FLE
Bush Assails Democrats Over Patriot Act
President Bush accused Democrats yesterday of blocking a full reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act for political reasons, as the White House stepped up an aggressive campaign to defend the president's terrorism-fighting authority. "For partisan reasons, in my mind, people have not stepped up," Bush told reporters, with 19 federal prosecutors by his side. "The enemy has not gone away; they're still there, and I expect Congress to understand that we're still at war and they've got to give us the tools necessary to win this war." Adopting campaign-style tactics, Bush and his aides plan to accuse Democrats of jeopardizing national security to further their political agenda, a tack that worked well for the White House in the 2002 and 2004 elections. But the political environment is different now, with Bush less popular and Democrats better organized in opposition. Moreover, key Republicans are also raising objections to Bush's broad interpretation of presidential power. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) was among the first to demand hearings on the NSA intercepts, and four GOP senators who typically back Bush in policy disputes played crucial roles in blocking the full reauthorization of the Patriot Act before Congress adjourned shortly before Christmas....
Bush Defends Spying Program As 'Necessary' to Protect U.S.
President Bush today mounted his third defense in two weeks of his secret domestic spying program, calling his order authorizing warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens a limited, legal program that Americans understand is protecting their security. Taking questions from reporters after a brief stop at an Army hospital in San Antonio to visit wounded troops, the president acknowledged concerns that monitoring overseas telephone calls and e-mails of citizens with suspected ties to terrorism may violate civil liberties. But he called his directive to the National Security Agency (NSA) after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "vital and necessary" to protect the country. "This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America, and I repeat limited," Bush said before flying back to Washington after six days cloistered on his ranch in Crawford, Tex. "I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy's thinking. "If somebody from al Qaeda is calling you, we'd like to know why." The president's first public comments of the new year after no public appearances last week offered a glimpse into how his administration intends to deflect congressional inquiries into his authorization of wiretaps on terrorism suspects -- with a vigorous defense of the program as a matter of national security....
Has Bush Gone Too Far?
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, White House officials were haunted by two questions. Were there other terrorists lying in wait within the U.S.? And, given how freely the 19 hijackers had been able to operate before they acted, how would we know where to find them? It didn't take long before an aggressive idea emerged from the circle of Administration hawks. Liberalize the rules for domestic spying, they urged. Free the National Security Agency (NSA) to use its powerful listening technology to eavesdrop on terrorist suspects on U.S. soil without having to seek a warrant for every phone number it tracked. But because of a 1978 law that forbids the NSA to conduct no-warrant surveillance inside the U.S., the new policy would require one of two steps. The first was to revise the law. The other was to ignore it. In the end, George Bush tried the first. When that failed, he opted for the second. In 2002 he issued a secret Executive Order to allow the NSA to eavesdrop without a warrant on phone conversations, e-mail and other electronic communications, even when at least one party to the exchange was in the U.S.—the circumstance that would ordinarily trigger the warrant requirement. For four years, Bush's decision remained a closely guarded secret. Because the NSA program was so sensitive, Administration officials tell Time, the "lawyers' group," an organization of fewer than half a dozen government attorneys the National Security Council convenes to review top-secret intelligence programs, was bypassed. Instead, the legal vetting was given to Alberto Gonzales, then White House counsel....
Spy Controversy, Redux
I went back to the records of the Church committee uncertain whether what I'd find in its investigation of abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies would have much relevance for today's uproar. Certainly the Bush administration's actions - its unilateral assertion of questionable presidential powers, its casual disregard for established legal rules, its contemptuous attitude toward congressional oversight - are extremely troubling. At the same time, the underlying actions at issue, at least from what's been reported so far, don't seem to rise to the level of the lurid, flagrant abuses (plots to assassinate foreign leaders, "black-bag job" break-ins to disrupt political dissidents) uncovered by the Church committee and a parallel House probe. As it turned out, though, some of the less well-known aspects of those investigations involved the NSA. And, much as today, the episodes called on the agency, the executive branch and Congress to grapple with questions about the proper balance between privacy and security, the role of the NSA in gathering intelligence domestically, and the circumstances, if any, under which the NSA could eavesdrop on Americans. The Church committee discovered that the NSA had for years - unbeknownst to Congress - been using a "watch list" of U.S. citizens and organizations in sorting through the foreign communications it intercepted. In addition, for three decades, from 1945 to 1975, telegraph companies had been turning over to the NSA copies of most telegrams sent from the United States to foreign countries. This program, code-named Shamrock, was, according to the Church committee report, "probably the largest governmental interception program affecting Americans ever undertaken."....
Full Speed Ahead: Behind the NSA spying furor
The talk at the White House in the days and weeks after 9/11 was all about suitcase nukes and germ warfare and surprise decapitation strikes. Every morning, as they crossed West Executive Drive on their way to work in the West Wing, Bush administration staffers recall seeing a plain white truck with a galvanized metal chimney. Sensors sniffing for pathogens or radioactivity, they guessed, though they couldn't be sure. Like just about everything else at that spooky time, the purpose of the truck was a secret. Such chilling sights are not likely to inspire thoughtful ruminations about the separation of powers or the true meaning of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. The message to White House lawyers from their commander in chief, recalls one who was deeply involved at the time, was clear enough: find a way to exercise the full panoply of powers granted the president by Congress and the Constitution. If that meant pushing the boundaries of the law, so be it. The Bush administration did not throw away the Bill of Rights in the months and years that followed; indeed, NEWSWEEK has learned, ferocious behind-the-scenes infighting stalled for a time the administration's ambitious program of electronic spying on U.S. citizens at home and abroad. On one day in the spring of 2004, White House chief of staff Andy Card and the then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a bedside visit to John Ashcroft, attorney general at the time, who was stricken with a rare and painful pancreatic disease, to try—without success—to get him to reverse his deputy, Acting Attorney General James Comey, who was balking at the warrantless eavesdropping. Miffed that Comey, a straitlaced, by-the-book former U.S. attorney from New York, was not a "team player" on this and other issues, President George W. Bush dubbed him with a derisive nickname, "Cuomo," after Mario Cuomo, the New York governor who vacillated over running for president in the 1980s. (The White House denies this; Comey declined to comment.) In a perfect democracy trying to strike a balance between civil liberties and national security, there would be reasoned, open debate between representatives of the different branches of government. But human nature and politics rarely work in neat and orderly ways. In moments of crisis, presidents, if they believe in executive power (and most inevitably do), will do almost anything to protect the country....
Wartime Attacks on Civil Liberties
If it is true to say, as Randolph Bourne did, that war is the health of the state, it is equally true to say that war is the sickness of individual liberty. The state always menaces its people with an array of orders, prohibitions, and confiscations, but never so much as in times of war, when it can count on widespread support for all measures said to be necessary to ensure victory. That is especially so when it comes to dissent. Many citizens and politicians are seized with the idea that any disagreement with the war policies is a threat to national survival and must be suppressed at all costs. Opposition to or even indifference toward the war is equated with disloyalty, and the deeply ingrained notion that the people have an overarching obligation of loyalty to the state rises to support the crackdown. Censorship and punishment are just what the traitors deserve! In Perilous Times, University of Chicago Law School professor Geoffrey Stone chronicles the American experience with the attack on civil liberties during times of war. Stone, a noted First Amendment scholar, has written an elegant book that begins with the Sedition Act of 1798 and continues through the Vietnam War. He explains in his introduction, Time and again, Americans have allowed fear and fury to get the better of them. Time and again, Americans have suppressed dissent, imprisoned and deported dissenters, and then — later — regretted their actions. This book is first and foremost about why this happens and how we can break this pattern as we look to the future. As a history, Perilous Times is a complete triumph, meticulously researched and clearly told....
GOV'T. WINS COURT AUTHORIZATION TO SPY ON CELL PHONE USE
A federal court issued an opinion permitting government agencies to use cell phone data to track a cell phone's physical location, without a search warrant based on probable cause. The ruling seems to be in line with recent revelations about President Bush authorizing secret, warrantless wiretaps. The court opinion on Dec. 20, 2005 went largely unnoticed by the media or the public, but may have major ramifications on privacy rights and issues. Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein of the United States District Court, Southern District of New York issued the opinion, despite three previous rulings to the contrary by other judges. There is no party to appeal, so the ruling paves the way for government agencies in all states to begin cell phone tracking without legal difficulty. There was only one party in each case that was rejected by other courts, the same party in the case that was given approval -- the Department of Justice. The DOJ did not appeal the cases it lost, and there is no party to appeal the case it won. "What other new surveillance powers has the government been creating out of whole cloth and how long have they been getting away with it?" commented the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation on it's web site. The DOJ revealed an attitude that a court order is not needed in the brief submitted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Brown: "A cell phone user voluntarily transmits a signal to the cell phone company, and thereby 'assumes the risk' that the cell phone provider will reveal to law enforcement the cell-site information."....
Chatting Up the TSA
Next time you go to the airport be sure to put on a happy face, even if you’ve been informed that your flight has been delayed by an hour and that you’ll miss all your connections. You’ll need this cheerful façade to make it through the TSA airport security checkpoint. As if being asked to strip off shoes, coats, belts and other clothing before going through a metal detector and getting your personal belongings x-rayed is not enough, the TSA will begin psychoanalyzing air travelers in 40 major airports next year. TSA screeners, who are not even fully trained law enforcement personnel, let alone professional psychologists, will perform behavior analysis screening on all passengers. The screeners will look for “suspicious” signs that might indicate a passenger could be a terrorist: having dry lips or a throbbing carotid artery (I’m not kidding), failure to make eye contact with or say hello to the screener, or evasive or slow answers to casual questions asked by the screener. Travelers who exhibit such nefarious characteristics will undergo extra physical searches—the infamous “pat down” frisk and bag rummage—and could even face police questioning. This further invasion of the public’s privacy is part of a trend in law enforcement to go beyond merely responding to criminal activity in an attempt to prevent it. But allowing security personnel to question people, conduct intrusive searches, and possibly even make arrests on such flimsy criteria, instead of on hard evidence of criminal activity, should raise alarm bells with all Americans concerned about their civil liberties. Even psychologists who believe that analyzing body language in a controlled lab environment can detect deceptive behavior admit that studies are needed to see if it will work in the field—in this case, en masse and at chaotic airport checkpoints....
RFID Passport Tests To Begin At San Francisco Airport
The Department of Homeland Security will begin testing passports embedded with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology at the San Francisco International Airport mid-January, a spokesperson for the agency said Friday. Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have begun to issue passports to travelers with RFID chips. Many pass through the San Francisco, making it a likely location to test the technology, according to Anna Hinken, a US-Visit spokesperson at the Department of Homeland Security. "We're bringing technology to the borders and chose RFID as one to help reach the goals of expediting safe entrance into the United States," she said. In October, the U.S. State Department issued final regulations on passports issued after October 2006, stating all would have embedded RFID chips that carry the holder's personal data and digital photo. Specifications for the passports were developed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a United Nations agency. San Francisco is not the first major U.S. city to trial the technology. Through the US-Visit program, the DHS ran a three month test with RFID-embedded e-passports in fall 2005 at the Los Angeles International Airport. Other RFID projects have been in the works, too. All this increased security isn't cheap. The technology budget for the US-Visit program adds up to more than $1 billion in the past three fiscal years, ending Oct. 1. DHS is waiting for "official" word on the 2006 budget, but Hinken said funds have been approved and expects final funding in January....
Man Arrested At Airport Says Gun Was For Protection
An arrest report shows that a North Carolina man arrested for having a stun gun in his baggage at Chicago's main airport told police he'd just returned from missionary work in Nigeria and had the weapon for protection there. A screener at O'Hare International Airport found the stun gun in carry-on baggage belonging to 35-year-old John Adegbenjo, of Winston-Salem. Adegbenjo had flown into Chicago on a Lufthansa flight from Germany and was planning to board a flight to Greensboro. He's charged with unauthorized use of a weapon and attempting to board an aircraft with a weapon. Adegbenjo's wife said her husband's missionary group in Nigeria didn't want to depend on police protection. Authorities said in court Thursday that Adegbenjo has no known criminal history. His bail was set at $50,000.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Rancher wins noise fight with gas industry In about a year, Sid Lindauer hopes he won’t hear as much noise from several natural-gas compressor stations near his ranch north of Parachute. For 312 years, Lindauer and others have tried to get the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to adopt stricter noise regulations for such things as the compressor stations, about a half-mile north of his 20-acre ranch on Garfield County Road 215. In December, those efforts bore fruit with the adoption of new, stricter noise standards. “I think it was a tremendous first step to solve a lot of noise problems with the industry,” Lindauer said. “This is very important for me on the ranch.” Compressor stations pressurize gas to deliver it through huge pipelines to sales points. Each compressor has huge motors and large cooling fans. Current statutory limits are 55 decibels from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and 50 decibels from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Under the new rules, which take effect at the end of January, allowable noise levels will drop by five decibels for most new oil and gas construction. Lindauer took readings in September 2002 that found sound levels at 60 to 68 decibels at his property line. Then, he described it as an “unbelievable, ghastly roaring sound.” Since then, mitigation by Williams Production and EnCana Oil and Gas has cut his noise levels in half, Lindauer said....
ENVIRONMENTAL HYSTERIA DEBUNKED "We must deal with climate change now. Evidence of catastrophic climate change is now too great to ignore. All human life is at risk". With dire warnings like this, radical environmentalists urge us to abandon our wasteful ways, and demand that the government take drastic, even totalitarian action to save civilization and even life on earth. No, I'm not talking about the global warming crisis. I'm talking about the great global cooling crisis – an impending life-destroying "ice age" which hundreds of newspapers and magazines warned us about in the 1970s. Just 30 years ago, some reputable scientists even went so far as to warn that unless we acted immediately, the entire human race could freeze to death before the year 2000. Obviously, they were dead wrong. Now radical environmentalists have come full-circle, and many are warning us that unless government takes drastic action immediately, global warming will soon spawn unending "killer hurricanes", flood our coastal cities, and turn farmlands into wastelands. As best-selling author Michael Crichton asks, "When will they ever learn?" Crichton's State of Fear novel is a fast-paced fictional work, in which the hero stumbles on an insidious global warming plot. In fact, State of Fear is a cautionary tale of the destructive consequences of irrational fears of imagined threats that never materialize and which are fueled largely by small special interest groups with hidden agendas, media hype and political hysteria....
Harris County Master Urban Rancher Program to Begin Feb. 3 For many suburban families, work may be in the city, but home is on the range. Small-acreage operations are increasing in number, according to Wayne Thompson, Texas Cooperative Extension agriculture agent in Harris County. Helping these operations, known as "ranchettes," is the focus of the Master Urban Rancher program. Extension will offer the next Master Urban Rancher class in Harris County beginning Feb. 3. The 12-week program will include lectures at the Hermann Park Garden Center, 6001 Fannin St., and site visits to successful small-acreage operations. These ranchette owners and Extension specialists will speak on such topics as agricultural economics for small businesses, pasture management, on-site wastewater treatment systems, fence construction and farm pond management....
Forest Service takes comments on cloud-seeding program Medicine Bow National Forest has begun taking public comments on part of a study to assess whether cloud seeding can boost precipitation in the state. Cloud seeding involves spewing silver iodide into clouds to coax more rain and snow to fall. Wyoming has contributed $8.8 million toward a five-year cloud-seeding project in the Wind River, Medicine Bow and Sierra Madre ranges. The goal is to add to the scientific data -- which so far has been mixed -- on whether cloud seeding works. The project is being carried out by Weather Modification Inc. of Fargo, N.D. It has submitted a proposal to Medicine Bow National Forest to operate up to 16 ground-based, cloud-seeding devices starting this winter. Some aerial cloud-seeding would take place, as well....
Wildlife group pays ranchers Defenders of Wildlife cut more than $18,000 in checks to Montana ranchers for livestock killed, or probably killed, by grizzly bears in 2005. The $18,089 was compensation for 18 cows, 10 sheep and 53 chickens, according to the conservation group. The amount is the second-highest since the compensation program began in 1997. Most of the conflicts between grizzly bears and livestock in 2005 were clustered around the Rocky Mountain Front and the Blackfeet Reservation, Minette Johnson, who works out of the group's Missoula office, said Monday. The most costly attacks happened in April as grizzlies emerged from hibernation and in the fall as wild berry crops dwindled and the bears prepared to enter dens for the winter. Defenders pays ranchers market value for livestock that government investigators can confirm was killed by grizzlies. The group pays 50 percent of market for animals that were probably killed by bears....
Bear attack victim makes slow progress Come Tuesday morning, after the holiday hubbub finally dies down, Johan Otter's going back to work. Last week, he went jogging. Twice. None of which would be news, of course, except that the California man spent most of the past four months in surgery or in hospitals or at home in his bed, recovering from an Aug. 25 grizzly bear mauling in Glacier National Park. "I'm a little anxious," he said about his anticipated return to work next week, "but I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited about getting some of my normal life back again." Normal, though, remains a ways off for the physical therapist from Escondido. Otter still can't see quite right when he looks down, because the bear all but ripped one eye out. He has no feeling in the top of his head. And his neck's still mighty stiff from where the grizzly broke it in five places while working to peel off Otter's scalp....
Births of cloned horses awaited in Purcell From a laboratory in Texas to a pasture south of Purcell lies a chain of scientific breakthroughs that soon will produce the nation’s first commercially cloned horses. The 19 pregnant mares who roam the 160-acre Royal Vista Southwest ranch are nearing the end of their 342-day gestation, with the first cloned foals due in February. The clones come from six high-profile performance horses and are valued at $150,000. “We check these mares frequently and it’s kind of fun to ultrasound these babies - they sure look good,” said Dr. James Bailey, a veterinarian and co-owner of Royal Vista Southwest, which operates ranches in Purcell and Fort Collins, Colo. “Were getting close, so it’s really exciting.” So far, only one cloned horse has been born in the United States, at Texas A&M University. Italy produced the world’s first cloned horse in 2003....
It's All Trew: Girls can be as ornery as boys George had purchased a fresh gentle milk cow that the girls named Daisy Bell. The family enjoyed fresh milk, butter and cream and made a pet out of Daisy Bell's calf. All was going well as George did the milking in the morning before daylight. Suddenly, Daisy Bell's milk production dropped and George was afraid she might have eaten some poison weeds as the cow became nervous and agitated at times. Each evening the youngest daughter watched for his return from riding and walked out to meet him on the trail. One evening, after telling about the day she became silent for a while then blurted out, "Old Daisy Bell bucks like hell." Instantly George realized why the cow's production had dropped. He also kept the secret quiet that evening so the girl would not get in trouble with her sisters for tattling....
Rancher wins noise fight with gas industry In about a year, Sid Lindauer hopes he won’t hear as much noise from several natural-gas compressor stations near his ranch north of Parachute. For 312 years, Lindauer and others have tried to get the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to adopt stricter noise regulations for such things as the compressor stations, about a half-mile north of his 20-acre ranch on Garfield County Road 215. In December, those efforts bore fruit with the adoption of new, stricter noise standards. “I think it was a tremendous first step to solve a lot of noise problems with the industry,” Lindauer said. “This is very important for me on the ranch.” Compressor stations pressurize gas to deliver it through huge pipelines to sales points. Each compressor has huge motors and large cooling fans. Current statutory limits are 55 decibels from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and 50 decibels from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Under the new rules, which take effect at the end of January, allowable noise levels will drop by five decibels for most new oil and gas construction. Lindauer took readings in September 2002 that found sound levels at 60 to 68 decibels at his property line. Then, he described it as an “unbelievable, ghastly roaring sound.” Since then, mitigation by Williams Production and EnCana Oil and Gas has cut his noise levels in half, Lindauer said....
ENVIRONMENTAL HYSTERIA DEBUNKED "We must deal with climate change now. Evidence of catastrophic climate change is now too great to ignore. All human life is at risk". With dire warnings like this, radical environmentalists urge us to abandon our wasteful ways, and demand that the government take drastic, even totalitarian action to save civilization and even life on earth. No, I'm not talking about the global warming crisis. I'm talking about the great global cooling crisis – an impending life-destroying "ice age" which hundreds of newspapers and magazines warned us about in the 1970s. Just 30 years ago, some reputable scientists even went so far as to warn that unless we acted immediately, the entire human race could freeze to death before the year 2000. Obviously, they were dead wrong. Now radical environmentalists have come full-circle, and many are warning us that unless government takes drastic action immediately, global warming will soon spawn unending "killer hurricanes", flood our coastal cities, and turn farmlands into wastelands. As best-selling author Michael Crichton asks, "When will they ever learn?" Crichton's State of Fear novel is a fast-paced fictional work, in which the hero stumbles on an insidious global warming plot. In fact, State of Fear is a cautionary tale of the destructive consequences of irrational fears of imagined threats that never materialize and which are fueled largely by small special interest groups with hidden agendas, media hype and political hysteria....
Harris County Master Urban Rancher Program to Begin Feb. 3 For many suburban families, work may be in the city, but home is on the range. Small-acreage operations are increasing in number, according to Wayne Thompson, Texas Cooperative Extension agriculture agent in Harris County. Helping these operations, known as "ranchettes," is the focus of the Master Urban Rancher program. Extension will offer the next Master Urban Rancher class in Harris County beginning Feb. 3. The 12-week program will include lectures at the Hermann Park Garden Center, 6001 Fannin St., and site visits to successful small-acreage operations. These ranchette owners and Extension specialists will speak on such topics as agricultural economics for small businesses, pasture management, on-site wastewater treatment systems, fence construction and farm pond management....
Forest Service takes comments on cloud-seeding program Medicine Bow National Forest has begun taking public comments on part of a study to assess whether cloud seeding can boost precipitation in the state. Cloud seeding involves spewing silver iodide into clouds to coax more rain and snow to fall. Wyoming has contributed $8.8 million toward a five-year cloud-seeding project in the Wind River, Medicine Bow and Sierra Madre ranges. The goal is to add to the scientific data -- which so far has been mixed -- on whether cloud seeding works. The project is being carried out by Weather Modification Inc. of Fargo, N.D. It has submitted a proposal to Medicine Bow National Forest to operate up to 16 ground-based, cloud-seeding devices starting this winter. Some aerial cloud-seeding would take place, as well....
Wildlife group pays ranchers Defenders of Wildlife cut more than $18,000 in checks to Montana ranchers for livestock killed, or probably killed, by grizzly bears in 2005. The $18,089 was compensation for 18 cows, 10 sheep and 53 chickens, according to the conservation group. The amount is the second-highest since the compensation program began in 1997. Most of the conflicts between grizzly bears and livestock in 2005 were clustered around the Rocky Mountain Front and the Blackfeet Reservation, Minette Johnson, who works out of the group's Missoula office, said Monday. The most costly attacks happened in April as grizzlies emerged from hibernation and in the fall as wild berry crops dwindled and the bears prepared to enter dens for the winter. Defenders pays ranchers market value for livestock that government investigators can confirm was killed by grizzlies. The group pays 50 percent of market for animals that were probably killed by bears....
Bear attack victim makes slow progress Come Tuesday morning, after the holiday hubbub finally dies down, Johan Otter's going back to work. Last week, he went jogging. Twice. None of which would be news, of course, except that the California man spent most of the past four months in surgery or in hospitals or at home in his bed, recovering from an Aug. 25 grizzly bear mauling in Glacier National Park. "I'm a little anxious," he said about his anticipated return to work next week, "but I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited about getting some of my normal life back again." Normal, though, remains a ways off for the physical therapist from Escondido. Otter still can't see quite right when he looks down, because the bear all but ripped one eye out. He has no feeling in the top of his head. And his neck's still mighty stiff from where the grizzly broke it in five places while working to peel off Otter's scalp....
Births of cloned horses awaited in Purcell From a laboratory in Texas to a pasture south of Purcell lies a chain of scientific breakthroughs that soon will produce the nation’s first commercially cloned horses. The 19 pregnant mares who roam the 160-acre Royal Vista Southwest ranch are nearing the end of their 342-day gestation, with the first cloned foals due in February. The clones come from six high-profile performance horses and are valued at $150,000. “We check these mares frequently and it’s kind of fun to ultrasound these babies - they sure look good,” said Dr. James Bailey, a veterinarian and co-owner of Royal Vista Southwest, which operates ranches in Purcell and Fort Collins, Colo. “Were getting close, so it’s really exciting.” So far, only one cloned horse has been born in the United States, at Texas A&M University. Italy produced the world’s first cloned horse in 2003....
It's All Trew: Girls can be as ornery as boys George had purchased a fresh gentle milk cow that the girls named Daisy Bell. The family enjoyed fresh milk, butter and cream and made a pet out of Daisy Bell's calf. All was going well as George did the milking in the morning before daylight. Suddenly, Daisy Bell's milk production dropped and George was afraid she might have eaten some poison weeds as the cow became nervous and agitated at times. Each evening the youngest daughter watched for his return from riding and walked out to meet him on the trail. One evening, after telling about the day she became silent for a while then blurted out, "Old Daisy Bell bucks like hell." Instantly George realized why the cow's production had dropped. He also kept the secret quiet that evening so the girl would not get in trouble with her sisters for tattling....
Monday, January 02, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Energy/Ag Alliance Fractures Over Eminent Domain For several decades now, the political interests of the energy and agricultural communities have been closely aligned in the Wyoming Legislature -- against federal regulations, but for federal tax breaks and support programs. Oh, and by the way, getting pretty much what they wanted from the state government and along similar lines. For all those years, Big Ag and Big Energy were reliable allies, but perhaps not for much longer. A deep fracture line has appeared between the two groups, and it is called eminent domain. Dustin Bleizeffer of the Casper Star Tribune has a New Year's Day package exploring the issue, including how landowners are objecting to a railroad's use of eminent domain, and a Rock Springs businessman who was forced to relocate his businesses by the Wyoming Department of Transportation. Basically, more and more ranchers, landowners and business people are feeling like road kill on the super highway to progress. Energy companies, railroads, government all use eminent domain to achieve their goals, and it has been going on for a long time. When it happened to just a few, the rest tended to shrug their shoulders and chalk it up to the price paid for progress -- a good thing for everyone. What's different now, is the super-heated pace of energy development and growth in Wyoming. The number of people getting run over by eminent domain is growing, and it seems like there's a critical mass of resentment and betrayal building up. We'll have to see how this plays out in the upcoming legislative session, but it could well be that there are enough angry, bitter people out there, that the legislature will listen and even up the playing field between the big boys and the little guys....
Property power struggle Some say the cowboy is nothing more than a romantic image of an ideal that simply doesn't exist today in the West. So is the notion that owning property means you can keep people out and conduct your own business on your own terms. Growing numbers of property owners in Wyoming are demanding reform of the state's eminent domain laws to protect what they say might be a dying Western value. Rancher Eric Barlow recently toured his neighbor's ranch in Powder River Breaks country between Gillette and Buffalo and noted a property line dividing the flat-bottom valley pasture between two brothers' ranches. On one side a coal-bed methane company had cut a long ditch carefully meandering to one side of the bottomland so it didn't disturb much of the pasture. On the other side of the property line, the man-made ditch was ripped zigzag from one side to the other, as if it were purposely cut to damage as much of the bottomland pasture as possible. This, said Barlow, was no mistake. He believes it was meant to punish the one rancher for not agreeing to the company's terms. The company initiated eminent domain proceedings to cut the zigzagging ditch and force coal-bed methane water onto the ranch where it isn't wanted. "A coal-bed methane company will not pass up an opportunity to make an example of a rancher, just to show the rest what they are capable of," Barlow said. What coal-bed methane companies are capable of is taking private property for their own economic gain. They're not the only ones....
Editorial - Charges against fire boss heap travesty atop tragedy Firefighter bosses may start feeling the heat like never before. Federal prosecutors in Spokane charged a Forest Service crew boss with manslaughter Dec. 23 in connection with the deaths of four firefighters in a 2001 wildfire in northcentral Washington. This first-of-its-kind criminal case is a gross miscarriage of justice on its face. But even if the charges don't stand up in court, prosecutors have sent an unmistakable - and unfortunate - message to men and women up and down the chain of command: Avoid all risks and cover your rear. The ultimate effect could be less-effective firefighting leading to bigger, more dangerous fires and, perversely, even greater risk of fire fatalities in the future. Prosecutors say 46-year-old Ellreese Daniels committed involuntary manslaughter by failing to prevent his crew from being overrun by the Thirtymile fire near Winthrop, Wash., July 10, 2001. The criminal complaint says he and others committed a variety of mistakes, among them: underestimating the fire's potential, failing to anticipate extreme fire behavior, inadequately communicating among themselves and failing to ensure the crew's proper deployment of emergency fire shelters in the face of advancing flames. Prosecutors also say Daniels lied about some of his actions afterward. Ten firefighters and two campers trapped with the crew survived; four crew members died in their emergency shelters of asphyxia from inhaling superheated gases from the fire raging around them. The fire started as a picnicker's campfire....
Editorial - At last, justice may prevail in Thirtymile Fire Four manslaughter charges brought against a U.S. Forest Service crew boss nearly 51/2 years after the deadly Thirtymile Fire in Okanogan County could finally be proof that justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied. Ellreese Daniels is accused of allowing his 14-member squad to be trapped by the Thirtymile Fire in July 2001. The four involuntary manslaughter charges filed against him earlier this month are widely believed to be the first homicide charges ever brought against a firefighter whose crew was overtaken by flames. Daniels also faces seven counts of lying to investigators about his role in fighting the 9,300-acre fire, which grew from an unattended campfire...The documents repeatedly blamed the tragedy on numerous mistakes by more than one unnamed supervisor. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Hopkins said federal rules prevent him from saying whether charges against other Thirtymile Fire bosses are expected. That possibility, both in the Thirtymile disaster and in subsequent fires that have left firefighters dead, is reportedly sending a chill through the professional firefighting ranks. They fear that they, too, may be held responsible if people under their command die. They should fear that -- and they should be held criminally responsible, but only when their actions allow the ever-present dangers inherent in firefighting to escalate through negligence and disregard for human safety....
Frontier family fights to return home Since 1878, four generations of Vadis and Howard Stratton's family lived as homesteaders on this mountain, much like TV's "The Waltons," the clan says. The family made electricity with an 1893 waterwheel, powered by a creek shooting downhill through a homemade pipe. Vadis Stratton and her late husband, Howard, who both didn't drink, smoke or cuss, raised seven kids here. Their home was a 1912 log cabin with a wood-burning stove near the original shed-sized 1878 dwelling. They cut timber for nearby Butte's mines and even prospected for gold. Right through last year, Vadis used a wringer washer. It all made for a 19th Century homestead working until the present day. Chester Arthur was president when the government invited covered-wagon pioneers like the Strattons' ancestors to settle the summits and valleys on the Continental Divide. Now the government has ordered the Strattons to leave, evicting the last of the frontier families that had populated this mountain and its namesake hamlet of Highland City, a nearly vanished ghost town founded in the 1860s gold rush. After winning a court ruling in 2005, the U.S. Forest Service declared 81-year-old Vadis Stratton and her son David, 42, illegal squatters in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and forced the matriarch in August to move into a senior citizen home in Butte, an hour's drive away....
Blown-down trees windfall for streams Wind, fire, floods . . . the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife finds a silver lining in everything nature can throw at the state. Especially trees. The agency, with help from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State Parks and a $28,750 grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, is collecting as many 20-inch (diameter) trees as possible from a veritable forest that blew down along the central Oregon Coast during December windstorms. Downed trees 40 to 50 feet long are destined to be placed in several streams to provide rearing habitat for small salmon and steelhead, capture gravel and create side channels for both juvenile and adult fish. Four log-truckloads of conifer logs have been collected so far, and as many as 10 more might be collected from the December windfall. Jason Kirchner, a department fish habitat biologist, said he has planned seven to 10 projects next summer to improve 12 to 15 miles of streams. He'll use 10 to 200 logs per project....
Blackfeet claim entitlement to 'substantial allocation' of water Leaders of the Blackfeet Tribe told state and federal officials here that their reservation deserves much more water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers than it is getting now. The tribe is in water-rights talks with the Montana Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission to determine how much water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers, along with other drainages, will be allocated to the tribe - and how much will be left over for other users. A public negotiation session was held Dec. 20 in Great Falls. Water from the two rivers, which form in the mountains west of the reservation and flow through it, currently is being diverted to thousands of farmers and residents along the Montana Hi-Line. Tribal officials aren't proposing to stop the distribution. But they argue they deserve more - what one called a ''substantial allocation'' - than they're getting. ''It's our water,'' Tribal Chairman Earl Old Person said. The outcome of the negotiations will affect thousands of residents on the reservation and those living downstream across north-central Montana....
Column - Balancing the needs of winter recreationists Utah boasts the “greatest snow on Earth” and for decades local residents and visitors have ventured into the Tony Grove/Franklin Basin area to ski, snowmobile and simply enjoy the beauty of the snow and mountains that Logan Canyon has to offer. Over time, conflicts between motorized and non-motorized recreationists have developed. Ultimately, a fair distribution of recreation experiences within a limited area means both sides have to give a little. The issues are not about acres. You'll read many articles on who has the most acres available to use and what is fair and what isn't. But that's misleading. Not every acre is equal. Instead, the issues center on quality of snow, family tradition, available terrain, existing parking, proximity to the community of Logan, and the list goes on. The Tony Grove/Franklin Basin has it all; it's the hotspot, the gem for winter recreation. The conflict has a long history. Local newspaper articles describing the issues date back to 1975. The Forest Service responded to these growing conflicts and concerns in the Logan Ranger District in the 2003 Revised Forest Plan and its accompanying environmental impact statement. Still the conflict continued....
Editorial - BLM's landscape system is in danger Three weeks after he took office, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne stopped the worst parts of a proposed overhaul of national parks management policies. Now he needs to do the same with a proposed overhaul of the Bureau of Land Management, announced to employees Nov. 30. The BLM manages three times as much public land as the National Park Service. The resignation of BLM Director Kathleen Clarke last Thursday gives Kempthorne the opportunity to show that the BLM remains committed to its conservation mission. The BLM is the steward of many of the great landscapes of the American West. In particular, the lands and waters of the National Landscape Conservation System have been called "hidden treasures of the American West." They include national monuments, national conservation areas, wilderness areas (and wilderness study areas), historic trails and wild and scenic rivers. These great Western landscapes are the sister system to our national parks, but more rugged. They are highly visited. The proposed reorganization would dump a variety of unrelated programs into the National Landscape Conservation System, thus diluting resources that would be devoted to managing the system, which is already strained for resources. Worse, this latest reorganization plan was hatched in secret with no public review and no congressional oversight. No details have been publicly released, although recommendations were presented to employees Nov. 30 by live satellite broadcast. U.S. Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, and 25 other House members called in a Dec. 20 letter for the BLM to halt the proposed reorganization until Congress examines the implications for the 26 million acre National Landscape Conservation System....
Eagle suit could affect Big Chino pumping A lawsuit that is expected to be filed within the next few weeks will, if successful, make things a bit more challenging for the Prescott area communities to pump the Big Chino aquifer. On Nov. 2 the Arizona-based environmental organization Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its decision to remove all bald eagles from the endangered species list. The CBD contends in its notice that the Arizona born and raised desert nesting bald eagle is a separate and distinct species that, unlike it relatives to the north, has not recovered and requires continued protection...Of the 47 known breeding sites in Arizona, more than one third of them are on the Verde River. Several are located in the upper reaches of the Verde River, along a stretch of riparian habitat that critics contend will be most impacted by plans to pump the Big Chino. The US Geological Survey has determined that approximately 80 percent of the flow of the upper reaches of the Verde River comes from the Big Chino aquifer. Under the protection of the endangered species act, it is against the law to degrade the habitat of a listed species without the consultation and approval of the federal government first....
Endangered Idaho Snail Losing Habitat After clambering down a canyon wall, ducking poison ivy vines and wading chest-deep across a lukewarm stream, Cary Myler spied some flecks that look like pepper sprinkled on a wet rock and announced, "Found some." The pinhead-sized dots are Bruneau hot springsnails. The tiny mollusks that thrive in water as warm as 100 degrees are found nowhere else in the world but here, in the bottom of this southwestern Idaho desert canyon riddled with hot springs 70 miles southeast of Boise. A decade ago, the snails were at the center of a national battle over federal laws designed to protect endangered species. Today, years after the lawsuits were decided and most of the rhetoric retired, they are closer to extinction than ever before. The level of the underground geothermal aquifer that feeds the seeps and springs of hot water where the snails live keeps dropping....
NYT Editorial - Environmental Harmony The long history of Congressional bipartisan cooperation on environmental issues dating back to Richard Nixon has been seriously challenged only twice. The first time was in 1995, when the Gingrich Republicans swept into Washington determined to roll back environmental laws, a threat averted by President Bill Clinton’s veto pen and the exertions of a group of moderate Republicans. The second challenge occurred during the Congress that has now thankfully drawn to a close. The Democrats’ return to power in both houses has raised hopes that some of the old cooperative spirit can be restored and progress made on vital matters like global warming, oil dependency, national parks and threatened wetlands. Environmentalists in the House will certainly have more time to work on positive legislation, since they will no longer have to play defense against Richard Pombo, the California Republican who produced a stream of destructive schemes to open up protected public lands for commercial exploitation, rescind a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling and undermine the Endangered Species Act. Mr. Pombo has been ushered into well-deserved retirement by California voters. On the Senate side, there have been striking changes in leadership. Barbara Boxer, who cares about global warming, replaces James Inhofe, who doesn’t, as head of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Jeff Bingaman, who emphasizes conservation as the appropriate response to oil dependency, replaces Pete Domenici, who tends to favor greater production of America’s dwindling supplies of oil and natural gas, as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Although he’ll need Mr. Domenici’s help, Mr. Bingaman will almost certainly make a major push for new energy legislation, based on proposals that already have broad bipartisan support and would offer a menu of loans, direct subsidies and tax breaks to encourage the production of fuel-efficient cars as well as alternatives to gasoline....
Studies: Lynx habitat may be at risk Some conservationists believe development of a private ski resort on Battle Mountain, as currently designed, will destroy potential lynx habitat and areas the animals might travel through. Colorado Wild conservationists based in Durango and others evaluated the Ginn Co.'s development south of Minturn and submitted their findings to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal agency is conducting an environmental study of the development and what may have to be done to lessen the effect on wildlife. Ginn Co. officials hope to build 1,700 homes, a golf course and 1,100 acres of ski terrain on and around Battle Mountain. Whether lynx roam Battle Mountain is debatable. The Ginn Co. found no traces of lynx in the area, although the Colorado Division of Wildlife has tracked lynx moving across the property....
In California, wild pigs hunted in defense of nature Save the flowers. Save the birds. Kill the pigs. This was Ted Champagne's mission deep in a maze of tule-covered islands and twisting sloughs where he steered his shallow hunting boat and waited for his Catahoula hounds to catch a whiff of wild pigs. The dogs, Butch and Porter, held their bodies taut and sniffed furiously. Champagne kept his 12-gauge shotgun close. He kept his 10-inch-long knife closer, strapped to his side and ready for use in case he found a pig in thick grass and reeds where it could be hard to tell if he was shooting a pig or his dogs. "Once the dogs smell something and jump out of the boat, things move fast," Champagne said. "You want to get in and finish it fast." Champagne is no ordinary hunter in this big marsh, but rather a guardian of endangered flowers and plants. He hunts to protect nature. Champagne volunteers his hunting services for a conservation group, the Solano Land Trust, one of a growing number of California public and nonprofit landowners who kill wild pigs to prevent them from damaging or killing native plants and wildlife....
Why voters rejected Santa Clara County open space measure It is one of the most vexing questions about last month's elections in Silicon Valley. Urban and suburban voters outnumber rural voters by a 15-1 ratio in Santa Clara County. The region has far more registered Democrats than Republicans, and a steady track record of supporting environmental issues. Yet those voters rejected Measure A, an initiative backed by every major local environmental group and many prominent Democratic politicians that would have placed landmark restrictions on development on hillsides and ranch lands. How? A Mercury News computer mapping analysis of all 1,244 precincts in Santa Clara County provides clues. As expected, Measure A won biggest in Palo Alto and Mountain View -- urban areas with lots of liberal voters and environmentalists. It lost biggest in Gilroy and Morgan Hill -- rural areas with more conservative voters, farmers and private-property-rights advocates. But a color-coded county map of the precinct results shows that the race was decided along the Highway 85 corridor....
Column - The Risks of Too Much City The coming year marks a great milestone in the human saga, a development similar in magnitude to the agricultural era and the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, a majority of human beings will be living in vast urban areas, many in megacities and suburban extensions with populations of 10 million or more, according to the United Nations. We have become "Homo Urbanus." Two hundred years ago, the average person on Earth might meet 200 to 300 people in a lifetime. Today a resident of New York City can live and work among 220,000 people within a 10-minute radius of his home or office in midtown Manhattan. Only one city in all of history -- ancient Rome -- boasted a population of more than a million before the 19th century. London became the first modern city with a population over 1 million in 1820. Today 414 cities boast populations of a million or more, and there's no end in sight. As long as the human race had to rely on solar flow, the winds and currents, and animal and human power to sustain life, the population remained relatively low to accommodate nature's carrying capacity: the biosphere's ability to recycle waste and replenish resources. The tipping point was the exhuming of large amounts of stored sun, first in the form of coal deposits, then oil and natural gas. Harnessed by the steam engine and later the internal combustion engine and converted to electricity and distributed across power lines, fossil fuels allowed humanity to create new technologies that dramatically increased food production and manufactured goods and services. The unprecedented increase in productivity led to runaway population growth and the urbanization of the world. No one is really sure whether this turning point in human living arrangements ought to be celebrated, lamented or merely acknowledged. That's because our burgeoning population and urban way of life have been purchased at the expense of vast ecosystems and habitats....
Berry: Corporate economy is enemy For more than 40 years, author and poet Wendell Berry has advocated for local agriculture, good land stewardship and less corporate control of economies. He's walked the talk on his Kentucky farm 50 miles east of Louisville, plowing his fields with horse teams, producing most of his family's food and writing prolifically, without a computer, on a changing American culture. He believes now, more than ever, that conservationists and local land users such as farmers and loggers need to come together. "The split between people who produce from the land, like ranchers, and conservationists has been a tragic loss and a tragic waste of time," Berry said recently from his Kentucky farm. "The two sides have a common enemy they should recognize. The global corporate economy is the enemy." Berry, 72, will be a special speaker at the Quivira Coalition conference at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 18 in Albuquerque. He said he supports the coalition's efforts to bridge the gap between agriculture, land managers and environmentalists....
Federal Subsidies Turn Farms Into Big Business The cornerstone of the multibillion-dollar system of federal farm subsidies is an iconic image of the struggling family farmer: small, powerless against Mother Nature, tied to the land by blood. Without generous government help, farm-state politicians say, thousands of these hardworking families would fail, threatening the nation's abundant food supply...This imagery secures billions annually in what one grower called "empathy payments" for farmers. But it is misleading. Today, most of the nation's food is produced by modern family farms that are large operations using state-of-the-art computers, marketing consultants and technologies that cut labor, time and costs. The owners are frequently college graduates who are as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with a tractor. They cover more acres and produce more crops with fewer workers than ever before. The very policies touted by Congress as a way to save small family farms are instead helping to accelerate their demise, economists, analysts and farmers say. That's because owners of large farms receive the largest share of government subsidies. They often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out....
Cows Engineered to Lack Mad Cow Disease Scientists have genetically engineered a dozen cows to be free from the proteins that cause mad cow disease, a breakthrough that may make the animals immune to the brain-wasting disease. An international team of researchers from the U.S. and Japan reported Sunday that they had "knocked out" the gene responsible for making the proteins, called prions. The disease didn't take hold when brain tissue from two of the genetically engineered cows was exposed to bad prions in the laboratory, they said. Experts said the work may offer another layer of security to people concerned about eating infected beef, although though any food derived from genetically engineered animals must first be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The surviving cows are now being injected directly with mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, to make certain the cattle are immune to it....
It's All Trew: Resourcefulness, greed make for salty brew The transformation from open-range to farming settlements brewed up some strange happenings in the Texas Panhandle. Add a mixture of nationalities, stir in every vocation you can think of then add a generous helping of man's natural greed - and the resulting brew sometimes became explosive. This was especially true in areas where the railroads chose to build. In 1876, the new State of Texas was financially broke but rich in land. The quickest way to turn land into money was by selling it. The fastest way to accomplish such sales was to build a railroad into virgin territory and open it for settlement. To encourage the building of railroads, the state offered to give 16 sections of land, or 10,240 acres, for each mile of new track laid. The railroad companies built the track, took the land, waited for the price to rise then sold it for money to build more track. Occasionally, a choice site on a side-track was created and private railroad investors took over, establishing a town and began selling lots and business opportunities to the public, creating big profits for the stockholders. The town of Salisbury, in what would become Hall County, was one of those choice sites....
Energy/Ag Alliance Fractures Over Eminent Domain For several decades now, the political interests of the energy and agricultural communities have been closely aligned in the Wyoming Legislature -- against federal regulations, but for federal tax breaks and support programs. Oh, and by the way, getting pretty much what they wanted from the state government and along similar lines. For all those years, Big Ag and Big Energy were reliable allies, but perhaps not for much longer. A deep fracture line has appeared between the two groups, and it is called eminent domain. Dustin Bleizeffer of the Casper Star Tribune has a New Year's Day package exploring the issue, including how landowners are objecting to a railroad's use of eminent domain, and a Rock Springs businessman who was forced to relocate his businesses by the Wyoming Department of Transportation. Basically, more and more ranchers, landowners and business people are feeling like road kill on the super highway to progress. Energy companies, railroads, government all use eminent domain to achieve their goals, and it has been going on for a long time. When it happened to just a few, the rest tended to shrug their shoulders and chalk it up to the price paid for progress -- a good thing for everyone. What's different now, is the super-heated pace of energy development and growth in Wyoming. The number of people getting run over by eminent domain is growing, and it seems like there's a critical mass of resentment and betrayal building up. We'll have to see how this plays out in the upcoming legislative session, but it could well be that there are enough angry, bitter people out there, that the legislature will listen and even up the playing field between the big boys and the little guys....
Property power struggle Some say the cowboy is nothing more than a romantic image of an ideal that simply doesn't exist today in the West. So is the notion that owning property means you can keep people out and conduct your own business on your own terms. Growing numbers of property owners in Wyoming are demanding reform of the state's eminent domain laws to protect what they say might be a dying Western value. Rancher Eric Barlow recently toured his neighbor's ranch in Powder River Breaks country between Gillette and Buffalo and noted a property line dividing the flat-bottom valley pasture between two brothers' ranches. On one side a coal-bed methane company had cut a long ditch carefully meandering to one side of the bottomland so it didn't disturb much of the pasture. On the other side of the property line, the man-made ditch was ripped zigzag from one side to the other, as if it were purposely cut to damage as much of the bottomland pasture as possible. This, said Barlow, was no mistake. He believes it was meant to punish the one rancher for not agreeing to the company's terms. The company initiated eminent domain proceedings to cut the zigzagging ditch and force coal-bed methane water onto the ranch where it isn't wanted. "A coal-bed methane company will not pass up an opportunity to make an example of a rancher, just to show the rest what they are capable of," Barlow said. What coal-bed methane companies are capable of is taking private property for their own economic gain. They're not the only ones....
Editorial - Charges against fire boss heap travesty atop tragedy Firefighter bosses may start feeling the heat like never before. Federal prosecutors in Spokane charged a Forest Service crew boss with manslaughter Dec. 23 in connection with the deaths of four firefighters in a 2001 wildfire in northcentral Washington. This first-of-its-kind criminal case is a gross miscarriage of justice on its face. But even if the charges don't stand up in court, prosecutors have sent an unmistakable - and unfortunate - message to men and women up and down the chain of command: Avoid all risks and cover your rear. The ultimate effect could be less-effective firefighting leading to bigger, more dangerous fires and, perversely, even greater risk of fire fatalities in the future. Prosecutors say 46-year-old Ellreese Daniels committed involuntary manslaughter by failing to prevent his crew from being overrun by the Thirtymile fire near Winthrop, Wash., July 10, 2001. The criminal complaint says he and others committed a variety of mistakes, among them: underestimating the fire's potential, failing to anticipate extreme fire behavior, inadequately communicating among themselves and failing to ensure the crew's proper deployment of emergency fire shelters in the face of advancing flames. Prosecutors also say Daniels lied about some of his actions afterward. Ten firefighters and two campers trapped with the crew survived; four crew members died in their emergency shelters of asphyxia from inhaling superheated gases from the fire raging around them. The fire started as a picnicker's campfire....
Editorial - At last, justice may prevail in Thirtymile Fire Four manslaughter charges brought against a U.S. Forest Service crew boss nearly 51/2 years after the deadly Thirtymile Fire in Okanogan County could finally be proof that justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied. Ellreese Daniels is accused of allowing his 14-member squad to be trapped by the Thirtymile Fire in July 2001. The four involuntary manslaughter charges filed against him earlier this month are widely believed to be the first homicide charges ever brought against a firefighter whose crew was overtaken by flames. Daniels also faces seven counts of lying to investigators about his role in fighting the 9,300-acre fire, which grew from an unattended campfire...The documents repeatedly blamed the tragedy on numerous mistakes by more than one unnamed supervisor. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Hopkins said federal rules prevent him from saying whether charges against other Thirtymile Fire bosses are expected. That possibility, both in the Thirtymile disaster and in subsequent fires that have left firefighters dead, is reportedly sending a chill through the professional firefighting ranks. They fear that they, too, may be held responsible if people under their command die. They should fear that -- and they should be held criminally responsible, but only when their actions allow the ever-present dangers inherent in firefighting to escalate through negligence and disregard for human safety....
Frontier family fights to return home Since 1878, four generations of Vadis and Howard Stratton's family lived as homesteaders on this mountain, much like TV's "The Waltons," the clan says. The family made electricity with an 1893 waterwheel, powered by a creek shooting downhill through a homemade pipe. Vadis Stratton and her late husband, Howard, who both didn't drink, smoke or cuss, raised seven kids here. Their home was a 1912 log cabin with a wood-burning stove near the original shed-sized 1878 dwelling. They cut timber for nearby Butte's mines and even prospected for gold. Right through last year, Vadis used a wringer washer. It all made for a 19th Century homestead working until the present day. Chester Arthur was president when the government invited covered-wagon pioneers like the Strattons' ancestors to settle the summits and valleys on the Continental Divide. Now the government has ordered the Strattons to leave, evicting the last of the frontier families that had populated this mountain and its namesake hamlet of Highland City, a nearly vanished ghost town founded in the 1860s gold rush. After winning a court ruling in 2005, the U.S. Forest Service declared 81-year-old Vadis Stratton and her son David, 42, illegal squatters in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and forced the matriarch in August to move into a senior citizen home in Butte, an hour's drive away....
Blown-down trees windfall for streams Wind, fire, floods . . . the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife finds a silver lining in everything nature can throw at the state. Especially trees. The agency, with help from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State Parks and a $28,750 grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, is collecting as many 20-inch (diameter) trees as possible from a veritable forest that blew down along the central Oregon Coast during December windstorms. Downed trees 40 to 50 feet long are destined to be placed in several streams to provide rearing habitat for small salmon and steelhead, capture gravel and create side channels for both juvenile and adult fish. Four log-truckloads of conifer logs have been collected so far, and as many as 10 more might be collected from the December windfall. Jason Kirchner, a department fish habitat biologist, said he has planned seven to 10 projects next summer to improve 12 to 15 miles of streams. He'll use 10 to 200 logs per project....
Blackfeet claim entitlement to 'substantial allocation' of water Leaders of the Blackfeet Tribe told state and federal officials here that their reservation deserves much more water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers than it is getting now. The tribe is in water-rights talks with the Montana Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission to determine how much water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers, along with other drainages, will be allocated to the tribe - and how much will be left over for other users. A public negotiation session was held Dec. 20 in Great Falls. Water from the two rivers, which form in the mountains west of the reservation and flow through it, currently is being diverted to thousands of farmers and residents along the Montana Hi-Line. Tribal officials aren't proposing to stop the distribution. But they argue they deserve more - what one called a ''substantial allocation'' - than they're getting. ''It's our water,'' Tribal Chairman Earl Old Person said. The outcome of the negotiations will affect thousands of residents on the reservation and those living downstream across north-central Montana....
Column - Balancing the needs of winter recreationists Utah boasts the “greatest snow on Earth” and for decades local residents and visitors have ventured into the Tony Grove/Franklin Basin area to ski, snowmobile and simply enjoy the beauty of the snow and mountains that Logan Canyon has to offer. Over time, conflicts between motorized and non-motorized recreationists have developed. Ultimately, a fair distribution of recreation experiences within a limited area means both sides have to give a little. The issues are not about acres. You'll read many articles on who has the most acres available to use and what is fair and what isn't. But that's misleading. Not every acre is equal. Instead, the issues center on quality of snow, family tradition, available terrain, existing parking, proximity to the community of Logan, and the list goes on. The Tony Grove/Franklin Basin has it all; it's the hotspot, the gem for winter recreation. The conflict has a long history. Local newspaper articles describing the issues date back to 1975. The Forest Service responded to these growing conflicts and concerns in the Logan Ranger District in the 2003 Revised Forest Plan and its accompanying environmental impact statement. Still the conflict continued....
Editorial - BLM's landscape system is in danger Three weeks after he took office, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne stopped the worst parts of a proposed overhaul of national parks management policies. Now he needs to do the same with a proposed overhaul of the Bureau of Land Management, announced to employees Nov. 30. The BLM manages three times as much public land as the National Park Service. The resignation of BLM Director Kathleen Clarke last Thursday gives Kempthorne the opportunity to show that the BLM remains committed to its conservation mission. The BLM is the steward of many of the great landscapes of the American West. In particular, the lands and waters of the National Landscape Conservation System have been called "hidden treasures of the American West." They include national monuments, national conservation areas, wilderness areas (and wilderness study areas), historic trails and wild and scenic rivers. These great Western landscapes are the sister system to our national parks, but more rugged. They are highly visited. The proposed reorganization would dump a variety of unrelated programs into the National Landscape Conservation System, thus diluting resources that would be devoted to managing the system, which is already strained for resources. Worse, this latest reorganization plan was hatched in secret with no public review and no congressional oversight. No details have been publicly released, although recommendations were presented to employees Nov. 30 by live satellite broadcast. U.S. Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, and 25 other House members called in a Dec. 20 letter for the BLM to halt the proposed reorganization until Congress examines the implications for the 26 million acre National Landscape Conservation System....
Eagle suit could affect Big Chino pumping A lawsuit that is expected to be filed within the next few weeks will, if successful, make things a bit more challenging for the Prescott area communities to pump the Big Chino aquifer. On Nov. 2 the Arizona-based environmental organization Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its decision to remove all bald eagles from the endangered species list. The CBD contends in its notice that the Arizona born and raised desert nesting bald eagle is a separate and distinct species that, unlike it relatives to the north, has not recovered and requires continued protection...Of the 47 known breeding sites in Arizona, more than one third of them are on the Verde River. Several are located in the upper reaches of the Verde River, along a stretch of riparian habitat that critics contend will be most impacted by plans to pump the Big Chino. The US Geological Survey has determined that approximately 80 percent of the flow of the upper reaches of the Verde River comes from the Big Chino aquifer. Under the protection of the endangered species act, it is against the law to degrade the habitat of a listed species without the consultation and approval of the federal government first....
Endangered Idaho Snail Losing Habitat After clambering down a canyon wall, ducking poison ivy vines and wading chest-deep across a lukewarm stream, Cary Myler spied some flecks that look like pepper sprinkled on a wet rock and announced, "Found some." The pinhead-sized dots are Bruneau hot springsnails. The tiny mollusks that thrive in water as warm as 100 degrees are found nowhere else in the world but here, in the bottom of this southwestern Idaho desert canyon riddled with hot springs 70 miles southeast of Boise. A decade ago, the snails were at the center of a national battle over federal laws designed to protect endangered species. Today, years after the lawsuits were decided and most of the rhetoric retired, they are closer to extinction than ever before. The level of the underground geothermal aquifer that feeds the seeps and springs of hot water where the snails live keeps dropping....
NYT Editorial - Environmental Harmony The long history of Congressional bipartisan cooperation on environmental issues dating back to Richard Nixon has been seriously challenged only twice. The first time was in 1995, when the Gingrich Republicans swept into Washington determined to roll back environmental laws, a threat averted by President Bill Clinton’s veto pen and the exertions of a group of moderate Republicans. The second challenge occurred during the Congress that has now thankfully drawn to a close. The Democrats’ return to power in both houses has raised hopes that some of the old cooperative spirit can be restored and progress made on vital matters like global warming, oil dependency, national parks and threatened wetlands. Environmentalists in the House will certainly have more time to work on positive legislation, since they will no longer have to play defense against Richard Pombo, the California Republican who produced a stream of destructive schemes to open up protected public lands for commercial exploitation, rescind a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling and undermine the Endangered Species Act. Mr. Pombo has been ushered into well-deserved retirement by California voters. On the Senate side, there have been striking changes in leadership. Barbara Boxer, who cares about global warming, replaces James Inhofe, who doesn’t, as head of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Jeff Bingaman, who emphasizes conservation as the appropriate response to oil dependency, replaces Pete Domenici, who tends to favor greater production of America’s dwindling supplies of oil and natural gas, as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Although he’ll need Mr. Domenici’s help, Mr. Bingaman will almost certainly make a major push for new energy legislation, based on proposals that already have broad bipartisan support and would offer a menu of loans, direct subsidies and tax breaks to encourage the production of fuel-efficient cars as well as alternatives to gasoline....
Studies: Lynx habitat may be at risk Some conservationists believe development of a private ski resort on Battle Mountain, as currently designed, will destroy potential lynx habitat and areas the animals might travel through. Colorado Wild conservationists based in Durango and others evaluated the Ginn Co.'s development south of Minturn and submitted their findings to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal agency is conducting an environmental study of the development and what may have to be done to lessen the effect on wildlife. Ginn Co. officials hope to build 1,700 homes, a golf course and 1,100 acres of ski terrain on and around Battle Mountain. Whether lynx roam Battle Mountain is debatable. The Ginn Co. found no traces of lynx in the area, although the Colorado Division of Wildlife has tracked lynx moving across the property....
In California, wild pigs hunted in defense of nature Save the flowers. Save the birds. Kill the pigs. This was Ted Champagne's mission deep in a maze of tule-covered islands and twisting sloughs where he steered his shallow hunting boat and waited for his Catahoula hounds to catch a whiff of wild pigs. The dogs, Butch and Porter, held their bodies taut and sniffed furiously. Champagne kept his 12-gauge shotgun close. He kept his 10-inch-long knife closer, strapped to his side and ready for use in case he found a pig in thick grass and reeds where it could be hard to tell if he was shooting a pig or his dogs. "Once the dogs smell something and jump out of the boat, things move fast," Champagne said. "You want to get in and finish it fast." Champagne is no ordinary hunter in this big marsh, but rather a guardian of endangered flowers and plants. He hunts to protect nature. Champagne volunteers his hunting services for a conservation group, the Solano Land Trust, one of a growing number of California public and nonprofit landowners who kill wild pigs to prevent them from damaging or killing native plants and wildlife....
Why voters rejected Santa Clara County open space measure It is one of the most vexing questions about last month's elections in Silicon Valley. Urban and suburban voters outnumber rural voters by a 15-1 ratio in Santa Clara County. The region has far more registered Democrats than Republicans, and a steady track record of supporting environmental issues. Yet those voters rejected Measure A, an initiative backed by every major local environmental group and many prominent Democratic politicians that would have placed landmark restrictions on development on hillsides and ranch lands. How? A Mercury News computer mapping analysis of all 1,244 precincts in Santa Clara County provides clues. As expected, Measure A won biggest in Palo Alto and Mountain View -- urban areas with lots of liberal voters and environmentalists. It lost biggest in Gilroy and Morgan Hill -- rural areas with more conservative voters, farmers and private-property-rights advocates. But a color-coded county map of the precinct results shows that the race was decided along the Highway 85 corridor....
Column - The Risks of Too Much City The coming year marks a great milestone in the human saga, a development similar in magnitude to the agricultural era and the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, a majority of human beings will be living in vast urban areas, many in megacities and suburban extensions with populations of 10 million or more, according to the United Nations. We have become "Homo Urbanus." Two hundred years ago, the average person on Earth might meet 200 to 300 people in a lifetime. Today a resident of New York City can live and work among 220,000 people within a 10-minute radius of his home or office in midtown Manhattan. Only one city in all of history -- ancient Rome -- boasted a population of more than a million before the 19th century. London became the first modern city with a population over 1 million in 1820. Today 414 cities boast populations of a million or more, and there's no end in sight. As long as the human race had to rely on solar flow, the winds and currents, and animal and human power to sustain life, the population remained relatively low to accommodate nature's carrying capacity: the biosphere's ability to recycle waste and replenish resources. The tipping point was the exhuming of large amounts of stored sun, first in the form of coal deposits, then oil and natural gas. Harnessed by the steam engine and later the internal combustion engine and converted to electricity and distributed across power lines, fossil fuels allowed humanity to create new technologies that dramatically increased food production and manufactured goods and services. The unprecedented increase in productivity led to runaway population growth and the urbanization of the world. No one is really sure whether this turning point in human living arrangements ought to be celebrated, lamented or merely acknowledged. That's because our burgeoning population and urban way of life have been purchased at the expense of vast ecosystems and habitats....
Berry: Corporate economy is enemy For more than 40 years, author and poet Wendell Berry has advocated for local agriculture, good land stewardship and less corporate control of economies. He's walked the talk on his Kentucky farm 50 miles east of Louisville, plowing his fields with horse teams, producing most of his family's food and writing prolifically, without a computer, on a changing American culture. He believes now, more than ever, that conservationists and local land users such as farmers and loggers need to come together. "The split between people who produce from the land, like ranchers, and conservationists has been a tragic loss and a tragic waste of time," Berry said recently from his Kentucky farm. "The two sides have a common enemy they should recognize. The global corporate economy is the enemy." Berry, 72, will be a special speaker at the Quivira Coalition conference at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 18 in Albuquerque. He said he supports the coalition's efforts to bridge the gap between agriculture, land managers and environmentalists....
Federal Subsidies Turn Farms Into Big Business The cornerstone of the multibillion-dollar system of federal farm subsidies is an iconic image of the struggling family farmer: small, powerless against Mother Nature, tied to the land by blood. Without generous government help, farm-state politicians say, thousands of these hardworking families would fail, threatening the nation's abundant food supply...This imagery secures billions annually in what one grower called "empathy payments" for farmers. But it is misleading. Today, most of the nation's food is produced by modern family farms that are large operations using state-of-the-art computers, marketing consultants and technologies that cut labor, time and costs. The owners are frequently college graduates who are as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with a tractor. They cover more acres and produce more crops with fewer workers than ever before. The very policies touted by Congress as a way to save small family farms are instead helping to accelerate their demise, economists, analysts and farmers say. That's because owners of large farms receive the largest share of government subsidies. They often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out....
Cows Engineered to Lack Mad Cow Disease Scientists have genetically engineered a dozen cows to be free from the proteins that cause mad cow disease, a breakthrough that may make the animals immune to the brain-wasting disease. An international team of researchers from the U.S. and Japan reported Sunday that they had "knocked out" the gene responsible for making the proteins, called prions. The disease didn't take hold when brain tissue from two of the genetically engineered cows was exposed to bad prions in the laboratory, they said. Experts said the work may offer another layer of security to people concerned about eating infected beef, although though any food derived from genetically engineered animals must first be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The surviving cows are now being injected directly with mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, to make certain the cattle are immune to it....
It's All Trew: Resourcefulness, greed make for salty brew The transformation from open-range to farming settlements brewed up some strange happenings in the Texas Panhandle. Add a mixture of nationalities, stir in every vocation you can think of then add a generous helping of man's natural greed - and the resulting brew sometimes became explosive. This was especially true in areas where the railroads chose to build. In 1876, the new State of Texas was financially broke but rich in land. The quickest way to turn land into money was by selling it. The fastest way to accomplish such sales was to build a railroad into virgin territory and open it for settlement. To encourage the building of railroads, the state offered to give 16 sections of land, or 10,240 acres, for each mile of new track laid. The railroad companies built the track, took the land, waited for the price to rise then sold it for money to build more track. Occasionally, a choice site on a side-track was created and private railroad investors took over, establishing a town and began selling lots and business opportunities to the public, creating big profits for the stockholders. The town of Salisbury, in what would become Hall County, was one of those choice sites....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Canadian's death could alter wolf debate in U.S. The November death of a man in northern Saskatchewan is thought to be the first documented case of healthy wolves killing a human in North America since 1900, an event that is likely to figure in the debate over wolf management policies in the United States. On Nov. 8, student Joel Carnegie, 22, was walking alone near a remote camp owned by a mining exploration company when it is believed that he was killed by wolves. Though an investigation is continuing, some wolves in the area had been attracted to a garbage dump and appeared to be less fearful of humans. The death in Saskatchewan "will change the semantics of the discussion," said Pam Troxell, coordinator of the Timber Wolf Alliance in Ashland, Wis. "People have already talked to me — 'if it happened up there, will it happen here?'" she said. "I think that it will be another factor in the debate — that wolves can kill people," said Adrian Wydeven, a DNR biologist and Wisconsin's top wolf expert. There have been other wolf attacks, including one in an area near where Carnegie was killed. Paquet said he interviewed a worker who was jogging to work in 2004 from his quarters when he was attacked by a lone wolf. The worker, who was also an artist and painted pictures of wolves, was in excellent physical condition — over 6 feet tall and weighed 220 pounds. He was able to get the wolf in a headlock and escape....
Plans to import water challenged Conservationists are attacking two water importation projects for the North Valleys in Washoe County, saying one will devastate wetlands in Honey Lake Valley and the other would destroy Dry Valley. Working for Sierra Club and the new group called the Great Basin Water Network, Reno hydrologist Tom Myers delivered the critique of the two projects to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management late this week. With the public comment period now closed for an environmental study of both two projects, the BLM is expected to make a decision within a few months on whether to permit a 28-mile long pipeline across federal lands....
Juniper trees being cleared for bighorns A hill of juniper trees on a section of state school land here has been cleared to open up lambing grounds for bighorn sheep along the Little Missouri River. Some area ranchers say it's a waste of time and money. The state Game and Fish Department in Dickinson worked on the project Wednesday to improve the sheep habitat by clearing dozens of junipers south of Medora. Volunteers from the Minnesota-Wisconsin chapter of the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep also helped. Bighorn ewes seek areas with an escape route. They also require a clear area to help them spot predators. Some local ranchers refused access across their land, forcing workers to haul equipment an extra mile. Doug Tescher, of rural Medora, is a rancher who refused access. "I don't think it's going to work," he said. "It would probably be cheaper to get rid of the coyotes."....
Editorial: Bond condition ends no-lose litigation Among economists, there's a concept known as “willingness to pay.” The general idea is that people say they want all sorts of things, but a truer measure of what they value is what they're willing to pay for and how much they're willing to pay. It's in that context that we find intriguing a federal judge's recent order requiring environmental groups to post a $100,000 bond to halt a logging project on a Montana national forest while they appeal a ruling permitting the logging. While we certainly don't think substantial bonds should be required in all cases in which people or groups challenge the actions of government agencies, some situations seem to warrant them. This is one. In disputes such as this one, there are two ways for logging opponents to win. One is on the merits of their case. The other is by playing out the clock. The timber in question involves trees killed by insects. Dead standing trees have value for lumber, but their salvage value diminishes relatively quickly as the wood deteriorates. Those who oppose salvage logging projects can prevail in court if they can show the Forest Service erred in its planning, preparation or administration of the timber sale. But they also can win on the ground if their lawsuits and appeals can drag things out long enough for the timber to lose its value and no one wants to buy it....
Desert land plan nearing completion After 13 years of often contentious debate and sometimes reluctant compromise, a federal land-use plan for the western Mojave Desert is nearing completion. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is preparing its response to 33 written protests to the plan, which would regulate 3.2 million acres of federal land in a 6.4-million-acre planning area in four counties. The sweeping plan outlines a strategy to protect the endangered desert tortoise and Mohave ground squirrel along with nearly 100 other sensitive animal and plant species while streamlining procedures for potential developers to comply with state and federal endangered species acts before moving ahead with projects in the fast-growing region. The proposal's habitat conservation plan has been accepted tentatively by local governmental agencies. It will take about 18 months to win final approval....
Column: Eminent domain by another name Eminent domain occurs when government takes private property. The Constitution requires that government pay "just compensation" to the owner when eminent domain is exercised. What do you call it when government takes away the use of private property, but leaves the title in the name of the property owner? The Constitution makes no provision for this function of government, but government is exercising this function, with increasing regularity and severity. The function is called "comprehensive planning" – in reality, it is social engineering. White County, Georgia, is about to adopt a plan for the "Protection of Mountains and Hillsides," which will severely restrict how private land owners may use their land. If any owner's land happens to slope as much as 25 percent, the owner may not use it at all, unless the lot is at least 1.5 acres. Then, he may disturb no more than 30 percent. If he wishes to build a home, with a driveway, the total "impervious" area may not exceed 20 percent of the land. This resolution in White County will empower government to take away the use of 70 percent of the land of a private owner. The owner must continue to pay taxes on 100 percent of the property, but may use only 30 percent....
ESA reform effort continues Congress appears to be on the road to reforming the federal Endangered Species Act, widely praised by some as an environmental godsend and vilified as overly oppressive by others. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act, HR3824, in September. Earlier this month, U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, introduced S2110, the Collaborative Recovery of the Endangered Species Act, or CRESA. According to Crapo and co-sponsor Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., a key component of S2110 is incentives to private landowners, including tax breaks and conservation banking. Conservation banking encourages voluntary conservation efforts and partnerships. It is a market-driven program used successfully in several states that allows landowners to profit from conservation efforts through use of conservation credits, they said. The proposed tax incentives will reward landowners who help recover species. However, they may mean CRESA will receive a hearing next year before the Senate Finance Committee. Both Crapo and Lincoln are on that committee. Additionally, there are regulatory incentives for landowners who voluntarily contribute to recovery with simpler procedures and through farm bill programs, they said....
Ecological jewel on brink of change Amid the sprawling sameness of Alaska's tundra is an oval pool of fresh water nine times the size of Lake Washington. Teshekpuk Lake supports one of the largest bird-nesting sites in North America. Inupiat hunters camp here among the heather and wild poppies to track wolverines or shoot ducks or net eellike burbot and catch whitefish. Biologists consider Teshekpuk as ecologically significant as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Now the Bush administration is on the brink of opening it to oil drilling, infuriating even the Native Alaskans who benefit most from oil, and many who have pushed to open up ANWR. Yet the debate is virtually unknown throughout the rest of the country....
Oil drilling alters landscape, life for tiny Inupiat village Rising like a missile silo from the hopelessly flat coastal plain was a monument to the best and worst of their future: an oil rig, drilling a well for the ConocoPhillips Alpine Oil Field. "Kind of hard to miss, isn't it?" Ahtuangaruak asked in a near whisper. The hunt for energy is marching across the Arctic, and arguments are raging over how oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) might alter life for Alaska's Natives. Some answers may lie here, in the village of Nuiqsut, population 450, about 100 miles west of ANWR. Despite oil drilling that the industry insists is the least intrusive ever done, this community is already experiencing the mix of progress and decay that comes from having oil in the backyard....
Navajos acting to stop uranium rush in state The price of uranium has tripled in the past two years, bringing with it the possibility of another uranium rush in Arizona, the state with the richest deposits of the ore and, along with New Mexico, the worst legacy associated with its mining. Last year, 700 mining claims were filed and 100 test holes were bored into the wild, remote high desert in northern Arizona. Secondary supplies of uranium on the world market have virtually dried up, and China, India and Japan are clamoring for uranium for their burgeoning domestic nuclear-power industries. Uranium now fetches $36 a pound on the spot market. Four years ago, it was going for just over $7 a pound. But not everyone is happy about the search for new mine sites. Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., stirred to action by the memory of how dangerous uranium mining can be, issued an executive order in November banning negotiations with uranium companies or uranium exploration on the three-state Navajo Nation, which was engulfed by a public health tragedy after the first wave of uranium mining began on its reservation in the 1950s. Dozens of premature deaths of Navajo miners and passed-on genetic defects have been attributed to uranium exposure....
Men face bribery charges A second Farmington businessman faces charges of trying to bribe an employee of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. A federal grand jury in Albuquerque last month indicted Curtis Slade, 43, on charges of offering a bribe to Ralph Mason of the BLM's Farmington field office. Slade is a former business partner of Norman Geoff McMahon, 71, who was indicted earlier last month on four similar counts. Slade and McMahon owned NewCo Aggregate and both were involved in securing mining permits from the BLM. McMahon is accused of giving Mason $7,000 between Dec. 15, 2000, and Feb. 15, 2002 in connection with a BLM permit to mine humate, an organic mineral used in fertilizer and soil supplements. Mason, who resigned on Dec. 3, 2003, was a geologist handling the permit process. The new indictment accuses Slade of giving Mason $4,000 for permits to mine sand and gravel....
Weeding out bad science Global warming, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the danger to humans of nuclear radiation, the environmental harm of DDT, the miraculous benefits supposedly coming from cloning and human stem cell research, the scientific certainty of Darwinian evolution. These are some of the prevailing scientific myths or mistruths Tom Bethell sets straight in his new book, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science." Bethell, a conservative English-born journalist known for his excellent writing and critical thinking, is a longtime editor at The American Spectator magazine. I talked to him by telephone Thursday from his home in Washington, D.C.: Q: If science is supposed to be about seeking the truth and being neutral, how can it be politically correct or incorrect? A: Well, science can get politicized when the facts are uncertain. This has allowed people, in some cases unscrupulous people, to exploit the prestige of science. At first people don't necessarily realize that. They know that water is made of oxygen and hydrogen -- how do you politicize that? But then you come to something like global warming, when you are talking about the average temperature on the surface of the Earth and comparing it with the temperature hundreds of years ago, when they didn't have thermometers, and projecting it 100 years into the future, and the uncertainties are just huge. So it becomes possible for unprincipled people to exploit the prestige of science on some issues. Q: Besides global warming, what other scientific truths are hidden from public view because they are politically incorrect? A: A number of environmental issues, I would say. In fact, I quote an interesting guy called Patrick Moore in the book who was a founder of Greenpeace who kind of rethought his whole position. He reports that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a lot of people on the Left, who had been essentially advocates on behalf of socialist causes, realized it was not going to work out, so they came over to the environmental movement. Such issues as endangered species have also been politicized....
Claiming the mountain Two hundred years ago, explorer Zebulon Pike spied a soaring peak north of his campsite on the Arkansas River, in the heart of what would later become the city of Pueblo. Fascinated by a mountain to the north that “appeared like a small blue cloud,” according to his journal, Pike and three of his men spent several days plowing through waist-deep snow in an attempt to reach the mountain before freezing weather, snow and inadequate clothing turned them back. It was one of those brief moments in history awash with irony, for the explorer whose name would later grace the mountain was about the last person to drift off the plains who didn’t in some way leave his physical mark on the peak....
'John Wayne made real movies. There ain't no queer in cowboy' Jim-Bob Zimmerschied is not a happy cowboy. "They've gone and killed John Wayne with this movie," he says angrily, beer in hand. "I've been doing this job all my life and I ain't never met no gay cowboy. It wouldn't be right." The target of Mr Zimmerschied's outburst is Brokeback Mountain, the Hollywood Western-with-a-twist that opens in London this week and is already being tipped for Oscar success. Flushed by Bud Lite, Mr Zimmerschied, a squat walrus-moustachioed man in a hat and check shirt, was in full flow. "John Wayne and Will Rogers, they made real cowboy movies. They portrayed us like we are. There ain't no queer in cowboy and I don't care for anyone suggesting there is." When he was distracted by one of the two bar-room brawls - both apparently unrelated to the Brokeback Mountain issue - an even drunker young man stepped up to the plate. "If you gave me the choice between watching that movie and being hung by the neck, I'd tie the noose myself," he slurred....
On the Edge of Common Sense: There's renewed interest in ag culture Agriculture, in the broad sense, is enjoying a renewed respect. Enrollment in ag curriculums in universities has been increasing; Vo Ag classes and FFA memberships are thriving in spite of often apathetic or even hostile school administrations. Anti-agricultural industries including extremist "green" groups, animal rights loonies and even well-meaning but ill-informed obstructionists are being relegated to irrelevance. This change in the public's attitude toward modern farming practices including the use of herbicides, antibiotics, dewormers, growth stimulants, genetically modified foods, feedlot practices, hog confinement, poultry production and others, may be related to the condition of our world today....
Canadian's death could alter wolf debate in U.S. The November death of a man in northern Saskatchewan is thought to be the first documented case of healthy wolves killing a human in North America since 1900, an event that is likely to figure in the debate over wolf management policies in the United States. On Nov. 8, student Joel Carnegie, 22, was walking alone near a remote camp owned by a mining exploration company when it is believed that he was killed by wolves. Though an investigation is continuing, some wolves in the area had been attracted to a garbage dump and appeared to be less fearful of humans. The death in Saskatchewan "will change the semantics of the discussion," said Pam Troxell, coordinator of the Timber Wolf Alliance in Ashland, Wis. "People have already talked to me — 'if it happened up there, will it happen here?'" she said. "I think that it will be another factor in the debate — that wolves can kill people," said Adrian Wydeven, a DNR biologist and Wisconsin's top wolf expert. There have been other wolf attacks, including one in an area near where Carnegie was killed. Paquet said he interviewed a worker who was jogging to work in 2004 from his quarters when he was attacked by a lone wolf. The worker, who was also an artist and painted pictures of wolves, was in excellent physical condition — over 6 feet tall and weighed 220 pounds. He was able to get the wolf in a headlock and escape....
Plans to import water challenged Conservationists are attacking two water importation projects for the North Valleys in Washoe County, saying one will devastate wetlands in Honey Lake Valley and the other would destroy Dry Valley. Working for Sierra Club and the new group called the Great Basin Water Network, Reno hydrologist Tom Myers delivered the critique of the two projects to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management late this week. With the public comment period now closed for an environmental study of both two projects, the BLM is expected to make a decision within a few months on whether to permit a 28-mile long pipeline across federal lands....
Juniper trees being cleared for bighorns A hill of juniper trees on a section of state school land here has been cleared to open up lambing grounds for bighorn sheep along the Little Missouri River. Some area ranchers say it's a waste of time and money. The state Game and Fish Department in Dickinson worked on the project Wednesday to improve the sheep habitat by clearing dozens of junipers south of Medora. Volunteers from the Minnesota-Wisconsin chapter of the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep also helped. Bighorn ewes seek areas with an escape route. They also require a clear area to help them spot predators. Some local ranchers refused access across their land, forcing workers to haul equipment an extra mile. Doug Tescher, of rural Medora, is a rancher who refused access. "I don't think it's going to work," he said. "It would probably be cheaper to get rid of the coyotes."....
Editorial: Bond condition ends no-lose litigation Among economists, there's a concept known as “willingness to pay.” The general idea is that people say they want all sorts of things, but a truer measure of what they value is what they're willing to pay for and how much they're willing to pay. It's in that context that we find intriguing a federal judge's recent order requiring environmental groups to post a $100,000 bond to halt a logging project on a Montana national forest while they appeal a ruling permitting the logging. While we certainly don't think substantial bonds should be required in all cases in which people or groups challenge the actions of government agencies, some situations seem to warrant them. This is one. In disputes such as this one, there are two ways for logging opponents to win. One is on the merits of their case. The other is by playing out the clock. The timber in question involves trees killed by insects. Dead standing trees have value for lumber, but their salvage value diminishes relatively quickly as the wood deteriorates. Those who oppose salvage logging projects can prevail in court if they can show the Forest Service erred in its planning, preparation or administration of the timber sale. But they also can win on the ground if their lawsuits and appeals can drag things out long enough for the timber to lose its value and no one wants to buy it....
Desert land plan nearing completion After 13 years of often contentious debate and sometimes reluctant compromise, a federal land-use plan for the western Mojave Desert is nearing completion. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is preparing its response to 33 written protests to the plan, which would regulate 3.2 million acres of federal land in a 6.4-million-acre planning area in four counties. The sweeping plan outlines a strategy to protect the endangered desert tortoise and Mohave ground squirrel along with nearly 100 other sensitive animal and plant species while streamlining procedures for potential developers to comply with state and federal endangered species acts before moving ahead with projects in the fast-growing region. The proposal's habitat conservation plan has been accepted tentatively by local governmental agencies. It will take about 18 months to win final approval....
Column: Eminent domain by another name Eminent domain occurs when government takes private property. The Constitution requires that government pay "just compensation" to the owner when eminent domain is exercised. What do you call it when government takes away the use of private property, but leaves the title in the name of the property owner? The Constitution makes no provision for this function of government, but government is exercising this function, with increasing regularity and severity. The function is called "comprehensive planning" – in reality, it is social engineering. White County, Georgia, is about to adopt a plan for the "Protection of Mountains and Hillsides," which will severely restrict how private land owners may use their land. If any owner's land happens to slope as much as 25 percent, the owner may not use it at all, unless the lot is at least 1.5 acres. Then, he may disturb no more than 30 percent. If he wishes to build a home, with a driveway, the total "impervious" area may not exceed 20 percent of the land. This resolution in White County will empower government to take away the use of 70 percent of the land of a private owner. The owner must continue to pay taxes on 100 percent of the property, but may use only 30 percent....
ESA reform effort continues Congress appears to be on the road to reforming the federal Endangered Species Act, widely praised by some as an environmental godsend and vilified as overly oppressive by others. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act, HR3824, in September. Earlier this month, U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, introduced S2110, the Collaborative Recovery of the Endangered Species Act, or CRESA. According to Crapo and co-sponsor Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., a key component of S2110 is incentives to private landowners, including tax breaks and conservation banking. Conservation banking encourages voluntary conservation efforts and partnerships. It is a market-driven program used successfully in several states that allows landowners to profit from conservation efforts through use of conservation credits, they said. The proposed tax incentives will reward landowners who help recover species. However, they may mean CRESA will receive a hearing next year before the Senate Finance Committee. Both Crapo and Lincoln are on that committee. Additionally, there are regulatory incentives for landowners who voluntarily contribute to recovery with simpler procedures and through farm bill programs, they said....
Ecological jewel on brink of change Amid the sprawling sameness of Alaska's tundra is an oval pool of fresh water nine times the size of Lake Washington. Teshekpuk Lake supports one of the largest bird-nesting sites in North America. Inupiat hunters camp here among the heather and wild poppies to track wolverines or shoot ducks or net eellike burbot and catch whitefish. Biologists consider Teshekpuk as ecologically significant as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Now the Bush administration is on the brink of opening it to oil drilling, infuriating even the Native Alaskans who benefit most from oil, and many who have pushed to open up ANWR. Yet the debate is virtually unknown throughout the rest of the country....
Oil drilling alters landscape, life for tiny Inupiat village Rising like a missile silo from the hopelessly flat coastal plain was a monument to the best and worst of their future: an oil rig, drilling a well for the ConocoPhillips Alpine Oil Field. "Kind of hard to miss, isn't it?" Ahtuangaruak asked in a near whisper. The hunt for energy is marching across the Arctic, and arguments are raging over how oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) might alter life for Alaska's Natives. Some answers may lie here, in the village of Nuiqsut, population 450, about 100 miles west of ANWR. Despite oil drilling that the industry insists is the least intrusive ever done, this community is already experiencing the mix of progress and decay that comes from having oil in the backyard....
Navajos acting to stop uranium rush in state The price of uranium has tripled in the past two years, bringing with it the possibility of another uranium rush in Arizona, the state with the richest deposits of the ore and, along with New Mexico, the worst legacy associated with its mining. Last year, 700 mining claims were filed and 100 test holes were bored into the wild, remote high desert in northern Arizona. Secondary supplies of uranium on the world market have virtually dried up, and China, India and Japan are clamoring for uranium for their burgeoning domestic nuclear-power industries. Uranium now fetches $36 a pound on the spot market. Four years ago, it was going for just over $7 a pound. But not everyone is happy about the search for new mine sites. Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., stirred to action by the memory of how dangerous uranium mining can be, issued an executive order in November banning negotiations with uranium companies or uranium exploration on the three-state Navajo Nation, which was engulfed by a public health tragedy after the first wave of uranium mining began on its reservation in the 1950s. Dozens of premature deaths of Navajo miners and passed-on genetic defects have been attributed to uranium exposure....
Men face bribery charges A second Farmington businessman faces charges of trying to bribe an employee of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. A federal grand jury in Albuquerque last month indicted Curtis Slade, 43, on charges of offering a bribe to Ralph Mason of the BLM's Farmington field office. Slade is a former business partner of Norman Geoff McMahon, 71, who was indicted earlier last month on four similar counts. Slade and McMahon owned NewCo Aggregate and both were involved in securing mining permits from the BLM. McMahon is accused of giving Mason $7,000 between Dec. 15, 2000, and Feb. 15, 2002 in connection with a BLM permit to mine humate, an organic mineral used in fertilizer and soil supplements. Mason, who resigned on Dec. 3, 2003, was a geologist handling the permit process. The new indictment accuses Slade of giving Mason $4,000 for permits to mine sand and gravel....
Weeding out bad science Global warming, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the danger to humans of nuclear radiation, the environmental harm of DDT, the miraculous benefits supposedly coming from cloning and human stem cell research, the scientific certainty of Darwinian evolution. These are some of the prevailing scientific myths or mistruths Tom Bethell sets straight in his new book, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science." Bethell, a conservative English-born journalist known for his excellent writing and critical thinking, is a longtime editor at The American Spectator magazine. I talked to him by telephone Thursday from his home in Washington, D.C.: Q: If science is supposed to be about seeking the truth and being neutral, how can it be politically correct or incorrect? A: Well, science can get politicized when the facts are uncertain. This has allowed people, in some cases unscrupulous people, to exploit the prestige of science. At first people don't necessarily realize that. They know that water is made of oxygen and hydrogen -- how do you politicize that? But then you come to something like global warming, when you are talking about the average temperature on the surface of the Earth and comparing it with the temperature hundreds of years ago, when they didn't have thermometers, and projecting it 100 years into the future, and the uncertainties are just huge. So it becomes possible for unprincipled people to exploit the prestige of science on some issues. Q: Besides global warming, what other scientific truths are hidden from public view because they are politically incorrect? A: A number of environmental issues, I would say. In fact, I quote an interesting guy called Patrick Moore in the book who was a founder of Greenpeace who kind of rethought his whole position. He reports that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a lot of people on the Left, who had been essentially advocates on behalf of socialist causes, realized it was not going to work out, so they came over to the environmental movement. Such issues as endangered species have also been politicized....
Claiming the mountain Two hundred years ago, explorer Zebulon Pike spied a soaring peak north of his campsite on the Arkansas River, in the heart of what would later become the city of Pueblo. Fascinated by a mountain to the north that “appeared like a small blue cloud,” according to his journal, Pike and three of his men spent several days plowing through waist-deep snow in an attempt to reach the mountain before freezing weather, snow and inadequate clothing turned them back. It was one of those brief moments in history awash with irony, for the explorer whose name would later grace the mountain was about the last person to drift off the plains who didn’t in some way leave his physical mark on the peak....
'John Wayne made real movies. There ain't no queer in cowboy' Jim-Bob Zimmerschied is not a happy cowboy. "They've gone and killed John Wayne with this movie," he says angrily, beer in hand. "I've been doing this job all my life and I ain't never met no gay cowboy. It wouldn't be right." The target of Mr Zimmerschied's outburst is Brokeback Mountain, the Hollywood Western-with-a-twist that opens in London this week and is already being tipped for Oscar success. Flushed by Bud Lite, Mr Zimmerschied, a squat walrus-moustachioed man in a hat and check shirt, was in full flow. "John Wayne and Will Rogers, they made real cowboy movies. They portrayed us like we are. There ain't no queer in cowboy and I don't care for anyone suggesting there is." When he was distracted by one of the two bar-room brawls - both apparently unrelated to the Brokeback Mountain issue - an even drunker young man stepped up to the plate. "If you gave me the choice between watching that movie and being hung by the neck, I'd tie the noose myself," he slurred....
On the Edge of Common Sense: There's renewed interest in ag culture Agriculture, in the broad sense, is enjoying a renewed respect. Enrollment in ag curriculums in universities has been increasing; Vo Ag classes and FFA memberships are thriving in spite of often apathetic or even hostile school administrations. Anti-agricultural industries including extremist "green" groups, animal rights loonies and even well-meaning but ill-informed obstructionists are being relegated to irrelevance. This change in the public's attitude toward modern farming practices including the use of herbicides, antibiotics, dewormers, growth stimulants, genetically modified foods, feedlot practices, hog confinement, poultry production and others, may be related to the condition of our world today....
EMAIL: NO RAIN, NO HAY
From :
Sent : Sunday, January 1, 2006 2:27 PM
To : flankcinch@hotmail.com
Subject : no rain, no hay PLEASE READ ASAP< WE NEED HELP
We have a small farm in N. Arkansas, and are spending HUGE amounts of $ on grain feed for our cattle . My better half works 150 mi. away and I care for the livestock and such myself while he's away, I also have a disabled child that I must travel 100 mi. to his specialist often. We cannot find any hay, much less afford to pay 30+ per bale and delivery fees, which would have to come from 100+ mi. away.
Please help me find some kind of program for drought relief, I live in Stone CO, AR.
Sincerely,
Elli
pauleykelli@aol.com,
From :
Sent : Sunday, January 1, 2006 2:27 PM
To : flankcinch@hotmail.com
Subject : no rain, no hay PLEASE READ ASAP< WE NEED HELP
We have a small farm in N. Arkansas, and are spending HUGE amounts of $ on grain feed for our cattle . My better half works 150 mi. away and I care for the livestock and such myself while he's away, I also have a disabled child that I must travel 100 mi. to his specialist often. We cannot find any hay, much less afford to pay 30+ per bale and delivery fees, which would have to come from 100+ mi. away.
Please help me find some kind of program for drought relief, I live in Stone CO, AR.
Sincerely,
Elli
pauleykelli@aol.com,
Sunday, January 01, 2006
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
Been Throw'd
by Larry Gabriel
If you got "throw'd" by anything in 2005, the start of a new year is a perfect time to try again.
The fact that an effort failed last year, doesn't mean it will fail this year. We may have to change our grip, but it never means we are certain to be thrown on the next try.
The best cowboys get thrown. My Dad always said he was thrown only four times in this life and twice by the same horse. That horse never did get gentle, but he was always a great horse.
In this part of the country, it is no big deal to be thrown, but it is a "big deal" to give up. That's why rodeo cowboys get back on after being thrown, sometimes with serious injuries.
Jeff Willert, the 23-year-old saddle bronc world champion, from Belvidere, SD, might not be a household name yet, but he is a prime example of the cowboy spirit that never gives up.
In 2003, Jeff was thrown by a horse that kicked him in the head and left him blind in one eye. That event may have put a damper on 2003, but it did not stop him from becoming bronc riding world champion in 2005.
Many rodeo cowboys continue to ride after serious injuries just to finish the competition. That might seem foolish to some people who don't understand the importance of trying.
Riders may "know" in their heads they can't ride that bad bull or bad horse, but in their hearts they believe a greater importance lies in giving it their best shot.
Rodeo is a unique sport. The competitors don't act like normal competitors. They work and play together, and they help each other during competition.
A rodeo cowboy competes with himself. His challenge is to improve himself. The same animal might have thrown him on previous rides, but he believes he can do it this time and must try.
One thing is certain; people who don't have that kind of belief system will never ride the eliminator bronc. A champion will get that done.
When a champion does well he says, "Ah, I just got lucky." He never brags.
Life gives everyone a throw of one kind or another. The important thing is getting back into the fray. The real contest is within the person, not on the animal.
Jeffery Willert is a real South Dakota hero.
Conquest does not make a hero. A hero is someone we can emulate when we have been throw'd and feel like giving up.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
Resolving to be inspired
By Julie Carter
It is that time of year again. People are talking about resolutions and a better year ahead.
I haven't ever figured out why the change of a particular month, day or year is supposed to magically motivate you to be a better person and make life run smoother.
If that is the case, then I would pick June 30 or Sept. 1. The weather is much better for parties, barbecues and other celebratory events.
I have learned that my resolve for anything is never based on the calendar but more often grounded in something that inspires me.
Inspiration moves body, mind, spirit and soul but resolve often gets no further than making a promise soon to be forgotten.
So on Jan. 1 when you've risen early, jogged a mile, even if it's in segments between the coffee pot and the easy chair, sworn that as soon as you catch your breath you'll eat something healthy and begin your journey to a better 2006, let me give you something to inspire you. It did me.
This week I met a couple that didn't have any idea they were inspiring anyone. They are just who they are, a cowboy and a lady. What you see is what you get, on all levels.
He shoes horses for a living. Now before you shrug and say, "Okay, so what?" let me say, he will soon be 72 years old.
Life as a "farrier" is hard back-breaking work and I know men who would like to give that job up a good 20 years sooner than this cowboy has.
If you want a "what it is like" simulation exercise for that job, bend over and lift up one end of your biggest sofa and peer underneath it for ten minutes without letting it down.
Then for a little more realism, have a child jump up and down on it while you try to hold it up. Do this at all four corners without a lengthy pause in between and you'll get the picture. Now do that 10-15 times a day and see how you feel at sundown.
This obviously tough cowboy said he has cut back some from his prior years of long days and hundreds of miles. He now tries to only do five horses a day.
Folks, that's inspiration to be able to "cut back" to more physical work than many of us do in a week.
He used to do most of his work at the racetracks. He no longer does that but he does still shoe racehorses for owners at the training farms.
So not only is he still shoeing horses, he is shoeing horses that are hot blooded, eating hot feed and with temperaments that are not always complimentary to the equine species.
This isn't the same as putting iron on the bottom of ole Dobbin's hooves.
In the interest of manners, I didn't ask the age of his wife, but this gal is one of those country ladies that is timelessly classy. I watched with envy as she waltzed around the party in double criss-cross strapped three-inch stilettos like runway modeling was her other profession.
To offset that visual, I marveled at her delight in receiving a new shotgun for Christmas so she could shoot rattlesnakes at the ranch.
I'm inspired. I know if I work a little harder at life I can be like that when I grow up.
Now I'm off to lift the sofa (or maybe just the rug next to it) and clean my shotgun.
Happy New Year!
Copyright Julie Carter 2006
Been Throw'd
by Larry Gabriel
If you got "throw'd" by anything in 2005, the start of a new year is a perfect time to try again.
The fact that an effort failed last year, doesn't mean it will fail this year. We may have to change our grip, but it never means we are certain to be thrown on the next try.
The best cowboys get thrown. My Dad always said he was thrown only four times in this life and twice by the same horse. That horse never did get gentle, but he was always a great horse.
In this part of the country, it is no big deal to be thrown, but it is a "big deal" to give up. That's why rodeo cowboys get back on after being thrown, sometimes with serious injuries.
Jeff Willert, the 23-year-old saddle bronc world champion, from Belvidere, SD, might not be a household name yet, but he is a prime example of the cowboy spirit that never gives up.
In 2003, Jeff was thrown by a horse that kicked him in the head and left him blind in one eye. That event may have put a damper on 2003, but it did not stop him from becoming bronc riding world champion in 2005.
Many rodeo cowboys continue to ride after serious injuries just to finish the competition. That might seem foolish to some people who don't understand the importance of trying.
Riders may "know" in their heads they can't ride that bad bull or bad horse, but in their hearts they believe a greater importance lies in giving it their best shot.
Rodeo is a unique sport. The competitors don't act like normal competitors. They work and play together, and they help each other during competition.
A rodeo cowboy competes with himself. His challenge is to improve himself. The same animal might have thrown him on previous rides, but he believes he can do it this time and must try.
One thing is certain; people who don't have that kind of belief system will never ride the eliminator bronc. A champion will get that done.
When a champion does well he says, "Ah, I just got lucky." He never brags.
Life gives everyone a throw of one kind or another. The important thing is getting back into the fray. The real contest is within the person, not on the animal.
Jeffery Willert is a real South Dakota hero.
Conquest does not make a hero. A hero is someone we can emulate when we have been throw'd and feel like giving up.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
Resolving to be inspired
By Julie Carter
It is that time of year again. People are talking about resolutions and a better year ahead.
I haven't ever figured out why the change of a particular month, day or year is supposed to magically motivate you to be a better person and make life run smoother.
If that is the case, then I would pick June 30 or Sept. 1. The weather is much better for parties, barbecues and other celebratory events.
I have learned that my resolve for anything is never based on the calendar but more often grounded in something that inspires me.
Inspiration moves body, mind, spirit and soul but resolve often gets no further than making a promise soon to be forgotten.
So on Jan. 1 when you've risen early, jogged a mile, even if it's in segments between the coffee pot and the easy chair, sworn that as soon as you catch your breath you'll eat something healthy and begin your journey to a better 2006, let me give you something to inspire you. It did me.
This week I met a couple that didn't have any idea they were inspiring anyone. They are just who they are, a cowboy and a lady. What you see is what you get, on all levels.
He shoes horses for a living. Now before you shrug and say, "Okay, so what?" let me say, he will soon be 72 years old.
Life as a "farrier" is hard back-breaking work and I know men who would like to give that job up a good 20 years sooner than this cowboy has.
If you want a "what it is like" simulation exercise for that job, bend over and lift up one end of your biggest sofa and peer underneath it for ten minutes without letting it down.
Then for a little more realism, have a child jump up and down on it while you try to hold it up. Do this at all four corners without a lengthy pause in between and you'll get the picture. Now do that 10-15 times a day and see how you feel at sundown.
This obviously tough cowboy said he has cut back some from his prior years of long days and hundreds of miles. He now tries to only do five horses a day.
Folks, that's inspiration to be able to "cut back" to more physical work than many of us do in a week.
He used to do most of his work at the racetracks. He no longer does that but he does still shoe racehorses for owners at the training farms.
So not only is he still shoeing horses, he is shoeing horses that are hot blooded, eating hot feed and with temperaments that are not always complimentary to the equine species.
This isn't the same as putting iron on the bottom of ole Dobbin's hooves.
In the interest of manners, I didn't ask the age of his wife, but this gal is one of those country ladies that is timelessly classy. I watched with envy as she waltzed around the party in double criss-cross strapped three-inch stilettos like runway modeling was her other profession.
To offset that visual, I marveled at her delight in receiving a new shotgun for Christmas so she could shoot rattlesnakes at the ranch.
I'm inspired. I know if I work a little harder at life I can be like that when I grow up.
Now I'm off to lift the sofa (or maybe just the rug next to it) and clean my shotgun.
Happy New Year!
Copyright Julie Carter 2006
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Is Tennessee Melting?
Anyone reading the latest Associated Press article in the Tennessean titled "State follows world with warmer temperatures" might be led to believe that our beautiful state is turning into one giant oven. The article, which claims that Tennessee cities are "hotter than normal," is based on information and statistics provided by a political organization based in Washington, D.C. So, yes, I was a bit skeptical when reading the findings. For starters, we must acknowledge that the organization providing the information, Clear the Air, has a mission. And that mission is to convince the masses that global warming does exist and that it is probably caused by people driving around in SUVs. The conclusion is formed by the organization before the stats are ever gathered. All that is left for Clear the Air to do is to find figures and use them in a way that makes their desired conclusion a statistical reality. Certainly, the stats used in the "study" are by no means falsified. They are factually correct. In fact, I used the same exact source for my research. But as the old saying goes: Statistics don't lie, statisticians do. And as far as this study goes, the statisticians are trying to pull the wool over our eyes. The first thing I wondered is why the study only used figures from between 1961-1990 when figures were available from as early as 1871 and as late as 2004. If a point is to provide proof for long-term global heating patterns, it makes sense to include as much data as possible. It took only a little research to figure out why the study reduced their findings to a 40-year period. Though the organization studied many cities, I reduced my research to the city of Nashville. According to the study, the average 11-month temperature for Nashville in 2005 was 72.9 degrees, compared to a 71.5 average in the fairly limited study period of 1961-1990. This counts for a 1.4 degree jump in 2005, providing evidence that Nashville, according to the study, is indeed getting hotter. But why didn't Clear the Air include the 1950s in its study, or any other earlier decade for that matter? Simply put, the 1950s was just too hot of a decade and would have increased the average temperature of their study period, thus making the results proving drastic warming far less staggering. In fact, between 1952-1956 the average high temperature in Nashville was 73.9 degrees, making that 5-year span in the fifties 1 degree hotter than 2005 and 2.4 degrees hotter than the 1961-1990 period, all before "global warming" really started to kick in. Since then, no five-year period in Nashville has come even close to being as hot as that period some fifty years ago....
Senate Dems Put Enviros' Dollars Before National Security
When deep pocket environmental lobbyists say “jump,” politicians beholden to them respond “how high.” Nowhere was this more evident than in the Senate’s recent inability to pass a necessary military funding bill as long as it contained a provision that would have allowed oil and gas production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Access to oil is both an economic and a national security issue. Oil, the dominant source of energy for transportation, is also a feedstock for plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, lubricants and construction materials. And, as pointed out by Senator Ted Stevens during the debate over the 2005 military appropriations bill, the largest single user of petroleum products is the U.S. military. Thus, access to oil is critical to our military if it is to continue to carry out its mission of furthering America’s strategic interests at home and abroad. However, America can’t produce all the oil it needs domestically. This means that we rely on oil from countries with interests often hostile to our own. Allowing oil and gas production in ANWR won’t end this reliance but it would reduce it and thus make our country less vulnerable to either petro-blackmail or temporary disruptions in supply. Accordingly, the Senate’s action was stunning and irresponsible. When asked to choose between the irrational demands of environmental lobbyists and the well-being of the nation and the safety of its men and women in uniform, a minority in the Senate, the vast majority of them Democrats, chose the former....
Drilling for Jobs
When will greenies get it? The Editioral Board of USA Today does. George Will does. ANWR is no longer a tub-thumping environmental issue of a few years ago, or an oil supply issue as the industry insists. ANWR is an important jobs issue and natural gas issue. Despite all the recent good news about economic growth, the American Chemistry Council estimates roughly 100,000 job losses since 2000 and $50 billion in business due to this problem. The plastics industry also lost 150,000 jobs and $14.6 billion of economic activity between 2000 and 2002. The American fertilizer industry will have virtually vanished not to ever return by the end of the year. These job losses are not due to the over-hyped issue of outsourcing because of labor or healthcare expenses. The crisis involves the price of natural gas’s meteoric rise and our decreasing domestic supply of this vital energy source....
U.S. Animal-Rights Leader Addresses “Nonviolence” Conference, Yet Advocates Violence Toward People
Today the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit American NGO, criticized the International Nonviolence Conference for including U.S. animal-rights leader Ingrid Newkirk among its honored speakers on December 29 in Bethlehem. Newkirk has spent much of her career advocating violence against people who use animals for food, clothing, entertainment, and vital medical research. “Newkirk has always advocated violence against people with whom she disagrees,” said Center for Consumer Freedom Director of Research David Martosko. “Her appearance at a conference promoting nonviolent solutions threatens to cheapen the entire event.” Today the Center for Consumer Freedom sent organizers of the International Nonviolence Conference a list of things they should have known about Newkirk before inviting her to participate, including....
The New York Times Keeps Tabs On PETA
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) supporters sitting down to their Sunday New York Times this weekend would be forgiven for doing a double-take: The old Gray Lady aired some of PETA's dirty laundry. In a prominent "Week In Review" story, the Times explored PETA's complaints about FBI surveillance, which were recently publicized by the American Civil Liberties Union. While PETA calls it "harassment and very disturbing," the Center for Consumer Freedom told the Times that, given PETA's checkered history, it's completely justified. "These are certainly dangerous people," our Director of Research told the Times. "I'm not saying PETA people are bomb throwers, but they certainly encourage people who do." Other commentators are also dismissing PETA's misleading claim of FBI-instigated victimhood. The Weekly Standard reminds its readers this week that the animal rights movement "includes some violent groups and some apologists for terror," and singles out "Jerry Vlasak, a California physician and spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front -- a group funded by PETA in the past." Two months ago, Vlasak told a U.S. Senate committee that the murder of medical researchers is a "morally justifiable" animal-rights tactic, insisting that "these are not innocent lives."....
Is Tennessee Melting?
Anyone reading the latest Associated Press article in the Tennessean titled "State follows world with warmer temperatures" might be led to believe that our beautiful state is turning into one giant oven. The article, which claims that Tennessee cities are "hotter than normal," is based on information and statistics provided by a political organization based in Washington, D.C. So, yes, I was a bit skeptical when reading the findings. For starters, we must acknowledge that the organization providing the information, Clear the Air, has a mission. And that mission is to convince the masses that global warming does exist and that it is probably caused by people driving around in SUVs. The conclusion is formed by the organization before the stats are ever gathered. All that is left for Clear the Air to do is to find figures and use them in a way that makes their desired conclusion a statistical reality. Certainly, the stats used in the "study" are by no means falsified. They are factually correct. In fact, I used the same exact source for my research. But as the old saying goes: Statistics don't lie, statisticians do. And as far as this study goes, the statisticians are trying to pull the wool over our eyes. The first thing I wondered is why the study only used figures from between 1961-1990 when figures were available from as early as 1871 and as late as 2004. If a point is to provide proof for long-term global heating patterns, it makes sense to include as much data as possible. It took only a little research to figure out why the study reduced their findings to a 40-year period. Though the organization studied many cities, I reduced my research to the city of Nashville. According to the study, the average 11-month temperature for Nashville in 2005 was 72.9 degrees, compared to a 71.5 average in the fairly limited study period of 1961-1990. This counts for a 1.4 degree jump in 2005, providing evidence that Nashville, according to the study, is indeed getting hotter. But why didn't Clear the Air include the 1950s in its study, or any other earlier decade for that matter? Simply put, the 1950s was just too hot of a decade and would have increased the average temperature of their study period, thus making the results proving drastic warming far less staggering. In fact, between 1952-1956 the average high temperature in Nashville was 73.9 degrees, making that 5-year span in the fifties 1 degree hotter than 2005 and 2.4 degrees hotter than the 1961-1990 period, all before "global warming" really started to kick in. Since then, no five-year period in Nashville has come even close to being as hot as that period some fifty years ago....
Senate Dems Put Enviros' Dollars Before National Security
When deep pocket environmental lobbyists say “jump,” politicians beholden to them respond “how high.” Nowhere was this more evident than in the Senate’s recent inability to pass a necessary military funding bill as long as it contained a provision that would have allowed oil and gas production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Access to oil is both an economic and a national security issue. Oil, the dominant source of energy for transportation, is also a feedstock for plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, lubricants and construction materials. And, as pointed out by Senator Ted Stevens during the debate over the 2005 military appropriations bill, the largest single user of petroleum products is the U.S. military. Thus, access to oil is critical to our military if it is to continue to carry out its mission of furthering America’s strategic interests at home and abroad. However, America can’t produce all the oil it needs domestically. This means that we rely on oil from countries with interests often hostile to our own. Allowing oil and gas production in ANWR won’t end this reliance but it would reduce it and thus make our country less vulnerable to either petro-blackmail or temporary disruptions in supply. Accordingly, the Senate’s action was stunning and irresponsible. When asked to choose between the irrational demands of environmental lobbyists and the well-being of the nation and the safety of its men and women in uniform, a minority in the Senate, the vast majority of them Democrats, chose the former....
Drilling for Jobs
When will greenies get it? The Editioral Board of USA Today does. George Will does. ANWR is no longer a tub-thumping environmental issue of a few years ago, or an oil supply issue as the industry insists. ANWR is an important jobs issue and natural gas issue. Despite all the recent good news about economic growth, the American Chemistry Council estimates roughly 100,000 job losses since 2000 and $50 billion in business due to this problem. The plastics industry also lost 150,000 jobs and $14.6 billion of economic activity between 2000 and 2002. The American fertilizer industry will have virtually vanished not to ever return by the end of the year. These job losses are not due to the over-hyped issue of outsourcing because of labor or healthcare expenses. The crisis involves the price of natural gas’s meteoric rise and our decreasing domestic supply of this vital energy source....
U.S. Animal-Rights Leader Addresses “Nonviolence” Conference, Yet Advocates Violence Toward People
Today the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit American NGO, criticized the International Nonviolence Conference for including U.S. animal-rights leader Ingrid Newkirk among its honored speakers on December 29 in Bethlehem. Newkirk has spent much of her career advocating violence against people who use animals for food, clothing, entertainment, and vital medical research. “Newkirk has always advocated violence against people with whom she disagrees,” said Center for Consumer Freedom Director of Research David Martosko. “Her appearance at a conference promoting nonviolent solutions threatens to cheapen the entire event.” Today the Center for Consumer Freedom sent organizers of the International Nonviolence Conference a list of things they should have known about Newkirk before inviting her to participate, including....
The New York Times Keeps Tabs On PETA
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) supporters sitting down to their Sunday New York Times this weekend would be forgiven for doing a double-take: The old Gray Lady aired some of PETA's dirty laundry. In a prominent "Week In Review" story, the Times explored PETA's complaints about FBI surveillance, which were recently publicized by the American Civil Liberties Union. While PETA calls it "harassment and very disturbing," the Center for Consumer Freedom told the Times that, given PETA's checkered history, it's completely justified. "These are certainly dangerous people," our Director of Research told the Times. "I'm not saying PETA people are bomb throwers, but they certainly encourage people who do." Other commentators are also dismissing PETA's misleading claim of FBI-instigated victimhood. The Weekly Standard reminds its readers this week that the animal rights movement "includes some violent groups and some apologists for terror," and singles out "Jerry Vlasak, a California physician and spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front -- a group funded by PETA in the past." Two months ago, Vlasak told a U.S. Senate committee that the murder of medical researchers is a "morally justifiable" animal-rights tactic, insisting that "these are not innocent lives."....
FLE
Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program
A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight, according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. The concerns appear to have played a part in the temporary suspension of the secret program. The concerns prompted two of President Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general - to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the officials said. The unusual meeting was prompted because Mr. Ashcroft's top deputy, James B. Comey, who was acting as attorney general in his absence, had indicated he was unwilling to give his approval to certifying central aspects of the program, as required under the White House procedures set up to oversee it. With Mr. Comey unwilling to sign off on the program, the White House went to Mr. Ashcroft - who had been in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital with pancreatitis and was housed under unusually tight security - because "they needed him for certification," according to an official briefed on the episode. The official, like others who discussed the issue, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the program. Mr. Comey declined to comment, and Mr. Gonzales could not be reached. Accounts differed as to exactly what was said at the hospital meeting between Mr. Ashcroft and the White House advisers. But some officials said that Mr. Ashcroft, like his deputy, appeared reluctant to give Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales his authorization to continue with aspects of the program in light of concerns among some senior government officials about whether the proper oversight was in place at the security agency and whether the president had the legal and constitutional authority to conduct such an operation. It is unclear whether the White House ultimately persuaded Mr. Ashcroft to give his approval to the program after the meeting or moved ahead without it....
NSA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance
Information captured by the National Security Agency's secret eavesdropping on communications between the United States and overseas has been passed on to other government agencies, which cross-check the information with tips and information collected in other databases, current and former administration officials said. The NSA has turned such information over to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and to other government entities, said three current and former senior administration officials, although it could not be determined which agencies received what types of information. Information from intercepts -- which typically includes records of telephone or e-mail communications -- would be made available by request to agencies that are allowed to have it, including the FBI, DIA, CIA and Department of Homeland Security, one former official said. At least one of those organizations, the DIA, has used NSA information as the basis for carrying out surveillance of people in the country suspected of posing a threat, according to two sources. A DIA spokesman said the agency does not conduct such domestic surveillance but would not comment further. Spokesmen for the FBI, the CIA and the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, declined to comment on the use of NSA data. Since the revelation last month that President Bush had authorized the NSA to intercept communications inside the United States, public concern has focused primarily on the legality of the NSA eavesdropping. Less attention has been paid to, and little is known about, how the NSA's information may have been used by other government agencies to investigate American citizens or to cross-check with other databases. In the 1960s and 1970s, the military used NSA intercepts to maintain files on U.S. peace activists, revelations of which prompted Congress to restrict the NSA from intercepting communications of Americans....
Justice Dept. Investigating Leak of NSA Wiretapping
The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into recent disclosures about a controversial domestic eavesdropping program that was secretly authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said yesterday. Federal prosecutors will focus their examination on who may have unlawfully disclosed classified information about the program to the New York Times, which reported two weeks ago that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens and residents without court-approved warrants, officials said. The Justice Department's decision to reveal the opening of a criminal investigation is rare, particularly given the highly classified nature of the probe. White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy told reporters in Crawford, Tex., yesterday that the department "undertook this action on its own" and that Bush had only learned about it from senior staff earlier in the day. But Duffy reiterated earlier statements by Bush, who had sharply condemned the disclosure of the NSA program and argued that it seriously damaged national security....
NSA spied on its own employees, other U.S. intelligence personnel, journalists, and members of Congress
NSA spied on its own employees, other U.S. intelligence personnel, and their journalist and congressional contacts. WMR has learned that the National Security Agency (NSA), on the orders of the Bush administration, eavesdropped on the private conversations and e-mail of its own employees, employees of other U.S. intelligence agencies -- including the CIA and DIA -- and their contacts in the media, Congress, and oversight agencies and offices. The journalist surveillance program, code named "Firstfruits," was part of a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) program that was maintained at least until October 2004 and was authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss. Firstfruits was authorized as part of a DCI "Countering Denial and Deception" program responsible to an entity known as the Foreign Denial and Deception Committee (FDDC). Since the intelligence community's reorganization, the DCI has been replaced by the Director of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte and his deputy, former NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden. Firstfruits was a database that contained both the articles and the transcripts of telephone and other communications of particular Washington journalists known to report on sensitive U.S. intelligence activities, particularly those involving NSA. According to NSA sources, the targeted journalists included author James Bamford, the New York Times' James Risen, the Washington Post's Vernon Loeb, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, the Washington Times' Bill Gertz, UPI's John C. K. Daly, and this editor [Wayne Madsen], who has written about NSA for The Village Voice, CAQ, Intelligence Online, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). In addition, beginning in 2001 but before the 9-11 attacks, NSA began to target anyone in the U.S. intelligence community who was deemed a "disgruntled employee." According to NSA sources, this surveillance was a violation of United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The surveillance of U.S. intelligence personnel by other intelligence personnel in the United States and abroad was conducted without any warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The targeted U.S. intelligence agency personnel included those who made contact with members of the media, including the journalists targeted by Firstfruits, as well as members of Congress, Inspectors General, and other oversight agencies. Those discovered to have spoken to journalists and oversight personnel were subjected to sudden clearance revocation and termination as "security risks."....
FLASHBACK: CLINTON, CARTER SEARCH 'N SURVEILLANCE WITHOUT COURT ORDER
Bill Clinton Signed Executive Order that allowed Attorney General to do searches without court approval. Clinton, February 9, 1995: "The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order" WASH POST, July 15, 1994, "Administration Backing No-Warrant Spy Searches": Extend not only to searches of the homes of U.S. citizens but also -- in the delicate words of a Justice Department official -- to "places where you wouldn't find or would be unlikely to find information involving a U.S. citizen... would allow the government to use classified electronic surveillance techniques, such as infrared sensors to observe people inside their homes, without a court order." Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, the Clinton administration believes the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." Secret searches and wiretaps of Aldrich Ames's office and home in June and October 1993, both without a federal warrant. Government officials decided in the Ames case that no warrant was required because the searches were conducted for "foreign intelligence purposes." Government lawyers have used this principle to justify other secret searches by U.S. authorities. "The number of such secret searches conducted each year is classified..." Jimmy Carter Signed Executive Order on May 23, 1979: "Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order."
Clinton Claimed Authority to Order No-Warrant Searches
In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has "inherent authority" to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body. Even after the administration ultimately agreed with Congress's decision to place the authority to pre-approve such searches in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, President Clinton still maintained that he had sufficient authority to order such searches on his own. "The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes," Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994, "and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General." "It is important to understand," Gorelick continued, "that the rules and methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the president in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities." Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, provides for such warrantless searches directed against "a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power." Reporting the day after Gorelick's testimony, the Washington Post's headline — on page A-19 — read, "Administration Backing No-Warrant Spy Searches."....
Phone giants mum on spying
In the days following revelations that the Bush administration ordered the National Security Agency to spy on domestic telephone and Internet communications without a court order, one involved party has remained silent. The nation's telephone giants--which control the data pipelines--have neither commented on nor denied their reported participation, nor have they reacted to the charge that they may have been complicit in violating privacy rights. But historically the telecom companies have cooperated with the government on wholesale wiretapping, and the Bush administration's anti-terrorism programs appear to be no exception. Without commenting directly on a classified topic, industry officials--when asked--suggested that they would not stand in the way of a request for help. "Our members have worked for years with law enforcement with an objective to preserve lawfully authorized surveillance," said Tom Amontree, a spokesman for the US Telecom Association, the industry group representing most phone companies. "We have no comment on national security matters." Added Eric Rabe, a spokesman for Verizon Communications Inc., one of the nation's phone giants: "We typically make law enforcement agencies get a court order. Our default is to cooperate, but we don't feel we should appropriate customer information lightly. We try to make sure what we do is in compliance with the law."....
Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor
The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources. The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved. GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world. Over the past two years, as aspects of this umbrella effort have burst into public view, the revelations have prompted protests and official investigations in countries that work with the United States, as well as condemnation by international human rights activists and criticism by members of Congress. Still, virtually all the programs continue to operate largely as they were set up, according to current and former officials. These sources say Bush's personal commitment to maintaining the GST program and his belief in its legality have been key to resisting any pressure to change course....
Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program
A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight, according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. The concerns appear to have played a part in the temporary suspension of the secret program. The concerns prompted two of President Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general - to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the officials said. The unusual meeting was prompted because Mr. Ashcroft's top deputy, James B. Comey, who was acting as attorney general in his absence, had indicated he was unwilling to give his approval to certifying central aspects of the program, as required under the White House procedures set up to oversee it. With Mr. Comey unwilling to sign off on the program, the White House went to Mr. Ashcroft - who had been in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital with pancreatitis and was housed under unusually tight security - because "they needed him for certification," according to an official briefed on the episode. The official, like others who discussed the issue, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the program. Mr. Comey declined to comment, and Mr. Gonzales could not be reached. Accounts differed as to exactly what was said at the hospital meeting between Mr. Ashcroft and the White House advisers. But some officials said that Mr. Ashcroft, like his deputy, appeared reluctant to give Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales his authorization to continue with aspects of the program in light of concerns among some senior government officials about whether the proper oversight was in place at the security agency and whether the president had the legal and constitutional authority to conduct such an operation. It is unclear whether the White House ultimately persuaded Mr. Ashcroft to give his approval to the program after the meeting or moved ahead without it....
NSA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance
Information captured by the National Security Agency's secret eavesdropping on communications between the United States and overseas has been passed on to other government agencies, which cross-check the information with tips and information collected in other databases, current and former administration officials said. The NSA has turned such information over to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and to other government entities, said three current and former senior administration officials, although it could not be determined which agencies received what types of information. Information from intercepts -- which typically includes records of telephone or e-mail communications -- would be made available by request to agencies that are allowed to have it, including the FBI, DIA, CIA and Department of Homeland Security, one former official said. At least one of those organizations, the DIA, has used NSA information as the basis for carrying out surveillance of people in the country suspected of posing a threat, according to two sources. A DIA spokesman said the agency does not conduct such domestic surveillance but would not comment further. Spokesmen for the FBI, the CIA and the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, declined to comment on the use of NSA data. Since the revelation last month that President Bush had authorized the NSA to intercept communications inside the United States, public concern has focused primarily on the legality of the NSA eavesdropping. Less attention has been paid to, and little is known about, how the NSA's information may have been used by other government agencies to investigate American citizens or to cross-check with other databases. In the 1960s and 1970s, the military used NSA intercepts to maintain files on U.S. peace activists, revelations of which prompted Congress to restrict the NSA from intercepting communications of Americans....
Justice Dept. Investigating Leak of NSA Wiretapping
The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into recent disclosures about a controversial domestic eavesdropping program that was secretly authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said yesterday. Federal prosecutors will focus their examination on who may have unlawfully disclosed classified information about the program to the New York Times, which reported two weeks ago that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens and residents without court-approved warrants, officials said. The Justice Department's decision to reveal the opening of a criminal investigation is rare, particularly given the highly classified nature of the probe. White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy told reporters in Crawford, Tex., yesterday that the department "undertook this action on its own" and that Bush had only learned about it from senior staff earlier in the day. But Duffy reiterated earlier statements by Bush, who had sharply condemned the disclosure of the NSA program and argued that it seriously damaged national security....
NSA spied on its own employees, other U.S. intelligence personnel, journalists, and members of Congress
NSA spied on its own employees, other U.S. intelligence personnel, and their journalist and congressional contacts. WMR has learned that the National Security Agency (NSA), on the orders of the Bush administration, eavesdropped on the private conversations and e-mail of its own employees, employees of other U.S. intelligence agencies -- including the CIA and DIA -- and their contacts in the media, Congress, and oversight agencies and offices. The journalist surveillance program, code named "Firstfruits," was part of a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) program that was maintained at least until October 2004 and was authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss. Firstfruits was authorized as part of a DCI "Countering Denial and Deception" program responsible to an entity known as the Foreign Denial and Deception Committee (FDDC). Since the intelligence community's reorganization, the DCI has been replaced by the Director of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte and his deputy, former NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden. Firstfruits was a database that contained both the articles and the transcripts of telephone and other communications of particular Washington journalists known to report on sensitive U.S. intelligence activities, particularly those involving NSA. According to NSA sources, the targeted journalists included author James Bamford, the New York Times' James Risen, the Washington Post's Vernon Loeb, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, the Washington Times' Bill Gertz, UPI's John C. K. Daly, and this editor [Wayne Madsen], who has written about NSA for The Village Voice, CAQ, Intelligence Online, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). In addition, beginning in 2001 but before the 9-11 attacks, NSA began to target anyone in the U.S. intelligence community who was deemed a "disgruntled employee." According to NSA sources, this surveillance was a violation of United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The surveillance of U.S. intelligence personnel by other intelligence personnel in the United States and abroad was conducted without any warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The targeted U.S. intelligence agency personnel included those who made contact with members of the media, including the journalists targeted by Firstfruits, as well as members of Congress, Inspectors General, and other oversight agencies. Those discovered to have spoken to journalists and oversight personnel were subjected to sudden clearance revocation and termination as "security risks."....
FLASHBACK: CLINTON, CARTER SEARCH 'N SURVEILLANCE WITHOUT COURT ORDER
Bill Clinton Signed Executive Order that allowed Attorney General to do searches without court approval. Clinton, February 9, 1995: "The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order" WASH POST, July 15, 1994, "Administration Backing No-Warrant Spy Searches": Extend not only to searches of the homes of U.S. citizens but also -- in the delicate words of a Justice Department official -- to "places where you wouldn't find or would be unlikely to find information involving a U.S. citizen... would allow the government to use classified electronic surveillance techniques, such as infrared sensors to observe people inside their homes, without a court order." Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, the Clinton administration believes the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." Secret searches and wiretaps of Aldrich Ames's office and home in June and October 1993, both without a federal warrant. Government officials decided in the Ames case that no warrant was required because the searches were conducted for "foreign intelligence purposes." Government lawyers have used this principle to justify other secret searches by U.S. authorities. "The number of such secret searches conducted each year is classified..." Jimmy Carter Signed Executive Order on May 23, 1979: "Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order."
Clinton Claimed Authority to Order No-Warrant Searches
In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has "inherent authority" to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body. Even after the administration ultimately agreed with Congress's decision to place the authority to pre-approve such searches in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, President Clinton still maintained that he had sufficient authority to order such searches on his own. "The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes," Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994, "and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General." "It is important to understand," Gorelick continued, "that the rules and methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the president in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities." Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, provides for such warrantless searches directed against "a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power." Reporting the day after Gorelick's testimony, the Washington Post's headline — on page A-19 — read, "Administration Backing No-Warrant Spy Searches."....
Phone giants mum on spying
In the days following revelations that the Bush administration ordered the National Security Agency to spy on domestic telephone and Internet communications without a court order, one involved party has remained silent. The nation's telephone giants--which control the data pipelines--have neither commented on nor denied their reported participation, nor have they reacted to the charge that they may have been complicit in violating privacy rights. But historically the telecom companies have cooperated with the government on wholesale wiretapping, and the Bush administration's anti-terrorism programs appear to be no exception. Without commenting directly on a classified topic, industry officials--when asked--suggested that they would not stand in the way of a request for help. "Our members have worked for years with law enforcement with an objective to preserve lawfully authorized surveillance," said Tom Amontree, a spokesman for the US Telecom Association, the industry group representing most phone companies. "We have no comment on national security matters." Added Eric Rabe, a spokesman for Verizon Communications Inc., one of the nation's phone giants: "We typically make law enforcement agencies get a court order. Our default is to cooperate, but we don't feel we should appropriate customer information lightly. We try to make sure what we do is in compliance with the law."....
Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor
The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources. The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved. GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world. Over the past two years, as aspects of this umbrella effort have burst into public view, the revelations have prompted protests and official investigations in countries that work with the United States, as well as condemnation by international human rights activists and criticism by members of Congress. Still, virtually all the programs continue to operate largely as they were set up, according to current and former officials. These sources say Bush's personal commitment to maintaining the GST program and his belief in its legality have been key to resisting any pressure to change course....
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