Ken Salazar most likely irrational: federal court

Nobody wants to hear that:

After reviewing the Secretary’s Report, the Moratorium Memorandum, and the Notice to Lessees, the Court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium.

Secretary Salazar was way, way out of line in ascribing to industry experts a remedy they hadn't endorsed by inserting paragraphs into his report after the experts had signed off. It's appropriate for the court to have taken that into consideration. And I don't really care how many shares in Transocean Judge Feldman owns. Transocean has lots and lots of other customers and places to lease its drilling rigs.

They better beef up that case if they expect to win an appeal.

→ Injunction granted (.pdf; 22 pgs.).

eta:

"A federal judge's decision today to block a six-month moratorium on new deep-water drilling projects is extremely shortsighted," said a public advocate. "If anything, the temporary ban that President Barack Obama declared in May should be made permanent."

A permanent ban probably would have seemed more reasonable.