Ms. Karen S...

Dear Ms...:

Thank you so much for contacting me to share your thoughts and concerns. Currently, I receive approximately 30,000 letters and e-mails a week. This is input that I value greatly. If you wish to provide additional thoughts and concerns I would encourage you to e-mail me at http://feinstein.senate.gov/email.html.

Sincerely yours,

Dianne Feinstein

United States Senator

http://feinstein.senate.gov

Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the Nation are available at my website http://feinstein.senate.gov . You can also receive electronic e-mail updates by subscribing to my e-mail list at http://feinstein.senate.gov/issue.html

In other words...I don't have time to actually respond to your bullshit e-mails, missy!

Actually, I have no idea which of my e-mails to her she's not really responding to in this response. I think I have sent six to her and Barbara Boxer both in the last two weeks, mostly about the plethora of anti-choice Judiciary nominations Bush is trying to sneak in while we're all busy focusing on other issues.

~~~

Oh and lookie here and draw your own conclusions. I'm sure you can imagine what mine are.

From today's NY Times:

Report by the E.P.A. Leaves Out Data on Climate Change
By ANDREW C. REVKIN with KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to publish a draft report next week on the state of the environment, but after editing by the White House, a long section describing risks from rising global temperatures has been whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs.

The report, commissioned in 2001 by the agency's administrator, Christie Whitman, was intended to provide the first comprehensive review of what is known about various environmental problems, where gaps in understanding exist and how to fill them.

Agency officials said it was tentatively scheduled to be released early next week, before Mrs. Whitman steps down on June 27, ending a troubled time in office that often put her at odds with President Bush.

Drafts of the climate section, with changes sought by the White House, were given to The New York Times yesterday by a former E.P.A. official, along with earlier drafts and an internal memorandum in which some officials protested the changes. Two agency officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the documents were authentic.

The editing eliminated references to many studies concluding that warming is at least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and tail-pipe emissions and could threaten health and ecosystems.

Among the deletions were conclusions about the likely human contribution to warming from a 2001 report on climate by the National Research Council that the White House had commissioned and that President Bush had endorsed in speeches that year. White House officials also deleted a reference to a 1999 study showing that global temperatures had risen sharply in the previous decade compared with the last 1,000 years. In its place, administration officials added a reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion.

In the end, E.P.A. staff members, after discussions with administration officials, said they decided to delete the entire discussion to avoid criticism that they were selectively filtering science to suit policy.

Administration officials defended the report and said there was nothing untoward about the process that produced it. Mrs. Whitman said that she was "perfectly comfortable" with the edited version and that the differences over climate change should not hold up the broader assessment of the nation's air, land and water.

"The first draft, as with many first drafts, contained everything," she said in a brief telephone interview from the CBS studios in Manhattan, where she was waiting to tape "The Late Show With David Letterman."

"As it went through the review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change," Ms. Whitman said. "So rather than go out with something half-baked or not put out the whole report, we felt it was important for us to get this out because there is a lot of really good information that people can use to measure our successes."

James L. Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House advisory group, said, "It would be utterly inaccurate to suggest that this administration has not provided quite an extensive discussion about the state of the climate. Ultimately, E.P.A. made the decision not to include the section on climate change because we had these ample discussions of the subject already."

But private environmental groups sharply criticized the changes when they heard of them.

"Political staff are becoming increasingly bold in forcing agency officials to endorse junk science," said Jeremy Symons, a climate policy expert at the National Wildlife Federation. "This is like the White House directing the secretary of labor to alter unemployment data to paint a rosy economic picture."

Drafts of the report have been circulating for months, but a heavy round of rewriting and cutting by White House officials in late April raised protest among E.P.A. officials working on the report.

An April 29 memorandum circulated among staff members said that after the changes by White House officials, the section on climate "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change."

Another memorandum circulated at the same time said that the easiest course would be to accept the White House revisions but that to do so would taint the agency, because "E.P.A. will take responsibility and severe criticism from the science and environmental communities for poorly representing the science."

The changes were mainly made by the Council on Environmental Quality, although the Office of Management and Budget was also involved, several E.P.A. officials said. It is the second time in a year that the White House has sought to play down global warming in official documents.

Last September, an annual E.P.A. report on air pollution that for six years had contained a section on climate was released without one, and the decision to delete it was made by Bush administration appointees at the agency with White House approval.

Like the September report, the forthcoming report says the issues will be dealt with later by a climate research plan being prepared by the Bush administration.

Other sections of the coming E.P.A. report � on water quality, ecological conditions, ozone depletion in the atmosphere and other issues � all start with a summary statement about the potential impact of changes on human health and the environment, which are the two responsibilities of the agency.

But in the "Global Issues" section of the draft returned by the White House to E.P.A. in April, an introductory sentence reading, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment" was cut and replaced with a paragraph that starts: "The complexity of the Earth system and the interconnections among its components make it a scientific challenge to document change, diagnose its causes, and develop useful projections of how natural variability and human actions may affect the global environment in the future."

Some E.P.A. staff members defended the document, saying that although pared down it would still help policy makers and the agency address the climate issue.

"This is a positive step by the agency," said an author of the report, who did not want to be named, adding that it would help someone determine "if a facility or pollutant is going to hurt my family or make it bad for the birds, bees and fish out there."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

~~~

And lastly, here we go again...

Bush Warns Iran on Building Nuclear Arms
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, June 18 � President Bush said for the first time today that the United States and its allies "will not tolerate the construction of a nuclear weapon" in Iran, and an American official at a meeting of the world's nuclear watchdog agency accused the country of repeatedly evading inspections and violating its commitments.

Mr. Bush's assertion that Iran's program would be stopped came as the White House said it hoped to begin working with allies soon on intercepting ships and aircraft suspected of carrying material that could aid states like Iran and North Korea in their nuclear programs.

For years American officials have been studying programs in Iran and North Korea that are believed to be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium from the spent fuel produced by nuclear reactors. The Central Intelligence Agency believes North Korea already produced, a decade ago, enough plutonium to produce two weapons. Then, in October, the North admitted to a second program to produce highly enriched uranium in a laboratory process, and inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency found a very similar program in Iran, after receiving tips from American and other intelligence agencies.

Programs in both countries appear to have accelerated in recent months, American intelligence officials say. (ikss note: Gee, I wonder why...)

Mr. Bush's statement today came in response to questions from reporters during a meeting with senators about Medicare. Asked how he would stop Iran from acquiring a weapon, he said: "The international community must come together to make it very clear to Iran that we will not tolerate construction of a nuclear weapon. Iran would be dangerous if they have a nuclear weapon." (ikss note: And you know, America is obviously not dangerous at all.)

But Mr. Bush did not describe a strategy to halt the program, and while he is picking up support for gradual isolation of North Korea, many nations in Europe and elsewhere have extensive trade relations with Iran and rely on its oil. Moreover, administration officials believe that Iran is likely to pursue efforts to build nuclear weapons regardless of what government rules the country.

"They now see a nuclear power � the United States � right next door in Iraq," said one American diplomat with long experience with Iran. "That has to be affecting their calculations."

A senior White House official said tonight that Mr. Bush's explicit warning to Iran was a "carefully-worded escalation" that, for the first time, drew a line that the White House said Iran would not be permitted to cross. "It's not like this spilled out," a senior official said, noting that Mr. Bush had met extensively with his aides about the Iranian program in recent weeks.

Yet as recently as two weeks ago, when he was visiting Russia, which is providing crucial technology to Iran for a nuclear reactor, Mr. Bush said only that he was "concerned" about Iran's program and that it was important to keep weapons out of the hands of "radical clerics"...

Mr. Bush has made clear in a series of statements that began during the summit meeting of industrialized nations in �vian, France, two weeks ago that finding new ways to counter the Iranian and North Korean programs would be at the top of his agenda in the aftermath of the war in Iraq. The White House said today that it was moving forward with the first phase of its "counterproliferation" effort...

Mr. Bush also voiced support for protesters on the streets of Tehran today, even though some of his aides have worried that any vocal American backing would play into the hands of hard-line clerics who say the street protests have been engineered by Washington.

"I appreciate those courageous souls who speak out for freedom in Iran," Mr. Bush said. "They need to know America stands squarely by their side. And I would urge the Iranian administration to treat them with the utmost of respect."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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