Another NYTimes must-read on the Bush Administration vs. National Parks

Consistently, this scam involves secret backroom deals, partisan scheming, a link to Dick Cheney, embedded cronyism, and private profiteering from preserved public property.

Recently, a secret draft revision of the national park system's basic management policy document has been circulating within the Interior Department. It was prepared, without consultation within the National Park Service, by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary at Interior who once ran the Chamber of Commerce in Cody, Wyo., was a Congressional aide to Dick Cheney and has no park service experience.

Within national park circles, this rewrite of park rules has been met with profound dismay, for it essentially undermines the protected status of the national parks. The document makes it perfectly clear that this rewrite was not prompted by a compelling change in the park system's circumstances. It was prompted by a change in political circumstances - the opportunity to craft a vision of the national parks that suits the Bush administration.

Read the LA Times piece on the same.

Meanwhile, these black-hats also proposed fuel economy standards that would actually incent light truck manufacturers to make their trucks more heavy and less fuel efficient by bumping them into higher categories (newly created, of course, so as not to put any pressure on the industry to create more efficient vehicles)