Given the news these days of the endlessly spewing oil in the gulf, you might ask: Can't the folks at the Interior Department's old Minerals Management Service get anything right? Well, maybe not. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed an executive order last week that reorganized and renamed the MMS, which oversaw oil and gas development on the Outer Continental Shelf, christening it the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement. The department, in an announcement, noted a shorthand version: Bureau of Ocean Energy, or BOE. In his 'Hello' e-mail to MMS employees, new BOE chief Michael Bromwich also noted the name change to BOE, saying he hoped it would be 'the first step in a series of more substantive and meaningful changes' in the near future. Not so fast, James Anderson, the newly named organization's acting associate director for administration and budget, said in an e-mail Friday to the MMS executive committee (where we use italics, he used underlining _ and, in the second case, boldface as well): 'Please be advised that (begin italics) BOE should not be used <I>(</I> end italics<I>) </I> as the abbreviation. ... Until further notice, the abbreviation (begin italics) BOEMRE should be used (end italics). Administration division chiefs and program chiefs of staff have been included on this message so as they can disseminate this information to the appropriate points of contact.' (Presumably that includes Bromwich.) Anderson doesn't address proper pronunciation, but perhaps it should be 'bummer.' _ _ _ Meanwhile, the enviro group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is auctioning off original MMS memorabilia accumulated over the years. Yes, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have your own piece of this bureaucratic Enron. There's the usual assortment of gym bags, pins, lanyards, 25th-anniversary laptop bags and such. But then there are the truly coveted items, such as 'Petey, the Petroleum-Loving Whale' _ actually, PEER made that name up _ a little rubber toy whale embossed with 'MMS Environmental Studies Program,' starting bid $50. There's the exquisitely timed MMS 'Oil Drop Paperweight,' a 2 1/2-inch acrylic square containing an oil droplet from off the Alaska coast ($125), as well as a particular favorite, the 'Antimicrobial Telephone Pad' with, for the truly phobic, an MMS hand sanitizer (both for $50). These are prized historically, being from the last-ever MMS Safety Day, in 2009. (This year's luncheon for safety awards, scheduled for May 3, was canceled after the April 20 calamity.) Our top choice, though, is the beautifully framed Al Gore Hammer Award for high- performing federal employees ($100). This one was for the agency's Innovative Achievements Program acknowledging the agency's and staff's commitment to customer service, PEER said. (No, this was given in 1997, long before that IG report of an MMS staffer having sex with an oil company employee.) The message from Gore reads: 'Thanks for building a government that works better and costs less!' Ah, yes. Bidding begins Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. and closes July 7 at 9 a.m. We'll update as needed. (P.S. PEER is looking for other precious memorabilia _ T-shirts, windbreakers, mugs, etc. _ to use in future auctions.) _ _ _ While fears about 'burrowing' _ political types sliding into career jobs _ run especially high during presidential-election years, a new study by the Government Accountability Office has found only seven cases of burrowing during the Bush administration, none of them near the 2008 election. The GAO looked at 'conversions,' or movement from political to civil service positions, from May 2005 and May 2009, finding only 139. Of those, the GAO found only seven that were clearly improper. (We've always thought such conversions were almost by definition improper, inherently subject to chicanery and so on, but never mind.) 