WHILE WE SLEEP – AT 8:11 A.M. ET:  Obama operatives, especially in the EPA, are busy drawing up new regulations they can impose themselves, without an act of Congress.  After the administration took a beating in the 2010 elections, it was widely predicted that it would try to rule by administrative fiat, since it could no longer get major legislation through the House.  The prediction has come true.  From Fox:

A move by the Environmental Protection Agency to revoke the long-standing permits for a mammoth coal mine in West Virginia sends a strong signal that President Obama plans to implement key parts of his agenda even though newly empowered Republicans can block his plans in Congress.

In the aftermath of the November elections, many political pundits predicted that the once-unchecked Obama legislative machine would turn it's energies to federal rulemaking as a way to circumvent Republicans on Capitol Hill. And the EPA’s decision last week suggests that those forecasts were spot-on.

Much to the consternation of the West Virginia delegation in Congress, the coal industry, and the working people of the Mountain State, the agency took the unprecedented step of revoking a mining permit that it had issued four years ago to Arch Coal’s Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, West Virginia.

The revocation prompted unusually harsh responses from West Virginia's two Democratic Senators.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller sent the president a letter which read, in part: "I am writing to express my outrage with the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) decision to veto a rigorously reviewed and lawfully issued permit at the Spruce Number 1 Mine in Logan County, West Virginia. This action not only affects this specific permit, but needlessly throws other permits into a sea of uncertainty at a time of great economic distress."

Sen. Joe Manchin issued a statement which appeared to mock the EPA's permitting process.

"According to the EPA, it doesn't matter if you did everything right, if you followed all of the rules,” Manchin wrote. “Why? They just change the rules."

COMMENT:  When two members of the president's own party harshly criticize the administration, it is news.  The president seems determined to carry out his 2008 agenda, regardless of the public will or damage to a fragile economy.  And the EPA action doesn't begin to exhaust (oh, maybe that's a bad word) the agency's potential for forcing changes that will drive people out of work.

We all want clean air, water, and soil.  But there's a right way and a wrong way, and administrative fiat is the wrong way.  Maybe the president can give a shout out to all those who'll be thrown out of work.

January 18, 2011