Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 01/09/2012 10:26:29 AM PST by WilliamIII
WASHINGTON — Several Supreme Court justices are criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency for heavy-handed enforcement of rules affecting homeowners.
The justices were considering whether to let a North Idaho couple challenge an EPA order identifying their land as “protected wetlands.” Mike and Chantell Sackett of Priest Lake wanted to build their house on the land. But the EPA says the Sacketts can’t challenge the order to restore the land to wetlands or face thousands of dollars in fines.
Justice Samuel Alito called EPA’s actions “outrageous.” Justice Antonin Scalia noted the “high-handedness of the agency” in dealing with private property. Chief Justice John Roberts said that the EPA’s contention that the Sacketts’ land is wetlands, something the couple disagrees with, would never be put to a test under current procedure.
The Sacketts were filling in a lot near Priest Lake in 2007 to construct a house when EPA officials shut down the project, saying the couple had filled in wetlands without getting a permit.
(Excerpt) Read more at spokesman.com ...
It would be nice to see SCOTUS take the case, rule against the EPA and hold the person who chose to make the decision personally responsible for any expenses this couple became saddled with in order to protect their property.
But, what does the Wise Latina from the Bronx think?
well at least there is one sane member of the SCOTUS.. Is there 4 more?
Who pays this couples legal fees if they win?
Ping.
Then the SCOTUS should bitch-slap EPA back to the stone age.
“But, what does the Wise Latina from the Bronx think?”
Call me Karnac but I’m going to go with a thumbs down from the wise Latina to the homeowners on this one.
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I'm thinking this case is so egregious, she won't want to stick her fat ***, er, neck out on this one.
The EPA is an anti american fascist organization that needs to be completely defunded and dismantled with all employees blacklisted and deported after serving 10 to 20 years in a federal penitentiary at hard labor.
>> But, what does the Wise Latina from the Bronx think?
She thinks Lisa Jackson is smokin’ hot.
Don’t mess with the Sacketts. Just ask the Higgins!
My parents property in Washington state was starting to get “wetlands-like” in a one acre area. They quietly had it filled in.
These are the same parents that, when they had a home available for rent in the 1960’s told me that if someone called who sounded black, I was to say it was already rented. I was in 6th grade at the time and “aware enough toask them why. They said, and I paraphrase: If we get deadbeat white tenants, we can kick them out, but if we get deadbeat black tenants we’re stuck with them.
It is funny how the government controls the activity of its citizens in so many “unintended consequences” sort of ways.
A weak defense of EPA Analysis
With a federal government lawyer conceding almost every criticism leveled at the way the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency compels landowners to avoid polluting the nation’s waterways, the Supreme Court on Monday seemed well on its way toward finding some way to curb that agency’s enforcement powers. Their task was made easier as Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Malcolm L. Stewart stopped just short of saying that EPA was just as heavy-handed as its adversaries — and several of the Justices — were saying.
Perhaps the most telling example: when several of the Justices expressed alarm that a homeowner targeted by EPA’s efforts might face a penalty of as much as $37,500 each day of alleged violation, Stewart made it clear that the fine actually might be doubled, to $75,000 a day, although he tried to recover by saying that was only “theoretical,” and that he did not think that EPA had ever taken that step.
The argument in Sackett, et al., v. EPA (docket 10-1062) did not appear to portend a slam-dunk loss for EPA during the first half of Monday’s argument, when the lawyer for an Idaho couple faced quite rigorous questioning about whether the couple had exercised options that might have been open to them to avert the dire consequences of EPA enforcement. But the tenor of the session changed abruptly as soon as the line of argument chosen by EPA’s lawyer, Stewart, unfolded.
It all came to something of an explosive verbal climax when Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., suggested that the scheme that Stewart had outlined would be considered by the ordinary homeowner as something that “can’t happen in the United States.” Alito ticked off the situation: the homeowner planned to build a house on a lot, the lot was found to have “a little drainage problem,” the homeowner was soon told by EPA that “you have wetlands,” that steps had to be taken to alleviate the environmental threat, that “you have to let us on your premises,” that every day “you face $75,000 in penalties,’ that the homeowner cannot go to court to make a challenge, and that, if there is a court case, it won’t occur “until we choose.”
Stewart did not dispute the recitation even in that accusatory fashion, and could only answer that such an order from EPA would not have been “the first communication” from EPA to the homeowner, since the agency would try earlier to alert property owners of their obligations under the law.
(NOTE TO READERS: This post will be expanded following the afternoon argument.)
I think this is an extraordinary notice by the Justices to the EPA that they better revise their actions immediately since SCOTUS is very clear with this, that if the case comes to the Court later the EPA won't like the outcome. 'With prejudice' ...
Especially a Clinch Mountain Sackett.
{” Then the SCOTUS should bitch-slap EPA back to the stone age “
This is essentially the same SCOTUS (4 libs, 4 conservatives, and Kennedy) that agreed to allow the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide (necessary for all life on the plantet) as a pollutant...
If I’m not mistaken the EPA sued the couple for $40 million dollars!!! Incredible. I salute that couple for not backing down and yes, whoever is responsible should go down!
Thx. :-/
ping for later
All the more reason to help Newt defeat The Messiah in November.
I still can’t believe the EPA cares about a freaking half-acre lot. Even in their twisted world.
FReepmail me to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the SCOTUS ping list.
We're not there yet, but we will eventually come to what I call a 'set to' with these evil people who have infested our country. Powder Dry....
I fear that one day, somebody is going to retaliate for the EPA’s crap and take matters into their own hand. I also think that the EPA should be very afraid that it will happen.
Rats will gnaw their leg off to escape a trap; wounded deer will attack you; what makes anyone think that the animal in all of us will react any differently?
Speaking of ‘taking matters into one’s own hands” ...
We read almost every week about a ‘crazed gunman’ that killsa handful of family/relatives. What we don’t hear unless we dig deeper is the root cause. Feminist ‘family’ courts that screw grown hard working men out of their children, their monies and jail them as in debtor countries. MSM hides the causes and we wake up to another day of MSM lies.
Understandable, but we have to regulate what we feel is eventually going to happen - at least in the severity of the words we chose to voice those feelings.
We have a DHS, TSA, FBI, (and now supposedly, a US Military with the new Appropriations bill - NDAA?), etc. that is just aching to find a regular non-Muslim American to put on a show-trial.
Well, a lot of the Bronx was wetlands back when some of my Dutch ancestors lived in the area back in the 1600s so I’m sure that she would agree that the larger portion of NYC should be leveled and returned to its natural state. While we’re at it, most of D.C. including the area where her home is was once a swamp (wetlands) so let’s start by condemning her property and forcing her to return it to its natural state.
Are you kidding? Obama and the other lefties have been hoping earnestly something like that would happen.
They’ve been pushing Americans, provoking us, aggressively in order to self-fulfill their prophecy that some conservative somewhere will go postal. They’re not afraid of that, it’s one of their wildest wet dreams. The Hussein Administration has been predicting, counting on, and provoking some kind of “right wing” violence from the word go. Frankly, given the wide diversity of tolerance among our ranks and the regime’s hell bent campaign to make that happen, it’s a wonder it hasn’t.
She will do what her Marxist boss wishes. She will ALWAYS rule in cases in a way to increase the power of the State against Liberty.
This is the same Supreme Court which came within one vote of ruling that the 2nd Amendment may say “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”, but since there is no such right anyway, there is nothing to infringe. The 2nd Amendment simply does not exist as to ordinary citizens.
They may get a second bite at that apple sooner or later.
The EPA people did it because the homeowners refused to roll over. Bureaucrats just can’t abide citizens refusing their imperious demands.
This is the same mentality exhibited by the ATF when the gentleman at Ruby Ridge refused to go spy for them, and so they entrapped him into sawing off the barrel of a shotgun, then threatened him with a felony conviction.
Does anyone know how long it takes for a transcript of oral arguments to be posted?
Most of the US would not be farmed or built upon if these ignorant Nazis had been around back then.
Of course the residents then would just have laughed at them, right before the tar and feathers were applied.
For those who might read this who don't typically read SC oral arguments, you might want to keep in mind that you really can't tell how a given justice will vote based on the questions asked.
Oh, I certainly get that aspect -- I'm just trying to figure what made these yahoos even become aware that this half acre in north Idaho even existed. This falls well below the normal resolution of their radar.
Sotomayor and Kagan are left wing activists who were lucky enough to get put on the Supreme Court where they can work their mischief for the next 30 years. There is no case so egregious she won’t vote for it. The Constitution is a living document that needs tweaking from time to time as far as they are concerned. I just pray to God that Ginsberg lives at least 1 hour past Newt’s inaugeration so he can put another Thomas or Scalia on the bench.
Then sent him the wrong court date so they could convict him in absentia, then sent a US Marshal's SWAT team in to provoke a gunfight so they could send in the FBI Hostage Rescue Team to kill the gentleman and his family.
Nolan lit a shuck out of New Mexico again. and is on his way.
Exactly. Our ancestors would have put these jackasses in chains, as would the founding fathers.
I completely agree with you, fire and forget.
In a nation with more guns than people, a population FED UP with abuses of the Constitution (many of them veterans sworn to “support and defend” it), and a clearly ineligible usurper in the White House ... I could easily go on ... it is indeed shocking that nobody has gone postal yet.
All it would take is a couple of guys meeting for a beer after a day at the target range, attract a few like-minded friends as word spreads, and we could easily have a genuine rebellion on our hands.
But I just as equally agree that Obummer DREAMS about us “bitter clingers” starting an armed insurrection. Then he could declare a national emergency, suspend both the election and the Constitution, lock up lots of people without trial, shut down the Internet (and the phones too, why not?) and we would quickly see our first American Emperor.
Infuriating is too mild a word ... and the pressure builds.
Yes, because this is their third Strike. First there was SWANCC v. Army Corp of Engineers where the EPA's migratory waterfowl definition was upended.
Second there was Rapanos v. Army Corp where they were slapped by Scalia about the "waters of the United States"
Now in this case, they attempt an end around the federal courts with their rule making. It is not wise to argue that the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction, or the defendants in a federal action do not have standing .
Three strikes and you're out.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, which also filed briefs in the case, has called it a corporate-backed effort to weaken regulations of the Clean Water Act.
I pulled the quote as a reminder, to myself, that if allowed to implement their Utopia, many Leftists would happily march every Freeper off to labor camps.
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