After Sarah Palin suggested that there is a connection between Obama's response to oil spill and BP's financial contributions to him on Fox News Sunday, Robert Gibbs shot down her accusations on Face the Nation. 
 
 PALIN: Well, I think that there is, perhaps, a hesitancy, to -- I don't really know how to put this, Chris, except to say that the oil companies who have so supported President Obama in his campaign and are supportive of him now, I don't know why the question isn't asked by the mainstream media and by others if there's any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration -- if there's any connection there to President Obama taking so doggone long to get in there, to dive in there and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico. Now if this was President Bush or if this were a Republican in office who hadn't received as much support even as President Obama has from BP and other oil companies, you know the mainstream media would be all over his case in terms of asking questions, why the administration didn't get in there -- didn't get in there and make sure that the regulatory agencies were doing what they were doing with the oversight to make sure that things like this don't happen. 
 
 Gibbs: Palin Should Get More Informed About Drilling: 
 
 "Sarah Palin was involved in that election, but I don't think, apparently, was paying a whole lot of attention," Gibbs said. "I'm almost sure that the oil companies don't consider the Obama administration a huge ally - we proposed a windfall profits tax when they jacked their oil prices up to charge for gasoline." "My suggestion to Sarah Palin would be to get slightly more informed as to what's going on in and around oil drilling in this country," he added. 
 
 As CBS noted, the back and forth between Palin and Gibbs continued after he was on the air. They also did a bit of fact checking on campaign donations on all sides from the oil companies including Palin. 
 
 According to Open Secrets.org, BP's campaign contributions during the 2008 election cycle were $214,915 to Democrats, and $315,909 to Republicans (about 40/60), split almost evenly between individual contributions and PACs. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, during Palin's 2006 run for Governor in Alaska (where the large majority of donations came from individuals), BP America made the fifth-largest donation by a company to her campaign, contributing $4,650, with BP Alaska giving an additional $250. 
 
 As Media Matters pointed out after the right wing started calling this Obama's Katrina, the administration did respond to the spill immediately, so that part of her argument falls flat as well. The response has been inadequate and they should not have trusted BP's early estimates on how much oil was leaking, but you can't say they weren't out there from day one. Their bigger problem was not cleaning up the MMS and catering to the "drill baby drill" crowd like Palin in order to get some bipartisan support for their energy legislation. 
 
 Chris Wallace also allowed Palin to do some revisionist history when she claimed that she knows "what it takes to hold these oil companies accountable". Uh...not so much. 
 
 Palin’s Exxon Valdez account draws guffaws: 
 
 Sarah Palin’s new memoir, “Going Rogue,” already has been strongly criticized by John McCain’s aides for her account as a vice presidential candidate on the ticket with him in their unsuccessful 2008 race for the White House. Now, add Alaskan experts who were involved in the case over the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster saying her account over her role in the litigation is distorted for a number of reasons. In the book, Palin claims to have helped the fishermen, Alaska Natives and other individuals suing Exxon over spill damages prevail in their legal case. “It took years for Alaska to achieve victory. As governor, I directed our attorney general to write an amicus brief in the case, and, thanks to Alaska’s able attorneys arguing in front of the highest court in the land, in 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the people,” she writes in her book. “Finally, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.” But Palin’s claims of victory for the plaintiffs and of playing a role in achieving that victory are highly distorted, said the chief attorney for the approximately 32,000 plaintiffs that sued Exxon over damages from the worst oil-tanker spill in U.S. waters. “That is the most cockamamie bullshit,” said Dave Oesting of Anchorage, lead plaintiff attorney in the private litigants’ civil case against Exxon and its successor, Exxon Mobil Corp. “She didn’t have a damn thing to do with it, and she didn’t know what it was about.” Read on... 
 
 And as I already noted, the Bush administration DOJ shut down a criminal investigation of BP, so there was no accountability. 
 
 Scott West: The U.S. Government Has Taught BP That it Can Do Whatever it Wants: 
 
 SCOTT WEST: But by August of '07, something had shifted dramatically, and we were told by the US attorney's office in Alaska that the case would settle out for corporate misdemeanor. And at the meeting that I attended there in late August, the question was asked, if we had to go to trial today, what could we prove? And I had to admit that a trial at that moment, the most we could prove was a corporate misdemeanor. And then I said, "But we’re not done with our investigation. We’ve only just begun. We need another couple of years to really vet this out." And they said, well, can I guarantee that I would be able to convict individuals. And I said, "Of course not. You can’t guarantee anything like that in the criminal investigative arena." And so, with that, they said, "Well, then we’re done." And I was in shock. It’s unheard of for a special agent in charge to be denied the opportunity to complete an investigation that was so far from nearing its end. And then— AMY GOODMAN: So you have the EPA considering penalties of upwards of, what, 800—or $672 million, possibly felony charges against BP executives, and they end up settling for $20 million? SCOTT WEST: Yes, they ended up settling for $20 million. And I was told there was a couple of reasons for that $20 million figure. One, we have to go back to the Olympic Pipe Line case. The Olympic pipeline ruptured in Bellingham, Washington in 1999, and the resulting spill of gasoline into a stream caught fire. Three individuals were burned to death, and a stream was destroyed. That case was investigated by EPA out of the Seattle office. In '99 and 2000, it was considered a very significant criminal case in the US attorney's office in Seattle, which was at that time under the Clinton administration. When the Bush administration took over at the Department of Justice, and the US attorney came in, it was—became a bottom-of-the-barrel case and was ultimately settled out for a very low amount of money. And I have been talking with one of the investigators on that case, and he said the amount of money that was determined as the fine in that matched what the insurance companies were willing to pay. So Olympic Pipe Line essentially did not have to actually pay the fine, but it was covered by their insurance company. Now, that Olympic Pipe Line settlement became the benchmark, within the Bush Department of Justice, for environmental crime. 
 
 Yeah, that's some accountability Sarah. There are plenty of more than valid reasons to be criticizing what's gone on with this oil spill and the response. Sarah Palin doesn't have an ounce of credibility to be the one making any of them, but that won't stop Fox News from bringing her on as though she does. 
 
 h/t aview999 for the Reuters link. ||||| Reuters A sea turtle covered in oil swims off Louisiana on Tuesday. BP was capturing so much oil that it didn't have a big enough boat on site to hold it. 
 
 U.S. officials said Tuesday that BP PLC was collecting so much oil from its broken well a mile under the Gulf of Mexico that it didn't have a big enough boat to hold it—the latest in a series of miscalculations stoking a political backlash against BP and the global oil industry. 
 
 President Barack Obama on Tuesday piled the pressure on BP and its beleaguered chief executive, Tony Hayward, telling NBC News in an interview aired Tuesday that he would have fired Mr. Hayward by now if he worked for him. The president responded to criticism that his response to the crisis has been too cool and that he shouldn't be spending time meeting with experts, saying he had been talking to experts "so I know whose ass to kick." 
 
 Fighting Words Administration comments on BP and the spill: 'They are not our partner. They are not our partner.' Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, April 29, correcting a subordinate's reference to BP 'Our job basically is to keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum to carry out the responsibilities they have.' Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, May 2 'Where I was wrong was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios.' President Obama, May 27 'I am furious at this entire situation.' Obama, June 3 'I don't sit around talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.' Obama, interview aired June 8 
 
 Mr. Obama faces rising frustration, and according to some polls, falling approval for his administration's handling of the Gulf disaster. A few weeks ago, Mr. Obama left the rhetorical flourishes to subordinates, such as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who said the administration would keep its "boot on the neck" of BP. 
 
 But Democratic figures such as strategist and CNN pundit James Carville began taking Mr. Obama to task for not being tough enough on BP. Now, Mr. Obama himself is scolding BP, warning the company last week against "nickel and diming" Gulf residents, and using a series of televised interviews this week to say he was "furious" about the situation. More substantively, the White House is now backing a move to lift all caps on liability oil companies could face for spilling crude. 
 
 Frustration over the spill could cost BP and its oil industry rivals heavily in the years to come. The costs will come in the form of new regulations—such as those issued Tuesday by the Obama administration as the prerequisite for companies to resume offshore drilling in waters shallower than 500 feet. 
 
 The new rules call for, among other things, more extensive inspection and certification of blowout preventers, the huge devices that are supposed to stanch the flow of oil from a damaged well. A failed blowout preventer is one factor in the huge BP spill. 
 
 Congressional Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, met Tuesday and emerged to declare they were determined, in her words, "to exploit and enforce the laws that are there; change them if necessary; and pass others to make us stronger in terms of protecting the interest of the taxpayer, the economy, the ecology, the quality of life of the region." 
 
 The industry—or consumers—could also pay in the form of higher taxes. Legislation pending in the Senate would increase a per-barrel tax paid by oil companies to 41 cents, up from 8 cents, raising $14 billion over 10 years. The tax is supposed to support a government fund created in 1990 after the Exxon Valdez spill to help fund cleanup projects. 
 
 Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Tuesday that Democrats were raiding the fund to pay for programs not related to oil-spill cleanup. New revenue raised by the levy "ought to be used to clean up spills," he said. 
 
 Oil companies will pay in another way: Lost or delayed opportunities to drill. The U.S. has called a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling and cancelled the sale of oil leases off the East Coast and Alaska. The Obama administration had also halted shallow-water drilling pending the issuance of the new rules; complying with those rules could keep rigs off the water for more days or weeks. 
 
 Photos: Oil Impacts Animal Life View Slideshow Angel Gonzalez for The Wall Street Journal Brown pelicans overlooked containment boom lines at their nesting grounds in the Cat Bay Islands in Louisiana. Tar Reaches the Florida Coast View Slideshow Reuters 
 
 The new rules issued Tuesday require a company's chief executive to personally certify that the operator has complied with all regulations, that drilling equipment has been tested and that personnel are properly trained, among other things. And they require independent verification for a number of systems, particularly blowout preventers. 
 
 "We are pleased that a framework is beginning to take shape to allow shallow-water drilling activity to resume," the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group for oil companies, said in a statement. The group cautioned it was studying the details of the new shallow-water rules, and said it remained concerned that the moratorium on deepwater projects would threaten jobs and oil production. 
 
 The shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico account for about 55% of all natural gas produced in the Gulf and about 20% of all the oil. The deepwater region, where BP was drilling an exploratory well that blew up, accounts for more than 80% of the oil produced in the region. 
 
 Michel Claudet, president of Terrebonne Parish, said the resumption of shallow-water drilling wouldn't help his parish. Deepwater exploration and drilling supports far more jobs. 
 
 "We'll live through the seafood [collapse], even though we don't want to. But this whole moratorium will be a nail in the coffin of Terrebonne Parish," he said. 
 
 So far, the oil industry has dodged major regulatory clampdowns elsewhere in the world. 
 
 Norway on Tuesday said it was "not appropriate" to allow new deepwater drilling until the Deepwater Horizon incident had been fully investigated, but the government said it would go ahead with plans to award new exploration licenses in its territorial waters next year. 
 
 The U.K. said Tuesday it wouldn't halt drilling in the West of Shetland area north of Scotland, one of the most promising deepwater sites in Europe. Officials did announce plans to double the number of annual environmental inspections of drilling rigs. 
 
 In the Gulf, BP's costs for the disaster are mounting fast. Late Tuesday, the British oil giant said it would donate net revenue from the oil it is collecting from the well to organizations working on the Gulf cleanup effort. The company still faces pressure from the Obama Administration to pay more, faster, and to move more rapidly to capture oil from its well. 
 
 BP, which is capturing about 15,000 barrels a day from the well now, plans in the next week or so to expand its oil-containment effort by another 5,000 barrels a day, deploying another vessel already at the site of the spill. The company is also bringing in storage vessels from elsewhere in the world, including a tanker from the North Sea. 
 
 A group of scientists working for the U.S. government is expected to release later this week a new estimate of how much oil is flowing from the well. Scientists charged with studying the flow rate are now analyzing high-resolution video of the leak using a method called particle image velocimetry, which involves observing separate features in the flow from one frame to the next to measure the velocity of the fluid. 
 
 --Laura Meckler contributed to this article. 
 
 Write to Guy Chazan at guy.chazan@wsj.com and Susan Daker at susan.daker@dowjones.com ||||| In her television show tonight, Sarah Palin casts herself as a can-do superwoman of the natural world. She fishes, hikes across glaciers and preaches "respect for the elements" from a speedboat while clad in a yellow cagoule. But the programme has already plunged the Mama Grizzly-in-chief into controversy after a leading conservationist in her adopted home of Alaska accused her of flagrant irresponsibility by fishing too close to protected brown bears. 
 
 John Toppenberg, director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, said scenes in an online trailer for the programme appeared to show the former Republican vice-presidential candidate breaking the rules of Wolverine Creek, a famous spot where bears – and humans – come to fish. "It's clear from the video that she violated the guidelines," he said, calling her actions "a travesty". 
 
 In a preview of Sarah Palin's Alaska, a part nature documentary, part candid camera of the daily life of one of America's most controversial political families, the former state governor is seen fishing for salmon with husband Todd and family members. She can be seen apparently holding her rod towards brown bears on the river bank, while the party's boat appears to be closer to the bears than guidelines advise. The Alaska department of fish and game says people in a boat must not fish within 30ft of a bear. "It's clearly irresponsible," said Toppenberg. "She is encouraging the violation of important guidelines. Humans can get too close to the bears." 
 
 The irony of a right-wing conservative, who boasts of hunting moose and shooting wolves while campaigning for more oil drilling in Alaska, transforming herself into a nature fan for primetime has not been lost on environmentalists. 
 
 Large brown bears gather in Wolverine Creek because the fishing is so easy and the animals have, in the process, become a tourist spectacle. But Toppenberg warned that by behaving in an apparently irreverent manner, Palin was doing nothing to foster responsibility among visitors. "She is encouraging the violation of important guidelines that allows tourism to flourish in Alaska. She is inviting future problems with the tourism industry and, in particular, the bear-viewing industry," he said. 
 
 More than two years after she was plucked by Republican presidential candidate John McCain to be his running mate in the 2008 election, Palin, 46, claims she will run for president in 2012 if "there's no one else". Meanwhile she has decided to put her family and her home state on show for the nation in Sarah Palin's Alaska. But even a soft-focus programme becomes controversial when Palin is attached to it. 
 
 Joe Meehan, of the wildlife conservation division of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said that it appeared that the Palins' boat got within 30ft of the bears but not while they were actually feeding. "Some people may say you shouldn't even try to fish when a bear is in the area and I wouldn't argue with that," he added. 
 
 Meehan, who supervises Alaska's wildlife refuge programme, which includes Wolverine Creek, said that while he did not believe Palin had necessarily breached the guidelines, he had concerns over the signal she was sending. "Fishing in close proximity to bears may, in general, not send an appropriate message to large numbers of people that are not experienced at fishing in bear country," he said. 
 
 The preview clip also shows a bear jumping into the river near the Palins. Palin recalls dramatically to camera later: "So I'm thinking we are going to get stuck there, the anchor is dropped and there is a bear coming towards us." 
 
 But this enraged Toppenberg. "She implies that she is somehow in danger or being brave. That's complete nonsense," he said. "Wolverine Creek is the one place in Alaska where the bears are tolerant and completely habituated to the presence of people and boats. But the guidelines are there for a reason."
– Sarah Palin took time out from her war with new neighbor Joe McGinniss—now safely behind a mile-high fence—to launch a Facebook attack on President Obama, who she says passed the buck in his press conference on the Gulf oil spill and hasn't gotten federal agencies involved fast enough. "His lack of executive experience might explain this because he is apparently unaware that it’s his job as a chief executive to make sure they do their jobs and help solve problems." Could be read as a cute rejoinder to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs suggesting sweetly on Sunday that Palin, who had charged that Obama was in bed with BP because of campaign contributions, apparently "wasn't paying a whole lot of attention" during the election, and might want to get "slightly more informed as to what's going on in and around drilling in this country." Palin goes on to slam Obama's decision to suspend drilling off the coast of Alaska, and says it shows how much the president has to learn. "Please learn that we must have domestic energy development, you must stop looking backward and blaming Bush, and we must all work together to 'plug the d#*! hole.' ”