Judge tosses Katrina lawsuit against Engineer Corps A federal judge in New Orleans on Wednesday dismissed a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the failure of the city's levee system during Hurricane Katrina's floods in 2005. U.S. Judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the Corps, which designed and built the levees and floodwalls meant to keep the below-sea-level city from being inundated, was shielded by a 1928 law that protects the federal government from lawsuits over flood control projects. In his ruling, Duval scolded the agency for "its failure to accomplish what was its task." "Millions of dollars were squandered in building a levee system ... which was known to be inadequate by the Corps' own calculations," Duval wrote in his ruling, issued in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana....All that, and they are still immune. Remember that the next time a politician lectures you about "personal responsibility". Making the gov't responsible for it's actions would be a good start.
Corn on the Mob All over the world, food prices are on the rise. For most of the late 1990s and up until 2005, the price of beans on the Chicago Board of Trade had remained stable at about $5 a bushel. Since then, they have shot up over 150 percent, to around $13. Corn has doubled, to $5. Wheat prices have tripled. It all started with the 2005 Energy Policy Act, passed by a Republican congress and signed by a Republican president, mandating that an increasing amount of ethanol be admixed with gasoline. The bill was sold as a road to "energy independence" and as lowering the amount of carbon dioxide we emit, reducing dreaded global warming. By now, 15 percent of our corn crop is being distilled, diverted from the proper purpose for such distillates (i.e. drinking), combusted, and sent out your car's tailpipe. The Act required production of four billion gallons of ethanol in 2006, increasing by approximately 700 million gallons each succeeding year. Enter those familiar characters supply, demand, and price. Supply tightens, prices escalate, and more and more farmers divert cropland from other crops (mainly soybeans and wheat) to corn. In the U.S., most crops are turned into animal feed, but in poorer countries, such as Indonesia (soybeans) or Mexico (corn for tortillas) they are consumed directly. IT'S ONLY GOING to get worse. As if to add more 200-proof to the fire, President Bush, citing global warming in his 2007 State of the Union speech, called for production of 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017, displacing 20 percent of our current gasoline consumption with this intoxicating elixir. This is five times the amount mandated in the 2005 Energy Act. He claimed that this would help us get off Middle Eastern oil....
Seashore deer culling resumes The hunters were out with their high-powered rifles but nobody among the growing legion of opponents spotted any deer being killed at Point Reyes. It is no secret, though, that blood is mixing with the rain at the Point Reyes National Seashore this week. Park officials acknowledged Wednesday that gun-toting contractors have resumed what is the most intensive campaign in park history to get rid of exotic deer. The news prompted several protests, including a demonstration Wednesday by nearly two dozen children, and helicopter overflights in an attempt to capture the carnage on video. The National Park Service approved a plan last year to get rid of about 1,100 fallow and axis deer using a combination of contraception and high-powered rifles. A Connecticut company, White Buffalo Inc., was hired to do the shooting. About 400 fallow deer were killed in the late summer and fall, park officials said. At least 80 does have been captured and sterilized with an experimental contraceptive drug called GonaCon....
Appeals court upholds $10.2 million award to injured snowmobiler A federal appeals court panel has upheld a lower court's decision ordering the U.S. Forest Service and a snowmobiler to pay more than 10 million dollars to a Michigan man who suffered severe brain injuries when he was struck by a snowmobile near West Yellowstone in 1996. The panel's ruling stems from a 2004 decision by U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula. Molloy ruled that the Forest Service must pay 40 percent of the award for the crash, which left Brian Musselman of Hope, Michigan, with permanent disabilities. Molloy said the Forest Service failed to fix dangerous conditions along the groomed trail where the crash occurred, or warn snowmobilers of the hazard. He also assigned 50 percent of the liability to Jamie Leinberger of Bay City, Michigan, one of two snowmobilers Musselman's family originally sued. The Forest Service appealed Molloy's ruling. But a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Molloy, in an opinion issued today....The Forest Service is being held accountable...reckon they will appeal again?...the BLM appealed their "accountability" case all the way to the Supreme Court and won.
Senate panel backs Oregon, Idaho deals A Senate committee Wednesday endorsed an Idaho land swap and a plan to create federal wilderness protection for nearly 14,000 acres of national forest land along Oregon's southern coast. The Copper Salmon Wilderness, proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., will be included a huge public lands bill to be debated by the Senate. The measure was among 42 separate bills approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Seventeen bills -- including the Oregon measure and the Idaho land exchange -- will be combined in a measure that includes about 60 individual land bills, Senate aides said Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to bring the bill to the Senate floor soon....
N.M. plans to restore high-mountain toad New Mexico environmental officials said they will reintroduce the boreal toad into the state in hopes of restoring the high-mountain amphibian to the region. There have been no reports of the toad in New Mexico since 1996, and the last confirmed sighting was 10 years before that, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported. Leland Pierce of the state Fish and Game Department said biologists continue to look for the toads but are almost certain they are locally extinct. The closest confirmed wild population is in Colorado. The toad -- 2 to 4 inches long, black and covered with red warts -- might seem unattractive. But it is the only toad found more than 10,000 feet above sea level. The Colorado Department of Wildlife has been breeding the toad and can supply New Mexico with tadpoles, Pierce said. If the U.S. Forest Service approves the plan, New Mexico could begin its recovery plan this spring. Biologists suspect the chytrid fungus wiped out New Mexico's toads....
Bill on track for off-road enforcement State wildlife rangers could give tickets to illegal off-road riders under a bill that gained new strength in the House on Tuesday. Colorado has 14 million acres of national forests and 8 million acres run by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, but only 18 forest rangers and eight BLM officers dedicated to law enforcement, said Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison. "That's a million acres per officer. Obviously, they can't be everywhere," said Curry, sponsor of House Bill 1069. The bill would let state and county officers enforce federal laws on all-terrain vehicles. It was weakened last week in the agriculture committee, when opponents amended it to require the federal government to post signs whenever a trail is closed to motorized vehicles. Representatives were angry about a change in the way the Forest Service allows all-terrain vehicles. Trails used to be open unless marked closed. Now, everything is closed unless a trail is specifically marked open. Curry convinced the full House to strip off that amendment Tuesday and pass her bill on a voice vote. It still faces one more recorded vote in the House, which could come as early as today....
Group threatens suit over cattle grazing An environmental group announced plans Wednesday to sue Washington state if it approves a proposal to allow cattle grazing on portions of Central Washington's Whisky Dick Wildlife Area, a parcel of rural sagebrush situated between the state's two remaining sage grouse populations. The Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project contends that the state must first produce an environmental impact statement before allowing 160 cattle to forage on two pastures in the Whisky Dick area, about 110 miles east of Seattle. The two pastures proposed as grazing land comprise 8,418 acres of the 28,549-acre wildlife area, a rolling series of ridges and canyons above the mid-Columbia River. Under the proposal, grazing would occur for 30 days this spring. Fish and Wildlife officials say the grazing management plan is part of a larger process to improve land management in the area with the cooperation of local landowners, conservation and environmental groups, and others. Moderate grazing by livestock removes older, rank grass and increases the availability of more-nutritious spring or fall regrowth for elk, thereby reducing chances elk will forage on farmland, according to Fish and Wildlife. The area in question has not been grazed by livestock for 10 years....
Interior orders mineral royalty reforms after report US Interior Secretary Dirk A. Kempthorne, after receiving the final report of an independent study panel on Jan. 25, ordered immediate implementation of recommended mineral management reforms that can be carried out administratively. The report, having more than 100 recommendations, came from a bipartisan panel the secretary formed last year which was cochaired by former US senators Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) and Jake Garn (R-Utah). "Where it is within our power to do so, the responsible officials will take action to rectify identified problems. However, other recommendations may require further study or legislative action," Kempthorne said. His directive to Minerals Management Service Director Randall B. Luthi and Bureau of Land Management Director James L. Caswell also orders the two agencies to develop action plans based on the report's recommendations and submit a progress report within 30 days. The recommendations, to be implemented immediately, include additional ethics training for all MMS employees, especially those who deal with oil, gas, and other lessees in a regulatory, collections, or enforcement role....
Video of workers abusing cows raises food safety questions A video showing California slaughterhouse workers abusing dairy cows -- a violation that raises questions about U.S. food safety -- was released by the Humane Society of the United States on Wednesday. The video, which one lawmaker said raises questions about the safety of the nation's food supply, shows Hallmark Meat Packing Co. workers administering repeated electric shocks to the downed cows -- animals that are too sick, weak or otherwise unable to stand on their own. Workers are seen kicking cows, jabbing them near their eyes, ramming them with a forklift and shooting high-intensity water up their noses in an effort to force them to their feet for slaughter. The society says the video was shot last year by an undercover investigator who wore a hidden camera under his clothes when he worked at the facility. Hallmark Meat Packing Co., based in Chino, California, sells beef to its sister company, Westland Meat, which distributes it to various federal programs, including the National School Lunch Program. Downed cows are more easily contaminated and may carry diseases harmful to consumers. U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations prohibit allowing disabled or contaminated animals into the food supply. Officials said they would investigate....Go here to see the video.
The bovine TB challenge When bovine tuberculosis showed up in a northern Minnesota cattle herd, state officials acted quickly to slaughter the herd and stop the disease. They believed it was an isolated case. It's been nearly three years since that first case of bovine TB, and last week the disease was found in a ninth cattle herd. TB has also been found in 17 wild whitetail deer, including four killed last fall. "With every year that we continue to find infected herds and infected deer it becomes more of a challenge," says Minnesota State Veterinarian Bill Hartman. "We were hopeful we would be able to go up there and eliminate the infection from the cattle rapidly and do the same with the deer. Continuing to find herds this far into it is certainly not a good thing," Hartman says. Controlling TB in a cattle herd is less complicated than fighting the disease in wild deer. An infected herd can be quarantined and slaughtered. Minnesota used a special hunting season and federal sharpshooters in an effort to kill hundreds of deer around farms where TB was found. But a recent aerial survey found the deer population in the area is nearly the same as a year ago....
An orphan becomes the King of Texas An eight-year-old boy in New York City was apprenticed to a jeweler. His parents, Irish immigrants, died when he was five. He worked for the jeweler two years before he ran away and hid in a ship bound for Mobile. It was 1834. After four days at sea, the boy was found and taken to the captain of the Desdemona. The boy said his name was Richard King and that he ran away because he didn't like minding the jeweler's kid. The captain made him his cabin boy to earn his passage. When the ship docked at Mobile, the captain found King a job on an Alabama steamboat. A few years later, the steamboat captain sent King to school in Connecticut, but he left school and returned to the riverboat life, this time in Florida, where he met Mifflin Kenedy, captain of the steamboat Champion. Kenedy took the Champion to New Orleans and then up the Mississippi. He had been hired to select boats for Zachary Taylor's campaign in Mexico. Kenedy wrote his friend King, urging him to join him on the Rio Grande. King arrived in 1847 and became the pilot on the Corvette. King and Kenedy spent the war ferrying supplies up the Rio Grande. After the war, the two formed a partnership with Charles Stillman and bought three surplus Army steamboats. On July 10, 1850, King celebrated his 26th birthday at Miller's Hotel in Brownsville. Two years later, King rode north to attend the Lone Star Fair at Corpus Christi. After passing the alkali flats (El Desierto de los Muertos), the land opened into prairie covered with rich grass. King's party camped near a creek named Santa Gertrudis. King supposedly was struck by the idea that this was ideal cattle country; perhaps there was an epiphany, a thought that, "Here it is; and here is all that is to come." Grass and possibilities. King talked it over with his friend, Capt. Robert E. Lee, who told him it wasn't Virginia, but it was a country with a future. In July 1853, King bought 15,000 acres, part of the Santa Gertrudis grant, from the heirs of Juan Mendiola. He paid two cents an acre.