Last Friday, I noted that the Obama administration FDA was set to carry out a ban on asthma inhalers over environmental concerns because the propellant in them contains greenhouse gases. I thought that this was notable given that the Obama administration had recently stopped itself from implementing major ozone regulations that were to apply to energy producers on the grounds that they were too expensive (or more cynically, because they would hurt his fundraising from business interests).

Suffice to say, that post got an enormous amount of attention. A number of people have pointed to the fact that the FDA announced the inhaler ban in 2008 to say this isn’t the Obama administration’s problem. Well, more specifically, the FDA publicly announced the ban in question November 2008, probably because the regulators in question were hoping it would get lost in the political shuffle. Still, if you insist on blaming Bush in part for this regulatory overreach, I won’t necessarily disagree. (Though it should be obvious that Bush and the GOP are generally opposed to precisely this kind of regulatory overreach when it comes to the environment, and the same can not be said of Obama and Democrats.)