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Politico reports that Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), who backed away from his demand for a vote to head off EPA's 'endangerment' rules this fall -- in return for a promised lame-duck vote from Harry Reid that, apparently, one person in town believed -- is really serious this time about making sure EPA doesn't take down the coal industry. Er, without Congress designing how it does so.

Firing the first salvo in what is expected to be a top energy issue in the new Congress, Sen. John Rockefeller said Wednesday that he's raring to go in his controversial bid to handcuff the Environmental Protection Agency's climate regulations for two years.

Operative phrase? "For two years". He wants to beg a legislative deal on that which has died legislatively and now stands zero chance of being enacted before 2013 and, as being run with by a rogue EPA, threatens to tarnish his party badly only to quite likely lose in court.

Killing EPA's effort outright would remove the false urgency of, indeed the only motivating factor the warmists have left for, Congress 'doing something'. So he's also got to be concerned with taking the wind out of the sails of a February Congressional Review Act veto of these rules now in effect which, if passed by the House, would put Rockefeller's team in a very uncomfortable position. Similarly, he must head off the "Blackburn" one-pager affirming the Clean Air Act as written does not cover carbon dioxide, otherwise known as plant food. Passage of that, too, would prove uncomfortable. And that surely will be a popular idea come 2012.

Either would doom the global warming industry. He does not seek to doom the global warming industry. He instead says he wants to ensure viability for coal. Which the global warming industry and agenda is dedicated to bankrupting. As our president even admitted so was he, with his plans.

What is a partisan to do? Something's gotta give.

So, this is a call for Congress to manage the deconstruction of the coal industry. Well, just as incoming House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton may not remember what Barack Obama admitted cap-and-trade was designed to do, and apparently accepts that this is really about the climate and can be pursued 'reasonably', possibly Sen. Rockefeller doesn't get it. But I think he probably does. He also probably understands that if Obama succeeded legislatively with the unpopular head-on assault of Waxman/Markey or Boxer/Kerry, it would have been a generational death for hs party and many of those with a professional "D" after their names, among a very large number of Americans. Many of them in West Virginia.

Republicans, please don't be too gullible. This is to beg a deal. No deal. The Clean Air Act written and amended should merely be reinstated to its prior form before the Supreme Court said in a 5-4 opinion that EPA can regulate absolutely anything as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act -- including pure, clean oxygen -- if emitted into the atmosphere, if it grounds its claim in the Act which grants EPA judicial deference to "agency expertise".

Kill this. Kill the rules. Kill "This reading of the statute [which] defies common sense", in the words of Justice Scalia. And stop enabling this dangerous global warming industry.