BEATING THE CLOCK….A few days ago I linked to a Washington Post story about all the new regulations and executive orders the Bush administration is rushing to put into effect before they leave office. Their deadline is November 20, because executive orders don’t take legal effect for 60 days and they want them on the books before Obama takes over. Froude Reynolds explains how they’re getting this done:
In an effort to amend the Endangered Species Act to say it doesn’t really apply to big federal projects like power plants or dams, the Bush administration claimed it reviewed 200,000 comments in four days. Not all by themselves. They called in fifteen extra people from around the country to work on it all week! With that kind of manpower, each person only had to read seven comments every minute!
You know, I’d almost be disappointed if they weren’t doing stuff like this up to the very end. The good news, Reynolds says, is that this behavior is practically guaranteed to be ruled “arbitrary and capricious” by an administrative law judge in the near future after some environmental group or another takes them to court. That being the case, let’s hope the true believers in the Bush administration treat all their last-minute regs with the same care and respect for the law that they’ve shown for the past eight years.
