In all the news overload lately, I missed that the Clean Water Act

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had been overturned. You can burn a river, but not a flag.

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1. according to this it was not...

I am confused. I was on vacation last week and missed this...

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=494440&category=OPINION&newsdate=6/26/2006

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Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy deserves praise for refusing to join the assault by his conservative colleagues on the bench on a key environmental law. His vote proved the decisive one in keeping the Clean Water Act from being overturned. But it was disconcerting nonetheless to see Justice Kennedy trying to define a wetland. It was even more unsettling to read the inventive definitions put forth by the court's conservatives. Supreme Court justices may be experts on the law, but that hardly qualifies them as experts in ecology.

Instead, they should have focused strictly on the facts of law. At issue was the federal Clean Water Act, and how the Army Corps of Engineers applied it when it determined that two Michigan developers had filled in wetlands without a permit. The developers contended that the corps had gone too far in its interpretation, and the four conservatives on the high court agreed. But then they began to weigh in with their own ideas of what constitutes a wetland.

The question is why. Congress established a precedent for making such decisions. When it passed the Clean Water Act, it invested the Corps of Engineers with the authority to decide how it would be applied. Even the Bush White House grasped this, and sided with the corps in urging the Supreme Court not to hear the Michigan case.

For now, Justice Kennedy's definition of a wetland will act as a guide for Congress, the corps and other interested parties to follow. It provides protection for wetlands that have a significant impact on the "biological integrity" of an aquatic system. That is broad enough to cover many wetlands that might well have been at risk had the four conservative justices prevailed.

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2. Thanks. That's something good, at least, for a change.