Res­cuers Find Bod­ies of Two W.Va. Min­ers:

Res­cuers on Sat­ur­day found the bod­ies of two coal min­ers who dis­ap­peared after a con­vey­or belt caught fire deep inside a coal mine.

The bod­ies were found in an area of the mine where res­cue teams had been bat­tling the fire for more than 40 hours.

After Sago, peo­ple not­ed that the MSHA was over­worked and under­fund­ed, and that the fines they could levy were so low that it was cheap­er to pay the fine than to make life­sav­ing repairs. And it came out that a num­ber of safe­ty reg­u­la­tions were elim­i­nat­ed or weak­ened by min­ing lob­by­ists who had been ele­vat­ed to reg­u­la­to­ry positions.

Four­teen deaths lat­er:

The Bush admin­is­tra­tion is review­ing safe­ty equip­ment used in the nation’s mines after pre­vi­ous­ly scrap­ping sim­i­lar ini­tia­tives start­ed by the Clin­ton administration.

The agency that over­sees coal mine safe­ty is seek­ing pub­lic input on how to bet­ter sup­ply min­ers and res­cuers with equip­ment such as breath­ing appa­ra­tus and com­mu­ni­ca­tions devices, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by The Asso­ci­at­ed Press.

In recent years, the Mine Safe­ty and Health Admin­is­tra­tion pulled Clin­ton-era ini­tia­tives exam­in­ing safe­ty equip­ment and mine res­cue oper­a­tions off its reg­u­la­to­ry agen­da, a semi­an­nu­al doc­u­ment that out­lines what agen­cies are work­ing on.

Good gov­ern­ment is seiz­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make life bet­ter, bad gov­ern­ment is pass­ing those oppor­tu­ni­ties up, and rolling things back in a way that hurts peo­ple. This admin­is­tra­tion and this Repub­li­can con­gress aren’t about mak­ing things bet­ter. They aren’t against big gov­ern­ment. They just don’t care for good government.