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Court: NRC In Violation For Not Ruling On Yucca Mountain
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.'"
The checks and balances in our government are what stands between a successful government of the people and a dictatorship. What powers you give Obama today, or gave Bush yesterday, may be in the hands of a form of Hitler tomorrow.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
...and why are you giving the NRC and Obama bravo's? They are CLOSING Yucca mountain, not getting it completed and therefore usable.
'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.
That's all this president has been doing since he's been in office. He ignores the parts of the law he doesn't agree with and rigorously enforces the parts he does agree with. That's why nobody will trust him on comprehensive immigration reform -- he'll just waive the parts of the law he doesn't like. You can't deal with a man like that. Imagine that! An un-American, law-breaking, lying president. Ah, ye fools!
Or the Obama administration could you know, follow the law.
I couldn't believe he unilaterally decided to ignore Obamacare, the law named after him!
Here are some laws that the administration has famously ignored, instead of pursuing a repeal through the democratic process. There are probably more.
Again, I'm not saying any one of these laws is a wise law, but they are (or were in the case of DOMA until overturned) duly legislated, therefore the executive had a constitutional duty to enforce them until such time the laws are repealed by the legislature or overturned by the courts. Where is the Republic going when the executive branch no longer feels constrained by the law or the democracy?
It always surprises me that people forget - if you allow the president a power grab, you're giving that power to a future President Palin or whoever. Don't want Palin making your healthcare choices, including contraceptives? Keep the federal government out of health care.
The law (passed in 1983) said that once a location is chosen, the agency is allowed 3 years to make a yes or no determination, with one-year extensions if they become necessary.
All that is required is a simple "Yes" or "No", within three years.
The 3-year clock started ticking in 2002.
Since 2002 over $100M has been spent simply waiting for the yes or no answer.
Both the original court order and this appeals court order are repeating: The law says you must give a yes or no answer within three years. The time is expired, you must give your answer.
The problem is entirely political. They cannot answer either way and still expect to get votes, so they bury their heads in the sand and refuse to do anything other than cash the checks.
In some ways I am jealous; how many jobs can you do nothing for a decade and still collect a tithe of a billion dollars for it? Are they accepting new hires? It seems like a bureaucrat's dream.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
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.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
...and why are you giving the NRC and Obama bravo's? They are CLOSING Yucca mountain, not getting it completed and therefore usable.
Umm, maybe this is a bit of an obvious thing to say, but given that you're at a +5 informative and I've been modded troll, perhaps not obvious enough...
Why are they closing Yucca mountain?
Is it perhaps because all the money was witheld due to pressure from the NIMBYs, thus leaving closure the only option? The NRC pushed for years to get this operational and failed time and time again... because they couldn't ride roughshod over the courts. They tried. They failed. I admire that effort, though it failed.
Obama had no choice but to mothball it; It was even part of his 2008 election campaign -- the NIMBYs, led by their commander Senator Harry Reid, vigorously campaigned to kill it. They won. Before Obama even took office, funding was cut, cut, and then gutted, cut some more, and roasted over a fire. Obama is now riding roughshod over the courts to get the money invested in the program back out, because he can't overcome NIMBY.
So you've got the NRC on one side, trying to get past the endless appeals of the court system to get it done. You've got The NIMBYs on the other side, trying to keep it in court forever so it'll never get done... and you've got Obama in the middle saying "Fuck this -- Appeals court; GTFO." All he's trying to do is get some traction one way or another -- he picked pulling out because pressure was too great, not because the project isn't necessary. And yeah, I support that -- politically it's his only option. Just as the NRCs only option was to try to get around the courts before lobbyists got to Congress and killed it. It was a race... they lost. And the whole nation loses too.
All of this because our goddamned court system is a giant monkey wrench in the guts of anything that society needs, but individuals don't want near them: Like prisons, sewage processing plants, nuclear reactors, etc. I bravo both Obama and the NRC because they recognize it's the court system that's fucking things up and they tried to do and end run-around them. They both failed. They were both on opposite sides of the problem... but ultimately, they both agreed on where the problem was: The goddamned courts.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
In theory, Gitmo is for enemy combatants, not terrorists. Or at least that's how it started.
You really don't want to go down the path of civil trials for enemy combatants. Being an enemy soldier and firing at US troops is not illegal, nor is flying a bomber over a US city and dropping bombs on civilians. Doing so without being in uniform violates every treaty governing war for the past 400 year or so, but it's only the "not in uniform" part that's illegal. A downed enemy bomber pilot should be released at the end of the war, not executed for mass murder.
But in 2011 yet another incremental power grab (Obama's in this case, but it's not like the pattern is new) extended "covered persons" (those for which military justice is appropriate) to members of terrorist groups and people giving assistance to them. That crosses the bright line separation between "enemy soldier (in uniform or otherwise)" and "just some guy opposed to the US". For the former to apply to a US citizen, he has to fly to Afghanistan and point a rifle at a US uniform - really hard to abuse to go after local political opponents. The later can be stretched to apply to just about anyone, by submitting "evidence" to the secret courts where there's no defense present.
I have no problem with having P.O.W. camps when we're fighting, whether or not war was officially declared. But to effectively convict someone who clearly isn't an enemy soldier of treason without a trial? That's Star Chamber nonsense right there, the exact sort of thing we had a revolution to get away from.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Do you think having Palin or Jeb Bush running the healthcare system, making health decisions for you, would be a good idea? How about Chris Christie? Ron Paul? Do you want them tracking your emails and phone calls?
;)
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.