...

Now that invisible wall separating Florida from its neighbors has been breached. The spreading BP oil spill has already reached the Panhandle, and if it rides currents to the renowned reefs and fishing holes on both Florida coasts, the Sunshine State could become a vacation destination with the rules of a museum: Look, but don’t touch.

All because other states decided to rely on oil and gas, angry Floridians say; all because, in the water, there are no borders — only currents that can carry catastrophes hundreds of miles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/us/13florida.html?hp

By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — Representative Joe L. Barton had to be truly sorry by the time he apologized for his apology on Thursday.

In the four hours between his televised apology to BP — for what he called a $20 billion “shakedown” by President Obama for loss claims in the gulf oil spill — and his apology for that apology, Mr. Barton, a Republican from Texas, had been pummeled in the blogosphere, assailed by Democratic Party operatives and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and, in the blow that landed, threatened by Republican leaders with being yanked from the party’s top seat on the powerful House energy committee.

By day’s end, the Barton sideshow had become the main show in Congress, eclipsing the much-anticipated grilling of BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, by members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday,” Mr. Barton said in his opening statement. “I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown — in this case a $20 billion shakedown.”

Democrats, smelling blood in an election year, sought to make Mr. Barton an exemplar for Republican ties to “Big Oil.” House Republican leaders, fearing that trap, rushed to contain the damage.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip, summoned Mr. Barton and he “was told to apologize, immediately, or he would lose his spot, immediately,” a senior aide said. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”

When Mr. Barton soon did issue a statement of contrition, Mr. Boehner’s office also distributed it, for added effect. Then Mr. Boehner, Mr. Cantor and another party leader, Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, together publicly rebuked their colleague.

Mr. Barton, in his statement, apologized “for using the term ‘shakedown’ ” to describe the $20 billion escrow account that BP and the White House announced Wednesday. He also retracted the apology to BP and said the company “should bear the full financial responsibility for the accident on their lease in the Gulf of Mexico” on April 20 and “fully compensate those families and businesses that have been hurt.”

Of the five Gulf Coast states, Mr. Barton’s Texas is the only one whose beaches, fisheries and tourist haunts are not threatened by oil spewing from BP’s ruined well. Republican lawmakers from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida quickly disavowed Mr. Barton’s apology to BP, and one was the first to call for stripping Mr. Barton of his committee seat.

----------------

see toon at top...