The Jive doesn't often post environmental news, but the Bush administration's latest is so stunning in its wrongheadedness, I couldn't let it lie. These people are so brazen as to post a massive gain in the number of wetlands, because they've started counting such things as golf course ponds and development drainage runoffs, none of which provide the benefits of natural wetlands, which protection acts have been enacted to safeguard.

But the report contends that the losses were offset by creating more than 715,000 acres of new wetlands, mainly artificial ponds that do not provide the same environmental benefit as wetlands.

Federal officials hailed the results as a positive sign.