Via The Washington Post:

As an applicant requesting a stay of the Clean Power Plan, we believe there is a more charitable explanation for the Supreme Court’s favorable decision than the Feb. 11 editorial “Putting the brakes on clean power” suggested. The Obama administration called our request for a stay “extraordinary and unprecedented.” Those words more aptly describe the Environmental Protection Agency’s power plan.

The high court’s ruling puts the brakes on a plan to transform the nation’s electricity grid by a federal agency that lacks the legal authority to impose such costs on Americans, let alone the competence to manage this far-reaching undertaking. The editorial urged Congress to “wake up” and act, but Congress acted by resolving to block implementation of this rule, only to bedenied by the president.

The court’s decision effectively gives states more freedom to manage their own energy and environmental needs without coercion. The administration and other deniers of economic harm must now acknowledge that two of the three branches have expressed grave doubts about the EPA’s costly power plan.

Hal Quinn, Washington