Sunday, March 16, 2008

Can we impeach him before he does anymore lasting damage to America?

President Bush, despite unprecedented low levels of popularity and despite having had his party suffer an historic defeat in the '06 election continues to do his best to unravel American democracy.

From the Washington Post

The Environmental Protection Agency weakened one part of its new limits on smog-forming ozone after an unusual last-minute intervention by President Bush,according to documents released by the EPA.

EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA's scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents.

...

The dispute involved one of two distinct parts of the EPA's ozone restrictions: the "public welfare" standard, which is designed to protect against long-term harm from high ozone levels. The other part is known as the "public health" standard, which sets a legal limit on how high ozone levels can be at any one time. The two standards were set at the same level Wednesday, but until Bush asked for a change, the EPA had planned to set the "public welfare" standard at a lower level.

The documents, which were released by the EPA late Wednesday night, provided insight into how White House officials helped shape the new air-quality rules that, by law, are supposed to be decided by the EPA administrator.
Yes, but "laws" only means what the Decider decides they mean in the Bush administration. If he decides that he wants to do the bidding of his friends in industry who want more relaxed environmental standards despite the law saying the decision is to be made by the EPA administrator then all he needs to do is have his lawyers come up with some kind of tortured justification for the Decider politically interfering with the EPA and PRESTO! The law means exactly what the Decided wanted it to mean.

Just like at the Justice Department, the EPA is being transformed into an agency that effects the political will of the White House. The scientific integrity of the EPA has been compromised. I still marvel at the fact that we have as a president a man who has almost zero understanding at all of how democracy works or what the rule of law means.

President Bush continues to solidify the case for his being the worst president in American history.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

For a behind-the-scenes look into some of the dirty details behind the President's involvement here, check out my posting at http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jwalke/science_decider_in_chief.html