Bush's last gasp: Let's poison the parks.

Is ruining things sort of like scratching an itch for Bush? Here the man is about out of office, and he won't stop.

You know what will be novel? Having an Environmental Protection Agency that think its job is to protect the environment.

The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing new air-quality rules that would make it easier to build coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and other major polluters near national parks and wilderness areas, even though half of the EPA's 10 regional administrators formally dissented from the decision and four others criticized the move in writing.

Documents obtained by The Washington Post show that the administration's push to weaken Clean Air Act protections for "Class 1 areas" nationwide has sparked fierce resistance from senior agency officials. All but two of the regional administrators objecting to the proposed rule are political appointees.

The proposal would change the practice of measuring pollution levels near national parks, which is currently done over three-hour and 24-hour increments to capture emission spikes during periods of peak energy demand; instead, the levels would be averaged over a year. Under this system, spikes in pollution would no longer violate the law.

His defenders STILL don't get why people are so furious with George W. Bush. Well, here's a hint:

He filled the Environmental Protection Agency with friends of his who were hostile to the idea of protecting the environment.

See, it would be really hard to shut the agency down, which is what he wanted to do. So he just filled it with people who were hostile to its actual mission. Same effect without the trouble.

How is it possible not to realize how frigging insulting that is?