One Legal Defeat Too Many?

Was the legal defeat that the Obama administration suffered last week - that I blogged about at Say Anything - the direct cause of his weekend flip-flop? I'll be monitoring the oil industry buzz to see what the reaction is. My guess is that they highly skeptical that this is anything more than phony rhetoric intended for public consumption only, but they'll be calling the administration's bluff for sure by submitting permit applications like nobody's business. I might add that IMHO the best web resource for what's going on in the offshore energy exploration world is RigZone, and as of right now, their coverage of this supposedly major policy pronouncement is...nada. Pretty much, it's not news in the oil patch...nobody believes it.