Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

President Barack Obama and family stuck their toes in Florida for 26 hours on their way to a ten day family stay at toney Martha’s Vineyard. Peter Nichols of the Tribune’s Washington Bureau  explains the motivation for the trip: “Having urged people to visit the Gulf Coast, the Obamas risked looking elitist, so White House aides arranged the trip to the Florida Panhandle. They got the pictures they wanted. Obama took a dip in the bay and high-fived his daughter, who made a hole in one at a miniature golf course.” While in Florida, Mr. Obama stuck his toe, once again, into the New York mosque-cultural center controversy. While he appeared have approved the building of a mosque and cultural center a little more than a stone’s throw from the place where, more than 9 years ago, jihadi terrorists had rubblized the World Trade Center Twin Towers, Mr. Obama now began to massage the message. The nineth anniversary of the terrorist incident in New York is coming around this September 11...

The Environmental Protection Agency has never said the air is safe to breathe and never will--as clean-air expert Joel Schwartz has pointed out--because the day it does, is the day it is out of a job. EPA writes the regulations under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 for the six pollutants—seven, the Supreme Court having just added another, carbon dioxide. Three times EPA has declared new standards, each one tougher, for ground-level ozone, first at 0.12 parts per million for one hour, then at 0.08 parts per million for eight hours, and in March at 0.075 ppm for eight hours. This latest change, declares EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, is “the most protective” in history from air “simply too dirty to breathe.” (EPA defines as “unhealthy” anything above its latest arbitrary standard.) Each time the standard is changed, the new standard is always the most protective in history, since it is always tighter than the standard it replaces. EPA declares that tightening the ozone ...