Wait for it...wait for it...

Ta-da!

In the wake of Katrina, Interior Secretary Gale Norton announces administration push to open the Arctic Refuge, outer continental shelf, and other areas to energy development (which is the polite way of saying drilling and mining). (NYT)

[Asst. Interior Secretary] Craig Manson... defended the review of national park management policies. Permissible "impacts" on park lands, Mr. Manson said, are confused with impermissible "impairments."

"Footprints are going to be made if people are in the parks," he said. "But that's not necessarily an impairment."

Giant, oil-derrick-shaped footprints. Yeah, you'll hardly even notice them.

And if you're going to trust anybody's word on this, trust the guy who once said, “If we are saying that the loss of species in and of itself is inherently bad, I don’t think we know enough about how the world works to say that." (Craig Manson, LA Times, 11/14/03)