The deep, soul-scraping need in the Bush Administration to bend backwards into a pretzel shape at the wishes of anyone with “raping the land” on their resumé has led them to make some rather hasty and unformed judgments, the most embarrassing of which may be the government response to the so-called “Biscuit fire” in Oregon. The blaze torched 500,000 acres of Oregon and California in 2002, leading to a heartfelt and passionate outpouring of government support to aid needy timber companies in fully profiting from the charred remains.

I’m not sure how you profit from forest fire timber – I picture big machines picking up scorched trees and scraping the black stuff off like pieces of burnt toast – but however you do it, the government did it stupid wrong. Total costs for the project reached $12 million, while projected sales will only amount to $9. All that was left for them to do was find a worthy scapegoat. Wisely, they chose litigious tree-huggers (blaming the spotted owl seemed a bit of a stretch.)

Environmentalists oppose salvage-logging, arguing that cutting down old trees makes forests more vulnerable to future fires and severely impacts wildlife habitats. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office says it wasn’t the lawsuits - the Bushies overreached in their logging zeal and ran up costs.

“Taxpayers are going to have to spend millions more just cleaning up the damage from the logging than the government made from the timber sales,” [New Mexico Sen. Jeff] Bingaman said. “At the same time, promises of community fire protection, habitat restoration and scientific analyses remain unscheduled and unfulfilled.”

Fortunately, the Republicans have a plan to prevent these frivolous concerns from creeping in and interfering with a full-scale dead-tree-sale in the future: they’ve introduced a bill to speed up logging of burned forests before their commercial value diminishes - before Bambi’s grave grows cold, as it were.

In his Tuesday visit to Southern California, Bush said of the bill, “I believe Congress needs to pass further law that will enable us to ‘restore’ forests once they've been burned.” I know what you’re thinking – how could he speak a word with quotes around it? But they were there, floating in space above his head.

GAO Says Bush Administration, Not Lawsuits, to Blame for Oregon Logging Losses (AP)