Coalition of states claims climate change is still up in the air

Well, if U.S. President Barack Obama has learned anything in his first year in office, it's that there's no way to please everybody, no matter what. So, news from Washington today that 12 states had joined lawsuits seeking to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions shouldn't surprise anyone. Lawsuits are one of the major ways that public policy gets done, especially when business interests are involved. Florida, Indiana, South Carolina and nine other states asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to block the EPA from issuing rules to control such emissions, according to the Reuters international news service. Their petitions join three filed earlier this year by Virginia, Texas and Alabama, Reuters said. The suits ask the EPA to reopen hearings on an "endangerment finding" it issued last year that greenhouse emissions are dangerous to people. The April finding, which became final in June, enabled the EPA to begin regulating greenhouse emissions under the Clean Air Act. Regulations expected to be issued shortly would require cars and light trucks to increase their energy efficiency. "If EPA doesn't reopen the hearings we will move forward to try to stop them from regulating greenhouse gases," said Brian Gottstein of the Virginia Attorney General's office, Reuters said. The states complain that the new rules are too heavily based on climate change reports from the United Nations that have been criticized for exaggerating some data. But 16 other states have petitioned to join the case in support of the EPA. The new rules are consistent with an Obama administration pledge to use regulations to curtail emissions if Congress does not pass a climate bill, which has been stalled in the legislature, Reuters said.

The government is really on trial in Padilla case

Word from San Francisco that the Obama administration is pressing for the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by an infamous terror suspect should come as no surprise to anyone. As everyone has seen in the past 12 months, last year's historic change at the top of the U.S. government did not mean that everything would be completely different from that point on. The government is involved in so many things, it is not possible -- nor desirable -- for all of them to change immediately. When it comes to lawsuits already in process, like the one filed by the family of Jose Padilla against University of California Professor John Yoo, the government cannot reverse positions without considerable legal maneuvering. Anyway, even if the government wanted to change course, it could, and maybe should, simply rely on the legal process to force that change. Even given that, it is not always clear what the government's best interest is. Take the Padilla case. You remember Padilla, right? He is the U.S. citizen accused of plotting with al-Qaida to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb in the United States in 2002. Padilla was declared an "enemy combatant" by the Bush administration and isolated in a U.S. Navy brig in South Carolina for more than three years. His and, his family's lawsuit alleges, was subjected to the kind of corporal mistreatment that Yoo, then a U.S. Justice Department lawyer, contended was not torture in a now infamous memorandum in 2002, according to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. According to allegations in the lawsuit, Yoo was subjected to sleep and sensory deprivation, kept for long periods of time in total darkness and blinding light, and threatened with the deaths of himself and his family if he didn't talk to U.S. interrogators. This is the kind of mistreatment the United States and scores of other nations agreed to eliminate in treaties signed after World War II. But Yoo's 2002 memo theorized how the Bush administration could possibly justify mistreatment of detainees while maintaining that the United States adhered to international treaties pledging that it would not engage in such conduct. The Padilla family lawsuit sought token damages against Yoo, contending that he had personally authorized the mistreatment, the Chronicle said. But the United States -- then the Bush administration, now the Obama administration -- contends that there is no legal right to sue lawyers who give advice to the president on issues of national security. That is not an insignificant point, and is probably correct. It will be interesting to see if the federal courts can resolve the question without deeply limiting access to the court system that citizens authorize and pay for. Yet the legal machinations are obscuring what is the fundamental issue here -- the United States mistreated detainees in violation of its own laws and its international obligations. The Obama administration is fighting the claim because that's what lawyers do when sued -- fight until and unless an honorable settlement becomes clear. And what about Padilla himself? The government withdrew the dirty bomb charges and put him on trial for an unrelated conspiracy, for which he was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison, even though he likely has gone insane while incarcerated -- if he wasn't insane already. So, whether Padilla's family can sue or not, all the legal arguments in the world cannot change that the U.S. government's reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks went beyond the bounds of civilized conduct. The people have already spoken and replaced the Bush administration -- it's time for the legal system to stop obfuscating and start putting the responsible officials on trial.

House vote on Wilson highlights historic hostility directed at new president

At least most of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives remember what an insult is when they hear it directed at someone else. That someone else, of course, is President Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, whose speech to a joint session of Congress was interrupted by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) on Sept. 9. The House voted 240-179 on Tuesday -- largely along party lines -- to pass a resolution of disapproval against Wilson, who shouted "you lie" during Obama's speech, according to Cable News Network (CNN). No matter what anybody thinks about Obama, the financial crisis or the health care debate, this was clearly an insult and a violation of common sense. He is the president of the United States, and a measure of respect is called for. Nobody in government interrupted George W. Bush while he was speaking, and he was probably the worst president ever. In fact, nobody in government has ever blatantly interrupted a speech by the president in the country's 220 years, according to the House historian, CNN said. But what does it mean that our elected representatives treated even this as a partisan matter, except possibly for the 12 Democrats who voted "no" and the seven Republicans who voted "yes?" Do the House Republicans think their organized opposition to whatever the Democrats -- and Obama -- propose is reason enough to abandon rules that have kept debate at the Capitol civil over all these decades? Hasn't the Republican Party done enough to polarize the country by trying to demonize Democrats who opposed the last president and who supported Obama? The disapproval resolution was the mildest punishment the House could levy on Wilson, who apologized to Obama right after the speech but refused demands from Democrats to apologize to the entire chamber. "In my view, by apologizing to the president, the most important person in the history of the world, that applied to everyone," Wilson said during Tuesday's debate on the resolution in the House, CNN reported. But Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Wilson's refusal to apologize to the House merited punishment, whether Wilson apologized to Obama or not.