Extinct Sense
A troubling report from the Interior Department

IT LOOKS LIKE another story of endangered ethics on the Bush administration’s environmental staff. Last week the Interior Department’s inspector general submitted the results of an investigation of Julie A. MacDonald, the deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, to congressional overseers.

According to numerous accounts collected in the inquiry, Ms. MacDonald has terrorized low-level biologists and other employees for years, often yelling and even swearing at them. One official characterized her as an “attack dog.” Much of this bullying, the report suggests, was aimed at diluting the scientific conclusions and recommendations of government biologists and at favoring industry and land interests. Ms. MacDonald’s subordinates said she has trenchantly resisted both designating new species as endangered and protecting imperiled animals’ habitats. She defended her interventions in an interview with the inspector general’s staff, saying that she kept Interior’s scientists accountable, according to the report. But the evidence available suggests she was at the least too aggressive.

H. Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, recounted a battle he had with Ms. MacDonald over the Southwest willow flycatcher, an endangered bird. Biologists in the field concluded that the bird’s nesting range, which determines how much land the government should protect as habitat for the species, was 2.1 miles. Mr. Hall claims that Ms. MacDonald insisted on lowering that to 1.8 miles so that the nesting range would not extend into California, where her husband maintained a family ranch. The inspector general noted that she has no formal training in biology. [mjh: Bushies don’t believe in Science.]

The inspector general’s review of Ms. MacDonald’s e-mail account also showed that she had close ties to lobbying organizations that have challenged endangered-species listings and that she had “misused her position” to give them information not available to the public on Interior Department policy.

Reports of Ms. MacDonald’s alleged sins have emerged soon after revelations of other ethical lapses by Bush environmental appointees. J. Steven Griles, the former second in command at Interior, pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the Jack Abramoff scandal. And Sue Ellen Wooldridge, formerly the government’s top environmental lawyer, jointly purchased a vacation home with Mr. Griles and a lobbyist for ConocoPhillips. These are troubling incidents.

Ms. MacDonald works for an agency tasked with making determinations based on scientific fact, not on her, or her lobbyist friends’, inclinations. She appears to have betrayed that vital principle. The inspector general has sent his report to top officials at the Interior Department. They should investigate for themselves the document’s troubling descriptions and take action to ensure that Ms. MacDonald and other managers at Interior make policy fit the science, not the other way around.

ABC News: Abdullah: U.S. Occupation ‘Illegitimate’

King Abdullah denounced the American military presence in Iraq on Wednesday as an “illegitimate foreign occupation” and called on the West to end its financial embargo against the Palestinians.

The Saudi monarch’s speech was a strongly worded lecture to Arab leaders that their divisions had helped fuel turmoil across the Middle East, and he urged them to show unity. But in opening the Arab summit, Abdullah also nodded to hardliners by criticizing the U.S. presence in Iraq.

“In beloved Iraq, blood is flowing between brothers, in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and abhorrent sectarianism threatens a civil war,” said the king, whose country is a U.S. ally that quietly aided the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2989843

IRAQ — WHITE HOUSE SHOCKED BY ABDULLAH’S CONDEMNATION OF IRAQ OCCUPATION:

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah denounced the “American military presence in Iraq as an “illegitimate foreign occupation” and called on the West to end its financial embargo against the Palestinians.” Yesterday, the Bush administration responded with shock to Abdullah’s declaration. “We were a little surprised to see those remarks,” said Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns. White House spokesman Dana Perino went so far as to claim, “It is not accurate to say that the United States is occupying Iraq.” Abdullah’s remarks were just the latest instance of the Saudi’s public distancing from the Bush administration. Earlier this week, the Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland reported that the Saudi government rejected an offer to attend a White House state dinner with President Bush. Prince Bandar, “the Saudi national security adviser, flew to Washington last week to explain to Bush that April 17 posed a scheduling problem. ‘It is not convenient’ was the way it was put, says one official.” “I think he was concerned that he was seen too much as Bush’s friend,” said Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The Saudis have expressed repeated concerns over Bush’s Iraq policy. The day after last year’s Thanksgiving, Vice President Cheney was “summoned” to Saudi Arabia to “read him the riot act.” The Saudis expressed their concerns that the United States might take the Shiite side in Iraq’s civil war, disregarding the safety of the Sunni Arab community.

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/progressreport/2007/03/email_evasion.html
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Related: mjh’s blog — Quick Indictment of Treason

Quick Indictment of Treason

http://mjhinton.net/slides/duhbya/

Some groups claim Interior plans to gut Endangered Species Act By H. Josef Hebert, The Associated Press

The Interior Department is considering a broad revamping of how it protects animals and plants in danger of extinction, including changes that critics contend will reduce the number of species that will be saved. …

Some of the proposals would make obscure changes in how the law is implemented while others would be more direct, said [Jan Hasselman, an attorney in Seattle with Earthjustice], who has analyzed the documents. Together they would “fundamentally gut the intent” of the law protecting species in danger of extinction.
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One proposed change would narrow when species can be considered in danger of extinction. Currently that is widely interpreted as in some time — as the statute directs — “in the foreseeable future.” The draft papers suggest a more specific timetable of 20 years for some species and a specific number of generations for others, Hasselman said.

“This would severely limit listing of new endangered species,” he said.

Also being considered is giving more power to states in creating species recovery plans and in determining what plants and animals get protection, including the ability of governors to block attempts to reintroduce species in their states.

If governors had such power, gray wolves would not have re-emerged in Idaho or Montana, nor would the grizzly have been reintroduced to Idaho, [Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity] said in a telephone interview. …

The department also hopes to narrow the geographic range over which a species must be protected. Protection would be limited to a plant or animal’s current habitat and not the geographic region it has historically occupied.

Another proposal would allow logging, development and other projects even if they threaten a species, as long as they do not “hasten” its extinction. Environmentalists said currently no projects are allowed if they have any impact on a listed species. …

“We hope Interior will back off on this,” [Daniel Patterson of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility] said. “It’s a radical weakening of the Endangered Species Act.”
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Endangered Species Program, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—Fisheries (also known as the National Marine Fisheries Service) are the two agencies charged with the administration and implementation of the Endangered Species Act. The goal of the Endangered Species Act is the recovery of listed species to levels where protection under the Act is no longer necessary.

http://www.fws.gov/endangered/recovery/

Regardless of what Congress does and regardless of what the pro-war crowd says, there is already a countdown until all troops are removed from Iraq. Our national nightmare ends the day the next president takes office and the angry idiot is gone.mjh

Ordinary Customers Flagged as Terrorists By Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post Staff Writer

Private businesses such as rental and mortgage companies and car dealers are checking the names of customers against a list of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers made publicly available by the Treasury Department, sometimes denying services to ordinary people whose names are similar to those on the list.

The Office of Foreign Asset Control’s list of “specially designated nationals” has long been used by banks and other financial institutions to block financial transactions of drug dealers and other criminals. But an executive order issued by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has expanded the list and its consequences in unforeseen ways. Businesses have used it to screen applicants for home and car loans, apartments and even exercise equipment, according to interviews and a report by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area to be issued today.

“The way in which the list is being used goes far beyond contexts in which it has a link to national security,” said Shirin Sinnar, the report’s author. “The government is effectively conscripting private businesses into the war on terrorism but doing so without making sure that businesses don’t trample on individual rights.”

Terror Database Has Quadrupled In Four Years, By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer

Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world — field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip — arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where analysts feed them into the nation’s central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects.

Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives.

But in addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others. Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. …

TIDE has also created concerns about secrecy, errors and privacy. The list marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to “horror stories” of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged.

The watch lists fed by TIDE, used to monitor everyone entering the country or having even a casual encounter with federal, state and local law enforcement, have a higher bar. But they have become a source of irritation — and potentially more serious consequences — for many U.S. citizens and visitors.

In 2004 and 2005, misidentifications accounted for about half of the tens of thousands of times a traveler’s name triggered a watch-list hit, the Government Accountability Office reported in September. …

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said last year that his wife had been delayed repeatedly while airlines queried whether Catherine Stevens was the watch-listed Cat Stevens. The listing referred to the Britain-based pop singer who converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam. The reason Islam is not allowed to fly to the United States is secret. [mjh: As long as Ted Stevens is suffering, I’m OK with this.] …

TIDE is a vacuum cleaner for both proven and unproven information, and its managers disclaim responsibility for how other agencies use the data. …

Every night at 10, TIDE dumps an unclassified version of that day’s harvest — names, dates of birth, countries of origin and passport information — into a database belonging to the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center. TIDE’s most sensitive information is not included. The FBI adds data about U.S. suspects with no international ties for a combined daily total of 1,000 to 1,500 new names.

I didn’t see anything about Gore’s testimony in today’s paper. (I didn’t watch TV news, so I don’t know what was shown on TV.) You can see Web-based video of various parts. In particular, see the first link below for Inhofe making an ass of himself and Boxer making a point he probably can’t really absorb. mjh

PS: Am I the only person disturbed by our society’s obsession with titles-for-life. Al Gore is NOT Senator Gore NOR Vice President Gore. He is former-Senator Gore or former-Vice President Gore or, hey, how about this, “Al” (I can live with Mr. Gore, if we need to be highfalutin’).

Think Progress » Boxer Slams Down Inhofe’s Global Warming Filibuster: ‘You Don’t Make The Rules Anymore’
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/21/gore-boxer-inhofe/

Think Progress » Gore: ‘If The Crib’s On Fire, You Don’t Speculate That The Baby Is Flame-Retardant’

Mocking global warming deniers, Gore said, “The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don’t say, well I read a science fiction novel that tells me it’s not a problem. If the crib’s on fire, you don’t speculate that the baby is flame-retardant. You take action. The planet has a fever.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/21/gore-barton/ [highlights]

Al Gore to Congress: “Today, the Honorable Al Gore testified before Congress saying, “I promise you a day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they’ll ask one of two questions. Either they will ask, ‘What in God’s name were they doing? Didn’t they see the evidence? … Or, they’ll ask another question. They may look back and they’ll say, ‘How did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy?’”

http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=153 [three clips plus link to transcript]

Al’s Journal : Al’s Testimony Before the House of Representatives
http://blog.algore.com/2007/03/als_testimony_before_the_house.html [36 minute opening statement]