Wetlands Litigation
From Yahoo News: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court said on Tuesday that it would decide the reach of the federal government's power to regulate wetlands, an issue pitting environmentalists against property-rights advocates.
The justices agreed to decide a pair of Michigan cases, involving a shopping-center developer and a condominium builder, that will test whether the government's use of the 1972 Clean Water Act represented a permissible exercise of Congress' authority to regulate interstate commerce.
The high court will consider whether federal regulators have gone too far by restricting development of wetlands that are not adjacent to navigable waters such as rivers or lakes. Read entire piece.
I hate cases like this in which strong ideas which I hold dear find themselves at war. Property rights? All for them - the foundation of economic freedom. Protection of the land? All for it. Trust states and localities to do the latter? Forget it. But is that right and principled? Maybe not. Are local, state and the federal govt corrupted by money? Yes - but it's not campaign contributions - it's tax money that corrupts them. They get to spend your hard-earned $ to buy re-election. Which is why a town govt will usually prefer a Walmart to a marsh.
