The EPA should be dismantled yet this afternoon - today's edition

Progressivism gave us the notion that modern American life was too complex for a government confined to Constitutionally specified functions.  Croly, Dewey, Wilson et al called for a panoply of new executive-branch departments and agencies specializing in the various aspects of that life, each to be staffed with experts in determining what was needed to effectively deal with such matters previously outside government's purview as prices for farm products, or retirement - or the air and water.

But these "experts," by virtue of the entity by which they were employed, would tend to be statists, and therefore not exactly neutral agents with regard to policy.  And they'd therefore increasingly encroach upon the legislative branch's policy-making function - by instituting "regulations" that would be de facto laws.

Some would perfect the creepy art of joining with groups advocating a specific policy position to rally public opinion to their zeal to regulate.  The EPA is the poster child for this type of mischief:

When the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a major new rule intended to protect the nation’s drinking water last year, regulators solicited opinions from the public. The purpose of the “public comment” period was to objectively gauge Americans’ sentiment before changing a policy that could profoundly affect their lives.
Gina McCarthy, the agency’s administrator, told a Senate committee in March that the agency had received more than one million comments, and nearly 90 percent favored the agency’s proposal. Ms. McCarthy is expected to cite those comments to justify the final rule, which the agency plans to unveil this week.
But critics say there is a reason for the overwhelming result: The E.P.A. had a hand in manufacturing it.
In a campaign that tests the limits of federal lobbying law, the agency orchestrated a drive to counter political opposition from Republicans and enlist public support in concert with liberal environmental groups and a grass-roots organization aligned with President Obama.

The Obama administration is the first to give the E.P.A. a mandate to create broad public outreach campaigns, using the tactics of elections, in support of federal environmental regulations before they are final.
The E.P.A.’s campaign highlights the tension between exploiting emerging technologies while trying to abide by laws written for another age.
Federal law permits the president and political appointees, like the E.P.A. administrator, to promote government policy, or to support or oppose pending legislation.

But the Justice Department, in a series of legal opinions going back nearly three decades, has told federal agencies that they should not engage in substantial “grass-roots” lobbying, defined as “communications by executive officials directed to members of the public at large, or particular segments of the general public, intended to persuade them in turn to communicate with their elected representatives on some issue of concern to the executive.”

Late last year, the E.P.A. sponsored a drive on Facebook and Twitter to promote its proposed clean water rule in conjunction with the Sierra Club. At the same time, Organizing for Action, a grass-roots group with deep ties to Mr. Obama, was also pushing the rule. They urged the public to flood the agency with positive comments to counter opposition from farming and industry groups. 

It's not going unnoticed:

At minimum, the actions of the agency are highly unusual. “The agency is supposed to be more of an honest broker, not a partisan advocate in this process,” said Jeffrey W. Lubbers, a professor of practice in administrative law at the American University Washington College of Law and the author of the book “A Guide to Federal Agency Rulemaking.”
“I have not seen before from a federal agency this stark of an effort to generate endorsements of a proposal during the open comment period,” he said.
Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma and chairman of the environment committee, is holding a hearing on Tuesday to examine the proposed rule. “There is clear collusion between extreme environmental groups and the Obama administration in both developing and promoting a host of new regulations,” he said.

So when Comandante Gina McCarthy crows about 87.1 percent of the public being cool with these new regs, she's not telling the whole story.

Post-America is one creepy place.