LA Times:

The clock has started ticking down for anyone who wants to comment on the Department of Interior’s proposed overhaul of the Endangered Species Act, which could cut out the independent reviews of whether a government decision will affect species in danger of extinction.

The notice was posted in the Federal Register on Friday, giving anyone who wants to weigh in on the changes until Sept. 15.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will accept comments through the eRulemaking portal but won’t accept e-mail or faxes.

Independent scientific reviews have been a mainstay of the Endangered Species Act and are meant to provide more input into policy decisions and avoid conflict-of-interest charges that might occur when an agency appears to rubber stamp its own decision.

No doubt just one of thousands of ways the Republicans are trying to destroy the government’s ability to function before they go.  Read more 

Actually, I’m not so upset about this- it appears that at least some Congresscritters are on this. I don’t know if they will be able to fix the problem, and $10B is just a drop in the bucket of what we’re about to spend in Iraq. Still, the reason I think this story is important is that I believe it is being repeated, in every government agency, from top to bottom. The rule of law is truly dead in this country, and I guess I’m on a mission to get more people to understand that. Kudos to the Old Grey Ho for being on this, although I’m sure if I looked around, I would find a blogger who beat them to it:

The report, a result of a yearlong investigation, grew out of complaints by four auditors at the agency, who said that senior administration officials had blocked them from recovering money from oil companies that underpaid the government.

…

In one case, senior officials decided that it would impose a “hardship” on oil companies to demand that they calculate the back interest they owed after having been caught underpaying. The agency itself was years behind in billing the companies, because its computers could not perform the calculations.  Read more 

Steven Griles, ex-No. 2 (which is to say the real boss) at the Department of the Interior, was sentenced today on (entirely inadequate) charges of obstruction of justice.  Read more 

Awhile back on “Law & Order” they had a scenario where a couple of guys had been conniving wickedly, but the only witness who could testify against either was the other one of the pair. They had the one guy all set to sing and then they put him on the stand and he said he and the other fellow had run up to Massachusetts the day before and gotten married, therefore he was refusing to testify under spousal privilege.

That of course was fiction. The following is what passes for reality these days. At least these two crooks aren’t infested with Teh Ghey. From Taegan Goddard yesterday:

Two Bush administration officials “who have been linked in scandal are now linked in wedlock. The union of former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles and Sue Ellen Wooldridge could have implications for the investigation into Griles’s ties to ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff,” The Hill reports.

Ain’t it just [sniff, sniff, weep, blow nose, accidentally open large box filled with metal BBs onto the red wedding carpet] so sweet? Republican devotion to marriage & traditional family ’n’ shit…it just gets me right [pats hand over lower digestive tract] here. But to continue:  Read more