Friday, December 1, 2006

Carl Pope: On a Knife's Edge. On the face of it, the Supreme Court seemed to be considering last Wednesday whether the Environmental Protection Agency must/can/or cannot regulate global warming-causing carbon dioxide pollution under the Clean Air Act. But behind this specific issue is a much broader question -- whether the court room door is going to be slammed in the face of ordinary Americans. The Clean Air Act says that EPA must regulate any air pollutant "reasonably anticipated" to harm public health -- or "the climate." When the Sierra Club petitioned the EPA to follow the law, the Agency refused. The EPA said that carbon dioxide couldn't be shown to harm the climate, but that even if it was, EPA could decide not to regulate it because it thought regulation would be a bad idea. This pretty blatantly ignored the law so we, and others, sued. But when a panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard the suit, it issued a split decision. One judge said EPA did have to issue regulations; one said global warming might be a myth, so EPA did not have to act; and the third judge said that Massachusetts and the other plaintiffs had no right to be courtroom in the first place, because they hadn't shown enough harm to their interests. As a result of this week's Supreme Court arguments it now seems pretty clear that four of the Justices -- Souter, Breyer, Stevens, and Ginsberg -- think that global warming is a pollutant requiring regulation, and that the plaintiffs have shown that their states will be harmed by it. The four conservative Justices -- Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito -- seem to be leaning towards letting EPA ignore the problem. Scalia, stunningly for a Justice who says he is opposed to judicial activism, said that EPA didn't have to regulate any pollutant that wasn't a threat to public health -- ignoring the plain language of the Clean Air Act that any substance which harms property or climate is also a pollutant. (Acid rain or lead wouldn't have met Scalia's test, for example.) The swing Justice, as so often these days, is Justice Kennedy. But the key issue is unlikely to be the narrow one -- is carbon dioxide a pollutant. If the Court gets to that issue, most observers feel it would rule either that the EPA could, or the EPA must, regulate CO2. But Kennedy might rule that, because global warming has some level of uncertainty, the plaintiffs lack standing to bring any lawsuit. The important issue is not whether EPA must, or only can, regulate greenhouse pollutants-- what's also being decided here is whether the states can regulate global warming pollution themselves. If EPA can regulate CO2, then so can California and other states -- so their right to set emission standards for CO2 from motor vehicles would be protected as long as the Supreme Court concedes that CO2 is a pollutant. And the real reason the Bush Administration has fought against admitting that CO2 is a pollutant is its desire to block state action to clean up vehicle emissions. But the impact of a bad ruling on standing would be enormous. If the high court rules against the states and the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, it would undo decades of Congressional efforts to ensure that environmental laws could be enforced by citizens in court, by making anyone bringing such a suit prove specific, individual harm. The impact on enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts would be devastating. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 12:34:56 PM    comment []

Cenk Uygur: A Pre-emptive Strike Against the Constitution. Newt Gingrich started the attack against the US constitution in the beginning of the week. He launched operation shock and awe by striking against one of the most cherished principles of this country - the freedom of speech. It worked, because after all we've been through in the last six years, I was still shocked by this. The first amendment! I am not sure I can name something more sacred to the principles of America. Then Dennis Prager came in and delivered the second blow to the first amendment (if you don't know him, don't worry, you're not alone; he is a buffoonish conservative talk show host who has made a cheap living desperately trying to copy Rush Limbaugh his whole life). Prager went after the establishment clause. He argued that every member of Congress should show their allegiance to the Bible in order to be allowed into Congress. The first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." How much clearer did they have to be? But in case, you're as dense as Prager, the framers did make it clearer! Here is Article VI of the United States Constitution: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. The problem with these conservatives is that they truly don't understand the idea of America. They have no idea what this country stands for. If all we stand for is the religious views of the majority, then we are no different than any country in the Middle East. If we strike out against our enemies by trying to shut down their right to speak, then we are no better than communist China or the Islamic Republic of Iran. These conservatives missed the whole point of the country. We are not just some slab of land between Canada and Mexico. Nebraska or Rhode Island or Hawaii is not the chosen land of any deity. The people that live here hold no special claim to privilege based on race, nationality or a favored religion. What makes us the greatest country on earth is that we are open and free. That we are willing to die to protect that freedom, and not just for us. We are the guardians of freedom. We are the ones who believe in liberty and champion it throughout the world. And these clowns want to take that away because they are afraid? Perhaps Gingrich should have looked up the motto of the state he was speaking in. New Hampshire is the place of patriots - American patriots who lived and died for freedom. Not the place of moral and ideological cowards. In New Hampshire, they believe you "live free or die!" That's the America I know and love. Not the scared, shut-down society afraid of dissent that Newt Gingrich envisions. Not the exclusive, fundamentalist Judeo-Christian stronghold of America that Dennis Prager dreams of. I know an America that is open and free - and proud. Don't tell me our boys died in Iwo Jima and Bunker Hill and Gettysburg and Normandy, so a bunch of cheap-suited Republican cowards can give away our freedoms without a fight in the middle of the night. Newt Gingrich said that we should empanel people to impose a level of supervision on speech that we would normally never dream of. Why? Because he's afraid of the big, bad Osama. If your beloved Republican leader had caught him, maybe you wouldn't be wetting your pants worried about him. We beat the Nazis so that Gingrich could give our rights away to a bunch of ragtag terrorists? This is the white flag of surrender. Gingrich is saying that we cannot defeat the terrorists with our rules. In case, you think that's an exaggeration, he literally said we need a "different set of rules" to limit speech and the internet. He is saying the American system that was good enough to win World War I, World War II and the Cold War is not good enough to beat Al Qaeda. If I was less polite man, I would call little Newt a pussy. But I'm far too polite. Besides I don't want him putting this website on his list of dangerous websites that need to be banned. Oh, did I not tell you about that part? "This is a serious long term war and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, it will lead us to close down every website that is dangerous." This man wants to be President. If this is the kind of pre-emptive strike he has in mind against our constitution, imagine what he would do if he actually seized power. Remember, the last time Gingrich was in the government, he shut it down. Does he believe in the US system at all? Can Newt Gingrich fairly be called an American anymore? He might have been born here and he currently resides here, but is he really an American? In order to be truly American, don't you have to believe in America? If these Republicans don't believe they can defeat the terrorists without giving up our unalienable rights and our system of government, maybe they should step aside and let some real men of honor guide this country back to the path of righteousness and strength. The Young Turks [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 12:23:11 PM    comment []

Headline of the Day. The liberal media strikes again. From page one of today's San Francisco Chronicle: The article in a nutshell: Bush might still be talking about staying the course in Iraq, but behind the scenes, who knows what the heck he's really thinking or doing? That should be pretty obvious by now, but there's something bracing about seeing that in print in a major newspaper. Even the Chron. [MotherJones.com | MoJo Blog - Social Issues and Political Commentary] 9:29:03 AM    comment []

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