The Environmental Protection Agency and its beleaguered administrator, Stephen Johnson, have managed to stay out of the news for about two months. So it was weirdly comforting to see the Washington Post’s Lyndsey Layton write this morning about another environmental rule the Bush administration is flouting.

The Pentagon is refusing to clean up three contaminated military sites, which are in Maryland, New Jersey, and Florida. The bases are EPA "superfund" sites, meaning the agency can force the site’s polluter, in this case the Pentagon, to clean them up. But not only is the Pentagon not cleaning up sites, rife with chemicals from unexploded weapons, they’re threatening to withhold money from state officials who persist in demanding they clean up the military bases.

At a Senate hearing yesterday, the Pentagon defended what looks to be like bullying by saying they disapprove of EPA’s approach to the clean-up. Barbara Boxer, (D-Calif.) an ardent Bush administration foe, responded: "I don’t want the EPA making decisions on war strategy and I don’t want the [Pentagon] making decisions on environmental clean up." I don’t know — maybe we should see if Stephen Johnson has been secretly spending his time cooking up an Iraq withdrawal plan. -MB

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