Posted by Jonathan Adler:
Sunday Song Lyric:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_02_08-2009_02_14.shtml#1234100832
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decided
[1]United States v. Cundiff, a case arising out of Mulhlenberg County,
Kentucky, concerning the scope of federal wetland regulations
post-Rapanos. The wetlands at issue were a "festering eyesore,"
according to the court, largely due to acidic runoff from an nearby
abandoned mine site. Rather than describe the poor environmental
conditions of the land in its own words, however, the Court dropped a
footnote to "Paradise," a [2]John Prine song about Muhlenberg County's
environmental woes.
And daddy won�t you take me back to Muhlenberg County Down by the
Green River where Paradise lay Well, I�m sorry my son, but you�re
too late in asking Mister Peabody�s coal train has hauled it away .
. . .
Then the coal company came with the world�s largest shovel And they
tortured the timber and stripped all the land Well, they dug for
their coal �til the land was forsaken Then they wrote it all down
as the progress of man . . .
When a court quotes lyrics like this, you can assume a challenge to
federal environmental regulation will not fare well. And so it was.
The Sixth Circuit upheld federal jurisdiction over the Cundiffs land.
The full lyrics are available [3]here, and here's a [4]video of Prine
performing the song.
References
1. http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/09a0035p-06.pdf
2. http://www.johnprine.net/index.html
3. http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/prine-john/paradise-10845.html
4.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=john+prine+paradise&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=0OCOScv4BoH8tgeMisSECw&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title
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