Cubed: Fair enough, and you're right about not being prosecuted under laws that have changed (i.e. animal buggery...oh, wait, that still is a crime...heheh...forget it). However, those past-polluters have been sitting in violation for the past three years while the Admin. held off until they managed to change EPA ah, laws. I question the "efficiency" label as one that is easily applied whenever one wants to re-characterize their actions. Plus everything is economic. We prosecute murderers, however, first and foremost because it's simply wrong, although you could quite easily make an efficiency argument too about why random murders would drag down the economy.

When we look back to some of the horrors of pollution, I think the efficiency argument is further weakened (and nice try with the absurdist example of the Warbler - we're talking billowing plumes of un-treated coal fumes that lead to acid rain, contaminated drinking water, and lung problems - obviously editors read enough Grisham novels to catch on to the lawyer tricks). Efficiency, like anything else, is dependent on perspective. It's certainly more efficient for the companies and their creditors and employees to operate without costly scrubbers and monitors weighing down the bottom line. Not so much for the neighboring housing market or farm, however. Should the laws be modernized to ensure effective remedies? Yes, but that's not what Bush is really doing. He's taking off any risk of sanction.

When you let the asylums run the place...well, you know how that chestnut goes. No one should be left to police themselves. Just like taking a quiz in high school where you grade your own results (or worse, let your best buddy do it), there's little incentive to mark "F" when with a few cosmetic changes, you have a "B". And what market, exactly, is there for pollution regulation? I'm not going to buy a car from GM because it (or its supplier) uses hundreds of dangerous, polluting chemicals to make the impact-resistant plastic resins in a bumper? By the time I learn of all this, it's water under the bridge, and GM has pledged to change its evil ways.

If Bush wants to phase out antiquated laws, that's one thing. But leaving nothing in their place seems a bit drastic, and not very realistic.