BP And Government Employees Had A Drug-Fueled Sex Orgy And Now People In Louisiana Can't Go Swimming

Forgive me for getting ahead of myself. But it looks like the Mineral Management Service (MMS), our very own government agency that inspects all things minerals (and how they are managed), is a hotbed for super hot, life-endangering action. MMS employees were exposed yesterday for accepting gifts from oil companies, taking drugs and having sex on the job leading up to the oil spill. Which isn't so different from their scandal two years ago when they were exposed for accepting gifts from oil companies, taking drugs and having sex on the job. The biggest problem seems to stem from the fact that inspectors, oil company officials and government workers all work within the same jocular, oil-minded circle. Some of them have even had each others' jobs. Naturally, friendships, alliances and on-scene fucking occurs. It's that office place sexual tension, or the occasional workplace drug use. On a combustible death trap. But here's the really creepy part:

The result, the report found, was regulation that often looked less than rigorous. One confidential source, it said, told investigators that service inspectors let the oil and gas companies fill out their own inspection forms -- in pencil. Then an inspector would trace over their writing in ink. [Ezra Klein]

Tracing is how parents teach their children to write. And writing in pencil is a preemptive shtick crappy students use so they can rewrite answers on tests after the fact and say, "See? You made a mistake." It's not what the people drilling for oil and the other people who are supposed to regulate them do, especially when they're on a boat made of oil and fire off the coast of America.