I've been posting a lot lately about the Bush Administrations Midnight Rules, specifically those focused on allowing additional oil and gas drilling on public lands. Recently, some of Clinton's own Midnight Rules are back in the news. In January of 2001, on their way out of the White House, the Clinton Administration enacted the Road-less Areas Conservation Rule (RACR) which was adopted by the US Forest Service. This rule essentially protected ~58 million acres of forest from roads, oil and gas drilling, mining, etc. Essentially placing these areas off limits for human development. However, shortly into his first term, Bush started trying to undo the RACR and continued this throughout his second term. This has played out through both government and the courts, with a new development happening just recently.

The Bush Administraiton not only failed to uphold the RACR, but they themselves tried to completely invalidate it. This effort led to court action, and in July of 2006 a federal judge overturned a Bush order (made in 2005) that invalidated the Clinton ban. However, in August of 2006, another federal judge provided an order that invalidated the Clinton RACR. This led the Bush Administration to request that the two judges get together and find some reconciliation to their conflicting orders.

The result was that the first judge revised their findings so that they overturned Bush's invalidation of the rule in only 10 of the 39 states that had land protected under the rule. So, 10 western states get to keep their road-less areas, while the other 29 states have lost the protection afforded by the RACR.

Of course, all of this could be pointless. Lets not forget that the moving trucks will be rolling up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue again shortly, and then Obama gets his turn.