In the spring, President Bush was able to ram through a number of appeals court judges when Senate Republicans threatened to invoke the nuclear option. Already today, the AP's John Heilprin reports, these judges' effect can be felt.

An effort by environmental groups to block the Bush administration from implementing regulations on mercury pollution power plants was rejected by a federal appeals court.

Without comment, Judges David Sentelle and Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied a motion to halt immediately the regulations adopted in March by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The rules set a nationwide cap on mercury emissions from about 600 coal-burning power plants and puts a ceiling on allowable pollution for each state beginning in 2010. Individual plants, however, can avoid cleanups by buying pollution allowances from plants well under allowable limits.

Environmental and health advocacy groups plus 14 states have asked the appeals court to order EPA to rewrite the regulations to require that all plants install within the next three years the best available technology for cutting mercury pollution. In the meantime they asked the judges to set aside the regulations until the case can be heard.

Sentelle and Brown refused to do that in an order filed late Thursday.

Does anyone still believe that the President's judicial nominees aren't complete shills for industry?