The state is up in arms about the ban on deepwater drilling

IRONY surrounds the Obama administration’s moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

The people it presumably intends to protect—the residents of south Louisiana, whose fisheries and shorelines are being fouled by BP’s still-gushing Macondo well, and the oilfield workers who could be at risk from another disaster—are probably its loudest critics.

Nearly two out of three Americans support the ban, according to one recent poll, but gulf coast residents are split down the middle.

And in Louisiana, where the energy industry is a mainstay of the economy, state leaders and opinion-makers have been nearly unanimous in opposing the moratorium.


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