"I Cannot Think of Many Things More Frightening": The Supreme Court Has Declared War on Governing

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

50% : "The Court today issues what is really an advisory opinion on the proper scope of the new rule EPA is considering," she wrote.
48% : And on Thursday, on the final day of an already historic, cataclysmic term that saw the end of nearly five decades of jurisprudence protecting the right to abortion and other judicial overreach, six justices on the Supreme Court finished what five began at the dawn of the prior Democratic administration: They defanged the Environmental Protection Agency's power to curb carbon pollution under the federal Clean Air Act, in a near-fatal blow to the government's rulemaking authority to ensure the air we breathe is a little safer and the impacts of climate change blunted.
48% : The particulars of the legal issues decided in West Virginia v. EPA are wonky and steeped in the language of administrative law.
41% : In Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, Congress empowered the EPA to take measures to get at the root of sources of any substance that "causes, or contributes significantly to, air pollution" that "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare."
39% : But the bigger sin of West Virginia v. EPA is that the Supreme Court isn't just hobbling an agency, an administration, or even a president wishing to respond to a pressing issue of national importance.
35% : Because that mandate to ensure the nation's air is breathable is clear, Obama's Clean Power Plan sought to regulate power plants under it and nudge them from dirty, fossil fuel-reliant sources of energy, like coal, to cleaner ones, including natural gas, solar, and wind energy -- with these last two sources taking precedence.
22% : That plan was not to be: A number of Republican-led states, industry groups, and coal companies sued to block its implementation, and the rest is Supreme Court history: Scalia, Chief Justice John Roberts, and justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito blocked it from taking effect.

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