To gerrymander

Gerrymandering specifically refers to altering the lines demarcating voting districts in order to gain a political advantage in an upcoming election. Most recently, this occurred in Texas under Tom Delay's directive. More generally, gerrymandering can refer to altering any set of rules for the purpose of eliciting a specified outcome.

In an egregious bit of gerrymandering, the EPA, directed by Bush himself, weakened the rules governing ozone targets. In doing so, the EPA overruled its own scientific advisers. This is not particularly unusual for this administration, for its contempt for science is well documented. What caught my eye were these couple of paragraphs from a Washington Post article:

The president's order prompted a scramble by administration officials to rewrite the regulations to avoid a conflict with past EPA statements on the harm caused by ozone.

Solicitor General Paul D. Clement warned administration officials late Tuesday night that the rules contradicted the EPA's past submissions to the Supreme Court, according to sources familiar with the conversation. As a consequence, administration lawyers hustled to craft new legal justifications for the weakened standard.

With this we’re in a different realm altogether. It is one thing to override the opinions of scientists who are, after all, mere advisers and not deciders. It is quite another to have the executive asserting a directive requiring a whole new set of legal justifications, which justifications contradict previous justifications. In other words, in this case the rules and the basis of the rules have been gerrymandered. Typically the adoption of a rule is motivated by its justification. In this case, and who knows how many others, things are the other way around: give me a rule, any rule, and I’ll gerrymander some justification for it.

With this, it is hard to conceive how there is even the semblance of the rule of law.