Joined: Sat May 29, 2004 11:46 pm
Posts: 14428
Location: NC
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King George Loses His Crown
By Marie Cocco
WASHINGTON— A great gust of common sense has blown away the rhetoric that obscures the president’s soft-on-polluters policy with slogans such as “Clear Skies.” The Supreme Court decision demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency take steps to regulate emissions that are linked to global warming is a victory for Mother Earth. And much, much more.
The high court issued another unequivocal reprimand to the Bush administration’s ceaseless arguments that the president can ignore or circumvent any law of his choosing, and make up out of whole cloth an alternate set of rules.
The substance of the environmental case was simple: The Bush administration, in its ideological war against regulation in general and its refusal to acknowledge the scientific evidence of global warming in particular, subverted the Clean Air Act by having the EPA abandon its mandate to treat certain auto emissions as air pollutants. All the usual weasel words the administration uses when it wants to get its way—that there is some overarching presidential power to replace laws and congressional requirements with the political judgments it prefers—were swept away.
When Congress required the EPA to use its judgment in assessing the danger of air pollutants, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court’s 5-4 majority, it meant the judgment had to be applied based on facts about the public’s health and welfare. The agency’s decisions, the court said, were to be made “within defined statutory limits.”
“Put another way,” Stevens wrote, “the use of the word ‘judgment’ is not a roving license to ignore the statutory text.”
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"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."
Honore de Balzac
"Democrats work to help people who need help.
That other party, they work for people who don't need help.
That's all there is to it."
~Harry S. Truman
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