Joe Barton is not alone in tossing bouquets and sympathy toward the corporation responsible for the worse pollution disaster in American history. Other examples:

--BP "shouldn't have to be fleeced," in the words of Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minnesota, who described as "a redistribution of wealth fund" the $20 billion escrow account set up to pay cleanup costs and claims.

--"We can't afford to demonize" BP, Sarah Palin declared on television last week as she upbraided President Obama for taking so long to meet with BP's chief executive Tony Hayward. (Hayward has been exiled back to England.)

--President Obama "is directly engaged in extorting money" from BP, ex-House Speaker (and possible presidential candidate) Newt Gingrich charged, appearing on Fox News' "Hannity."

--Back when he was a law professor, Barack Obama taught his law students "how to use the Constitution to shake down corporations through race and grievance lawsuits," Rush Limbaugh charged. "That's what he taught students at the University of Chicago . . . much like he is doing to BP."

--The BP escrow account is an example of "Chicago-style shakedown politics" by President Obama, Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, charged in a statement.

After Republican House leaders beat his brains in, Barton apologized for his apology. Interestingly, however, House Republican leader John Boehner declared about 10 days ago that government and BP should share burdens of spill response, before hastily clarifying that cleaning up is the company's responsibility.

Republican Senate hopeful Dino Rossi told seattlepi.com that he supports the escrow fund and removing the liability cap on oil spills. In Kentucky, however, GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul delivered a now-famous "Accidents happen" response before he stopped giving interviews to non-tame media.

Dating back more than a century, to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, "green" Republicans have done yeoman service for conservation and the environment. But they are now an endangered species.

When supertankers were banned from Puget Sound -- via an amendment slipped into the Marine Mammals Protection Act -- Democratic Sen. Warren Magnuson received the kudos. But two Republicans in our House delegation, moderate Joel Pritchard and conservative Jack Cunningham, cleared away obstacles to House floor passage.

By contrast, Joe Barton is responsible for legislative language that forced the Minerals Management Service (MMS) to speed up approval of drilling rigs. MMS was already more a lapdog than a watchdog.