Yesterday, police in Middlefield Ohio released shocking video of a routine traffic stop on March 10. When police pulled James Gilkerson over, he climbed out of his car with an AK-47, rapidly firing 37 shots before his gun jammed or he ran out of ammunition. Officer Erin Thomas...

In my early career in the oilfield, when I was working on cement and frac crews, I breathed plenty of dust from cement, frac sand, and powdered guar used to make frac gel. Throw in a little xylene and hydrochloric acid, and I think my lungs have experienced plenty of...

Recently, Texas attorney general Greg Abbott cranked up his unlimited-contribution-campaign machine to go up against Rick Perry's unlimited-contribution-campaign machine for governor in 2014. Perry, who's known for gun play, stumbled badly during the 2012 presidential primary season, and been seen lately as vulnerable in his quest...

In the month since the shocking tragedy of the Newtown massacre, the debate it rekindled has taken a turn that no other bloody incident in our recent history had yet been able to motivate; that is, to actually stiffen the resolve of everyday Americans to take a stand, demanding that...

The conversation has finally begun. After 20 innocent children and six of their teachers were brutally murdered at their desks by a severely disturbed young man using powerful semi-automatic weapons in a school in Newtown Connecticut, the fog of the nation's collective awareness of gun violence has begun to clear....

This morning, the EPA announced that BP has been banned from acquiring any new U.S. government contracts due to its "lack of business integrity." The agency said the ban will continue until BP proves that it can meet government established business standards. The ban does not effect current contracts. BP...

We may know later today what criminal penalties the U.S. government will impose on BP for its tragic blowout and subsequent oil spill that polluted the Gulf Of Mexico in 2010. FuelFix, the energy blog for the Houston Chronicle, and Reuters are reporting that settlement has...

It became apparent fairly early in the evening last night that the Republicans were going to get thumped.  As state results began to march across the map, with major battleground states turning blue, and Tea Party candidates losing, Republican hopes waned.  Their plan simply didn't work.  The hundreds of millions...

There has been a persistent oil sheen near the site of BP's Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico ever since the well was shut in and eventually plugged in late 2010. Alarmists use that oil sheen as some kind of evidence that the well is flowing, alleging a...

About mid-August, I got the phone call from my big brother that I was dreading. "Mom is going down, and she wants to see you," he said. The confrontation I had been avoiding for months was upon me, and I wasn't going to get out of it. It was time....

Exactly one week ago, Shell triumphantly announced the resumption of drilling in the offshore Arctic after a 20-year hiatus. The drillship Noble Discoverer spud (began drilling) the first new Burger prospect well in the Chukchi Sea; less than 24 hours later, they had to shut down and move...

Shell announced yesterday that it began drilling its Burger prospect 70 miles offshore Alaska's northwest coast that morning at 8:30 am eastern time. The drillship Noble Discoverer is being used for this prospect, which is in about 150 feet of water. The Bureau of Safety and...

Today, one of my heroes, Neil Armstrong, died at age 82.  He was the first man to walk on the moon, stepping out of his lunar lander at  2:56 UTC on July 21, 1969.  As a 16 year-old, and son of an Air Force pilot, I was infatuated with everything...

I'm sitting here in Denver, watching local coverage of yet another mass shooting by a gun nut, this time in a theatre during a midnight screening of the new Batman movie. At this time, 12 are reported dead, 50 wounded. The televised scenes at the theatre and the arrested shooter's...

As I watched Mitt Romney bomb the networks on Friday, steadfastly sticking to his story that he had nothing whatsoever to do with Bain Capital after February 1999, even though he was listed as the firm's Chief Executive Officer, President, and Managing Director well into 2002, I was...

President Obama speaks regularly about how the United States government should encourage the development and deployment of clean technology to reduce our dependence on oil, especially the oil imported from countries that hate us. I couldn't agree more. The problem is, though, that no matter who sits in the White...

Today, the Justice Department arrested a former BP engineer on two counts of obstruction of justice for allegedly destroying hundreds of text messages that included details of flow rate calculations of their blown out Macondo well in the days immediately following the Gulf disaster on April 20, 2010,...

Tonight at 9:50 p.m. central time marks the anniversary of the exact time that BP's deepwater well named Macondo blew out, killing 11 workers, destroying Transocean's Deepwater Horizon, and putting five million barrels of oil into the water 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.  Most of...

The recent boom in domestic oil and gas development, spurred by new technologies in geologic interpretation, horizontal drilling, completion techniques, and hydraulic fracturing, has exposed a huge gap between our knowledge of getting oil and gas out of the ground and our knowledge of the long-term damage to the environment...

Over the last several months, the controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline extension has grown to such fevered pitch that several weeks ago, the Obama administration, fearing alienation of its own environmentalist base, punted a decision on its border crossing permit for another year of further "study" of the pipeline...