This makes me wish I was in D.C.!

It's like the legal equivalent of a Grateful Dead show. Are there scruffy law students shuffling around outside the building with one finger up and signs that say "looking for a miracle"? Is anyone selling veggie burritos to those waiting in line? Spotted any legal reporters huffing nitrous?

www.grist.org

   At the risk of being redundant redundant.

   Seriously, this was nicely summed up and stated, I hope you are going to keep all of those of us with day (and evening and weekend) jobs up to date?

patrick

Kit, do you mean a 5-4 decision, in favor of Massachusetts, with a vague, mealy-mouthed, ambiguous majority opinion?  Well, you may very well be right.  But I keep getting hung up on a legal precedent for calling CO2 an "air pollutant."  Do I "pollute the air," willy-nilly, simply by the act of breathing?  And what about the rest of you aerobic organisms?  If I were a Supreme, I would make a big deal about that; I would go with Massachusetts, of course, but in my independent opinion I would come up with a more nuanced interpretation of the legislation's term "air pollutant."

Thanks for your comments on the troubles of the LA Times, one of our greatest newspapers.  Format issues, marketing issues, are big, and need to be worked out.  But meanwhile, reporters, other writers and photographers are the treasures of every paper, and should not be let go.  You would think that over there on The Coast, the wise people had this all figured out, and the rich people wwould be gladly following along.

Closer to home, the Philadelphia Inquirer is suffering a difficult transition.  And the NY Times folks are still walking around in bloody bandages, and displaying their wounds, after a near mutiny.  In Boston, the Globe tends to steer to port, the Christian Science Monitor to starboard; of course I prefer the Globe's direction, especially regarding gay rights.  Whether in the long run their steering is good for either paper, we shall see.  Could be that they are contentedly settling in for certain markets.

I never look at the Wall Street Journal.  That is a pity.  But life is short.  Of course, all they would have to do is run an "animal welfare and biodiversity" column, and I would be hooked.  And if it was any good, I would be ordering gift subscriptions for my family and friends.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

"EPA argues that it has inherent discretion to decline to conduct the initial analysis."

The (im)plausible deniability clause?  So if the EPA decides to ignore greenhouse gas pollution as a danger to public welfare (a fact: greenhouse gases do endanger public welfare)it cannot be held responsible for the damage caused to the plaintiffs by failing to regulate it.

Following that same argument to it's logically absurd conclusion; whatever pollution danger to the public welfare that the EPA chooses to ignore (for whatever reason) it has no responsibility to regulate.

So EPA policy has absolutely no connection to laws based upon scientific facts, only the whim of the particular political appointee in charge.

And you thought the executive branch had to comply with the law as well as enforce it?  Think again, under these neoconmen the executive branch is at war with the laws of the land.  With ignorance it's main weapon.

Ignorant and proud of it, that goes for the prezz and his faithbased followers in spades!  Will Scalia, Alito, and Roberts endorse ignorance as a viable basis for regulatory policy?  Yep, that's my guess.

See no evil...

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Following the reporter David Savage, I think the Supremes will rule that the EPA has the right to regulate CO2 as a pollutant, but not the requirement.

Of course you're right that CO2 is not a pollutant in the same sense that soot is a pollutant, but given that it and other greenhouse gases are literally changing the climate, to argue that the EPA has the right to enforce the Clean Air Act to preserve, if at all possible, our lovely climate seems nothing less than sane to me.

On the second topic, I agree, it's painful to see what is happening to American newspapers today. From my perspective, the big three (the NY Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall St. Journal) are thriving, and everyone else is suffering tremendously, thanks in large part to the Internet that I love.

My daughter in high school has some interest in being a journalist, but I can't really encourage her, knowing how impossible it is to make a decent living at it myself. In this crazy world, it makes more sense if you're interested in journalism to become a teacher and teach kids who are also interested in journalism, and maybe write a story or two when possible, then to actually try to make it your life.

But enough whining from me.