While Americans eagerly vote for the next president, here\u2019s a sobering reminder: As of Tuesday, George W. Bush still has 77 days left in the White House \u2014 and he\u2019s not wasting a minute.<\/p>\n
President Bush\u2019s aides have been scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights, among others \u2014 few for the good. Most presidents put on a last-minute policy stamp, but in Mr. Bush\u2019s case it is more like a wrecking ball. We fear it could take months, or years, for the next president to identify and then undo all of the damage.<\/p>\n
Here is a look \u2014 by no means comprehensive \u2014 at some of Mr. Bush\u2019s recent parting gifts and those we fear are yet to come.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The DoJ is pushing out new guidelines to let the FBI collect still more covert informaton on Americans, whether or not there’s any probable cause of wrong-doing. The White House has announced it will ignore a provision in the bill that created DHS that requires an unedited report by the department’s privacy officer be given annually to Congress. The Interior Dept is busy removing requirements for scientific review of federal projects and their impact on endangered or threatened species, as well as pushing the gray wolf off the endangered species at. The EPA is working to weaken Clean Air Act restrictoins on coal plant upgrades, and to allow new plants to be located near national parks, and may give Interior a nod to let mining companies dump more wastes in streams and valleys. Expect to see new HHS rules to allow still more health care workers to refuse to provide assistance in areas like birth control and emergency contraception. <\/p>\n
\nWe suppose there is some good news in all of this. While Mr. Bush leaves office on Jan. 20, 2009, he has only until Nov. 20 to issue \u201ceconomically significant\u201d rule changes and until Dec. 20 to issue other changes. Anything after that is merely a draft and can be easily withdrawn by the next president.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the White House is well aware of those deadlines.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
And people thought stealing the “W”s off the typewriters was childish and destructive …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
… the Bush Administration is doing its darnedest to do everything it can to advance its agenda in the remaining days left to it. We won’t talk — yet –…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8593,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/10\/03\/another_interes.html","url_meta":{"origin":13604,"position":0},"title":"Another interesting nomination","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 3-Oct-05 3:47pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Evidently Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to replaced O'Conner on the bench has folks on both sides of the aisle all a-twitter. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is said to...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10761,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/07\/02\/the_law_order_party.html","url_meta":{"origin":13604,"position":1},"title":"The Law & Order Party","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 2-Jul-07 6:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Bush commutes Scooter Libby's sentence.\u00a0 President Bush commuted Monday the prison term of former White House aide I. Lewis \"Scooter\" Libby, facing 30 months in prison after a federal court...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11089,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/13\/he_really_doesnt_have_to.html","url_meta":{"origin":13604,"position":2},"title":"He really doesn’t have to listen, I guess …","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 13-Apr-07 5:49am","format":false,"excerpt":"Law suits by a pair ejected from a Bush speech a couple of years ago have led\u00a0to a fascinating appeals argument asserted by lawyers for some of the people who...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":958,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/10\/30\/a_warning_to_us.html","url_meta":{"origin":13604,"position":3},"title":"A warning to us all","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 30-Oct-01 3:06pm","format":false,"excerpt":"My sainted wife, Margie, comments on the Cheney\/Bush post below: What worries me about Cheney is Bush's repeated statements, \"I don't have anthrax.\" That has been his pat answer to...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2014,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/03\/26\/shocked_shocked.html","url_meta":{"origin":13604,"position":4},"title":"Shocked! Shocked, do you hear?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 26-Mar-02 3:16pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The White House finally knucked under to a court order on providing documents about who met with Administration officials during planning for Bush energy policy. Surprise, surprise, it seems to...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10749,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/07\/06\/and_just_so_that_i_get_my.html","url_meta":{"origin":13604,"position":5},"title":"And just so that I get my daily dose of politics thrown in there …","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 6-Jul-07 12:33pm","format":false,"excerpt":"BD -- who will be the first to agree with me that he is much further, ah, left than I am on a single-axis political spectrum -- posts a fine...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}