This is one of those odd semi-quasi controversies from last year.  Doc Hastings quotes Daniel Webster — as all politicians do when fingering “Greats”, sort of shamelessly.

Today we move to this as your basic template for the current Doc Hastings news of any moment in time.

Yeah, the GOP, they’re really, really angry…at Obama and the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOERME) with it’s new (kind-of) safety regulations and (kind-of) oversight.
GOP Rep. Doc Hastings is beside himself pissed, issuing subpoena’s every chance he gets…

Yeah.  What… huh…

Nearly two years after the Deepwater Horizon exploded, it’s true that the spill hasn’t been the economic and environmental catastrophe that many were predicting. (Credit goes to writers like TIME’s own Michael Grunwald, who suspected early on that the region would bounce back from the disaster.) But the impact is still being felt—a study last month showed that oil spill had damaged sea floor coral as far as 7 miles away from the wellhead site. Tar balls—old, weathered oil from the spill—are still washing up along the beaches, while scientists are worried about the unusually high number of dolphins dying in the Gulf of Mexico, for reasons that still aren’t clear.

Meanwhile conservatives are still angry over the deepwater drilling moratorium that the Administration put into place for several months after the spill, as the Interior Department—and later, the reformed Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOERME)—overhauled safety oversight. Doc Hastings, the Republican chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee yesterday issued a subpoena for Interior Department documents over the moratorium, with some critics claiming that the Administration had twisted advice from technical experts to support a long moratorium. “The moratorium directly caused thousands of lost jobs, economic pain throughout the Gulf region and a decline in American energy production,” said Hastings. “It’s important to clearly understand what happened.”

Interesting cause and effect relations here.  An oil spill.  Affects the economy.  A moratorium and some regulatory tightening to avoid an oil spill.  Affects the economy.
Yeah, well.  You get what you vote for.   Surely gas will go down to 2 bucks any day now.

In election news:
Now that Jay Clough has dropped out of the race, Doc Hastings will be running unopposed. While this does guarantee a disappointing victory for Hastings, we still will remain active with what we have been doing, in order to raise awareness and understanding about the issues.

Clough has moved on to slightly greener pastures — he’ll get killed in the race in the 5th district, sure, but by a few fewer percentage votes.  Meantime, for the fourth, Washington’s “anywhere in the state” and top two primary system guarantees that there will be someone on the ballot against him in November.

You got this guy.
Dr. Mohammad H. Said announced his candidacy as a third-party candidate for the American Centrist Movement, which Said says he founded.

American Centrist Movement, huh?  Actually down the list it’s a hodge-podge of sorts, but never mind…  We’ll see if, like last election, a Tea Party candidate from Prosser chimes in.
Other ideas:  Maybe Gordon Allen Pross can switch parties again, and win by being the only Democratic candidate in the race.  Or, you know, Dennis Kucinich is in the hunt for a district.  Hey!  That’d be an interesting race!  Doc Hastings versus Dennis Kucinich!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 6th, 2012 at 9:43 am and is filed under Doc Hastings and the 4th Congressional District of Wash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.