Dubja and Humpty Dumpty

From the New York Times:

"March 18, 2006

Judges Overturn Bush Bid to Ease Pollution Rules

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

WASHINGTON, March 17

A federal appeals court on Friday overturned a clean-air regulation issued by the Bush administration that would have let many power plants, refineries and factories avoid installing costly new pollution controls to help offset any increased emissions caused by repairs and replacements of equipment.

Ruling in favor of a coalition of states and environmental advocacy groups, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the "plain language" of the law required a stricter approach. The court has primary jurisdiction in challenges to federal regulations.

The ruling by a three-judge panel was the court's second decision in less than a year in a pair of closely related cases involving the administration's interpretations of a complex section of the Clean Air Act. Unlike its ruling last summer, when the court largely upheld the E.P.A.'s approach against challenges from industry, state governments and environmental groups, the new ruling was a defeat for the agency and for industry, and a victory for the states and their environmentalist allies.

In the earlier case, a panel including two of the three judges who ruled on Friday decided that the agency had acted reasonably in 2002, when it issued a rule changing how pollution would be measured, effectively loosening the strictures on companies making changes to their equipment and operations.

But on Friday, the court said the agency went too far in 2003 when it issued a separate new rule that opponents said would exempt most equipment changes from environmental reviews and even changes that would result in higher emissions.

With a wry footnote to Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass," the court said that "only in a Humpty-Dumpty world" could the law be read otherwise.

"We decline such a world view," said their unanimous decision, written by Judge Judith W. Rogers, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. Judges David Tatel, another Clinton appointee, and Janice Rogers Brown, a recent Bush appointee, joined her.

"This is an enormous victory over the concerted efforts by the Bush administration to dismantle the Clean Air Act," Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, whose office led the opposition from the states, said in an interview."

So the Judges finally saw what so many of us already knew: the current White House can barely read childrens rhymes or fairly tales and their lawyers are not much better.

Thank you reason and rational thinking. Finally we have some people that are not beholden to the money of big industry and oil and that consider the future of our environment as well. This is a step forward for a change, not backwards like we have seen for the past 6 years.

Speaking of going backwards, maybe more people will start to see the light and truth and put even more pressure on their representatives in Congress and Senate to vote against drilling in Arctic now. The Senate just approved such drilling in a bill this week. That must be stopped. We cannot let the oil companies into this precious bio zone and destroy it as well just to make even more money than they already do. We do not need this oil. Spend the money on alternative replinishable fuels and more fuel efficient engines instead.