If only salmon were Big Oil

Then they'd have the full support of the Bush administration instead of being kicked around like this.

Salmon advocates filed a lawsuit Monday to force the Bush administration to obey a 5-year-old court order requiring it to make permanent rules to keep agricultural pesticides from killing salmon.

Filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, the lawsuit asks a judge to order NOAA Fisheries, the agency in charge of protecting salmon, to formally consult with the Environmental Protection Agency over the use of 37 pesticides. Several are commonly found in rivers around the country and can kill salmon at minute concentrations.

U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour had ordered the formal consultations in 2002 and imposed temporary restrictions that barred crop-dusting next to salmon streams and required home and garden stores to post warnings for consumers.

"Apparently what it takes to get this administration to do its job under (the Endangered Species Act) is to have someone there enforcing the law every step of the way," said Joshua Osborne-Klein, an attorney for Earthjustice, the environmental public interest law firm representing salmon advocates.

This administration has no respect for the law whether it's about personal privacy or following court orders to protect endangered species.