The administrative decision to shut down ALL oil drilling and exploration is indicative of our Novelty President.

Editor's notes: Obama has decided to cancel oil drilling in the Gulf for AT LEAST six months (his words). What does this academic think will happen during this moratorium, that the jobs will be there when he decides to lift the moratorium, that the various oil giants in the region will sit on their profit margins and patiently wait for his next decision? The fact is this --- during the coming six month moratorium, businesses will fail and oil companies will go elsewhere, not to return to the Gulf anytime soon. Restrictions on deep water drilling? Absolutely. Shut down the Gulf to oil exploration and lose thousands of jobs? Sheer idiocy -- jds.

An opinion from Investor's Business Daily: As if the latest measly numbers on our jobless recovery weren't bad enough, along comes the administration to pile disaster upon disaster by slapping a six-month ban on deep-water drilling.

When President Obama visited Louisiana on May 1, he talked about the possibility that the oil gushing from BP's Deepwater Horizon well could "jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home." Now the administration's response could jeopardize the livelihoods of tens of thousands more.

In a letter sent to Obama on Wednesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal challenged the president's decision to suspend deepwater drilling for six months while a presidential commission to which the buck has been passed tries to sort things out.

It's another chapter in the administration's inept response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which has included seeking the advice of "Avatar" and "Titanic" director James Cameron, presumably because he knows how to operate cameras underwater. Perhaps Cameron, as one wag put it, told the White House how to rearrange the deck chairs.

The last thing we need is to enact public policies that will certainly destroy thousands of existing jobs while preventing the creation of thousands more," Jindal wrote. The moratorium, he said, will shut down 33 deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, including 22 near Louisiana, costing as many as 6,000 jobs in the next three weeks and 20,000 by the end of next year.

We expect his plea to fall on deaf ears. Jindal was last seen begging the federal government to provide millions of feet in containment booms and to approve an emergency permit for a state plan to dredge and build new barrier islands to keep the oil from reaching the marshes and wetlands. Both could have been done in a single White House phone call.

The ban requires all Gulf wells in more than 500 feet of water to shut down, and also prevents permits from being issued for any new deepwater drilling. According to the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association (LMOGA), as many as 1,400 jobs are at risk for each of the 33 idled rigs. The jobs average $1,804 a week, meaning lost wages could be as high as $330 million each month.