FLE
11 Indicted in 'Eco-Terrorism' Case
After taking nine years to penetrate what they called a "vast eco-terrorism conspiracy" in Oregon and four other Western states, federal prosecutors announced on Friday the indictment of 11 people in connection with a five-year wave of arson and sabotage claimed by the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. The 17 attacks, which occurred from 1996 to 2001, caused no deaths but resulted in an estimated $23 million in damage to lumber companies, a ski resort, meat plants, federal ranger stations and a high-voltage electric tower. After its members allegedly set fire to the office of the Boise Cascade wood products company in Monmouth, Ore., on Christmas Day in 1999, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) sent out a communique saying, "Early Christmas morning elves left coal in Boise Cascade's stocking." In Washington, the Justice Department called the indictments a breakthrough in what prosecutors said has been a long and difficult investigation of the animal rights group and the environmental organization, which organize themselves in small, Maoist-style cells and advocate "direct action" against those who abuse animals or Earth. "Today's indictment proves that we will not tolerate any group that terrorizes the American people, no matter its intentions or objectives," Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said at a news conference. Joining Gonzales, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said: "Investigating and preventing animal rights and environmental extremism is one of the FBI's highest domestic priorities." There are 188 open investigations of crimes claimed by the two groups, dating to 1987, according to Carl J. Truscott, director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He said 25 to 30 of those cases are being actively being pursued -- about half of them in the Pacific Northwest, California and Utah....
FBI affadavit on Sacramento arrests outlines deep infilatration of radical movements
FBI documents released today reveal details about the state's case against Eric McDavid, Lauren Weiner, and Zachary Jensen, who were arrested Friday for allegedly conspiring to blow up U.S. Forest Service buildings buildings and cell phone towers on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front. According to the criminal complaint the group considered bombing the Nimbus Dam on the American River near Sacramento, a cellular telephone tower, a power station, banks, trucks, mountain-top-removal projects in West Virginia and Communist Party offices. The complaint went on to claim that the three "scoped out" the US Forest Service's Institute of Forest Genetics in Placerville, California, building and the Nimbus Dam, on January 10th. The following day they allegedly purchased ingredients for a homemade bomb at an area Wal-Mart store. Agents say that they recovered a notebook from Eric McDavid which contained a diagram of the Forest Service Institute and pictures of pipe bombs. Information in the complaint comes from a paid "confidential source (CS) who is deeply imbedded within the subjects' cell. The CS has worked for the FBI since early 2004. S/he has agreed to testify in court." Supporters identified the CS as a young woman named "Anna" who "went to Auburn" with the defendents shortly before their arrests. The document says that she has has provided information in at least 12 anarchist cases since 2004. She has traveled to and infiltrated various anarchist gatherings and protests across the country including the Biodev 2005 demonstrations in Philadelphia, a CrimethInc. convergence in Indiana and the Feral Visions green anarchist gathering in North Carolina. A police officer suffered a fatal heart attack during a confrontation at the Philadelphia protest which the defendants are now being linked to....
Border Crossing Cards May Someday Be Official ID
One card would serve as a border pass, a driver's license and a security ID for entering federal buildings. It would include not just your name and picture, but your fingerprints and DNA. Just don't call it a national ID card. The Homeland Security Department is planning border crossing cards for Americans re-entering the country from Canada and Mexico. Officials hope to start issuing the PASS (for People Access Security Service) cards by the end of 2006, but will not require them for an additional year. A PASS card may also one day carry driver's license and other identification information, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday. But he told reporters, "I don't think it's a national ID card." Critics fear such a card could violate privacy rights. "It seems to me that we ought to try to be building toward an architecture where one card can do a number of different things for somebody so you don't have to carry 10 cards," he said. The card is an alternative to post-Sept. 11 requirements that U.S. residents show their passports to re-enter from Canada and Mexico by the end of 2007. Currently, U.S. residents coming into the country from Mexico or Canada usually only need to show a driver's license or birth certificate that proves nationality. The proposal still would require passports or certain other secure ID documents from Canadians, Mexicans and other foreign citizens entering the United States. Canadian officials have criticized both the passport plan and the PASS cards as costly and cumbersome requirements that could thwart cross-border traffic and hurt the economy in border towns....
Google data request fuels fears
At first glance it is hard to understand why the US Government's Justice Department wants Google to hand over a week's worth of search data. To begin with, this would be a huge amount of information to paw through. In an average week, Google handles between 500 million and a billion searches. While this is far less than the US government's request for 60 days worth of data, it is likely to produce a huge file tens, if not hundreds, of gigabytes in size. At the same time, the US government wants a random sample of one million websites that people have searched for. It is well known that net service firms and search engines do hand over records to law enforcement agencies who need the data for ongoing criminal investigations. In many cases data found in computer memory caches or searches people have done online have been used in successful prosecutions. But in the UK and US there are laws in place that limit how much and what types of information can be requested. So-called "fishing expeditions" in which police forces or intelligence works request data and look through it for people that have committed crimes are outlawed.
Danny Sullivan, net consultant and founder of Search Engine Watch, said the request Google is fighting was not tied to any criminal investigation by law enforcement organisations. "This is a weird one and is not something that has come up before," he told the BBC News website. He said the fear was that the US Government wanted to set a precedent with this request so it can turn to search firms whenever they want, for whatever data is deemed important....
Bush Leads Defense of NSA Domestic Spying
The Bush administration is opening a campaign to push back against criticism of its domestic spying program, ahead of congressional hearings into whether President Bush has the legal authority to eavesdrop on Americans. President Bush will visit the ultra-secret National Security Agency on Wednesday, underscoring his claim that he has the constitutional authority to let intelligence officials listen in on international phone calls of Americans with suspected ties to terrorists. "We are stepping up our efforts to educate the American people," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said about Bush's trip to the NSA, based at Fort Meade in Maryland. "This is a critical tool that helps us save lives and prevent attacks," he said. "It is limited and targeted to al-Qaida communications, with the focus being on detection and prevention." On Monday, deputy national intelligence director Mike Hayden, who headed the National Security Agency when the program began in October 2001, will speak on the issue a the National Press Club. On Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is delivering a speech on the program in Washington....
Legal Rationale by Justice Dept. on Spying Effort
The Bush administration offered its fullest defense to date Thursday of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, saying that authorization from Congress to deter terrorist attacks "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities." In a 42-page legal analysis, the Justice Department cited the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the writings of presidents both Republican and Democratic, and dozens of scholarly papers and court cases in justifying President Bush's power to order the N.S.A. surveillance program. With the legality of the program under public attack since its disclosure last month, officials said Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales ordered up the analysis partly in response to what administration lawyers felt were unfair conclusions in a Jan. 6 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The Congressional report challenged virtually all the main legal justifications the administration had cited for the program. The analysis released Thursday by the Justice Department, with comments from lawyers throughout the department, expanded on the legal arguments made in two still-classified legal opinions as well as in a slimmer letter that the department sent to Congress last month. The basic thrust of the legal justification was the same - that the president has inherent authority as commander in chief to order wiretaps without warrants and that the N.S.A. operation does not violate either a 1978 law governing intelligence wiretaps or the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches. "The president has made clear that he will exercise all authority available to him, consistent with the Constitution, to protect the people of the United States," the report said. The Congressional authorization on the use of force, it added, "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities."....
Friday, January 20, 2006
MAD COW DISEASE
Shipment of veal chops shuts down U.S. beef exports to Japan
Three boxes containing just 121 pounds of veal on Friday shut down U.S. beef exports to Japan - five weeks after a two-year ban was lifted - because a sample shipment by a Brooklyn packer contained bone-in cuts in violation of Tokyo's tighter food-safety regulations. The company, Atlantic Veal & Lamb, called it "an honest mistake." The new Japanese ban sent shock waves through the American beef industry, which had hoped resumed exports would help recapture a $1.4 billion market. Once the biggest overseas customer of U.S. beef, Japan banned imports after a mad-cow outbreak in Washington state in December 2003. Australia has filled much of the demand since. "Gosh, it's awful," said Will Skaggs, 32, a Texas rancher who runs a Beefmaster breed cow-calf operation near DeLeon. "This comes at a real bad time. We're already battling drought and raging wildfires and this thing comes out. People were hanging in there, thinking prices will stay up." Since the Japanese market reopened last month, exports have only been a trickle - just 4 percent of the purchases made in the same time period of 2003, said Steve Kay, editor of Cattle Buyers Weekly of Petaluma, Calif. Large shipments by sea of chilled beef began only last week with an estimated 1,300 to 1,600 metric tons of beef, valued at $12 million to $16 million, reportedly stranded between ports. "It is regrettable," Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told a news conference. Koizumi said he approved the agriculture minister's suggestion to ban U.S. imports. Japan's Kyodo News Service reported that three boxes of a 41-box, 860-pound test shipment contained veal with backbone when inspected Friday at Narita Airport outside Tokyo....
U.S. to probe beef shipment to Japan
In what promises to be a costly blunder, a Brooklyn-based meat company sent a shipment of veal to Japan that included cattle backbones, material the Japanese consider at risk for mad cow disease. The announcement immediately set off a round of mea culpas from the U.S. beef industry and the Department of Agriculture. Agriculture Secretary Michael Johanns dispatched a team of inspectors to Japan and vowed to bolster inspections at U.S. plants that export beef. He also prohibited the company that shipped the veal, Atlantic Veal & Lamb, from exporting any more beef to Japan. "This is an unacceptable failure on our part to meet the requirements of our agreement with this trading partner, the country of Japan," Johanns said. "We are taking this matter seriously, recognizing the importance of our beef export market, and we are acting swiftly and firmly. "This just simply should not have happened," he added. "I am very unhappy about this. Our inspector should have caught this." While offering the Japanese government an array of measures to reassure them about U.S. beef, including a promise to reprimand the USDA inspector who checked out the problem shipment, U.S. officials - and the beef industry - sought to convince consumers that there was no public-health crisis. Rather, they insisted, the United States had simply violated trade protocol....
USDA pledges stricter scrutiny of beef exports
U.S. meat inspectors were dispatched to Japan to check American beef shipments detained there and U.S. beef processors will be under stricter scrutiny to meet Tokyo's requirements, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said on Friday. A team of USDA inspectors will re-examine U.S. shipments detained at Japanese ports. "That product isn't going to move into the Japanese marketplace until they are satisfied that we have met their concerns and their requirements," he said. Meanwhile, all U.S. meat plants must now have two USDA inspectors review shipments to confirm that rules are followed. Surprise inspections are planned to ensure compliance. On Tuesday, the USDA will meet with beef companies to review compliance with the U.S.-Japan trade agreement....
S.Korea sticks to US beef imports, monitors closely
South Korea will not change its plan to resume importing U.S. beef but will inspect it carefully after Japan found risk material that could cause mad cow disease in American meat, a farm ministry official said on Friday. Just a month after a ban on imports of the meat was lifted, Japan said imported beef from the U.S. contained risk materials, which could cause the brain-wasting disease. "At this time, Japan's case will not affect the agreement between South Korea and the United States on resuming American beef imports at the end of March," the official of Agriculture Ministry said. "But we will watch this case very carefully and be cautious in inspecting facilities in U.S., " he added. South Korea, once the world third-largest export market for U.S. beef, announced last week it would restart U.S. beef imports in late March. But Seoul will set import restrictions, only allowing in beef from cattle aged less than 30 months and then on condition that any bone was removed before shipping....
Texas ranchers weighing impact of Japan's beef ban
Texas' cattle ranchers are anxiously waiting to see whether Japan's halt on U.S. beef shipments turns into a temporary setback or a permanent roadblock. "This is a technical breach and not a food safety issue," said Matt Brockman, executive vice president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association in Fort Worth. "I would hope that trade can resume soon." For the state's cattle feeders, Japan has long been considered a key market. The country imported $1.4 billion worth of U.S. beef in 2003. And the U.S. Agriculture Department had forecast 287 million pounds of beef could be exported to Japan this year – about 31 percent of 2003 levels. "The potential of the Japanese market is pretty significant," said Burt Rutherford, a spokesman for the Texas Cattle Feeders Association, which represents 195 feed yards in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico....
Shipment of veal chops shuts down U.S. beef exports to Japan
Three boxes containing just 121 pounds of veal on Friday shut down U.S. beef exports to Japan - five weeks after a two-year ban was lifted - because a sample shipment by a Brooklyn packer contained bone-in cuts in violation of Tokyo's tighter food-safety regulations. The company, Atlantic Veal & Lamb, called it "an honest mistake." The new Japanese ban sent shock waves through the American beef industry, which had hoped resumed exports would help recapture a $1.4 billion market. Once the biggest overseas customer of U.S. beef, Japan banned imports after a mad-cow outbreak in Washington state in December 2003. Australia has filled much of the demand since. "Gosh, it's awful," said Will Skaggs, 32, a Texas rancher who runs a Beefmaster breed cow-calf operation near DeLeon. "This comes at a real bad time. We're already battling drought and raging wildfires and this thing comes out. People were hanging in there, thinking prices will stay up." Since the Japanese market reopened last month, exports have only been a trickle - just 4 percent of the purchases made in the same time period of 2003, said Steve Kay, editor of Cattle Buyers Weekly of Petaluma, Calif. Large shipments by sea of chilled beef began only last week with an estimated 1,300 to 1,600 metric tons of beef, valued at $12 million to $16 million, reportedly stranded between ports. "It is regrettable," Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told a news conference. Koizumi said he approved the agriculture minister's suggestion to ban U.S. imports. Japan's Kyodo News Service reported that three boxes of a 41-box, 860-pound test shipment contained veal with backbone when inspected Friday at Narita Airport outside Tokyo....
U.S. to probe beef shipment to Japan
In what promises to be a costly blunder, a Brooklyn-based meat company sent a shipment of veal to Japan that included cattle backbones, material the Japanese consider at risk for mad cow disease. The announcement immediately set off a round of mea culpas from the U.S. beef industry and the Department of Agriculture. Agriculture Secretary Michael Johanns dispatched a team of inspectors to Japan and vowed to bolster inspections at U.S. plants that export beef. He also prohibited the company that shipped the veal, Atlantic Veal & Lamb, from exporting any more beef to Japan. "This is an unacceptable failure on our part to meet the requirements of our agreement with this trading partner, the country of Japan," Johanns said. "We are taking this matter seriously, recognizing the importance of our beef export market, and we are acting swiftly and firmly. "This just simply should not have happened," he added. "I am very unhappy about this. Our inspector should have caught this." While offering the Japanese government an array of measures to reassure them about U.S. beef, including a promise to reprimand the USDA inspector who checked out the problem shipment, U.S. officials - and the beef industry - sought to convince consumers that there was no public-health crisis. Rather, they insisted, the United States had simply violated trade protocol....
USDA pledges stricter scrutiny of beef exports
U.S. meat inspectors were dispatched to Japan to check American beef shipments detained there and U.S. beef processors will be under stricter scrutiny to meet Tokyo's requirements, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said on Friday. A team of USDA inspectors will re-examine U.S. shipments detained at Japanese ports. "That product isn't going to move into the Japanese marketplace until they are satisfied that we have met their concerns and their requirements," he said. Meanwhile, all U.S. meat plants must now have two USDA inspectors review shipments to confirm that rules are followed. Surprise inspections are planned to ensure compliance. On Tuesday, the USDA will meet with beef companies to review compliance with the U.S.-Japan trade agreement....
S.Korea sticks to US beef imports, monitors closely
South Korea will not change its plan to resume importing U.S. beef but will inspect it carefully after Japan found risk material that could cause mad cow disease in American meat, a farm ministry official said on Friday. Just a month after a ban on imports of the meat was lifted, Japan said imported beef from the U.S. contained risk materials, which could cause the brain-wasting disease. "At this time, Japan's case will not affect the agreement between South Korea and the United States on resuming American beef imports at the end of March," the official of Agriculture Ministry said. "But we will watch this case very carefully and be cautious in inspecting facilities in U.S., " he added. South Korea, once the world third-largest export market for U.S. beef, announced last week it would restart U.S. beef imports in late March. But Seoul will set import restrictions, only allowing in beef from cattle aged less than 30 months and then on condition that any bone was removed before shipping....
Texas ranchers weighing impact of Japan's beef ban
Texas' cattle ranchers are anxiously waiting to see whether Japan's halt on U.S. beef shipments turns into a temporary setback or a permanent roadblock. "This is a technical breach and not a food safety issue," said Matt Brockman, executive vice president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association in Fort Worth. "I would hope that trade can resume soon." For the state's cattle feeders, Japan has long been considered a key market. The country imported $1.4 billion worth of U.S. beef in 2003. And the U.S. Agriculture Department had forecast 287 million pounds of beef could be exported to Japan this year – about 31 percent of 2003 levels. "The potential of the Japanese market is pretty significant," said Burt Rutherford, a spokesman for the Texas Cattle Feeders Association, which represents 195 feed yards in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Land sells at $1 mil per acre A small piece of land in north Phoenix's popular Desert Ridge development sold for a record $1 million an acre Thursday at an Arizona state land auction. Apartment builder Gray Development paid $33.45 million for the 32-acre site near the Loop 101 and 56th Street. It plans to build more than 800 high-end apartments and condominiums on the pricey land. It was the first of five residential parcels in Desert Ridge that the Land Department plans to auction off this year. "There's still tremendous demand for land," State Land Commissioner Mark Winkleman said....
Firefighter charged with arson in Nevada A firefighter was indicted Thursday on federal arson charges for three wildfires that burned hundreds of acres of national forest in central Nevada this summer. Mark E. Morgan, 34, was working temporarily as a member of a U.S. Bureau of Land Management crew. He's accused of setting the fires in August in Lander County about 170 miles east of Reno, agency officials said. Morgan, of Reno, faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of three counts if convicted, U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden said. A federal grand jury returned the indictment Wednesday, but prosecutors did not make it public until late Thursday....
GJ: No drilling on mesa The Grand Junction City Council will fight a plan that could open the city’s watershed on Grand Mesa to oil and gas development, saying it wants to take every precaution to safeguard the city’s drinking water. Council members voted 5-2 Wednesday night to oppose a federal lease sale offering more than 13,000 acres on the mesa for drilling. The city will send a formal letter of protest to the Bureau of Land Management and letters to the Western Slope’s congressional delegation asking for legislators’ help in removing Grand Junction’s parcels from the sale. Raul Morales, the associate field office manager for the BLM in Grand Junction, said Thursday the BLM takes the issues raised by the city just as seriously as the city does. The BLM is planning to auction oil and gas leases on 22,000 acres in Mesa County on Feb. 9. About 12,000 acres are in Palisade’s watershed, and 600 acres are in Grand Junction’s watershed, according to the BLM. Those watersheds provide drinking water to the municipalities. Grand Junction is following the lead of Palisade town trustees, who voted unanimously last week to battle the lease sale. Palisade officials said they not only want to protect the town’s watershed, but also a $6 million investment in a new water treatment facility the town board approved last year....
2 Oregon activists accused of arson Investigators of sabotage by radical environmental groups have named two more suspects, both from Southern Oregon, in criminal complaints filed in federal court in Eugene. Widely known activist Jonathan Mark Christopher Paul, 39, is accused of a July 21, 1997, arson that destroyed the Cavel West horse meat packing plant in Redmond. Damage was estimated at $1.4 million. He is scheduled to appear in federal court later this week. Suzanne Nicole Savoie, 29, is accused of the Jan. 2, 2001, arson of Superior Lumber Co., now known as Swanson Group, in Glendale. Savoie, who lives in the Applegate area, had not yet been arrested Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Portland said. If convicted, each faces at least five years and as long as 20 years in prison. A grand jury is expected to return formal charges against the two within 30 days....
Forest Service must release papers A judge has ordered the U.S. Forest Service to come clean about accusations that attorneys for the controversial Village at Wolf Creek served as ghostwriters for federal policy. In a ruling Tuesday, Magistrate Judge David L. West of the U.S. District Court in Durango gave the Forest Service three weeks to turn over any documents detailing communication between village developers and Forest Service officials. In particular, he called on the agency to release documents that might shed light on a charge that an attorney for billionaire village developer Billie Joe "Red" McCombs drafted a letter later signed by lawyers for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA oversees the Forest Service. The letter became a crucial component of the village's final building plans. Mineral County endorsed the plans in October 2004, but a district judge in Creede revoked the approval a year later....
Red tape prompts sawmill closure Timber entrepreneur Steve Seley has closed his sawmill on Gravina Island near Ketchikan, one of the few mills left in the giant Southeast rainforest. Seley said Tuesday he's fed up with dealing with the U.S. Forest Service, the federal agency that manages Alaska's 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest, the country's largest. The owner of Pacific Log & Lumber said he's beyond the point of frustration with trying to buy timber from the agency. "The issue is: Can the federal government perform or not?" Seley said. "The industry is out of capital, out of logs and almost out of desire."....
Judge lifts restraining order on logging while bears hibernate A federal judge has cleared the way for salvage logging in grizzly bear habitat in the Flathead National Forest while the bears are hibernating. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy had banned logging in the roadless areas that fall within areas burned by wildfires during the summer of 2003. The temporary restraining order was issued in response to a lawsuit that challenges post-fire management projects in the Swan Mountain Range west of Hungry Horse Reservoir and in the North Fork Flathead Basin. The Flathead National Forest filed a motion in November asking that the logging ban be lifted during winter months, and Molloy did so in a Jan. 13 ruling. Joe Krueger, the Flathead forest's environmental coordinator, said the initial order had the potential to set a precedent for banning all management activities year-round in core grizzly bear habitat. But the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service argued that scheduled helicopter logging in those areas would not adversely affect grizzly bears when they are denned during the winter months....
Tanks, tortoises fuel ongoing debate The U.S. Army, moving closer to the long-sought expansion of its tank training center near Barstow into desert tortoise habitat, released its final report Thursday on how it will minimize harm from its large-scale maneuvers on the federally protected reptile. The report, however, noted that a key finding in 2004 by federal wildlife officials that approved the 150,000-acre expansion of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin may have been invalidated by a later court ruling in another case. In that case, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must consider the recovery of an endangered species and not just its survival when approving an action in what is called critical habitat, such as the case with the tank training center....
Feds May Protect Plant In Oil Shale, Gas Fields The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday that it is considering whether to protect a plant that environmentalists warn could be wiped out by oil shale and natural gas development. Fish and Wildlife has proposed listing the Graham's beardtongue as a threatened species as part of the settlement of a lawsuit by five environmental groups. The plant is found in eastern Utah and northwestern Colorado, home to intense gas drilling and vast oil shale reserves that the federal government is eager to develop. The Bureau of Land Management is developing a programmatic environmental review of oil shale development on federal lands in the area, meaning that it will be an overview of various issues rather than a study of a specific project at a specific site. More than 70 percent of the plants are on public lands overseen by Bureau of Land Management....
Study: Government not protecting sage grouse from energy boom The federal government needs to impose new restrictions on oil and gas development in the West because current policies are failing to protect sage grouse, according to conservationists citing a new study of the birds in western Wyoming. With all the oil and gas development going on now and planned in the future, "care really must be taken if we're going to have these wide open ecosystems in the future," Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist with the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie, said Thursday. Sage grouse inhabit large areas of the western United States, including Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Montana, where energy development is booming. The study cited Thursday was conducted by University of Wyoming doctoral student Matthew Holloran for his dissertation. It was paid for by the Bureau of Land Management, the state Game and Fish Department and oil and gas companies....
Feds won’t add coho to threatened species list Crediting strong efforts by the state of Oregon to limit fishing, reform hatchery production and improve freshwater habitat, NOAA Fisheries said Tuesday it’s shelving its proposal to return Oregon coastal coho to the threatened species list. “I applaud the hard work of local agriculture, forestry, state, tribal and other federal partners to develop a solid plan for recovery,” Bob Lohn, the NOAA Fisheries Northwest regional administrator, said in a statement. “This is an encouraging example of the diverse interests that can come together to improve conditions for salmon in the Pacific Northwest.” With no federal protection, there will be fewer regulations on logging, agriculture, land development and restoration work from Astoria to Port Orford. Douglas Timber Operators Executive Director Bob Ragon said the decision won’t likely increase logging in the region, but will ultimately mean less threat of lawsuits and restrictive bureaucratic red tape in the future....
Lawmakers: Why would proposed mine spend $18 million on grizzlies After hearing that a proposed mine beneath the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness in Montana would help the survival of grizzly bears in the region, the leader of an Idaho legislative panel on Wednesday asked why mining officials were taking steps to conserve grizzly habitat in the first place. ‘‘What’s bears got to do with the mine?’’ Sen. Hal Bunderson, R-Meridian, asked officials with Revett Minerals Inc., a Spokane Valley, Wash., company seeking government approval for a copper and silver mine at Rock Creek, Mont., about 25 miles across the Idaho border from Lake Pend Oreille. ‘‘I understand the need to do water quality mitigation, but when it comes to bear mitigation, that’s just piling on and it’s wrong,’’ said Bunderson, co-chairman of the Joint Legislative Environmental Common Sense Committee. Revett officials are hoping their plans to spend $18 million to increase grizzly protection around the Rock Creek Mine will improve chances that government regulators and courts will approve the necessary permits that have been sought by developers since 1987. Legal challenges have overturned two previous ‘‘biological opinions’’ in favor of the project by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency is now at work on a third....
McCloskey takes challenge to run against Pombo Former Peninsula Congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey Jr., best remembered for his Vietnam War opposition and his speech calling for the impeachment of President Nixon, will announce his candidacy Monday in Lodi as a Republican challenger to Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy. The feisty 78-year-old beat the bushes for months in his quest to find a Republican willing to run against the seven-term incumbent with whom he has major political differences. But when no one volunteered, McCloskey asked, "Why not me?" McCloskey, who served eight terms in Congress from 1967 to 1983, wrote the 1974 Endangered Species Act that Pombo has worked to alter for the past 13 years. Pombo finally passed a bill out of the House last year that would fundamentally change the way the country protects threatened plants and animals, although the bill faces an uncertain fate in the Senate. "It's time to take Pombo out," McCloskey told the Times' editorial board Wednesday....
Land trade expands desert wilderness sites A land swap nine years in the making will boost wilderness areas, wildlife refuges and other federally designated lands in the desert by 29,500 acres. The land was old railroad property in wilderness areas in the Newberry and Rodman mountains and the Trilobite Wilderness in San Bernardino County and in Gilmore's Camp and two national wildlife refuges in Imperial County. Those parcels now will be in public hands under an agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. In exchange, the bureau will give up 2,000 acres of public land, mostly agricultural leases, in eastern Riverside County in and around the Palo Verde Valley, a farming hub next to the Colorado River....
Environmentalists, others rip BLM oil-shale plan Environmentalists and other Coloradans with long memories criticized a government effort to revive oil-shale production on the Western Slope during a meeting in the Denver area Thursday, as industry representatives generally stayed quiet. "There's no indication today that oil shale is any more economically viable than it was on Sunday, May 2, 1982," when Exxon closed its oil-shale project near Parachute, laying off 2,200 workers, said Kevin Markey, who lives near Lyons. Markey and others warned that the oil-shale industry took a heavy toll on Colorado's environment and economy, and said they see little reason to believe a new round of exploration will be different....
Perry Declares Statewide Drought Disaster Gov. Rick Perry declared a disaster in all 254 Texas counties Thursday and asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide disaster relief assistance for Texas farmers and ranchers who have suffered losses because of the dry conditions. Perry earlier requested drought relief assistance for 113 counties and to date the USDA has approved 54 of the requests. “Our farmers and ranchers have been suffering from extremely dry conditions, as well as devastating wildfires,” Perry said....
Land sells at $1 mil per acre A small piece of land in north Phoenix's popular Desert Ridge development sold for a record $1 million an acre Thursday at an Arizona state land auction. Apartment builder Gray Development paid $33.45 million for the 32-acre site near the Loop 101 and 56th Street. It plans to build more than 800 high-end apartments and condominiums on the pricey land. It was the first of five residential parcels in Desert Ridge that the Land Department plans to auction off this year. "There's still tremendous demand for land," State Land Commissioner Mark Winkleman said....
Firefighter charged with arson in Nevada A firefighter was indicted Thursday on federal arson charges for three wildfires that burned hundreds of acres of national forest in central Nevada this summer. Mark E. Morgan, 34, was working temporarily as a member of a U.S. Bureau of Land Management crew. He's accused of setting the fires in August in Lander County about 170 miles east of Reno, agency officials said. Morgan, of Reno, faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of three counts if convicted, U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden said. A federal grand jury returned the indictment Wednesday, but prosecutors did not make it public until late Thursday....
GJ: No drilling on mesa The Grand Junction City Council will fight a plan that could open the city’s watershed on Grand Mesa to oil and gas development, saying it wants to take every precaution to safeguard the city’s drinking water. Council members voted 5-2 Wednesday night to oppose a federal lease sale offering more than 13,000 acres on the mesa for drilling. The city will send a formal letter of protest to the Bureau of Land Management and letters to the Western Slope’s congressional delegation asking for legislators’ help in removing Grand Junction’s parcels from the sale. Raul Morales, the associate field office manager for the BLM in Grand Junction, said Thursday the BLM takes the issues raised by the city just as seriously as the city does. The BLM is planning to auction oil and gas leases on 22,000 acres in Mesa County on Feb. 9. About 12,000 acres are in Palisade’s watershed, and 600 acres are in Grand Junction’s watershed, according to the BLM. Those watersheds provide drinking water to the municipalities. Grand Junction is following the lead of Palisade town trustees, who voted unanimously last week to battle the lease sale. Palisade officials said they not only want to protect the town’s watershed, but also a $6 million investment in a new water treatment facility the town board approved last year....
2 Oregon activists accused of arson Investigators of sabotage by radical environmental groups have named two more suspects, both from Southern Oregon, in criminal complaints filed in federal court in Eugene. Widely known activist Jonathan Mark Christopher Paul, 39, is accused of a July 21, 1997, arson that destroyed the Cavel West horse meat packing plant in Redmond. Damage was estimated at $1.4 million. He is scheduled to appear in federal court later this week. Suzanne Nicole Savoie, 29, is accused of the Jan. 2, 2001, arson of Superior Lumber Co., now known as Swanson Group, in Glendale. Savoie, who lives in the Applegate area, had not yet been arrested Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Portland said. If convicted, each faces at least five years and as long as 20 years in prison. A grand jury is expected to return formal charges against the two within 30 days....
Forest Service must release papers A judge has ordered the U.S. Forest Service to come clean about accusations that attorneys for the controversial Village at Wolf Creek served as ghostwriters for federal policy. In a ruling Tuesday, Magistrate Judge David L. West of the U.S. District Court in Durango gave the Forest Service three weeks to turn over any documents detailing communication between village developers and Forest Service officials. In particular, he called on the agency to release documents that might shed light on a charge that an attorney for billionaire village developer Billie Joe "Red" McCombs drafted a letter later signed by lawyers for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA oversees the Forest Service. The letter became a crucial component of the village's final building plans. Mineral County endorsed the plans in October 2004, but a district judge in Creede revoked the approval a year later....
Red tape prompts sawmill closure Timber entrepreneur Steve Seley has closed his sawmill on Gravina Island near Ketchikan, one of the few mills left in the giant Southeast rainforest. Seley said Tuesday he's fed up with dealing with the U.S. Forest Service, the federal agency that manages Alaska's 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest, the country's largest. The owner of Pacific Log & Lumber said he's beyond the point of frustration with trying to buy timber from the agency. "The issue is: Can the federal government perform or not?" Seley said. "The industry is out of capital, out of logs and almost out of desire."....
Judge lifts restraining order on logging while bears hibernate A federal judge has cleared the way for salvage logging in grizzly bear habitat in the Flathead National Forest while the bears are hibernating. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy had banned logging in the roadless areas that fall within areas burned by wildfires during the summer of 2003. The temporary restraining order was issued in response to a lawsuit that challenges post-fire management projects in the Swan Mountain Range west of Hungry Horse Reservoir and in the North Fork Flathead Basin. The Flathead National Forest filed a motion in November asking that the logging ban be lifted during winter months, and Molloy did so in a Jan. 13 ruling. Joe Krueger, the Flathead forest's environmental coordinator, said the initial order had the potential to set a precedent for banning all management activities year-round in core grizzly bear habitat. But the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service argued that scheduled helicopter logging in those areas would not adversely affect grizzly bears when they are denned during the winter months....
Tanks, tortoises fuel ongoing debate The U.S. Army, moving closer to the long-sought expansion of its tank training center near Barstow into desert tortoise habitat, released its final report Thursday on how it will minimize harm from its large-scale maneuvers on the federally protected reptile. The report, however, noted that a key finding in 2004 by federal wildlife officials that approved the 150,000-acre expansion of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin may have been invalidated by a later court ruling in another case. In that case, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must consider the recovery of an endangered species and not just its survival when approving an action in what is called critical habitat, such as the case with the tank training center....
Feds May Protect Plant In Oil Shale, Gas Fields The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday that it is considering whether to protect a plant that environmentalists warn could be wiped out by oil shale and natural gas development. Fish and Wildlife has proposed listing the Graham's beardtongue as a threatened species as part of the settlement of a lawsuit by five environmental groups. The plant is found in eastern Utah and northwestern Colorado, home to intense gas drilling and vast oil shale reserves that the federal government is eager to develop. The Bureau of Land Management is developing a programmatic environmental review of oil shale development on federal lands in the area, meaning that it will be an overview of various issues rather than a study of a specific project at a specific site. More than 70 percent of the plants are on public lands overseen by Bureau of Land Management....
Study: Government not protecting sage grouse from energy boom The federal government needs to impose new restrictions on oil and gas development in the West because current policies are failing to protect sage grouse, according to conservationists citing a new study of the birds in western Wyoming. With all the oil and gas development going on now and planned in the future, "care really must be taken if we're going to have these wide open ecosystems in the future," Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist with the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie, said Thursday. Sage grouse inhabit large areas of the western United States, including Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Montana, where energy development is booming. The study cited Thursday was conducted by University of Wyoming doctoral student Matthew Holloran for his dissertation. It was paid for by the Bureau of Land Management, the state Game and Fish Department and oil and gas companies....
Feds won’t add coho to threatened species list Crediting strong efforts by the state of Oregon to limit fishing, reform hatchery production and improve freshwater habitat, NOAA Fisheries said Tuesday it’s shelving its proposal to return Oregon coastal coho to the threatened species list. “I applaud the hard work of local agriculture, forestry, state, tribal and other federal partners to develop a solid plan for recovery,” Bob Lohn, the NOAA Fisheries Northwest regional administrator, said in a statement. “This is an encouraging example of the diverse interests that can come together to improve conditions for salmon in the Pacific Northwest.” With no federal protection, there will be fewer regulations on logging, agriculture, land development and restoration work from Astoria to Port Orford. Douglas Timber Operators Executive Director Bob Ragon said the decision won’t likely increase logging in the region, but will ultimately mean less threat of lawsuits and restrictive bureaucratic red tape in the future....
Lawmakers: Why would proposed mine spend $18 million on grizzlies After hearing that a proposed mine beneath the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness in Montana would help the survival of grizzly bears in the region, the leader of an Idaho legislative panel on Wednesday asked why mining officials were taking steps to conserve grizzly habitat in the first place. ‘‘What’s bears got to do with the mine?’’ Sen. Hal Bunderson, R-Meridian, asked officials with Revett Minerals Inc., a Spokane Valley, Wash., company seeking government approval for a copper and silver mine at Rock Creek, Mont., about 25 miles across the Idaho border from Lake Pend Oreille. ‘‘I understand the need to do water quality mitigation, but when it comes to bear mitigation, that’s just piling on and it’s wrong,’’ said Bunderson, co-chairman of the Joint Legislative Environmental Common Sense Committee. Revett officials are hoping their plans to spend $18 million to increase grizzly protection around the Rock Creek Mine will improve chances that government regulators and courts will approve the necessary permits that have been sought by developers since 1987. Legal challenges have overturned two previous ‘‘biological opinions’’ in favor of the project by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency is now at work on a third....
McCloskey takes challenge to run against Pombo Former Peninsula Congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey Jr., best remembered for his Vietnam War opposition and his speech calling for the impeachment of President Nixon, will announce his candidacy Monday in Lodi as a Republican challenger to Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy. The feisty 78-year-old beat the bushes for months in his quest to find a Republican willing to run against the seven-term incumbent with whom he has major political differences. But when no one volunteered, McCloskey asked, "Why not me?" McCloskey, who served eight terms in Congress from 1967 to 1983, wrote the 1974 Endangered Species Act that Pombo has worked to alter for the past 13 years. Pombo finally passed a bill out of the House last year that would fundamentally change the way the country protects threatened plants and animals, although the bill faces an uncertain fate in the Senate. "It's time to take Pombo out," McCloskey told the Times' editorial board Wednesday....
Land trade expands desert wilderness sites A land swap nine years in the making will boost wilderness areas, wildlife refuges and other federally designated lands in the desert by 29,500 acres. The land was old railroad property in wilderness areas in the Newberry and Rodman mountains and the Trilobite Wilderness in San Bernardino County and in Gilmore's Camp and two national wildlife refuges in Imperial County. Those parcels now will be in public hands under an agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. In exchange, the bureau will give up 2,000 acres of public land, mostly agricultural leases, in eastern Riverside County in and around the Palo Verde Valley, a farming hub next to the Colorado River....
Environmentalists, others rip BLM oil-shale plan Environmentalists and other Coloradans with long memories criticized a government effort to revive oil-shale production on the Western Slope during a meeting in the Denver area Thursday, as industry representatives generally stayed quiet. "There's no indication today that oil shale is any more economically viable than it was on Sunday, May 2, 1982," when Exxon closed its oil-shale project near Parachute, laying off 2,200 workers, said Kevin Markey, who lives near Lyons. Markey and others warned that the oil-shale industry took a heavy toll on Colorado's environment and economy, and said they see little reason to believe a new round of exploration will be different....
Perry Declares Statewide Drought Disaster Gov. Rick Perry declared a disaster in all 254 Texas counties Thursday and asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide disaster relief assistance for Texas farmers and ranchers who have suffered losses because of the dry conditions. Perry earlier requested drought relief assistance for 113 counties and to date the USDA has approved 54 of the requests. “Our farmers and ranchers have been suffering from extremely dry conditions, as well as devastating wildfires,” Perry said....
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Robert E. Lee
If you rely on the mainstream media for your news, you probably do not know that January 19, is the 199th anniversary of the birth of Robert E. Lee. Nor would you know that numerous celebrations will be held to honor the General on that day. I am not sure why the mainstream media ignores Lee. It is certainly not because he isn’t newsworthy. Lee is immensely popular not only throughout America but also in Europe. And when any organization compiles a listing of famous Americans, General Lee is always ranked near the top. During the War Between the States and continuing into the years following the War, Lee was frequently the subject of articles by journalists and editors. These men often sought his opinion regarding affairs of state. General Lee spoke for many of us in this statement contained in his January 5, 1866, letter to New York editor, C. Chauncey Burr: "All the South has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth." (emphasis added)Today, the government that Lee described no longer exists, but when the General made his comments many mistakenly believed that the government "as originally organized" might survive. They had not realized how radically the government had already been altered during the War years. Lee himself thought that the concept of sovereign states combined with a limited federal authority would continue. And he wanted to do his part to sustain such a concept. So, within months of his surrender at Appomattox, he decided to apply for the restoration of his citizenship that had been revoked as a result of his War efforts. An official pardon and a restoration of citizenship was eventually granted to Robert E. Lee, but not during his lifetime. How did it all come about? Well, "thereby hangs a tale" – 100 years in the making and along the way there were the usual bureaucratic logjams, petty politics, high hopes, and disappointments. And, also, an unsolved mystery and an extraordinary bit of luck....
If you rely on the mainstream media for your news, you probably do not know that January 19, is the 199th anniversary of the birth of Robert E. Lee. Nor would you know that numerous celebrations will be held to honor the General on that day. I am not sure why the mainstream media ignores Lee. It is certainly not because he isn’t newsworthy. Lee is immensely popular not only throughout America but also in Europe. And when any organization compiles a listing of famous Americans, General Lee is always ranked near the top. During the War Between the States and continuing into the years following the War, Lee was frequently the subject of articles by journalists and editors. These men often sought his opinion regarding affairs of state. General Lee spoke for many of us in this statement contained in his January 5, 1866, letter to New York editor, C. Chauncey Burr: "All the South has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth." (emphasis added)Today, the government that Lee described no longer exists, but when the General made his comments many mistakenly believed that the government "as originally organized" might survive. They had not realized how radically the government had already been altered during the War years. Lee himself thought that the concept of sovereign states combined with a limited federal authority would continue. And he wanted to do his part to sustain such a concept. So, within months of his surrender at Appomattox, he decided to apply for the restoration of his citizenship that had been revoked as a result of his War efforts. An official pardon and a restoration of citizenship was eventually granted to Robert E. Lee, but not during his lifetime. How did it all come about? Well, "thereby hangs a tale" – 100 years in the making and along the way there were the usual bureaucratic logjams, petty politics, high hopes, and disappointments. And, also, an unsolved mystery and an extraordinary bit of luck....
FLE
Leading Conservatives Call for Extensive Hearings on NSA Surveillance
Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) today called upon Congress to hold open, substantive oversight hearings examining the President's authorization of the National Security Agency (NSA) to violate domestic surveillance requirements outlined in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, chairman of PRCB, was joined by fellow conservatives Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR); David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, in urging lawmakers to use NSA hearings to establish a solid foundation for restoring much needed constitutional checks and balances to intelligence law. "When the Patriot Act was passed shortly after 9-11, the federal government was granted expanded access to Americans' private information," said Barr. "However, federal law still clearly states that intelligence agents must have a court order to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans on these shores. Yet the federal government overstepped the protections of the Constitution and the plain language of FISA to eavesdrop on Americans' private communication without any judicial checks and without proof that they are involved in terrorism." The following can be attributed to PRCB members: "I believe that our executive branch cannot continue to operate without the checks of the other branches. However, I stand behind the President in encouraging Congress to operate cautiously during the hearings so that sensitive government intelligence is not given to our enemies." -- Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO, Free Congress Foundation. "Public hearings on this issue are essential to addressing the serious concerns raised by alarming revelations of NSA electronic eavesdropping." -- Grover Norquist, president, Americans for Tax Reform. "The need to reform surveillance laws and practices adopted since 9/11 is more apparent now than ever. No one would deny the government the power it needs to protect us all, but when that power poses a threat to the basic rights that make our nation unique, its exercise must be carefully monitored by Congress and the courts. This is not a partisan issue; it is an issue of safeguarding the fundamental freedoms of all Americans so that future administrations do not interpret our laws in ways that pose constitutional concerns." -- David Keene, chairman, American Conservative Union. "If the law is not reformed, ordinary Americans' personal information could be swept into all-encompassing federal databases encroaching upon every aspect of their private lives. This is of particular concern to gun owners, whose rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment are currently being infringed upon under the Patriot Act's controversial record search provisions." -- Alan Gottlieb, founder, Second Amendment Foundation....
Congressional Agency Questions Legality of Wiretaps
The Bush administration appears to have violated the National Security Act by limiting its briefings about a warrantless domestic eavesdropping program to congressional leaders, according to a memo from Congress's research arm released yesterday. The Congressional Research Service opinion said that the amended 1947 law requires President Bush to keep all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees "fully and currently informed" of such intelligence activities as the domestic surveillance effort. The memo from national security specialist Alfred Cumming is the second report this month from CRS to question the legality of aspects of Bush's domestic spying program. A Jan. 6 report concluded that the administration's justifications for the program conflicted with current law. Yesterday's analysis was requested by Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, who wrote in a letter to Bush earlier this month that limiting information about the eavesdropping program violated the law and provided for poor oversight. The White House has said it informed congressional leaders about the NSA program in more than a dozen briefings, but has refused to provide further details. At a minimum, the briefings included the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees and the two ranking Democrats, known collectively as the "Gang of Four," according to various sources....
Strange Bedfellows v. Bush and Cheney
For the last month, civil liberties attorneys have been searching for the picture-perfect plaintiffs to challenge President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. The dilemma they faced was obvious: The only known targets of the secret spying are suspected or convicted terrorists, hardly the most politically palatable victims of government abuse. On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union revealed its solution to this problem in a spectacular fashion. It filed suit against the National Security Agency with a collection of litigants that reads like the guest list of an Arianna Huffington dinner party. Begin with Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens, an Iraq war booster who holds the distinction of being the only person to condemn both Mother Teresa as a fraud and Henry Kissinger as a war criminal. Then add Larry Diamond, a Stanford academic who advised the Bush administration on democratization in Iraq, and James Bamford, an Iraq war opponent who has written extensively about the National Security Agency. Tara McKelvey, a writer on military torture for the American Prospect, makes an appearance, as does Barnett Rubin, a New York University professor who advised the United Nations on the formation of a new Afghan government. And for good measure, the litigants also include Greenpeace, the environmental group that has never been accused of any ties to al-Qaida, as well as several other lawyers. The glue that binds this motley crew of pundits, scholars and activists was a legal theory that the ACLU hopes will convince federal courts to declare the wiretap program unconstitutional. In a Tuesday conference call with reporters, the ACLU did not provide any new evidence about who was targeted by the NSA wiretaps. Rather, it argued that the mere disclosure of the hitherto secret program has had a "chilling effect" on the plaintiffs' willingness to communicate openly on international phone and data lines, violating their privacy and First Amendment rights. "Lawyers, journalists and scholars are already changing their behavior," explained Ann Beeson, the ACLU's associate legal director. "We have a lot of evidence of harm."....
Mining for kids: Children can’t “opt out” of Pentagon recruitment database
Parents cannot remove their children’s names from a Pentagon database that includes highly personal information used to attract military recruits, the Vermont Guardian has learned. The Pentagon has spent more than $70.5 million on market research, national advertising, website development, and management of the Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies (JAMRS) database — a storehouse of questionable legality that includes the names and personal details of more than 30 million U.S. children and young people between the ages of 16 and 23. The database is separate from information collected from schools that receive federal education money. The No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to report the names, addresses, and phone numbers of secondary school students to recruiters, but the law also specifies that parents or guardians may write a letter to the school asking that their children’s names not be released. However, many parents have reported being surprised that their children are contacted anyway, according to a San Francisco-based coalition called Leave My Child Alone (LMCA). “We hear from a lot of parents who have often felt quite isolated about it all and haven’t been aware that this is happening all over the country,” said the group’s spokeswoman, Felicity Crush. Parents must contact the Pentagon directly to ask that their children’s information not be released to recruiters, but the data is not removed from the JAMRS database, according to Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman. Instead, the information is moved to a suppression file, where it is continuously updated with new data from private and government sources and still made available to recruiters, Krenke said. It’s necessary to keep the information in the suppression file so the Pentagon can make sure it’s not being released, she said. Krenke said the database is compiled using information from state motor vehicles departments, the Selective Service, and data-mining firms that collect and organize information from private companies. In addition to names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and phone numbers, the database may include cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity, and subjects of interest....
Feds want Google search records
The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases. The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches. In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for one million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period. The Mountain View-based search engine opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents. Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort ``vigorously.''....
FBI Missed Internal Signs of Espionage
By the government's own account, FBI analyst Leandro Aragoncillo was spying in plain sight. He rummaged through FBI computers for intelligence reports unrelated to his work and then e-mailed the classified documents to opposition leaders in the Philippines. He had traveled more than a dozen times to the Asian country on personal business since 2000. And records show he carried debt of at least a half-million dollars — on Marine retirement pay and an entry-level FBI salary. But for at least seven months, the bureau that makes catching spies its No. 2 mission after fighting terrorism missed signs of espionage in its own ranks — again. Safeguards the FBI put in place after it was rocked by the Robert Hanssen spy scandal in 2001 failed to raise red flags about Aragoncillo's activities, according to interviews and court papers reviewed by The Associated Press. It took outside help — U.S. customs officials separately developed suspicions about Aragoncillo — to alert the FBI. The bureau soon discovered he was sending sensitive U.S. intelligence assessments about the Philippines' government to Filipino opposition leaders, court records say....
Indiana Residents Deemed Suspicious Could Be Monitored
Public officials want to create an "intelligence fusion center" to collect data on suspicious Indiana residents. Senator Thomas Wyss of Fort Wayne is sponsoring Senate Bill 247. It would allow a center to collect intelligence information on an individual if the person "reasonably" appears to have knowledge of terrorist or criminal activities. The center would be in the state government complex. Under the governor's direction, law enforcement officers across Indiana would work together and share information. State Homeland Security Director Eric Dietz said the center would be funded through federal grants....
'Decommissioned' Guns Nearly As Good As Confiscations
The Brady group and its congressional supporters are proceeding, and making headway, with a below-radar effort to ban operating firearms from the general public, without having to actually disarm America's 80 million gun owners. The plan is now evolving around an innocent-sounding new legal term. It was tucked deep in a 400,000-word spending bill under president Clinton (law # P.L. 105-277), and it is now spreading throughout federal gun laws. Its latest use, the eighth, is in the frivolous-lawsuit ban just enacted (The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, law # P.L. 109-92; S.397). Described at the end of this report, it accents a liability all Americans -- not just gun owners -- are increasingly under, a tightening legal noose few people realize is around their necks. The phrase is "secure gun storage or safety device." It includes almost anything that will keep a gun from working. At its simplest, it's gun locks. This and closely related tactics are sometimes called "decommissioning schemes." Gun-control advocates -- the mainstream ones who seek to disarm the public -- will essentially win their cause if they can require guns to be disabled, disassembled, locked up or turned off by remote control. This approach is already working in National Parks where possession of a working gun subjects you to immediate federal arrest, confiscation of your property, and endless aggravation. No criminal act of any kind is required, just legal possession of personal property -- any firearm. However, a gun in pieces so it cannot be fired, locked in your car trunk is allowed. Interestingly, no statutory authority for this denial of civil rights can be found. And of course, statutory denial of civil rights would be unconstitutional on its face....
Leading Conservatives Call for Extensive Hearings on NSA Surveillance
Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) today called upon Congress to hold open, substantive oversight hearings examining the President's authorization of the National Security Agency (NSA) to violate domestic surveillance requirements outlined in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, chairman of PRCB, was joined by fellow conservatives Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR); David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, in urging lawmakers to use NSA hearings to establish a solid foundation for restoring much needed constitutional checks and balances to intelligence law. "When the Patriot Act was passed shortly after 9-11, the federal government was granted expanded access to Americans' private information," said Barr. "However, federal law still clearly states that intelligence agents must have a court order to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans on these shores. Yet the federal government overstepped the protections of the Constitution and the plain language of FISA to eavesdrop on Americans' private communication without any judicial checks and without proof that they are involved in terrorism." The following can be attributed to PRCB members: "I believe that our executive branch cannot continue to operate without the checks of the other branches. However, I stand behind the President in encouraging Congress to operate cautiously during the hearings so that sensitive government intelligence is not given to our enemies." -- Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO, Free Congress Foundation. "Public hearings on this issue are essential to addressing the serious concerns raised by alarming revelations of NSA electronic eavesdropping." -- Grover Norquist, president, Americans for Tax Reform. "The need to reform surveillance laws and practices adopted since 9/11 is more apparent now than ever. No one would deny the government the power it needs to protect us all, but when that power poses a threat to the basic rights that make our nation unique, its exercise must be carefully monitored by Congress and the courts. This is not a partisan issue; it is an issue of safeguarding the fundamental freedoms of all Americans so that future administrations do not interpret our laws in ways that pose constitutional concerns." -- David Keene, chairman, American Conservative Union. "If the law is not reformed, ordinary Americans' personal information could be swept into all-encompassing federal databases encroaching upon every aspect of their private lives. This is of particular concern to gun owners, whose rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment are currently being infringed upon under the Patriot Act's controversial record search provisions." -- Alan Gottlieb, founder, Second Amendment Foundation....
Congressional Agency Questions Legality of Wiretaps
The Bush administration appears to have violated the National Security Act by limiting its briefings about a warrantless domestic eavesdropping program to congressional leaders, according to a memo from Congress's research arm released yesterday. The Congressional Research Service opinion said that the amended 1947 law requires President Bush to keep all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees "fully and currently informed" of such intelligence activities as the domestic surveillance effort. The memo from national security specialist Alfred Cumming is the second report this month from CRS to question the legality of aspects of Bush's domestic spying program. A Jan. 6 report concluded that the administration's justifications for the program conflicted with current law. Yesterday's analysis was requested by Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, who wrote in a letter to Bush earlier this month that limiting information about the eavesdropping program violated the law and provided for poor oversight. The White House has said it informed congressional leaders about the NSA program in more than a dozen briefings, but has refused to provide further details. At a minimum, the briefings included the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees and the two ranking Democrats, known collectively as the "Gang of Four," according to various sources....
Strange Bedfellows v. Bush and Cheney
For the last month, civil liberties attorneys have been searching for the picture-perfect plaintiffs to challenge President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. The dilemma they faced was obvious: The only known targets of the secret spying are suspected or convicted terrorists, hardly the most politically palatable victims of government abuse. On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union revealed its solution to this problem in a spectacular fashion. It filed suit against the National Security Agency with a collection of litigants that reads like the guest list of an Arianna Huffington dinner party. Begin with Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens, an Iraq war booster who holds the distinction of being the only person to condemn both Mother Teresa as a fraud and Henry Kissinger as a war criminal. Then add Larry Diamond, a Stanford academic who advised the Bush administration on democratization in Iraq, and James Bamford, an Iraq war opponent who has written extensively about the National Security Agency. Tara McKelvey, a writer on military torture for the American Prospect, makes an appearance, as does Barnett Rubin, a New York University professor who advised the United Nations on the formation of a new Afghan government. And for good measure, the litigants also include Greenpeace, the environmental group that has never been accused of any ties to al-Qaida, as well as several other lawyers. The glue that binds this motley crew of pundits, scholars and activists was a legal theory that the ACLU hopes will convince federal courts to declare the wiretap program unconstitutional. In a Tuesday conference call with reporters, the ACLU did not provide any new evidence about who was targeted by the NSA wiretaps. Rather, it argued that the mere disclosure of the hitherto secret program has had a "chilling effect" on the plaintiffs' willingness to communicate openly on international phone and data lines, violating their privacy and First Amendment rights. "Lawyers, journalists and scholars are already changing their behavior," explained Ann Beeson, the ACLU's associate legal director. "We have a lot of evidence of harm."....
Mining for kids: Children can’t “opt out” of Pentagon recruitment database
Parents cannot remove their children’s names from a Pentagon database that includes highly personal information used to attract military recruits, the Vermont Guardian has learned. The Pentagon has spent more than $70.5 million on market research, national advertising, website development, and management of the Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies (JAMRS) database — a storehouse of questionable legality that includes the names and personal details of more than 30 million U.S. children and young people between the ages of 16 and 23. The database is separate from information collected from schools that receive federal education money. The No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to report the names, addresses, and phone numbers of secondary school students to recruiters, but the law also specifies that parents or guardians may write a letter to the school asking that their children’s names not be released. However, many parents have reported being surprised that their children are contacted anyway, according to a San Francisco-based coalition called Leave My Child Alone (LMCA). “We hear from a lot of parents who have often felt quite isolated about it all and haven’t been aware that this is happening all over the country,” said the group’s spokeswoman, Felicity Crush. Parents must contact the Pentagon directly to ask that their children’s information not be released to recruiters, but the data is not removed from the JAMRS database, according to Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman. Instead, the information is moved to a suppression file, where it is continuously updated with new data from private and government sources and still made available to recruiters, Krenke said. It’s necessary to keep the information in the suppression file so the Pentagon can make sure it’s not being released, she said. Krenke said the database is compiled using information from state motor vehicles departments, the Selective Service, and data-mining firms that collect and organize information from private companies. In addition to names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and phone numbers, the database may include cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity, and subjects of interest....
Feds want Google search records
The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases. The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches. In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for one million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period. The Mountain View-based search engine opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents. Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort ``vigorously.''....
FBI Missed Internal Signs of Espionage
By the government's own account, FBI analyst Leandro Aragoncillo was spying in plain sight. He rummaged through FBI computers for intelligence reports unrelated to his work and then e-mailed the classified documents to opposition leaders in the Philippines. He had traveled more than a dozen times to the Asian country on personal business since 2000. And records show he carried debt of at least a half-million dollars — on Marine retirement pay and an entry-level FBI salary. But for at least seven months, the bureau that makes catching spies its No. 2 mission after fighting terrorism missed signs of espionage in its own ranks — again. Safeguards the FBI put in place after it was rocked by the Robert Hanssen spy scandal in 2001 failed to raise red flags about Aragoncillo's activities, according to interviews and court papers reviewed by The Associated Press. It took outside help — U.S. customs officials separately developed suspicions about Aragoncillo — to alert the FBI. The bureau soon discovered he was sending sensitive U.S. intelligence assessments about the Philippines' government to Filipino opposition leaders, court records say....
Indiana Residents Deemed Suspicious Could Be Monitored
Public officials want to create an "intelligence fusion center" to collect data on suspicious Indiana residents. Senator Thomas Wyss of Fort Wayne is sponsoring Senate Bill 247. It would allow a center to collect intelligence information on an individual if the person "reasonably" appears to have knowledge of terrorist or criminal activities. The center would be in the state government complex. Under the governor's direction, law enforcement officers across Indiana would work together and share information. State Homeland Security Director Eric Dietz said the center would be funded through federal grants....
'Decommissioned' Guns Nearly As Good As Confiscations
The Brady group and its congressional supporters are proceeding, and making headway, with a below-radar effort to ban operating firearms from the general public, without having to actually disarm America's 80 million gun owners. The plan is now evolving around an innocent-sounding new legal term. It was tucked deep in a 400,000-word spending bill under president Clinton (law # P.L. 105-277), and it is now spreading throughout federal gun laws. Its latest use, the eighth, is in the frivolous-lawsuit ban just enacted (The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, law # P.L. 109-92; S.397). Described at the end of this report, it accents a liability all Americans -- not just gun owners -- are increasingly under, a tightening legal noose few people realize is around their necks. The phrase is "secure gun storage or safety device." It includes almost anything that will keep a gun from working. At its simplest, it's gun locks. This and closely related tactics are sometimes called "decommissioning schemes." Gun-control advocates -- the mainstream ones who seek to disarm the public -- will essentially win their cause if they can require guns to be disabled, disassembled, locked up or turned off by remote control. This approach is already working in National Parks where possession of a working gun subjects you to immediate federal arrest, confiscation of your property, and endless aggravation. No criminal act of any kind is required, just legal possession of personal property -- any firearm. However, a gun in pieces so it cannot be fired, locked in your car trunk is allowed. Interestingly, no statutory authority for this denial of civil rights can be found. And of course, statutory denial of civil rights would be unconstitutional on its face....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Conservationists, ranchers pack talk on wolf reintroduction The Western Slope, which has some 250,000 elk, could sustain more than 1,000 wolves, conservationist Rob Edward told a standing-room-only crowd in Carbondale on Wednesday. And that, said longtime Carbondale rancher Bill Fales, "scares the hell out of me." Edward, director of carnivore restoration for Sinapu, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring native carnivores to their ancestral lands, presented a slide show at Dos Gringos restaurant on wolf reintroduction. Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop hosted the event. Whether western Colorado has room for wolves is a central part of a contentious issue, he said....
Alaska aerial hunt of wolves declared illegal A judge declared illegal Alaska’s controversial program of shooting wolves from the air to boost the population of moose and other game, prompting state officials to suspend the policy. Superior Court Judge Sharon Gleason said Tuesday the Alaska Board of Game failed to follow its own requirements when it launched a program allowing private hunters to gun down wolves from an aircraft to remove the animals from the food chain. Since the program started in 2003, licensed hunters have shot and killed hundreds of wolves by tracking the animals and shooting them from above in the face of protests from animal rights groups and the occasional tourism boycott. Gleason ruled that the state failed to adequately address regulatory requirements, calling for proof that aerial wolf control is necessary and would be more effective than other, less-drastic steps to boost game populations....
County commission calls for wolf delisting The Gallatin County Commission gave its support Tuesday to a resolution calling on federal authorities to speed up efforts to remove gray wolves from the endangered species list. Commissioners voted 2-1 in support of the joint resolution, which is being sought by county commissioners in seven counties near Yellowstone National Park. The document isn't legally binding. but is instead a form of protest by those counties concerned about the wolves' reintroduction in Yellowstone. It labels wolves a "predator species" in need of management and requests that the governor of Montana take steps to compensate ranchers for livestock losses. Wolves are here to stay and everyone accepts that, rancher and outfitter Lee Hart told commissioners. But their proper place is inside the park. "I don't think we need to extend Yellowstone Park across the state of Montana," he said....
Army could pay Fort Hood area landowners up to $1,500 an acre to keep land rural The deputy commanding general of Fort Hood said he's willing to give landowners around the base up to $1,500 an acre to maintain their land as a rural buffer zone, but he'll scrap the effort if landowners aren't interested. About 75 landowners gathered in the tiny Flat Community Center on Tuesday as Maj. Gen. James Simmons released the first details of how the voluntary buffer zone plan would work. Controversy has swirled around the buffer zone idea for months, with opponents suggesting it was a stealthy land grab for endangered species habitat or Fort Hood's expansion. Landowners interrogated the general about the incentive program, but most seemed disarmed by his plainspoken answers and willing to consider the incentives. Simmons said he would go forward with the program only with the cooperation of landowners representing at least half the acreage in the proposed buffer zone. Pending approval early this summer by the Department of the Army, agents for Fort Hood could begin signing up landowners for the program this fall. Under the plan, a third-party administrator – mostly likely the Texas Soil and Water Conservation Board – would negotiate contracts with the landowners in the three buffer zone areas. Those areas on the west, northeast and far south side of Fort Hood comprise 91,417 acres....
Kansas Land Trust to create buffer around Fort Riley The military wants to keep making loud noises. Kansas environmentalists want to ensure the tallgrass prairie doesn’t die. The two problems may have one solution. Officials with Fort Riley and the Lawrence-based Kansas Land Trust on Wednesday announced plans to create a “buffer” around the Army base, a 10-year program that would permanently preserve up to 50,000 acres of prairie and farmland. “We’d like to keep that land use the way it is,” said Jeff Keating, a civilian biologist who manages the buffer program for Fort Riley. Fort officials fear that population explosion could trigger a big demand for new residential developments near the base, potentially creating unwanted conflicts between the Army, with its firing ranges and helicopters, and any new neighbors. Fort Riley would work with the Kansas Land Trust to use federal money from the Army Compatible Use Buffer Program to buy conservation easements from neighboring landowners, keeping the land in the hands of its current owners, in use for farming and grazing, but forever off-limits to development....
Ranchers protest proposal for frog habitat designation Ranchland owners packed a meeting room Tuesday for the second time in a week to protest plans to declare 4,400 acres as critical habitat for the red-legged frog. Federal officials insist designating the land northeast of Valley Springs will have no effect on ranching operations and only a minimal effect when ranchers decide to cash out for development. A federal study of the area found protecting frog habitat would eliminate only two or three of the 3,000 homes likely to be built in the area over the next 20 years. Nevertheless, property owners fear the designation alone will devalue their land and possibly prevent them from cashing out....
Christo meeting draws crowd The idea of a temporary work of art that lasts just two weeks like Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "Over the River" proposal is for many a baffling concept. Cook, then 23, heard the rancher's wife at a public meeting just like the one held Tuesday evening in Canon City during which the U.S. Bureau of Land Management got an earful of public comment from more than 150 area residents on the large-scale project which would consist of fabric panels suspended above the Arkansas River. Bulgarian-born artist Christo and his partner-wife Jeanne-Claude, both 70, are New York-based artists who propose to hang about seven miles of translucent fabric panels over eight segments of the Arkansas River between Canon City and Salida. The artwork would hang for 14 days, sometime between mid-July and mid-August probably in 2008 or 2009. Fabric panels would be attached to steel cables stretched across the river, covering the water surface, but not the side slopes and would hang from between 10 and 24 feet above the water. The aluminum-coated fabric has been wind tested and would be porous enough to allow rainwater to seep through....
Is cloud seeding worth it?: Lawmakers to consider funding work Tom Barnes is in the midst of his 15th winter of watching for the perfect storm. When it happens - on those occasions when the wind doesn't blow too hard, temperatures are frigid enough to produce snow and a large amount of precipitation appears eminent - he lights his portable propane burner. He knows his machine is working, and that he's giving Mother Nature a helping hand, when the blue flame turns orange as it reacts with a cocktail intended to coax extra moisture from the sky. Now it appears likely that state lawmakers will consider legislation to do on a larger scale what Barnes and ranchers and farmers in six Southeast Idaho counties have been doing for several years - seed the clouds....
Bison shipments to slaughter go on, along with debate Nearly 50 more bison from Yellowstone National Park were trucked to slaughter Wednesday, as the debate continued over the plan that allows for the animals to be captured due to disease concerns. Over the last week, 524 bison have been captured near the park’s northern border — the most since 1996-97, park spokesman Al Nash said. Most of those animals will be sent to slaughter without being tested for brucellosis, a disease found in the herd and driving force behind the state-federal plan that allows for hazing, capture or slaughter of wandering bison. As of Wednesday, 264 bison had been sent to slaughter houses in Montana and Idaho, leaving 221 still being held at the Stephen’s Creek capture site just inside the park’s northern boundary, officials said. Thirty-eight calves previously were sent to a research project north of Yellowstone after testing negative for brucellosis, and Nash said more might qualify for the so-called quarantine facility, pending testing. One calf died at the capture pen, officials said....
National Elk Refuge begins feeding Artificial feeding of elk on the National Elk Refuge has begun in response to complaints about elk feeding on haystacks and commingling with cattle. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department asked the refuge to begin artificial feeding on Jan. 11 after fielding complaints, according to Game and Fish biologist Doug Brimeyer. There was plenty of natural forage for elk in Jackson Hole until late December, when deep snow began prompting elk to seek easy meals in ranchers' hay. Dan Winder, a resident of the Cache Creek area, reported more than 40 elk around his hayfield recently. He also found about 15 elk in a corral eating his hay and was worried about the safety of an expensive stallion....
Jury to decide if sentencing justified in Hayman Fire case A Teller County judge ruled Tuesday that a jury should decide whether ‘‘aggravated circumstances’’ justify an extended sentence for a former forestry worker who started the worst wildfire in Colorado history. Terry Lynn Barton, 42, pleaded guilty to a state arson charge for the 2002 Hayman Fire, which charred 138,000 acres and destroyed 133 houses. A judge sentenced her to 12 years in prison - twice the normal term. The Colorado Court of Appeals then ordered a new sentencing hearing, saying the judge might have been biased because smoke from the fire forced him out of his home and that he didn’t have the constitutional authority to order an extended sentence. Fourth Judicial District Judge Thomas Kennedy ruled Tuesday that a jury should consider whether ‘‘aggravating circumstances’’ existed to allow for Barton’s extended sentence....
Senseless cattle slayings nothing new to ranchers The $10,000 hunt for the perpetrator of a 10-cow Johnson massacre rages on. While Johnson's losses near Vernon were the largest in recent memory, many ranchers say senseless killing of their livestock is a constant spur in their sides. Elizabeth Mitchell owns a herd not far from the Johnson ranch where 10 pregnant cows were killed at the end of December. Since the fall of 2004, she said two of her cows were killed that were certainly the result of foul play, and two more she suspects were killed senselessly. "Everybody loses some every year," Mitchell said. "I had two for sure [killed] and two others that were suspicious, but we never had anybody dig into the carcasses to verify the cause of death." "It goes on all the time, it's like we live in the Wild West," she said. "It goes on all the time, it's like we live in the Wild West," she said. "You can't hire enough patrol people to drive out here all the time because it's such vast areas and that's why people get away with things like this."....
Lean Cattle Mean Lean Wallets For Ranchers Texas cattle ranchers say without some measurable drought relief soon, they will have to sell off their herds. Some already have begun the painful process of selling parts of their herd for less than they are worth. Monday night at the Fort Worth Stock Show, ranchers said no rain means no grass and vegetation and that means no hay to feed their cattle through the winter. “People can't buy hay. At least you can’t buy it an economical price,” rancher Rodney Roberson said. “They can’t keep these cows through the winter, then it’s time to get rid of them because they can’t afford to feed them sack feed and make it work it economically in the commercial cattle business." Other ranchers said prized cattle are being sold to meat markets. It's either that or have them starve to death....
Recovery slow from mad cow-related losses American cattle producers are still trying to dig out of the hole caused by mad cow disease, even as Japan has reopened its borders to U.S. imports and other countries prepare to follow suit. Financial losses to the beef and cattle industry have been immense. Analysts estimate the U.S. beef industry has lost $6.2 billion from the closing of foreign markets. Financial losses for Colorado, the nation's fourth-largest beef producer, are estimated to have reached about $160 million over the past two years. If there is any saving grace, it's that the export bans occurred during a period of high beef prices and low supplies, helping to buffer the cattle industry from some of the fallout....
The beef over pet food On a recent winter afternoon in San Francisco's well-heeled Marina district, there's blood on the sidewalk. Spilling out of the garage of a neat yellow house, dozens of cardboard boxes overflow with a smorgasbord of frozen raw meat and bones sealed in plastic bags. There's pork and beef from Niman Ranch, and whole quail from Cavendish Game Birds of Vermont. It looks like an upscale butcher has been pillaged by a modern-day Robin Hood, who left the spoils for the taking: lamb, chicken, goat, turkey, rabbit, buffalo -- a veritable Noah's Ark of high-quality protein plunder. It's monthly delivery day for San Francisco Raw Feeders, a buyers group with some 350 human members who strive to feed their animals a diet rich with raw meat -- and not just any meat, but sustainable, antibiotic- and steroid-free meat and bones from cows, pigs and poultry raised and slaughtered on small farms....
A Matter of Numbers But as formidable as these issues are, they're not Ladd's biggest worry. What really has him wrestling the mattress at night, the issue that most immediately threatens his ability to stay in business as a cattleman, is at the moment, right before his eyes. It's the international border fence. Or more accurately, the holes, cuts, washouts and smuggler vehicle run-throughs that turn that fence into Swiss cheese. Ladd, who has 10 1/2 miles of land abutting the Mexican line, is standing at a spot known as Gringo Draw. Floodwaters washed through here last summer, taking out a 100-foot-wide portion of the fence, and that yawning gap is still there. But there are many others. In a one-mile span, we counted 12 fence breaks along Ladd's borderland through which Mexican cattle can wander onto his property, mingling with his own stock. The problem? If these intruder livestock happen to be diseased, they could infect his herd and ruin him. In fact, Ladd believes that disaster will befall him eventually....
Report slams USDA biotech experiments In a report released quietly just before Christmas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's investigative arm disclosed that the department failed to properly monitor thousands of acres of experimental biotechnology crops. The report by the department's inspector general said USDA didn't thoroughly evaluate applications to grow experimental crops and then didn't ensure the genetically engineered plants were destroyed after experiments. In several cases, the agency didn't even know where so-called field trials were located....
'The Worst Hard Time' nimbly chronicles tragedies of the Dust Bowl The term ''Dust Bowl" often conjures a ''Grapes of Wrath" image of a great migration from worn-out farms in Texas and Oklahoma to green fields in other states. Timothy Egan has focused on the farmers who stayed and who lived through the worst environmental disaster in our nation's history. ''The Worst Hard Time" is a powerful, deeply researched chronicle of the most destructive boom-and-bust cycle in American history: the wheat-growing frenzy in the Great Plains in the 1920s, which became the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. No region in America has ever been harder hit by reckless environmental practices. Egan anchors the story on three towns in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Year by year, you get to know young couples struggling to keep their children alive, a resolute newspaperman, a cowboy father turned broken rancher, and high school kids barely hanging on to their youth....
Bailey ready to rein it in In a span of three decades, he has ridden the winners of virtually every important race in the United States, been inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame and written a book. The 30,846 horses he has ridden, 5,890 of them winners, have amassed more than $304 million in earnings. He has been ubiquitous on the biggest racing days because they were often his biggest days. But after nearly 32 years as a jockey -- he rode his first winner in 1974 at Sunland Park in New Mexico -- and two decades of unmitigated stardom, Jerry Bailey will ride his last race next week at Gulfstream Park. "I'm sure this is not a surprise to most people," said Bailey, who has contemplated retirement at the ends of each of the last few racing seasons. "It's time," he said, citing a desire to devote more time to his family and another to, "... walk away in one piece. I believe I fulfilled everything I set out to do." Bailey, 48, will join ESPN and ABC Sports as an analyst. He will debut March 18 with ESPN coverage of the Santa Catalina Stakes at Santa Anita Park....
Revering a hero of the West Raconteur, writer and photographer Robert W. Limbert is a folk hero without peer in Idaho. Across America he was once on par with the likes of Wild Bill Hickcock. During the 1920s and '30s, Limbert was singularly responsible for promoting the Gem State. He traveled around the country staging lively shows about the West—presentations that combined adventure storytelling, movies, slides, birdcalls, sleight-of-hand and trick shooting. Pre-arrival publicity often challenged the local sheriff to a shootout, and in Chicago he even called out mobster Al Capone. Though they didn't duel, they apparently got along famously....
Fast on the trigger It’s fast, it’s fun and it’s catching on. “Mounted shooting is the fastest-growing equestrian sport in America today,” said Marlin Kennedy of the Kooskia area. Kennedy should know. He’s been a champion in his class in both the Mounted Shooters of America and Cowboy Mounted Shooting associations, most recently winning the buckle and a world championship title for the Mounted Cowboy Shooters of America Men’s Limited 20 X Extreme. Mounted shooting is the combination of a fast-paced, timed equestrian sport and shooting two .45-caliber single-action revolvers loaded with special ammunition. Competitors ride a variety of courses requiring precision control of the horse....
An American legend heads into the sunset It's hard to imagine John Wayne winning the West without his trusty Winchester by his side. In real life, the Winchester was there for the winning of the West, as much a tool for survival as a weapon. It's Winchester that's kept generation after generation employed in New Haven, Conn., home of the world-renowned rifle. But the end may be near for Winchester. U.S. Repeating Arms Co. Inc. plans to close the New Haven factory that opened in 1866. New Haven residents are trying to save the plant before the March 31 closing date, but if a buyer can't be found, it could mean the end of all commercially produced Winchesters. Winchesters could be found on cattle drives, wagon trains and Army posts during the opening and development of the West. They could be found in the hands of infamous outlaws, but Winchesters also were used by the lawmen who brought them to justice. Ranchers, farmers, cowboys, hunters and explorers used Winchesters every day, as much one of their tools as a saddle and rope. They were a part of the culture, a necessary part....
Conservationists, ranchers pack talk on wolf reintroduction The Western Slope, which has some 250,000 elk, could sustain more than 1,000 wolves, conservationist Rob Edward told a standing-room-only crowd in Carbondale on Wednesday. And that, said longtime Carbondale rancher Bill Fales, "scares the hell out of me." Edward, director of carnivore restoration for Sinapu, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring native carnivores to their ancestral lands, presented a slide show at Dos Gringos restaurant on wolf reintroduction. Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop hosted the event. Whether western Colorado has room for wolves is a central part of a contentious issue, he said....
Alaska aerial hunt of wolves declared illegal A judge declared illegal Alaska’s controversial program of shooting wolves from the air to boost the population of moose and other game, prompting state officials to suspend the policy. Superior Court Judge Sharon Gleason said Tuesday the Alaska Board of Game failed to follow its own requirements when it launched a program allowing private hunters to gun down wolves from an aircraft to remove the animals from the food chain. Since the program started in 2003, licensed hunters have shot and killed hundreds of wolves by tracking the animals and shooting them from above in the face of protests from animal rights groups and the occasional tourism boycott. Gleason ruled that the state failed to adequately address regulatory requirements, calling for proof that aerial wolf control is necessary and would be more effective than other, less-drastic steps to boost game populations....
County commission calls for wolf delisting The Gallatin County Commission gave its support Tuesday to a resolution calling on federal authorities to speed up efforts to remove gray wolves from the endangered species list. Commissioners voted 2-1 in support of the joint resolution, which is being sought by county commissioners in seven counties near Yellowstone National Park. The document isn't legally binding. but is instead a form of protest by those counties concerned about the wolves' reintroduction in Yellowstone. It labels wolves a "predator species" in need of management and requests that the governor of Montana take steps to compensate ranchers for livestock losses. Wolves are here to stay and everyone accepts that, rancher and outfitter Lee Hart told commissioners. But their proper place is inside the park. "I don't think we need to extend Yellowstone Park across the state of Montana," he said....
Army could pay Fort Hood area landowners up to $1,500 an acre to keep land rural The deputy commanding general of Fort Hood said he's willing to give landowners around the base up to $1,500 an acre to maintain their land as a rural buffer zone, but he'll scrap the effort if landowners aren't interested. About 75 landowners gathered in the tiny Flat Community Center on Tuesday as Maj. Gen. James Simmons released the first details of how the voluntary buffer zone plan would work. Controversy has swirled around the buffer zone idea for months, with opponents suggesting it was a stealthy land grab for endangered species habitat or Fort Hood's expansion. Landowners interrogated the general about the incentive program, but most seemed disarmed by his plainspoken answers and willing to consider the incentives. Simmons said he would go forward with the program only with the cooperation of landowners representing at least half the acreage in the proposed buffer zone. Pending approval early this summer by the Department of the Army, agents for Fort Hood could begin signing up landowners for the program this fall. Under the plan, a third-party administrator – mostly likely the Texas Soil and Water Conservation Board – would negotiate contracts with the landowners in the three buffer zone areas. Those areas on the west, northeast and far south side of Fort Hood comprise 91,417 acres....
Kansas Land Trust to create buffer around Fort Riley The military wants to keep making loud noises. Kansas environmentalists want to ensure the tallgrass prairie doesn’t die. The two problems may have one solution. Officials with Fort Riley and the Lawrence-based Kansas Land Trust on Wednesday announced plans to create a “buffer” around the Army base, a 10-year program that would permanently preserve up to 50,000 acres of prairie and farmland. “We’d like to keep that land use the way it is,” said Jeff Keating, a civilian biologist who manages the buffer program for Fort Riley. Fort officials fear that population explosion could trigger a big demand for new residential developments near the base, potentially creating unwanted conflicts between the Army, with its firing ranges and helicopters, and any new neighbors. Fort Riley would work with the Kansas Land Trust to use federal money from the Army Compatible Use Buffer Program to buy conservation easements from neighboring landowners, keeping the land in the hands of its current owners, in use for farming and grazing, but forever off-limits to development....
Ranchers protest proposal for frog habitat designation Ranchland owners packed a meeting room Tuesday for the second time in a week to protest plans to declare 4,400 acres as critical habitat for the red-legged frog. Federal officials insist designating the land northeast of Valley Springs will have no effect on ranching operations and only a minimal effect when ranchers decide to cash out for development. A federal study of the area found protecting frog habitat would eliminate only two or three of the 3,000 homes likely to be built in the area over the next 20 years. Nevertheless, property owners fear the designation alone will devalue their land and possibly prevent them from cashing out....
Christo meeting draws crowd The idea of a temporary work of art that lasts just two weeks like Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "Over the River" proposal is for many a baffling concept. Cook, then 23, heard the rancher's wife at a public meeting just like the one held Tuesday evening in Canon City during which the U.S. Bureau of Land Management got an earful of public comment from more than 150 area residents on the large-scale project which would consist of fabric panels suspended above the Arkansas River. Bulgarian-born artist Christo and his partner-wife Jeanne-Claude, both 70, are New York-based artists who propose to hang about seven miles of translucent fabric panels over eight segments of the Arkansas River between Canon City and Salida. The artwork would hang for 14 days, sometime between mid-July and mid-August probably in 2008 or 2009. Fabric panels would be attached to steel cables stretched across the river, covering the water surface, but not the side slopes and would hang from between 10 and 24 feet above the water. The aluminum-coated fabric has been wind tested and would be porous enough to allow rainwater to seep through....
Is cloud seeding worth it?: Lawmakers to consider funding work Tom Barnes is in the midst of his 15th winter of watching for the perfect storm. When it happens - on those occasions when the wind doesn't blow too hard, temperatures are frigid enough to produce snow and a large amount of precipitation appears eminent - he lights his portable propane burner. He knows his machine is working, and that he's giving Mother Nature a helping hand, when the blue flame turns orange as it reacts with a cocktail intended to coax extra moisture from the sky. Now it appears likely that state lawmakers will consider legislation to do on a larger scale what Barnes and ranchers and farmers in six Southeast Idaho counties have been doing for several years - seed the clouds....
Bison shipments to slaughter go on, along with debate Nearly 50 more bison from Yellowstone National Park were trucked to slaughter Wednesday, as the debate continued over the plan that allows for the animals to be captured due to disease concerns. Over the last week, 524 bison have been captured near the park’s northern border — the most since 1996-97, park spokesman Al Nash said. Most of those animals will be sent to slaughter without being tested for brucellosis, a disease found in the herd and driving force behind the state-federal plan that allows for hazing, capture or slaughter of wandering bison. As of Wednesday, 264 bison had been sent to slaughter houses in Montana and Idaho, leaving 221 still being held at the Stephen’s Creek capture site just inside the park’s northern boundary, officials said. Thirty-eight calves previously were sent to a research project north of Yellowstone after testing negative for brucellosis, and Nash said more might qualify for the so-called quarantine facility, pending testing. One calf died at the capture pen, officials said....
National Elk Refuge begins feeding Artificial feeding of elk on the National Elk Refuge has begun in response to complaints about elk feeding on haystacks and commingling with cattle. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department asked the refuge to begin artificial feeding on Jan. 11 after fielding complaints, according to Game and Fish biologist Doug Brimeyer. There was plenty of natural forage for elk in Jackson Hole until late December, when deep snow began prompting elk to seek easy meals in ranchers' hay. Dan Winder, a resident of the Cache Creek area, reported more than 40 elk around his hayfield recently. He also found about 15 elk in a corral eating his hay and was worried about the safety of an expensive stallion....
Jury to decide if sentencing justified in Hayman Fire case A Teller County judge ruled Tuesday that a jury should decide whether ‘‘aggravated circumstances’’ justify an extended sentence for a former forestry worker who started the worst wildfire in Colorado history. Terry Lynn Barton, 42, pleaded guilty to a state arson charge for the 2002 Hayman Fire, which charred 138,000 acres and destroyed 133 houses. A judge sentenced her to 12 years in prison - twice the normal term. The Colorado Court of Appeals then ordered a new sentencing hearing, saying the judge might have been biased because smoke from the fire forced him out of his home and that he didn’t have the constitutional authority to order an extended sentence. Fourth Judicial District Judge Thomas Kennedy ruled Tuesday that a jury should consider whether ‘‘aggravating circumstances’’ existed to allow for Barton’s extended sentence....
Senseless cattle slayings nothing new to ranchers The $10,000 hunt for the perpetrator of a 10-cow Johnson massacre rages on. While Johnson's losses near Vernon were the largest in recent memory, many ranchers say senseless killing of their livestock is a constant spur in their sides. Elizabeth Mitchell owns a herd not far from the Johnson ranch where 10 pregnant cows were killed at the end of December. Since the fall of 2004, she said two of her cows were killed that were certainly the result of foul play, and two more she suspects were killed senselessly. "Everybody loses some every year," Mitchell said. "I had two for sure [killed] and two others that were suspicious, but we never had anybody dig into the carcasses to verify the cause of death." "It goes on all the time, it's like we live in the Wild West," she said. "It goes on all the time, it's like we live in the Wild West," she said. "You can't hire enough patrol people to drive out here all the time because it's such vast areas and that's why people get away with things like this."....
Lean Cattle Mean Lean Wallets For Ranchers Texas cattle ranchers say without some measurable drought relief soon, they will have to sell off their herds. Some already have begun the painful process of selling parts of their herd for less than they are worth. Monday night at the Fort Worth Stock Show, ranchers said no rain means no grass and vegetation and that means no hay to feed their cattle through the winter. “People can't buy hay. At least you can’t buy it an economical price,” rancher Rodney Roberson said. “They can’t keep these cows through the winter, then it’s time to get rid of them because they can’t afford to feed them sack feed and make it work it economically in the commercial cattle business." Other ranchers said prized cattle are being sold to meat markets. It's either that or have them starve to death....
Recovery slow from mad cow-related losses American cattle producers are still trying to dig out of the hole caused by mad cow disease, even as Japan has reopened its borders to U.S. imports and other countries prepare to follow suit. Financial losses to the beef and cattle industry have been immense. Analysts estimate the U.S. beef industry has lost $6.2 billion from the closing of foreign markets. Financial losses for Colorado, the nation's fourth-largest beef producer, are estimated to have reached about $160 million over the past two years. If there is any saving grace, it's that the export bans occurred during a period of high beef prices and low supplies, helping to buffer the cattle industry from some of the fallout....
The beef over pet food On a recent winter afternoon in San Francisco's well-heeled Marina district, there's blood on the sidewalk. Spilling out of the garage of a neat yellow house, dozens of cardboard boxes overflow with a smorgasbord of frozen raw meat and bones sealed in plastic bags. There's pork and beef from Niman Ranch, and whole quail from Cavendish Game Birds of Vermont. It looks like an upscale butcher has been pillaged by a modern-day Robin Hood, who left the spoils for the taking: lamb, chicken, goat, turkey, rabbit, buffalo -- a veritable Noah's Ark of high-quality protein plunder. It's monthly delivery day for San Francisco Raw Feeders, a buyers group with some 350 human members who strive to feed their animals a diet rich with raw meat -- and not just any meat, but sustainable, antibiotic- and steroid-free meat and bones from cows, pigs and poultry raised and slaughtered on small farms....
A Matter of Numbers But as formidable as these issues are, they're not Ladd's biggest worry. What really has him wrestling the mattress at night, the issue that most immediately threatens his ability to stay in business as a cattleman, is at the moment, right before his eyes. It's the international border fence. Or more accurately, the holes, cuts, washouts and smuggler vehicle run-throughs that turn that fence into Swiss cheese. Ladd, who has 10 1/2 miles of land abutting the Mexican line, is standing at a spot known as Gringo Draw. Floodwaters washed through here last summer, taking out a 100-foot-wide portion of the fence, and that yawning gap is still there. But there are many others. In a one-mile span, we counted 12 fence breaks along Ladd's borderland through which Mexican cattle can wander onto his property, mingling with his own stock. The problem? If these intruder livestock happen to be diseased, they could infect his herd and ruin him. In fact, Ladd believes that disaster will befall him eventually....
Report slams USDA biotech experiments In a report released quietly just before Christmas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's investigative arm disclosed that the department failed to properly monitor thousands of acres of experimental biotechnology crops. The report by the department's inspector general said USDA didn't thoroughly evaluate applications to grow experimental crops and then didn't ensure the genetically engineered plants were destroyed after experiments. In several cases, the agency didn't even know where so-called field trials were located....
'The Worst Hard Time' nimbly chronicles tragedies of the Dust Bowl The term ''Dust Bowl" often conjures a ''Grapes of Wrath" image of a great migration from worn-out farms in Texas and Oklahoma to green fields in other states. Timothy Egan has focused on the farmers who stayed and who lived through the worst environmental disaster in our nation's history. ''The Worst Hard Time" is a powerful, deeply researched chronicle of the most destructive boom-and-bust cycle in American history: the wheat-growing frenzy in the Great Plains in the 1920s, which became the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. No region in America has ever been harder hit by reckless environmental practices. Egan anchors the story on three towns in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Year by year, you get to know young couples struggling to keep their children alive, a resolute newspaperman, a cowboy father turned broken rancher, and high school kids barely hanging on to their youth....
Bailey ready to rein it in In a span of three decades, he has ridden the winners of virtually every important race in the United States, been inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame and written a book. The 30,846 horses he has ridden, 5,890 of them winners, have amassed more than $304 million in earnings. He has been ubiquitous on the biggest racing days because they were often his biggest days. But after nearly 32 years as a jockey -- he rode his first winner in 1974 at Sunland Park in New Mexico -- and two decades of unmitigated stardom, Jerry Bailey will ride his last race next week at Gulfstream Park. "I'm sure this is not a surprise to most people," said Bailey, who has contemplated retirement at the ends of each of the last few racing seasons. "It's time," he said, citing a desire to devote more time to his family and another to, "... walk away in one piece. I believe I fulfilled everything I set out to do." Bailey, 48, will join ESPN and ABC Sports as an analyst. He will debut March 18 with ESPN coverage of the Santa Catalina Stakes at Santa Anita Park....
Revering a hero of the West Raconteur, writer and photographer Robert W. Limbert is a folk hero without peer in Idaho. Across America he was once on par with the likes of Wild Bill Hickcock. During the 1920s and '30s, Limbert was singularly responsible for promoting the Gem State. He traveled around the country staging lively shows about the West—presentations that combined adventure storytelling, movies, slides, birdcalls, sleight-of-hand and trick shooting. Pre-arrival publicity often challenged the local sheriff to a shootout, and in Chicago he even called out mobster Al Capone. Though they didn't duel, they apparently got along famously....
Fast on the trigger It’s fast, it’s fun and it’s catching on. “Mounted shooting is the fastest-growing equestrian sport in America today,” said Marlin Kennedy of the Kooskia area. Kennedy should know. He’s been a champion in his class in both the Mounted Shooters of America and Cowboy Mounted Shooting associations, most recently winning the buckle and a world championship title for the Mounted Cowboy Shooters of America Men’s Limited 20 X Extreme. Mounted shooting is the combination of a fast-paced, timed equestrian sport and shooting two .45-caliber single-action revolvers loaded with special ammunition. Competitors ride a variety of courses requiring precision control of the horse....
An American legend heads into the sunset It's hard to imagine John Wayne winning the West without his trusty Winchester by his side. In real life, the Winchester was there for the winning of the West, as much a tool for survival as a weapon. It's Winchester that's kept generation after generation employed in New Haven, Conn., home of the world-renowned rifle. But the end may be near for Winchester. U.S. Repeating Arms Co. Inc. plans to close the New Haven factory that opened in 1866. New Haven residents are trying to save the plant before the March 31 closing date, but if a buyer can't be found, it could mean the end of all commercially produced Winchesters. Winchesters could be found on cattle drives, wagon trains and Army posts during the opening and development of the West. They could be found in the hands of infamous outlaws, but Winchesters also were used by the lawmen who brought them to justice. Ranchers, farmers, cowboys, hunters and explorers used Winchesters every day, as much one of their tools as a saddle and rope. They were a part of the culture, a necessary part....
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
GAO
Hazardous Waste: EPA Needs to Clarify the Types of Mercury Waste That Can Be Treated and Disposed of Using the Debris Regulations. GAO-06-99, December 16.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-99
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d0699high.pdf
Hazardous Waste: EPA Needs to Clarify the Types of Mercury Waste That Can Be Treated and Disposed of Using the Debris Regulations. GAO-06-99, December 16.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-99
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d0699high.pdf
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Burned, Standing Trees A Threat In Durango Area Forestry officials are warning that dead trees left standing after a 70,000-acre wildfire nearly four years ago are in danger of toppling onto roads and trails, endangering drivers, hunters and others. "These trees that are fire-killed and don't have any needles are going to be falling over with a greater frequency," U.S. Forest Service forester Mike Johnson told the Durango Herald in Sunday's editions. "Our concerns are particularly where the fire got close to the roads and common-use areas," he said. "If it's a windy day, you may want to postpone your trip," he said. The 2002 Missionary Ridge fire destroyed 56 homes. One firefighter was killed when the roots of a burned tree gave way and the trunk fell on him....
FBI accuses 3 environmentalists of bomb plot The FBI announced the arrests Friday of three environmental protesters suspected in a plot to destroy federal property, cell phone towers and power generation facilities. Those charged were connected to the Earth Liberation Front, a movement that justifies destruction of industrial objects in defense of the environment, according to an FBI news release. Arrested were Zachary O. Jenson, 20, of Monroe, Wash.; Lauren Weiner, 20, of Philadelphia; and Eric Taylor McDavid, 28, of Auburn. They were arrested Friday morning in the parking lot of a shopping center in Auburn (Placer County), about 30 miles east of Sacramento. In addition to unspecified cell phone towers and power generation facilities, the three were also plotting to destroy U.S. Forest Service facilities, the FBI said....
Recreationists ticketed during wilderness sting The Summit County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Forest Service cited more than 30 people recently for violating wilderness recreation rules in the White River National Forest, according to a release from the Summit County Sheriff's Office. The two entities collaborated on Jan. 6-7 to enforce federal and state laws in areas of high recreation use where there have been compliance issues in the past. Ten officers saturated a popular area near Spring Creek Road past Heeney and the Vail Pass Recreation Area. "There has been consistent trespassing by snowmobilers into the wilderness near Spring Creek and that is something that should not be tolerated," said Forest Service law enforcement officer Jill Wick....
Editorial: Make NEPA better, not weaker For better and worse, one law has shaped national environmental policy for 35 years. It's called the National Environmental Policy Act, more commonly known by its acronym, NEPA. Its enactment in 1970 marked perhaps the largest milestone in modern environmentalism. NEPA is based on the common-sense, look-before-you-leap idea that government agencies should consider the environmental implications of their decisions and actions, and that the public should be involved in making those decisions. This is the law that requires environmental impact statements for significant government decisions and ensures the public the right to comment on and meaningfully participate in those decisions. NEPA is a good law but far from perfect. It could be made better, more useful and much more efficient. Unfortunately, the strongest proponents for improving NEPA happen to be critics who often sound adversarial to the law's purpose. They provoke a defensive reaction from NEPA proponents who tend to resist any reform for fear they might open the door for wholesale changes that defeat the purpose of NEPA. The result is stalemate. NEPA has been tweaked only twice, in relatively minor ways, since enactment....
Group wants trapping ban to protect lynx A Minnesota-based animal welfare group has asked the federal government to ban trapping in Minnesota's two national forests to stop the accidental killing of lynx. Help Our Wolves Live — which has taken up the cause of the lynx — says the ban is needed in the Chippewa and Superior national forests to protect lynx, listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. According to HOWL, humans are the leading cause of lynx deaths in Minnesota and may be holding lynx numbers down. Several lynx have been shot, trapped and hit by vehicles in recent months. Linda Hatfield, executive director of HOWL, said a review of research data shows at least 15 lynx have been trapped, snared or shot in Minnesota over the last 36 months — nearly half of those within the Superior National Forest....
Geese Put Oakland in a Sticky Situation Piles of goose waste at a city lake have officials struggling to clean up the mess for picnicking park-goers. Full-time resident Canada geese arrived at the city's Lake Merritt in 1954 when several injured birds were introduced to the refuge. Their numbers have exploded in the last 20 years to at least 200 regulars, with about 2,000 geese descending on the park each summer, according to the National Audubon Society. "Each bird produces about a pound of poop a day — that's literally a ton each day," said Stephanie Benavidez, head naturalist at the Lake Merritt Wildlife Refuge. It is a staggering problem that has Oakland trying to figure out how to chase away the geese without running afoul of the Federal Migratory Bird and Endangered Species acts that protect many of the birds that live alongside the geese at Lake Merritt, which covers 150 acres....
Cannon insists BLM should not claim that land is owned by feds U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon is calling on the Bureau of Land Management to back away from claiming about 56 acres adjacent to Camp Williams that he says have been recognized as private property since the original federal survey was taken 150 years ago. BLM officials argue a new survey proves the land, at the south end of Salt Lake County, rightfully belongs under federal ownership, and that any adjustment is beyond their control. In a letter sent to BLM Director Kathleen Clarke, Cannon says a property "hiatus" created by a 2001 BLM survey is inconsistent with long-recognized and firmly documented property lines. "I am concerned that the survey is the result of inaccurate data and will affect the rights of the county and numerous private property owners in a potentially damaging matter," Cannon wrote in a statement. "Accordingly, I request that the survey be withdrawn and that BLM discontinue any action."....
Budget woes worry BLM manager Predictions are grim for the future of the Bureau of Land Management, said Jay Carlson, district manager of the Roseburg office of the BLM at the Douglas Timber Operators’ breakfast meeting last Thursday. Addressing near-term and long-term projections for the state of the agency, Carlson focused on the district funding and staffing issues taking a nose-dive as the BLM’s purchasing power declines in the future. “Our projections are not necessarily dire, (but they) are certainly not hugely hopeful,” Carlson said. BLM is a Department of Interior agency. Because of 2005’s hurricanes, military efforts on two fronts, the potential rebuilding process of Iraq and Bush administration tax cuts, Carlson predicts a domestic budget getting spread even thinner with each successive year....
BLM puts forward proposal on herbicides The amount of federal land in Western Oregon sprayed with herbicides could jump from 21,000 acres to 70,000 acres, under a proposal by the Bureau of Land Management. Bureau officials said the spray is a necessary weapon against rampant invasive weeds, which have choked out native plants and taken over millions of acres of public land. A 20-year-old court injunction that curbed the use of pesticides in Oregon left the bureau "a little bit handcuffed" in its fight against the prolific weeds, said Todd Thompson, an agency natural resource specialist based in Portland. A final herbicide proposal, which is due later this year, is seen as the first step toward asking a judge to lift the injunction....
Pulling oil from aging fields With the success of using carbon dioxide to revitalize the century-old Salt Creek oil field in central Wyoming under its belt, Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. is proposing to use the same technique to coax more oil out of established fields in Sweetwater County. The Bureau of Land Management recently released its environmental study on the company's proposed Monell Enhanced Oil Recovery Project for public review. The company is proposing to pump carbon dioxide into its Patrick Draw Field Monell Unit to increase pressure and to push the oil to production wells. Anadarko officials said results from a pilot program in the project area indicated that CO2 flooding would be an effective method of recovering the additional oil remaining in the ground. The company hopes to recover an estimated additional 28 million barrels of oil using the technique, according to the BLM study....
Aquifer authority, USDA agree to help clear out brush over recharge zone The Edwards Aquifer Authority and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service will implement a brush-management plan over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone. Through greater brush control, the two government agencies expect to increase the amount of water seeping back into the ground over the aquifer. This initiative also should improve the productivity of pastureland for ranchers. Through the federal Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP), the Natural Resources Conservation Service is looking to reimburse landowners 50 percent for the removal of Ashe juniper throughout the recharge zone....
Parched Oklahoma thirsts for relief Bill Lawson's thirsty pastures crunch underfoot, just like the dried mud in the dead and dying farm ponds that stopped sustaining his cattle weeks ago. His herd follows his pickup truck, lowing for feed because the wheat they usually graze on failed to come up. Fields that should be 6-inch-high seas of shamrock green sit yellowed and dusty, feeding only the black crows that swoop down to steal the unsprouted seed. The Oklahoma rancher moves his herd from shrinking puddle to shrinking pond, fearing grass fires, hoping for rain and knowing that 50 years of farming will end if it doesn't come in significant amounts....
Big, bad Bodacious: His story not a bunch of bull On a neon night in Las Vegas during the 1995 National Finals Rodeo, the odds of Tuff Hedeman drawing the legendary rodeo bull Bodacious were 15-1. But Hedeman was paired with Bodacious, and he faced a big decision. The four-time world champion had promised to never again mount Bodacious after the bull shattered Hedeman's facial bones at a high-profile bull riding show earlier that year. However, Hedeman was in the thick of a title race hunt and declining to attempt to ride Bodacious meant that he would receive a zero that night and the next night. So when he was called to ride, Hedeman mounted Bodacious in the chute, put his hand in the rope handle and called for the gate to be opened. As the panel swung and Bodacious began exiting, a stalwart stock contractor yanked Hedeman off Bodacious and planted Hedeman on the walkway behind the chute. Following those specifics meant that Hedeman received only one zero. Several performances later, Bodacious sent Scott Breding to the emergency room with head injuries, even though Breding wore a catcher's mask. That's when Bodacious' owner, Sammy Andrews, opted to retire the bull. He reassigned Bodacious as a breeder and a traveling road show....
Burned, Standing Trees A Threat In Durango Area Forestry officials are warning that dead trees left standing after a 70,000-acre wildfire nearly four years ago are in danger of toppling onto roads and trails, endangering drivers, hunters and others. "These trees that are fire-killed and don't have any needles are going to be falling over with a greater frequency," U.S. Forest Service forester Mike Johnson told the Durango Herald in Sunday's editions. "Our concerns are particularly where the fire got close to the roads and common-use areas," he said. "If it's a windy day, you may want to postpone your trip," he said. The 2002 Missionary Ridge fire destroyed 56 homes. One firefighter was killed when the roots of a burned tree gave way and the trunk fell on him....
FBI accuses 3 environmentalists of bomb plot The FBI announced the arrests Friday of three environmental protesters suspected in a plot to destroy federal property, cell phone towers and power generation facilities. Those charged were connected to the Earth Liberation Front, a movement that justifies destruction of industrial objects in defense of the environment, according to an FBI news release. Arrested were Zachary O. Jenson, 20, of Monroe, Wash.; Lauren Weiner, 20, of Philadelphia; and Eric Taylor McDavid, 28, of Auburn. They were arrested Friday morning in the parking lot of a shopping center in Auburn (Placer County), about 30 miles east of Sacramento. In addition to unspecified cell phone towers and power generation facilities, the three were also plotting to destroy U.S. Forest Service facilities, the FBI said....
Recreationists ticketed during wilderness sting The Summit County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Forest Service cited more than 30 people recently for violating wilderness recreation rules in the White River National Forest, according to a release from the Summit County Sheriff's Office. The two entities collaborated on Jan. 6-7 to enforce federal and state laws in areas of high recreation use where there have been compliance issues in the past. Ten officers saturated a popular area near Spring Creek Road past Heeney and the Vail Pass Recreation Area. "There has been consistent trespassing by snowmobilers into the wilderness near Spring Creek and that is something that should not be tolerated," said Forest Service law enforcement officer Jill Wick....
Editorial: Make NEPA better, not weaker For better and worse, one law has shaped national environmental policy for 35 years. It's called the National Environmental Policy Act, more commonly known by its acronym, NEPA. Its enactment in 1970 marked perhaps the largest milestone in modern environmentalism. NEPA is based on the common-sense, look-before-you-leap idea that government agencies should consider the environmental implications of their decisions and actions, and that the public should be involved in making those decisions. This is the law that requires environmental impact statements for significant government decisions and ensures the public the right to comment on and meaningfully participate in those decisions. NEPA is a good law but far from perfect. It could be made better, more useful and much more efficient. Unfortunately, the strongest proponents for improving NEPA happen to be critics who often sound adversarial to the law's purpose. They provoke a defensive reaction from NEPA proponents who tend to resist any reform for fear they might open the door for wholesale changes that defeat the purpose of NEPA. The result is stalemate. NEPA has been tweaked only twice, in relatively minor ways, since enactment....
Group wants trapping ban to protect lynx A Minnesota-based animal welfare group has asked the federal government to ban trapping in Minnesota's two national forests to stop the accidental killing of lynx. Help Our Wolves Live — which has taken up the cause of the lynx — says the ban is needed in the Chippewa and Superior national forests to protect lynx, listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. According to HOWL, humans are the leading cause of lynx deaths in Minnesota and may be holding lynx numbers down. Several lynx have been shot, trapped and hit by vehicles in recent months. Linda Hatfield, executive director of HOWL, said a review of research data shows at least 15 lynx have been trapped, snared or shot in Minnesota over the last 36 months — nearly half of those within the Superior National Forest....
Geese Put Oakland in a Sticky Situation Piles of goose waste at a city lake have officials struggling to clean up the mess for picnicking park-goers. Full-time resident Canada geese arrived at the city's Lake Merritt in 1954 when several injured birds were introduced to the refuge. Their numbers have exploded in the last 20 years to at least 200 regulars, with about 2,000 geese descending on the park each summer, according to the National Audubon Society. "Each bird produces about a pound of poop a day — that's literally a ton each day," said Stephanie Benavidez, head naturalist at the Lake Merritt Wildlife Refuge. It is a staggering problem that has Oakland trying to figure out how to chase away the geese without running afoul of the Federal Migratory Bird and Endangered Species acts that protect many of the birds that live alongside the geese at Lake Merritt, which covers 150 acres....
Cannon insists BLM should not claim that land is owned by feds U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon is calling on the Bureau of Land Management to back away from claiming about 56 acres adjacent to Camp Williams that he says have been recognized as private property since the original federal survey was taken 150 years ago. BLM officials argue a new survey proves the land, at the south end of Salt Lake County, rightfully belongs under federal ownership, and that any adjustment is beyond their control. In a letter sent to BLM Director Kathleen Clarke, Cannon says a property "hiatus" created by a 2001 BLM survey is inconsistent with long-recognized and firmly documented property lines. "I am concerned that the survey is the result of inaccurate data and will affect the rights of the county and numerous private property owners in a potentially damaging matter," Cannon wrote in a statement. "Accordingly, I request that the survey be withdrawn and that BLM discontinue any action."....
Budget woes worry BLM manager Predictions are grim for the future of the Bureau of Land Management, said Jay Carlson, district manager of the Roseburg office of the BLM at the Douglas Timber Operators’ breakfast meeting last Thursday. Addressing near-term and long-term projections for the state of the agency, Carlson focused on the district funding and staffing issues taking a nose-dive as the BLM’s purchasing power declines in the future. “Our projections are not necessarily dire, (but they) are certainly not hugely hopeful,” Carlson said. BLM is a Department of Interior agency. Because of 2005’s hurricanes, military efforts on two fronts, the potential rebuilding process of Iraq and Bush administration tax cuts, Carlson predicts a domestic budget getting spread even thinner with each successive year....
BLM puts forward proposal on herbicides The amount of federal land in Western Oregon sprayed with herbicides could jump from 21,000 acres to 70,000 acres, under a proposal by the Bureau of Land Management. Bureau officials said the spray is a necessary weapon against rampant invasive weeds, which have choked out native plants and taken over millions of acres of public land. A 20-year-old court injunction that curbed the use of pesticides in Oregon left the bureau "a little bit handcuffed" in its fight against the prolific weeds, said Todd Thompson, an agency natural resource specialist based in Portland. A final herbicide proposal, which is due later this year, is seen as the first step toward asking a judge to lift the injunction....
Pulling oil from aging fields With the success of using carbon dioxide to revitalize the century-old Salt Creek oil field in central Wyoming under its belt, Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. is proposing to use the same technique to coax more oil out of established fields in Sweetwater County. The Bureau of Land Management recently released its environmental study on the company's proposed Monell Enhanced Oil Recovery Project for public review. The company is proposing to pump carbon dioxide into its Patrick Draw Field Monell Unit to increase pressure and to push the oil to production wells. Anadarko officials said results from a pilot program in the project area indicated that CO2 flooding would be an effective method of recovering the additional oil remaining in the ground. The company hopes to recover an estimated additional 28 million barrels of oil using the technique, according to the BLM study....
Aquifer authority, USDA agree to help clear out brush over recharge zone The Edwards Aquifer Authority and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service will implement a brush-management plan over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone. Through greater brush control, the two government agencies expect to increase the amount of water seeping back into the ground over the aquifer. This initiative also should improve the productivity of pastureland for ranchers. Through the federal Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP), the Natural Resources Conservation Service is looking to reimburse landowners 50 percent for the removal of Ashe juniper throughout the recharge zone....
Parched Oklahoma thirsts for relief Bill Lawson's thirsty pastures crunch underfoot, just like the dried mud in the dead and dying farm ponds that stopped sustaining his cattle weeks ago. His herd follows his pickup truck, lowing for feed because the wheat they usually graze on failed to come up. Fields that should be 6-inch-high seas of shamrock green sit yellowed and dusty, feeding only the black crows that swoop down to steal the unsprouted seed. The Oklahoma rancher moves his herd from shrinking puddle to shrinking pond, fearing grass fires, hoping for rain and knowing that 50 years of farming will end if it doesn't come in significant amounts....
Big, bad Bodacious: His story not a bunch of bull On a neon night in Las Vegas during the 1995 National Finals Rodeo, the odds of Tuff Hedeman drawing the legendary rodeo bull Bodacious were 15-1. But Hedeman was paired with Bodacious, and he faced a big decision. The four-time world champion had promised to never again mount Bodacious after the bull shattered Hedeman's facial bones at a high-profile bull riding show earlier that year. However, Hedeman was in the thick of a title race hunt and declining to attempt to ride Bodacious meant that he would receive a zero that night and the next night. So when he was called to ride, Hedeman mounted Bodacious in the chute, put his hand in the rope handle and called for the gate to be opened. As the panel swung and Bodacious began exiting, a stalwart stock contractor yanked Hedeman off Bodacious and planted Hedeman on the walkway behind the chute. Following those specifics meant that Hedeman received only one zero. Several performances later, Bodacious sent Scott Breding to the emergency room with head injuries, even though Breding wore a catcher's mask. That's when Bodacious' owner, Sammy Andrews, opted to retire the bull. He reassigned Bodacious as a breeder and a traveling road show....
FLE
Mexican soldiers defy border
The Mexican military has crossed into the United States 216 times in the past nine years, according to a Department of Homeland Security document and a map of incursions obtained by the Daily Bulletin. U.S. officials claim the incursions are made to help foreign drug and human smugglers cross safely into the United States. The 2001 map, which shows 34 of the incursions, bears the seal of the president's Office of National Drug Control Policy. The document states that since 1996, Mexican military personnel have crossed into the following Border Patrol sectors: • San Diego County, 17 times • El Centro, 58 • Yuma, Ariz., 24 • Tucson, Ariz., 39 • El Paso, Texas, 33 • Marfa, Texas, eight • Del Rio, Texas, three • Laredo, Texas, six • Rio Grande Valley, Texas, 28. White House officials would not comment on the map and referred questions to officials at the Department of Homeland Security. Kristi Clemens, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, would not confirm the number of incursions, but said Saturday the department is in ongoing discussions with the Mexican government about them....
Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends
In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month. But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans. F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy. As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said. President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives." But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive....
Two Groups Planning to Sue Over Federal Eavesdropping
Two leading civil rights groups plan to file lawsuits Tuesday against the Bush administration over its domestic spying program to determine whether the operation was used to monitor 10 defense lawyers, journalists, scholars, political activists and other Americans with ties to the Middle East. The two lawsuits, which are being filed separately by the American Civil Liberties Union in Federal District Court in Detroit and the Center for Constitutional Rights in Federal District Court in Manhattan, are the first major court challenges to the eavesdropping program. Both groups are seeking to have the courts order an immediate end to the program, which the groups say is illegal and unconstitutional. The Bush administration has strongly defended the legality and necessity of the surveillance program, and officials said the Justice Department would probably oppose the lawsuits on national security grounds. Justice Department officials would not comment on any specific individuals who might have been singled out under the National Security Agency program, and they said the department would review the lawsuits once they were filed. Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Justice Department, added Monday that "the N.S.A. surveillance activities described by the president were conducted lawfully and provide valuable tools in the war on terrorism to keep America safe and protect civil liberties."....
Investigating the NSA
A congressional criminal investigation into the leak to the New York Times of the National Security Agency's warrantless collection and data-mining of e-mails and phone calls in and out of the United States is indeed required because of the highly classified nature of the information. But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is not a credible conductor of the probe because he was deeply involved as head of the office of counsel at the White House when George W. Bush authorized this NSA program. Moreover, since the news broke, and keeps on breaking, Mr. Gonzales has been one of the chief defenders of the president's further unleashing of the NSA. This cheerleading hardly inspires confidence that the attorney general will not have already reached his conclusions. Also, with the Senate conducting its own investigation, there is White House pressure to move that inquiry from Arlen Specter's Judiciary Committee to the Intelligence Committee. But the latter's chairman, Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican, is so indifferent to Fourth Amendment privacy protection that he supports giving the FBI the power, through administrative subpoenas, to seize extensive personal data from Americans not involved in any criminal acts. There is no judicial review of those subpoenas. Whoever is in charge of the inquiry should call, as a witness, James Comey, who was an effective federal prosecutor of terrorists. In 2004, while then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized with pancreatitis, Mr. Comey refused to sign off on certain expansive surveillance operations of the NSA authorized by the president because he was not sure they were legal....
You're being watched ...
Since 9/11, the expansion of efforts to gather and analyze information on U.S. citizens is nothing short of staggering. The government collects vast troves of data, including consumer credit histories and medical and travel records. Databases track Americans' networks of friends, family and associates, not just to identify who is a terrorist but to try to predict who might become one. Remember Total Information Awareness, retired Adm. John Poindexter's effort to harness all government and commercial databases to preempt national security threats? The idea was that disparate, seemingly mundane behaviors can reveal criminal intent when viewed together. More disturbing, it assumed that deviance from social norms can be an early indicator of terrorism. Congress killed that program in 2003, but according to the Associated Press, many related projects continued. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency runs a data-mining program called Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery, which connects pieces of information from vast amounts of data sources. The Defense Intelligence Agency trawls intelligence records and the Internet to identify Americans connected to foreign terrorists. The CIA reportedly runs Quantum Leap, which gathers personal information on individuals from private and public sources. In 2002, Congress authorized $500 million for the Homeland Security Department to develop "data mining and other advanced analytical tools." In 2004, the General Accounting Office surveyed 128 federal departments and agencies to determine the extent of data mining. It found 199 operations, 14 of which related to counterterrorism. What type of information could these mine? Your tax, education, vehicle, criminal and welfare records for starters. But also other digital data, such as your travel, medical and insurance records — and DNA tests. Section 505 of the Patriot Act (innocuously titled "Miscellaneous National Security Authorities") extends the type of information the government can obtain without a warrant to include credit card records, bank account numbers and information on Internet use....
Wiretapping, FISA, and the NSA
US wiretapping laws, FISA and Presidential powers given to the NSA to intercept communications make for interesting times when coupled with technology. What are the issues surrounding privacy, search, seizure and surveillance? Whenever a new technology is developed, or a new threat that causes us to deploy these technologies, questions invariably arise about their legality. When the telephone was first developed and used, it was not clear that the constitutional dictates on unreasonable searches and seizures applied to conversations that were neither "searched" nor "seized." The recent revelations that the US Department of Defense, through the National Security Agency, was targeting the international communications of US citizens for interception as part of a classified program raises questions about the constitutionality and legality of the program itself. The first thing to emphasize is that we don't know anything at all about this program. It has been alternatively described as a vacuum cleaner which sits on the main routers and international trunk lines of communication and "sucks up" all data for later analysis; as a "spider" program that starts with leads of phone numbers and email addresses found from interception or by analysis of al Qeada targets that does brief analysis any of these addresses or phone numbers; or most recently by the White House as a narrow rifle shot. Can the President of the United States, during a time of war (albeit a war on terror, or terrorism, or fundamentalism without any end in sight whatsoever) assert plenary executive authority to intercept communications, including emails and other electronic communications originating from the United States and from US citizens without any kind of judicial warrant? The first place to start any analysis of privacy, search, seizure and surveillance is with the US Constitution itself....
U.S. Seeks to Avoid Detainee Ruling
The Bush administration took the unusual step yesterday of asking the Supreme Court to call off a landmark confrontation over the legality of military trials for terrorism suspects, arguing that a law enacted last month eliminates the court's ability to consider the issue. In a 23-page brief, U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement said the justices should throw out an appeal by Yemeni national Salim Hamdan, an alleged driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, because a new statute governing the treatment of U.S. detainees "removes the court's jurisdiction to hear this action." The brief represents the latest escalation in the showdown between the Bush administration and critics of the government over the legal rights of military detainees captured overseas. Hamdan's case is one of several high-stakes legal battles working their way through the courts, and the Supreme Court's November decision to consider his appeal was a blow to the government. Hamdan is among approximately 500 inmates held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; nine are scheduled to be tried by "military commissions" created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Hamdan's lawyers and many civil liberties groups have decried the commissions as unconstitutional and unfairly stacked against defendants. Separately, the administration is trying to eliminate habeas corpus lawsuits filed on behalf of nearly every detainee, saying they have clogged federal courts with frivolous actions. The Supreme Court gave Guantanamo Bay detainees access to federal courts in a 2004 ruling....
Translator's Conviction Raises Legal Concerns
For three years federal agents trailed Mohammed Yousry, a chubby 50-year-old translator and U.S. citizen who worked for radical lawyer Lynne Stewart. Prosecutors wiretapped his phone, and FBI agents shadowed and interviewed him. They read his books and notepads and every file on his computer. This was their conclusion: "Yousry is not a practicing Muslim. He is not a fundamentalist," prosecutor Anthony Barkow acknowledged in his closing arguments to a jury in federal district court in Manhattan earlier this year. "Mohammed Yousry is not someone who supports or believes in the use of violence." Still, the prosecutor persuaded the jury to convict Yousry of supporting terrorism. Yousry now awaits sentencing in March, when he could face 20 years in prison for translating a letter from imprisoned Muslim cleric Omar Abdel Rahman to Rahman's lawyer in Egypt. In June 2000, Stewart released to a reporter a version of the letter, which discussed a cease-fire between Islamic militants and the Egyptian government. Prosecutors said that the lawyer and the translator, by these acts, conspired to use Rahman's words to incite others to carry out kidnappings and killings. No attack took place....
Firearms tracking device urged
Saying gun manufacturers should take steps to track guns, a Boston city councilor is proposing that global positioning technology be installed in firearms. Councilor Rob Consalvo wants to put a tracking device into newly manufactured guns and have legal gun owners retrofit their firearms so owners and police can locate and retrieve stolen guns the same way police use a computer chip to locate stolen cars. ''Let's use that same technology to track weapons so we know where they are when they're stolen or bought illegally," he said. ''I think it's a common-sense idea." Consalvo has asked Springfield-based Smith & Wesson, one of the world's largest gun manufacturers, to meet with him to discuss the proposal. Tom Taylor, Smith & Wesson's vice president of marketing, said yesterday that the company had not yet reviewed the proposal, and declined to comment....
Mexican soldiers defy border
The Mexican military has crossed into the United States 216 times in the past nine years, according to a Department of Homeland Security document and a map of incursions obtained by the Daily Bulletin. U.S. officials claim the incursions are made to help foreign drug and human smugglers cross safely into the United States. The 2001 map, which shows 34 of the incursions, bears the seal of the president's Office of National Drug Control Policy. The document states that since 1996, Mexican military personnel have crossed into the following Border Patrol sectors: • San Diego County, 17 times • El Centro, 58 • Yuma, Ariz., 24 • Tucson, Ariz., 39 • El Paso, Texas, 33 • Marfa, Texas, eight • Del Rio, Texas, three • Laredo, Texas, six • Rio Grande Valley, Texas, 28. White House officials would not comment on the map and referred questions to officials at the Department of Homeland Security. Kristi Clemens, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, would not confirm the number of incursions, but said Saturday the department is in ongoing discussions with the Mexican government about them....
Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends
In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month. But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans. F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy. As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said. President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives." But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive....
Two Groups Planning to Sue Over Federal Eavesdropping
Two leading civil rights groups plan to file lawsuits Tuesday against the Bush administration over its domestic spying program to determine whether the operation was used to monitor 10 defense lawyers, journalists, scholars, political activists and other Americans with ties to the Middle East. The two lawsuits, which are being filed separately by the American Civil Liberties Union in Federal District Court in Detroit and the Center for Constitutional Rights in Federal District Court in Manhattan, are the first major court challenges to the eavesdropping program. Both groups are seeking to have the courts order an immediate end to the program, which the groups say is illegal and unconstitutional. The Bush administration has strongly defended the legality and necessity of the surveillance program, and officials said the Justice Department would probably oppose the lawsuits on national security grounds. Justice Department officials would not comment on any specific individuals who might have been singled out under the National Security Agency program, and they said the department would review the lawsuits once they were filed. Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Justice Department, added Monday that "the N.S.A. surveillance activities described by the president were conducted lawfully and provide valuable tools in the war on terrorism to keep America safe and protect civil liberties."....
Investigating the NSA
A congressional criminal investigation into the leak to the New York Times of the National Security Agency's warrantless collection and data-mining of e-mails and phone calls in and out of the United States is indeed required because of the highly classified nature of the information. But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is not a credible conductor of the probe because he was deeply involved as head of the office of counsel at the White House when George W. Bush authorized this NSA program. Moreover, since the news broke, and keeps on breaking, Mr. Gonzales has been one of the chief defenders of the president's further unleashing of the NSA. This cheerleading hardly inspires confidence that the attorney general will not have already reached his conclusions. Also, with the Senate conducting its own investigation, there is White House pressure to move that inquiry from Arlen Specter's Judiciary Committee to the Intelligence Committee. But the latter's chairman, Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican, is so indifferent to Fourth Amendment privacy protection that he supports giving the FBI the power, through administrative subpoenas, to seize extensive personal data from Americans not involved in any criminal acts. There is no judicial review of those subpoenas. Whoever is in charge of the inquiry should call, as a witness, James Comey, who was an effective federal prosecutor of terrorists. In 2004, while then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized with pancreatitis, Mr. Comey refused to sign off on certain expansive surveillance operations of the NSA authorized by the president because he was not sure they were legal....
You're being watched ...
Since 9/11, the expansion of efforts to gather and analyze information on U.S. citizens is nothing short of staggering. The government collects vast troves of data, including consumer credit histories and medical and travel records. Databases track Americans' networks of friends, family and associates, not just to identify who is a terrorist but to try to predict who might become one. Remember Total Information Awareness, retired Adm. John Poindexter's effort to harness all government and commercial databases to preempt national security threats? The idea was that disparate, seemingly mundane behaviors can reveal criminal intent when viewed together. More disturbing, it assumed that deviance from social norms can be an early indicator of terrorism. Congress killed that program in 2003, but according to the Associated Press, many related projects continued. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency runs a data-mining program called Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery, which connects pieces of information from vast amounts of data sources. The Defense Intelligence Agency trawls intelligence records and the Internet to identify Americans connected to foreign terrorists. The CIA reportedly runs Quantum Leap, which gathers personal information on individuals from private and public sources. In 2002, Congress authorized $500 million for the Homeland Security Department to develop "data mining and other advanced analytical tools." In 2004, the General Accounting Office surveyed 128 federal departments and agencies to determine the extent of data mining. It found 199 operations, 14 of which related to counterterrorism. What type of information could these mine? Your tax, education, vehicle, criminal and welfare records for starters. But also other digital data, such as your travel, medical and insurance records — and DNA tests. Section 505 of the Patriot Act (innocuously titled "Miscellaneous National Security Authorities") extends the type of information the government can obtain without a warrant to include credit card records, bank account numbers and information on Internet use....
Wiretapping, FISA, and the NSA
US wiretapping laws, FISA and Presidential powers given to the NSA to intercept communications make for interesting times when coupled with technology. What are the issues surrounding privacy, search, seizure and surveillance? Whenever a new technology is developed, or a new threat that causes us to deploy these technologies, questions invariably arise about their legality. When the telephone was first developed and used, it was not clear that the constitutional dictates on unreasonable searches and seizures applied to conversations that were neither "searched" nor "seized." The recent revelations that the US Department of Defense, through the National Security Agency, was targeting the international communications of US citizens for interception as part of a classified program raises questions about the constitutionality and legality of the program itself. The first thing to emphasize is that we don't know anything at all about this program. It has been alternatively described as a vacuum cleaner which sits on the main routers and international trunk lines of communication and "sucks up" all data for later analysis; as a "spider" program that starts with leads of phone numbers and email addresses found from interception or by analysis of al Qeada targets that does brief analysis any of these addresses or phone numbers; or most recently by the White House as a narrow rifle shot. Can the President of the United States, during a time of war (albeit a war on terror, or terrorism, or fundamentalism without any end in sight whatsoever) assert plenary executive authority to intercept communications, including emails and other electronic communications originating from the United States and from US citizens without any kind of judicial warrant? The first place to start any analysis of privacy, search, seizure and surveillance is with the US Constitution itself....
U.S. Seeks to Avoid Detainee Ruling
The Bush administration took the unusual step yesterday of asking the Supreme Court to call off a landmark confrontation over the legality of military trials for terrorism suspects, arguing that a law enacted last month eliminates the court's ability to consider the issue. In a 23-page brief, U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement said the justices should throw out an appeal by Yemeni national Salim Hamdan, an alleged driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, because a new statute governing the treatment of U.S. detainees "removes the court's jurisdiction to hear this action." The brief represents the latest escalation in the showdown between the Bush administration and critics of the government over the legal rights of military detainees captured overseas. Hamdan's case is one of several high-stakes legal battles working their way through the courts, and the Supreme Court's November decision to consider his appeal was a blow to the government. Hamdan is among approximately 500 inmates held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; nine are scheduled to be tried by "military commissions" created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Hamdan's lawyers and many civil liberties groups have decried the commissions as unconstitutional and unfairly stacked against defendants. Separately, the administration is trying to eliminate habeas corpus lawsuits filed on behalf of nearly every detainee, saying they have clogged federal courts with frivolous actions. The Supreme Court gave Guantanamo Bay detainees access to federal courts in a 2004 ruling....
Translator's Conviction Raises Legal Concerns
For three years federal agents trailed Mohammed Yousry, a chubby 50-year-old translator and U.S. citizen who worked for radical lawyer Lynne Stewart. Prosecutors wiretapped his phone, and FBI agents shadowed and interviewed him. They read his books and notepads and every file on his computer. This was their conclusion: "Yousry is not a practicing Muslim. He is not a fundamentalist," prosecutor Anthony Barkow acknowledged in his closing arguments to a jury in federal district court in Manhattan earlier this year. "Mohammed Yousry is not someone who supports or believes in the use of violence." Still, the prosecutor persuaded the jury to convict Yousry of supporting terrorism. Yousry now awaits sentencing in March, when he could face 20 years in prison for translating a letter from imprisoned Muslim cleric Omar Abdel Rahman to Rahman's lawyer in Egypt. In June 2000, Stewart released to a reporter a version of the letter, which discussed a cease-fire between Islamic militants and the Egyptian government. Prosecutors said that the lawyer and the translator, by these acts, conspired to use Rahman's words to incite others to carry out kidnappings and killings. No attack took place....
Firearms tracking device urged
Saying gun manufacturers should take steps to track guns, a Boston city councilor is proposing that global positioning technology be installed in firearms. Councilor Rob Consalvo wants to put a tracking device into newly manufactured guns and have legal gun owners retrofit their firearms so owners and police can locate and retrieve stolen guns the same way police use a computer chip to locate stolen cars. ''Let's use that same technology to track weapons so we know where they are when they're stolen or bought illegally," he said. ''I think it's a common-sense idea." Consalvo has asked Springfield-based Smith & Wesson, one of the world's largest gun manufacturers, to meet with him to discuss the proposal. Tom Taylor, Smith & Wesson's vice president of marketing, said yesterday that the company had not yet reviewed the proposal, and declined to comment....
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