U.S. to Hold Public Meeting About Spill

Can we expect a new generation of raucous town halls in the near future? The Obama administration has announced that it will hold its first official public meeting about the Gulf disaster on July 12 and 13 in New Orleans. The panel investigating the crisis hopes to "hear directly from the people of the Gulf Coast whose lives and livelihoods have been so profoundly affected by the BP Deepwater Horizon spill,” said former U.S. Senator Bob Graham and William Reilly, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, in a statement. The commission has six months to investigate and make recommendations for new rules, to make sure that “any offshore drilling is done safely.”