'This Roadblock to Listing Under the Bush Administration is Criminal'

George W. Bush has been accused of everything under the sun by the left since the day he took office.

Now the Washington Post has uncovered another grave threat to our national security: Bush hasn't put enough animals and plants on the endangered species list to satisfy the environmental wackos.

How will the republic survive this grave injustice?

With little-noticed procedural and policy moves over several years, Bush administration officials have made it substantially more difficult to designate domestic animals and plants for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Controversies have occasionally flared over Interior Department officials who regularly overruled rank-and-file agency scientists' recommendations to list new species, but internal documents also suggest that pervasive bureaucratic obstacles were erected to limit the number of species protected under one of the nation's best-known environmental laws.

The documents show that personnel were barred from using information in agency files that might support new listings, and that senior officials repeatedly dismissed the views of scientific advisers as President Bush's appointees either rejected putting imperiled plants and animals on the list or sought to remove this federal protection.

Officials also changed the way species are evaluated under the 35-year-old law -- by considering only where they live now, as opposed to where they used to exist -- and put decisions on other species in limbo by blocking citizen petitions that create legal deadlines.

As a result, listings plummeted. During Bush's more than seven years as president, his administration has placed 59 domestic species on the endangered list, almost the exact number that his father listed during each of his four years in office. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has not declared a single native species as threatened or endangered since he was appointed nearly two years ago.

In a sign of how contentious the issue has become, the advocacy group WildEarth Guardians filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking a court order to protect 681 Western species all at once, on the grounds that further delay would violate the law. Among the species cited are tiny snails, vibrant butterflies, and a wide assortment of plants and other creatures.

"It's an urgent situation, and something has to be done," said Nicole Rosmarino, the group's conservation director. "This roadblock to listing under the Bush administration is criminal."

One species that clearly has grown and multiplied wildly out of control is the barking moonbat.

I fear we're stuck with them.

People need to get their priorities straight. I believe the President has his hands full fighting a couple of war and protecting us against terrorism. The fact a few endangered species may become even more endangered is a price I'm willing to pay.

This story naturally brings out the best in the commenters at the Huffington Post.

LITU

Haven't we learned anything? Planet earth was put here for the benefit of the Friedmanites, and to hell with everyone else. Free market capitalists are completely at odds with the natural world. They're short-sighted doom makers, and it will be interesting to see how well that ideology fares when the biological scales have been tipped beyond repair, as is now the case with global climate patterns. Rape and pillage with an economic sword.

The good news is Mother Nature ALWAYS wins, and humanity will go the way of the dodo. Viva la bacteria.

Of course, we also bring Hitler into the mix. The analogy is obvious no?

DerAmi

I firmly believe that future generations of Americans will learn to think of President George W. Bush much the same as current generations think of Hitler.

It is a sad time in the history of America.

Contact your Representative and ask why they are not fulfilling their duty to impeach as clearly defined in The Constitution of The United States of America