[riverrunner]

"What about air emissions regulations, for example? Say you own a factory and there is a certain regulation that governs the emissions from your exhaust stack. Now assume that your state's environmental agency promulgates a new regulation that reduces the allowable emissions. Your factory is now worth less, since you must spend money to meet the new regulations. Do you deserve compensation?"

It could be. To put it more simply, if the state makes a law that your property, such as say a gun, is now contraband, it should compensate you for it. If the State changes regulations, because of new evidence, to promulgate public health, then the public should pay for the damages created to promote that health.

In most such cases, if the evidence is clear, then victims can sue for damages as well.

If the property owner acted in good faith, they should not be damaged for the public good, without compensation.

The EPA has disregarded hundreds of years of precedent in the way that it unilaterally bankrupts people for merely owning property, even if there is no link to damages.

[hoosierham]

Nixon's great sin was not Watergate,but creating the EPA.

And G.W. Bush's great sin is the creation of the Homeland Security agency.

Both huge,powerful,un-needed expansions of federal power and encroachments on American freedom,when agenvcies already existed to deal with the instant problems.If the relevant agencies were ineffective they should have been disbanded or reformed,not aggrandized.