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Conservative like activist judges — the conservative kind

Speaking of the federal judiciary, don't miss Brad Plumer on the real substance of current far-right complaints about "activist judges."

Contrary to much "liberal activist judge" mythology, "ninety-four of the 162 active judges now on the U.S. Court of Appeals were chosen by Republican presidents." And Republican appointees have a clear majority on 10 of the 13 circuit courts.

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That said, there's still a certain logic to all these complaints. Most of the Republican judges now on the circuit courts, after all, are merely conservative -- by and large exerting a good deal of judicial restraint. By contrast, as Jeffrey Rosen nicely described over the weekend, a growing number of conservatives -- including and up to Dick Cheney in the White House -- actually want to place strong conservative activists on the court, people who, contrary to "mere conservatives" like Antonin Scalia, would be actively willing to overturn law after law in order to get legal doctrine back to where it was before the New Deal. The sort of judges who will strike down labor and environmental protections, scale back minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws, and take away Congress' ability to regulate commerce.

Jonathan Adler says no.

A while back I mentioned an Atlantic Monthly essay claiming that the real danger of an (even more) conservative federal judiciary is to environmental regulation.

Jonathan H. Adler has a paper in the Iowa Law Review arguing that the danger is minimal, and mainly at the margins, and perhaps not such a bad thing. The abstract is reprinted on Commons, if you want a capsule summary. I can't say I read all 95 pages (!), but I believe the relevant stuff comes toward the end. Here's a long exerpt:

Joel Makower discusses.

Last week I wrote about Nike's new (and laudable) corporate responsibility report. This weekend, Joel Makower mentioned it in the course of a longer discourse about these kinds of reports and what they portend. Good reading.

(And okay, I give up. If they are "corporate responsibility reports," why is the acronym "CSR" always used?)

Rice-A-Phony

China, Europe experiencing illegal GM crop introductions Two delicious scandals are brewing over the illegal introduction of genetically modified crops — rice in China and corn in Europe — onto […]

oh, and oil.

Speaking of China and oil, Peak Energy has a long and informative post up about the convergence of those two portentous topics.

Brand v. Romm

I wrote earlier about Stewart Brand's attempt at provocation, an essay called "Environmental Heresies." Now Technology Review has started a special blog where Brand will duke it out with Joseph Romm, former Dept. of Energy official and "hydrogen economy" debunker. Should be interesting to follow.

Kaisha Atakhanova fought to keep nuclear waste out of Kazakhstan

Kaisha Atakhanova. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. The Republic of Kazakhstan bears the scars of its Soviet past. Intensive agriculture has drastically shrunk the inland Aral Sea, creating one of the […]

These six activists have won a top prize — and countless battles

The winners: (clockwise from left) López, Ewango, Roth, Tamayo, Goldman (cofounder of the prize), Atakhanova, Jean-Baptiste. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. You know it’s been a tough year when you’ve spent […]

Find out the biggest pollution sources near you!

One of my favorite tools is the EPA's eGRID database, which contains emissions data on nearly every electric power generation source in the United States.

You can use it to educate yourself and your friends about which coal-fired power plants upwind of you will benefit from Smokey Joe Barton's latest transparent attempt to gut the Clean Air Act.

Spend a few hours exploring the power plants in your area and state, and in no time you'll be the toast of your town's cocktail circuit. Download it now, while the EPA still exists!

Stossel uses Crichton for ratings

Sorry to beat the dead horse that is the John Stossel/Michael Critchton lovefest, but I thought Stossel's On the Media interview April 8 was just too rich to miss. At the end of a somewhat testy interview about the state of scientific consensus on climate change, On the Media co-host Brooke Gladstone said:

In December, you featured novelist Michael Crichton on 20/20, and you praised him for contradicting something most people believe and fear. You went on to say that environmental organizations are fomenting false fears in order to promote agendas and raise money. Why use a fiction writer to refute the scientific community?

JOHN STOSSEL: Because he's famous, and he's interesting, and he's smart, and he writes books that lots of people read, and I could interview the scientists for 20/20, but more people will pay attention when this particular smart fiction writer says it.

Famous! Market grabbers! By those standards, Hollywood is chock-a-block with climate experts.  Let's swell those IPCC ranks!