RUSH: We have a little bit of Obama here from his comments moments ago outside the White House in the Rose Garden.
OBAMA: We are praying for a miracle. I want to offer my deepest condolences to the friends and the families of the fathers and the husbands and brothers, nephews and sons who were killed in this accident. When I was in the Senate, I supported the efforts of Senator Byrd and Rockefeller to try to improve mine safety, but it’s clear that more needs to be done. And that’s why I’ve asked my Secretary of Labor, as well as the head of Mine Safety and Health Administration, to give me a preliminary report next week on what went wrong and why it went wrong so badly, so that we can take the steps necessary to prevent such accidents in the future.
RUSH: There you go. ‘We worked on mine safety. Byrd, Rockefeller, we worked on mine safety in the Senate. But more needs to be done.’ Well, they didn’t get anything done. Was there no union responsibility for improving mine safety? Where was the union here? Where was the union? The union is generally holding these companies up demanding all kinds of safety. Why were these miners continuing to work in what apparently was an unsafe atmosphere?