The United States Supreme Court ruled today that environmental groups do not have legal standing to sue against the logging or environmental destruction of federal land.

“Broad concerns shared by all citizens, like an interest in ‘good government’ or in the ‘health of the forests,’ are not sufficient to establish standing,” Justice Antonin Scalia noted, writing for the court’s 5-4 majority vote.

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After years of appeals and court battles, an unprecedented case over the federal Clean Water Act will face the Supreme Court on Monday.

Local environmentalists organized against a plan by a gold mine nearby Juneau, Alaska to dump mining waste and rubble into a nearby lake. While the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council lost the original lawsuit to stop the plan in 2006, they later won the appeal with the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court now must decide whether mines should be prevented from storing their waste in water bodies, as specified in the Clean Water Act. Alaska issued a permit to the mine allowing it to dump waste in the lake, but environmentalists pointed out the discrepancy.

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A law against selling videos of animal cruelty was overturned last year in favor of Robert J. Stevens and his dog-fight video business.  Steep increases in the number of available “crush videos” where small animals are crushed to appease a sexual fetish have prompted a request to the Supreme Court to make this unspeakable act illegal again.

The 1999 law signed by President Clinton made it unlawful to sell “crush videos” and nearly all depictions of animal cruelty.  Stevens and his lawyers utilized the First Amendment to convince the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia to reverse his 37-month conviction and strike down the law altogether.  The United States solicitor general has asked Supreme Court hear the case soon.

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As the presidential election draws near, Americans will be voting on a number of key issues, among the most important, I think we all agree, is energy.  Will we choose John McCain, the nuclear candidate, or Barack Obama,  the wind, solar, and fuel-efficient car candidate?

One issue that ties in to this debate: the significant loss of lake,  river & marine life that gets sucked into the cooling systems of many older nuclear power plants, battered against the sides of pipes, and heated to death by steam.

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