Does anybody have a scorecard of how many Bush appointees whose understanding of how to do their job was actually the exact opposite of what everyone else understood their job to be?
Let's add another name to the wall of shame: Julie MacDonald.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday reversed seven rulings that denied endangered species increased protection, after an investigation found the actions were tainted by political pressure from a former senior Interior Department official.[..]
The rulings came under scrutiny last spring after an Interior Department inspector general concluded that agency scientists were being pressured to alter their findings on endangered species by Julie MacDonald, then a deputy assistant secretary overseeing the Fish and Wildlife Service.
MacDonald resigned her position last May.
Rahall in a statement said that MacDonald, who was a civil engineer, "should never have been allowed near the endangered species program." He called MacDonald's involvement in species protection cases over her three-year tenure as an example of "this administration's penchant for torpedoing science."[..]
Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists said the acknowledgment of seven instances of wrongdoing "does not begin to plumb the depths of what's wrong" at the wildlife agency and its implementation of the Endangered Species Act.
