Bush gets Conservative

President Bush will create the world's largest protected marine area, designating as a national monument a 1,200-mile-long chain of small Hawaiian islands and surrounding waters and reefs that are home to a spectacular array of sea life. Bush will enact a suite of strict rules for the area, including a five-year phasing out of commercial and sport fishing. The chain of largely uninhabited atolls, seamounts, reefs and shoals, which sweeps northwest from the big islands of Hawaii, is called the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and is home to some 7,000 species of marine life, including endangered green sea turtles and Hawaiian monk seals and millions of breeding seabirds. Bush made a public statement saying "Look, I've got this authority, I'm going to use it". Oh President Bush...


The authority President Bush speaks of is given to him through the Antiquities Act of 1906. The act was passed by Congress and signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt on June 8, 1906. It gives the President the authority to restrict the use of particular public land owned by the federal government by executive order, bypassing Congressional oversight. The Act has been used over a hundred times since its passage. Its use frequently creates significant controversy.