West Virginia Blue
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Having not been able to change the law through legislation, having see all the court appointees not bring the results wanted on this issue, having over-ruled science every chance created, the White House is taking this in their own hands.
WASHINGTON (AP) - . . . 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 . . .
"I am deeply troubled by this proposed rule, which gives federal agencies an unacceptable degree of discretion to decide whether or not to comply with the Endangered Species Act," said Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, who asked for a staff briefing before the proposal was announced but did not receive one. "Eleventh-hour rulemakings rarely, if ever, lead to good government -- this is not the type of legacy this Interior Department should be leaving for future generations."
Don't we have some sort of funny salamander here in the state with a tour named after it? Out West where I lived their is concern about the desert tortoise. Before Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth there was Bill McKibben's The End of Nature. Does man exist outside of nature, or is creation care strong enough to push back? Anybody worried that yet another Sternly Worded Letter won't matter in the least? Anybody want to ask Shelley McCapito her position on science and the environment? After all she holds a B. S. degree in zoology from Duke.
The administration had been dragging its feet on climate change and the Clean Air Act. Now they are worried that this was another vehicle after the controversy over polar bears and ice. Or was this a nod to mining? I think the West is more attuned to conservation at this point. We all know what Dick Cheney thinks. What do you think?
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