Project Katrina

Via the always wonderful Mother Jones:

We’re not there yet. Today, Representatives Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Lois Capps (D-Calif.) wrote a letter to National Oilwell Varco (NOV)—the company that provided the data display systems used by the drilling crew to monitor the well—demanding that the company hand over key information to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, the independent commission formed by President Obama to investigate the disaster. The information locked away in NOV’s vaults could help the commission recreate the computer displays that engineers on the Deepwater Horizon were looking at just seconds before the rig exploded.

Unfortunately, NOV is declining. In their letter to the company, Markey and Capps cite their difficulties with NOV as a big reason why the commission needs the authority to issue subpoenas—a privilege it doesn’t currently enjoy. The House passed a bill co-sponsored by Markey and Capps (by a vote of 420-1) giving it that power earlier this year. But Senate Republicans stymied any further progress.

[....]

Without subpeona power, the spill commission is toothless. Markey and Capps are using NOV’s heinous stubbornness to hammer that point home, and are lucky to have gotten their bill out the door in a Democrat-controlled House. But it’s not going anywhere in the Senate. Realistically, though, it doesn’t seem as though Democrats would have the legislative capital to burn on empowering the commission anyway. That’s too bad.

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post reports Jim DeMint has backed down from his attempt to deny subpoena power to the Obama Administration’s Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission.

Last week the House near-unanimously passed legislation giving the commission that power, but yesterday, Senator  Jim DeMint infuriated Democrats by  putting a block on the legislation when a Dem brought it to the floor for a voice vote.

DeMint claimed he was doing this on behalf of unnamed GOP Senators in his caucus, prompting Dems to charge that Republicans were shielding Big Oil from a real probe.

But the Senate GOP leadership has informed DeMint’s office that it has no objections to the legislation, and it will proceed, DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton tells me.

According to Sargent, DeMint’s office says they never had any objections to the concept of subpoenas, but put a hold on the legislation because a number of other senators had not had time to read it yet.