Posted on 06/19/2006 10:06:40 AM PDT by Sandy
Edited on 06/19/2006 10:09:01 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Here in N.Y. State we own a piece of property that has a squishy part that is RIGHT NEXT TO A BUSY RAIL TRACK. We were told that it's a "wetland" that birds could use for water. We investigated and wound up with a five-foot pile of paper that was confusing and beyond belief. I am not exaggerating here.
I believe it. Each state is more craven than the next when it comes to taking away property rights.
Oh! So he's taking over for "Wheeler/Dealer" Sandra Day O'CONner??? Looks like Dubya owes us at least one more justice we can count on to be reasonable and rational!!!
Hey! Did you see this little trickle down in the "right" direction? Time for another "Bucket Brigade" by "the people?"
The Wetlands People have dictated drainage runoff from a parking lot that emptied into a slough that was not flowing most of the year and which connected to a river that was in itself a somewhat navigable slough before the CoE did a flood control project that didn't save Fairbanks when the real flood came.
What a putrid pantload!!! I'm sick of these GovernMental EnvironMental Pagan Religious Zealots!!! They are eating out our existance like maggots!!! Actually, they're enough to gag maggots!!!
Hardly. As Scalia notes in his scathing review of Kennedy's opinion:
"Justice Kennedy’s disposition would disallow some of the Corps’ excesses, and in that respect is a more moderate flouting of statutory command than Justice Stevens’.15 In another respect, however, it is more extreme. At least Justice Stevens can blame his implausible reading of the statute upon the Corps. His error consists of giving that agency more deference than reason permits. Justice Kennedy, however, has devised his new statute all on his own. It purports to be, not a grudging acceptance of an agency’s close-to-the-edge expansion of its own powers, but rather the most reasonable interpretation of the law. It is far from that, unless whatever affects waters is waters."
Scalia is an odd man. At times he's such a tremendous writer, as he is here, and so quickly calls b.s. when he sees it. Here he calls Kennedy out for making the plain text of the language into something more than it is simply to make the purposes enforceable--though more enforceable than the drafters intended. And he notes that to define "waters" as "whatever affects waters" is absurd (Kennedy has done just that, of course).
Kennedy could have sided in more than the judgment. Because he decided instead to play the O'Connor waffling game, now the litigation will continue as to what constitutes a 'nexus' in every wetlands case. It's an enviroweenie lawyer's dream. Roberts subtly points this out.
But then there's the Gonzales v. Raich type cases, where Scalia puts out more b.s. than his incisive comments in other cases could ever make up for, and in that case, he essentially agreed with the argument that anything that affects interstate commerce IS interstate commerce.
Scalia is a wonderful ally to Constitutionalists, generally, but a terrible hypocrite when he turns his back on us.
I don't see how Kennedy's opinion will be "the controlling one." Looks like the liberal writer is throwing a bone to the eco-fascists.
I'd say this is an affirmation of the SWANCC decision that declared that ponds aren't navigable waters.
This decision appears to tell the EPA fascists that ditches and puddles aren't navigable waters. It also mercifully kills the idiotic "migratory molecule rule" that tried to claim that water that might be evaporated by the sun can be regulated because that water might fall into a navigable waterway.
Several years ago, the USSC clearly told the idiots on the 6th circus not to prosecute Rapanos and to read and apply SWANCC to his case. The 6th circus, the EPA fascists and the Army Corps of Corpulent Clowns ignored that order and have now been appropriately slapped down.
Now I hope that Rapanos' attorneys will file a civil suit against these federal fascists for trespass, perjury, extortion and violation of his civil rights. And then criminal charges. I want to see these goosestepping Marxists in prison.
All this means for land owners is that now they must wait and see!!! In other words, just as I said here earlier, Kennedy did pull an O'CONnor and totally muddied up the water till nobody wins anything until someday in the distant future, the next case like this clarifies the ruling ruined by Kennedy!!! A total exercise in futility!!!
Thanks for your reply. Unless Americans stand up and fight for property rights we are lost. We are still fighting and I'm getting nasty with local officials. And I love your tagline which is beautiful.
Thanks, it's one of my favorite taglines so far. I don't think I'll ever change it.
I agree. Kennedy screwed up what should have been a good ruling...instead of deciding the case on its merits, he waffled. Stating that "...the Corps/EPA must go back to court and prove the nexus between isolated wetlands and the waters of the U.S."
Watched Cspam a while back and the attorneys from the different factions were talking about this case...turned my stomach...turned it off, couldn't take it - and me being somewhat of a resource policy geek. There wasn't a single lawyer who cared about reality - they all argued arcane case law; common sense be damned!
The surest way to destroy the environment is to let the lawyers manage it!!!
Or especially the government and it's lawyers!!!
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