REPORTERS: Somebody leaked an early draft of this administration proposal to us and it says it will let the various federal agencies decide for themselves whether a road or tunnel, or whatever thing they want to build, will put rare wildlife at risk. They won’t have to consult with Fish and Wildlife anymore.

SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D-CALIF): That’s illegal. If you want to do that, you’re going to have to try to hammer legislation through congress.

LOBBYIST FOR DEVELOPERS: We just want to be able to build things faster, and right now it really sucks for us how long we have to wait before we build things.

WILDLIFE CONSERVATION GROUP: If the government lets you do that, bald eagles may die.

DEPT. OF INTERIOR BUSH UNDERLING: We know that secretly this whole wildlife thing you guys are always talking about is actually about curbing carbon emissions. You just want to find a way to help halt global warming by stopping some developments that create emissions. You are obsessed with that or something.

One potential way for greens to stop this proposal would be to try to find a legal basis on which to stall it until later in the year. If we then got Obama, he’d be able to erase the proposed Bush changes no problem because such edicts take a little while to go into effect. But if we got McCain, we’d probably be screwed on this.

Image: flickr/graybeard763

The alleged perjury took place Jan. 24th, when Johnson told Boxer’s committee he’d made an independent decision not to allow California to enact its own fuel economy standards that would have been stricter than national ones. In reality, says the former EPA administrator Jason Burnett, Johnson seemed disposed to grant California at least a partial waiver until the White House told him not to. (Here’s a previous post about Burnett).

In case there’s any confusion over names: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is a guy from Rhode Island who wants to take Johnson down; The White House is an entity that allegedly makes Johnson dance like a little beggar child.

 Image: flickr/National Archives

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) pounced immediately today, saying the memo shows that the EPA’s administration have been turning the agency into “a secretive, dangerous ally of polluters, instead of a leader in the effort to protect the health and safety of the American people.”

The Office of the Inspector General also made a statement today, saying, basically, what the f–k, dude, you’re supposed to be on my team and this is my job:  “All EPA officials and employees are required to cooperate with OIG. This cooperation includes providing the OIG full and unrestricted access to EPA documents, records, and personnel.”

The managers who were sent the e-mail were in the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, which means they’re the guys in charge of making sure pollution laws are obeyed. So basically the legal compliance people were being told not to comply with the inspector general. Which proves once and for all that these days the EPA is The Office.