For years, conservatives were said to be “standing athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!’ ” But a federal judge’s ruling Friday points to the new reality that those who are now seeking to stop history — or at least the development of new energy technologies — are liberals, led by President Obama. Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and regulations implemented by two agencies within his department. The regulations — designed to slow down energy development — came from the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Attorneys for the government argued that the Western Energy Alliance, an energy industry advocacy group that filed the suit, failed to show the regulations caused hardship such as added costs or unnecessary delays. Freudenthal disagreed, saying “Western Energy has demonstrated through its members recognizable injury. Those injuries are supported by the administrative record.” As a result, regulations issued in 2005 under President George W. Bush that were supplanted by the Obama rules are back in force. The Bush regulations were designed to speed up federal reviews of applications to explore and develop hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned lands in Western states believed to hold vast untapped quantities of oil and natural gas. Developing such resources could reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil and reduce costs for American consumers.