We've seen that when administrations take a soft approach, or no approach, to safety and health regulations, deaths skyrocket.
"This is an administration that when we say we are going to do something, we mean it," Mr. Bush said.
General Powell and Mr. Armitage became such buddies during their years in Republican administrations that when they left public life in the early 1990's, they called each other four or five times a day, even though they had no particular business to transact.
His written comments to the department quote the assertion in a public administration treatise that when regulators are left to carry out vague directives, the result is "at best a hell of administrative boredom" and at worst "a tightly woven fabric of legitimized privilege".
But today Mr. Fleischer said Mr. Shelby had complained of the general threat alerts issued by the administration after the Sept. 11 attacks -- implying that when the administration had warned Americans of what it knew, Congress had been critical.
"The dress code disciplinary decision you inquired about was overturned when administration realized that although the shirt was offensive and distracting to some adults in the building, the students were paying it little attention," a spokesperson for the school told the site.
"We have a chronic problem in Congress that when the administration is involved in one side of the issue, we rarely hear about the other side of the issue.
In response to recent sallies from the G.O.P. nominee, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, Mr. Clinton pointed out that when the administration enacted its economic strategy of trying to close the budget deficit, even by raising taxes on the richest Americans, the Republican leadership in Congress voted uniformly against it and predicted it would bring about economic ruin.
It appears that when inexperienced administration officials faced BP's steely-eyed negotiators on this issue, they were buffaloed into shutting in the well without measuring the flow.
Pace also points out that when the administration says that reporters should endeavor to fact-check every story they bring forward about a person who lost their health insurance, to see if they really have merit, that reporters aren't actually obliged to do so.
