With only two months to go, President Bush is planting booby traps for the incoming chief executive, Barack Obama, as proof he's still capable of breaking his word: He promised Obama cooperation during the transition, not land mines.
A fusillade of unnecessary executive orders and agency decisions to reward political cronies will be scattered on Obama's road to the White House, decisions the new president is bound to spend valuable time repealing.
Two noxious decisions have stirred widespread protests and controversy.
The president proposes a rule allowing doctors, hospitals, other health-care providers and pharmacists to refuse to perform or assist in abortions and sterilization on moral or religious grounds and not be penalized if they receive federal funds. Patients requiring urgent medical attention or birth control medications could be deprived of services.
Bush's other order stirring a furor is the Bureau of Land Management's Dec. 19 auction of 50,000 acres of public land for oil and gas drilling near Utah's Arches National Park and two other protected red-rock areas, Dinosaur National Monument and Canyonlands National Park.
BLM's Utah state director, Selma Sierra, defiantly dismisses protests from the National Park Service and environmental groups with typical Bush administration callousness toward the environment: She sees nothing wrong with drilling near national parks. How about drill rigs near the White House?
Bush should stop this last-minute trifling with government. He should acknowledge the decision of the electorate to set the country on a new path—not the soon to be ex-president's path.
