WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Dick Cheney’s office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, a former EPA official maintains.

Story Highlights
Six pages were cut from testimony on climate change by CDC last October
Cheney’s office deeply involved in cutting testimony, former EPA adviser says
EPA currently is examining whether carbon dioxide poses a public health risk

CNN.com

Endangered listings drop with little-noticed procedural and policy moves

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.

…

MSNBC

WASHINGTON - House Democrats demanded documents Thursday about a multibillion-dollar overseas contracting loophole to track down how — and why — the Bush administration slipped it into plans to protect taxpayer money.

Leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee gave the administration until April 4 to turn over the documents or, aides have said, face a possible subpoena.

The controversial loophole has irked Democrats and Republicans alike. But it has the support of a trade association that lobbies on behalf of giant global government contractors, including Blackwater USA, KBR Inc., Boeing Co., CACI International Inc. and Lockheed Martin.

MSNBC

While I am not endorsing a candidate, I thought that this would be an important speech to hear.

I’ll be the first to admit when people are just picking at scabs, but this is pretty damaging. Someone running for President of the USA on his foreign policy credentials doesn’t even have his facts straight about who is who in Iraq. If he doesn’t even know that in his strong point, imagine what he’d do to the economy. We can’t afford to have another Republican president - especially not until we can straighten out all the problems that Bush has caused.

JERUSALEM - Senator John McCain’s trip overseas was supposed to highlight his foreign policy acumen, and his supporters hoped that it would showcase him in a series of statesmanlike meetings with world leaders throughout the Middle East and Europe while the Democratic candidates continued to squabble back home.

But all did not go according to plan on Tuesday in Amman, Jordan, when Mr. McCain, fresh from a visit to Iraq, misidentified some of the main players in the Iraq war.

Mr. McCain said several times in his visit to Jordan — in a news conference and in a radio interview — that he was concerned that Iran was training Al Qaeda in Iraq. The United States believes that Iran, a Shiite country, has been training and financing Shiite extremists in Iraq, but not Al Qaeda, which is a Sunni insurgent group.

Mr. McCain said at a news conference in Amman that he continued to be concerned about Iranians “taking Al Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.” Asked about that statement, Mr. McCain said: “Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.”

It was not until he got a quiet word of correction in his ear from Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who was traveling with Mr. McCain as part of a Congressional delegation on a nearly weeklong trip, that Mr. McCain corrected himself.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. McCain said, “the Iranians are training extremists, not Al Qaeda.”

MSNBC

Barack Obama
Pledged: 1,404
Superdelegates: 207
Total: 1,611

Hillary Clinton
Pledged:1,243
Superdelegates: 237
Total: 1,480

Needed to Win: 2,025

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency agreed to weaken an important part of its new smog requirements after being told at the last minute that President Bush preferred a less stringent approach, according to government documents.

They show tense exchanges between the EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget in the days before the smog air quality standard was announced Wednesday.

Changes directed by the White House were made only hours before the agency issued the regulation. The late activity forced the EPA to delay the announcement for five hours.

The disagreement concerned the amount of protection from ozone, or smog, that should be afforded wildlife, farmlands, parks and open spaces.

….

CNN

Lemmingnation hasn’t quite been operational lately. I apologize for not posting all of the sneaky, underhanded things the Bush Administration has done in this time frame, but I will make an effort to keep track once again.

A surgeon general’s report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration’s policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

…

Richard H. Carmona, who commissioned the “Call to Action on Global Health” while serving as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, recently cited its suppression as an example of the Bush administration’s frequent efforts during his tenure to give scientific documents a political twist. At a July 10 House committee hearing, Carmona did not cite Steiger by name or detail the report’s contents and its implications for American public health.

Carmona told lawmakers that, as he fought to release the document, he was “called in and again admonished . . . via a senior official who said, ‘You don’t get it.’ ” He said a senior official told him that “this will be a political document, or it will not be released.”

Full Article at MSNBC.com

Getting Bush out of office isn’t the only way to save the Planet.

Commit to changing out your standard light bulbs with Energy-Saving Bulbs.

ASimpleSwitch.com

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Also, check out “51 Things We Can Do to Save the Environment” at Time.com

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Finally, want to see what will happen in your area as water levels rise? Take a look at this interactive Google Map that allows you to adjust water levels around the world.
Flood.FireTree.Net