“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel recently said. “And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

What “things” do Emanuel and the Obama administration want to do, and what “opportunities” have been presented them by the current economic crisis? In short, the armada of bailouts deployed by the outgoing Bush administration will soon become the weapons the Democrats need to push greenhouse gas regulations that they haven’t been able to get in through the front door.