The latest installation in the Washington Post's four-part series on Vice President Cheney's relentless campaign to circumvent government accountability to advance a radical, special interest agenda highlights the devastating impact the Bush Administration has had on environmental protections throughout the West. Today's report details Cheney's efforts to politicize key government agencies, stock the bureaucracy with partisan cronies, constantly search for ways around the law, and his attempts to manipulate scientific research to advance the agenda of the Bush Administration's special interest friends.

Vice President Cheney "took on a decisive role to undercut long-standing environmental regulations for the benefit of business." [Washington Post, 6/27/07] From forcing changes in the Park service to allow snowboarding in national parks, to suspending "tough new standards governing arsenic in drinking water," to easing air pollution controls, to pushing to make Nevada's Yucca Mountain a repository for nuclear waste, to rewriting land-protection laws to ease restrictions on logging, mining and most development, to contributing to the "largest fish kill the West had ever seen," Cheney oversaw an agenda that consistently put the interests of the Bush Administration's special interest backers ahead of the American people.

Today's story comes days after reports revealing that Vice President Cheney tried to argue that his office is not part of the executive branch in order to avoid standard rules on archiving materials.

"The fact that Vice President Cheney thinks he can unilaterally exempt himself from the executive branch in order to avoid accountability and has sought every imaginable way to go above, around and through laws intended to protect our most treasured resources is the latest example of a pervasive culture of corruption Republicans brought to Washington," said Colorado Democratic Party Chair Pat Waak. "Colorado voters deserve leaders who serve the public, not Republicans like Dick Cheney who skirt the law to advance their special interest agenda. The people of Colorado have a right to know if Senator Wayne Allard and Representatives Lamborn, Musgrave and Tancredo support the Bush Administration's lawlessness and abuse of power. The American people rejected this type of Republican Culture of Corruption in November and they're going to reject it again in 2008."

The Washington Post series on Cheney can be read at

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/index.html