President Bush is expected to nominate Susan Dudley as the next head of an obscure but “super-powerful office that oversees many business regulations.” The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs holds sway over federal regulatory agencies like the EPA and helps set regulatory policy for a wide range of issues, from workplace safety to water quality.

The most recent head, John Graham, has “demonstrated consistent hostility to protections for public health, safety and the environment over his career.” And according to Frank O’Donnell of Clean Air Watch, Dudley “makes John Graham look like Ralph Nader.”

As the director of regulatory studies at the industry-backed Mercatus Center she has worked to oppose vital public health regulation as a “hidden tax” that hinders profits. Some of her targets:

– Opposed EPA plans to set tougher public health standards for smog.

– Opposed lower-polluting cars and SUVs and cleaner gasoline.

– Opposed air bags in cars, preferring to leave public safety decisions “to the market place.”

– Opposed stronger regulations for arsenic in drinking water, claming that there “is a wide range of uncertainty in the science surrounding the health effects of arsenic in U.S. drinking water supplies.”

– Opposed measures to curb global warming, stating that the “evidence regarding global warming and human contribution to it is mixed, and…if a slight warming does occur, historical evidence suggests it is likely to be beneficial, occurring at night, in the winter, and at the poles. Taking ‘precautionary action’ to protect human health based on a series of tenuous linkages would likely create a new set of risks.”

Not surprisingly, Exxon Mobil has donated $80,000 to Dudley’s think tank.

UPDATE: The global warming document that opposed measures to curb global warming was written by a Mercatus colleague of Susan Dudley, not by Dudley herself. We regret the error.

In the White House press briefing this afternoon, Tony Snow was asked whether the White House believes the military is so overstretched that it would trouble responding to a potential North Korea threat:

QUESTION: Do current military obligations in any way limit or restrict potential U.S. responses to North Korea?

SNOW: Not that I’m aware of. But that’s probably better posed to the Pentagon, which would have — it’s not a question that I can give you an informed answer to.

Snow may want to check in with the Pentagon himself because the Joint Chiefs of Staff has already stated on the record that the military would have trouble responding to a military conflict in either North Korea or Iran. From USA Today, 2/16/05:

Stretched thin in Iraq, the U.S. military would have trouble responding as quickly and effectively as commanders would like if it had to go to war in Iran or North Korea, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Congress Wednesday.

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, said a sudden military crisis in one of those two nations “” both of which are resisting U.S. demands that they give up nuclear programs “” would likely force the Pentagon to remobilize reserve and Guard components that have rotated home from Iraq to rest.

In addition, because of the current strain on U.S. forces, it would take longer for U.S. troops to respond to a crisis in Iran, North Korea or some other major conflict than U.S. battle plans call for, Myers told the House Armed Services Committee.

“The timeliness of our response might not be totally consistent with what the combatant commander wants and so forth,” Myers said.

(ed. note: The original title of the post caused confusion. We have updated it.)

Larry King is interviewing President Bush and the First Lady tonight. He told CNN.com he may ask his first question about Ken Lay because “Lay was a friend of his.” King added, “I’ll definitely ask about Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman… I’d like to know if Bush would support him as an independent.”

A common right-wing argument about why global warming isn’t a problem is that it may have positive benefits for the earth:

“When it’s not even clear that the warming we’ve seen is hurting us — many argue that it’s a boon, citing its benefits to agriculture and its potential to make severe climates more hospitable.” [Jason Lee Steorts, National Review, 6/6/06]

A new study to be published today in the journal Science, however, concludes that recent increases in Western wildfires may be a result of global warming. While “part of the increase may be attributed to natural fluctuations, evidence also links it to the effects of human-induced climate warming,” according to Dan Cayan, a co-author of the paper and director of the climate research division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The AP reports on the study:

An analysis of data going back to 1970 indicates the fires increased “suddenly and dramatically” in the 1980s and the wildfire season grew longer, according to scientists in Arizona and California. … Beginning about 1987, there was a change from infrequent fires averaging about one week in duration to more frequent ones that often burned five weeks or more, they reported. The length of the wildfire season was extended by 78 days.

“So far in 2006, more than 3.8 million acres have burned in the United States “” double the 10-year average for this time of year,” according to the Interagency Fire Center. In 2000, fires burned 7.4 million acres across the West and more than 20 people died.

Yesterday on Fox’s The Big Story, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio described how he jails hundreds of immigrants and subjects them to degrading treatment. Arpaio says he dresses jailed immigrants in pink underwear, pink handcuffs and a stripped jumpsuit. He also forces them to listen to “patriotic songs” multiple times a day. Watch it:

Arpaio’s prison has also been the site of multiple controversial inmate deaths.

Transcript: Read more

In an interview with the National Review, Sen. Lindsey Graham strongly objected to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the Geneva Conventions applied to enemy combatants. Graham suggested that Congress should reverse the Supreme Court’s interpretation:

We’ve got to put a fence around this decision by the Court to grant Common Article Three of the Geneva Convention rights to terrorists. In 2002, Bush said that enemy combatant terrorists will be treated humanely within the spirit of the Convention but not given Convention status. I think he was right. You don’t want to erode the Convention.

What Graham is sugesting is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has the final say on how treaties should be interpreted. The Court explained in another case, Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, issued the same day has Hamdan:

Under our Constitution, “[t]he judicial Power of theUnited States” is “vested in one supreme Court, and insuch inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Art. III, §1. That “judicialPower . . . extend[s] to . . . Treaties.” Id., §2. And, as Chief Justice Marshall famously explained, that judicial power includes the duty “to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). If treaties are to be given effect as federal law under our legal system, determining their meaning as a matter of federal law “is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department,” headed by the “one supreme Court” established by the Constitution.

It’s difficult for Graham and other loyal supporters of the Bush administration to accept that their legal approach to combating terrorism is dysfunctional. The Hamdan decision spelled this out. And it’s not a problem they can rubber stamp their way out of.