We cannot consign our children to this future. The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now. Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash America's innovation and seize control of our own destiny.

But now it increasingly appears that “the worst environmental disaster in American history” wasn’t all that bad. Yes, the loss of human life was tragic, and the loss of animal life was regrettable -- but it also wasn’t that dramatic. Some birds were oiled and died, always a sad sight. But according to Time, the number of birds killed is -- so far -- less than 1 percent of the avian casualties of the Exxon Valdez. And to date, only three oiled mammal carcasses have been recovered. Three.

“The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared,” federal contractor and geochemist Jacqueline Michel told Time. Ivor van Heerden, another scientist working on the spill, says “there’s just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster. I have no interest in making BP look good -- I think they lied about the size of the spill -- but we’re not seeing catastrophic impacts.” He adds: “There’s a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it.”

It turns out that Obama was right when he said that the Gulf Coast is “resilient” -- a comment that ignited outrage from environmentalists and backpedaling from the White House. And so was Rush Limbaugh, who said the catastrophe talk was overblown. That, too, ignited outrage from environmentalists, but unlike Obama, Limbaugh didn’t care.

According to Frank Rich, the “principal mission of the Obama presidency” is to prove (in Lincoln and Obama’s words) that “the role of government is to do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves.” And on that score Obama has been wildly successful.

The greatest damage from the Deepwater Horizon disaster (and yes, even with the hyper-deflation, it’s still a disaster) has been from the federal government. The drilling ban imposed by the administration, against the counsel of the sort of “sound science” Obama usually sanctifies, has been devastating to the region, costing thousands of jobs and untold millions in lost revenues and taxes. That’s definitely something the people couldn’t have done better for themselves. 

Meanwhile, if Obama is serious about driving America forward to a green economy “even if we don’t yet know precisely how we’re going to get there,” he will take the Gulf region’s devastation on the road, destroying good jobs across the country (the oil and gas industry pays twice the national average) and replacing them with bad ones. He will replace cheap energy with expensive energy. (During the campaign, he promised that his plan would cause electricity rates to “skyrocket.”) He will place bets on unproven technologies while discarding proven ones. In short, he will nationalize a disastrous disaster policy.

Fortunately, his energy plan has died in Congress without a vote, because even members of his own party recognized it as an economic and political suicide pact. A majority of voters never bought into the idea that the Gulf spill was yet another crisis for Obama to exploit rather than fix. If we can put a man on the moon, people said, plug the leak. Even 65 percent of Democrats oppose the ban, according to a Bloomberg poll.

It seems that the American people can make up their own minds better than government can. A point that should be driven home come November.

— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. © 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

I. Repeal Health Insurance Reform.
II. Privatize Social Security or Get Rid of It.
III. End Medicare as it Presently Exists.
IV. Extend the Bush Tax Breaks for the Wealthy and Big Oil.
V. Repeal Wall Street Reform.
VI. Protect Those Responsible for the Oil Spill.
VII. Abolish the Department of Education.
VIII. Abolish the Department of Energy.
IX. Abolish the Environmental Protection Agency.
X. Repeal the 17th Amendment (ending the direct election of U.S. Senators).

Clever, right? Hey, why are you still weeping? Oh, I see. Rasmussen found that as recently as June, 58 percent of voters favored repealing the health-care behemoth? So it wouldn’t be scary if Republicans actually ran on that item.

Oh, and your opponent doesn’t favor privatizing Social Security? Not even a little? Hasn’t she ever said something like “We may have to consider changes to the retirement age”? -- because that can be demagogued as wanting to privatize Social Security. Well, you make a good point. The Republicans (to the dismay of philosophical conservatives and libertarians) have been embracing Social Security as Linus did his blanket, for many an election cycle. I guess, while we’re at it, we might as well go ahead and concede that these same domesticated Republicans haven’t exactly been carrying the banner for eliminating the Departments of Energy and Education (far less the EPA!) for a really long time, though some wish they would.

There, there. Don’t fret. What? Your opponent actually is in favor of repealing the “Wall Street reform”? She says it will create 243 new regulations, just for starters, and that the federal government will now have the power to decide whether pretty much every business in America is taking too much risk. If a federal regulator decides you are making bad decisions, he can close down your shop. Besides, it completely sidestepped the biggest reason for the financial meltdown, Fannie and Freddie, because those were Democrats’ sandboxes. Hmmm.

The unemployment rate in your district is 17 percent? Twenty-five percent among the young? The expiration of the Bush tax cuts will raise taxes for small-business owners, and this will make hiring even less likely? According to the Small Business Administration (another agency principled conservatives would happily kiss goodbye), small businesses were responsible for between 60 and 80 percent of net new jobs in the past decade. But now they’re worried. They don’t know how the new financial-reform bill will affect them, and they’ve seen what the Massachusetts health-care reform did to business there, so they’re extremely nervous about the effects of the national health-care reform. They’re getting by, but they’re in no mood to hire.

In fact, they’re in a firing mood. And they’re looking at you. Here, you’re going to need these tissues after all.

— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Judge Susan Bolton has to get credit for her cheekiness. She took a matter of profound national concern and injected an element of hilarity into it.

As gloriously ridiculous as a classic Monty Python skit, the federal judge’s decision blocking Arizona’s immigration law is an appropriate first volley in the legal war over the law. If our immigration system is to be defined by a judicially sanctioned lawlessness, we might as well dispense with the pretense.

Acting in keeping with federal law, court precedent, and a Department of Justice legal memorandum (not to mention common sense), Arizona said its law-enforcement officers would henceforth check the legal status of suspected illegal immigrants during the course of a lawful stop or arrest. To conclude that the law likely will be struck down for “preempting” federal regulations, Judge Bolton had to engage in complicated judicial gymnastics, which she nailed with all the skill of a Mary Lou Retton in robes.

Taking her cues from the Obama administration’s suit against the law, Judge Bolton worried that too many legal aliens would be caught up in Arizona’s dragnet. Of course, these aliens are already required by federal law to carry proof of their legal status. But let’s put that aside (as Judge Bolton does). She claims that too many legal aliens without ready access to documents proving their lawful entry into the U.S. will be put at risk, including visitors from visa-waiver countries.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that visitors from countries like Norway and Australia are flooding into the border areas of Arizona. And let’s assume they engage in recklessly illegal conduct, daring cops to stop and arrest them. And let’s assume they exhibit all the behaviors associated with illegal immigrants. How could such a visitor escape the dreaded fate awaiting him when an officer asks about his legal status? Perhaps by producing a passport stamped with the duration of his stay, possessed by every visitor from a visa-waiver country?

Judge Bolton piles speculation atop implausible readings of the law. Say a legal alien is arrested and his release is delayed by a check on his status. Let’s put aside (as Judge Bolton does) that on average it takes the staff manning the federal database set up for such checks 70 minutes to get to an inquiry and a mere 11 minutes to answer it. Judge Bolton declares that any delay amounts to exposing legal aliens to “the possibility of inquisitorial practices and police surveillance.”

This is a tautology dressed up with scare words. It’s impossible as a matter of definition to get arrested without experiencing “police surveillance.” As for “inquisitorial practices,” blogger William A. Jacobson notes that “states already routinely run searches for a variety of statuses, including outstanding warrants, child support orders and non-immigration identity checks. Each of these checks potentially could delay release of an innocent person.”

When states want to check on someone’s immigration status, they do it with the aforementioned federal database. As a matter of law, the outfit running it must respond to all inquiries “seeking to verify or ascertain citizenship or immigration status#...#for any purpose authorized by law.” In writing this sweeping requirement, Congress did not make an exception for requests emanating from Arizona.

Too bad, says Judge Bolton. If the state finds too many suspected illegal immigrants, it might overburden the system. Let’s put aside (as Judge Bolton does) that the system already gets 1 million inquiries a year, that it has a theoretical capacity to process 1.5 million and that, as of now, Arizona only makes 80,000 inquiries annually, meaning even a drastic increase could be accommodated. If the federal government fears a surge from Arizona, couldn’t it add some positions to the 153 staffers currently assigned to the database? Think of it as stimulus.

But never mind. With emotions running high over the Arizona law, some comic relief is always welcome. Judge Bolton has provided it.

— Rich Lowry is editor of National Review. © 2010 by King Features Syndicate. 

— Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2010). © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc.