The controversy over the Clean Air Act is worth understanding because it reveals a pivotal development that EPA and the environmental groups would prefer to conceal: the 40-year-old act is no longer a sensible way to regulate large-volume conventional air pollutants such as ozone and particulate matter.

Come November, it is very unlikely that conservative voters will stay home. So, barring a truly fringe GOP nominee, they will vote against Obama no matter what. Already, the conversation on the right is moving toward the all-important question of "electability."

REINS would improve environmental regulation by giving legislators a role in updating our obsolete environmental statutes. EPA has been rolling grenades to succeeding presidential administrations since it was established. The origin of the rolling, ticking hand grenades is Congress.

Congress should apply to climate change the market-based solution that it successfully applied to acid rain nearly twenty years ago.

The Environmental Protection Agency will celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Clean Air Act, but the Clean Air Act cannot handle today's pollution problems and time to really celebrate will come when the Clean Air Act is itself reformed to make it capable of dealing with today's challenges.

Reforming the Clean Air Act’s treatment of conventional pollutants would both ease political resolution of the greenhouse gas issue and improve control of conventional pollutants.

The Warner and REINS proposals are excellent ideas but, at least in the area of the environment and the economy, are no substitute for reforming the underlying statutes.

Our military commitments demand substantial increases in defense spending.