Lame Duck Moves

President Bush is now officially a lame duck President. Normally, that means the President just lays low, avoids screw-ups, and starts writing a memoir. In Bush's case, it looks like he's still trying to do his job.

Bush has pushed policies in two key areas that you need to know about, the first of which is oil shale development:

The Bush administration Monday opened up two million acres of public land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming to oil-shale exploration, challenging congressional Democrats who have opposed the move.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) has indicated that she would prefer to limit shale drilling on environmental grounds, but found it politically difficult to extend a ban on oil-shale operations after oil prices surged to record highs earlier this year.

It is unclear what will happen after President-elect Barack Obama takes office in January. If he and other Democrats want to keep federal oil-shale lands off-limits, they would have time to change course, because requests for new commercial leases undergo a lengthy review by the Interior Department.

The shale region in the western U.S. holds the equivalent of about 800 billion barrels of oil, according to Bureau of Land Management estimates. That is enough to meet current levels of U.S. demand for 110 years.

The process of converting oil shale into oil is apparently quite expensive, so it would not likely be viable unless prices went back up, but I don't know of anyone who expects prices to stay at their current lows indefinitely. So, this appears to be a preemptive measure, looking ahead to the future. It's no secret that we'll need more energy production if we are to remain a prosperous, free, and secure nation, and this is one component that would help. If this one act could set us free from foreign oil for a century all by itself, isn't it worth considering?

The second issue on which Bush recently acted is on the Freedom of Choice Act:

The Bush administration has decided to push last-minute rule changes in the lame-duck period that would strengthen protections for health providers with religious objections to abortion and contraception. Objections have come from within the administration itself and from states and providers over the new rules, which they claim greatly overreach already-existing protections and obliterate compromises reached on these issues. It appears that President Bush has decided to pre-empt the Freedom of Choice Act as his last major domestic effort:

A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job discrimination laws.

The proposed rule would prohibit recipients of federal money from discriminating against doctors, nurses and other health care workers who refuse to perform or to assist in the performance of abortions or sterilization procedures because of their “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and drugstores from requiring employees with religious or moral objections to “assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity” financed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

One commonly debated component of the FOCA is that people with certain religious beliefs may not want to dispense birth control pills or the morning after pill. Current law allows them to refuse such actions. Hot Air offers this analysis:

[T]his isn’t really about dispensing the Pill. It’s about forcing hospitals and clinics who offer OB/GYN services and accept Medicare and other federal funding to provide abortions. The Freedom of Choice Act completely federalizes the issue of abortion, making Congress the sole arbiter of restrictions — which FOCA explicitly repeals entirely. It also repeats the canard that abortion isn’t available in 87% of the country (despite which 22% of all pregnancies in the US end in abortion) and that FOCA intends to rectify that. How? The only option available would be a requirement that all OB/GYN clinics and hospitals provide abortions on request.

The Catholic Church runs almost a thousand health care facilities and treated over 90 million patients in 2007. They have already said that passage of FOCA would likely force them to close down most or all of these facilities in order to avoid being forced to provide abortions. The Bush rules attempt to prevent that from happening. The incoming Obama administration will be forced to repeal them before imposing FOCA, a not insurmountable obstacle but one which will make their intention to force OB/GYN providers to become abortionists plain.

As social issues like abortion and gay marriage have once again become a very front-burner issue, this is probably going to be a big deal in the coming months. We know that Obama is the most radically pro-abortion President this country has ever had (here, here, here), and he has committed to Planned Parenthood that signing the FOCA will be his 'first act as President', so there is good cause for social conservatives and religious people of all stripes to be concerned. As I understand it, this act would not only legalize abortion-on-demand at taxpayer's expense, it would also remove protections for people refusing to participate in such actions based on their religious beliefs. This would be a very dangerous bill if it became law, taking us one more step toward a nation in which there would be a thought police that could prosecute people for thinking or believing the 'wrong' things.

So, Bush has taken action on a couple of very important issues. While it is certain that Obama and his far-Left Dem Congress can undo just about everything Bush has done (including these moves), the more thoroughly entrenched Bush can make them, the harder it will be and the longer it will take to root them out. Even buying some time could be important, as it will allow the Right to inform the American public and generate the all-important public support when these issues come up for votes.

Thank you, President Bush.

There's my two cents.