Bush moved Monday to replace outgoing Commission on Civil Rights Chairwoman Mary Frances Berry and vice chairman Cruz Reynoso. Berry, who has been on the commission since 1980, has argued that her ousting is premature and that her term does not expire until Jan. 21, 2005. Bush replaced Berry with Gerald Reynolds, a former assistant secretary in the Department of Education's Civil Rights Office. Abigail Thernstorm, a current Republican commission member, will assume the position of vice chairman. Abbey Taylor, a former Virginia attorney general, will fill Reynoso's vacancy.

The list of names being mentioned in conjunction with Tommy Thompson's exit from the HHS Secretary post has grown a bit. Here's the compilation:

• Mark McClellan, director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was immediately at the top of the list, but now some speculate that his first priority will be completing work on Medicare prescription drug coverage.

…the outgoing secretary of health and human services says our food supply isn't safe. That's right. In his resignation remarks, Tommy Thompson told press that he believed that it would be "easy" for terrorists to contaminate our food supply. "For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do." Thompson stated that he "worried every single night" about terrorist threats to the nation's food supply.

The headline may seem alarmist at first, but in light of the Bush administration's record it's actually quite understated: Bush Sets Out Plan to Dismantle 30 Years of Environmental Laws. The Independent has connected the dots -- and the picture that emerges is pretty dystopic: George Bush's new administration, and its supporters controlling Congress, are setting out to dismantle three decades of US environmental protection.