Two Very Dumb Things The Bush Administration Has Done This Year…..So Far

I was sitting here reading an article in the National Post by Kevin A. Hassett about the legal mess the Bush administration has gotten itself in over this decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. It wasn’t that Hassett wrote anything absolutely brand new but all the while I’m reading I’m thinking, “These guys are really stupid! What they did was plain dumb! What were they thinking?”

Hassett describes the decision by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne as trying to have it both ways – meaning trying to keep those who think the polar bear is going away forever happy AND not let the decision have any bearing on the environment, i.e. global warming, etc.

We are governed by laws, right? A consideration by the U.S. government to protect the bear is supposed to be based on scientific evidence and a host of other criteria. In this case, government decided to list the bear as “threatened”. Any 8th-grade student should be able to understand that turning protection of the bear over to the ESA means abiding by the laws within the Act. Thinking they could wave a magic wand and have it their own way is really dumb.

That was the latest act. Remember back in January, U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court concerning District of Columbia vs. Heller, said that the ruling of the lower court that declared D.C.’s gun ban unconstitutional was unconstitutional. Clement requested the Supreme Court to return the case to the lower courts because he was afraid such a ruling would strip the federal government of the authority to strip Americans of their right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. That, too, was really dumb.

I’m still sitting here wondering how dumb some of these people are. I recall a saying my father used to iterate when I was a kid growing up. “There must be two of you because one couldn’t be so stupid!” I’m not sure I would go that far but having two very large gaffes within 5 months of each other makes you wonder.

Tom Remington