Fighting Global Warming Block by Block King County Executive Ron Sims has a simple test for every new public works project, building plan or government land purchase: Will it increase the region's total greenhouse-gas emissions, or reduce them? Officials in King County and other places are rethinking the way their communities grow and operate, all with an eye toward reducing their overall carbon footprint. After decades of policies that encouraged people to move out to the suburbs in pursuit of larger homes and bigger back yards, some policymakers are now pushing aggressively to increase urban density and discourage the use of private cars. In Massachusetts, the state demands that developers calculate and disclose the climate impact of their projects. In California, Attorney General Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown Jr. has sued communities and power companies for failing to offset the greenhouse gases generated by their expansion plans. And Washington, D.C., officials are installing a new trolley line and bike rental kiosks in an effort to cut back on car trips within the city. Even though national politicians are beginning to eye a federal carbon cap more seriously, the flurry of activity in state and local jurisdictions highlights a little-noticed reality: Most of the measures to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions will be enacted outside the nation's capital....
Slaughter of bison roils ranch town his is not a place where buffalo are welcome to roam. When 32 bison lumbered across a fence that separated their owners' vast, wind-swept expanse of land from a neighboring ranch in March, they ended up dead. Some fell where they were shot. Others scattered, galloping for miles before they succumbed in the snow. They were victims, contend the bison's owners, of a murder plot hatched by the neighbor, a Texan frustrated by what he called the repeated trespassing of the herd onto his land. Law enforcement officials are closemouthed, saying only that they are investigating. At issue, said Park County Undersheriff Monte Gore, is whether the culprit violated Colorado's century-old open-range law, which says livestock may go pretty much where they please. Throughout the West, many states still adhere to the open-range principle, a throwback to the 1800s that says it is not a rancher's responsibility to keep livestock fenced in -- it's everyone else's job to keep them out. If you don't want someone else's cow on your land, the law goes, build a fence. If the cow crosses your fence, you can lock it up until its owner retrieves it, and you can sue the owner for damages. But you can't kill it, said Rick Wahlert, Colorado brand commissioner....
Shell makes run on water In its quest to melt oil out of western Colorado's shale, Royal Dutch Shell has been buying up land and water rights in anticipation of what is likely to be a thirsty new industry. Some officials, however, worry that the demands of the oil-shale industry could drain every drop of the region's remaining water. "On the upper end, we're looking at potentially several hundred thousand acre-feet of water — more than people think is commonly available to develop in the Colorado River," said Dan Birch, deputy general manager for the Colorado River Water Conservation District. Shell and other energy companies have amassed tens of thousands of acres of cropland, ranches and open space — including a state wildlife area — to gain water that would be needed to power the oil-shale process. "We've been acquiring land and associated water rights for a long time," Shell spokesman Tracy Boyd said. "We're just situating ourselves so that when the time comes, we'll have the resources we need."....
BLM: Plan will protect prairie chicken, lizard habitat in NM Two rare species found in southeastern New Mexico's oil and gas country will have added protections under a conservation plan approved by the Bureau of Land Management. About 465 square miles of habitat for the lesser prairie chicken and the sand dune lizard will be protected, and the agency has expanded restrictions on drilling activity during the prairie chicken's mating season in an effort to boost the bird's numbers. For Linda Rundell, state director for the BLM in New Mexico, the additional protections for the prairie chicken have been a long time coming. As a biologist more than 25 years ago, she spent time surveying the prairie chickens and their habitat. Under the BLM's plan, an area of critical environmental concern has been set aside for the prairie chicken. The agency said no oil and gas leasing will be allowed in this area. Areas of occupied habitat for the prairie chicken and the lizard also will be off limits to new oil and gas activity, said Tony Herrell, BLM's deputy director for minerals in New Mexico. In areas of existing operation, Herrell said drilling activity is restricted during the prairie chicken's mating season—March through June—and noise is limited so the birds can hear each other's calls....
Lease-sale of lynx habitat put on hold In a big victory for environmental protectionists, Colorado's Bureau of Land Management has deferred offering oil and gas leases for 84 parcels of U.S. Forest Service land encompassing 144,000 acres in the San Luis Valley at the BLM's May 8 lease sale. "Based on information we received from the public, local governments and our own internal review, we will defer offering these Forest Service parcels until additional analysis can be completed," said BLM Colorado State Director Sally Wisely. The parcels to be deferred are located in the Rio Grande National Forest in Colorado's San Luis Valley, where Colorado began reintroducing the endangered Canadian lynx in 2000. There are an estimated 250-300 of the species in the area today....
Uranium claims spring up along Grand Canyon rim Thanks to renewed interest in nuclear power, the United States is on the verge of a uranium mining boom, and nowhere is the hurry to stake claims more pronounced than in the districts flanking the Grand Canyon's storied sandstone cliffs. On public lands within five miles of Grand Canyon National Park, there are now more than 1,100 uranium claims, compared with just 10 in January 2003, according to data from the Department of the Interior. In recent months, the uranium rush has spawned a clash as epic as the canyon's 18-mile chasm, with both sides claiming to be working for the good of the planet. Environmental organizations have appealed to federal courts and Congress to halt any drilling on the grounds that mining so close to such a rare piece of the nation's patrimony could prove ruinous for the canyon's visitors and wildlife alike. Mining companies say the raw material they seek is important to the environment, too: The uranium would feed nuclear reactors that could -- unlike coal and natural gas -- produce electricity without contributing to global warming....
Plea further extends Thirtymile tragedy In a New Year's Eve editorial on the last day of 2006, we were willing to concede at the time that "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." That hope has been dashed now that a plea-bargaining deal has led to fire crew chief Ellreese Daniels pleading guilty in U.S. District Court in Spokane Tuesday to two misdemeanor charges of making false statements to investigators. The magnitude of the reduction in charges is staggering: In exchange, the government dropped four felony counts of involuntary manslaughter and seven felony counts of making false statements. Four people died and the only person charged in the incident gets a plea-bargaining slap on the wrist and won't have to face trial -- during which a more complete story of what happened up to and during that fateful day could unfold during testimony. Frankly, we've been less than impressed from the start with the federal government's handling, at all levels, of the Thirtymile incident. We remain convinced that Daniels must answer in part for the tragedy because he was directly responsible for the safety of his crew. But we also maintain that the blame for the Thirtymile debacle involves much more than just what happened on the fire line that day. Blame must also extend further up the chain of command and include a culture of stonewalling and cover-up so prevalent in the U.S. Forest Service at the time....
2 national forests combined The Wasatch-Cache National Forest just got more complicated. Now it's the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. The mouthful of a name is worth $2 million a year in administrative savings for U.S. Forest Service's Intermountain Region. Budgets are the biggest thing driving the consolidation. Funding has languished while demands for firefighting and recreation are rising. Some ranger districts are losing a recreation planner in the consolidation. A similar consolidation took place in 1973 when the Wasatch and Cache forests were combined.
Republicans senators push for oil shale development Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard has joined other Republican members of Congress in pushing for more domestic energy production by removing barriers to oil shale leasing in Colorado and other parts of the region. A bill introduced Thursday by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., would repeal a one-year moratorium on approval of final regulations for commercial oil shale leases on federal land. It would also allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Colorado's other senator, Democrat Ken Salazar, pushed the one-year ban that prevents the U.S. Bureau of Land Management from using federal funds to draft final regulations for commercial leases. "U.S. oil shale resources alone exceed 2 trillion barrels of potential supply," Allard said in a written statement. "We in Congress should not be preventing this kind of progress."....
Western groups want BLM to consider climate change decisions Conservationists are shifting the debate over oil and gas development across the West from the preservation of a single species here or there to the potential impacts that development could have on entire landscapes due to climate change. At the center of the debate are oil and gas lease sales held each quarter by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The agency offered about 100 parcels covering some 112,000 acres in New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma two weeks ago and has more than 175,000 acres up for lease in Colorado next week. "The Rocky Mountain region is experiencing an unprecedented oil and gas boom right now so it's crucial that we get ahead of the curve here and not let this get away from us before it's too late to do anything," Jeremy Nichols, director of Denver-based Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action, said Thursday. Nichols' group is just one of several organizations that have protested recent oil and gas lease sales across the region due to climate change concerns _ rather than the usual arguments of how oil and gas might affect a particular endangered species or a pristine plot of land. The group targeted all of the parcels, saying they should not have been offered since the agency's management plans don't address climate change as a potential result of greenhouse gas emissions from more oil and gas development. The protest also claims the agency skirted federal environmental laws by not considering new information about climate change from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the New Mexico Climate Change Advisory Group or other federal scientists....Grazing permits will be next.
Protected sea lions found shot dead on Columbia River The deaths of six sea lions are under investigation after the bodies of the federally protected animals were found in open traps on the Columbia River and appeared to have been shot. The carcasses of four California sea lions and two Steller sea lions were found Sunday about noon. The discovery came one day after three elephant seals were found shot to death at a breeding ground in central California. All three species are federally protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. But Steller sea lions are also protected under the Endangered Species Act, authorities said....
FWP to intervene in wolf lawsuit Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks announced Thursday that it will intervene in a lawsuit filed this week challenging the federal government's delisting of gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains. The agency also plans to oppose a request from 12 conservation groups seeking a preliminary injunction from the federal District Court in Missoula. The injunction, if approved, would reinstate federal Endangered Species Act protection for gray wolves while the court considers the lawsuit. "FWP supports wolf delisting and we'll join the legal proceedings to help ensure that wolves in Montana remain under state jurisdiction and continue to be managed under a plan that has won nationwide praise and support," said Jeff Hagener, director of FWP in Helena....
Turner 'almost done' buying up ranchland The "Mouth of the South" might be mellowing, at least in terms of his appetite for ranchland in Nebraska. CNN founder Ted Turner, the largest private landowner in Nebraska and the United States and the nation's largest bison rancher, said Wednesday that he is about done buying new ranches. He said he would like to reach 2 million acres nationwide before he dies — about 40,000 acres more than he currently owns. "I'm almost done. I've got enough," said Turner, who was visiting Omaha for the reopening and renaming of one of his 54 bison restaurants, now called Ted's Nebraska Grill. The 69-year-old billionaire, philanthropist and conservationist said he isn't interested in free-standing ranches anymore, only "reasonably priced" parcels adjacent to his current operations, which include five ranches in Nebraska near Gordon, Oshkosh and Mullen. The ranches cover 425,221 acres, an area larger than Douglas and Sarpy Counties combined. "You know what 2 million acres is?" Turner asked over a plate of bison miniburgers and transfat-free onion rings. "If my land was all connected, in one long straight line, a mile deep, it would stretch from New York to San Francisco." Then he joked: "I've been thinking about doing some swaps. I'd be able to cut the United States in half and charge people from going from the north to the south."....
Senators kill packer ban Senate and House farm bill conferees killed a final attempt to include a ban on packer ownership of livestock during a late night conference session last night. An amendment by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa was defeated by Senate Ag committee conferees on a voice vote. The Senators then quickly adopted language from the House version of the farm bill, which did not include a packer ban. A statement from Grassley said recent plans by JBS to purchase National Beef Packing Co., Smithfield Beef Group and Five Rivers Ranch show why the packer ban is "needed more than ever" to ensure farmers can get a fair market price for cattle and hogs. "We might not have won tonight, but we'll keep fighting. I just hope it's not too late for the family farmer when people finally realize that we have serious problems with competition in agriculture."
Loss Of Packer Ban Won’t Slow Efforts Western ranchers plan to keep pushing for livestock market reforms despite the failure of the Farm Bill Conference Committee to ban meatpacker ownership of live cattle prior to slaughter. Late last night Senate conferees killed the ban on a voice vote. "The packer ban would have helped return competition to the livestock markets and fairness to livestock contracts by stopping the biggest packers from controlling market access and lowering market prices," said Mabel Dobbs, a rancher from Weiser, Idaho, representing the Western Organization of Resource Councils. "Congress has left us to the wolves." Dobbs said concern about consolidating markets is high because of JBS Swift’s plan to buy two of the country’s largest meatpackers, Smithfield Beef and National Beef. The acquisition would make JBS Swift the largest packer in the world. If the merger succeeds, the three largest meatpacking companies in the U.S. would process nearly 9 out of 10 of the livestock slaughtered....
Ky. Derby Horse Owners Must Love The Farm Bill McConnell, along with a handful of other senators, has successfully spared a measure that would allow accelerated depreciation for race horses. The measure would essentially allow race horse owners _ who pay millions for Triple Crown contenders, write down their investment over three years. The provision appears to have survived the conference committee negotiations on the $300 billion farm bill. The Joint Committee on Taxation has yet to release an official estimate for the horse race provision, which is part of a larger $1.4 billion tax package. Defenders of the measure say the tax break simply allows race horse owners to depreciate their thoroughbred assets on the same schedule that farmers depreciate other equipment on their tax returns. Under current law, race horses are depreciated over seven years; the new provision would allow full depreciation over three years. Critics, like House Agriculture Chairman Colin Peterson (D-Minn.), have said they're worried about the provision helping wealthy Saudi princes who buy Triple Crown horses. McConnell spokesman Don Stewart defended the provision, saying "horses and cows are the only capital not depreciated over three years."...
McCain tells Iowans he would veto farm bill over subsidies Some things never change: Republican John McCain dislikes farm subsidies. "I have to give you a little straight talk about the farm bill that is wending its way through Congress," McCain said Thursday at the Polk County Convention Center. "I do not support it. I would veto it," he said. "I would do that because I believe that the subsidies are unnecessary." McCain was in the heart of farm country, a place where subsidies for corn and ethanol fuel are wildly popular. His long-held position against subsidies has cost him in Iowa, the state that traditionally begins the presidential nominating process and is a potential swing state in the fall. Yet the Arizona senator didn't hesitate to bring up the issue....
Farm bill upends normal political order It is the rarest of moments: President Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are on a collision course over a giant farm bill, but it is Bush who is broadly aligned with liberal Bay Area activists pushing for reform, while the San Francisco Democrat is protecting billions of dollars in subsidies to the richest farmers. A conference committee approved on Thursday most of a nearly $300 billion farm bill that will lock in the nation's food policy and environmental stewardship on millions of acres of private land for the next five years. Hoping to survive a veto, lawmakers doled out money to everyone from thoroughbred racehorse owners to food-stamp recipients. The package melds last year's House and Senate farm bills for votes in both chambers before going to the White House. Several controversies remain to be worked out this week. The administration threatened a veto, with Bush deriding a "massive, bloated" effort. Lawmakers are betting that Bush will not dare kill a $10.3 billion increase in nutrition spending such as food stamps, which make up the bulk of the bill, or anger farm-state Republicans in an election year. If he does, they plan to override him....
PETA wants Eight Belles jockey suspended after filly's death People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is seeking the suspension of Eight Belles' jockey after the filly had to be euthanized following her second-place finish in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday. Gabriel Saez was riding Eight Belles when she broke both front ankles while galloping out a quarter of a mile past the wire. She was euthanized on the track. PETA faxed a letter Sunday to Kentucky's racing authority claiming the filly was "doubtlessly injured before the finish" and asked that Saez be suspended while Eight Belles' death is investigated. "What we really want to know, did he feel anything along the way?" PETA spokeswoman Kathy Guillermo said. "If he didn't then we can probably blame the fact that they're allowed to whip the horses mercilessly." Eight Belles trainer Larry Jones said the filly was clearly happy when she crossed the finish line. "I don't know how in the heck they can even come close to saying that," Jones told The Associated Press on Sunday. "She has her ears up, clearly galloping out."....
‘Sea Monster’ discovery on Glacier Island the buzz of old Cordova One of the strangest chapters in Cordova’s history began on Nov. 10, 1930, when Jerry O’Leary and Charles Gibson discovered the carcass of sea creature floating in Eagle Bay on Glacier Island. O’Leary, a fox farmer, and Gibson, his employee, were making their rounds to feed their foxes and spotted the carcass floating on its back amid the icebergs from Columbia Glacier, six miles to the north. The head and tail sections were devoid of flesh. However, the midsection was mostly intact. O’Leary and Gibson towed the carcass to shore and chopped off the meat and hung it in the smoke house, intending to use it as feed for the foxes. Gibson described the meat as "looking and smelling like horse meat." They saved the skeleton, which was described to be anywhere from 27 to 42 feet long, with a long tail and peculiarly shaped flat triangular-shaped head. They ventured to guess that it had been entombed in the Columbia Glacier before breaking off and floating in the sea ice. Word of its existence reached Valdez and Cordova and sparked the interest of Charles Flory of the U.S. Forest Service and W.J. McDonald, the district forest supervisor of the Chugach National Forest. McDonald, Lee C. Pratt, Captain E.N. Jacobson, John V. Lydick, Howard W. Stewart and A.C. Faith launched an expedition to document the creatures’ remains....

Aristocrats of the range
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Julie Carter

Cowboys are the aristocrats of the agricultural wage earners. As such, there are two or three things which are absolutely essential for their well being: well-trained, prestigious-looking horses, a good rope and a nice hat.

Dan had the horse department covered with Slats. And he was following Tex's advice about roping.

Since the last problem he had was roping his heel horse's front feet occasionally, Dan went to see what Tex had to say.

Tex advised getting a rope his horse could see and then he wouldn't step in the loop. So Dan went down to the feed store, looked over all the brightly colored twines and came out with one of the new Roper Vision ropes - a glow-in-the-dark lime green.

This iridescent wonder came with a pair of matching sunglasses, the theory being that the roper would better focus on his rope when wearing them.

Dan didn't follow this logic as he wasn't the one having trouble seeing a regular colored rope, but most definitely, Slats wasn't going to get the sunglasses.

He decided that a little pasture roping might help Slats out with his difficulty of stepping into a heel loop. Tim came to help him out. The project would not be a wasted effort. They needed to doctor a few yearlings who had picked up something at the sale barn.

In the pasture, they rode through all the new cattle slowly and doctored each one who needed a shot. With the job well tended to, they decided to practice a little to break in Dan's new rope.

The owner of the cattle had driven up to the pasture fence and was watching the entire operation; the cowboys were unaware of their audience.

After watching the flurry of activity through the initial doctoring, the cow boss walked out to the ropers and asked, "What you boys doing now?"

"Why, we're roping and doctoring the sick cattle."

The owner allowed he had seen quite a bit of roping going on but in the most recent timeframe, he hadn't seen any shots given.

Dan, quick with his wit, answered sincerely, "Last night I soaked my rope in a bucket of penicillin and there's no need to give a shot. And, besides that, we been looking at these cattle and thought we might need to check and see if some of them had a bone in their leg."

Good help is hard to find, so, begrudgingly, the cow boss decided to tend to some of his other business.

While he was putting his paycheck in circulation with the new green rope purchase, Dan also selected a brand new straw hat. He really hated to part with the extra money, but lately he'd noticed there were some quite pretty girls at the team ropings.

He also knew that one of the secrets to good looks is a good hat. Sometimes a new hat needs some breaking-in, so he was wearing it a little to get the sweatband broke-in before next Saturday's team roping.

This morning's job was to do some pasture shredding with the tractor in the horse trap. Dan got the shredder hooked up, was moving right along with the blades cutting down the old grass neatly when a little puff of wind hit and lifted that new straw right off his head.

The next thing he heard was "brrrrrrtt" as the new straw went through the shredder. A few choice words later, Dan shrugged and thought to himself, "Those pretty girls are just going to have to be impressed with Slats and the new lime green rope."

Two out of three is not bad for an aristocrat.

Julie's rope of choice is powder blue. Visit her website at www.julie-carter.com

FLE

Fabricated 'Bioterrorism' Case Collapses After a four-year legal battle, a US federal judge has dismissed all charges against an avant-garde artist who public officials condemned as a bio-terrorist in a case critics are calling "a persecution, not a prosecution." The artist is Dr. Steven Kurtz, a professor of Visual Studies at the University of Buffalo, and a founding member of the award-winning collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). The case started in May of 2004. While Kurtz was preparing for an exhibition of an art installation at MASS MoCA, a museum in North Adams, Massachusetts, his wife of 20 years died in her sleep. When police responded to his 911 call, they noticed a small food-testing lab and petri dishes containing bacteria cultures. The lab was part of the scheduled installation, which would have allowed museum visitors to see if their store bought food contained genetically modified (GM) organisms. The cultures were part of a multimedia project commissioned by the British-based art-science initiative, The Arts Catalyst, and produced in consultation with scientists from the Harvard-Sussex Program. The project used the harmless bacteria Bacillus subtilis and Serratia marcescens in an installation, performance, and film dedicated to demystifying issues surrounding germ warfare programs and their cost to global public health. Some of CAE's work is designed to protest the potential risks of genetically modified (GM) food. Local police called the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). While politicians and federal prosecutors rushed to trumpet the thwarting of a major threat, Kurtz was detained under the PATRIOT Act on suspicion of bioterrorism. The street where Kurtz's home was located was cordoned off, his house searched, and his property seized. Federal agents confiscated Kurtz's art projects, computers, and all copies of a book manuscript Kurtz was working on, as well as his reference books and notes. The book, Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health, had to be entirely reconstructed and was finally published in 2006. The then governor of New York, George Pataki, lauded the work of the FBI for disrupting a major bioterrorism threat. And the then US attorney in Buffalo, Michael A. Battle – the lawyer who was later to become the Department of Justice employee who notified eight US attorneys that they were being fired – praised the work of the Buffalo Joint Terrorism Task Force. But after a several-month-long investigation, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to provide any evidence of "bioterrorism." On the contrary, FBI tests revealed within a few days of the incident that there were no harmful biological agents in Kurtz's house and that his wife had died of heart failure. Forced to drop its charges of weapons manufacture, the government instead accused Kurtz and Ferrell of mail and wire fraud. The government claimed that when Dr. Ferrell gave the cultures to Dr. Kurtz, this violated a contract between the University of Pittsburgh and the supplier, American Type Culture Collection (ATCC). Neither the university nor ATCC had brought any complaint, and observers pointed out that scientists routinely share non-hazardous cultures. The Department of Justice further claimed that this alleged contract discrepancy constituted federal mail and wire fraud. Because the charges against the two academics were brought under the PATRIOT Act, the maximum penalty was increased from five years to 20. Earlier, Dr. Ferrell pled guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge rather than facing a prolonged trial for the mail and wire fraud felonies. During the legal wrangling, he had two minor strokes and a major stroke that required months of rehabilitation. He was indicted as he was preparing to undergo a stem cell transplant, his second in seven years. But Kurtz rejected any plea deal, instead demanding a public trial. Most of the art world has rallied behind him. His colleagues in the Critical Art Ensemble set up a website and a legal defense fund, and Kurtz continued to teach at the University of Buffalo. When the case finally arrived in a courtroom this month, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara ruled to dismiss the indictment. It is unclear whether the government will appeal the dismissal....Looks like another CYA operation by the FBI and DOJ.
Audit: Up to 400 State Department laptops missing The State Department has lost track of as many as 400 laptop computers, an internal audit ordered by the Inspector General has found. "The importance of safeguarding official laptops and office equipment containing sensitive information is not a new concern," said State Department overseer Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-NY) through a spokesperson to CQ Politics. "I intend to review the facts about this situation." The computers belong to the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, run by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which protects diplomats during stateside visits and trains and equips foreign police, intelligence and security forces. Anonymous sources say that officials are "urgently" scouring offices in the Washington, D.C. area to account for the equipment. The State Department is not keeping good records of its inventory, official John Streufert told a panel at a February 6 meeting on the security of "personal identification information," citing a "significant deficiency." Mark Duda, the Inspector General's representative, also warned of scandal like the one that erupted in May of 2006, after the home of a Veterans Administration employee was burglarized and a laptop he was using for a work project, containing names, Social Security numbers and birthdates of more than 26 million people, was taken....Don't worry, we can still trust them to protect all the data they are collecting on us. Right?

Congress' ethanol affair is cooling Members of Congress say they overreached by pushing ethanol on consumers and will move to roll back federal supports for it — the latest sure signal that Congress' appetite for corn-based ethanol has collapsed as food and gas prices have shot up. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Democrats will use the pending farm bill to reduce the subsidy, while Republicans are looking to go further, rolling back government rules passed just four months ago that require blending ethanol into gasoline. "The view was to look to alternatives and try to become more dependent on the Midwest than the Middle East. I mean, that was the theory. Obviously, sometimes there are unforeseen or unintended consequences of actions," Mr. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, told reporters yesterday....
Doubts grow over ethanol Sharply rising food prices may force Congress to reconsider the fivefold increase in ethanol production it mandated just four months ago, some lawmakers say. Few members appear willing to call for the outright repeal of the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), which requires that 36 billion gallons of ethanol be produced by 2022. Of that, 15 billon gallons would come from corn. But the new concerns represent a significant turn for a policy issue that was embraced by both congressional Democrats and President Bush as a way to boost rural economies and domestic energy security. “We certainly did not anticipate what’s happened, if that was the cause,” said Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “We don’t know how much of the food crisis was caused by it, but nobody expected it to cause much.” Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) added: “I think it’s something we need to look at.”....
Don't rush to blame ethanol, WH says The White House this morning cautioned against rushing to judge ethanol as a root cause of escalating global food prices. "There's been a lot reported, maybe too much attention, to biofuels and maybe not enough to all of the other factors that affect food prices, especially in this country, where it is a tiny slice of increased food prices," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. On Tuesday, President Bush said that "85 percent of the world's food prices are caused by weather, increased demand and energy prices — just the cost of growing product — and that 15 percent has been caused by ethanol, the arrival of ethanol."....
Texas Gov Mulls Seeking Waiver From US Renewable Fuel Rule The Texas governor's office is considering seeking an exemption to a national standard that requires renewable fuels use. Because corn-based ethanol is the most widely available renewable fuel, Texas Gov. Rick Perry's office says it fears that use of the fuel is driving up food prices. The Renewable Fuels Standard requires companies that blend ethanol and other additives into gasoline to sell a certain volume of renewable fuels each year until 2022. "Ultimately, food prices are reaching high levels, so we're looking at this as an option for reducing that burden," said Allison Castle, a spokeswoman for Gov. Perry. Texas is the leading producer of beef, she said, so elevated prices of corn for cattle feed place a burden on the state's economy. Ethanol producers have countered that their fuel doesn't drive up beef prices because byproducts of ethanol distillation can be used as cattle feed. But simply exempting Texas from the mandate may not be an easy move. The legal grounds upon which such an appeal would be made are unclear. The mandate is a federal obligation without specific benchmarks for each state, so if Texas seceded from the mandate, the overall quantity of ethanol required might remain unchanged....
Saving 'God's creation' unites scientist, evangelical leader A Nobel laureate scientist and a leader of the evangelical Christian movement walk into a restaurant. It sounds like the setup for a joke, a scenario that is screaming for a punch line that plays off the seemingly endless disagreements between faith and science. But this is a true story, and Dr. Eric Chivian and the Rev. Richard Cizik have come up with a zinger no one could expect. They went to lunch together to agree on something - the need to curb negative human impact on the Earth. And the partnership they formed that afternoon in 2005 has led this odd couple of the environmental movement to be named, today, to Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. "I must admit I approached that meeting with some anxiety," said Chivian (pronounced chih-vee-an), director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, "I'm involved in evolutionary biology. I support stem cell research. I have gay friends who are married. I felt I had positions that would be at odds with his." Cizik (pronounced sigh-zik), vice president for governmental affairs for the 45,000-church National Association of Evangelicals in Washington, D.C,, had similar reservations. But, as they point out, they were not there to discuss their differences. What brought them together is what Chivian calls "a deep, fundamental commitment to life on earth."....
EPA official ousted while fighting Dow The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up. On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade's interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Midwest office, based in Chicago. Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA administrator Stephen Johnson took away her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1. The call came as the Tribune was preparing to publish a story about the dioxin issue and Gade's crusade....
Study: Warmer ocean water means less oxygen Low-oxygen zones where sea life is threatened or cannot survive are growing as the oceans are heated by global warming, researchers warn. Oxygen-depleted zones in the central and eastern equatorial Atlantic and equatorial Pacific oceans appear to have expanded over the last 50 years, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science. Low-oxygen zones in the Gulf of Mexico and other areas also have been studied in recent years, raising concerns about the threat to sea life. Continued expansion of these zones could have dramatic consequences for both sea life and coastal economies, said the team led by Lothar Stramma of the University of Kiel in Germany. The finding was not surprising, Stramma said, because computer climate models had predicted a decline in dissolved oxygen in the oceans under warmer conditions. Warmer water simply cannot absorb as much oxygen as colder water, explained co-author Gregory C. Johnson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle....
Wildlife commission votes 9-0 to allow continued shooting of animals A citizen’s petition to ban the recreational shooting of prairie dogs came to a quick death Thursday at the hands of the Colorado Wildlife Commission. Testimony on the controversial issue raised concerns on one side about cruelty to animals and hunting ethics and equally fervent concerns on the other side about protecting private property rights, game-damage control and introducing youths to hunting. It took more than an hour and was dominated by opponents to the petition. “Shooting is the only way to control” prairie dogs, said Hotchkiss farmer Dave Whittlesey, who said he shoots “20 to 30 a day” on his property with little apparent effect on the prairie dog population. His argument was repeated several times, with some farmers saying they shoot thousands of prairie dogs each year in attempts to alleviate damage to hay fields and other crops. “Shooting is the only species-specific control,” said David Koontz of Hotchkiss. “We kill several thousand a year, and if I had to stop, I’d be out of business in five years.” Veterinarian Dick Steele of Delta said he has euthanized “crippled horses after (they stumbled) into prairie dog holes.” He called prairie dog control a useful, entry-level activity for young hunters....
Court says feds don't have to reveal names The federal government doesn't have to reveal the names of employees involved in a bungled operation to a private watchdog group that doesn't trust official investigations of the incident, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. The employees' right to be free of harassment from the news media and the public outweighs any benefit in re-examining an incident that officials have already gone over, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The head of a news media organization criticized the ruling, saying the court took too narrow a view of the government's disclosure obligations under the Freedom of Information Act. "The court assumes the government can do no wrong and paternalistically assumes the government would know how to fix whatever went wrong," said Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, which was not involved in the case. "The public is entitled to information from records to hold the government accountable, particularly in its role as an employer." The case involved a fire in the Salmon-Challis National Forest in Idaho that killed two U.S. Forest Service firefighters, Shane Heath and Jeff Allen, in July 2003....
Bush Administration Takes Aim at National Parks Gun Ban The Bush administration on Wednesday announced its intent to shoot down federal rules that prohibit individuals from carrying loaded firearms in U.S. national parks and wildlife refuges. The proposal would permit individuals to carry loaded and concealed weapons if permitted by state laws in the state where the park or refuge is located, a change many current and retired park rangers contend is unnecessary and potentially dangerous. U.S. Interior Department officials said the proposed change would clarify conflicting state and federal restrictions. The 61 units of the National Park Service where hunting is permitted, as well as the public lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, follow state laws on firearms. Firearms were first banned in national parks in the 1930s in a bid to curb poaching. "Much has changed in how states administer their firearm laws in that time," U.S. Interior Department Assistant Secretary Lyle Laverty. Forty-eight U.S. states now have laws allowing for legal possession of concealed weapons. The administration believes that management of national parks and wildlife refuges "should defer to those state laws," Laverty said. ....The Bushies are just like the Dems, they pick and choose when to defer to state law. Why don't they defer to state law when they are confiscating livestock?
Tahoe woman to pay $100,000 for felling tree An Incline Village woman who hired a company to chop down trees on national forest land to enhance her view of Lake Tahoe agreed Thursday to pay $100,000 restitution and do 80 hours of community service in a plea deal with federal prosecutors that likely will keep her out of prison. Patricia Marie Vincent, 57, was indicted in January by a federal grand jury in Reno on felony charges of theft of government property and willingly damaging government property. She faced up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of those original counts if convicted. But in exchange for her guilty plea on Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Rachow agreed to drop the felony charges and charge her with one misdemeanor count of unlawfully cutting trees on U.S. land. That crime carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison, a $100,00 fine and possible restitution. But Rachow said under the plea agreement, she would face a year of probation, 80 hours of community service and pay $100,000 in restitution -- with $35,000 going to the U.S. Forest Service and $65,000 going to the National Forest Foundation....There they go again, diverting money to a private nonprofit. What is with these US Attorneys? They are clearly operating to bypass the Congressional appropriation process. Congress should deduct a like amount from this US Attorney's budget.
Treehuggers Against Trees With wildfires burning, it is useful to turn to the wisdom of the ancients. When the pioneers first entered the great forests of America, they found that the Native Americans had managed the forests for centuries. Their woodlands contained very few big trees—maybe fifty such trees per acre. Apparently the Indians had set regular, low intensity fires which burned away accumulations of undergrowth, deadwood, dying trees and particularly small trees growing between the big trees. The larger trees were unharmed, because of their thick fire-resistant bark. These fires kept the forest healthy by providing a barrier to disease. The pioneers, however, used much more wood in their civilization than the Native Americans. They needed it for housing, for boats and river ships, for railroad sleepers, for carriages, and for town infrastructure. To them, fire was an enemy. Quick growth of new trees was important. Policies were put in place that suppressed all fire. This culminated in the creation of Smokey Bear in 1945. Three years later, his catchphrase was born: "Remember — only you can prevent forest fires." The price was a degradation of the health of American forests. Private logging firms continued to keep forests healthy where they operated, by clearing out the underbrush and deadwood and harvesting trees to clear spaces between other trees. Where loggers did not operate, undergrowth and deadwood began to accumulate. These are dangerous, because small trees, for example, provide ladders for the fire to climb to reach the crown of mature trees, where the fires can take hold instead of being shrugged off by the thick bark below. Meanwhile, more and more land came to be controlled by the federal government....
People abandoning domestic horses in wild herd, BLM says Horse lover Marty Felix can’t imagine anyone delivering a death sentence to a domestic horse by abandoning it in the wild. But that’s what she witnessed recently in the Little Book Cliffs area, northeast of Grand Junction. Felix, a volunteer with the Bureau of Land Management who helps care for the local wild horse herd, said she identified a brown Appaloosa gelding April 11 that didn’t belong to the wild herd. She and other volunteers working in the Main Canyon of Little Book Cliffs caught a glimpse of the man who set the horse free, but the man wasn’t caught. She said while some people may have romantic notions of letting a horse free in the wild to live out the end of its life, it is inhumane and against the law. According to BLM spokeswoman Mel Lloyd, the mid-April incident was not the first time officials were apprised of domestic horses being set free in the Little Book Cliffs area. Last year a domestic horse and a mule were found. Felix said a similar incident occurred in 2003. Lloyd said people caught abandoning horses are subject to state and federal penalties. Domestic horses can be shunned or injured by wild horse herds, resulting in a slow and painful death. Domestic horses cannot adapt to the high-desert climate and can spread disease to wild herds, potentially inducing a catastrophic die-off of wild herds, Lloyd said....
Rare giant worm may wriggle far from home on Palouse The giant Palouse earthworm is still among the Northwest's rarest inhabitants, but two new discoveries suggest the native wigglers might be a bit more abundant than previously thought. A pair of pinkish-white worms from opposite margins of the Columbia River basin appear to be members of the species, reputed to grow up to 3 feet long. In March, researchers digging in a remnant of native prairie near Moscow, Idaho, accidentally minced one of the creatures and collected the bits. The rolling grasslands of the region, called the Palouse, are believed to be the species' historic habitat. But the second worm came from a more surprising location: a forested slope above the Chelan County town of Leavenworth. "If it is the correct species, it's pretty exciting to find it in an area where it hasn't been described before," said University of Idaho soil scientist Jodi Johnson-Maynard, who has been stalking the giant earthworm for years. "Maybe it's not just tied to the prairie."....
New EPA Standards Would Cut Amount Of Lead in the Air The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday proposed tightening the federal limits for lead in the air, but the proposal fell short of what its own scientists said is required to protect public health. Lead, which is emitted by smelters, mining, aviation fuel and waste incinerators, can enter the bloodstream and affect young children's development and IQ, as well as cause cardiovascular, blood pressure and kidney problems in adults. The United States has not changed its atmospheric lead standards in 30 years, but the Bush administration is under a court order to issue new rules by September. U.S. emissions of lead have dropped from 74,000 tons a year three decades ago to 1,300 tons a year now, largely because leaded gasoline was taken off the market. Since 1990, however, more than 6,000 studies have examined the impact of lead on public health and the environment and have revealed that it has harmful effects at lower concentrations than previously thought. In a conference call with reporters yesterday, EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus C. Peacock announced that the agency is proposing to cut the current standard of 1.5 micrograms of lead per cubic meter of air to a range of between 0.10 and 0.30 micrograms per cubic meter....
Wolf advocates barrage gov's office Wyoming is receiving a great deal of scorn from wolf advocates throughout the United States, and even overseas, but state officials said Wednesday that most of the non-local critics don't have their facts straight about the state's wolf management plan. And even though some people in places as far afield as California and Vermont are encouraging travelers and consumers to boycott the Cowboy State -- because they disagree with its "shoot-on-sight" zone for wolves -- it appears that interest in traveling to Wyoming is actually on the rise, one official with the Wyoming tourism office said Wednesday. Gov. Dave Freudenthal's office received more than 800 phone calls Tuesday and Wednesday from members and supporters of Defenders of Wildlife, a Washington, D.C.-based conservation organization. The group urged people via mailings and through its Web site to call and ask the governor to get rid of "the shoot-on-sight policy that is now in effect for nearly 90 percent of the state." What Defenders of Wildlife calls "talking points," the governor's office calls a "script." And those answering the phones in the State Capitol heard the wording repeated about 85 times an hour Tuesday, and 25 times an hour Wednesday, according to Cara Eastwood, the governor's press secretary....
Bear Spray, Your Best Defense - Alaska Sportsman The angry bellowing of several coastal brown bears erupted behind a patch of ryegrass that separated me from the salmon stream. Bears gathered there were undoubtedly disputing fishing rights. As I angled across a mudflat to avoid the scuffle, a medium-sized bear emerged from the grass. His whimpering and bawling indicated he’d been a loser in the standoff, his head low as he ambled along. Catching sight of me, he launched into a gallop, growling as the 100 yards separating us rapidly dwindled. I had to restrain myself from running: There was nowhere to go and the bear easily could have run me down. So I squared off with his hurtling hulk, planted my feet and frantically groped for my can of bear spray. To my utter shock, the can was not on my hip. In a split second I realized I’d foolishly put it in my pack to get it out of the way as I hiked through dense brush. The thought had no sooner cleared my mind when a spray of sand shot up. The bear halted, mere feet away, staring at me, head down and growling. This was not going well. Intense bear encounters like this happen many times a year in Alaska: person meets bear, person has no deterrent, bear makes choices for both of them. Fortunately, bears often choose to walk away from such encounters—as did the bear in this case—but not always. Alaska has averaged 4.5 bear attacks a year since 1985, including 24 fatalities and 45 serious injuries. Few of the people involved in these horrific incidents probably imagined they were going to run into a bear, much less be mauled by one. But each did, and in each case things went bad, fast. With two colleagues, Stephen Herrero and Terry DeBruyn, I have been researching bears for most of my career....
Farm Bill Follies First, what do the farmers get? Answer: A lot. Last year, net farm income reached a record level of nearly $89 billion due to high crop prices. Farm household income averaged $84,000 in 2007, according to the Environmental Working Group (the 2006 average for all U.S. households was $66,000). Despite such good times, the federal government showered $5 billion in direct payments on 1.4 million farmers. These direct payments have nothing to do with crop productivity or a safety net in case of low prices—they are basically gifts to farmers just because they are farmers. In fact, farmers with gross incomes up to $2.5 million have been eligible for these payments. President Bush wants to cap that at $200,000 in income, but the House is considering a cap of $500,000, and the Senate voted to cap the payments at $750,000 per year in income. Overall, Congress shaved just 2 percent off of the direct payments of $5 billion per year over the next four years. While this is a barely discernible improvement, one would think record high farm incomes combined with a world food crisis would make this a good time for Congress to scrap farming subsidies altogether. It is true that about two-thirds of farm-bill spending funds nutrition programs such as school lunches and food stamps. Lawmakers added $10 billion to the food stamp program to help lower-income Americans address higher food prices. But why are food prices higher in the first place? Part of the reason is the federal government's subsidies and its mandate to turn food into fuel—which brings us to the legislation's energy policy madness. The new farm bill contains a small gesture in the direction of sanity by reducing bioethanol subsidies from 51 cents per gallon to 45 cents per gallon. This should reduce the price of a bushel of corn by about 3 cents, according to the Des Moines Register. On the other hand, Congress is trying get around the unintended consequences of its biofuels policy by offering $1.01 per gallon subsidy for so-called cellulosic ethanol. Large-scale production of cellulosic ethanol has yet to take off, so the farm bill also disperses $400 million in tax credits in the hope of jumpstarting such production. In addition, the bill extends the tariff on imported ethanol until 2012....
California's farm belt adopts measures to cut air pollution Environmentalists say a new plan to clean up the soot-laden air in California's farm belt would fail to adequately regulate agricultural sources of pollution. Critics of the plan unfurled white prayer flags Wednesday outside the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District's meeting in Fresno to illustrate the premature deaths they say are associated with the valley's polluted air. California's farm belt has some of the highest levels of airborne dust, smoke and soot in the country. The district's governing board voted 8-3 in favor of a plan that could keep families from using their fireplaces for up to 35 days each winter and require local employers to make a portion of their workers car pool. The plan is meant to comply with standards set in 1997 under the federal Clean Air Act. More rigorous standards were adopted in 2006. Air quality advocates said the plan should have done more to regulate dairies, wineries and diesel pumps on farms, which are among the many sources of air pollution....
$10,000 bounty put out on cattle killer’s head A reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those involved in the shooting of nine cows and a week-old calf last week in Skull Valley near Lone Rock was upped to $10,000 Thursday — a sum pledged by the Humane Society of Utah, state and local farm bureaus, the Utah Cattlemen’s Association, and the Tooele County Commission. “The county is serious about finding the shooters,” Tooele County Commissioner Jerry Hurst said. “We are very upset and want to do what we can to bring them to justice. When ranchers lose one cow it’s devastating, but when you lose 10 it’s unthinkable. Those people who are doing this obviously have no regard for animals.” The cows were grazing on Bureau of Land Management property leased by cattle owner Martin Anderson, who said six cows and a calf were found dead at the site. Anderson had to put down the other three cows because they were severely wounded. The animals had bullet wounds in their heads, torsos, shoulders and hips, and many were shot multiple times. Of the nine adult cows that were killed, seven had new calves, which now require bottle feeding....
School Lunch Suppliers Complying After Humane Handling Audit U.S. beef processors implicated in a USDA audit of slaughterhouses in the wake of the Hallmark/Westland recall have remedied the problems that prompted the agency's Food Safety and Inspection Service to issue reprimands, an agency spokeswoman told Meatingplace.com. FSIS spokeswoman Amanda Eamich emphasized this point following an Associated Press article published Wednesday citing information obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request for details of a humane-handling audit of 18 processors that supply beef to the National School Lunch Program. Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.) had requested the special audit after abuses at Chino, Calif.-based Hallmark/Westland made national headlines. Hallmark/Westland was a school lunch program supplier. "We reported back to [Kohl] more than three weeks ago," Eamich said. "Really, this isn't any new development."....
Trent Loos, Rancher-Activist-Advocate For Farmers & Producers If you want to get Trent Loos to sit still for an interview, you’d better be prepared to work around his schedule, which includes hosting radio shows, launching promotional campaigns, creating a regular e-newsletter and speaking at dozens of agricultural meetings and conferences every year. And try not to schedule a conversation during a raging blizzard sweeping over the Loup, Nebraska, area where he farms and ranches – especially not when his goats are delivering kids and a mountain lion roaming the area has already picked off two of his herd. But when he’s not tracking cougars or caring for livestock, Loos puts his passion into a cause that ought to be a priority with all farmers and ranchers, no matter what they’re raising: Communicating to consumers the benefits of our food production system and the safe, abundant, affordable sustenance we all too often take for granted. His radio programming, which encompasses an audience of more than four million on 100-plus stations across the country, includes daily Loos Tales and Rural Route programming, various “Trails & Tales” and a Truth Be Told show. His Loos Tales TV programming, which examines the people, places and policies affecting rural America, airs weeknights at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. Central on Dish Network 9411....

FLE

Only 12 Miles of Real Border Fence Done Despite Law and May Deadline Two years after President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act into law, requiring 700 miles of double-layer fencing to be constructed along five stretches of the southern U.S. border by May 2008, only 90 miles of fencing have been built -- and just 12 miles of it is double-layered. "By eliminating the double-fence requirement, the Democratic Congress is going to make it easier for drug and human smugglers to cross our Southern land border," Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), who wrote the original fencing specification in the Secure Fence Act, said when the U.S. House passed a resolution altering the language of the act, including eliminating the double-layer requirement for the fencing. The resolution also said that "at least" 370 miles of fencing should be built, with no time table given. Now, with a new administration coming in eight months, the future of the border fence may be linked to who wins the presidency....
Neb. AG refuses to sue for immigrants' fair housing rights Anne Hobbs was angry. The head of the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission had just learned of a Hispanic couple who said their landlord asked for their driver's licenses - but didn't ask the same of non-Hispanic tenants. Hobbs said it sounded like the couple were "treated differently than everybody else because of national origin," and sent the case to the state's top prosecutor, hoping he would sue on their behalf under fair housing laws. When Attorney General Jon Bruning received the case, he was angry, too - for a different reason than Hobbs. "I'm not going to use taxpayer dollars to file lawsuits for illegal aliens," said Bruning after learning the couple was in the U.S. illegally. "You're not going to get a free lawyer" from his office, he said, "if you're not a citizen of this country." Critics say Bruning's legal rationale is so off-base that he may end up in court after all - and not as a prosecutor. Immigration activists suggest they may be laying the groundwork for a first-of-its kind lawsuit, with Bruning as the defendant....
Break-ins plague targets of US Attorneys In two states where US attorneys are already under fire for serious allegations of political prosecutions, seven people associated with three federal cases have experienced 10 suspicious incidents including break-ins and arson. These crimes raise serious questions about possible use of deliberate intimidation tactics not only because of who the victims are and the already wide criticism of the prosecutions to begin with, but also because of the suspicious nature of each incident individually as well as the pattern collectively. Typically burglars do not break-into an office or private residence only to rummage through documents, for example, as is the case with most of the burglaries in these two federal cases. In Alabama, for instance, the home of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman was burglarized twice during the period of his first indictment. Nothing of value was taken, however, and according to the Siegelman family, the only items of interest to the burglars were the files in Siegelman's home office. Siegelman's attorney experienced the same type of break-in at her office. In neighboring Mississippi, a case brought against a trial lawyer and three judges raises even more disturbing questions. Of the four individuals in the same case, three of the US Attorney’s targets were the victims of crimes during their indictment or trial. The main target of the indictment, attorney Paul Minor, had his office broken into, while Mississippi Supreme Court Justice, Oliver E. Diaz Jr., had his home burglarized. According to police reports and statements from Diaz and from individuals close to Minor, nothing of value was taken and the burglars only rummaged through documents and in Minor’s case, also took a single computer from an office full of expensive office equipment....
Telecoms and the Bush administration talked about how to keep their surveillance program under wraps The Bush administration is refusing to disclose internal e-mails, letters and notes showing contacts with major telecommunications companies over how to persuade Congress to back a controversial surveillance bill, according to recently disclosed court documents. The existence of these documents surfaced only in recent days as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by a privacy group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The foundation (alerted to the issue in part by a NEWSWEEK story last fall) is seeking information about communications among administration officials, Congress and a battery of politically well-connected lawyers and lobbyists hired by such big telecom carriers as AT&T and Verizon. Court papers recently filed by government lawyers in the case confirm for the first time that since last fall unnamed representatives of the telecoms phoned and e-mailed administration officials to talk about ways to block more than 40 civil suits accusing the companies of privacy violations because of their participation in a secret post-9/11 surveillance program ordered by the White House....
Court-Approved Wiretapping Rose 14% in '07 Last year might have been a rough year for U.S. home prices, but growth in government wiretaps remained healthy, with the eavesdropping sector posting a 14% increase in court orders compared to 2006. In 2007, judges approved 4,578 state and federal wiretaps, as compared to 4,015 in 2006, according to two new reports on criminal and intelligence wiretaps. State police applied for 27% more wiretaps in 2007 than in 2006, with 94% of them targeting cell phones, according to figures released by the U.S. Courts' administrator. In 2007, state judges approved 1,751 criminal wiretap applications, without turning any of them down, according to the report (.pdf). That's a near-three fold increase in state wiretaps since 1997. Federal criminal wiretaps remained fairly constant -- hovering around 500 -- though exact numbers aren't known since the Justice Department has begun withholding information from the administrators of the U.S. court regarding sensitive investigations. As for wiretaps aimed at suspected spies and terrorists, the feds applied for 2,370 orders for wiretaps and physical searches from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, according to a separate annual wiretap report (.pdf) to Congress. The court modified 86 of these, and rejected three. The number of approved applications are up 9% from 2006, when the government approved 2,176 applications. It's unclear how many people these orders applied to since they can name more than one target, and in January 2007, the Bush Administration began getting so-called basket warrants from the secret court, in order to reduce the political heat over its warrantless wiretapping program. Those orders, which the administration described as "innovative," likely covered many individuals or entire geographic regions and required periodic re-authorization from the court....
Post Carrier Accused of Warning Customer About 'Mail Cover' Surveillance Here's a good reason to remember your postal carrier at Christmas time. Apparently, he or she can tell you if the government is secretly monitoring your mail. Federal prosecutors in Detroit say letter carrier Darlene Cry illegally tipped off a postal customer that he was the subject of a "mail cover" -- a form of warrantless surveillance in which the envelope information on every card and letter received is secretly recorded by the Post Office, then passed to federal law enforcement or intelligence officials. "From on or about April 22, 2005 thought on or about May 21, 2005, a mail cover was conducted for all mail pieces addressed to an individual residing on Lauder Street in Detroit, Michigan who was, at all times relevant to the Information, the subject of an ongoing federal criminal investigation," reads the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on Friday. On July 8th of that year, Cry "did disclose to the subject … that his mail was monitored by the Postal Service," the complaint alleges, violating a federal law against disclosing confidential government information, a misdemeanor. Courts have ruled that Americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the address information on their mail, and mail covers have a long and storied history in the annals of domestic surveillance. In the 1970s, the Church Committee found that the CIA and FBI had used the mail cover program as a front to secretly open, copy and re-seal some 215,000 letters, in a single spying operation run from an office in New York....

Amber Waves Of Pain Once seen as a way of decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels, ethanol now is being viewed by many as interfering with people's dependence on food. On Tuesday, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, introduced legislation to freeze the mandate in last year's energy bill requiring a fivefold increase in ethanol production by 2022. As Hutchinson stated on these pages the day before: "This was a well-intentioned measure, but it was also impractical. Nearly all our domestic corn and grain supply is needed to meet this mandate, robbing the world of one of its most important sources of food." Diverting food to fuel, she noted, has contributed to a 240% rise in the price of corn, wheat and soybeans since February 2006. The rising price of grain raises the cost of raising farm and ranch animals. This raises the price of beef, poultry, milk and eggs. Also on Tuesday, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, called on Congress to revisit the ethanol mandate and asked the EPA to exercise its "congressionally given authority to waive all or portions of these food-to-fuel mandates as part of its rule-making process." "Decades of ill-conceived planning by politicians and bureaucrats afraid of expanding our energy supplies are now bearing an ugly fruit," Inhofe said. "Our current biofuels mandates are having massive and potentially life-threatening consequences." Even Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat from corn-growing Illinois, said of the issue: "The object of having homegrown fuel in America is a good goal. . . . But we have to understand it's had an impact on food prices . . . even in the corn belt. We better be honest about it." Indeed, let's be honest about ethanol. It receives a 51-cents-per-gallon tax subsidy, which will cost $4.5 billion this year....
Chickenfeedhawks Last week, Time magazine featured on its cover the iconic photograph of the U.S. Marine Corps raising the flag on Iwo Jima. But with one difference: The flag has been replaced by a tree. The managing editor of Time, Rick Stengel, was very pleased with the lads in graphics for cooking up this cute image and was all over the TV sofas talking up this ingenious visual shorthand for what he regards as the greatest challenge facing mankind: “How To Win The War On Global Warming.” And which obscure island has it been planted on? In Haiti, the Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was removed from office on April 12. Insofar as history will recall him at all, he may have the distinction of being the first head of government to fall victim to “global warming” — or, at any rate, the “war on global warming” that Time magazine is gung-ho for. At least five people have been killed in food riots in Port-au-Prince. Prices have risen 40 percent since last summer and, as Deroy Murdock reported, some citizens are now subsisting on biscuits made from salt, vegetable oil and (mmmm) dirt. Dirt cookies: Nutritious, tasty, and affordable? Well, one out of three ain’t bad. Unlike “global warming,” food rioting is a planet-wide phenomenon, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Ivory Coast to the tortilla rampages in Mexico and even pasta protests in Italy. So what happened? Well, Western governments listened to the eco-warriors, and introduced some of the “wartime measures” they’ve been urging. The EU decreed that 5.75 percent of petrol and diesel must come from “biofuels” by 2010, rising to 10 percent by 2020. The U.S. added to its 51 cents-per-gallon ethanol subsidy by mandating a five-fold increase in “biofuels” production by 2022. The result is that big government accomplished at a stroke what the free market could never have done: They turned the food supply into a subsidiary of the energy industry. When you divert 28 percent of U.S. grain into fuel production, and when you artificially make its value as fuel higher than its value as food, why be surprised that you’ve suddenly got less to eat?....
Wildlife groups call for end to Mexican wolf removal policy Two wildlife conservation groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday to keep federal agencies from aggressively removing endangered Mexican gray wolves that have attacked livestock more than twice from a recovery program in Arizona and New Mexico. WildEarth Guardians and The Rewilding Institute are asking the U.S. District Court to stop the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's removal policy, known as "Standard Operating Procedure 13." Under the policy, Fish and Wildlife removed 45 wolves from the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area during the past three years. That's almost twice the number that the agency removed in the prior seven years. The removal sometimes involves killing the wolves and other times involves bringing them back to captivity, authorities said. "We don't think the removal of any of the wolves in the wild is appropriate," said Rob Edward, director of carnivore restoration at Santa Fe-based WildEarth Guardians. "The top priority should be the recovery of the species." Meanwhile, Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity also sued the Fish and Wildlife, hoping to force the agency to develop a recovery plan and habitat for the endangered American jaguar. The group said that construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border will stop jaguars from re-colonizing their former habitats in the southern United States....
Whale-watching boats are putting whales in jeopardy In the lush waters of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, whale watching is one of the region's most beloved - and jaw-dropping - experiences. When one of the animals is spotted in the dark, cold waters, boats filled with awestruck tourists make a beeline to watch the leviathan feed and, if luck is with them, breach. But a new study says whale-watching boats are going too fast near whales, endangering them and disregarding a decade-old pledge to slow down. As part of the study, published this month in the journal Conservation Biology, researchers went undercover 46 times in 2003-2004 on ships owned by New England's whale-watching companies. Armed with global positioning system units, the observers recorded time, speed, and location at 5-second intervals. Every trip exceeded the voluntary speed limits, sometimes more than threefold, they found. "I want to see whale watching, but it has to be done in a way as safe as we can make it," said Dave Wiley, lead author of the report, funded by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, an advocacy group. "They are going too fast," said Wiley, research coordinator for the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. The whale-watching companies are not named in the study....
Battle over eminent domain is another civil rights issue Few policies have done more to destroy community and opportunity for minorities than eminent domain. Some 3 to 4 million Americans, most of them ethnic minorities, have been forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of urban renewal takings since World War II. The fact is that eminent-domain abuse is a crucial constitutional rights issue. Current eminent domain horror stories in the South and elsewhere are not hard to find. At this writing, for example, the city of Clarksville, Tenn., is giving itself authority to seize more than 1,000 homes, businesses and churches and then resell much of the land to developers. Many who reside there are black, live on fixed incomes, and own well-maintained Victorian homes. Eminent domain has always had an outsized impact on the constitutional rights of minorities, but most of the public didn’t notice until the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London. In Kelo, the Court endorsed the power of a local government to forcibly transfer private property to commercial interests for the purpose of “economic development.”....
Many Ways To Deal With Energy But First Things First: Start Drilling What to do about oil? First it went from $60 to $80 a barrel, then from $80 to $100 and now to $120. Perhaps we can persuade OPEC to raise production, as some senators suggest; but this seems unlikely. The truth is that we're almost powerless to influence today's prices. We are because we didn't take sensible actions 10 or 20 years ago. If we persist, we will be even worse off in a decade or two. The first thing to do: Start drilling. It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits. These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government estimates, these areas may contain 25-30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves). What keeps these areas closed are exaggerated environmental fears, strong prejudice against oil companies and sheer stupidity. Americans favor both "energy independence" and cheap fuel. They deplore imports — who wants to pay foreigners? — but oppose more production in the United States. Got it?
Republicans Go Green? California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, once the proud owner of a fleet of gas-guzzling Humvees, got religion on global warming pretty quickly after taking office. And in one of the great political reversals of the decade, he has emerged as a major figure in the environmental movement. Last week Yale University hosted the signing by Schwarzenegger and a handful of other governors of a "Declaration on Climate Change" (no substance, just lofty principles). He delivered the keynote address to a large crowd of overachieving tree-huggers. If it had been a different audience, you might say he threw them some red meat. But given the venue, let's just say Schwarzenegger was dishing prime tofu. But he also railed against the "enviro-wimps" who prevent him from taking tougher action on climate change. Environmentalists want renewable energy, he said, "but they don't want you to put it anywhere. .  .  . It's not just businesses that slows things down, it's not just Republicans that have slowed things down, it's also Democrats and sometimes those environmental activists that slow things down." Schwarzenegger also blamed Washington, and while he was careful not to name names, everybody understood that the man really slowing things down keeps office hours in an oval room. Yet just two days before, President Bush had made an Arnold-like U-turn of his own, delivering a major speech on global warming in which he set a target date for capping greenhouse emissions (delightfully distant 2025), and spoke of "working toward a climate agreement that includes the meaningful participation of every major economy."....
Rage over Mt. Taylor — Rumors of closure fly More than 200 people packed the Cibola County Convention Center to give voice to concerns and feelings about Mount Taylor and the recent decision to temporarily list parts of the sacred mountain as a cultural property. The Cibola County Commission called for the special meeting of the commission to allow time to the large number of people who wished to speak to the issues raised when the New Mexico State Historical Preservation Division of the Department of Cultural Affairs held an emergency meeting Feb. 22. Citizens from the Cibola area expressed outrage that they were not notified of the pending decision. Star Gonzales of the New Mexico Mining Museum was contacted about the meeting by telephone. Gonzales attended the meeting and asked that the review be postponed, but the request was denied, said the energy spokeswoman, who was present at the SHPO review. Ben Chavez of the Cubero Land Grant said land grant residents east of the mountain had never been notified of the meeting. Neither of the newspapers in wide circulation in Cibola County was given notice of the meeting. KDSK/KMIN radio in Grants first heard of the meeting in a news release announcing the decision, after the event....
Forest Service struggling with Wyoming Range The Forest Service is trying to clean up the mess it made by involving Denver-based Stanley Energy in meetings about environmental studies for disputed energy leases on the Wyoming Range. But the agency might not be as much to blame as Governor Dave Freudenthal, as well as the general public, might believe. Freudenthal has already sent two livid letters to the Forest Service deriding the agency’s rash choice of including Stanley Energy, or Stanley, in initial discussions about the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS), a document due for release in November that will determine whether 44,720 acres on the Wyoming Range should be leased for energy development. Although the Forest Service announced last week that Stanley will no longer be included in the meetings about the environmental studies, the governor has demanded that the agency trash the DSEIS and start anew, or at least pace its “aggressive timeline” and allow more public input with a Reasonably Foreseeable Development (RFD). An RFD is a baseline projection of gas exploration, development, production and reclamation prepared by qualified specialists and subject to peer review....
Mine plan near Mount St. Helens nixed The Bureau of Land Management has rejected a lease application from a Colorado-based company seeking to mine copper 12 miles northeast of the Mount St. Helens crater, just outside the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. The surprise decision Wednesday effectively ends the effort by Moly Inc. of Lakewood, Colo., to develop its mining claims on the federal land. “Given the BLM decision of no action on the lease application, it’s our intention to spend no further time, money or energy on the application,” said Seth Foreman, the company’s manager of investor relations. Instead, he said, the company, formerly Idaho General Mining Inc. of Spokane, will focus on developing two molybdenum mines in central Nevada. Ed Shepard, BLM director for Washington and Oregon, said the agency was not able to determine whether a hard-rock mining lease would be compatible with the purpose for which the lands in question were purchased. The Forest Service bought a portion of the land from the Trust for Public Land in 1986, using Land and Water Conservation Funds. Congress appropriates those funds from offshore oil and gas leasing revenues and dedicates them to buying land for state and local conservation projects....
Road Dust from Gas Rigs Eroding Ancient Pictographs in Nine Mile Canyon Road dust from gas rigs traveling through Nine Mile Canyon near Price is slowly sanding away pictographs from ancient American Indian cultures. The defacing of these archaeological sites will speed up with the increased traffic from a proposed expansion of a nearby gas field, says Nine Mile Canyon Coalition member Ivan White, with a voice hoarse from spending the afternoon in the dusty canyon. "We don't have any desire to stop the gas drilling, but we do not want the longest art gallery in the world, you know, to be completely destroyed," White says. Today is the last day for public comment on the draft Environmental Impact Statement for Bill Barrett Corporation's proposal to fully develop the gas field south of Nine Mile Canyon. White's group has asked the Bureau of Land Management to extend the deadline for 2 months to further study the dust, survey the archaeological sites, and conduct an engineering study of alternate routes to the gas field. The Environmental Coordinator for BLM's Price Field Office, Brad Higdon, says results of a recent study on dust and the use of magnesium chloride as a dust suppressant indicate they are contributing to the erosion of the ancient art carved into the canyon's walls. In light of this study, Higdon says the BLM is partnering with Carbon County to test different dust suppression methods along Nine Mile Canyon Road to determine short-term fixes for the problem, and possible long-term solutions....
Wildlife panel wrestles with energy drilling Limiting energy company access to sensitive wildlife areas and fine-tuning requirements for after-drilling cleanup led discussion Wednesday as the Colorado Wildlife Commission hammered out a resolution to send to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. House Bill 1298 requires the oil and gas commission to balance energy development with wildlife conservation and to consult with the wildlife commission on ways to minimize the affect of development on wildlife. The oil and gas commission already has a set of draft regulations on the table, and the wildlife commission Wednesday tackled what it saw as shortcomings in the oil and gas commission draft. Chief among those concerns are timing restrictions, surface-occupancy limitations and reclamation. The wildlife commission wants reclamation, particularly the reseeding of disturbed land including well pads and pipelines, done quickly, using a proper seed mix of wildlife-favorable forbs, shrubs and grasses. The timing stipulations, which would limit when and how long an energy company can operate in sensitive areas, centered on impacts to greater sage grouse and mule deer. Timing restrictions are “one area the energy companies pushed back real hard,” DOW Director Tom Remington said. “These directly affect their profitability. Bureau of Land Management (timing stipulations) are routinely waived. We want to find a way to keep some. They are our leverage to get industry to come to the table to discuss other impacts.”....
Ocean Cooling to Briefly Halt Global Warming, Researchers Say Parts of North America and Europe may cool naturally over the next decade, as shifting ocean currents temporarily blunt the global-warming effect caused by mankind, Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences said. Average temperatures in areas such as California and France may drop over the next 10 years, influenced by colder flows in the North Atlantic, said a report today by the institution based in Kiel, Germany. Temperatures worldwide may stabilize in the period. The study was based on sea-surface temperatures of currents that move heat around the world, and vary from decade to decade. This regional cooling effect may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases building up around the earth, said Richard Wood, a research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. provider of environmental and weather-related services. ``Those natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period,'' Wood said in an interview. ``Without knowing that, you might erroneously think there's no global warming going on.''....
Pressure mounts to drop 'squaw' from place names Moves to eliminate the term "squaw" from names of geographical sites are accelerating because of protests that the term is offensive. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names has renamed 16 valleys, creeks and other sites so far this year. Pending proposals mean 2008 should see more changes than any year in a decade, the board says. American Indians consider "squaw" a derogatory term for women, says Jacqueline Johnson of the National Congress of American Indians. Native Americans have pushed states and the federal government to eliminate it. Their most high-profile success came April 10, when the federal board renamed Squaw Peak, a hiking spot outside Phoenix, Piestewa Peak to honor Lori Piestewa, a Hopi-Hispanic soldier from Arizona who was killed in Iraq in 2003. Nine states — Minnesota, Montana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Oregon, Maine, Florida, North Carolina and Tennessee — have passed laws changing names of public places that use certain terms defined as offensive. At least 940 places from churches to bridges and natural formations use the word, the names board says. At Squaw Valley in California, a push to rename the ski resort failed five years ago....
2 beef processors cited for humane violations Two of the nation's largest beef processors were slapped with humane handling violations during a government review of meat providers to the National School Lunch Program, records show. One of those companies' violations was rescinded after the company appealed, and the other company's appeal is pending. Audits by the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service resulted in "noncompliance" determinations for a National Beef Packing Co. plant in Dodge City, Kan., and a Cargill Meat Solutions plant in Fresno, Calif., according to information obtained by The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act request. Overall, the audits of 18 slaughterhouses found that some cattle were not being stunned properly on the first try, others were subject to overcrowding, and others had to be electrically prodded to get them to move. On Monday, after AP raised questions about Cargill's violations, FSIS officials notified the company that it was granting its appeal of the noncompliance determination and would instead issue a "letter of concern" to the plant. "The merits of their appeal were acceptable," FSIS spokeswoman Amanda Eamich said, while declining to provide any specifics. Cargill spokesman Mark Klein also declined to discuss why the noncompliance record was rescinded. The Agriculture Department told Sen. Herb Kohl in a letter three weeks ago that the audits found violations in four of the 18 slaughterhouses reviewed, including one serious enough to lead to a temporary suspension, but declined to identify the plants....
First Offspring of an Equine Clone Born in Italy Prometea, the blazed Haflinger who gained notoriety in 2003 as the world's first horse clone, has given birth to a colt. Today the Laboratorio di Tecnologie della Riproduzione (LTR) in Cremona, Italy, announced the March 17 arrival of Pegaso, who was produced by a single artificial insemination attempt. Continuing the family tradition of world firsts, Pegaso is the first offspring of an equine clone, and he's apparently healthy and thriving. Cesare Galli, DVM, and his research team at LTR were responsible for the production of Prometea, who was born on May 28, 2003. The first equine clone, born May 4 of that year, was a mule colt that was followed by the birth of two more cloned mules in June and July, respectively. Mules are sterile, so Prometea was the first candidate for reproducing. She was bred to Haflinger stallion Abendfurst, using artificial insemination....
State moves to ban fake testicles on vehicles Senate lawmakers in Florida have voted to ban the fake bull testicles that dangle from the trailer hitches of many trucks and cars throughout the state. Republican Sen. Cary Baker, a gun shop owner from Eustis, Florida, called the adornments offensive and proposed the ban. Motorists would be fined $60 for displaying the novelty items, which are known by brand names like "Truck Nutz" and resemble the south end of a bull moving north. The Florida Senate voted last week to add the measure to a broader transportation bill, but it is not included in the House version. In a spirited debate laced with double entendre, Senate lawmakers questioned whether the state should curtail freedom of expression in vehicle accessories. Critics of the ban included the Senate Rules Chairman, Sen. Jim King, a Jacksonville Republican whose truck sported a pair until his wife protested....
Tin can tied to colt's tail sparked gunfight It was a rainy day on Oct, 1, 1878. Texas Rangers were playing cards at a Ranger camp on the Banquete Creek west of Banquete. A man named Josh Peters, a 24-year-old son of a nearby rancher, asked one of the Rangers "Who tied that can to my colt's tail?" It was a prank. Peters' sorrel gelding was grazing nearby when a Ranger named George Talley, drinking tequila, took a tomato can, put gravel in it to make a rattling sound, and tied it to the colt's tail. It spooked the colt and he ran himself almost to death. Next day, an angry Josh Peters came to the Ranger camp. The story was told later by a Ranger George Durham in the book "Taming the Nueces Strip." The details also came out in a trial in Corpus Christi later. It was early evening. The Rangers were playing a card game called "pitch" when Peters showed up, on the prod. Peters said, "Who tied that can to my colt's tail? I'll whip the sorry bastard who did it." Talley, the guilty Ranger, put down his cards and started to stand up. "I done it." Both men pulled their guns and shots were fired. Talley got in the first shot and it hit Peters under the right rib, the bullet going through his heart. Peters' shot went wild and missed. Talley's second shot hit Peters in the temple. He was dead before he hit the ground. Four weeks later, on Oct. 30, 1878, Talley was indicted for murder....

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Aviation companies blame FBI, CIA and terrorists for 9/11 Aviation companies sued by the families of Sept. 11 victims for failing to safeguard air travel are in turn blaming federal investigators — arguing the Federal Aviation Administration was not alerted that al-Qaida was poised to launch terrorist attacks. In court documents filed this week in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, aviation companies are seeking to force five FBI employees to provide testimony that may help defend against claims the companies share blame in the attacks. "The aviation parties anticipate that the FBI witnesses' testimony will demonstrate that the FBI had information before Sept. 11 indicating that al-Qaida may have been about to launch terrorist attacks on civil aviation, which it did not timely pass along to the Federal Aviation Administration," lawyers wrote. The airlines and aviation companies are defending themselves against lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for injuries, fatalities, property damage and business losses related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. The latest documents filed by the airlines, airport authorities, security companies and an aircraft manufacturer argue that if the FAA had known about an FBI investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, it could have amended security measures to guard against the type of terrorist attack Moussaoui was planning. The aviation defendants said the FBI has refused to permit even a single deposition, although the agency does not deny that five potential witnesses in the case have already testified and made other public statements before the 9/11 Commission, the Moussaoui trial jury and the media. In the lawsuit against the CIA, companies including American Airlines Inc., United Airlines Inc., US Airways Group Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc., Continental Airlines Inc. and The Boeing Co. are seeking to interview the deputy chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit in 2001, and an FBI special agent assigned to the unit at that time. The names of both are secret....
FBI, politicos renew push for ISP data retention laws The FBI and multiple members of Congress said on Wednesday that Internet service providers must be legally required to keep records of their users' activities for later review by police. Their suggestions for mandatory data retention revive a push for potentially sweeping federal laws--which civil libertarians oppose--that flagged last year after the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the idea's most prominent proponent. FBI Director Robert Mueller told a House of Representatives committee that Internet service providers should be required to keep records of users' activities for two years. Also lending their support for data retention were Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., who said that Internet chat rooms were crammed with sexual predators, and Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary committee and a previous data retention enthusiast. Rep. John Conyers, the senior Democrat and chairman, added that any proposed data retention legislation submitted by the FBI "would be most welcome." It could mean forcing companies to store data for two years about what Internet addresses are assigned to which customers (Comcast said in 2006 that it would be retaining those records for six months). Or it could be far more intrusive. It could mean keeping track of e-mail and instant-messaging correspondence and what Web pages users visit. Some Democratic politicians have called for data retention laws to extend to domain name registries and Web hosting companies and even social-networking sites. During private meetings with industry officials, FBI and Justice Department representatives have said it would be desirable to force search engines to keep logs--a proposal that could gain additional law enforcement support, but raise additional privacy concerns and potentially conflict with European laws....
Heat-Seeking Missives There’s a move afoot on Capitol Hill to rein in some of the vast powers conferred upon government investigators by the PATRIOT Act, the infamous, hastily crafted law written in response to the September 11th attacks. New legislation has been introduced in both Houses of Congress intended to curb the FBI’s ability to collect private data on virtually anybody using a tool called a national security letter (NSL). The bills come in the wake of yet another damaging FBI inspector general report on the bureau’s abuse of its expanded authorities. And addressing that issue may start with a bill, sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), which would both drastically limit the circumstances under which these secretive orders are issued and strictly regulate how the information obtained is handled by the FBI. NSLs function, in some superficial ways, as traditional subpoenas. Like subpoenas, they require recipients to turn over information that might be relevant to criminal investigators. Unlike subpoenas, however, NSLs aren’t subject to judicial oversight, making them ripe for abuse. An NSL authorizes the acquisition of what’s known as metadata; information—like phone records, and financial statements—that reveal a suspect’s behavioral modes only. An NSL can’t, for instance, serve as a warrant for a wiretap, but it can be used to obtain reams of data about an individual’s calling patterns. It is often used to collect a person’s business (or “transactional”) information as well—with an NSL, the FBI can ask for a person’s insurance information, but not his medical records. NSLs aren’t subject to the approval of any court or judge, they can be issued under extremely broad circumstances, and, by way of a sweeping gag order, they forbid the recipient from discussing the information request under almost any circumstances. And their use has exploded since the passage of the PATRIOT Act, which removed almost all legal restrictions on the FBI’s authority to issue them....
Senators slam ID cards Republican and Democratic senators alike railed Thursday against the cost and potential privacy problems of the Real ID Act, but a Homeland Security official insisted that the department has borne much of the expense for new driver's license standards. "It is, as I see it, the worst kind of Washington, D.C., boondoggle," Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said at a hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs oversight subcommittee. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, who chairs the subcommittee, said the Real ID program could increase the problem of identity theft and pose significant challenges to the economy and the travel industry. "We cannot spend billions of dollars to erode Americans' privacy protections," Akaka said. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, the top Republican on the subcommittee, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, both criticized the significant costs to states and other potential flaws of the program. The government has estimated that the Real ID program will cost $10 billion to implement, with states picking up $4 billion of that tab. But Stewart Baker, an assistant secretary at the Homeland Security Department, said those figures were based on rough estimates from the states and that the actual amounts may be lower. Akaka, Tester, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and two Republicans together sponsored legislation that would repeal the Real ID requirements and establish a negotiated rule-making process before the Homeland Security Department could create standards for driver's licenses....
15,000 want off the U.S. terror watch list More than 15,000 people have appealed to the government since February to have their names removed from the terrorist watch list that delayed their travel at U.S. airports and border crossings, the Homeland Security Department says. The complaints have created such a backlog that members of Congress are calling for a speedier appeal system that would help innocent people clear their names so they won't fall under future suspicion. Among those who have been flagged at checkpoints: toddlers and senior citizens with the same names as suspected terrorists on the watch list. The Homeland Security Department says it gets about 2,000 requests a month from people who want to have their names cleared. That number is so high that the department has been unable to meet its goal of resolving cases in 30 days, says Christopher White, spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, which handles the appeals. He says the TSA takes about 44 days to process a complaint. In February, the TSA launched the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, a one-stop shop for people to appeal links to the watch list, which flags anyone with potential ties to terrorism. The list has more than 750,000 names....
Appeals court tosses out NYC lawsuit against gun industry A federal appeals court Wednesday tossed out New York City's lawsuit accusing the gun industry of selling firearms with the knowledge they can be diverted into illegal markets. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a federal law provides the gun industry with broad immunity from lawsuits brought by crime victims and violence-plagued cities. A federal judge had allowed the lawsuit to proceed, though it had not yet reached trial. New York is one of several cities that had sued gun makers. It said the industry violated public nuisance law by failing to take reasonable steps to stop widespread access to illegal firearms. The lawsuit asked for no monetary damages. It had sought a court order for gun makers to more closely monitor those dealers who frequently sell guns later used to commit crimes....
Bill Would Preserve Gun Background Check Records Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, has introduced a bill that would allow the FBI to keep background check information on approved gun buyers for 180 days. Since 2004, records of firearm transactions must be destroyed within 24 hours after those transactions are approved. (Prior to 2004, the FBI retained the records for 90 days.) Second Amendment supporters strongly oppose the retention of lawful gun sale records, seeing it as a step toward creating a national gun registration list. When the National Instant Criminal Background Check System began running at the end of 1998, the FBI said it would "not be used to establish a federal firearm registry" and that all information resulting in legal firearm transfers would be destroyed. Sen. Lautenberg's bill, the Preserving Records of Terrorist & Criminal Transactions (PROTECT) Act of 2008, also would require the FBI to retain for 10 years all background check records in cases where a would-be gun buyer's name is matched to a federal terrorist watch list. (Lautenberg tried to close the "terrorist loophole" in 2005, but the bill was never passed.)....
Satellite Base Damaged in Anti-US Protest In an embarrassing security breach, anti-war activists in New Zealand early Wednesday broke into a communications facility they say is part of a global surveillance system that benefits the U.S. anti-terrorist campaign. Three men were arrested after members of a group calling itself ANZAC Ploughshares said they cut through fences and slashed one of two giant white radomes covering satellite dishes, deflating the ball-shaped structure. Groups that have been protesting against the site for years claim it is part of a global eavesdropping network providing intelligence to the U.S. National Security Agency, and involving listening stations in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The alleged system, dubbed Echelon, was investigated by the European Parliament in 2001, following claims that it had been abused to benefit U.S. firms bidding for international contracts. The inquiry concluded that the system did exist, tracked mostly satellite-based messages, but also had the capacity to monitor telephone calls, faxes and emails....
Microsoft Helps Law Enforcement Get Around Encryption The growing use of encryption software -- like Microsoft's own BitLocker -- by cyber criminals has led Microsoft to develop a set of tools that law enforcement agents can use to get around the software, executives at the company said. Microsoft first released the toolset, called the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE), to law enforcement last June and it's now being used by about 2,000 agents around the world, said Anthony Fung, senior regional manager for Asia Pacific in Microsoft's Internet Safety and Anti-Counterfeiting group. Microsoft gives the software to agents for free. While Microsoft can point to wide usage of COFEE, some experts are skeptical about using that type of tool to recover data, and even the developer of the product at Microsoft acknowledges that it's not accepted by some users....