RUTHFULLY YOURS

If a private company dumped three million gallons of toxic sludge into Colorado waterways, we’d be flooded with daily media updates for months. Yet the press has by now forgotten the disaster unleashed in August when EPA contractors punctured an abandoned mine. New evidence suggests the government isn’t coming clean about what happened.

The House Natural Resources Committee last week released a report detailing EPA’s cascade of failures that resulted in the Aug. 5 blowout of the Gold King Mine, which unloaded 880,000 pounds of metals into the nearby Animas River and other waters.

EPA planned its disastrous investigation of the mine for years, not that you’d know: The agency assumed a layout of the area that contradicted public records, including the remarkable conclusion that a drain ran near the ceiling of the mine’s entrance. This led EPA to believe that water backed up only about half the tunnel. The agency didn’t test the water pressure, a precaution that would have prevented the gusher. EPA hasn’t explained this decision, and emails obtained by the committee show the on-site coordinator knew there was “some pressure.”

The crew made more bad decisions than characters in a horror movie. About a week before the blowout, the on-site coordinator went on vacation and left instructions that his replacement seems to have ditched. For example: Don’t dig toward the tunnel floor unless you have a pump handy. The crew pressed downward without a pump and intentionally unearthed the mine’s plug. “What exactly they expected to happen remains unclear,” the report concludes. The Interior Department now euphemistically calls this series of events an “excavation induced failure.” READ MORE AT SITE

US Marshals Service arrested a Houston man for allegedly failing to repay a $1500 federal student loan that he had received in 1987. According to Paul Aker, he was arrested at his home last week by a group of seven armed deputy US Marshals. He was then taken to a local federal court, where he signed a payment plan for the nearly 30-year-old loan.

U.S. House Rep. Gene Green (D-TX) said that the federal government is recurring to private debt collectors to hunt down debtors. The collectors are obtaining judgements in federal courts and are thus enabled to seek debtors’ arrest by federal marshals. Green said “There’s bound to be a better way to collect a student debt.”

Media reports contend that federal marshals deliver between 1200 to 1500 warrants per year throughout the United States to persons who have not repaid their federal student loans.

According to a reporter for Fox 26 news, the marshals arrived at Akers’ home in “combat gear and automatic weapons.”

Aker expressed incredulity that he had to repay his loan. He said, “I’m home. I haven’t done anything. Why are there marshals on my door?” When he was brought before a federal judge in Houston, Akers said it was “mind-boggling” that he was required to make a payment agreement for the money he owed. He also claimed that he was not read out his Miranda rights nor offered any legal representation. Akers claimed that he had never received a notice of default on the loan for 30 years.

I’m sorry that the crucial importance of Justice Scalia’s now-vacant seat on the Supreme Court meant that the heated battle over filling it was already well underway while most of us, reeling from the profound loss, craved a respectable interval to console his loved ones and reflect on his epic legacy. Yet when I groused to a friend about the unseemliness of it all early Saturday evening, I was gently admonished with this thought: Antonin Scalia loved America, lived to preserve what was great about America, accomplished more in that regard than almost anyone in our history, and would have hoped that we’d follow that example — not just honor his legacy but act on it.

So right.

Thus, a few thoughts about the nomination battle that should not happen.

Of course President Obama is going to propose a nominee. It is a legitimate exercise of his authority to do so. But it is also a legitimate exercise of the Senate’s authority not to entertain the nomination. That is clear from the Constitution’s plain language and attested to by the history of Democratic obstruction of judicial nominees by senators named Obama, Clinton, Schumer, Leahy, et al.

The presumption that a president is entitled to his nominees if they satisfy basic criteria of competence and probity applies to executive-branch officers, not judges. Officers of the executive branch exercise the president’s power and are removable at the president’s pleasure, so naturally the president is entitled to deference in this area — although (a) not if the nominee has a history of misconduct (see Eric Holder), (b) not if he nominates someone who says she will support executive-branch lawlessness (see Loretta Lynch), and (c) there cannot be unilateral surrender — if Democrats reject executive nominees for philosophical reasons, Republicans would be foolish not to respond in kind.

Judicial nominations are a different matter entirely.

Even in traditional, pre-Bork times, the courts were a discrete branch of government. Judges get lifetime appointments that stretch well beyond the presidency in which they are nominated, and far from wielding the president’s power, they are often a check on the president’s abuse of that power. So clearly, even before 1987, the president would not be entitled to the kind of deference that he deserves on executive appointments.

No. 1: No nominee for the high court can get through the Senate before the election. No one.

No. 2: President Obama and the Democratic candidates for president know that. So do Republicans. All God’s children know it.
No. 3: Since the nominee will not be approved, Obama will use the opportunity to advance other goals. He will propose someone who burnishes his own progressive credentials and shows why control of the court depends on the November election. Putting Senate Republicans in an awkward position would be a nice bonus. But the target is November.

No. 4: Obama will nominate someone whose demographic characteristics help in the contests for president and U.S. Senate. That is not just his main criterion. It is his only one. The candidate could be from a purple state. Or a Latino. Or openly gay. Having finished law school would be a plus.