The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is once again changing its tune on when it will announce plans to protect the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. The agency has said it needs 10 more weeks to make the decision, according to the Associated Press. The legal deadline for making the decision was Jan. 9. At that time, FWS, which is an agency within the Department of the Interior, said it would make its decision in early February. The latest announcement of delay indicates the decision may be pushed into early July at the earliest.

An editorial in today's New York Times condemns a policy, known as preemption, which prohibits consumers from suing manufacturers if a product harms a consumer, so long as that product is in some way regulated by the federal government. The editorial calls preemption a "perverse legal doctrine" and warns that as it "continues to spread, the public will be deprived of a vital tool for policing companies and unearthing documents that reveal their machinations."

When EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and the White House get together to talk about environmental regulations, it seems they often decide to blatantly ignore federal law. Recently, EPA has refused to let California regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and set a new standard for ozone that dismisses the advice of the agency's scientific advisors. Both decisions ignore plain language provisions in the Clean Air Act, and both were made under pressure from the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Sunday's Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an article by Stephen Koff highlighting a problem OMB Watch has been focusing on for the past few months: declining budgets and staffing levels at federal regulatory agencies.