Judge Holds Lawless Obama Interior Department in Contempt

As I wrote in my year-end review, the Administration's shenanigans on the Gulf drilling moratorium were lawless and bound to get it in trouble.

The federal judge who struck down the Obama administration's moratorium on deepwater drilling after the Gulf oil spill held the Interior Department in contempt Wednesday, and ordered the federal agency to pay attorneys' fees for several offshore oil companies.

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman chided the department for its "dismissive conduct" after he overturned the agency's decision to halt any new permits for deepwater projects and suspend drilling on 33 exploratory wells after the Deepwater Horizon blast, which killed 11 workers and triggered the massive spill.

After Feldman overturned the government's moratorium in June, the agency issued a second nearly identical suspension.

"Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the reimposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government's contempt of this court's preliminary injunction order," he wrote.

This is the future of the ObamaCare litigation too, if Administration officials insist on continuing implementation without first asking Judge Vinson for a stay.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 09:16 PM

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