Midnight Rules

I know exactly how George Bush feels. With so little time left (in the semester) you really just want to make your mark before it's too late. So no wonder the President is busy obstructing the green revolution: getting rid of environmental review in relation to fishery management, cutting slack for coal-mining companies who blow up mountians, letting factory farms ignore the Clean Water Act, neutering the Endangered Species Act, and circumventing the part of the Clean Air Act that forces utilities to update pollution controls on every new or renovated plant. Wow! As if hating on the earth weren't bad enough, he's also got some anti-labor rules up his sleeve, making it more difficult for the gov't to limit employees' exposure to toxins and tougher to take sick or medical leave. The New Yorker sums it up best:

"What distinguishes this Administration in its final days—as in its earlier ones—is the purity of its cynicism. White House officials haven’t even bothered to argue that these new rules are in the public interest. Such a claim would, in any event, be impossible to defend, as just about every midnight regulation being proposed is, evidently, a gift to a favored industry."

On second thought, I guess I have the luxury of not being indebted to special interests and not suffering from megalomania. My own midnight rules are more like: try to get 8 hours of sleep, don't blow off final exams to go skiing, shoot for at least one A and don't eat too many Christmas cookies!