The conduct of the National Park Service over the last week might be the biggest scandal of the Obama administration. This is an expansive claim, of course. Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS, the NSA, the HHS mandate—this is an administration that has not lacked for appalling abuses of power. And we still have three years to go.
Even so, consider the actions of the National Park Service since the government shutdown began. People first noticed what the NPS was up to when the World War II Memorial on the National Mall was “closed.” Just to be clear, the memorial is an open plaza. There is nothing to operate. Sometimes there might be a ranger standing around. But he’s not collecting tickets or opening gates. Putting up barricades and posting guards to “close” the World War II Memorial takes more resources and manpower than “keeping it open.”
The closure of the World War II Memorial was just the start of the Park Service’s partisan assault on the citizenry.
Just following orders, it seems.
When even park rangers are OFA operatives, is it hard to believe that the IRS believed targeting Tea Party groups was acceptable?
And going back to the spoils system to correct a nonpartisan civil service that has become the vanguard of the hope and change won't work (although it might be better).
As I keep saying, the problem isn't correctable by tweaking the system. The problem is that the federal government is just too damn big.
If it isn't as important to your financial well being to control the federal government, the efforts to control the federal government will go down and the harm that even a hostile civil service can do will go down.
UPDATE: Mark Steyn comments on the National Park Service whose motto is now apparently "to sever and prevent":
The NPS has spent the past two weeks behaving as the paramilitary wing of the DNC, expending more resources in trying to close down open-air, unfenced areas than it would normally do in keeping them open.
Americans used to just go into the wilderness without federal protection. That was called "settling the West."
Then we preserved some of that land for recreation and the NPS rangers mostly protected our picnic baskets.
These days, the park rangers need more firepower to deal with drug cartels setting up shop in national parks.
But instead of the beefed up rangers protecting visitors who are "recreating" in it, they are stopping the people they once protected from visiting lands that everyone once entered unprotected.
This is called "progress."
