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White House Refused To Open Unwelcome EPA E-Mail
epfreed writes "The White House lost a case in the Supreme Court about the need for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. So the EPA made new rule. And now the NYTimes reports that the White House did not want to get these new rules from the EPA about greenhouse gases. So they did not open the email."
Frankly I'm pretty sure my boss would give me the sack for that sort of BS.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
How did they know about the rules if they never opened the e-mail?
Also after 7 years, is anyone surprised?
i didn't want to rtfa. so i didn't click on the link.
Looks like I won't be opening many work emails from now on. Those emails from my bank might go unread, too. It's about time they showed some leadership!
The only thing sadder and more despicable at this point than the Bush administration are the Democrats in Congress who have been on their knees for the last two years after promising to hold this imperial administration accountable.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
A Bush official, with fingers in his ears, was quoted as saying: "Nyah! Nyah! Nyah! Nyah! I can't hear you! Nyah! Nyah! Nyah! ...."
My blog
Awesome! So it's cool if I just leave all that important-looking IRS mail in an unopened pile by the door, right?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Given the government's poor record with computer security, I wouldn't open ANY documents emailed me. I would imagine there are policies in place that would forbid the acceptance of such messages. This story could well be somebody at the EPA insisting on total asshattery.
And if its something official and important, why is it being emailed anyway? Shouldn't it be, like, printed out and physically handed to somebody? Maybe signed, stamped, notarized, and whatever else?
IANAL but doesn't this amount to the whole ignorance of a law isn't a defense kind of thing? If an individual or a company violates EPA standards and they get caught they get spanked with fines and such. So by their rational if the rest of us don't know about the new rules we get off the hook too right? Works for me!
Maybe the EPA shouldn't have mentioned V1agra in the subject...
...one of the senior E.P.A. officials said, "That's not what the administration wants to show. They want to show that the Clean Air Act can't work."That's just it, isn't it? The Bush administration is convinced that the Federal government cannot work and they do everything in in their power to prove it at every turn.
Heck of a job Brownie!
my insights may be modded Funny, but at least some of my jokes are modded Insightful
This is a nuts use of email. For something this important you'd expect the documents to be sent by courier or registered post, signature on delivery etc. That way, you can prove they've received it and if they've chosen not to read it it's their bad. Anyway, why should the White House need to see this? The court has decided the EPA has the authority to introduce the rule and it's then up to the judiciary to enforce it. The legislature is surely out of the loop by this point.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Really show's the maturity of our leaders there.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
Read this to get Free Paige Sex: Half of the Republicans in the office would have read it in a flash...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Based on the experience of the last seven years, non-reality-based decision making is a powerful tool for gathering and holding power. We should celebrate the Bush administration's success in contesting or ignoring every bit of evidence that contests their highly profitable worldview. After all, didn't a lot of people vote for Bush because they wanted a president who says what he means and means what he says?
Anyway, listening to scientists just encourages to make up stuff that upsets people. Evolution, the germ theory of disease, the greenhouse effect . . . we'd all be happier and more content if we all behaved like Ben Stein would like us to: God-fearing authority-worshipping dumbfucks.
This is like the behavior of a child who thinks that covering their eyes means no one around can see them. Does Pres. Bush have dementia? First his speech, and now his age behavior? A fellow at my church has Dementia and he's starting to behave a bit like a child in this way. It's not fun for anyone to go through, but the White House? Next we'll see folks walking around in diapers saying they forget how to use their computers.
If you think "If I ignore it, it'll go away", then you're probably ignorant. If you're the President of the United States and you think to yourself, "If I ignore this official message sent here by the EPA, maybe it'll go away", then you're criminally ignorant.
Other possible subject lines: "Get Viagra / Cialis without a prescription"
"VP Cheney shot another friend in the face"
"Bum Fights Vol 3 now available on DVD"
"American Idol canceled"
"Mobilize the Navy! North Dakota invades South Dakota"
"Senator Byrd called you a pussy!"
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
For the past sixty years or more, judicial despotism has increased until now, you have governors and legislators of states waiting to see what some court will rule on an issue before they can proceed. This is NOT what the Framers intended, and unless we get things back to the balance of powers between the branches of government things are going to become more despotic.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
There's too many problems with it. If you're sending something official, there's no reliable record that it was even delivered.
What's next? The EPA sending an IM about new regulations?
Using email in this matter is completely inappropriate, and the ./ community shouldn't get so slackjawed because of it.
Does anyone know? Does there have to be some kind of catch all pardon from the President or something at the end of his term? (I hearby pardon all members of the Whitehouse staff of all crimes) That thing about firing Federal Attorney's who wouldn't procecute opponents of the White House during elections seems like something that shouldn't be just dropped.
It's a special character encoding. It's only ö when you're not looking at it.
we se the "LA LA LA!! I CAN"T HEAR YOU!! LA LA LA LA!!!" theory of government in action.
I'd ask why the hell people would seriously consider anyone connected with this Administration for any sort of public service ever again, but I fear you'd tell me and I'm just not up for it anymore.
No Longer a Menace to Society.
Alexandria Morrigan born 2/22/01 l. 20.5in wt. 7 lbs. 5 oz.
Give the man some credit. Bush is faithfully serving the people who got him into office.
They suckered the dupes into thinking they were getting a straight-shooting native-born Texan who was the kind of feller who'd drink a beer with them, keep the military out of nation-building boondoggles, hated taxes, and loved little unborn babies.
Now they've managed to convince us, and Congress, that we're better off not making him and his cronies accountable.
Bush and Cheney will spend their lives after the White House getting big bucks serving on the boards of Exxon, Halliburton, and Soylent Corporation ,while we are left to deal with the financial and ecological mess they created.
Suckers. We're all suckers.
Most courts would hold that an e-mail is not an official communication. I can not inform my tenants via e-mail that they are being evicted. I can not create a binding sale contract via e-mail. etc. etc. Sure , most of our interoffice communication is via e-mail, and we choose to uphold it as legitimate within our work environments, but the law still sees e-mail as unofficial. /. are willing to overlook the fact that e-mail is not a means of official communication and is also not a 100% reliable means of communication in order to bash Bush.
Also, did someone admit that they received this e-mail but did not open it? I don't read that in the article. For all we know, the e-mail was never received, or is sitting in some spam folder because somewhere in the e-mail it said that the environment is f*cked.
Of course, we here on
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The President is the Chief Executive Officer of the Executive Branch.
All power of the Executive Branch comes as proxy for the Chief Executive.
The Executive Branch does not have the authority to create obligations which the Chief Executive officer does not want.
The EPA is part of the Executive Branch.
The SCOTUS ruling endorsed the authority of the EPA to create such regulations, it did not empower the EPA to create them exclusive of the Executive Officer. The SCOTUS did not somehow turn the EPA into a fourth branch of the Federal Government.
There's no "there" there.
It really is that simple.
John McCain says he's completely computer illiterate, and has to rely on other people to do anything on the computer for him. Now, given that George W. Bush has said that "doesn't read newspapers" - what're the odds *he's* computer literate? Or that either of them would hire (or keep) people who felt that skill was far more important than they did?
Whether you think this is genuine incompetence or just plausible deniability - the fact remains that we collectively "hired" someone who said he lacked a vital skill for the job, and a fair portion of Americans are seriously considering hiring another one.
If you were willfully ignorant, and had to rely exclusively on the caliber of people a willfully ignorant person would hire as advisers - you too would end up having to:
-Say things like "$4.00 a gallon gas? I hadn't heard about that".
-Wait until your staff put together a DVD for you to illustrate what a "heckuva" job that ex-Head of an Equestrian club manager you hired to run FEMA was doing responding to a Category 5 hurricane that hit a below sea level city.
-Claim that "Everyone thought he had Weapons of Mass Destruction".
-Respond that "No one could have predicted" terrorists would fly highjacked jumbo jets into the building they previously tried to blow up with a truck bomb.
-Assume that promising to "Protect and Uphold the Constitution" consisted primarily of keeping your hands of the interns, and doing a lot of bicycling.
So let's not complain about this too much folks. We hired an incurious idiot to run the company. Just be thankful the company didn't go completely bankrupt before we started paying more attention to applicant's resumes.
I'm actually far more surprised than thankful. If we make it to 2009 without China foreclosing on us, it's going to feel the way it does to wake up safe in bed when you have no memory of how you got home from the previous night's party: thankful you got home alive but still worried about kind of damage you've done to your car, credit line, or reputation in the process.
Bush's statements were made to congress and to the public, neither of which have punishments in the law books about lying. Clinton's statements were made in the court of law, under oath, there are punishments in the law books about lying under oath. Both are lying, but only one has a direct legal punishment assigned to it. Clinton should have been impeached for lying under oath, neither can be trusted to tell the truth.
Also it's kind of interesting that both you and the parent quote Rockefeller, only the parent's quotes are direct from a government report and yours appear to be from media/interviews? Personally I would consider the quotes in the parent post to carry more weight.
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
I don't care who is the president, I don't want this it is bad for everybody.
"Bush did it so it must be ok."
That's the new bar? we're screwed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's strange, making me suspicious of your thesis, that with all the hyperlinks in that Washington Post article, not one points to the full text of the report it discusses, nor even to complete paragraphs or even complete sentences that specify, for example, on [sic] nuclear or biological weapons, just which of the "president's statements 'were substantiated by intelligence information.'" And it's strange that, among so many excerpts, all the excerpts from that article are sentence fragments, necessitating the improper grammar repeated ad nauseam, "On [fallacy]?. The president's statements 'were substantiated [by
And, no, most of Congress did not know at that time anything but the cherry-picked version manufactured by Douglas Feith & co.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
I'm not gonna read it and you can't make me! And if I don't read it, I don't have to do anything about it!
Thank $DIETY that there's only seven more months of this sort of crap. The hell of it is that these bozos could screw things more royally than anyone could ever imagine in those seven months.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
The good people of San Francisco already have GWB's legacy organised - they're proposing to name their new sewerage plant after him.
http://presidentialmemorial.wordpress.com/
If you are an SF resident, do your duty, and sign up.
Do as you would be done to.
It is not the executive's place to create or ignore obligations(laws). He can create policy regarding conduct within the framework of law -- he can decide how to execute the law. Congress created the obligation in law, the executive branch is then responsible for executing said law. The judicial branch judged the effort in executing the law as interpreted by the supreme court as lacking and ordered compliance. Basic checks and balances. In this case the executive has overstepped his constitutional bounds.
This is willful, blatant disregard for one of the most important principles in the US Constitution, that of checks and balances.
The legislative branch passed a law requiring action by the executive branch.
Agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency operate as rogue legislative bodies. They create regulations, which generally are not laws passed by Congress.
There are no checks and balances between the EPA and the Executive Branch, because the EPA itself is unconstitutional.
The conspiracy theories are interesting, but house-of-cardish.
Perhaps, among the short-term profiteers, there are those in the "know" in the industry, who realize that demand has already outstripped supply, and supply is going to forever decrease. Furthermore, oil is energy, and is fundamental, and may be the straw the breaks the camels back on the perpetual-growth-myth the is the core of our economic system.
Regardless, the situation is highly unpredictable, and the stakes are huge. The market has predicted the price of oil as correctly has possible.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
So, should ALL the people in the link I just provided, including Nancy Pelosi, Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, John Kerry, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, and the oracle himself, Al Gore all be tried for treason?
Do you think they should?
Origins: All of the quotes listed above are substantially correct reproductions of statements made by various Democratic leaders regarding Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's acquisition or possession of weapons of mass destruction. However, some of the quotes are truncated, and context is provided for none of them — several of these quotes were offered in the course of statements that clearly indicated the speaker was decidedly against unilateral military intervention in Iraq by the U.S.
If so, on what grounds? No, they did not say "THE EXACT SAME THING." They made similar statements, when discussing the real dangers of Iraq, but they did not ignore contradictory facts and they did not run a publicity campaign for the purpose of waging a war of aggression in Iraq.
First, nothing from the Huffington Post can be used as a source... EVER. It is opinions posted by the most ignorant of Americans, celebrities. If anything, having something said in the Huffington post should be used as COUTNER-evidence to whatever was said.
In my opinion, discarding any one article merely because it appears in the Huffington Post [or any other source] would be to subscribe to the premise of guilt by association, which I do not. Heh, I held my nose and read the article you posted from snopes. You're entitled to your opinions. Everybody else is equally entitled to our opinions, and that includes everybody who disagrees. That's life. The subject at hand is not difference of opinion, but irresponsible and dishonest representation of fact in the pursuit of others' opinions, voters' opinions, in one of the gravest of all political matters, declaration of war. To dismiss a fact merely because it's expressed by a person, or in a journal, with which you have a difference of opinion is to make the very same type of error as we are discussing.
However, I did notice that there was no mention of Sandy Berger, the Clinton security advisor stealing top secret documents and cutting them up with scissors during the 9-11 investigation. I guess that was no big deal, what with Bush lying and all.
That's a disgrace, no doubt about it and no argument, but it is not currently "news." It was not omitted from that article because of Democratic bias. That was the correct professional journalistic decision.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that his intelligence service had warned the Bush administration before the U.S. invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein's government was planning attacks against U.S. targets both inside and outside the country.
Vladimir Putin, no matter how friendly he may be nor how pure his soul, is primarily responsible for advancing the interests of Russia, not of the United States. As those tend to overlap these days, it is wise to be receptive to any tips he offers, to take them seriously. But because he is primarily responsible not to us but to a foreign power, the correct next step is to validate what he says independently, with U.S. intelligence assets and never take him, nor any other foreign power, on feith. "Russian President Vladimir Putin said" is not relevant rebuttal to the findings of the U.S. Congress, for this U.S. citizen.
Granted, Saddam Hussein was not in full compliance with terms of treaties he signed. It is also worth noting, however, that his invasion of Kuwait was in response to diagonal oil drilling from Kuwait into Earth under Iraq and that oil was as much a motive for the defense of Kuwait against Iraq as it was a motive for Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, so the U.S., and especially t
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
This is the sort of stunt you'd expect from a 6 year-old, sticking his fingers in his ear so as to not hear you.
Wow, can this President act more immature?
Heaven forbid the White House read a letter containing a mysterious white substance known as "The Polar Ice Caps". They won't read letters about how global warming is causing climate change, but they will read the letters that have anthrax in them.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Tactical genius, the White House has load of methods of dealing with bad news that are bordering on the brilliant: http://www.236.com/news/2008/06/25/the_white_house_is_rubber_ever_7365.php