Actually, knowing this administration, I wonder if somebody got fired for it:

It was a remarkable moment in President Barack Obama’s press conference Thursday: just hours before, the head of the Minerals Management Service had left the top post at the agency that oversees offshore oil drilling.

And yet, the president said he didn’t know whether Liz Birnbaum had resigned or been fired.

If he or she didn’t get fired… well, the First Commandment of the White House Staff has always been Thou Shalt Not Make The President Look Like A Blithering Idiot* In Public.  It would be positively uncivil of me to try to encourage the executive branch of government to regularly transgress said commandment, at least until we get a President from my party in the Oval Office again.

Moe Lane

*Seriously, read the whole article: the President and his own Interior Secretary are contradicting each other over how Liz Birnbaum (Obama appointee, by the way) left MMS.  The word used to describe reporters’ reaction was ‘flummoxed.’  You don’t want to see the word ‘flummoxed’ used in this situation, particularly when you’re the President and it’s your first press conference in almost a year.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.