Nuclear Winter: The Aftermath from an Environmental Perspective
I get an occasional email newsletter from the environmental advocacy group Bush Greenwatch, which focuses on legislation and the ill effects of BushCo appointees and policies toward the environment, and today's focuses on the potential benefits to environmental policy--via commentary by Doug Kendall, executive director of Community Rights Counsel (CRC)--of the recent accord over the filibuster/Nuclear Option over BushCo judicial appointees:

But environmentalists appear to have cemented a landmark victory in the so-called "Gang of 14" deal, reached by a bipartisan coalition of Senators: namely,the defeat of William Myers, a long-time grazing and mining lobbyist nominated for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. If the Democratic filibuster on Myers holds, as it should, this will mark the first time in history a judicial nominee has been defeated primarily on environmental grounds. [...] Even more important, perhaps, is a new provision that was added at the last minute at the behest of Senators Robert Byrd and John Warner. It is worth quoting in full: We believe that, under Article II, Section 2, of the United States Constitution, the word "Advice" speaks to consultation between the Senate and the President with regard to the use of the President's power to make nominations. We encourage the Executive branch of government to consult with members of the Senate, both Democratic and Republican, prior to submitting a judicial nomination to the Senate for consideration. As this provision illustrates, President Bush could have avoided this war over his judicial nominations simply by taking more to heart his responsibility to make judicial appointments with "the advice and consent" of the U.S. Senate. The fact that seven Republicans signed a deal with this paragraph included is a clear rebuke to President Bush for his unilateral and overtly-ideological judicial selections. This paragraph gives some meaning to the phrase "extraordinary circumstances": if the President picks a controversial Supreme Court nominee without any consultation with Democrats, they can plainly argue extraordinary circumstances exist.

Here's a bit more on Mr. Myers from a Bush Greenwatch article from early 2004, during his initial run to nomination to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals:

Until he resigned in October, William Myers was chief attorney for the Bush Interior Department, where he helped shape the weakening of Administration policies on the Endangered Species Act. He also contributed to the curbing of federal protections to prevent destructive mining and overgrazing of public lands. [...] An ethics investigation by the Interior Department's inspector general is pending over Myers' approval of questionable settlement with a rancher cited for overgrazing public lands. A second complaint was closed earlier this month when the inspector general ruled that despite meeting 37 times while at Interior with representatives of the grazing and mining industry, including former clients, Myers -- a former lobbyist for mining and grazing interests -- did not violate an ethics agreement. Before joining Interior, the Boise, Idaho, attorney served as a lobbyist for the National Mining Association, among others. From 1993-1997, Myers was executive director of the Public Lands Council, a trade association promoting the interests of ranchers who graze sheep and cattle on public lands, and director of federal lands for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Not a single member of the American Bar Association's committee that rates federal judicial nominees found Myers "well qualified." More than a third rated him "unqualified." In one legal opinion Myers wrote at Interior, he overturned the opinion of his predecessor so that Interior Secretary Gale Norton could approve a 1,650-acre, cyanide heap-leach gold mine in California. The Clinton Administration had concluded it would irreparably damage a portion of the Quechan Indian Tribe's "Trail of Dreams," a crucial spiritual site for the tribe. To reverse his predecessor's opinion, Myers had to make a tortured legal interpretation that the word "or" in a statute in fact meant its exact opposite: "and." A federal judge found that in doing so Myers violated three separate rules of statutory interpretation and "misconstrued the clear mandate" of the law in question.