In keeping with the theme of government criminals who spurn their duties, yet another judge is fed up with the Bush administration's refusal to meet its deadlines, and this time the issue is global warming.

In news that will surprise no one, it turns out the Bush administration is not keeping its climate change reports up to date. A district judge in California has ruled that it broke the law in its failure to release a study on the impact of global warming, specifically, the Global Change Research Act of 1990, which holds that federal climate change research must be revised every three years. (This particular report is one year late.)

With typical hubris, the Bush administration has feigned surprise (and dispensed with the '90s) claiming in court papers that it was "only recently that the initiation of a process to revise the research plan has become necessary and advisable," Further, it claimed--lawbooks be damned--it was actually up to the government to decide how to handle the reports, thank you very much.

The judge called this flat out "wrong."