Thank you teabaggers and Conservatives for more Toxic Drinking Water

Its not looking good right now but I think the alternatives are worse.

 

I think it is great that they are trying to reign in the problems caused by earlier courts' far too expansive view of the interstate commerce clause. Congress is supposed to be a body of limited, enumerated powers as defined in Art. I. Intrastate waste disposal would fall outside any rational reading of Art. I, but under the crazy tests where anything that COULD have a SUBSTANTIAL EFFECT in the AGGREGATE is subject to congressional regulation they were morphed into a body of unlimited powers. Once the court decided congress could regulate a man growing food for his own consumption, it was clear that a reversal needed to take place.

 

looks like we got a new sam lik lawyer who's gonna drop abstract legal language on us non legal scholars.


Cool, its a lesson

 

Agreed. I don't know if it's possible to expect all persons to not let their own opinions influence their decisions, but I still agree.

 

I agree. You know the system is working when the Supreme Court checks the laws passed by congress to make our water clean. This way, they do the right thing by balancing clean water with polluted water. You don't want things tilted too much into the "clean" area. Got to give all water equal access to households.

 

things like due process suck too. Think how more efficient the criminal justice system would be if stupid lawyer rules that stop important pieces of evidence from getting into court didn't exist either.

This is just a legal thing. Congress is just going to rewrite the law with the correct language. You can all stop freaking out now.

 

Disagree that our system is broken. Just the opposite, actually, as the past 10 years or so have been some of the most challenging political environments we've ever seen ...and yet our democracy never missed a beat.

Many other countries could not have sustained the 2000 election or even the 2008 election. No other country on earth could elect an 'outsider' to be their leader. Could you imagine France electing a black guy? Or Iraq electing a white guy? Or China electing a hispanic? Or or or.

Money always has been and always will be the primary driving force that moves the world. Fact of life.

 

Not sure why you make this analogy, when they are totally different things.

Why should that be even necessary? My point is that in the end, a system is only as good as the people carrying out its function. Even a "perfect" system that's really good in theory(which I believe our government is) has tons of problems in practice because of the people in it.

 

The nature of our system is to recognize the imperfection of human society and as such create a system that has checks and balances and prevents the majority from running roughshod over the minority. In the vision of many of the Founders the situation we have now of a frequently gridlocked government is exactly what they envisioned.

 

I agree with you in regard to if you are talking about what the founders probably thought but dealing with something like air and water pollution this might've been something that they weren't fully aware of. With things like water pollution watersheds, both surface and ground, often cross many state boundaries and as such bear upon interstate issues.

For instance I live a mile away from the Mississippi and me dumping toxic waste onto my backyard is an act that takes takes place completely in one state but the water table eventually drains into the Mississippi and that has affects to many other potential states.

 

Likewise a restaurant that serves bad shrimp can affect people across state lines because they might have a customer from a neighboring state, but that is minuscule compared to the local effect. This is occurring in one state and the vast majority of the effects are in one state. The proper vehicle for handling this is state law. The New Deal court (like the New Deal congress and president) decided it would be a great idea to just do everything at the federal level, so now we have our current system. I like any effort by the court to try to reverse that trend, even if it is not the perfect vehicle to do so (the Raich medical mar1juana case would have been much better, but Scalia wasn't going to vote in favor of allowing pot).

 

I admit that my US government knowledge isn't what it used to be, but how does gridlock affect Supreme Court decisions? Or apply in this case at all?

And while they may envisioned gridlock, do you think they envisioned using tons and tons of pork to get through such gridlocks? And are they okay with that?

 

If the alternative had been McCain and Palin, I'm sure those countries would consider pretty hard.