On Thursday the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on the MMS scandal currently providing humorists with so many drilling puns. Pelosi’s blog has an account of the hearing. (See also E&E News, $ub req’d.)
The most amusing part was the righteous performance from Rep. George Miller, particularly this exchange with Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne:
Kempthorne: “… I would like to initiate an outreach program so we do sit down and we go through this with the corporations so they know exactly what the rules are.”
Miller: “They know what the rules are … they know what ethical behavior is and isn’t … they just apparently have chosen not to participate. We’re gonna take big grown up and successful people and we’re gonna give them ethics lessons? I don’t get it. I suspect that prosecution would focus the mind on the ethical problem — as opposed to a DVD. I just don’t understand it.”
Aw, I think Kempthorne’s right: how could oil company execs know that plying public officials with cocaine and hookers in exchange for favors was against the rules? They don’t tell you this stuff in business school.
Here’s Miller:
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