Running out the clock is always a risky strategy-especially tricky when you're up against U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth. At almost the same moment Bill was releasing his list of Presidential pardonees and Hillary was taping up the last of the boxes to be shipped to Chappaqua, Judge Lamberth zapped the Environmental Protection Agency with a preliminary injunction aimed at preventing it from chucking down the memory hole crucial information about how the agency went about its business in the final days of the Clinton-Gore Administration.

The injunction was granted in response to a filing by the Landmark Legal Foundation, related to a Freedom of Information request it had filed back in September seeking the names of any third parties or outside interest groups the EPA had talked to with respect to its controversial, last-minute flurry of regulations. In short, what Landmark wants to know is whether this rush to regulate before a Republican moved into the White House meant the EPA was making backroom deals with environmental and activist groups.

Landmark, moreover, clearly is not the only one asking. Scarcely two hours after George W. Bush raised his right hand to take the oath of office, he issued his first order: a freeze on the publication of new regulations in the Federal Register, as well as on those that have already been published but not yet implemented. The Bush folks rightly want to get a look at the fine print.

The Freedom of Information Act is supposed to help us here. Under the act, when a request is made for expedited consideration-as Landmark's was-the recipient has 10 days to respond. Instead, the EPA simply ignored the deadline completely. When Landmark followed up with a lawsuit, EPA attorney John Heinz and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Humphreys spoke to Landmark by phone, where they hashed out an agreement about the parameters of the search. When nothing happened, Landmark went back to court looking for an injunction. There the EPA explained that the agreement the two parties had reached-the deal Landmark was abiding by-was not valid because the EPA had not yet signed it.

Such resistance suggests that our busy regulators understood all too well that their actions would not hold up under scrutiny. They seem particularly averse to cost-benefit analysis. The new regulation restricting sulphur content in diesel fuel, for example, seems to be oblivious to the needs of the trucking industry and those who depend on it. What makes it particularly galling is that the issue is not really about a restriction per se but about the timetable for implementation, the expense of that implementation and the levels that are truly dangerous. Ditto for the provisions about arsenic in drinking water, which New Mexico is saying will cost it $400 million to implement.

Had someone asked these kinds of questions about regulations affecting, say, energy production in California, San Franciscans would still be able to enter an elevator without worrying whether they would be stuck between floors by a blackout. In particular we need to know whether this is an agency whose agenda was hijacked by liberal interest groups for their own purposes, in secret and with no public accountability. Judge Lamberth's decision to grant a preliminary injunction and President Bush's executive freeze indicate that they obviously agree.