Screw the Whales

With 161 days left in office, President Bush and his merry band of miscreants are figuring they might as well start shitting on the carpets and pissing on the drapes before they vacate the premises for good:

Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct.

The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.

New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft first obtained by The Associated Press.

…The draft rules would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats.

This is the same bullshit the administration is trying to pull with the proposed HHS rules which would redefine contraception as abortion, except, in this case, the proposed changes "would accomplish through regulations what conservative Republicans have been unable to achieve in Congress: ending some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects."

All of these rules changes, coming when everyone's paying attention to who's going to be the next president, are effectively the same law-dodging horseshit as the signing statements and national security letters of which Bush is so fond. They’ve found every loophole to do end-runs around federal law, and they're exploiting every one of them to conservatives' advantage on their way out the door, hoping everyone will instead be paying attention to Bush making a complete arse of himself at the Olympics, rather than noticing he's making a mockery of our laws back home.

Like the administration's 2006 proposal for a fire sale of public land, where the public was given 30 days to contest the proposal, we're being given a "60-day public comment period" to register objections before the new Endangered Species Act regulations are finalized by the Interior Department.

A new administration could freeze any pending regulations or reverse them, a process that could take months. Congress could also overturn the rules through legislation, but that could take even longer.

So the best thing to do is try to create a groundswell of disapproval during the public comment period. It won't start, however, until the regulations are formally proposed, so we've got to keep our eyes peeled. (I'm thinking it will be posted here, but I'm not certain.) Let me know if and when that clock starts ticking, Shakers—and it will be teaspoon time.