Rediscovering Democracy

After eight years of Bush's executive orders on science (or the lack of it), suddenly the FOX Street Journal has a problem with the executive branch doing anything executive.

This ruling has been inevitable since at least April and we warned about it during Mr. Obama's campaign, but its cynicism and willfulness still astonish. The political threat is so potent precisely because invoking a faulty interpretation of the 1970 Clean Air Act will expose hundreds of thousands of "major" sources of emissions that produce more than 250 tons of an air pollutant in a year to the EPA's costly and onerous review process. This threshold might be reasonable for traditional "dirty" pollutants (such as NOX) but it makes no sense for ubiquitous carbon, which is the byproduct of almost all types of economic production.

The White House knows this, which is why earlier this fall Ms. Jackson announced a "tailoring rule" that limits this regulation to sources that emit more than 25,000 or more tons a year like coal-fired power plants and heavy manufacturing. Ms. Jackson claims this unilateral rewrite of a statute is a concession, but its real purpose is to dodge a political backlash while still preserving the EPA's ability to threaten business and recalcitrant Democrats.

For now, this decision moves into the courts, and years if not decades of litigation. Yet the decision really is historic: The White House has opened a Pandora's box that will be difficult to close, that is breathtakingly undemocratic, and that the country, if not liberal politicians, will come to regret.

Which is funny, because when Bush was telling scientists that they couldn't study stem cells and quashing federal studies on climate change, the same WSJ editorial board was telling us how a useless gridlocked Congress was unable to make the decisions that Bush needed to make, and wasn't it great that we had an executive branch with this kind of power?

As I've been saying, anything done in Washington by a Republican is democratic, popular and good.  Anything done by a Democrat is fascist, hated, and evil.  Even if it's the same policy.