Oh those proposals? Those? Uh, sure, they were old and really a work in progress, or at least since the GOP Congress has been voted out.
An Interior Department spokesman, Hugh Vickery, said the proposed rules the senators questioned were part of an old document not now under consideration. He said the department is looking for recommendations on how to administer the Endangered Species Act more consistently.Q: How do you tell when a GOP political appointee is telling a lie? A: When their lips are moving. I can't wait to hear the Interior Department answer the question about how scraping the protection system benefits endangered wildlife. That's going to be a priceless moment and a response worth saving.
Environmental activists raised alarms about the draft rules change last month, saying the revisions would weaken the act so much that about 80 percent of the 1,300 species now on the endangered list would lose protection.
The activists also said government documents they obtained indicate revisions were being made as recently as February.
