When Sarah Palin spoke at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference April 9 -- in New Orleans, ironically enough -- she bashed government oversight and red tape and called for streamlining the drilling permit process. "We don't need more studies. We need more action," she said. "Let's drill baby drill. Not stall baby stall."

Today, after much anticipation, Palin responded on her Facebook page to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that, while she was crafting the note, was making its way onto the shores of New Orleans and Louisiana's bayous. In the note, she insisted that she will not retract the drilling mantra, one that's has taken a bruising since the spill.

"I repeat the slogan ‘drill here, drill now' not out of naiveté or disregard for the tragic consequences of oil spills ... I continue to believe in it because increased domestic oil production will make us a more secure, prosperous, and peaceful nation," she wrote.

Even though she won't give up on the drill bit, she might, her note suggests, be retooling the way she talks about the role of government in regulating the oil patch. In New Orleans, government was the evil that inhibited production. Now, however, "Actions will be taken to increase oversight to prevent future accidents," she wrote. "Government can and must play an appropriate role here."

Then, red tape and permitting processes where anathema. Now, she's proud of the red tape she imposed and the permitting processes she enacted as governor and oil and gas regulator -- both jobs that she quit before she was halfway through her term. Her administration, she boasts, "ramped up oversight of the oil industry," and "instituted new oversight and held British Petroleum (BP) financially accountable for poor maintenance practices."