The Supreme Court is back in session, and their first decision of the 2008-2009 US tour lifted a lower court ban on sonar use off the California coast.   This from Yahoo news.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

 

Six justices agreed with the outcome, although Justice John Paul Stevens did not join the majority opinion. Justice Stephen Breyer would have allowed some restrictions to remain, while Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter said the prospect of harm to the whales was sufficient to justify limits on sonar use.

 

The court did not deal with the merits of the claims put forward by the environmental groups. It said, rather, that federal courts abused their discretion by ordering the Navy to limit sonar use in some cases and to turn it off altogether in others.

 

The overall public interest tips “strongly in favor of the Navy,” Roberts wrote. He said the most serious possible injury would be harm to an unknown number of the marine mammals

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“In contrast, forcing the Navy to deploy an inadequately trained anti-submarine force jeopardizes the safety of the fleet,” the chief justice wrote.

Ginsberg’s dissent favors the emanations of the penumbras of the unknown quantity of marine mammals over those of the US Navy and the American Republic.  No one is or should be surprised.  Even a young liberal would be better than Justice Ginsberg.  She has clearly wanderd off the plantation.  Souter sold out to the Georgetown liberal celebrity circuit early on and has long since lost constitutional credibility.

For the record I happen to consider most of Ginsberg’s (and Souter’s) opinions to be harmful to a known quantity of land mammals living in the Constitutional Republic of the United States.

So maybe the Navy can point some Sonar in their direction?