From the rabidly right-wing editors of the Boston Globe:

PRESIDENT OBAMA vastly understated the case last week when he said the Minerals Management Service has a “cozy relationship’’ with oil companies. The agency within the Interior Department, which approves offshore drilling requests, has routinely flouted federal requirements to seek impact assessments from environmental agencies before issuing permits. This flouting of the law began under the Bush administration, and Obama has failed to correct it.
On Obama’s watch, according to The New York Times, the minerals service approved nearly 450 drilling plans and seismic blasting projects without seeking reviews from agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Several final approval permits were granted this month, even though Interior Secretary Ken Salazar claimed that he’d stopped granting permits after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
Obama has criticized the “ridiculous spectacle’’ of major drilling firms like BP, Transocean, and Halliburton blaming each other. But just as ridiculous is how his Interior Department kept rubber-stamping permits. The department was in such bad shape that its acting inspector general, Mary Kendall, wrote Salazar just three weeks ago to say that Interior “has never had, and currently operates without, a scientific integrity policy.’’

The rest here.

I’m going to keep writing this: When President Obama reviewed all of this prior to his decision to allow drilling, how could these problems at MMS go unnoticed or unremarked?