Bakken, Birds and Boundaries

Three interesting articles I came across last week...

How "North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia" by Stephen Moore in the WSJ tells the story of Harold Hamm, the discoverer of the Bakken fields of the northern Great Plains, and how we have the potential to be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade".

The biggest obstacle to getting us to achieving that goal?  President Obama and the current Washington maze of bureaucracy, regulations and misplaced faith in green and alternative energy.

A perfect example of the utter nonsense that the oil and gas industry in this country has to put up was highlighted in this article by Ann Althouse.

It seems the U.S Attorney has hauled seven oil and natural gas companies into federal court for allegedly killing 28 migratory birds that were found dead near oil waste lagoons.  However, wind farms kill an estimated 440,000 birds each year.  How many wind companies have been prosecuted?  ZERO!

I have said it before and I will say it again.  The federal government is not supposed to be in the business of picking winners and losers.  It is supposed to protect the citizenry and make sure that we have a level playing field.  Another example that shows how far we are from the government that was envisioned by our Founding Fathers.

Finally, an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by Clark Neily entitled, "The Myth of Judicial Activism".  Mr. Neily cites some interesting stats.

If lawmaking were a sport, how often would we expect politicians to put the ball in the constitutional basket versus putting up constitutional bricks? In principle, the Supreme Court's strike-down rate should equal the rate that the other branches of government exceed their constitutional authority. Given how often it is accused of activism, one might think the Supreme Court's strike-down rate must be off the charts. In fact, the opposite is true.

Over the 50-year period from 1954 to 2003, Congress enacted 16,015 laws, of which the Supreme Court struck down 104—just two-thirds of 1%. The court struck down an even smaller proportion of federal administrative regulations—about 0.5%—and a still smaller proportion of state laws: 455 out of one million laws passed, or less than one-twentieth of 1%.

In fact, on an annual basis, the Supreme Court struck down only three out of every 5,000 state and federal laws passed. Compared with the explosive growth of government, the Supreme Court's efforts to impose constitutional limits on the legislative and executive branches are barely blips on the radar screen.

The problem is that the Courts in this country have spent too much time "writing" laws and have not spent the necessary time enforcing limits on government power.  How many dictates, mandates and edicts have come from the courts over the last 50 years?  They need to forget that type of judicial activism and get active in what the Constitution established as their principal role- policing constitutional boundaries.