EPA Chief resigned after Cheney rewrote coal plant rules

Well here we go, yet another oversight agency gutted... and Cheney is calling the shots directly it seems. But then again, after wiping out 70,000 salmon in one of the greatest mass killoffs in history, this is small potatoes for him:

In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake.

Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in.

First Cheney looked for a way around the law, aides said. Next he set in motion a process to challenge the science protecting the fish, according to a former Oregon congressman who lobbied for the farmers.

Because of Cheney's intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

Characteristically, Cheney left no tracks.

The Klamath case is one of many in which the vice president took on a decisive role to undercut long-standing environmental regulations for the benefit of business.

So it seems that Christine Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and former Chief of the EPA under the Bush Administration, originally told everyone that she quit to "spend more time with her family." Of course, she was being a good conservative... and good conservatives tell no tales.

But the Washington Post states that Whitman left the EPA because Cheney pressured her into accepting pro-coal industry power plant rules which would create massive increases of air pollution:

It was Cheney's insistence on easing air pollution controls, not the personal reasons she cited at the time, that led Christine Todd Whitman to resign as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, she said in an interview that provides the most detailed account so far of her departure.

So... she just quietly quit? She didn't speak out, didn't fight him...she simply quit. And all without a word of warning to anyone.

What is wrong with these Republicans? Some of them have over-riding morals - but won't stop the nightmare because they are more devoted to their party than to the nation, or even their own welfare and the welfare of generations to come.

Nation before Party!!!