Daily Caller.

The Supreme Court rolled back the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate under the Clean Water Act (CWA) in a unanimous decision Thursday.

Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, brought by a couple prevented by the EPA from building a home on their own land near Priest Lake, Idaho because it contained wetlands, considered the scope of the agency’s “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule, which defines what “navigable waters” can be regulated under the CWA. Plaintiffs Chantell and Mike Sackett, who have spent 15 years fighting the agency’s rule in court, allege the EPA has overstepped the authority it was granted when Congress enacted the CWA in 1972—forcing them to stop construction on their land or face fines.

The Supreme Court sided with the Sacketts, determining their land is not covered under the text of the CWA, which gives the EPA authority to regulate “navigable waters.”

Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barett, that the EPA’s interpretation “provides little notice to landowners of their obligations under the CWA.” The Court held that the CWA applies to only wetlands that are “as a practical matter indistinguishable from waters of the United States,” maintaining a “continuous surface connection.”

EPA restrictions on wetlands is similar to civil asset forfeiture.  It amounts to thievery.  It’s wrong and everybody knows it.

The opinion was “unanimous,” but the picture isn’t so rosy as you might suspect.

Though justices were united in their judgement, they maintained disagreements on definitions. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in an opinion concurring in judgement that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, thought the majority went too far in its test for which wetlands are included.

“By narrowing the Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the Court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States,” he wrote.

Kagan similarly said in an opinion joined by Sotomayor and Jackson that the majority has appointed itself as “the national decision-maker on environmental policy” by choosing a test that “prevents the EPA from keeping our country’s waters clean by regulating adjacent wetlands.”

“The eight administrations since 1977 have maintained dramatically different views of how to regulate the environment, including under the Clean Water Act,” she wrote, noting some “promulgated very broad interpretations of adjacent wetlands.”

“Yet all of those eight different administrations have recognized as a matter of law that the Clean Water Act’s coverage of adjacent wetlands means more than adjoining wetlands and also includes wetlands separated from covered waters by man-made dikes or barriers, natural river berms, beach dunes, or the like,” she wrote. “That consistency in interpretation is strong confirmation of the ordinary meaning of adjacent wetlands.”

So the other “justices” sided with the sensible ones, but they want all but the most obvious examples to be decided by the FedGov, with property owned by the same.

Thus, the Leviathan only got his hand slapped rather than smitten into ruin on the rocks like he should have been.

Interestingly, Mark Smith sees this as very important for gun owners.  See how this decision applies to the ATF and why lawyers will be citing it in the coming months.

David Codrea:

As for the first part of his statement, it’s funny he prefaced it with “But I’ll be honest with you,” and then failed to mention who has done comparison shopping in such neighborhoods and then reported which purchase offered more quantity and variety selections, was quicker, easier, less expensive and scary, and carried fewer inherent risks. It’s also funny he failed to mention why that was the fault of gun owners, and where he got the talking point from.

Barry is a liar, and he’s not very creative either.  He has to use the lies created by other people in order to have talking points.  It’s a far cry from his lofty rhetoric and prediction of the cessation of the “rising of the tides” with his advent.  David has written a good article and vetted Obama’s sources on this one.  I find it amusing when we know their tricks.  Similarly, their astroturfing has been such an abysmal failure that it does more for our side than theirs.  Read all of David’s piece.

Kurt Hofmann:

This unimaginably courageous man, “armed” only with a shopping bag, is one of CSGV’s despised “insurrectionists”? Granted, one could make the case that refusing to meekly surrender to the government’s unlimited coercive force is indeed “insurrectionist” behavior, even when unarmed, and thus doomed. The Chinese government no doubt believes it was. But isn’t that a good thing–something to be admired, even revered?

Very good catch, Kurt.  Go read what Kurt is talking about.  And no, CSGV couldn’t care less about ending totalitarianism’s rule over the people, leading to such things as the murder of children under the still-enforced one-child policy.  As long as the collective is unhindered in its aims, then the CSGV is happy.  That says all sorts of remarkably bad, ugly, obscene things about Josh Horwitz, doesn’t it?

From Glenn Reynolds, backyard grilling targeted by the EPA.  Glenn responds, I’M INCREASINGLY IN FAVOR OF BACKYARD TARRING-AND-FEATHERINGS THAT TARGET THE EPA.  David Codrea also notes this today.

Yes, tar and feathers.  It seems to me that it’s past time for disobedience and threats.  Until the federal government has a healthy fear of the people, they will continue to perpetrate this sort of obscenity.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Isn’t this just swell?  According to this article in Technology Review, there are two, new approaches being tested for making coal-burning power plants cleaner and more efficient:

A pair of new technologies could reduce the cost of capturing carbon dioxide from coal plants and help utilities comply with existing and proposed environmental regulations, including requirements to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Both involve burning coal in the presence of pure oxygen rather than air, which is mostly nitrogen. Major companies including Toshiba, Shaw, and Itea have announced plans to build demonstration plants for the technologies in coming months.

The basic idea of burning fossil fuels in pure oxygen isn’t new. The drawback is that it’s more expensive than conventional coal plant technology, because it requires additional equipment to separate oxygen and nitrogen. The new technologies attempt to offset at least some of this cost by improving efficiency and reducing capital costs in other areas of a coal plant. Among other things, they simplify the after-treatment required to meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

The article doesn’t state how much money is being sent down the rat hole to develop these new technologies, but, regardless of the amount involved, this is such a colossal waste that I don’t know whether to laugh or punch the fake rhino head on the wall.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is still on a holy crusade against “global warming” by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, despite the fact that the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory has been repeatedly exposed as a sham.   As a result, precious time, money, talent and resources are being directed towards solving a “problem” that doesn’t exist.

The Left wants to talk about stimulating the economy, but what about the stimulative effect of lowering the cost of electricity to businesses and consumers?  Imagine the effect of simply eliminating the EPA’s carbon dioxide emission standards on the generation of electricity?  This is the sort of thing that should be high on Romney’s to-do list in January 2013.