If the Dems thought they were going to have an easy time driving a stake into the fat, black heart of Bush’s vampiric policies, they were wrong. Administration appointees, like club-footed lackeys, are busy ripping apart what’s left of the Environmental Protection Agency and its extensive libraries.

According to findings by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a letter from four incoming House Dems demanding that “the destruction or disposition of all library holdings (be) immediately ceased,” was responded to the next day with a complete purge of thousands of documents from the EPA’s Web site for the Office of Prevention, Pollution and Toxic Substances Library. There were also reports that OPPTS staffers were destroying hard copies of the records.

“EPA’s leadership appears to have gone completely feral,” said PEER’s executive director, Jeff Ruch. At the libraries that have already closed, the EPA has been selling off furnishings at huge losses in an effort to make reopening wholly unfeasible. One buyer purchased the entire contents of the EPA’s largest regional library for a scant $350 (U.S.). The buyer estimates she’ll resell it all for about $80K.

» Scott Saxon