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Federal judge uses very strange words to overturn LNG pause

Published on 39 Comments on Federal judge uses very strange words to overturn LNG pause

Early this year the Department of Energy paused approvals of new LNG terminals. Several states sued, saying the decision was arbitrary and was costing them a lot of money.

Yesterday a Trump-appointed judge in Louisiana (of course) issued a preliminary injunction against the pause and told DOE to start issuing approvals again. It's possible that his ruling is correct. The pause was pretty obviously political in nature; it was ordered without the usual regulatory process; and it reversed a longstanding policy of approving most LNG terminals expeditiously.

Nonetheless I want to highlight a couple of passages from judge James Cain's opinion:

The Defendants’ choice to halt permits to export natural gas to foreign companies is quite complexing to this Court.... [It] is completely without reason or logic and is perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy.

What is this supposed to mean? It turns out that complexing actually is a word: It has to do with the process of binding two atoms to form a complex. However, a less-used definition is complicating. But neither makes sense. Perhaps his honor meant perplexing?

Then there's epiphany, which means a sudden inspiration or understanding. That also makes no sense. Perhaps he meant epitome?

Finally there's ideocracy. As it happens, this is actually a word too. It apparently refers to a society governed by a single overarching ideology. That seems unlikely, though. Perhaps he meant idiocracy?

Who edits these things? Anybody?

39 thoughts on “Federal judge uses very strange words to overturn LNG pause”

      1. lower-case

        what i find most amusing is that the judge seems to think he can force the administration to immediately approve these LNG terminals

        i'm pretty sure justice garland would be able to set him straight on that

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  2. JC

    So, the obvious question for me, regardless of the strange wording is this: What happens if our newly untethered president instructs his energy secretary to ignore this buffoon's ruling?

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    1. memyselfandi

      Fortunately democrats believe in the rule of law so that isn't possible. But given that the administration's official reasoning for the pause is the claim that increasing LNG exports by a factor of 10 in 3 years could have national security implications it does seem odd that it is opposed by republicans.

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      1. MF

        The administration has clearly indicated that this is actually an environmental action.

        If Biden argued that student loan forgiveness is a national security issue Republicans will also not just assume that it is and fall in line.

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        1. memyselfandi

          "The administration has clearly indicated that this is actually an environmental action." That's a bald face lie. Why do maggots so love to document that they don't have a shred of honor or integrity anywhere in their being.

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  4. sonofthereturnofaptidude

    "College men from LSU; went in dumb, come out dumb, too; hustlin' 'round Atlanta in their alligator shoes; gettin' drunk every weekend at the barbecue..."

    Randy Newman, Rednecks

    Except Judge McCain didn't even get into LSU.

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  6. DFPaul

    Ha, just came across this in the NYT wrap up of the Supreme Court season...

    'On Thursday, it [the SC] made 13 separate corrections to four sets of opinions. In one of them, blocking a Biden administration plan to combat air pollution, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch had repeatedly referred to nitrogen oxide as nitrous oxide.

    That confusion, Professor Karlan said, “would be just funny (in a laughing-gas sort of way) if the court weren’t simultaneously kneecapping expert agencies that do know the difference.”'

    So it could be that not understanding the meaning of words is a feature, not a bug - conservative virtue signaling, if you will. After all, we all know how evil science and education are...

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    2. golack

      I haven't read up on this case, but typically you'll see the term as nitrogen oxides (NOx), mainly meaning NO and NO2, the main pollutants. It also includes any combination of N and O, so the term could include nitrous oxide, N2O, or laughing gas. But you can not use nitrous oxide to refer to nitrogen oxides.

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      1. Altoid

        No, you can't! NOx is a collective term for a group of chemicals; nitrous oxide is a specific chemical, like you say. The particular NOx the regulation in that case applies to are combustion products. The vast bulk of nitrous oxide in the air is produced by soil organisms.

        "Nitrous oxide" getting into the slip opinion tells the world that Gorsuch, his clerks, the other universal mega-geniuses, and *their* clerks, all had no idea of the distinction. The court only changed it after everybody involved in that small but telling fiasco got mercilessly and deservedly mocked all around the social and regular media world for carelessness and/or ignorance.

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          1. Altoid

            I was agreeing with you, sorry that didn't come through. I meant it like, you're going "you can't use nitrous oxide for the other," and I'm like "absolutely, y'know? and there's more." At least that's how I meant it to come out . . .

            And yeah, they deserve all the mockery they've gotten, and then some. Fun for the mockers, and might even teach the mockees something if they're paying attention.

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  10. Jim Carey

    It's part of Vladimir Putin's ideocracy. Putin has been quoted as saying that he doesn’t have to get anyone to believe anything. All he has to do is convince enough people not to believe in anything. So, the "single overarching ideology" is "don't believe in anything," which by extension would include not believing in the importance of expressing one's thoughts in language, or preserving the environment, the constitution, legal precedents, etc.

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  12. SeanT

    Cain also said he had “reviewed the voluminous studies attached as exhibits, all of which boast of both the economic and environmental benefits of exporting natural gas."
    which seems doubtful.

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    2. memyselfandi

      There are few environmental benefits to exporting LNG. Contrary to the bald face lies on the right, LNG produces very similar greenhouse gases to burning coal. (scum on the right pull a con by always quoting piped natural gas CO2 which is about half of that for LNG.)

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  14. E-6

    Judges who take their roles as judges seriously would take care to avoid these mistakes. They would be embarrassed knowing that other judges, lawyers, and law professors saw such pedestrian errors. Judges, like many Trump nominees, who see themselves only as political warriors simply don't care what other judges, lawyers, or law professors think. Political power (directed to "owning the libs") is all that matters to them.

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  16. D_Ohrk_E1

    First of all, we must internalize the "flatulation" of the matter by transmitting the effervescence of the "Indianisian" proximity in order to further segregate the crux of my venereal infection. Now, if I may retain my liquids here for one moment. I'd like to continue the "redundance" of my quote, unquote "intestinal tract", you see because to preclude on the issue of world domination would only circumvent - excuse me, circumcise the revelation that reflects the "Afro-disiatic" symptoms which now perpetrates the jheri curis activation. -- Oswald Bates

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  17. Jimm

    Less strange than dumb, that paragraph could be used to train high school kids for SAT or AP tests (on what not to do), and betrays both weakness in vocabulary and sloppy editing.

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  19. different_name

    I respect we have self-prescribed intellectual on our hands. The kind of apostle who reads a lot, but doesn't interapplicate with others, and thus ends up extirpating iconographic terminology.

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  20. Dana Decker

    C'mon Kevin, everybody knows that lawyers fuck around with language's imprecision. They could avoid that with a little care, but they don't because they like an, um, unregulated space within which to operate.

    "compelling state interest", "outer perimeter", "beyond a reasonable doubt" are meaningless, yet they appear all the time in legal work.

    Face it, lawyers are not particularly logical* and their mindset is far afield from STEM - where at the top there is broad agreement on issues. Not so at the top of the legal profession, where there is substantial disagreement between SCOTUS, Jamie Raskin, John Yoo, ACLU, Dershowitz. Explain that.

    * Trump lawyer Todd Blanche made an argument using the well know logical fallacy, Denying the Antecedent. Why wasn't he disciplined for that? Or are lawyers allowed to say anything to convince without sanction, even if it's provably false?

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