Who Poked the Bear?

"At stake could be not only the U.S. bilateral relationship with Russia, which already has been chilly, but the entire balance of power that many already believed to be shifting away from the U.S. over the last several years.

"Stephen Sestanovich, a senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, 'What there is to lose is . . . the stability of the framework that the U.S. thought was going to govern the post-Cold War world. When one country conquers another, that's typically regarded as pretty serious, and the inability to do anything about it is something the United States is not all that accustomed to.'"

Peter Spiegel and Julian E. Barnes write in the Los Angeles Times that "administration officials who requested anonymity when discussing internal policy decisions" acknowledged "that military aid to Georgia was off the table and sanctions against Russia were impractical," but "insisted the U.S. could take longer-term economic and diplomatic measures that would hit the Kremlin hard.

"'Just because we are not rushing to place U.S. infantry in Tbilisi does not mean the world is impotent in the face of this aggression,' said a senior Pentagon official. . . .

"Over the last 48 hours, Russia experts and former military and diplomatic officials have proposed a wide range of ways to push back Russian troops -- from instituting a no-fly zone over Georgian airspace to supplying the Georgian military with air defense systems.

"But administration officials said the list of measures actually under consideration -- such as sending humanitarian aid and rebuilding the Georgian military once fighting ends -- is far narrower.

"'The regular tool kit does not really work here,' said a U.S. government analyst who specializes in Russia's relations with its former republics. 'The Russians have plenty of money now, and we need their oil more than they need our credits.'"

Bush Vacation Still On

James Gerstenzang blogs for the Los Angeles Times: "As for the immediate effect on Bush: He was planning to begin on Thursday a two-week visit to his home in Crawford, Texas.

"As of this afternoon, officials said, he still is."

Eleventh-Hour Rulemaking Watch

Dina Cappiello writes for the Associated Press: "Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct. The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants. . . .

"If approved, the changes would represent the biggest overhaul of endangered species regulations since 1986. . . .

"The new regulations follow a pattern by the Bush administration not to seek input from its scientists. The regulations were drafted by attorneys at both the Interior and Commerce Departments."

Juliet Eilperin writes in The Washington Post: "The new rules, which will be subject to a 30-day per comment period, would use administrative powers to make broad changes in the law that Congress has resisted for years. Under current law, agencies must subject any plans that potentially affect endangered animals and plants to an independent review by the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. Under the proposed new rules, dam and highway construction and other federal projects could proceed without delay if the agency in charge decides they would not harm vulnerable species. . . .

"[E]nvironmentalists and congressional Democrats blasted the proposal as a last-minute attempt by the administration to bring about dramatic changes in the law. For more than a decade, congressional Republicans have been trying unsuccessfully to rewrite the act, which property owners and developers say imposes unreasonable economic costs."

Eilperin quotes Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, as saying; "Eleventh-hour rulemakings rarely, if ever, lead to good government -- this is not the type of legacy this Interior Department should be leaving for future generations."

And here's Bob Irvin, senior vice president of conservation programs at the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife: "Clearly, that's a case of asking the fox to guard the chicken coop."

It was just last month that Carol Leonnig wrote in The Washington Post about how political appointees at the Department of Labor were "moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers' on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins."

What both of these activities have in common is that they appear to break a deadline set by White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten in May. Bolten ordered that all agencies -- except in "extraordinary circumstances" -- submit proposed regulations before June 1 and "resist the historical tendency of administrations to increase regulatory activity in their final months." (See my recent NiemanWatchdog.org article warning of an onslaught of midnight rulemaking.)

In an email exchange this morning, Gary Bass, executive director of the public-interest organization OMB Watch, told me that "the proposed endangered species rule violates the spirit of the Bolten memo" as "the limited 30 day comment period for this important issue suggests the rule is on a fast track for completion before the Bush administration leaves."

But he didn't seem surprised. "[I]t appears that a number of agencies are violating the spirit of the Bolten memo in order to get policies in place that were not acceptable to Congress or public will. . . .

"I fear we are seeing an even greater increase in special favors for special interests as the Bush administration sets into the sunset. This cannot be good for the national interest and is not the way the government should be run."

Contractor Watch

James Risen writes in the New York Times: "The United States this year will have spent $100 billion on contractors in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, a milestone that reflects the Bush administration's unprecedented level of dependence on private firms for help in the war, according to a government report to be released Tuesday.

"The report, by the Congressional Budget Office, according to people with knowledge of its contents, will say that one out of every five dollars spent on the war in Iraq has gone to contractors for the United States military and other government agencies, in a war zone where employees of private contractors now outnumber American troops.

"The Pentagon's reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed American troops. The role of armed security contractors has also raised new legal and political questions about whether the United States has become too dependent on private armed forces on the 21st-century battlefield. . . .

"Contractors in Iraq now employ at least 180,000 people in the country, forming what amounts to a second, private, army, larger than the United States military force, and one whose roles and missions and even casualties among its work force have largely been hidden from public view. The widespread use of these employees as bodyguards, translators, drivers, construction workers and cooks and bottle washers has allowed the administration to hold down the number of military personnel sent to Iraq, helping to avoid a draft."

Predator Watch

James K. Galbraith blogs on Talking Points Memo about his new book, The Predator State.

Bush and Cheney, he writes, cut taxes not for idealistic reasons, but "to enrich their supporters. For the same reason, they outsourced to Blackwater and Halliburton and pursued military pipe dreams like Missile Defense. They were willing to have the government spend like a drunken sailor in 2003/4 to boost the economy before the election. They placed lobbyists in charge of the regulators, representing, in every case, the most extreme anti-regulation perspective. . . . Under Bush and Cheney, oil and gas, drug companies and defense contractors, insurers and usurers control the government of the United States, and it does what they want. This is the predator state. . . .

"They are not interested (if they ever were) in reducing government. On the contrary, they are perfectly willing to expand it. But the goal, in every case, is to expand government in such a way as to benefit, first and foremost, political friends and supporters at the expense, mainly, of the middle class. And while a rich country can survive a fair amount of this, it cannot withstand the complete control of government by predators. For what happens then, is a population crash of the prey. This, as a result of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the systematic deregulation of securities and futures markets, we now confront in the financial crisis and the speculative commodities bubble. And if we do not reclaim and rebuild the capacity of our government to act, with purpose and on a large scale, we will eventually see far worse as the climate crisis unfolds."

Federal Government Incompetence Watch

Even by its own standards, the Bush administration is flailing.

Robert Brodsky writes for Government Executive: "Many federal agencies have taken a step backward on the Bush administration's five major management initiatives, according to quarterly grades released on Thursday by the Office of Management and Budget.

"There were 14 downgrades on the status section of OMB's management score card for the third quarter of 2008, which ended June 30. And there were only six instances in which grades improved."

Hamdan Watch

The Los Angeles Times editorial board writes: "With credit for time served at Guantanamo Bay, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the onetime driver for Osama bin Laden who was convicted last week of material support for terrorism, could be a free man in January. But not if the Bush administration asserts the right to continue holding him for the duration of the so-called war on terror. Having touted the fairness of the military commission system at Guantanamo, the administration should honor its rulings. That means releasing Hamdan."

Suskind Watch

Ron Suskind, whose book I wrote about so much last week, will be Live Online today at 3 p.m. ET.

Jon Stewart had Suskind on last night. Says Suskind: "The book is all about the way America's moral authority has bled away, and how we need to restore it, to fight the battles we need to fight."

Bush in Photos

Ryan Tate blogs for Gawker: "Bush has been doing a funny/terrifying impersonation of a drunk president for all the press photographers at the Olympics."

Live Online

I'll be Live Online tomorrow at 1 p.m. ET. Come join the conversation.

Cartoon Watch

Jim Morin on Putin's soul, Mike Luckovich on Putin's sole, Nate Beeler on Putin's soul food, Dwane Powell on poking the bear, Bruce Plante on the bear's crocodile tears, Bill Mitchell on the irony of it all, Jeff Danziger on Georgians in Iraq, and Joel Pett on Bush's John Edwards defense.