Court: NRC In Violation For Not Ruling On Yucca Mountain 258
schwit1 sends this quote from an AP report: "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] to complete the licensing process and approve or reject the Energy Department's application for a never-completed waste storage site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. In a sharply worded opinion, the court said the nuclear agency was 'simply flouting the law' when it allowed the Obama administration to continue plans to close the proposed waste site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The action goes against a federal law designating Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste repository. 'The president may not decline to follow a statutory mandate or prohibition simply because of policy objections,' Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote in a majority opinion (PDF), which was joined Judge A. Raymond Randolph. Chief Judge Merrick B. Garland dissented. The appeals court said the case has important implications for the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government. 'It is no overstatement to say that our constitutional system of separation of powers would be significantly altered if we were to allow executive and independent agencies to disregard federal law in the manner asserted in this case by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,' Kavanaugh wrote. 'The commission is simply defying a law enacted by Congress ... without any legal basis.'"
Re: Yet another anti-Obama article (Score:3, Interesting)
Speaking to State Department personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil, on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that "this little thing called the Internet ... makes it much harder to govern."
Re:Yet another anti-Obama article (Score:4, Interesting)
What makes you think they were wrong? The choice offered us by the political machine was between an obvious sellout, and an obvious sellout who's also a raving misogynistic looney that's utterly out of touch with what it means to work for a living. I've met very few people who voted for Obama the second time around, but many, many who voted against Romney. When I'm feeling cynical it almost looks like the Republican party intentionally took a dive. And who could blame them - lots of old vultures coming home to roost - it looks much better for the Rs if a D happens to be in the oval office at the time.
Re:Yet another anti-Obama article (Score:0, Interesting)
Big question is how it was OK when Bush did it with his unitary executive powers to do whatever the fuck he wanted up to and including signing the Detainee Treatment Act with a signing statement of "Will not obey and you can't make me." [wikipedia.org] (btw, before you go wah wah consitution like Bush did, the Constitution specifically puts regulation of the military in Congress's hands, incluing the UCMJ and what would be considered violations thereof). But now suddenly the president has make sure the law is faithfully executed as if he had some sort of oath to do so.
or Obama could follow the laws he proposes (Score:5, Interesting)
I couldn't believe he unilaterally decided to ignore Obamacare, the law named after him!
Re:Yet another anti-Obama article (Score:5, Interesting)
that is what is happening.
over the last dozen or so administrations each has taken a little more power and then a little more. frequently flouting the law and not caring about conseqnuesnces unless it blows up in their faces, and then they do the absolutely least amount to make it go away.
For obama it is the NSA spying program. Obama wants to add checks and balances by letting the NSA monitor themselves monitoring every citizen without warrant or reason.
Bush said torture was not only legal, but expanded Gitmo to house people who he thought didn't deserve the rule of law.
Clinton, created and pushed through the DCMA.
Bush senoir basically covered his tracks while he was VP.
Reagan sold chemical weapons to Saddam. Who used them.
Carter was just a pussy.
Ford was a fill in
Nixon um watergate anyone
Johnson, Vietnam isn't a war it was never declared as such by Congress. Vietnam was a police action.
Kennedy? well he slept with more women(and better looking ones) than clinton did.
Eisnhowser? probably the last decent president we had. it is too bad no bothered listening to his warnings on military industrial complex taking over.
Truman? he nuked a country twice.(for a good reason Japan would not have go down easily)
Roosevelt? he was the first and only president to be elected 3 times breaking the tradition since Washington of only two terms. and he created the Executive office of the Presidency.
Re:A track-history of lawlessness (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't forget:
* The Obama Administration, no doubt with an eye to the 2014 elections, has announced that certain parts of the Affordable Care Act (a/k/a Obamacare) will simply be postponed until after the election. Nothing in the ACA gives this power [bloomberg.com] to the Executive branch.
* President Obama attempted to make "bench" appointments when Congress was still in session. Months later, this one got shot down [washingtontimes.com] in the courts.
* The IRS went after political enemies of the Administration. There may or may not have been direct orders from President Obama. (I am not ruling out something along the lines of "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" [redstate.com] instead of direct orders.) Not only is selective enforcement of the law illegal, but the IRS released confidential details of some conservative organizations to those organizations' political enemies, which is absolutely illegal with no possible wiggle room.
* Eric Holder's Department of Justice has a history [frontpagemag.com] of flouting the law.
I read an article that observed that one of the traditional checks on the power of government is the worry that, when the pendulum shifts and the other party is in power, that the other party might start taking advantage of any precedents you set. The article speculated that the Obama Administration isn't worried about this, as the mainstream media is solidly in Obama's pocket and yet implacably opposed to the Republicans. This leaves the Obama Administration free to do things that would get any Republican a firestorm of horrible publicity.
Fans of Bill Clinton, after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, used to chant "Bush Lied, People Died. Clinton Lied, Nobody Died." Remember that nobody died in the Watergate scandal, and think very hard about the Benghazi scandal. But the mainstream media isn't interested in Benghazi or any of the other scandals, any more than they have to be.
I'm not sure why I bothered to write this as somebody will mod it down to -1 really fast, rather than writing a rebuttal.
I think that the party you don't like will get ele (Score:5, Interesting)
One of them, or someone like them, will be president.
If you decide to give the feds power over your life, you are deciding to let Palin, Christie, or Paul make those decisions.
Ron Paul might issue an executive order that condoms have to have aluminum tips - your little head needs a tinfoil hat too.