Welcome to the Great Smoggy Mountains!

A report out today from the National Parks Conservation Association says that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park "is beginning to die" from a combination of ground ozone, acid rain, and Bush administration defunding and neglect. The failure to enforce clean air regs all over the East Coast but especially in the Tennessee Valley, where scores of old fossil-fuel-burning power plants still belch their crap unimpeded, is adding up to a natural disaster in the making. On Thursday of this week, the Bush Environmental Protection Agency itself admitted that the Smokies are a "nonattainment" area that hasn't met federal clean-air standards. "Nonattainment" is a federal euphemism for "blindingly awful air, and furthermore we couldn't care less because black bears and the tourists who tease them aren't major campaign donors!"