Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship at a Senate hearing on mine safety last month. (Pete Marovich/ZUMApress.com)

Massey Energy and mine safety advocates don’t agree on much these days. But as government regulators begin their closed-door probe into the cause of April’s deadly blast at a Massey mine in southern West Virginia, the two sides have united on one front: Both are questioning the willingness of the Mine Safety and Health Administration to hold itself responsible for potential mistakes leading up to the tragedy — especially if the probe is not made public.

[Environment1] “How likely is MSHA to point the finger at itself if the evidence gathered in confidential interviews suggests that its actions contributed to the explosion?” Don Blankenship, Massey’s pugnacious CEO, asked Senate lawmakers during a mine safety hearing last month.

If history is any indication, it’s not very likely.

Following a number of deadly mine disasters in the last decade, MSHA’s internal investigators came to the seemingly contradictory conclusion that although the agency made significant mistakes, it was also not to blame for those accidents. That trend, according to a growing number of mine safety experts, is a disturbing one, not least because the alleged whitewash in those cases relieves pressure on the agency to reform itself.

“They always conclude that MSHA did nothing wrong, so they avoid liability and nothing changes in the agency,” said a former MSHA manager who spoke anonymously due to the sensitivity of the topic. “When the time came to do the internal reviews, [they] made sure that MSHA was not blamed.”

Tony Oppegard, a former MSHA lawyer who now represents the victims of mining accidents, generally agreed, arguing that while the quality of the internal reviews varies according to their authors, “there’s an inherent conflict because you have the agency investigating itself.”

“There needs to be a truly independent group of people conducting these investigations,” Oppegard said.

All sides agree that the chief responsibility for miner safety lies with the mine operator. But when the companies don’t uphold their part of the bargain, it becomes the task of regulators either to force the companies to shape up or to shutter the mines altogether. A failure to do so can have tragic consequences.

In January 2006, the Sago Mine explosion in West Virginia killed 12 miners and injured a 13th. Under the Bush administration, MSHA had adopted a policy of “compliance assistance,” under which inspectors were encouraged simply to point out safety hazards and help mine operators comply with the rules, rather than punishing safety violations with fines and other penalties. Although MSHA’s internal review found a “failure of personnel to follow established inspection procedures,” as well as a failure to correct known weaknesses in enforcing the rules, the authors also made clear that MSHA should not bear any of the responsibility for the tragedy.

“Although the internal review team identified deficiencies in MSHA’s actions at the Sago Mine, the team did not find any evidence that the actions of District 3 personnel caused or contributed to the fatal explosion,” the reviewers said.

A similar scenario unfolded following the May 2006 explosion at the Darby Mine No. 1 in Harlan County, Ky., which killed five miners and injured a sixth. While the subsequent internal review noted “weak supervisory, managerial, and headquarters oversight” and found that “MSHA did not address the potential for significant problems with faulty seal construction,” the authors similarly concluded that MSHA should bear no blame.

“Although the internal review team identified significant deficiencies in MSHA’s actions at the Darby Mine, the team did not find any evidence that these deficiencies caused or contributed to the fatal explosion,” the report reads.

Indeed, rather than punishing the district manager overseeing the Darby Mine, MSHA recently named him the head of the team that will investigate the cause of April’s Upper Big Branch explosion, which killed 29 miners and almost killed a 30th — the deadliest mining accident in 40 years.

Last week, investigators entered the Upper Big Branch mine for the first time since that blast. But MSHA — which hasn’t staged a public mine-safety hearing since the Carter administration — has so far resisted all calls to hold one this time around. Opening its investigation to the public would grant the agency subpoena power that it won’t otherwise have.

MSHA leaders have argued that voluntary testimony is simply more reliable. “People should understand that private interviews are an important part of our investigation,” Solicitor of Labor Patricia Smith said in a recent statement.

Reports indicate, however, that a number of Massey miners are simply not showing up to their interviews with investigators.

“It’s a monumental mistake, what MSHA is doing,” Oppegard said. “It’s doomed to fail.” He suggested that MSHA force those witnesses to “come in and plead the fifth.”

Meanwhile, the former MSHA manager said that a failure by MSHA to take a hard and honest look at its role in the UBB disaster would be a missed opportuniy to correct some of the inherent weaknesses at the agency, where higher-ups “get caught up in the minutiae” of data collection without following up on what that information reveals.

“They’ve devised all these systems for collecting data and looking at it,” the source said, “but they haven’t taken it to the next step: using the data to make the mines safer.”

Officials on Thursday afternoon spotted an oil slick within 3 ½ miles of the Pensacola coast, and a stretch of Pensacola Beach contained dozens of gooey, oil-like clumps Friday morning. Locals and tourists poked at the gobs with sticks and took photos of them with their cellphones. Few ventured into the water, although area beaches remained open.

Earlier in the day, Gov. Charlie Crist said officials already have some of the tools they need to battle the incoming oil, but “we want to get more boom.”

“We’ve got about 250,000 feet of boom already dispatched through the Panhandle,” Crist said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. “We have about another 66,000 boom that is staged nearby, ready for us to be able to utilize and disperse. But in addition to that, we’re just going to keep asking and asking and asking for more.”

Meanwhile, BP engineers were successful in capping the seafloor well-head Friday, though a great deal of oil was reportedly still escaping into the Gulf.

“Israel is one of our strongest and most important allies,” Reid said in a short statement, “and the United States stands firmly with Israel at this critical time.”

I deeply regret the loss of life in the flotilla incident, including the death of an American citizen.

Israel has an obligation to protect its citizens and therefore has a clear right under international law to prevent weapons from getting in the hands of terrorists determined to target them.  Israel indicated it was willing to put in place a process to ensure that legitimate humanitarian relief reached Gaza.  Unfortunately this offer was rejected.

Israel has pledged to carry out a transparent and thorough investigation of this incident, and I look forward to its findings.

As does the rest of the world.

The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. reports that the Virginia-based coal giant has already hired a PR firm, which is lobbying lawmakers not to enact any reform legislation before the UBB investigation is complete — “which could be a year or more from now,” Ward notes dryly.

Indeed, investigators finally got into the mine on Wednesday for a few hours, but their plans to return today were thwarted by a drilling problem, pushing that re-entry to next week.

Ward notes that the PR firm, Public Strategies, is distributing copies of this recent editorial in the Charleston Daily Mail, which urges Congress not to pass reforms just for the sake of passing reforms.

Congress should wait until the investigation is complete before rushing headlong into changes that might not help and might even hinder mine safety. Whatever new legislation or regulation Congress pursues should be based on mining safety and miner health — not just on the commendable impulse to “do something.”

On its website, Public Strategies boasts that it can help “transform corporate reputation into competitive advantage.” Considering Massey’s reputation, it has its work cut out.

Increasingly, though, a fourth camp is emerging — one that’s criticizing Israel for attacking a Turkish-flagged vessel in international waters (and also questioning America’s support for the Israeli blockade of Gaza). Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) was the first to step into this thorny territory, circulating a letter to President Obama Wednesday arguing that Israel’s right to self defense “does not extend to shooting innocent civilians anywhere in the world, anytime it pleases.”

And yesterday, GOP Rep. Ron Paul (Texas), a libertarian who thinks the U.S. has no business in most international affairs, also blasted Israel’s actions, telling radio host Don Imus that the blockade of Gaza is “atrocious” and America’s support of it makes us “morally responsible.”

“Preventing goods from going in, it’s actually an act of war,” Paul said. “It’s absolutely wrong to prevent people that are starving and having problems — that are almost like in concentration camps — [from receiving aid], and saying, ‘Yes, we endorse this whole concept.’

“I think it’s just terrible, and I don’t think we should be a part of it.”

There are signs that the White House is starting to feel the same way. In an interview with Larry King yesterday, President Obama spoke gingerly of the need to investigate the incident before drawing sweeping conclusions. “But,” he added, “it’s not premature to say to the Israelis and to say to the Palestinians, and to say to all the parties in the region that the status quo is unsustainable.

“We have been trying to do this piecemeal for decades now. It just doesn’t work.”

But Republicans, who a month ago were saying that they’d recognize progress when the jobless rate fell, aren’t impressed. Indeed, Republican House Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) just issued a statement blasting the stimulus programs that are propping the numbers up.

[M]uch of what the Administration touts as a ‘jobs recovery’ has caused – and will continue to cause — the deficit to soar. Let me be clear – during challenging times, a job is a job. Yet government jobs that are paid for by taxing small business people and borrowing from the Chinese are not signs of a healthy economic recovery.

He has a point: 411,000 of those 431,000 new jobs are related to the 2010 Census and therefore temporary. Still, any new job creation is good news relative to the hundreds of thousands of jobs the economy was shedding a year ago. And, of course, the idea behind stimulus spending all along has been that the short-term hit to the deficit will be a tiny cost relative to the consequences of federal inaction.

Relatives in Istanbul mourn on the coffins of victims of Israel's raid of ships bound for Gaza. (Zuma)

On Thursday, the world learned that one of the activists killed this week by Israeli commandos was a U.S. citizen. On Capitol Hill, the news seemed to raise no eyebrows at all.

Furkan Dogan, a New York-born student living in Turkey, was one of nine activists killed, according to numerous reports, when Israeli soldiers on Monday boarded the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, a ship carrying aid supplies to the Gaza Strip in defiance of an Israeli blockade. The 19-year-old had been shot five times — including four shots to the head.

[Congress1] The raid has stirred a storm of criticism in much of Europe and the Middle East, not least because the soldiers had boarded the vessel — and five smaller ships — in international waters. Yet since news of Dogan’s identity and U.S. citizenship made headlines, the reaction from Washington lawmakers has been mostly silence — an odd response in the wake of such a high-profile episode.

Indeed, while a few Democratic leaders responded earlier in the week to the initial raid — most either defending Israel or cautiously urging an investigation into the incident — none reacted to the more recent news of Dogan’s death. Instead, congressional leaders seem ready to let the White House handle the thorny diplomacy of confronting the ally that’s just killed an American.

Calls to the offices of a number of Democratic leaders — including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (Mass.) and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman (Calif.) — were not returned Thursday.

The episode highlights the delicacy of Washington’s relationship with Israel, the only recognized democracy in the Middle East, and one that the United States supports with billions of dollars in military aid each year. It also creates a dilemma for the Obama administration, which is now forced to walk a thin line between the domestic pro-Israel crowd — which holds tremendous sway (and lobbies with millions of dollars) in Washington — and foreign allies calling for a more concrete condemnation of the deadly attack.

Obama on Thursday continued to approach the issue gingerly, telling CNN’s Larry King that the episode was “tragic” and the deaths “unnecessary.” But the president also stopped short of condemning Israel, instead reiterating his previous call for the country to cooperate in an investigation.

“I think the Israelis are going to agree to that — an investigation of international standards — because they recognize that this can’t be good for Israel’s long-term security,” Obama said.

Earlier in the day, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had dodged questions about whether the news of Dogan’s death alters the administration’s diplomatic position. Still, the death of a U.S. citizen likely puts a greater pressure on Washington’s political leaders to take a stand at some point — a dynamic not unlike that surrounding the 2003 death of Rachel Corrie, an American human rights activist killed in Gaza by an Israeli bulldozer as she protested the demolition of a Palestinian’s home.

Meanwhile, Israeli leaders have adamantly defended Monday’s raid as a necessary move to uphold the blockade and ensure that no weapons were smuggled into Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, an Islamic group that advocates for the elimination of Israel. As for the shootings, Israeli officials contend that the soldiers were simply acting in self defense after being attacked by activists on the Mavi Marmara.

It’s an argument being echoed by Israeli’s staunchest backers on Capitol Hill.

“I strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself, and the right of Israel’s naval commandos, who were executing a legal mission, to defend themselves by using force when they were brutally attacked,” Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) said this week. “I strongly condemn the action of those who assaulted the Israeli troops and made the use of violence by Israeli troops necessary in self-defense.”

Yet those participating in the aid flotilla have a different tale to tell. And Dogan wasn’t the only American taking part. Also aboard the ships were Hedy Epstein, a St. Louis-based author and Holocaust survivor; Ann Wright, a 29-year veteran of the U.S. Army; and Edward Peck, former U.S. ambassador to Mauritania and deputy director of the White House anti-terror task force under the Reagan administration.

In an interview with Salon on Thursday, Peck argued that those claiming the Israeli soldiers were simply acting in self defense have “got it backwards.”

“There are civilians, men and woman, on a Turkish-flagged vessel, in international waters. And here comes a group of heavily armed … guys who are going to take over the ship by force and then take it to Israel, where the passengers don’t want to go,” Peck said. “And so they pick up deck chairs and other things to fight off these heavily armed — and by the way, masked — commandos, and somehow they become the attackers.

“So that,” Peck said, “depresses me a little bit.”

“If we can afford wars, tax cuts, and bank bailouts, then we can certainly afford to maintain programs for workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own,” McDermott said in a statement. “But we also need to think about additional steps to help those trying to return to work.”

The hearing comes at a good time: As Annie pointed out yesterday, the long-term unemployed (those without work for more than 27 weeks) now represent almost 46 percent of the nation’s jobless population — the highest percentage since the government starting tracking those numbers 62 years ago.

That means that at least 7 million people have been without work for longer than six months. They’ll be anxious to see what McDermott et al. come up with.

Witnesses have yet to be announced.

Nothing shocking here.

“Israel exercised her legitimate right of self defense,” Lieberman said in a statement.

The flotilla was a clear provocation and was not an effort to improve the lives of the people of Gaza but rather an attempt to score political propaganda points.  The Palestinian people have legitimate rights to a state that is a peaceful neighbor of Israel, but those who assist Hamas only undermine that goal and a peaceful resolution.  Support of Hamas and its aims is not the humanitarian path to peace, but rather enables continued violence and conflict.

Lieberman also applauded the Obama administration for its response to the attack, during which nine activists were killed, including a U.S. citizen. The White House, he said, “has refused to join the international herd that has rushed to convict Israel before the facts were known and has apparently forgotten that Israel is a democratic nation and Hamas is a terrorist group.”

At difficult moments like this, it is more important than ever for the U.S. to stand steadfastly with our democratic ally, Israel.

The only mystery is why it took Lieberman, among the strongest backers of Israel on Capitol Hill, so long to issue his comments.

But Obama isn’t the only policymaker with egg on his face. The BP disaster has caused onetime drilling proponents like GOP Govs. Charlie Crist (Fla.) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Calif.) to rethink the wisdom of those policies. And, as Mother Jones’ Josh Harkinson notes this week, Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal — who’s been nothing but critical of the federal response as BP’s oil creeps onto his beaches — has been on the front lines of the push to allow states to expand the drilling off of their shores.

In February, 2006, while serving as a member of the GOP-controlled US House of Representatives, Jindal introduced the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act. Passed by the House a few months later, the bill would have opened up the entire US coast to offshore oil drilling. States could override the law and ban rigs in their territorial waters, yet the law would let them share lease royalties with the federal government — a strong incentive to drill. Adjacent states would have little say in the matter (clearly a problem, given that BP’s spill has marred several states’ coastlines).

Jindal’s bill, Harkinson adds, even included language specifically downplaying the risks associated with offshore drilling:

(4) it is not reasonably foreseeable that . . . development and production of an oil discovery located more than 50 miles seaward of the coastline will adversely affect resources near the coastline;

And it’s worth noting that the Louisiana governor — who’s been screaming from the rafters for federal help since the crisis began — also foresaw little role for Washington in his drilling expansion plans. Harkinson again:

As Jindal was pushing to radically increase offshore oil drilling (while accepting more than $100,000 from oil and gas companies), there’s no indication that he saw the slightest need to increase government oversight. His stated governing philosophy is deeply anti-regulatory. In March, 2009, he said: “There has never been a challenge that the American people, with as little interference as possible by the federal government, cannot handle.”

Except the recent spill.