It was a nice Saturday (Or "Hello Pot," said Kettle, "You're black!")

Then I logged on to the internet and made a sweep through my blogs which I had not been doing for the lat couple of days because of things going on in my life.

And that is when I found this over at the TortsProf Blog. According to Professor Childs' article, the Bush Administration has decided that its approach to "tort reforms" are not goin fast enough. Rather than wait for the legislatures and voters to approve the measures that they believe are in the best interest for the country, they have decided to go ahead and establish regulations essentially eliminating the rights of people to sue because of defects in their products. The first two that I am aware of are the FDA's rule about labelling and the Consumer Product Safety Commission ("CPSC") rule regarding matress fires.

The mattress rule was approved by three commissioners (Chair Hal Stratton, Vice-Chair Nancy A. Nord, and Thomas Hill Moore). Mr. Stratton and Ms. Nord are both Bush appointees. Mr. Moore was initially appointed by President Clinton but was reappointed by President Bush. A portion of the meeting's transcript is posted by the agency here. In it they tout that the new regulations will save 78% of people who would have been killed by mattress fires under the old rule. Interestingly, they do not include in their sound bites anything about the bit of the regulation where the take away the right to sue.

However, Mr. Moore, although voting in favor of the regulation (which looks like it was something long overdue), made it clear that he was not voting for the preamble. In his written concurrence, he went out of his way to state that the Executive Order which required the CPSC to insert the preamble regarding the preemption issue.

Mr. Moore' s statement aside, I find it interesting what the Bush Administration is doing. It is using a non-elective body to create and change the laws. I seem to recall some Federalist society people railing against that when I was in law school... or perhaps it was a member of the sitting administration talking to the faithful.

At least when the left does it, they are honest about what they are doing. I wonder why the Greedy Trial Lawyer will say about it?

Personally, I think its a symptom of the problem that both parties have in this country. However, today I am calling the Republicans on it. Just another example of their cronyism.