Bureaucracy for Bureaucracy's Sake

Unbelievable.

Last year, the Bush Administration decided to dispense with about half the paperwork involved in [forest plan] revisions by not requiring [the Forest Service] to write separate environmental impact statements for each plan.

Though the plans do nothing, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups took this decision to court. Last week, a federal judge in California ruled that, even though the plans themselves were not an “action,” the rules for how the plans were written are an action. So the judge tossed the rules on the ground that the Forest Service had not written an environmental impact statement for them.

Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasseses, and just as deadly.