In an unprecedented decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has sort-of overruled a lower Circuit Court's decision to allow the "Clean Power Plan" to proceed pending final adjudication. The Supreme Court had never before granted a request to halt a regulation before review by a federal appeals court.

In a 5-4 decision, with the usual suspects voting in the usual pattern, the Court stayed implementation of the CPP at the behest of 29 (largely Republican-governed and/or coal-dependent) states and numerous industry-business trade associations, in defiance of both the Administration, the EPA, and 18 mostly-Democratic states, along with a consortium of "environmental" groups.

The plaintiffs framed the CPP as part of the EPA's "war on coal" and described the proposed regulation (issued by the EPA last August as part of the overall campaign to recruit international support for the climate-change agenda of Obama and his coterie) as an unprecedented and illegitimate power grab.

Part of the Administration's defense/response was that the rule gave the states until 2018 to formulate their own "carbon-pollution" reduction plan; left unsaid was that in the absence of such plans, the EPA would be only too happy to do that job for them. Indeed, part of the argument against the CPP was that it was in violation of the Xth Amendment, by which all powers not delegated specifically to the Federal government were defaulted to the states. The CPP was accused of being a federal takeover of states' perquisites, which it in fact is.

“We’re disappointed the rule has been stayed, but you can’t stay climate change and you can’t stay climate action,” said Melissa Harrison, an EPA spokeswoman. Sadly for the EPA and the others fighting against what they deem to be the impending destruction of our planet due to "anthropogenic global warming," you can stay "climate action," and that's exactly what the Supremes did yesterday.