The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics put U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu on the defensive last week when it singled her out as Congress's leading recipient of political largesse from BP, the very same company whose massive deepwater leak is behind "one of the worst environmental disasters to beset her state," the group's OpenSecrets blog noted. Yet critics' focus on campaign cash obscures a more powerful dynamic driving Landrieu's ongoing fealty to the oil industry, even in the face of catastrophe. Sure, it's about money. But it's about way more than THAT money.
