U.S. scientists muzzled on warming

[waltky]

Supreme Court confuses jurisdiction issue...

EPA dropped wetlands cases, memo says
Mon., July. 7, 2008 WASHINGTON - Agency cites uncertain jurisdiction after 2006 Supreme Court ruling

The Bush administration didn't pursue hundreds of potential water pollution cases after a 2006 Supreme Court decision that restricted the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate seasonal streams and wetlands. From July 2006 through December 2007 there were 304 instances where the EPA found what would have been violations of the Clean Water Act before the court's ruling, according to a memo by the agency's enforcement chief.

Officials "chose not to pursue formal enforcement based on the uncertainty about EPA's jurisdiction," according to the memo, which was released Monday by two Democratic House committee chairmen. The EPA also chose to "lower the priority" of 147 other cases because it was unclear whether the intermittent streams, swamps and marshes flowed into navigable waterways.

Chief Justice John Roberts predicted the court's decision would be confusing, saying "regulated entities will now have to feel their way on a case-by-case basis." The confusion primarily surrounds temporary streams and wetlands not large enough to be navigable, but which are among the most prevalent types of waters across the country.

More EPA dropped wetlands cases, memo says - Environment - MSNBC.com

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Animal activists attacking scientists in their homes
Mon., July. 7, 2008 - More protesters using firebombs, flooding, acid at researchers’ front doors

In the hills above the University of California's Berkeley campus, nine protesters gathered in front of the home of a toxicology professor, their faces covered with scarves and hoods despite the warm spring weather. One scrawled "killer" in chalk on the scientist's doorstep, while another hurled insults through a bullhorn and announced, "Your neighbor kills animals!" Someone shattered a window.

Borrowing the kind of tactics used by anti-abortion demonstrators, animal rights activists are increasingly taking their rage straight to scientists' front doors. Over the past couple of years, more and more researchers who experiment on animals have been harassed and terrorized in their own homes, with weapons that include firebombs, flooding and acid.

Scientists say the vandalism and intimidation threaten not just themselves and their families but the future of medical research. Specialists in such fields as addiction, eyesight and the aging brain have been targeted. "It used to be everyone was worried about their laboratories being broken into and their data being destroyed, their animals being taken away," said Jeffrey Kordower, head of the Society for Neuroscience's animal research committee. "What they've decided to do now is make things more personal."

‘If you had to hurt somebody ... it would be morally justifiable’