EDITORIAL : THE NEW YORK TIMES, USA

Mr. Obama’s Energy Vision

It was instructive and depressing this week to watch President Obama and Congressional Republicans marching in completely different directions on energy policy. Mr. Obama reminded us that charting a clean energy future is not a pipe dream and that America can reduce its dependence on foreign oil. The Republicans reminded us how hard it will be to get there.

The outcome depends in no small measure on how hard Mr. Obama is willing to battle for his policies. As he showed again in a speech on Wednesday, he has no trouble articulating energy-related issues. What remains in doubt has been his willingness to see the fight through. This time must be different.

Beset by rising gas prices and Middle Eastern turmoil, Mr. Obama, like other presidents, decried the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. He also said there were no quick fixes and that a nation with only 2 percent of the world’s reserves cannot drill its way to self-sufficiency.

He then offered a strategy aimed at, among other things, reducing oil imports by one-third by 2025, partly by increasing domestic production but largely by producing more efficient vehicles and by moving advanced biofuels from the laboratory to commercial production.

These are achievable goals. Reducing oil imports by one-third means using 3.7 million fewer barrels a day. The fuel economy standards set last year by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation will yield 1.7 million of those barrels; the next round of standards, now on the drawing boards at the E.P.A., will yield another 1.7 million barrels. Advanced biofuels and improved mass transit could get us the rest of the way.

None of these goals will be reached if the Republicans who dominate their party have their way. One particularly destructive amendment to the House’s irresponsible budget bill would strip the E.P.A. of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases from vehicles and stationary sources. This authority, conferred by the Supreme Court, made possible the current fuel economy rules — which would be cast into doubt if the bill became law. It is obviously essential to any new round of rule-making. The bill also gave short shrift to most other clean energy programs.

Then there are three bills offered by Doc Hastings, the Washington Republican who leads the House Natural Resources Committee. The bills would effectively rewrite the rules governing offshore drilling imposed after the gulf oil spill, opening vast areas of the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic to exploration and greatly accelerating the measured pace at which the administration has been issuing drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico.

The chances for responsible progress seem greater in the Senate, despite mischievous efforts to undermine the E.P.A. by Republicans and some coal-country Democrats. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, is demanding a vote on a bill that would mimic the House budget measure by stripping the agency of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases. John D. Rockefeller IV, a West Virginia Democrat, has reintroduced a bill that would delay any such regulation for two years, which is almost as bad because such delays have a way of becoming permanent.

A more positive note was sounded Thursday by a bipartisan group of senators assembled by Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat, and Saxby Chambliss, a Republican of Georgia. The group is the remnants of the so-called Gang of 10 that tried to work out a sensible energy strategy during the “drill, baby, drill” hysteria of the 2008 presidential campaign. The group failed then, but Mr. Obama’s speech appears to have inspired a reunion — a tender shoot Mr. Obama should move quickly to encourage.

Failure of Empathy and Justice

When President Obama listed empathy as a valuable trait for a justice during his 2009 search to replace David Souter, the idea drew scorn from some conservatives who saw it as an excuse for being soft. But a Supreme Court ruling this week provides evidence of how useful empathy is, and of how not using it can lead to glaring injustice.

Connick v. Thompson is about the wrongful conviction of John Thompson for robbery and murder after prosecutors in New Orleans withheld evidence from Mr. Thompson that would have cast serious doubt on his guilt. He spent 18 years in prison and came close to being executed. He was exonerated after a prosecutor fessed up.
After Mr. Thompson sued, a federal trial court found the office liable for failing to train its prosecutors about their constitutional duty to turn over evidence favorable to the defense and awarded Mr. Thompson $14 million in damages. Now, by a 5-to-4 vote, the conservative majority of the Roberts court has overturned that ruling, saying the office can’t be held liable for a sole incident of wrongdoing.
The important thing about empathy that gets overlooked is that it bolsters legal analysis. That is clear in the dissent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her empathy for Mr. Thompson as a defendant without means or power is affecting. But it is her understanding of the prosecutors’ brazen ambition to win the case, at all costs, that is key.
After detailing the “flagrant indifference” of the prosecutors to Mr. Thompson’s rights, she makes clear how critically they needed training in their duty to turn over evidence and why “the failure to train amounts to deliberate indifference to the rights” of defendants.
The district attorney, Harry Connick Sr., acknowledged the need for this training but said he had long since “stopped reading law books” so he didn’t understand the duty he was supposed to impart. The result, Justice Ginsburg writes, was an office with “one of the worst” records in America for failing to turn over evidence that “never disciplined or fired a single prosecutor” for a violation.
For the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas asserts that Mr. Thompson failed to prove that the office “disregarded a known or obvious consequence” of its inaction. That doesn’t reckon with the “culture of inattention,” as Justice Ginsburg calls it, which made deplorable breaches far too predictable. Justice Ginsburg’s dissent is the more persuasive, focused on the problem at the heart of the case and at the heart of a legal system that too often fails to see defendants, guilty or not, as human beings.

Chancellor Merkel’s Shellacking

Even after pandering to voters’ fears about nuclear power, the euro and NATO operations in Libya, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany got a shellacking in her Christian Democratic party’s traditional bastion of Baden-Württemberg. We hope Mrs. Merkel, whose term runs until 2013, draws the right lessons and hews more closely to her own principles and Germany’s larger interests.

Sunday’s election took place in the shadow of Japan’s unfolding nuclear power-plant disaster. The future of Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors (four of which are in Baden-Württemberg) was the biggest issue, and the antinuclear Green Party was the biggest winner.
Mrs. Merkel was vulnerable after she pushed through a law extending the legal life of Germany’s reactors from 30 years to more than 40. Then, just ahead of the election, she ordered an immediate 90-day shutdown of the seven reactors built before 1980. It was the right thing to do, but it cast doubt on the earlier extension and left voters wondering what she would do when the 90 days ran out.
Mrs. Merkel’s flailing efforts to have it both ways on Europe’s endangered currency also left voters wondering where she really stood. She portrayed her decision to stretch out Germany’s contributions and her demands for growth-killing austerity as shielding German taxpayers from the extravagance of slothful European neighbors. Voters punished her for pledging any bailout money at all. Prolonging the crisis and impeding growth in the euro-zone will hurt German banks and exporters.
Mrs. Merkel has also been disappointing on Libya. Although NATO has long been the linchpin of Germany’s defense plans, she ostentatiously removed German ships in the Mediterranean from NATO command to keep them clear of operations in Libya. Germany also abstained in the United Nations Security Council’s vote authorizing action, joining Russia, China, Brazil and India.
Most of Mrs. Merkel’s postwar predecessors rightly believed that Germany’s economic prosperity was firmly tied to the European Union and its military security tied to NATO. It is becoming increasingly hard to figure out what Mrs. Merkel believes.

A Fresh Season for Managing Regret

It’s never easy getting back into the baseball season, what with the sport’s self-generated scandals and star-crossed narcissists. Fans yearning for the plain nine-inning deal — bat, ball, glove and hopes under open skies — lately had to wince at testimony about the monstrous side effects of illicit hormones taken by batters obsessed with hitting even more home runs. All Babe Ruth ever was reported abusing were hot dogs and beer.

In the New York game, money is inevitably in the lineup. Yankee players sound ecstatic at finally being rated underdogs to the Red Sox, who spent with Yankee abandon in hiring new Boston players. The Mets, in contrast, have hit such grim times that a piece of the team is being offered for sale to keep the club operating.

The team, as everyone knows, was hard hit in the Ponzi scheme concocted by Bernard Madoff, who is in prison as this season opens. Mets fans desperate for the crack of the bat still reel from the auction of Madoff property that saw his satin personalized Mets jacket fetch $14,500. They’d consider it just if he can’t get the Mets on cable.

Nine innings of distraction are a cure for life’s setbacks, and Mets loyalists can comfort themselves with that universal mantra of wait ’til this year. Hope is the thing with flutters, as last season’s comeback Met, R. A. Dickey, demonstrated with his looping knuckleballs and postgame philosophical riffs. “This game is about how to handle regret. It really is,” Dickey advised, a worthy theme for the brand-new season.