The American Spectator

Over the weekend the New York Times reported about several Green adherents to the Rahm Emanuel call to “never let a serious crisis go to waste:”

The oil spill spreading through the Gulf of Mexico has been declared the worst environmental catastrophe ever in the United States. But for American environmentalists, the distress may also bring opportunity….

Environmentalists, for their part, are hoping that the country will pay more attention to green issues after seeing the devastation in the gulf.

Already, groups are using the spill as a rallying cry. Luke Metzger, the director of Environment Texas, said that his group’s canvassers had switched their fund-raising and petitions pitch from aiding a remote mountain range to urging an end to new offshore drilling….

Another environmental group, American Rivers, is anticipating more attention to wetlands issues in general, even though oil was spilled into the sea, not rivers. “People are simply more tuned into environmental issues right now, especially when it comes to clean water,” said Amy Souers Kober, a spokeswoman for the group.

This is rich. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar just canned Liz Birnbaum, the director of the agency responsible for the oversight of oil drilling in federal waters, the Minerals Management Service. She was allegedly found to be incompetent because those who rewrite history in the Obama administration want the public to believe she was tasked with cleaning house at the corrupt MMS, but in reality she was told her top goal was to push alternative energy initiatives like the Cape Wind project.

There was little on Birnbaum’s bio that demonstrated she was up to the job. Before that she was staff director for the Committee on House Administration, but her most extensive recent experience that apparently qualified her to lead MMS was her position as a lobbyist and general counsel for…American Rivers! Now they are trying cultivate support based upon a disaster that happened on her watch.

Like I said — rich.