You don’t see this everyday. The Philadelphia Inquirer has published an editorial praising NJ Governor Chris Christie for finally getting off the nickel and beginning implementation of that state’s medical marijuana laws.

The Inquirer didn’t stop there, though, it said Delaware should also get with the program.

From The Inquirer editorial:

After months of delay, Gov. Christie has finally made the correct decision: to stop stalling implementation of the state’s medical marijuana law.

Christie never got the blanket assurance from federal authorities that they would honor the law. But he finally came to the same logical conclusion that others reached months ago, that it is unlikely that federal prosecutors would raid state-sanctioned medical marijuana dispensaries.

That doesn’t mean federal agents won’t pursue illegal marijuana operations, but they have much bigger operations to target in their war on drugs.

…

But now that the governor has given the green light, New Jersey should move quickly to implement prescription sales of medical marijuana.

Delaware and other states that were hesitant to proceed with medical marijuana programs while awaiting similar assurances from the federal government should follow Christie’s lead.

Suthers, in a motion filed today in Denver (pdf), asked the district court to recognize that Bruce had been properly served in advance of a motion Suthers will file next week “seeking sanctions for contempt” against Bruce.

Bruce dodged at least 30 attempts to serve him with a court order to testify in the high-profile campaign finance hearing. The hearing, which went on without him, connected him to efforts to get three statewide tax-slashing initiatives on the ballot. Administrative Law Judge Robert Spencer concluded that Bruce was heavily involved as the mysterious Mr X in efforts to prepare and promote the three measures: amendments 60, 61 and 101.

Included as Exhibit One in the motion filed today is an article from the Colorado Springs Gazette, where Bruce is quoted defiantly bragging that he traveled to Pennslyvania and he “didn’t have to clear with anybody in the government whether I want to go on vacation.”

The motion filed by Suthers Friday argues that Bruce had been officially and properly served papers requiring him to appear before the judge and that he was knowingly dodging the request. The coming contempt of court charge is based on the details outlined in today’s filing. Indeed, news that Suthers intends to file the contempt motion next week comes in a footnote in the motion filed today.

“Petitioners intend to file a motion seeking sanctions for contempt during the week of June 14, 2010,” reads the footnote.

The motion details the “cat and mouse” game Bruce played with the state, according to the document, and makes a strong case that he did so knowingly, citing the Gazette article but also a paper and email trail that remarkably includes a letter the litiginous Bruce sent in May to the Attorney General’s office on an unrelated separate lawsuit. The letter was postmarked from Colorado Springs during the days when officials were repeatedly attempting to serve Bruce to appear before Judge Spencer and during the days he suggested he was in Pennsylvania on vacation.

“The rules governing service of process are not ‘designed to create an obstacle course for [serving parties] to navigate, or a cat-and-mouse game for defendants who are otherwise subject to the court’s jurisdiction…”" the author of the motion writes.

“Mr Bruce is not ignorant of the law… He should not be allowed to ignore his obligations as a citizen of Colorado to appear, give testimony and produce documents in lawful proceeding… His actions are an affront to the [Administrative Law Judge] and this Court… and his apparent efforts to avoid service of this Court’s May 10 order should not be allowed to continue.”

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Held up by proponents of proposed federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, as yet another example of potential environmental problems associated with the process, the Pennsylvania case has been portrayed as another warning sign in the ongoing natural gas boom in the Mid-Atlantic region’s Marcellus Shale formation.

In Colorado’s heavily drilled Garfield County, commissioners are weighing a resolution supporting federal legislation co-sponsored by Colorado Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis that would remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for fracking that was granted during the Bush administration in 2005.

While some Coloradans are concerned about water quality and wildlife habitat in the Rocky Mountains, opponents of the boom in the Marcellus Shale are worried New York City’s watershed may be compromised by fracking, which involves injecting water, sand and undisclosed chemicals into tight rock and sand formations to force out more natural gas.

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ProPublica reported on Friday that DEP officials shut down all of Cabot’s hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in response to the latest of three spills traced to the company and its drilling-service contractors, Halliburton and Baker Tanks.

The problems in Pennsylvania could supply lawmakers even more ammunition in the ever-intensifying national campaign to strip a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the process that was granted during the Bush administration. Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette is leading the charge on that front with her so-called FRAC Act – a measure hotly debated in and around the gas fields of Colorado’s Western Slope.

“The department took this action because of our concern about Cabot’s current fracking process and to ensure that the environment in Susquehanna County is properly protected,” the DEP’s Robert Yowell said in a release Friday.

ProPublic reported the stop-work order suspended drilling on seven new wells the company was planned to frack in the county.

“There were unique elements of the location that experienced the three incidents and it was not necessary to force a shutdown of all fracturing activities,” Cabot spokesman Ken Komoroski told ProPublica. “However, Cabot understands the department has an important job to do.”

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has been a source of ongoing debate in Colorado, where Garfield County residents say their water wells have been contaminated by undisclosed chemicals contained in solutions of water and sand that are injected into gas wells to free up more gas from tight geological formations.

Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette, D-Denver, has introduced the FRAC Act to bring the process under federal control and require disclosure of proprietary chemicals under the Safe Drinking Water Act, but the oil and gas industry has bitterly opposed the legislation, pointing to a spotless record of virtually no water-contamination cases directly connected to fracking.

U.S. Rep Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., co-sponsored the bill because of the impacts of the gas boom going on in his district, which is part of the massive Marcellus Shale Formation that stretches into northeastern Pennsylvania.

When Hinchey and DeGette introduced the FRAC Act in June, one part-time resident of Dimock, Carolyn Wells, told the Colorado Independent natural gas drilling was destroying the formerly sleepy, rural getaway for residents of New York City and Philadelphia.

“People started leasing their land like crazy during the past two years, without reading the fine print or doing any research on what it means. All they see is dollar signs that they think they will get,” Wells said in June. “I can’t believe people will sacrifice clean air and water for money. Doesn’t do too much good if your environment is toxic or you get cancer.”

ProPublica has reported on previous cases of contamination near Dimock related to drilling operations by Texas-based Cabot Oil and Gas, but the latest spill, blamed on faulty pipe work, resulted in a significant fish kill and other fish “swimming erratically,” according to Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection.

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There are places, like along the Appalachian Trail, where a few precious hours of natural solace can be snatched from the swirling insanity along the Eastern Seaboard, but even then the crush of humanity is never far at bay.

So it’s disheartening even for Westerners to hear about the industrial intrusion that will result from natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, described in a New York Times editorial observer piece Monday as a “subterranean layer of rock that runs from the Lower Adirondacks down through the Catskills and to western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.” That’s a big swath of some of the last good woods in the Mid-Atlantic region.

The author, Verlyn Klinkenborg, brings that same sense of dismay westerners are feeling in the wake of a decade-long natural gas boom in Wyoming and Colorado — in places once thought so remote industrialization wouldn’t matter:

“I’ve seen all of this before in the explosion of coal bed methane development in Wyoming over the past decade. The same arguments have been advanced — energy independence — and the same alternative, a sober national approach to energy conservation, has been ignored.

“It takes a reasonably practiced eye to see the damage coal bed methane development has done. But when the infrastructure for pumping natural gas out of the Catskills has finally been put in place, there will be no mistaking its impact — no missing the gaping holes in the forest canopy, the artificial ponds full of “fracking” fluid, the industrial damage done.

“The estimates of the energy trapped below ground in the Marcellus Shale are indeed staggering. But to get that energy, we will have to give up a good share of the biological integrity of the land that lies above it. To stand in a glade in the Catskills is to realize what a deeply troubling trade-off that is.”