Managing leases in roadless areas confusing When Brimmer earlier this month reinstated the Bush administration’s interim roadless policy by overruling California Magistrate Judge Elizabeth LaPorte, who two months earlier had overruled Brimmer, neither side of the question rolled out the band and danced in the streets. It’s not that there was no one with whom to dance. In Colorado’s case, it’s more a question of musical chairs. Gov. Bill Ritter started the process by responding to the Bushies call for each state to devise its own roadless policy and kicked in the Colorado Roadless Area Review Task force. The task force eventually hammered out an agreement on how to protect 4.4 million acres of Colorado’s backcountry from development. From the beginning, Ritter considered the Colorado plan a form of insurance in case Brimmer’s original 2003 ruling, which said the 2001 roadless rules were implemented in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Wilderness Act, were ever usurped. It was, by LaPorte, and now Brimmer has returned fire, at the same time calling LaPorte’s actions “surreptitious.” Which means Brimmer’s latest decision and the judicial cat fight is bound to end up in the Supreme Court....