What do you do when you don’t want to read the bad news? You refuse to read it. And if you’re really ballsy, you tell people you won’t read it.
The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.
The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.
This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.
Nice. Can the Administration be fined for Contempt of Court? (I mean, legal contempt, not the obvious contempt they already hold.) I suppose they could be — if such fines didn’t have to be carried out by (drum roll) the Administration itself.
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, refused to comment on discussions between the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency. Asked about changes in the original report, Mr. Fratto said, “It’s the E.P.A. that determines what analysis it wants to make available” in its documents.
Fascinating that when it comes to requests to review communications, the Adminstration claims Executive Privilege and that it is a “unitary executive” that acts as a single, unregulatable agency. But when it comes to this sort of thing, the White House fobs it all off on the EPA. Again, nice. And, to illustrate:
Simultaneously, Mr. Waxman’s committee is weighing its response to the White House’s refusal to turn over subpoenaed documents relating to the E.P.A.’s handling of recent climate-change and air-pollution decisions. The White House, which has turned over other material to the committee, last week asserted a claim of executive privilege over the remaining documents.
In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Fratto, the White House spokesman, said the committee chairmen did not understand the legal precedent underlying executive privilege. “There is a long legal history supporting the principle that the president should have the candid advice of his advisers,” Mr. Fratto said.
In other words, “If we don’t want to take the blame, it’s those other guys. But if you want to talk to those other guys — you can’t, because they’re really us.”
White House pressure to ignore or edit the E.P.A.’s climate-change findings led to the resignation of one agency official earlier this month: Jason Burnett, the associate deputy administrator. Mr. Burnett, a political appointee with broad authority over climate-change regulations, said in an interview that he had resigned because “no more constructive work could be done” on the agency’s response to the Supreme Court.
He added, “The next administration will have to face what this one did not.”
From your lips to God’s ear, Mr Burnett.
(hat tip to Margie for the post title)