Congress was given a chance to vent

The lawmaker's words caused a furor in the GOP House leadership, and the Texas congressman, who has received $100,470 in political contributions from oil and gas companies, within hours was forced to apologize for the apology.

After all, it was Hayward, whose giant, wealthy oil company caused the nation's worst oil spill, who was supposed to apologize, not a congressman. For his part, Hayward said he was "deeply sorry" and "distraught" as well as "devastated" over the spill and its impact on Gulf coast Americans.

But that was about it from the 53-year-old British executive, whom President Barack Obama had said he would like to fire — if only he could.

Hayward was determined not to give lawmakers much more, no matter how hard they tried during the daylong hearing to elicit new details about BP's failures leading up to the April 20 explosion on the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
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