One day not too long ago, the Bush Administration decided that the sky was no longer blue. So an edict went out to all the relevant agencies, who were ordered to make their heavenly observations conform to the administration’s wishes. Sure, some people grumbled that it went against all known science, but those dead-enders were quickly broomed under the rug. That’s what you get for not playing on the winning team, losers.

Of course, this didn’t actually happen. But something very similar occurred when the EPA decided to set limits on mercury pollution.

The Environmental Protection Agency ignored scientific evidence and agency protocols to set limits on mercury pollution that would line up with the Bush administration’s free-market approaches to power plant pollution, a report released Thursday by the agency’s inspector general showed.

EPA staff members were instructed by administrators to set modest limits on mercury pollution and then had to work backward from the goal to justify the proposal, Inspector General Nikki Tinsley’s report said.

“I don’t think anyone has ever seen as much political influence in the development of a rule as we saw in this rule,” said one EPA staff member, who attended meetings between administrators and staff. “Everything about this rule was decided at a political level.”

The staff members, both of whom asked for anonymity, said that instead of considering a range of possibilities, staff members were told they had only one.

“Clean Skies”, indeed. But this is hardly unexpected, especially when it was revealed that entire sections of the Bush mercury rules were lifted verbatim from electric utility industry memos. Nice to see that the public safety is being determined by companies who, I’m sure, have our best interests at heart. Imagine the bureaucracy that could be eliminated if we just followed this model for other legislation! (Oh, wait….)

Much is made of the so-called “man date” that Bush has received in his second term, a victory that many people credit to religious voters and issues of “values”. While religion and environmentalism aren’t usually mentioned in the same breath (God gave us dominion over the animals and planet, after all), it’s nice to see that some churches are getting fed up with the administration’s laissez faire attitude toward environmental policy.

Frustration with the Bush administration’s environmental polices is bubbling up from mainstream churches and synagogues, as reflected in a statement signed recently by more than 1,000 clergy and congregational leaders in about 35 states.

Called “God’s Mandate: Care for Creation,” the statement says that “there was no mandate, no majority, or no ‘values’ message in this past election for the President or the Congress to rollback and oppose programs that care for God’s creation.”

In a conference call last month, some Catholic, Protestant and Jewish leaders came up with the idea of a strong statement on the environment to warn the White House and Republicans in Congress that there are limits to the support they can expect from the religious community, according to Paul Gorman, executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, an alliance of Catholic, Protestant, evangelical and Jewish organizations.

In this instance, the religious-types are sure to get the short end of the stick — God just doesn’t give out big campaign contributions, you know.