Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

The willows of my world

by Julie Carter

The home of my childhood was a high mountain ranch where snow covered mountains offered seasonal runoff to feed creeks and springs. Where there was water, there were also willows.

Country kids are easily entertained and in my youth, it was an era of simple entertainment by making do with what was available.

My three brothers and I fished and played cowboys, Indians and hillbillies in the willows along the creek. We camped at creek side, ate burned marshmallows from a sharpened willow stick and told ghost stories to scare ourselves, all the while able to see the lights of home from our camp.

We rode our horses anywhere we wanted to go, just as long as we told Mom where we were going and when to expect us back. Often we packed a lunch and would be gone all day on some adventure into the hills.

In the winter we shoveled the snow off the beaver ponds to ice skate on. We let the barb wire down on a fence so we could have a nice long toboggan run without having to duck under the wire.

Spring brought the snow melt and the creeks would run high and bitter cold. It was more than a kid could stand not to get in that water and do some wading when ole man winter finally left the high country. My dad would scold and threaten us to stay out of the dangerous running water.

 

But as kids will do, just as soon as we thought he wasn’t looking we had socks and shoes off and waded in. And, just as soon as we stepped foot in the water, he’d come with a fresh cut willow switch to sting our back sides all the way back to the house.

One of my most embarrassing moments in life came when a friend and I decided to do a little swimming in one of those beaver ponds.

I was about 8 years old and after a day of riding horseback through the meadows and hillsides, she and I decided the heat of the summer sun would be best soothed by a quick dip in the cool waters of Muddy Creek.

We tied up our horses, stripped down to our underwear, waded in chest deep and splashed away until it was time to go home.

Riding horses with wet underwear under your jeans is a most chafing idea. So I decided to abandon the wet undies by tossing them deep into the willows where I was sure they wouldn’t be found in my lifetime.

Two days later, my dad, with me along, took a group of guests trout fishing along that same creek. Fate was not kind to me nor was his ornery sense of humor.  He spotted the discarded undies almost immediately, poked them out of the willows with the end of his fishing pole, and paraded them in public like a flag waving in the breeze. The willows had given me up.

“Are these yours Julie?” he asked knowing very well they were. He was grinning from ear to ear at his discovery and my embarrassment. You just didn’t show folks your undies anytime and this was just over the line!

I wavered between extreme mortification and fear of what was to come next when he remembered he’d specifically told us not to go swimming without permission or supervision. 

In lieu of using a willow switch to tan my hide for disobeying, my dad only scolded me. I’ve often wondered if I got off light because he so enjoyed the moment. 

I think the world would be a better place if there were a few more “willow moments” in the lives of our youth.

Years ago when I mentioned to my dryland New Mexico born son that he needed a willow switch across his bottom he asked “What’s a willow switch?”  I had to cut a juniper branch and show him.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarternm@gmail.com.

Resource Management Plan

`Outside looking in

Resource Management Plan

Wolves in the hen house

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            Remember the Constitution?

            In the powers granted to Congress, lands purchased by the United States will be limited to “… Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings …” Furthermore, those lands so acquired would be “… purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be …”

            The Framers’ intent was to limit federal government dominion. The Founders staked their lives on the overthrow of tyranny by King George. They knew the oppressive consequences of the withholding of private property rights.

            They envisioned the importance of land differently than American elitists view it today. Lands were to be distributed to the states for specific purposes. The lands were to be used for the reduction of debt and the acceleration of the economy.

    Their intent wasn’t predicated on how much the federal government could squeeze from any sale. Rather, their intent was aimed at what price point it would take to distribute the lands to the American people. That was made clearer in the demand that unsold or unclaimed lands would become the states’ problem.

    Land was key to the economic success of the young nation, but it could it also become a burden to the fledgling government. What a difference 235 years makes.

Regional Management Plan

    The proxy for a Constitutional amendment altering the government’s land ownership authority was signed into law in 1976. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) reversed the management of public lands from a matter of disposal to a matter of retention.

    In the congressional debate, the Western States were promised equal standing with states east of the 100^th Meridian on the basis of land planning. The feds would own the land but local government would drive land use issues. Implicit in those issues would be the uniqueness of local economies, heritage, customs and culture.

    In April, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) with a consulting group, URS Corporation, revealed the draft of the Resource Management Plan/ Environmental Impact Statement (RMP) for the counties of Dona Ana, Otero, and Sierra in New Mexico. The document is not driven by local planning.

            Its shear volume and presentation of management alternatives makes it overwhelmingly suggestive of evolving and expanding authority never intended by legislation.

            A review should start with private land holdings. In the decision area, the land Americans can live on, create permanent wealth, and build future generation successes is 16% of the land mass. Government owns 84% of the land.

            That factor has been debilitating on the area’s agricultural base and, particularly, irrigated farmland. Most of the private land exists in a narrow corridor within the Rio Grande Valley. In a sea of federal holdings, residential growth has been forced within that narrow band.

The RMP is blind to the consequences.

            In the current plan, 120,371 federal acres were targeted and slated for sale. A reasonable portion could have relieved farmland pressure. In 18 years, 759 acres were sold.

    Two major issues have resulted. The first is residential development has become highest cost. When residential development is forced to grow within a flood plain, in watersheds that require expensive infrastructure installment, costs are higher. This includes the matter of reclamation dams intended and designed for the protection of farmland. Those dams have become the only existing protective infrastructure for down stream development. Since most are not compliant for human welfare and public safety standards, any upgrade is hugely expensive. 

    The second manifestation is the loss of irreplaceable farmland. Without any help in moderating the impact on farmland values, farmland loss in the same period is at least 11,500 acres. That loss equates to farmland that arguably produces the best chile and pecans grown in the world.

Moreover, farmland loss equates to the critical reduction in the ability to recruit next generation stewards. In Dona Ana County, that recruitment level is known. It stands at 17%. Less than one in five operations has a steward to continue the unique heritage of this isolated agricultural universe.

If asked why young stewards cannot be recruited, the answers will be consistent. Land prices, driven by residential growth, preclude the entry of new generation operators. The ranching community will add that they are unable to create parallel enterprises, they cannot commit to long term planning, and mortgage lenders have continued to take an increasingly dim view of federal land operations. The future is simply too tentative to put capital at risk.

The RMP doubles down on the dilemma. It is centrally focused on environmental matters.  Fully, 78% of the RMP is dedicated to environmental issues.

The same overt undertone is witnessed in the authorship. Among state reviewers and the consulting firm, 56% of the names explicitly reference environmental credentials. There was a single range management expert, but not a single Ag economist who would have devoted at least some effort attempting to quantify the socioeconomic impact to the heritage industries.

As for ranching, the alternatives for future livestock management consideration consist of holding the line in production, reducing production, or eliminating production. Any and all improvements that are derived by ranching and or partnership investments will not be allowed to accrue to the livestock financing the work. It will be reserved entirely for wildlife.

A question must be asked. What industry in America is subject to a guiding document that declares any investment made by the business cannot be accrued to the business?

Likewise, repeated plans are revealed to lump livestock grazing into watershed management units. Although, there are only 3.64 miles of federal lands that encompass wild and scenic river eligible streams within the 9,391,960 acres of planning area, livestock runs the risk of being lumped into some degree of wild and scenic river or at least watershed management.

It is here the document foundation starts to be fully revealed. The elevation of conservation partnerships into public view has taken place. Those partnerships, authorized by secretarial order, are intended to unite nongovernmental organizations (NGO) with land agencies. Findings predicated on global warming are intended to be funneled into the agencies for implementation.

One of those NGOs is revealed through wording in one of the livestock grazing alternatives in the RMP. The wording, referencing forced retirement of grazing allotments through surrenders, comes directly from the National Public Land Grazing Campaign. That NGO behind that campaign is the WildEarth Guardians. That organization has pledged to remove all grazing from federal lands.

Customs and Culture

Agriculture is only one component of local governance that is absent. The folks who shoot need to know that the plan calls for the elimination of all firearm discharges on 44,770 acres of land. Producers of power must be prepared to deal with 10 mile wide transmission line moratoriums along largely invisible historic trail corridors. Off road vehicle enthusiasts are being told their outdoor recreation fulfillment will be reduced by 1,598,000 acres.

In fact, every covenant for land use planning through multiple use and sustained yield principles set forth in FLPMA and other applicable law is downgraded, diminished, or dismissed. Matters that have fueled local customs and cultures are being eliminated.

Wilderness devotees, though, are fully represented. Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) acreage is on the verge of increasing 340% from 89,723 to 304,042 acres. FLPMA does give the BLM authority to designate ACEC, but such identification doesn’t change or prevent change of current management. It certainly doesn’t give the land agency authority to manage the area as wilderness or wilderness study area.

The representation made by the authors that BLM is obligated under Section 201 to maintain and inventory of lands for wilderness characteristics is blatantly false (3-5). There is no such wilderness authority, and, yet, that is exactly what the entire document is being built around.

True local input is absent. Local government simply wouldn’t come to the table with the scope and magnitude of this ‘document of added restrictions’. It wouldn’t come to the table encouraging the government to buy more private lands to eliminate state and private holdings within the new, expanded ACEC designations. The State of New Mexico should be horrified and indignant.

This is not a management plan. This is a freedom curtailment of catastrophic proportions.

The real world actually exists. From now until 2050, research reveals that mankind will have to produce as much food as it has produced in the past 4,000 years. What kind of government would sanction the elimination of the ability to produce goods and services with that looming?

FLPMA has become a tool of destruction for the Western States … this document is the proof.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “FLPMA declares that any management decision that eliminates one or more of the principal uses on tracts more than 100,000 acres must be reported to the House of Representatives and the Senate. Congressman Pearce, I so declare that issue within this RMP on multiple fronts.”

Americans Fighting Their Own Government For Economic Survival

by Marita Noon

...On May 8, I drove 2.5 hours to attend a public meeting about a new management plan for federal lands in three New Mexico counties—it was the last of three such public meetings. The plan was outlined, but attendees were not allowed to ask questions or comment during the presentation. Maps lined the room’s perimeter. In short, myriad acts and laws have to be taken into account in the management of public lands including the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA)—just to name a few. By the time all of these layers of regulation are applied to nominated portions of federal lands, virtually all economic activity is prohibited or severely limited—including ranching/grazing, mining, and oil and gas extraction. Even recreational uses, such as off-highway vehicles (OHV), can be banned or severely restricted.

After the 2-hour session, I felt agitated and frustrated. In the brief public presentation, we were told that they were holding these meetings because NEPA requires public participation. However, unlike the other public meetings I’ve attended, no public comment was allowed at the meeting. Additionally, when attendees were instructed on how provide written comment, we were told that we were to offer only “substantive comments” on the data and/or the science—not to vote in favor of, or opposition to, the Resource Management Plan (RMP).

Following the meeting, I spent time with Bill Childress, the District Manager for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for the Las Cruces office and Dave Wallace, the Assistant District Manager. I pointed out that their format discourages public comment, as no average person is ever going to read the 500+ page document—or be able to offer comment on the science or the data. “That’s the way it is,” was the response.

Regarding the BLM’s comment process, Joanne Spivack, an activist fighting the closure of roads and trails to motorized use, told me: “The only thing that matters are comments that specifically challenge how the RMP analysis is being done. That’s what ‘substantive’ means. 99.999% of the public don’t understand what that means. It takes a firm understanding of the NEPA process to write a comment that can challenge the agency and lead to an appeal (and lawsuit). The only things we can submit that can be used for our appeals, or in a lawsuit, are our formal comments submitted by the deadline. Those comments must be based solely on what is in the written Draft RMP and its associated documents.”

With Childress and Wallace, another meeting attendee and I discussed the known oil and gas resources and the potential presence of rare-earth elements. The TriCounty RMP designates several ACECs (Area of Critical Environmental Concern)—which are essentially managed as “wilderness areas,” though ACECs are not designated by Congress. Childress and Wallace explained that the process of creating ACECs is at the discretion of the Bureau; it is qualitative not quantitative, and subjective. They told us that generally conservation groups nominate the ACECs. Spivack noted: “There is no place or time in the process for the public to oppose the ACECs.”

Surprise! The Wilderness Society’s website offers their “Wish List for the BLM in 2013”—which includes: “Designate Otero Mesa as an ACEC in the TriCounty RMP and initiate an administrative mineral withdrawal for the area to protect its innumerable natural and cultural resources.”

The proposed 198,511-acre ACEC for Otero Mesa includes the following potential resource-use limitations:

• Exclusion and limitations of new rights-of way,
• Closure to mineral sales and geothermal leasing,
• Closure to vegetation sales, and
• Limitation of vehicle use to designated routes.

Spivack explains it this way: “The RMP doesn’t have specifics about what will be banned, why or where. There are no facts, no analysis and no proof that an ACEC is needed. But the RMP lays the groundwork for future lock-downs, by creating ‘conceptual’ frameworks such as ‘desired conditions’ and by creating new designation areas like ACECs. The RMPs have vague wording about future restrictions, which could be imposed in order to ‘protect the values’ of the ACEC. The ACEC is a way of creating management ‘goals’ which trump multiple use. The ACEC is a blank check and can be used restrict any activity under any excuse they want to cook up.”

The Otero Mesa portion of the BLM managed lands has the potential for oil and gas resources, and rare-earth elements. Due to existing land-use restrictions—before the proposed RMP is even implemented—a company interested in developing the rare earths was required to do its minimal-impact exploration with 19th century technology: horses and hand tools. When the exploration was complete, a hand rake was used to erase the footprints and restore the land. A company executive reported: “The RMP has the potential to adversely impact future mineral development.”

Commissioner Rardin and all his fellow county commissioners in Otero County are excited about the potential economic benefit the rare-earth mining project could bring: $25 million in the first year alone. Rardin believes one of the goals of the RMP is to stop the mining project. He told me: “The BLM is taking away our ability to make a living. As long as I am commissioner, I will challenge them and look to properly use our lands.” In Otero Country—a county as big as the state of Connecticut with 62,000 residents, only 12% of the land is taxable. The potential for mineral extraction, including oil and gas, is important for the community—and the people want it. Locking up the resources constitutes a government taking.

Ranchers in the region feel the same way. Steve Wilmeth, a rancher from southern New Mexico whose family came to New Mexico beginning in 1880, wrote about these attacks on the culture and customs of the West: “Increasingly, Westerners are governed not by laws, but by policy and regulations. Local governance isn’t planning or crafting solutions for communities. Rather, local governance is defending itself against the latest project being driven by conservation cooperation agreements.” Regarding the policies to be instituted and policed by the agencies, Wilmeth, in The Westerner, writes: “There is no grassroots land planning in this debacle. This is an end-run legislative proxy. It is being engineered by the environmental brokers.”

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This Is No Ordinary Scandal

by Peggy Noonan

We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they're seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue Service have left the administration's credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged. They don't look jerky now, they look dirty. The patina of high-mindedness the president enjoyed is gone.
    Something big has shifted. The standing of the administration has changed.
    As always it comes down to trust. Do you trust the president's answers when he's pressed on an uncomfortable story? Do you trust his people to be sober and fair-minded as they go about their work? Do you trust the IRS and the Justice Department? You do not.
    The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you.
    But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. This is his administration. Those are his executive agencies. He runs the IRS and the Justice Department.
    A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.
    The IRS scandal has two parts. The first is the obviously deliberate and targeted abuse, harassment and attempted suppression of conservative groups. The second is the auditing of the taxes of political activists.
    In order to suppress conservative groups—at first those with words like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" in their names, then including those that opposed ObamaCare or advanced the Second Amendment—the IRS demanded donor rolls, membership lists, data on all contributions, names of volunteers, the contents of all speeches made by members, Facebook FB +0.46% posts, minutes of all meetings, and copies of all materials handed out at gatherings. Among its questions: What are you thinking about? Did you ever think of running for office? Do you ever contact political figures? What are you reading? One group sent what it was reading: the U.S. Constitution.
    The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration. The Journal's Kim Strassel reported an Idaho businessman named Frank VanderSloot, who'd donated more than a million dollars to groups supporting Mitt Romney. He found himself last June, for the first time in 30 years, the target of IRS auditors. His wife and his business were also soon audited. Hal Scherz, a Georgia physician, also came to the government's attention. He told ABC News: "It is odd that nothing changed on my tax return and I was never audited until I publicly criticized ObamaCare."
     Franklin Graham, son of Billy, told Politico he believes his father was targeted. A conservative Catholic academic who has written for these pages faced questions about her meager freelance writing income. Many of these stories will come out, but not as many as there are. People are not only afraid of being audited, they're afraid of saying they were audited.
    All of these IRS actions took place in the years leading up to the 2012 election. They constitute the use of governmental power to intrude on the privacy and shackle the political freedom of American citizens. The purpose, obviously, was to overwhelm and intimidate—to kill the opposition, question by question and audit by audit.
    It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved.
    Lois Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, was the person who finally acknowledged, under pressure of a looming investigative report, some of what the IRS was doing. She told reporters the actions were the work of "frontline people" in Cincinnati. But other offices were involved, including Washington. It is not even remotely possible the actions were the work of just a few agents. This was more systemic. It was an operation. The word was out: Get the Democratic Party's foes. It is not remotely possible nobody in the IRS knew what was going on until very recently. The Washington Post reported efforts to target the conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency by May 2012—far earlier than the agency had acknowledged. Reuters reported high-level IRS officials, including its chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting.   

    The White House is reported to be shellshocked at public reaction to the scandal. But why? Were they so highhanded, so essentially ignorant, that they didn't understand what it would mean to the American people when their IRS—the revenue-collecting arm of the U.S. government—is revealed as a low, ugly and bullying tool of the reigning powers?

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The Most Important Constitutional Law Case You Probably Haven’t Heard Of: How an act of vengeance turned into an assault on federalism

by John Malcolm

    “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” That observation, first penned by English playwright and poet William Congreve, certainly applies to Carol Anne Bond.  Her amateurish attempts at revenge have resulted in two trips to the Supreme Court of the United States and will likely result in one of the most consequential constitutional cases in the next, or any, term.  The justices must decide whether our Congress is one of limited powers or whether the Treaty Power grants Congress potentially unlimited power to regulate anything, anywhere, at any time.
    In 2006, Carol Anne Bond discovered that her best friend, Myrlinda Haynes, had an affair with her husband and was pregnant with his child.  Vowing revenge, Bond, who was a technical assistant working for a large chemical manufacturer, spread chemicals (one purchased online, the other stolen from her employer) on Haynes’ car door, mailbox, and apartment doorknob on 25 occasions over the course of three months.  Although Haynes was able to detect the presence of these chemicals because of their distinctive color, on one occasion she forgot to clean the door knob and suffered a minor chemical burn on her thumb.  Bond was apprehended after federal postal inspectors placed surveil­lance cameras around Haynes’s home and identified her as the perpetrator.  Rather than leave this salacious, but garden variety crime to local authorities, federal prosecutors pursued a rather novel approach: charging Bond with violating the Chemical Weapons Implementation Act of 1998 (CWIA), a statute designed to implement the United States’ treaty obligations under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.
    The Chemical Weapons Convention, ratified by the Senate in 1997, is an international arms-control agreement that was intended to address the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by outlawing the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons.  Because the treaty was not self-executing, Congress passed the CWIA, 18 U.S.C. §§ 229 et seq., making it unlawful for a person “knowingly” to “develop, produce, otherwise acquire, transfer directly or indirectly, receive, stockpile, retain, own, possess, or use, or threaten to use, any chemical weapon.”
    Bond’s conduct clearly violated state law but would not appear to implicate any core concern of the treaty.  She moved to dismiss the charges arguing that, as applied to her, section 229 exceeded Congress’s enumerated powers and invaded the powers traditionally reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”).  Bond also challenged the statute as exceeding Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause, but the government responded that section 229 was not passed pursuant to any Article I, Section 8 enumerated power of Congress, but rather was passed pursuant to the Treaty Power and the Necessary and Proper Clause.
    The trial court denied Bond’s motion, and she pled guilty, reserving the right to appeal.  On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that Bond lacked standing to challenge the CWIA, but in June 2011, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy (Bond I), holding that a criminal defendant indicted under a federal statute has standing to challenge that statute on the grounds that it interferes with States’ rights under the Tenth Amendment.
    On remand, the Third Circuit affirmed Bond’s conviction, expressing reluctance but believing itself “bound to take at face value” a single sentence in the 1920 Supreme Court case Missouri v. Holland, in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote:

“If [a] treaty is valid there can be no dispute about the validity of the statute [implementing that treaty] under Article 1, Section 8, as a necessary and proper means to execute the powers of the Government.”

    The Third Circuit reluctantly, but broadly, construed Holland as allowing the Senate and the President to expand the federal government’s constitutional authority by negotiating a valid treaty requiring the passage of implementing legislation that would otherwise exceed Congress’s enumerated powers.
In Bond’s second trip to the Supreme Court, the question that the justices will address is whether the Treaty Power expands Congress’s power beyond its enumerated powers set forth in Article I, section 8...
    Most international treaties are premised on the assumption that all nations have the same structure and can therefore implement treaties in the same way.  However, unlike most other countries, we have a federal system in which many of the subjects covered by treaties are, or at least heretofore have been, left to state and local governments and to the people themselves to address as they see fit.  Indeed, unlike other countries, the Supreme Court made clear in cases such as Printz v. United States, that our Constitution limits the authority of the federal government to insist that state officials act as its agents to carry out federal policy.  If the legislative power can be increased without limit as to scope or subject matter by treaty, this would represent a significant disruption of the delicate balance of our federal system and would undermine the fundamental principle that Congress’s powers are limited to those enumerated in Article I, Section 8.

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Disarming Realities: As Gun Sales Soar, Gun Crimes Plummet

by Larry Bell

A couple of new studies reveal the gun-control hypesters’ worst nightmare…more people are buying firearms, while firearm-related homicides and suicides are steadily diminishing. What crackpots came up with these conclusions? One set of statistics was compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice. The other was reported by the Pew Research Center.

According to DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. gun-related homicides dropped 39 percent over the course of 18 years, from 18,253 during 1993, to 11,101 in 2011. During the same period, non-fatal firearm crimes decreased even more, a whopping 69 percent. The majority of those declines in both categories occurred during the first 10 years of that time frame. Firearm homicides declined from 1993 to 1999, rose through 2006, and then declined again through 2011. Non-fatal firearm violence declined from 1993 through 2004, then fluctuated in the mid-to-late 2000s.

And where did the bad people who did the shooting get most of their guns? Were those gun show “loopholes” responsible? Nope. According to surveys DOJ conducted of state prison inmates during 2004 (the most recent year of data available), only two percent who owned a gun at the time of their offense bought it at either a gun show or flea market. About 10 percent said they purchased their gun from a retail shop or pawnshop, 37 percent obtained it from family or friends, and another 40 percent obtained it from an illegal source...

The March Pew study, drawn from numbers obtained from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also found a dramatic drop in gun crime over the past two decades. Their accounting shows a 49 percent decline in the homicide rate, and a 75 percent decline of non-fatal violent crime victimization. More than 8 in 10 gun homicide victims in 2010 were men and boys. Fifty-five percent of the homicide victims were black, far beyond their 13 percent share of the population...

 Those gun crime rates certainly aren’t diminishing for lack of supply…at least not for law-abiding legal buyers. Last December, the FBI recorded a record number of 2.78 million background checks for purchases that month, surpassing a 2.01 million mark set the month before by about 39 percent. That December 2012 figure, in turn, was up 49 percent from a previous record on that month the year before. FBI checks for all of 2012 totaled 19.6 million, an annual record, and an increase of 19 percent over 2011.

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MUST SEE Race at Obama Downs! IRS, Benghazi, AP Scandal Trifecta

http://youtu.be/Oy_DF8NN8BY

A Ben & Jerry's Flavor We'll Soon Be Seeing

The few, the proud, the tortoises: Marines protect endangered species

by Ben Kesling

U.S. Marines are taught to overcome obstacles with a minimum of help. But when some Marines prepared to charge a hill in a training exercise here a few months ago, they were forced to halt and radio the one man who could help them advance: Brian Henen, turtle expert. 

    The troops were “running up the hill and firing at targets,” Mr. Henen said. “Some of the tortoises like the hill also. The Marines don’t want to hurt the tortoise, so they call us and we go in and move it.”

    Mr. Henen, who has a doctorate in biology, is part of a little-known army of biologists and other scientists who manage the Mojave desert tortoise and about 420 other threatened and endangered species on about 28 million acres of federally managed military land.

“There’s a lot of people who don’t recognize the amount of conservation the Marine Corps does,” said Martin Husung, a natural-resource specialist on the base. “A lot of people think we’re just running over things.”

    Instead, Mr. Henen often hustles out to remote parts of the Mojave Desert to make sure the threatened desert tortoise, which can weigh 10 pounds and live to be more than 50 years old, isn’t frightened by charging troops.

    “When they get scared, they pee themselves,” Mr. Henen said, referring to the tortoises. Since tortoises can go two years between drinks of water, an unplanned micturition can cause dehydration and even death. So Mr. Henen sometimes demonstrates to troops how he soaks the reptiles in a pool until they drink enough water to plod on with their lives.

    The tortoise isn’t the only animal benefiting from the limited hunting, high security and trained biologists on many bases. On the Navy’s San Clemente Island, biologists protect vulnerable loggerhead shrikes from hungry rats by installing metal “rat flashings” at the base of trees the birds nest in. In Texas, the Army creates protective nesting environments for endangered golden-cheeked warblers to fend off incursions by brown-headed cowbirds. And at Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee, the once-endangered Helianthus eggertii, or Eggert’s sunflower, is doing so well it has been taken off the endangered list.

    Congress ordered the Defense Department to protect the flora and fauna on its lands under the 1960 Sikes Act. Today, the military works with agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service, a bureau of the Interior Department, to search for and protect animals, plants and archaeological sites on its bases...

    Last year, the Department of Defense spent nearly $70 million on threatened and endangered species management and conservation, including $16.5 million on the red-cockaded woodpecker and just under $6 million on the desert tortoise.

I see that I and a desert tortoise have something in common.  After all, if a bunch of marines were firing their weapons and running in my direction I'm sure I'd suffer "unplanned micturition" myself.

That highlighting of the $70 million was by me, not the author.

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Senate Committee passes bill to transfer nine historic cemeteries away from Forest Service

A Senate bill that would transfer the ownership of nine historic cemeteries in the Black Hills from the U.S. Forest Service to local communities has passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Sens. Tim Johnson and John Thune introduced the bill earlier this year and it’s now headed to the main Senate floor. Johnson says transferring the cemeteries to the local communities that have been long maintaining and caring for them makes a lot of sense. He says the bill is a permanent solution. Thune says the current arrangement causes headaches for the caretaking communities that have managed the cemeteries for generations and places an unnecessary liability on the Forest Service. An identical bill was introduced in the House by U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem. AP

Here's an excerpt from The Westerner in 2005:

Ghost town fights to bury its dead A dispute over ownership of a cemetery in a Montana ghost town has landed in Congress, where one of Montana's senators is urging the federal government to surrender the land. But the U.S. Forest Service, which owns the property in the tiny mountain town of Elkhorn, says it's not inclined to give up the title without getting fair market value. The old ghost town in Jefferson County has just a few aging families left, and a number of them want to be buried in the cemetery _ legally _ next to their ancestors on the tranquil site overlooking a valley. People were buried in Elkhorn before Montana became a state or the Forest Service was established. But the cemetery became Forest Service land somewhere along the way, no one is sure quite when, and federal law prohibits human burials on public land. That hasn't stopped residents from burying loved ones there over the years, however. Locals estimate up to 90 people, maybe more in unmarked graves, have been interred in the last century or so. Resident and rancher Fred Bell, 71, whose grandparents, parents and son are buried in the cemetery, says he won't stop pushing the government to legally allow burials. He was among those who approached Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., last year after an unsuccessful effort spanning 15 years...

There are many stories of historical cemeteries being located on federal land, creating problems for both families and the Forest Service.  One Forest Service publication, Wild Cemeteries?, even discusses the challenges of managing a cemetery in a Wilderness area.

So if you thought when you were dead and gone your problems with the feds was over, you better think again.

Grazing goats maintain fire break

Goats take a water break

The number of goats removing vegetation that could fuel fires near San Diego Country Estates has grown from 600 to 1,400. As of May 9, they were two-thirds of the way through their 100-acre project in the Cleveland National Forest, according to officials. They started on April 23. It takes a lot of animals to forage those acres, said Ray Holes, owner of Prescriptive Livestock Services in Kennewick, Wash. For 15 years, Holes has been delivering goats for large grazing projects throughout the Western states, expanding his herd to 9,000. “We consider them a tool,” Holes said of the goats. The forest service considers the goat grazing project to maintain the San Vicente/Barona Mesa Community Defense line that protects the Estates, and other fuel breaks, an experiment. Palomar District Ranger Joan Friedlander said she was nervous about the reaction of residents but has received positive feedback. “Just very excited myself to see the results,” she said. The goal, Forest Service Fuels Battalion Chief Tim Gray said, is a 75 percent reduction in vegetation...more

You mean livestock grazing can lead to healthy and safe forests?  Yes, but you see this is only an "experiment".