Reading through our many e-mails from the Union of Concerned Scientists, we find the predictable outrage over President Obama's instructions to the EPA in early September that the agency withdraw its proposed rule to lower ozone limits. Excerpt:

Accusations that the President "intervened" with the EPA were common from the environmental left after the White House's Sept. 2 announcements that the EPA would not finalize a new National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ground-level ozone. In an angry blog post, "The President Sabotages Clean Air Protections," a Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer, John Walke, fumed, "In the most outrageous environmental offense of the Obama administration, the president himself has intervened politically to block the Environmental Protection Agency..."

It's as if they think the President reports to the EPA and must follow whatever recommendation (some of) its scientists may come up with. If GS-13s persuade EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to push through a discretionary $90 billion regulation -- the most expensive environmental regulation in U.S. history -- out of cycle with regular Clean Air Act review, well, that's what the President must do.

Here's a primer: But the U.S. system of government does not work that way. The President is elected by a vote of the people, he heads the executive branch, and agency directors like Jackson report to him. Through the Office of Management and Budget and its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the White House has a central role in the promulgation of regulations.

The President didn't intervene. He decided, and given the extreme economic consequences of the proposed ozone rule, he decided wisely.

(The Union of Concerned Scientists' full solicitation letter is here.)