BUSH ADMINISTRATION LOSES ANOTHER OFFICIAL
If you listen to the Democrats, you would get the idea that half the current administration is incompetent. However, several recent bureaucrats have resigned for reasons other than incompetence. A little over a week ago “Randy” Tobias resigned as State Department undersecretary. Randy, former head of the president’s global AIDS program who counseled abstinence rather than condoms, resigned for personal reasons after it was learned that he had paid “gals” to come to his condo to give him a massage.

Now it is Julie MacDonald, former Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Department of the Interior. True, she did have some problems with the scientists who worked for the department. These scientists were always trying to put species on the endangered list. When a species is on the endangered list, its habitat is protected. The scientists just cared about themselves and the species in question. They had no regard for business interests. If the habitat was in an area where oilmen wanted to drill or public land where cattlemen wanted their herd to graze, the scientists just ignored those considerations.

While she was at Interior, Ms. MacDonald struck a blow for free enterprise. She kept rewriting those scientific reports so that species were not declared endangered and habitats were not protected from business interests. She even went so far as to share internal documents with lawyers who represented organizations that had sued the Interior Department over decisions on endangered species. Instead of getting a medal like George Tenet, she was forced out.

We are sorry to see a free-spirited bureaucrat like Ms. MacDonald go, but not everyone shares that feeling. Kieran Suckling, one of the scientists who had clashed with the deputy assistant secretary said, “Julie MacDonald’s reign of terror over the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service is finally over.”