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Bush, pushed Awww, Ma! Do I Have To?By Rick Horowitz You know this kid. (You might even be this kid.) A perpetual-motion machine, this kid, and always ready for more. It's school stuff, and after-school stuff, and even before-school stuff. If it isn't band practice, it's the soccer team. If it isn't band practice or the soccer team, it's the drama club, or the community-service club, or the yearbook. Then there are the part-time jobs, stocking shelves at the grocery store, assisting the middle-schoolers with their math homework.
This kid feels absolutely able to do absolutely anything. There's simply no end to this kid's energy. Until someone utters the magic words. Words like "Can you help with the dishes?" Or "Will you clean up your room?" And suddenly, this kid goes limp. It's as if somebody pulled the switch and all the energy spilled right out of the shoes and down the drain. "I'm so tired!" the kid moans, collapsing dramatically toward the couch. And you feel a swift stab of sympathy, because after all, how much more can one child -- even one massively energetic teenaged child -- be expected to do? But then the phone rings, and it's one of the kid's friends calling and something totally cool is starting right this minute somewhere else, and just as suddenly, the kid's energy is fully restored and there's a high-octane dash to get just the right clothes on, the hair just so, and a full-tilt sprint out the front door. "See ya!" And you find yourself wondering how the energy that was so clearly missing one moment was so thoroughly -- so magically -- back the next. Until it occurs to you that this kind of energy, this kind of power, has nothing to do with what the kid can do, and everything to do with what the kid wants to do. So let's talk about global warming, shall we? Global warming, and that stunning Supreme Court decision -- and an administration that simply didn't want to regulate certain greenhouse gases. It was touching, really, hearing the Bush administration's lawyers set out all the reasons why its so-called Environmental Protection Agency couldn't possibly crack down on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping tailpipe emissions as a way of...protecting the environment. "We don't have the authority!" the lawyers cried, arguing for the narrowest possible reading of the Clean Air Act. "At least we don't think we do, and -- well, golly, the last thing we'd ever want to do is overstep our authority!" It never stopped them before. Suddenly finicky, don't you think? This is, after all, the very same administration that has chafed at any limits to its power to act in most other areas. An administration that typically prefers the broadest possible reading of its authority -- to start wars, to keep secrets, to imprison suspects, whatever. This is an administration that has latched on to every legal theory, no matter how far-fetched, designed to increase the power of the parts of government it controls. But here were the Bush administration's lawyers arguing just the opposite. They were powerless, they said. "We're so tired!" they moaned. (Where was the couch?) The Supreme Court must have had a good chuckle. And then five justices told the president: "Clean up your room." Posted 4/3/07.
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Rick Horowitz
