Bush Administration

A nice mash up of our joke of a President as the Joker from The Dark Knight. Mixes up the Bailout with Batman.

A federal judge has banned snowmobiles from Yellowstone National Park.

Some U.S. government employees are in really hot water, and not the jacuzzi-shaped kind they’d like it to be. According to three reports delivered to Congress today, a $5.3 million investigation uncovered “a culture of ethical failure” amongst the Interior Department. The department’s inspector general - Earl E. Devaney - found that over a dozen current and former employees had engaged in such transgressions.

A United States Appeals Court on Tuesday rejected an EPA rule that prevented states from establishing stricter emissions monitoring systems for high polluting industries such as oil refineries, chemical manufacturers and the like.

On Monday, the Bush administration proposed a policy that threatens to weaken the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to the point of extinction. This comes as no surprise. Like the war in Iraq, removing the fetters of environmental protection has been an administrational goal since 2001. Unlike the war in Iraq, this time Bush and his cronies could very well succeed.

Can anyone tell me how the extraction of oil from solid rock could be defined as either energy efficient or renewable? I was struck by a story in this week’s Department of Energy office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s weekly electronic newsletter that touted the benefits of developing western oil shale and drilling in the arctic circle. I was most struck by how the piece was clearly driven by political motivations.

In remarks on the Senate floor, Senator Amy Klobuchar decries political interference by members of the Bush administration in the release of climate change science by from federal agencies.

Federal land management officials recommend almost 4,400 new natural gas wells be drilled in western Wyoming, an area where energy mining is already blamed for increased air and water pollution. The amount of natural gas to be harvested is supposedly equal to about one year's supply for the US. The damage to wildlife, their habitat and the environment is expected to be significant. The Bush administration is pushing for these decisions.

The Bush administration announced requirements Monday that would encourage developers to compensate for the destruction of wetlands or streams by paying for the restoration or creation of wetlands elsewhere, sometimes many miles away.

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Who knows more about global warming? The top climate scientist at Nasa? Or that tool, the worst president EVER, GW Bush?