FrankRep
01-26-2010, 09:18 AM
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Lisa Jackson, John Broder, and others in the U.S. Senate are attempting to rein in the EPA's unilateral effort to regulate greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide. By James Heiser
Senators Try to Regain Legislative Authority Over EPA (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5887-senators-try-to-regain-legislative-authority-over-epa)
James Heiser | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
25 January 2010
The United States Constitution appears to be consigned to the role of fairytale in our post-modern society, because it seems like any discussion of how our representative government is supposed to function begins with the words, “Once upon a time...”.
In keeping with that fairytale motif, let us pretend for the moment that the constitutionally enumerated powers of the legislative branch of government still mean something. Oh, I’m not talking about that restrictive little list of things enumerated in Article 1, Section 8 (http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec8.html) which are actually specifically delineated as within the purview of Congress. Ever since the Commerce Clause was blown up into something you might see floating in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the legislative power of the federal government has long since outgrown the constraints placed upon it by the founding fathers. No, I’m asking for you to momentarily suspend your disbelief and imagine a government in which the legislative branch actually drafted the legislation — rather than what we apparently have at present, which is the executive branch writing its own law.
If the legislative branch was still a functioning branch of government, a whole host of bureaucratic power grabs would have been recognized as unconstitutional, and crushed by our elected representatives. Take, for example, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s “endangerment finding (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5827-epa-regulations-vs-freedom-and-prosperity)” concerning carbon dioxide — a move which was widely interpreted as intended to make an ‘end run’ around the United States Senate, which apparently was not lurching headlong into “cap and trade” as fast as the Obama Administration wanted. In our fairytale, citizens and elected representatives of good will — regardless of political party — would have viewed such an action as a willful violation of the Constitution, and would have settled for nothing less that the immediate resignation of Ms. Jackson.
Now back to the real world.
Instead of such a defense of the rule of law, we are subjected to the following bit of absurdity from the keyboard of John Broder over at The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/science/earth/22climate.html?ref=politics):
In a direct challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, introduced a resolution on Thursday to prevent the agency from taking any action to regulate carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases.
That’s right: In Mr. Broder’s world, it is the senator who is challenging the “authority” of the EPA to unilaterally impose sweeping legislation.
One might permit Mr. Broder a bit of slack, since he is probably still mourning the failure of his hero, Barrack Obama (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5663-obama-faltering-on-climate-change-conference), to ‘deliver’ at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. But the text cited above was the first sentence of his recent article. If Broder’s recollection of the Constitution is a little bit fuzzy, certainly someone on the editorial staff at The New York Times has read that musty old document at some point in the last few years. (After all, there’s even an iPhone “app (http://www.appsafari.com/reading/2745/us-constitution/)” for that, fellows! You can look cool and still familiarize yourselves with the highest law of the land.)
But Mr. Broder was only getting warmed up.
Ms. Murkowski, joined by 35 Republicans and three conservative Democrats, proposed to use the Congressional Review Act to strip the agency of the power to limit emissions of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court gave the agency legal authority to regulate such emissions in a landmark 2007 ruling.
Well, there you go. You know, pure oxygen (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/72299.php) is a pretty hazardous substance, too. And divers have to worry about nitrogen narcosis. Perhaps Ms. Jackson should use the magical powers granted to her by the Supreme Court to regulate oxygen and nitrogen, too. In fact, we should just look to the EPA to create an entirely new atmosphere for us. After all, Barrack Obama declared that his election as President would signal to future generations “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2008/06/03/transcript-obama-democratic-nomination-victory-speech/)” and the Leader has pointed to Ms. Jackson as the one who is his instrument to heal our atmosphere. What’s the rule of law in comparison to Mr. Obama’s mandate for unprecedented change (http://myths-methods-madness.blogspot.com/2009/12/myth-of-unprecedented-change-2.html)?
The stunning thing is that Ms. Murkowski was able to find three democrats who had not been ‘borged’ by Majority Leader Harry Reid. Speaking of Sen. Reid, Mr. Broder does document that an attitude of “the ends justifies the means” still reigns in the majority leader’s office:
An aide to Mr. Reid said that the measure was unlikely to come to a vote before March because of a crowded legislative calendar. He also said that while Mr. Reid believes that legislation to address climate change is preferable to E.P.A. regulation, the agency must retain the authority to act if Congress does not.
“There is no disagreement that it would be better than E.P.A. regulation for Congress to pass bipartisan comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation that creates jobs, improves our energy security and invests in making our economy and businesses more efficient and globally competitive,” the aide, Jim Manley, said. “But, thus far, very few Republicans have shown any willingness to work with us to get that done.”
In short, this means that all that matters is the outcome. Oh, it would be nice if the regulation could be implemented by means of a process which wears some of the rags of constitutionality, but the key thing is getting the job done.
After all, as Mr. Broder reminds us,
The agency has declared carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to be a threat to human health and the environment and is moving to write regulations to restrict emissions from vehicles, power plants and other major sources. The action could impose significant costs on the economy but would also rein in production of the heat-trapping gases that most scientists link to worrisome changes in the global climate.
“Worrisome changes”? That’s what we call the administration’s assault on the Constitution. Anthropogenic climate change is, at best, a theory; and it is a theory which is looking more and more flaky all the time. But the assault on the rule of law in this nation is easily demonstrated, and the implications for future generations of Americans is quite grave.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5887-senators-try-to-regain-legislative-authority-over-epa
Senators Try to Regain Legislative Authority Over EPA (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5887-senators-try-to-regain-legislative-authority-over-epa)
James Heiser | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
25 January 2010
The United States Constitution appears to be consigned to the role of fairytale in our post-modern society, because it seems like any discussion of how our representative government is supposed to function begins with the words, “Once upon a time...”.
In keeping with that fairytale motif, let us pretend for the moment that the constitutionally enumerated powers of the legislative branch of government still mean something. Oh, I’m not talking about that restrictive little list of things enumerated in Article 1, Section 8 (http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec8.html) which are actually specifically delineated as within the purview of Congress. Ever since the Commerce Clause was blown up into something you might see floating in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the legislative power of the federal government has long since outgrown the constraints placed upon it by the founding fathers. No, I’m asking for you to momentarily suspend your disbelief and imagine a government in which the legislative branch actually drafted the legislation — rather than what we apparently have at present, which is the executive branch writing its own law.
If the legislative branch was still a functioning branch of government, a whole host of bureaucratic power grabs would have been recognized as unconstitutional, and crushed by our elected representatives. Take, for example, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s “endangerment finding (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5827-epa-regulations-vs-freedom-and-prosperity)” concerning carbon dioxide — a move which was widely interpreted as intended to make an ‘end run’ around the United States Senate, which apparently was not lurching headlong into “cap and trade” as fast as the Obama Administration wanted. In our fairytale, citizens and elected representatives of good will — regardless of political party — would have viewed such an action as a willful violation of the Constitution, and would have settled for nothing less that the immediate resignation of Ms. Jackson.
Now back to the real world.
Instead of such a defense of the rule of law, we are subjected to the following bit of absurdity from the keyboard of John Broder over at The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/science/earth/22climate.html?ref=politics):
In a direct challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, introduced a resolution on Thursday to prevent the agency from taking any action to regulate carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases.
That’s right: In Mr. Broder’s world, it is the senator who is challenging the “authority” of the EPA to unilaterally impose sweeping legislation.
One might permit Mr. Broder a bit of slack, since he is probably still mourning the failure of his hero, Barrack Obama (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5663-obama-faltering-on-climate-change-conference), to ‘deliver’ at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. But the text cited above was the first sentence of his recent article. If Broder’s recollection of the Constitution is a little bit fuzzy, certainly someone on the editorial staff at The New York Times has read that musty old document at some point in the last few years. (After all, there’s even an iPhone “app (http://www.appsafari.com/reading/2745/us-constitution/)” for that, fellows! You can look cool and still familiarize yourselves with the highest law of the land.)
But Mr. Broder was only getting warmed up.
Ms. Murkowski, joined by 35 Republicans and three conservative Democrats, proposed to use the Congressional Review Act to strip the agency of the power to limit emissions of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court gave the agency legal authority to regulate such emissions in a landmark 2007 ruling.
Well, there you go. You know, pure oxygen (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/72299.php) is a pretty hazardous substance, too. And divers have to worry about nitrogen narcosis. Perhaps Ms. Jackson should use the magical powers granted to her by the Supreme Court to regulate oxygen and nitrogen, too. In fact, we should just look to the EPA to create an entirely new atmosphere for us. After all, Barrack Obama declared that his election as President would signal to future generations “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2008/06/03/transcript-obama-democratic-nomination-victory-speech/)” and the Leader has pointed to Ms. Jackson as the one who is his instrument to heal our atmosphere. What’s the rule of law in comparison to Mr. Obama’s mandate for unprecedented change (http://myths-methods-madness.blogspot.com/2009/12/myth-of-unprecedented-change-2.html)?
The stunning thing is that Ms. Murkowski was able to find three democrats who had not been ‘borged’ by Majority Leader Harry Reid. Speaking of Sen. Reid, Mr. Broder does document that an attitude of “the ends justifies the means” still reigns in the majority leader’s office:
An aide to Mr. Reid said that the measure was unlikely to come to a vote before March because of a crowded legislative calendar. He also said that while Mr. Reid believes that legislation to address climate change is preferable to E.P.A. regulation, the agency must retain the authority to act if Congress does not.
“There is no disagreement that it would be better than E.P.A. regulation for Congress to pass bipartisan comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation that creates jobs, improves our energy security and invests in making our economy and businesses more efficient and globally competitive,” the aide, Jim Manley, said. “But, thus far, very few Republicans have shown any willingness to work with us to get that done.”
In short, this means that all that matters is the outcome. Oh, it would be nice if the regulation could be implemented by means of a process which wears some of the rags of constitutionality, but the key thing is getting the job done.
After all, as Mr. Broder reminds us,
The agency has declared carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to be a threat to human health and the environment and is moving to write regulations to restrict emissions from vehicles, power plants and other major sources. The action could impose significant costs on the economy but would also rein in production of the heat-trapping gases that most scientists link to worrisome changes in the global climate.
“Worrisome changes”? That’s what we call the administration’s assault on the Constitution. Anthropogenic climate change is, at best, a theory; and it is a theory which is looking more and more flaky all the time. But the assault on the rule of law in this nation is easily demonstrated, and the implications for future generations of Americans is quite grave.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5887-senators-try-to-regain-legislative-authority-over-epa