The BP Oil Spill. The Disappearing Corpus Delicti

Corpus Delicti is a fundamental principal in law. Essentially, it means that you must have a body of facts on which a crime is based. A dead body, for there to be a murder. A missing something or other, for there to be a theft, and so on.

Certainly, in the case of the BP oil spill there was an initial Corpus Delicti: a body of facts that said there was an oil spill. We all saw the oil spewing from the broken pipe. We saw the birds covered with oil. We saw the tar balls washing up and we saw the beaches and marshes drenched with sticky goo.

The White House and many others declared this the worst environmental disaster that has ever occurred in the U.S. But, was it?

Right now, the oil has almost mysteriously vanished in the open waters of the Gulf, and the coastal areas have not seen much more damage than had been seen early on (Click here to See Story: 200 Million Gallons Later, Clean Up Crews Can’t Find Any Oil).

In this week's TIME Magazine, this usually liberal-leaning publication is even questioning whether or not the impact of the BP oil spill has been exaggerated or if it will even come close to having the negative environmental impact of the Exxon Valdez spill of some years ago (Click here to See Story: The BP Spill: Has the Damage Been Exaggerated? ).

The fact is that the waters of the Gulf are a much different animal than the waters of Prince William Sound that were so brutally damaged by the Exxon spill. The water is faster moving and a helluva lot warmer; allowing the oil eating microbes to do their jobs. The Gulf of Mexico is laden with oil and, on given day, there are thousands of gallons of naturally seeping oil that is managing quite well with little or no damage to the general environment. One scientist put the BP spill into proper perspective with respect to the total waters in the Gulf by saying it was like spilling a single can of Coke in the middle of the New Orleans SuperDome.

Currently, the political left and the environmental movement is using this now-questionable disaster as a means of pushing their anti-0il, coal, and gas agenda. Many of the politically oriented, like John Kerry, are using it as the basis for ramming his Cap and Trade bill through Congress. And, Obama has used it to shut down all new exploration and drilling in his attempt to take complete political advantage of the situation. Like the housing collapse and the recession, it appears we might be in the midst of another "crisis" that will help Obama and the Democrats push their continuing left-wing agenda. In my opinion, that body of evidence, that Corpus Delicti, that they are using to justify Cap and Trade and the drilling ban, will have long since abated while America will still be stuck with the job killing effects and high cost of energy that will result from the Democrat's use of another exaggerated crisis.