Great column again this week by Ernie Dumas, this time on the Republican effort to gut stricter regulation of deadly mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants. The Kochs and the coal industry are more important to Republicans than birth defects and death.

Sen. John Boozman is on the side of the polluters. Sen. Mark Pryor wants to give the industry three more years to comply with emission standards, but says forthrightly that the emissions are dangerous and need to be curbed, courageous in this day and time. Dumas notes that U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, on TV constantly about a handful of day laborer jobs at a pipe plant perhaps affected by a delay in the Keystone pipeline, is silent on the huge economic stimulus that would come from building and installing the machinery to make our air safer, not to mention the medical costs saved.

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