The House's shocks and struts took a beating last Friday as
Republican leaders arm-twisted, buttonholed and browbeat their rank and
file party members to eke out a 212-210 win on the federal oil refinery
bill.
Turmoil and fallout -- both inter- and intra-party -- over the
government's response to the hurricanes, President Bush's nomination of
Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, and the indictment of former House
GOP boss Tom DeLay have raised Washington's everyday partisan antagonism
to a boil.
This New York Times
account gives a taste of the enmity on display last
Friday.
Before the bill was brought to the floor for a vote, its authors
deleted a White House-backed Clean Air Act amendment that would have
made it easier for power plants to expand without having to install new
antipollution equipment.
In the end, all this uproar may be for naught. The Times says the
refinery bill's prospects as it moves across the rotunda to the Senate
are dim. Democrats there are itching for a filibuster, and there's a
good chance that that could spell defeat for the measure.
In other Washington high jinks, I mean news, the EPA inspector
general has found that although agency officials writing a new rule may
have given preferential treatment to an industrialist who is a major
fundraiser for President Bush, they didn't break any laws in doing so.
The industrialist is Richard Farmer, chairman of Cincinnati-based
Cintas Corp., and the rule in question has to do with the handling of
shop towels contaminated with toxic chemicals. The Washington Post
reported the story Sunday.
EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley told the Post that there is
nothing explicitly wrong with lobbyists giving EPA officials wording for
federal rules. "If someone gives them words that they think are
appropriate, there's nothing wrong with that," she told the Post.
"That's legal -- and common, apparently."
OK, it's time to Lighten Up, Francis, to paraphrase Sgt. Hulka
in "Stripes." A professor at New York State University of Environmental
Science and Forestry recently gave his students an assignment they won't
soon forget: He had them
carry their own garbage with them everywhere they went
for a week. The idea was to get them to think about consumerism and
overconsumption.
The results were mixed at best. The students' main conclusion: Trash
really, really smells bad.
Pete Fehrenbach
is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this
column are collected in
the Inbox
archive.