Love That Dirty Water

Two recent Supreme Court decisions have called into question the EPA's jurisdiction to regulate certain waterways under the Clean Water Act. The act gives the EPA jurisdiction over "navigable waters," which has been interpreted fairly broadly in the past. Now, the Court has suggested that the term does not refer to "waterways that are entirely within one state, creeks that sometimes go dry, and lakes unconnected to larger water systems."

The EPA is now hesitant to prosecute, shelving or discontinuing 1500 major cases over the past four years.

Furthermore, these waterways that are now questionably outside the EPA's jurisdiction provide drinking water for over a third of all Americans. Granted, drinking water is treated before it is distributed, but it should be the responsibility of the polluter to clean up the water, not the public utility.

You can read more here.

Changing Climate, Stagnant Politics

So, we haven't posted in a while, which of course means that nothing important happened in the past nine days.

Except the brief life of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. The act, which I first heard about on Monday, would have (1) created a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases--in my opinion, the best way to limit such pollution--and (2) allowed states to have tougher environmental regulations than the federal government, which California tried to do, but the Bush Administration's EPA denied California this right last December.

And now the bill has been filibustered to death. The supporters of the bill were 12 votes shy of the 60 necessary to invoke cloture and end debate. (Both Sens. Levin and Stabenow voted for cloture.) Senators will now wait until next year, when they will have a more supportive president and hopefully a more favorable legislature, until they try again.

Also on the climate change front, the NASA inspector general released a report stating that "political appointees in the space agency's public affairs office worked to control and distort public accounts of its researchers' findings about climate change for at least two years." Shock.

On a lighter note, there's a wolverine in Michigan's thumb!

The '01E Wolverine, North Campus, U-M, munching on the head of an Easter Bunny. (4/5/08)

Headlines: 20 May 2008 (and Older)

• 'W,' Oliver Stone's Bush Biopic
  

  A little crass.
  

• Klein on Obama:
  

  A general-election campaign between John McCain and Barack Obama doesn't need any hype. It won't be boring. The question is whether we, politicians and press alike, will grant this election — and electorate — the respect that it deserves.
  

• Make wearing a flag pin the 28th Amendment
  

  And the award for Best Use of Sarcasm goes to...
  

• The Fall of Conservatism
  

  The pendulum swings left? Long, but interesting.
  

• Obama and
  Ahma-gonna-kill-myself-if-the-primary-season-doesn't-end-soon-ijad
  

  Obama said that he would meet with the leadership of Iran, but he never said he'd meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So why does McCain and everyone on the Right say he did? And when is that McCain-Obama foreign policy debate going to be?
  

• Underplayed Story of the Day
  

  Remember when the EPA denied the state of California to legislate its own fuel-efficiency standards? Well, it turns out that, like everything else in the Bush Administration, the decision was based on sound science, and not politics.
  

• Obama Is Expected to Hit a Milestone in Today's Votes
  

  After primaries in Kentucky & Oregon, Obama will have the majority of pledged delegates, which will hopefully trigger a superdelegate-slide in his direction.