I believe Americans are an 'after-the-fact' people. Instead of disease prevention, we focus on health care, for instance.

Similarly, instead of being cautious, skeptical, and safe about massive deepwater oil drilling operations, we wait until we have the worst oil spill to consider the information at hand. 

The White House Council on Environmental Quality has announced that the BP Horizon well had a number of environmental exemption (which is insane) based on data that was decades old - and decades out of date. 

The announcement went on explain that the Mineral Management Service - you know, the folks doing blow with the extraction industry employees under the Bush administration (I'm not even kidding - look it up) - applied lax standards to the review process. 

According to news reports "the Obama administration is calling for environmental reviews for all new deepwater oil drilling." 

Seems like the messed up part of that is the word 'new'. I do agree that we should be reviewing the new permits, but I would argue that perhaps we should revue the currently operating permits, like the BP Horizon rig.

Because if THAT permit had been reviewed, or done properly in the first place, we may not have had that disaster. Of course, the real answer is to stop offshore drilling, but I'll take following the rules in the interim.