Cheney's Not-So-Soothing Presence

Cheney and the Whales

David A. Fahrenthold writes in The Washington Post: "The Bush administration yesterday proposed scaling back protected zones for endangered whales in the Atlantic Ocean, yielding to cargo companies' concerns about new speed limits for ships in these areas.

"The proposal, unveiled yesterday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, could end more than a year of wrangling between federal fisheries scientists and the White House over new measures to protect the North Atlantic right whale. About 300 of the whales remain, and researchers say their tiny population has been reduced further by fatal collisions with large ships.

"In July 2006, NOAA announced plans to create 30-nautical-mile buffer zones off of several East Coast ports, in which ships would be required to slow to 10 nautical miles per hour during certain times of the year.

"But cargo companies said that this would cause their ships to lose time and burn more fuel, and the proposal was held up for months by the administration.

"Yesterday, in a document called an environmental impact statement, NOAA announced a change. Its new plan would reduce the buffer zone to 20 nautical miles, or about 23 standard miles."

So once again, Cheney gets his way. As Juliet Eilperin wrote in The Washington Post last week, Cheney senior aide F. Chase Hutto III was a key player in setting the new policy: "Acting on Cheney's behalf, Hutto questioned whether there was sufficient scientific evidence to justify the economic costs that the rule would impose on shippers. . . . New England Aquarium research scientist Amy Knowlton said those changes would 'undermine the scientific integrity of the rule,' since right whales have been spotted within 30 miles of the ports."

On the Other Hand

Rosalind S. Helderman writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush announced Monday that three isolated stretches of the Pacific Ocean are under consideration for national monument status, a designation that could provide vast new protections for the regions' fragile coral reefs, seabirds and ocean creatures. . . .

"One area under consideration is the waters off the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, including the Mariana Trench, at 36,000 feet the deepest canyon in the world.

"'It's like Yellowstone Park and the Grand Canyon rolled into one,' said Joshua S. Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group, an advocacy organization that has urged the designation. . . .

"Reichert said that if the same kind of protections Bush granted in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands preserve are extended to the Northern Mariana Islands region, Bush will have established environmental protections for more of the Earth's surface than anyone in history.

"'He will have led the nation into a new era of ocean conservation,' he said."

Kenneth R. Weiss writes in the Los Angeles Times: "The White House memo has unleashed a scramble among officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as the Interior and Defense departments, to gather information and make recommendations to meet the president's timeline to finalize plans in the next few months. . . .

"Two other candidates for increased protection -- a stretch of deep-water corals off the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida and areas especially rich in marine life in the Gulf of Mexico -- were knocked out of consideration because of opposition from the fishing and oil and gas industries."

Dueling Covers

On the cover of Rolling Stone: How Bush Destroyed the Republican Party. The article by Sean Wilentz is only partially online, but in an accompanying video, Wilentz ticks off the Five Ways Bush Sunk the GOP. No. 3 is Dick Cheney; No. 2 is Karl Rove; No. 1 is Hurricane Katrina.

Meanwhile, on the cover of the Canadian magazine: The shockingly liberal legacy of George W. Bush.

Luiza Ch. Savage writes: "Bush is the tax-cutting conservative who nonetheless grew the federal government in size and power. He is the former governor who championed states' rights while centralizing more power in Washington. He is the proponent of race-neutral policies who did more than any president before him to measure, track, and invest in the achievement of black and Latino children. He is the advocate of human dignity who authorized interrogation techniques that amount to torture. The passionate defender of liberty who circumvented laws to spy on his own citizens. The lover of freedom who toppled one dictator while propping up others. The progenitor of wars that killed thousands on one continent, and the humanitarian who spent unprecedented sums to save millions from disease on another."

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Lee Judge on Bush's missile-defense program.