Ridiculous review

President Bush is continuing his 11th-hour raid on the integrity of the Endangered Species Act, despite hundreds of thousands of comments against the proposed changes.

Last month, the Interior Department worked to review 300,000 public comments related to a proposal that would exclude greenhouse gases and input from federal biologists from decisions with environmental consequences, reported The Associated Press.

Fifteen employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “reviewed” the comments within a span of 32 hours, after which the office of Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne would be charged with responding to the correspondences.

Based on the time constraints and volume of comments, conservationists said the undertaking was ludicrous. Each reviewer would have to go over seven comments per minute to have met the deadline, and some responses were lengthy. Not surprising to opponents, the Bush administration concluded the changes would not significantly affect the environment.