The Department of the Interior Arrests a Protesting Greenpeace Polar Bear

Why do the Feds suck so much? They make us take our shoes off when we fly, tap into our phone conversations illegally, and arrest our protesting polar bears.

Wait, wha?

Yup, the Department of Interior (also known as the Department of Buzzkill) had a peaceful protester dressed as a polar bear arrested in front of their Washington, DC headquarters.

Here’s what Greenpeace has to report about the whole affair:

A Greenpeace activist was arrested today for peacefully protesting the Bush Administration’s delay in issuing a final Endangered Species Act listing for the polar bear due to global warming. The activist, dressed in a polar bear suit, initiated a vigil by sitting in a paddleboat in a park pond in front of the Department of Interior.
While the Department of Interior is dragging their feet on protecting polar bears, they are moving full steam ahead on plans to drill for oil in prime polar bear habitat. New oil leases are opening up in the Chukchi Sea and oil companies are lining up quickly to obtain licenses to drill. A fifth of the remaining Arctic polar bears depend on Chukchi Sea ice in their hunt for food.

In December of 2005, Greenpeace and two other conservation groups sued the Bush administration when it missed its first legal deadline to respond to the petition for an endangered species listing. On December 27, 2006, the Service announced its proposal to list the species as “threatened” and had one year to make a final listing decision. The legal deadline for doing so was January 9, 2008.

Here’s the video of the takedown.

Swing over to the Greenpeace blog and read the whole story.

Link [Greenpeace] via Boing Boing