Jed Lewison is a current Daily Kos editor and the creator and editor of Daily Kos TV. So as I was looking through the Daily Kos blogs of the day, I found one particularly interesting. Lewison posted July 23rd and writes about some newfound issues pertaining to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The chief electronics technician, Mike Williams, said "the general safety alarm was habitually set to inhibited to avoid waking up the crew with late-night sirens. As a result of the alarms not being on, they did not go on in the time of the emergency. Lewison just replies to these claims with "seriously?" He goes on to say, "What is the point of having safety measures if you aren't going to use them?" To me, these are the same thoughts that ran through my head when I read the opening statement on the blog about the alarms being turned off. Oil rigs are very unsafe environments and for them to have been ignoring areas of safety, the repercussions were disastrous. Obviously, the alarm didn't cause the oil spill but if a simple alarm that is there for a purpose wasn't used, who's to say that any other set regulations weren't followed. Lewison goes on to say that the “executives of other oil companies use stories like this to characterize the disaster as an example of individual corporate failure.” It seems that when a disaster like this hits our nation, the first thing the public does is find someone to blame. In this particular issue, so many articles are posted everyday with new information that could have contributed to the overall disaster. However, Lewison believes that although BP and Transocean failed “egregiously,” they are still two of the biggest companies in the industry and when this blows over, they will “once again be welcomed back in to the oil industry fold.”

Religious Freedom in NYC

There are alot of issues with the freedom of religion. USA Today published an article concerning the issue of whether or not there should be a Muslim Community Center only 2 blocks away from the World Trade Center site. USA Today states that if anything the new center "honors the values that the terrorists sought to destroy. It also undermines al-Qaeda's attempts to convince Muslims that the United States is at war with Islam, when in fact the USA is the home of religious freedom, including freedom for peaceful Muslims to practice their faith." If we as a nation do not go through with this center, how would that in any way be fair? I understand that the families of the 9/11 tragedy are still suffering but that does not mean to hate or discriminate against all Muslims. That's like saying that all white people should be punished for the past involvement with slavery. USA Today is right in saying that the center should be built. In a way, by putting the Muslim center in that location, it is defying everything that the al-Qaeda were trying to accomplish. I understand that it may be hard to see the positive side to the situation but the public should not discriminate because to single out one religion is constitutionally wrong. The US is seen as a place for equality and freedom of religion which is "one of the core personal freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment." If the center is not built due to the public's outcry, I believe that this would then just be the beginning of many more issues to come.