“HUNTER: Glenn, I’ve got a bill I’m introducing today which says no other law with standing, and that includes the Endangered Species Act which stops you from brushing your own property, any private person may brush back their property as far as they want for purposes of fire protection. ... “
Which reminds me, the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, the same year as Roe.
The leftists are totally insane.
That was no coincidence. A few months ago, I read about the record of SCOTUS Harry A. Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade. He was also the one advancing wacko-environmentalism through his liberal interpretations. My own summary from reading various sources is below. One wonders how he would feel about the "incursion" if looking back, today.
On environmental issues he called for an "imaginative expansion" of traditional standing concepts that would allow public interest groups to enter environmental cases. When the Sierra Club was found to lack standing as "a representative of the public" in a case challenging the development of a ski resort in the Sequoia National Forest (Sierra Club v. Morton, 1972), Blackmun lamented "The case poses ... a wide, growing, and disturbing problem, that is, the Nation's and the world's deteriorating environment with its resulting ecological disturbances. Must our law be so rigid and our procedural concepts so inflexible that we render ourselves helpless when the existing methods and the traditional concepts do not quite fit and do not prove to be entirely adequate for new issues?"BTW, Blackmun was appointed by Richard Nixon and incessantly described as "a strict constructionist."As one of two alternatives, he wrote in his dissent "I would permit an imaginative expansion of our traditional concepts of standing in order to enable an organization such as the Sierra Club... to litigate environmental issues. This incursion upon tradition need not be very extensive. Certainly, it should be no cause for alarm. ...We need not fear that Pandora's box will be opened or that there will be no limit to the number of those who desire to participate in environmental litigation. The courts will exercise appropriate restraints just as they have exercised them in the past." The case, and others expanding upon it, opened federal courts up to a wealth of litigation.