Opinion: Lame Duck Strutting

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Not content with nearly eight years of mucking up the nation and the world, the Bush Administration seems to be planning on governing from the political grave.

Last week it was the environment. An Administration report outlined [reluctantly, no doubt] the ills that would come of more greenhouse gases -- and, in a parallel finding, suggested that the Clean Air Act doesn’t give the White House, any White House, the authority to do anything about it.

This contradicts a Supreme Court ruling, but is perfectly in keeping with Dick Cheney channeling ‘1984’s’ Winston Smith, reputedly snipping the science from draft Congressional testimony to ‘’reconcile’’ awkward facts with the Administration’s political credo.

It’s also consonant with the childish behavior reported by an EPA whistleblower that the White House refused to open an EPA e-mail confirming that climate change endangers public welfare, because then the Administration would legally have to do something about it. Or, alternatively, to put its fingers in its ears and stamp its feet and hold its breath until it turned blue.

Now we have the White House trying to plant another poison pill for a future administration. The White House looks like it’s trying a back-door way to redefine abortion, and extend it to contraceptives like drugs given to rape victims.

A new draft regulation would let a healthcare provider refuse to provide services that violate the worker’s moral beliefs, and would protect that worker’s job. But the worker’s job is already legally protected when it comes to abortions. This rule evidently puts the worker’s interests above the patient’s. It could apply to any objectionable ‘’health service,’’ potentially including IUDs, birth control pills, and emergency contraception, the ‘’morning after’’ pill. They didn’t draft this regulation to accommodate anyone’s objection to liver transplants.

It’s a political version of ‘’mortmain’’ -- dead hand, controlling property in perpetuity from the grave. And what a surprise that this White House would have to resort to policy legerdemain to do it.