In popular literature, the chubby loser who eagerly pays the stern dominatrix in the black corset to whip, denigrate and otherwise abuse him is an object both of humor and of pathos.

In Washington, he's called the Environmental Protection Agency.

Environmental groups that frequently revile and sue the Bush administration for failing to adequately "protect" the air and water have collected millions of dollars in government grants to help fund those efforts -- failing in one recent case to properly account for the money -- the Associated Press reported this week.

"More than 2,200 nonprofit groups have received grants from the Environmental Protection Agency over the last decade," The AP reports, "including those that lobby and sometimes sue the agency.

"One of the most prominent, the Natural Resources Defense Council, was cited in a recent audit for failing to properly document more than a third of the $3.3 million it received in three EPA grants."

The EPA's inspector general said the litigious NRDC used the money to conduct research and education on storm water pollution. But money is fungible -- paying money to someone who sues you is dumb, because it frees up more of their remaining resources to keep suing you. Unless, of course ... you like it.

Ongoing EPA grant recipient NRDC has sued EPA 35 times the past two years.

"It may be confusing to the public that with the right hand we're accepting government money and with the left hand sometimes we're beating up the government," comments Charles Miller, communications director for Environmental Defense, which has received more than $1.8 million from EPA since 1995.

"But the government is a complicated beast. Some of the things they're doing we think are wrong. A lot of the things they're doing we think are right. We're using the grant money to further the environmental cause," Mr. Miller said.

In fact, to bring these apparent contradictions into focus, it's only necessary to realize one thing: Government bureaucracies such as the EPA are full of extremists who bridle at any attempt by elected or appointed officials to moderate their undertakings and restrict them to only those modest, sensible regulatory efforts that truly benefit the environment while minimally impinging on business enterprise, resource development and property rights.

So, when officials reflecting the more sensible will of the electorate are placed above them in an attempt to rein them in, they happily fund and cooperate with their eco-extremist pals "on the outside."

Of course the EPA should be barred from funding anyone who lobbies or sues the agency. This is like attaching huge sea anchors to our warships, causing them to waste fuel and move more slowly, just to "make things fairer" for enemies wishing to sink them.

If these masochists wish to pay off folks like the Natural Resources Defense Council, while moaning "Please whip me," they certainly shouldn't do it with our tax money.