While I remain interested – as do all Americans – in the rich tapestry of idiomatic English, I did happen to read something this week that was not about farm animals or cosmetics. It was, instead, about sex, cocaine, and the Department of the Interior, making this the most improbably interesting sentence in the 159 year history of that storied agency. Otherwise, you might know them from their Seal, which celebrates the majestic buffalo, almost driven to extinction by white people taking vacations.

As the New York Times reports, the Interior Department is responsible for more than that terrible trip to the Grand Canyon you took when you were twelve. Indeed, the Minerals Management Service of the department is responsible for controlling things like offshore drilling and collecting royalties for oil and natural gas. The story the Times details is not complicated – in fact, it’s exactly what you might expect given the track record of the oil industry meeting the sound bureaucratic management of the Bush Administration – but it does involve the purchasing of cocaine and the doling out of favors, making it worth a read. Also worth a read is the fact that the Justice Department has declined to prosecute several of the key players involved, despite the request of the inspector general.

One can only hope that this isn’t the end of the investigation and that there’s plenty more sex, drugs, favors, and perhaps buffalo to come. However, if the local media in Louisiana have anything to say about it, we’ll be turning our attention back to people complaining about Entergy soon enough. Indeed, in one of the nation’s largest oil and gas producers, there has been hardly a single mention of this story in mainstream outlets. It strains credibility to assume that no part of this story touches the state – no stranger to favoritism and scandal in its own right. Perhaps outlets like the Times-Picayune are simply waiting until they have a solid piece of investigative journalism to reveal. On the other hand, perhaps they’re leaving all the heavy lifting to the local blogger community.

And, just in case you wonder why we’re not talking about the latest reasons that Barack Obama Is Going to Lose Because He Hates America So Much, here’s perhaps a small illustration of why cronyism and corruption at the nation’s oil and gas regulatory agency could matter for 2008:



Enjoy your pig trollops, America.