Consider these quotes from two climate scientists:

"In our models, it's difficult to understand how a 1-degree Fahrenheit warmer sea can spawn the ... rather significant increase that we've seen in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. Therefore, we can't put it all together. ... But the notion that a warmer Earth could cause more hurricanes, certainly that would be predicted by the climate scientists."

"Yet how can a barely discernible, 1-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th Century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?"

"Fairness" is an ideal that most people would like media outlets to embrace, but as a federal policy for television and radio, it's been dead for more than 20 years.

Yet despite that, the rule known as the Fairness Doctrine won't go away.

Leo Acton didn't think this career path was open to him. He considered being a musician, but he always thought of himself as a physical comedian. "In a lot of ways, I've always been a clown," he said last week in a phone interview.

But "I always thought you had to be born into the circus," he added. "I never thought it was really an option."

Silly guy. Everybody knows you can run away to join the circus.

In title and in summary, the Clean Water Restoration Act sounds benign enough.

But Dan Parmeter, executive director of the Minnesota-based American Property Coalition, calls it "the biggest federal power grab probably in the history of the country."