Free Republic

Taxes fund environmental suits - Environmental law firms reap billions in fees to fund lawsuits October 15, 2009 The federal government has paid out billions of dollars to environmental groups for attorney fees and costs, according to data assembled by a Cheyenne, Wyoming, lawyer. Karen Budd-Falen of Budd-Falen Law Offices [main@buddfalen.com or 307-632-5105] said the government between 2003 and 2007 paid more than $4.7 billion in taxpayer money to environmental law firms -- and that's just in the lawsuits she tracked. The actual figure, she said, is far greater. "I think we only found that the iceberg exists," she said....

Then head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, he invented a new form of what 19th-early 20th centuries Tammany boss George Washington Plunkett famously called “Honest Graft.” It was simple. Until 1977, Congress had to approve any settlement of a civil suit against the Federal government over $100,000. This preserved the Constitutional requirement that Congress control the government’s purse. But in that year, seeking relief from the burgeoning volume of suits to review, Congress removed the cap, handing the Justice Department a permanent blank check to pay settlements unilaterally, in any amount, out of an account known as the Judgment...