Alleging that the President Bush is trying to gut the Endangered Species Act before he leaves office, California Attorney General Jerry Brown has sued the Bush administration over the new regulations - proposed by the US Department of the Interior and US Department of Commerce - approved on December 16.

The lawsuit - filed in the federal court in San Francisco - alleges that, before finalizing the rules, the Department of Interior failed to give due consideration to public comments critical of the revisions, which reduce the independent reviews performed by government scientists for three-and-half decades.

By the way of the lawsuit - which also names the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service as defendants - Brown is asking the court to block the new rules, thereby giving some review time to the incoming Obama administration.

According to Brown, the new regulations permit federal agencies to practice or sanction mining and logging on federal land, without necessitating any review or comment from scientists on the effects the activities may have on endangered and threatened species and their habitats. In addition, the regulations drop the condition that the proposed federal projects need to measure greenhouse gas emissions.

Commenting on the new regulations, Brown said in a phone interview, "Unfortunately, the Bush administration has had an antipathy to using sound science. This is the latest assault as Bush goes out the door. It's intolerable."