Environment: Climate S.O.S.

ETHICS — SNOW DISTORTS HISTORY OF INVESTIGATIONS INTO PRESIDENT CLINTON’S PARDONS: In his USA Today op-ed yesterday defending the commutation of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s two and a half year prison sentence, White House spokesman Tony Snow referenced former President Bill Clinton’s issuance of pardons in the final hours of his administration, calling it “a mad rush to push through pardons with dizzying haste.” Asked at the White House press briefing yesterday if he was trying to justify the President’s extraordinary clemency for a former aide by saying “two wrongs make a right” due to some of Clinton’s questionable pardons, Snow responded “no,” adding, “I think what is interesting is perhaps it was just because he was on his way out, but while there was a small flurry, there was not much investigation of [Clinton’s pardons].” Snow is dishonestly misrepresenting the facts. Less than two weeks after Clinton issued his pardons, the House Government Reform Committee, headed by Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), initiated hearings into the issue. A week later, the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), launched its own investigation. The following day, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, in conjunction with the FBI, launched a criminal investigation into Clinton’s pardons. A week later, White announced that she was also investigating commutations that Clinton had issued. After Clinton waived executive privilege, three of his top aides, including Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta, testified before the House Government Reform Committee about the pardons. After all this, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) pledged to continue investigations, saying Congress must not “walk away” from the work left to be done. Over a year after the investigation began, federal prosecutors concluded “it wasn’t appropriate to bring charges” in the case.

ENVIRONMENT — BUSH GUTS WETLAND PROTECTION POLICIES AFTER HEAVY INDUSTRY LOBBYING: In 2004, President Bush announced that “[i]nstead of just limiting our losses, we will expand the wetlands of America,” proposing to “create one million acres of wetlands and restore another million damaged by development” by the end of the decade. Wetlands are a crucial part of America’s ecosystems, providing biological hubs for “an immense variety of species of microbes, plants, insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, fish, and mammals.” But the New York Times reports today that Bush has reneged on that promise after “a concerted lobbying effort by property developers.” In particular, the administration is scaling back guidelines for enforcing a 2006 Supreme Court decision that would have brought thousands of small streams and wetlands under the protection of the Clean Air Act of 1972. “But just before the new guidelines were to be issued last September, they were pulled back in the face of objections from lobbyists and lawyers for groups concerned that the rules could lead to federal protection of isolated and insignificant swamps.” Last month, the administration again issued new guidelines, “which environmental and recreational groups said were much more narrowly drawn.” Environmental groups have long been concerned about Bush’s wetland policies. In 2005, the Sierra Club noted that the administration was pursuing policies preventing “massive numbers of wetlands from protection under the Clean Water Act.” Today, it notes a worsening trend: “There are definitely waters that will not be protected because of this latest guidance. … The final guidance is clearly weaker than what we saw in the September guidance,” said Navis Bermudez of the Sierra Club.

IRAQ — DOOLITTLE: IRAQ IS A ‘QUAGMIRE,’ U.S. FORCES SHOULD BE OFF FRONT LINES ‘BY THE END OF THE YEAR’: Speaking Thursday at a town hall meeting with constituents, Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), who is currently under investigation for his “association with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff,” called the war in Iraq a “quagmire.” Doolittle argued, “We’ve got to get off the front lines as soon as possible. … [I]n my mind, that means something like the end of the year.” “I am increasingly convinced that we never are going to succeed in actually ending people dying [in Iraq]. I think it’s going to be a constant conflict…and if that is going to happen…it needs to be the Iraqis dying and not the Americans,” he said further. Noting the growing number of prominent conservatives — including Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) — who have rejected the Bush administration’s failed stay-the-course strategy in Iraq, Doolittle said, “My belief is that the majority of my colleagues on the Republican side have become skeptical of all of this. … And that’s a big change.” Further, Doolittle predicted that the “anticipated September report by Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will indicate that a long-term U.S. presence is needed despite the recent troop surge.” Despite his supposed commitment to ending the war, Doolittle was careful to remind the Sacramento Bee that he — like Lugar — “opposes setting a timetable to withdraw forces from Iraq.” Further, despite Lewis “Scooter” Libby lying to a grand jury during an investigation of a key aspect of the Bush administration’s justification for the war in Iraq, Doolittle remarked, “I thought the commutation was the president’s right to do. I don’t know why he didn’t just pardon him outright.”

“Global warming is radically changing the face of Mount Everest, the sons of the men who first reached its summit 54 years ago said.” The sons of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay say “their fathers would no longer recognise the world’s highest mountain,” noting the base camp is now 132 feet lower than it was 53 years ago.

Triple-digit temperatures are expected to set records in parts of the West. Forecasters predicted a high of 107 in Boise, ID, and 125 in Baker, CA. Residents in some states were warned “that outdoor activities could be dangerous except during the cooler early morning hours.”

Eighteen people died in Baghdad “after a car bomb blew up outside a photo shop here as members of a wedding party waited Thursday night for the newlyweds to get their pictures taken.”

“The bald eagle may be soaring back from near-extinction, but hundreds of other imperiled species are foundering, as the federal agency charged with protecting them has sunk into legal, bureaucratic and political turmoil.”

Nearly half of the National Hurricane Center’s employees urged the Bush administration to replace their boss. “The staff of the National Hurricane Center would like nothing more than to return its focus to its primary mission of protecting life and property from hazardous tropical weather,” they wrote, “and leave the political arena it now finds itself in.”

“An exodus of highly trained mid- and upper-level firefighters” from the U.S. Forest Service has left “swaths” of flammable national forests protected by little more than luck. “On any given day, about 40 of 271 U.S. Forest Service engines remain in firehouses rather than on patrol, idled by a shortage of supervisors.”

The New York Times writes, “There is no better measure of the power of the health care issue than this: Sixteen months before Election Day, presidential candidates in both parties are promising to overhaul the system and cover more — if not all — of the 44.8 million people without insurance.”

And finally: Today is President Bush’s birthday. The Houston Chronicle’s Julie Mason writes that Bush’s 61 years old physique is showing the demands of the office. “For Bush, his cumulative burden, with perhaps the Iraq war being most prominent — takes a heavy toll that is showing on his face and also in his demeanor, which is less jokey and more testy than previously. Some days, Bush looks exhausted.”