Talk About A "Shakedown"

Congressman Joe Barton apologized this morning to British Petroleum's CEO Tony Hayward because BP agreed to kick in $20 billion for a damages fund this morning. Barton said that BP had been "shaken down" by President Obama.

Well, that caused a firestorm of outrage and now Barton is apologizing for apologizing and he is trying to walk his first apology back.

Barton was shaken down by the leadership of the GOP which threatened to strip him of his plum committee job, the one that he uses to get hundreds of thousands of dollars in "campaign contributions" from the oil and gas industry.

Barton apologized so fast that one might have thought that either he was a Democrat or that he had said something less than nice about Oxycontin Radio Boy.