Little Noted

There is a tiny addendum to the bottom of today's NYT story on the craziness in the House yesterday (which notes that Republicans Wayne Gilchrist, Bill Young, Jim Gerlach and Roscoe Bartlett were those pressure-cooked into voting for the leadership's bill, even though DeLay & Co. knew from the get-go it won't pass in the Senate). The short paragraph added at the end, from an AP piece, reads:

"The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected on Friday what it called a Bush administration effort to "pull a surprise switcheroo" by weakening the government's authority to monitor air pollution from power plants, refineries and factories. The ruling annulled the E.P.A. revisions of air monitoring requirements last year."

The longer AP article fleshes things out a bit: a three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals threw out some 2004 "revisions" of the EPA's interpretation of the Clean Air Act, which contradicted that agency's own policies from 2002. The judges did indeed call this effort an attempt to "pull a surprise switcheroo."

The opinion adds "The upshot of EPA's final [2004] interpretation ... is that state permitting authorities are now prohibited from adding new monitoring requirements. This flip-flop complies with the [law] only if preceded by adequate notice and opportunity for public comment."

Good call.