Reverend Rick Warren Says U.S. Should Overthrow Evil Governments Like Iran – Last night, on Fox News, Sean Hannity insisted that United States needs to “take out” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Warren said he agreed. Hannity asked, “Am I advocating something dark, evil or something righteous?” Warren responded, “Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped…. In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers.”
Bush Interior Department Refuses to Follow the Law and Bureau of Land Management Changes Regulations – When the Bureau of Land Management announced that they were going to allow uranium mining along with oil and gas drilling around the Grand Canyon, the House Natural Resources Committee voted 20-2 to block mining in the area. Then the Bush Interior Department simply refused to issue the order on the grounds that not enough Republicans had been involved in the vote. Then on Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management stripped from its regulations the provision that gives two Congressional committees the power to compel the Interior Secretary to temporarily place public land off limits to mining and oil and gas development. So much for checks and balances. This Republican Administration just does whatever they want.
Mountaintop Removal Mining
One picture is worth a thousand words:
More than 400 mountains have been destroyed. – As threatened, the Bush Environmental Protection Administration has repealed key parts of the Stream Buffer Act. For nearly five years, since January 2004, the Bush administration has been working to essentially eliminate the more than 20-year-old buffer zone rule. Generally, that rule prohibits mining activities within 100 feet of perennial and intermittent streams.
Coal operators already can obtain variances to mine within the 100-foot buffer. To do so, though, companies must show that their operations will not cause water quality violations or “adversely affect the water quantity and quality, or other environmental resources of the stream.”
Ridiculously, the EPA and Office of Surface Mining had already been issuing such variances to operations that completely buried flowing streams, because blasting a stream out of existence somehow negates the need to worry about water quality. That’s how 1,200 miles of flowing water has been eliminated from the Appalachian region.
Now the EPA has stopped even the pretense of caring.
Way back when he was running (unsuccessfully) for a seat in Congress, Bush declared that he wanted to do away with both safety and environmental regulations. There are plenty of dead miners and ruined communities to mark his accomplishments in the White House.
Regards,
Jim
