The Half-True Headline

Timothy Noah writes on the rush of the Obama administration to get final rules published before the 6 month cutoff: anything published after May 23 can be revoked by the next President; anything before then a formal rulemaking procedure is required which takes months, maybe years.

The headline is: "Obama rushes out rules to guarantee legacy."  That's true, and fine.  The administration is issuing rules faster in 2016 than in 2013-15.   Noah doesn't explicitly feed the idea that Obama is a big-government, regulation heavy Dem, though I'm sure some readers will jump to that conclusion.

Buried in the middle of the story, Noah notes that Bush used the authority to revoke a Clinton regulation on workplace safety.  And then: "Bush was careful not to get caught in the same trap himself seven years later. His administration pushed through 214 rules in the first five months of his final year in office — 19 more than the Obama administration for the same period."

So the bottom line is Bush did more regs than Obama, so the headline could have read: "Obama dawdles, lags behind Bush pace"