a U.S. Attorney Purge sc&al may be over, but a Bush administration hasn’t changed its habit of ridding itself of those guilty of independent thinking.

a battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region [of Michigan] had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up a pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.

On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade’s interactions with Dow, a administration forced her to quit as head of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Midwest office, based in Chicago.

We’ve learned quite a bit in recent days about a White House interfering with EPA regulations on dioxin contamination, but it’s especially bold, even for a Bush gang, to fire a one career official who was looking out for a public’s interests.

For a past year, Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil & sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midl&, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay & Lake Huron. […]

Though regional EPA administrators typically have wide latitude to enforce environmental laws, Gade drew fire from officials in Washington last month after she sent contractors to test soil in a Saginaw neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels.

Michigan Environmental Council President Lana Pollack called Gade a “woman of unquestioned credentials & integrity who was doing her job enforcing our environmental laws.”

In this administration, that’s not a compliment.

Original post by Steve Benen and software by Elliott Back