The Supreme Court has sided with an Idaho couple in a property rights case, ruling they can go to court to challenge an Environmental Protection Agency order that blocked construction of their new home and threatened fines of more than $30,000 a day.

Wednesday’s decision is a victory for Mike and Chantell Sackett, whose property near a scenic lake has sat undisturbed since the EPA ordered a halt in work in 2007. The agency said part of the property was a wetlands that could not disturbed without a permit.

In an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court rejected EPA’s argument that allowing property owners quick access to courts to contest orders like the one issued to the Sacketts would compromise the agency’s ability to deal with water pollution.

“Compliance orders will remain an effective means of securing prompt voluntary compliance in those many cases where there is no substantial basis to question their validity,” Scalia said.

In this case, the couple objected to the determination that their small lot contained wetlands that are regulated by the Clean Water Act, and they complained there was no reasonable way to challenge the order without risking fines that can mount quickly.

Read More at The Washington Examiner

Mitt Romney’s China investment controversy is far from over. A March 15 story in the New York Times concerning Romney’s family trust investments in a Chinese company that manufactures surveillance cameras used by the Communist Party-ruled police-state apparatus continues to cause waves and draw attention to U.S. policies vis-à-vis the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that are immoral, as well as being harmful to our economy and harmful to the human rights of the Chinese people.

The Times piece reported that Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Romney, stands to profit from its buyout of Uniview Technologies, the Chinese company that is one of the largest providers of surveillance technology to the Beijing regime. Team Obama viewed the article as a godsend, providing an opportunity to counterattack Romney’s criticism of President Obama’s “weakness” on China and his administration’s failure to recognize that “the Chinese government continues to deny its people basic political freedoms and human rights.” Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter accused Romney of “hypocrisy” and of being “less than forthcoming” with his financial statements, especially as they relate to China.

In a press statement, Cutter said:

Now we know why Mitt Romney has been less than forthcoming about the details of his finances. Romney and his trustee claimed that he divested completely from Chinese-based companies. But today we learned that he continues to have a partnership interest worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in a Bain Capital fund that owns a Chinese video surveillance company. This revelation not only highlights Romney’s utter hypocrisy on China, but it also raises more questions about what his investments are and why he won’t reveal all of them.

The Times article reveals both less in the way of damning facts than Obama supporters would like us to believe, and more than Romney supporters would like to admit. The Times piece notes, for instance, that Romney had placed his stocks in blind trusts and had no control over the Chinese investments. It reported: “Mr. Romney has had no role in Bain’s operations since 1999 and had no say over the investment in China.”

It noted further: “In a statement, R. Bradford Malt, who manages the Romneys’ trusts, noted that he had put trust assets into the fund before it bought Uniview. He said that the Romneys had no role in guiding their investments. He also said he had no control over the Asian fund’s choice of investments.”

Romney and his supporters have focused on the “blind trust” aspect of the Uniview Technologies stock, asserting that since he had no control over the purchase it represents no contradiction of his criticism of Obama’s China policy and no financial conflict of interest. They have also taken some solace from the report by the Washington Post that Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has a much larger stake than Romney in the Bain Capital Asia Fund that owns Uniview.

Read More at The New American By William F. Jasper, The New American

The often insightful and amusing Michael Kinsley (who like me overlapped with Mitt Romney at Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan) leads off his Bloomberg column with Barbara Bush’s comment that this year’s presidential campaign was “the worst campaign I’ve ever seen in my life.” Before making some sensible points about Rush Limbaugh and Bill Maher, he pivots to criticism of her husband’s successful 1988 presidential campaign.

That year, Kinsley writes, George H. W. Bush “built a repulsive campaign against Michael Dukakis based on state prison furlough policy, obscure judicial rulings about reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and the need for laws against burning the American flag.” This is the standard liberal interpretation of the 1988 campaign: Michael Dukakis was ahead by 17 points but Bush brought him down by raising trivial and unfair “wedge issues.” (A wedge issue, of course, is one on which your candidate’s position is widely unpopular.)

My particular gripe here is about the “state prison furlough policy.” Kinsley doesn’t specify what that policy was, so let me do so. Over a period of 11 years Dukakis as governor of Massachusetts supported and protected against repeal a state policy granting weekend furloughs to prisoners sentenced to life without parole. People who were supposed to remain in prison for the rest of their lives were allowed to go free on weekends.

Dukakis’s defenders have long claimed that he didn’t respond properly to this charge. But what could he say in its defense? There are no rational arguments for this policy. None. Dukakis’s adherence to it, until he grudgingly signed a repeal bill shortly before launching his presidential candidacy, showed a stubborn refusal to renounce a policy that made absolutely no sense. This was liberalism carried to a ridiculous—and dangerous—extreme.

Those decrying Bush’s use of the furlough issue often refer to it as “the Willie Horton issue.” Willie Horton was a Massachusetts inmate sentenced to life without parole for murdering a young gasoline station attendant. Granted a weekend furlough, he failed to return to prison and eventually traveled to Maryland where he terrorized a couple in a home invasion and was prosecuted and sent to prison. Naturally the Maryland authorities did not return him to Massachusetts, even though a prison official pointed out that Horton had returned to prison after earlier furloughs.

Read More at The Washington Examiner By Michael Barone

Have you heard that Malia Obama, the president’s daughter, is reportedly spending her spring break in Oaxaca, Mexico? Allegedly, she’s jetting off with some of her classmates and 25 Secret Service agents to a country that the State Department has said all Americans should avoid. But something is different about the latest “Obama vacation controversy:” references to it are disappearing from the Internet — and fast.

 Read More at The Blaze By Erica Ritz, The Blaze