As inspectors delve into the deadly mine disaster in Sago, W.Va., their starting premise must be that the explosion that choked off 12 workers' lives would never have happened if all the safety rules now on the books had been properly enforced. Mining regulations born of decades of death and disaster dictate in detail the most basic protections for survival, like adequate ventilation and roof supports. Yet full enforcement was clearly lacking at the Sago mine...[Government] laxity - and the increasing risks that miners take to get their hard-earned wages - were underlined three years ago by the Government Accountability Office... Rather than turning this around, the Bush administration's main attention to the coal industry has been to appoint a raft of political appointees directly from energy corporations to critical regulatory posts... It is hardly enough to say that coal mining, while inherently dangerous, has taken fewer lives across the decades.