On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit tossed out the lawsuit brought by 15 coal states led by WV's AG Patrick Morissey and Murray Energy against the EPA's Clean Power Plan:

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out a lawsuit that challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan Tuesday, saying that because the rule isn’t yet in its final stage, it’s too soon for court challenges.

“They want us to do something that they candidly acknowledge we have never done before: review the legality of a proposed rule,” Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion. “But a proposed rule is just a proposal. In justiciable cases, this Court has authority to review the legality of final agency rules. We do not have authority to review proposed agency rules.”

This was no surprise as legal experts said as much when the lawsuit was originally filed.

But let's not criticize -- our attorney general got a lot of good publicity out of it which was probably the lawsuit's reason for existence to begin with. For example, yesterday's Intelligencer coverage of the decision devoted two full paragraphs to Morissey's reaction.

A question -- isn't this the same Intelligencer that regularly editorializes against frivolous law suits and governmental waste of public money? I thought so.