Don't it turn my gray skies blue?

No surprise here. Once again the EPA cooks the books to favor Bush sponsored legislation as discovered in an investigation conducted by the Congressional Research Service.

The Environmental Protection Agency's Oct. 27 analysis of its plan -- along with those of Sens. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) and James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) -- exaggerated the costs and underestimated the benefits of imposing more stringent pollution curbs, the independent, nonpartisan congressional researchers wrote in a Nov. 23 report.

Bush sponsored "Clear Skies" would do almost nothing not already being done by current law and I've heard they are proposing to raise certain levels of allowable pollution in the short term to "stimulate business" or some such euphemism for raise corporate profits.

This is just one is a string of EPA analyses that has been skewed in favor the administration. Just off the top of my head I can remember the dishonest assessments of the dangers in the air of Manhattan after 9/11 and distinct tinkering with reports to minimize the effects of climate disruption.

Here's where the genius of the Bush strategy of making political appointments in the mid and lower levels of the bureaucracy is apparent. It takes a concerted effort to push this kind of false propaganda out of formerly independent agencies.

You have to wonder whether Grover Norquist thought this scheme up. Rather than stage an obvious coup, the neo-cons are destroying the government with incompetence. By the time they're done we won't have a major government agency left in this country that's able to perform its most primary functions. Becoming ineffectual and thus arguably obsolete is pretty much the same as being drowned in Grover's metaphorical bathtub, wouldn't you say?