Favorite president of the United States?

[Everybody Nose]

Meh, screw it.

[Nick]

Interstate commerce is generally where they're going to derive the federal power to enact environmental standards.

Waterways are different than air. Emmissions in Ohio effect mountains in Vermont. It would really be totally assinine and overly complex without a standard.

[Philip55]

That's a pretty asinine way to spell asinine, but of course I wouldn't be so obnoxious as to point it out. [img]smile.gif[/img]

There are certain cases in which I agree that environmental regulation by the federal government is constitutional and proper.

There was general agreement at the time that regulating "commerce among the states" is a right of superintending the commercial regulations of every state so that no regulation imposed by a state would be partial to that one state, or contrary to the common interests of the states.

Madison's resolution, which led to the measure, is introduced by a preamble entirely explicit to this point:

Whereas, the relative situation of the United States has been found, on trial, to require uniformity in their commercial regulations, as the only effectual policy for obtaining, in the ports of foreign nations, a stipulation of privileges reciprocal to those enjoyed by the subjects of such nations in the ports of the United States, for preventing animosities, which cannot fail to arise among the several States, from the interference of partial and separate regulations.

So it is the power to strike down by federal supremacy and interfere with partial regulations of the states.

The plain and direct words of the Constitution are consistent with this understanding: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

[ January 26, 2005, 01:44 AM: Message edited by: Philip55 ]