Union Pacific Railroad Company Pays $102 Million to Settle Union Pacific Railroad Company (UP) will pay the United States $102 million to settle a civil lawsuit brought by the government to recover damages connected with the 2000 Storrie forest fire in the Plumas and Lassen National Forests in Northern California, U.S. Associate Attorney General Kevin O'Connor, U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey and U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott announced today. The settlement is the largest recovery in U.S. Forest Service history in a forest fire case. On Aug. 17, 2000, the Storrie forest fire ignited in the Feather River Canyon north of Storrie, Calif., on the railroad right-of-way within the Plumas National Forest. The United States' complaint alleged that the fire started as a result of a midday railroad track repair operation by UP employees who failed to take the necessary precautions to prevent the fire. The government contended that UP track maintenance workers failed to clear the area of flammable material, and failed to use appropriate spark shields in connection with high-speed rail saws and grinders, allowing the escape of small, hot pieces of metal that ultimately started the fire....
Federal investigators inquire about Plum Creek, Forest Service talks Federal investigators have begun looking into closed-door negotiations between the Bush administration and Seattle-based Plum Creek Timber Co., the nation's largest owner of private land. Disturbed that negotiations about U.S. Forest Service road easements near Plum Creek lands in Montana took place privately, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., last month asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate both the private nature of those talks and their outcome. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama criticized the talks soon after he spent the Fourth of July in Montana. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service, confirmed Wednesday that the GAO contacted his office. "We met with them (investigators) once, and I expect we will meet again," Rey said in a phone interview. "They asked for information, which we provided and will continue to provide."....
Mountain bikers say they're being left out A disagreement over how to create a wilderness area is brewing in Southwest Colorado. At issue, about 150,000 acres in the Hermosa Creek Region right outside Durango. Several conservation groups want Congress to offer the area a protected status--but that has one particular group of recreators crying foul. Bruce Gordon is owner and operator of EcoFlights. He gives people a bird's eye view of scenic areas throughout the west. He says, "It's really a magical kind of place." Hunters, anglers, and conservationists are lobbying to have the 'West Hermosa Roadless Area' designated as wilderness. That means no motors, and no mountain bikes. Mary Monroe is the Executive Director of Trails 2000, a trail advocacy group operating in the Durango region. She says Hermosa Creek is known as one of the best mountain bike trails in the world." She says granting the entire area wilderness status would be unfair. Monroe says, "You can still hike on it you can still horseback on it you can still do things that our members like to do but there is one group that would be eliminated and that would be the mountain bikers." For months, different interests, including the San Juan Citizen's Alliance, Trout Unlimited, and Trails 2000 have been trying to come up with a plan that pleases everyone. But the mountain bikers have been the most vocal because primarily, they say they stand to lose the most--including a segment of the treasured Colorado trail. ...
Interior proposes lower royalties on oil shale he Bush administration on Tuesday proposed charging energy companies wanting to squeeze oil out of vast shale deposits in the West lower royalties than what they pay for drilling on other federal lands, including offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. In draft rules issued Tuesday, the Interior Department recommended a range of royalty rates for the extraction of oil from shale on 2 million acres of public property in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. All would be less -- at least for a time -- than the 12.5 percent to 18.8 percent the government currently collects from companies producing oil on and offshore. Interior officials said the discounted rate, which would be fixed at 5 percent in one proposal, would offer an incentive for companies to develop oil shale, which can cost up to three times more to produce than traditional oil. Shale oil also contains less energy than oil, coal and wood, the Interior Department said....
Limbaugh, Salazar trade oil-shale jabs The push to develop oil shale in Colorado is about helping oil companies and not about lowering gas prices, Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar said Wednesday in response to on-air criticism from radio host Rush Limbaugh. The day after the Bureau of Land Management unveiled preliminary rules for selling oil-shale leases in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, Limbaugh quoted President Bush as saying that shale could provide fuel to meet energy needs for more than 100 years and said Salazar was standing in the way. "Even with $4 a gallon gasoline, Salazar and his fellow Democrats are still preventing America from using our own resources to lower gas prices and create new jobs," Limbaugh said. Salazar, interviewed later on 850 KOA radio, said Limbaugh is "spreading falsehoods."....
Are we wasting billions fighting wildfires? More provocatively, the research suggests that fighting fires on public lands to protect homes is ineffective and, in the long run, counter-productive. It is also far more expensive. Federal agencies still put out nearly every fire that starts - of the around 80,000 blazes each year, just 327 are generally allowed to burn. Out of the 9.8 million acres that burned across the country last year, only about 430,000 acres burned without suppression, in what managers call "wildland fire use" blazes. Fire suppression costs have risen 6.5 times in a decade to $1.86 billion last year. At the same time, funding to make private homes and communities safer has dropped by more than 30 percent since 2001 - to less than $80 million in 2008 - and more cuts are proposed for 2009. This is the paradox of wildland fire management in America: Most scientists and fire managers agree that fire is a healthy and necessary part of the forest, and that fighting these blazes serves only to build up fuels and boost the size and frequency of catastrophic fires....
Firefighting burns money, manpower McCoy-Brown, a district ranger with the Boise National Forest, credits a nine-year, $1.6 million Forest Service program to thin trees and clear flammable brush with keeping the 300,000-acre Cascade Complex fire at bay last year. "It costs a lot less to do these projects than it does to fight a wildfire," she said. But taxpayers didn't see the savings. The Forest Service did fight that fire, at a cost of more than $53 million. While dollars and people were devoted to this and other forest fires around the West, preventive programs - like the one at Warm Lake - were put on hold. And fires rob federal agencies of more than just the resources needed to keep homes and cabins safe in the future. In big fire years - which, thanks in part to a century of suppression, are now more common than ever - money and manpower are diverted from recreational needs, environmental preservation and even timber sales. Scientists and land managers say the forests need fires to be healthy. They say requiring fire-proof roofs and clearing trees and shrubs within 100 feet of rural structures is a far cheaper and less dangerous way to protect private property than attacking forest fires deep in the wilderness....
BLM testing anti-dust solution A short-term solution may be at hand to diminish damage to ancient rock art in Nine Mile Canyon, where big rigs serving gas drilling on the West Tavaputs Plateau are kicking up dust laden with corrosive salt. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is working with Denver-based Bill Barrett Corp. and county officials to test a relatively benign dust suppressant that may replace the magnesium chloride the company now uses to wet the steep unpaved roads that lead to its gas field. The product, Pennzsuppress D, contains materials similar to pine resin and soap that can penetrate dirt and repel moisture but it doesn't require water and can be ground up into the roadbed instead of sprayed on the surface. "It looks like it has potential. It looks good. I am cautiously optimistic," said Pam Miller, chairwoman of the Nine Mile Canyon Coalition, a conservation group dedicated to preserving the ancient Puebloan cultural sites spread throughout the area....
Woman Attacked by Bear Expected to Survive A 57-year-old woman is recovering from serious injuries after she was mauled by a bear while walking her dogs in Kern County. The bear attacked Allena Hansen and her two dogs Tuesday morning near the tiny rural community of Caliente, about five miles away from an area that burned in a recent wildfire. Despite suffering severe lacerations to her face and head, Hansen escaped and somehow drove herself three miles to the nearby Piute fire station, authorities said. "For her to be attacked in that manner and drive to a fire station, she must have been running on pure adrenaline," county fire spokesman Sean Collins said. "It's quite incredible actually that she did manage to get herself down here because I'm figuring there must have been a lot of blood also involved as well", he added. Hansen's friend August Dunning says he's really not surprised that she survived the ordeal....
Nitrates that killed wild horses were a natural occurrence A study released by the Bureau of Land Management shows that high levels of nitrates present in water in a depression near Cactus Flat were not from industrial sources. The high nitrates were from a combination of evaporative concentration and animal waste and natural soil nitrogen from air deposition. Last June, 71 wild horses on the Nevada Wild Horse Range, which is within the U.S. Air Force's Nellis Test and Training Range, died from nitrate poisoning at the site of the depression. The study conducted by Desert Research Institute determined that the two sources of high nitrates that caused the deaths of the horses were: * An increase in the concentration of naturally occurring nitrate due to high rates of evaporation of the water, and * The chemical conversion of nitrogen to nitrate that occurs through a process called nitrification in natural materials, including animal waste and natural soil nitrogen produced by aerial deposition....
Drilling taking over Rockies Colorado's former big game manager, John Ellenberger, remembers when the Piceance Basin was called the state's mule-deer factory because of its tens of thousands of deer. The 7,110-square-mile basin, about 170 miles west of Denver and dissected by the Colorado River, boasts some of the largest deer and elk herds in the country. Now Ellenberger wonders if Colorado can keep those bragging rights. During a recent tour of the basin, 18-wheelers barreled down a county road as companies drilled holes and laid pipes for natural gas in what has become one of the nation's energy hot spots. "You definitely get this feeling of being in the middle of an industrial zone," Ellenberger said. Throughout the Rockies - the Pinedale Anticline of northwestern Wyoming, the Powder River Basin in northeastern Wyoming and southern Montana - the energy boom is changing a once-pristine landscape. It's generating lawsuits, regulatory fights and heated public relations battles between those championing America's untapped energy potential and those worried about populations of deer, elk, pronghorns and sage grouse....
Thursday, July 24, 2008
YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK
Are we angry enough to fight back? JAWS CLENCHED, blood pressures spiked, and radio talk-show hosts spontaneously combusted when the Globe reported last week that the $15 billion Big Dig - formerly known as the $12.2 billion Big Dig, and more formerly as the $7.7 billion Big Dig, and even, once upon a time, as the $2.5 billion Big Dig - will in fact cost a staggering $22 billion and not be paid off until 2038. The Page 1 story was filled with infuriating details, such as the revelation that 80 percent of Massachusetts Highway Department employees are being paid with borrowed money. Bay State politicians originally sold voters on the Big Dig in part by assuring them that Washington would pick up 90 percent of the cost. In reality, nearly three-fourths of the tab is coming from the pockets of Massachusetts drivers and taxpayers. What we were told in the 1980s would set us back about $350 million will actually cost us more than 50 times as much....
Code Enforcers Crack Down On “Silent Menace” Scott Banker always keeps a watchful eye on his 7 year old son, Ian, and his 8 year old niece, Miesha, when they play in their blue inflatable pool. But he acknowledges he has yet to comply with state and local building code laws including the installation of an audible alarm and a barrier fence around the pool. “I usually keep a pretty good eye on the pool, especially when they’re in it and even when they’re not in it…For the regulations, I think they’re a good idea,” said Banker. Massena Code Enforcement Officer Gregory Fregoe has been busy this summer checking for violators. He says any pool holding 24 inches of water or more, including inflatable blue pools, need a permit and should be surrounded by a 4 foot high locked fence or barrier. The law also requires the pool be equipped with an audible alarm that sounds should someone fall in....
Concern grows over a fiscal crisis for U.S. As the Bush administration proposes backstopping mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a $300 billion line of credit and Congress contemplates another economic stimulus, the question is who will bail out the government? "People seem to think the government has money," said former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. "The government doesn't have any money." A rare consensus has developed across the political spectrum that the government's own fiscal affairs are precarious, with an astonishing $53 trillion in long-term liabilities, according to the Government Accountability Office. To put that number in human terms, the debt has reached $455,000 per U.S. household. As that debt grows, the United States increasingly relies on foreigners, including China and Middle East oil producers, for financing....
Are we angry enough to fight back? JAWS CLENCHED, blood pressures spiked, and radio talk-show hosts spontaneously combusted when the Globe reported last week that the $15 billion Big Dig - formerly known as the $12.2 billion Big Dig, and more formerly as the $7.7 billion Big Dig, and even, once upon a time, as the $2.5 billion Big Dig - will in fact cost a staggering $22 billion and not be paid off until 2038. The Page 1 story was filled with infuriating details, such as the revelation that 80 percent of Massachusetts Highway Department employees are being paid with borrowed money. Bay State politicians originally sold voters on the Big Dig in part by assuring them that Washington would pick up 90 percent of the cost. In reality, nearly three-fourths of the tab is coming from the pockets of Massachusetts drivers and taxpayers. What we were told in the 1980s would set us back about $350 million will actually cost us more than 50 times as much....
Code Enforcers Crack Down On “Silent Menace” Scott Banker always keeps a watchful eye on his 7 year old son, Ian, and his 8 year old niece, Miesha, when they play in their blue inflatable pool. But he acknowledges he has yet to comply with state and local building code laws including the installation of an audible alarm and a barrier fence around the pool. “I usually keep a pretty good eye on the pool, especially when they’re in it and even when they’re not in it…For the regulations, I think they’re a good idea,” said Banker. Massena Code Enforcement Officer Gregory Fregoe has been busy this summer checking for violators. He says any pool holding 24 inches of water or more, including inflatable blue pools, need a permit and should be surrounded by a 4 foot high locked fence or barrier. The law also requires the pool be equipped with an audible alarm that sounds should someone fall in....
Concern grows over a fiscal crisis for U.S. As the Bush administration proposes backstopping mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a $300 billion line of credit and Congress contemplates another economic stimulus, the question is who will bail out the government? "People seem to think the government has money," said former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. "The government doesn't have any money." A rare consensus has developed across the political spectrum that the government's own fiscal affairs are precarious, with an astonishing $53 trillion in long-term liabilities, according to the Government Accountability Office. To put that number in human terms, the debt has reached $455,000 per U.S. household. As that debt grows, the United States increasingly relies on foreigners, including China and Middle East oil producers, for financing....
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
National Park Service Gun Ban Expanding ...On July 10, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to designate the Washington-Rochambeau Trail, which stretches 600 miles from Rhode Island to Yorktown, Virginia, as a National Historic Trail. Such a designation would place the trail under the jurisdiction of the Department of Interior and the National Park Service, thus subjecting the Washington-Rochambeau to the current NPS gun ban. Carrying firearms on land controlled by the NPS is prohibited, even if the state in which the land is located allows firearms. The only way you can legally have a firearm anywhere on National Park land currently is by having it unloaded and inaccessible, such as locked up in your trunk. While the Interior Department recently (after seven years of foot-dragging) proposed new rules to partially reverse the gun ban, they have not yet taken effect. If and when they do go into effect, most gun owners would still not be allowed to possess firearms on these lands because, among other problems with the rule, open carry would remain prohibited. Congress still needs to take action to make the gun ban repeal complete and permanent. Before the bill passed the House, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) filed an amendment with the Rules Committee to protect the Second Amendment on the trail. His amendment would have required that state and local laws govern firearms possession and carrying on the trail. The Rules Committee changed that language and made it apply only to hunting. Rep. Bishop denounced the Committee during debate on the measure, pointing out that the committee "did not defend all of the Second Amendment, only the so-called hunting rights, which is not, not the purpose of the Second Amendment." Rep. Bishop made a motion to send the bill back to committee with instructions to restore the pro-gun language. His motion narrowly failed, 211-202. The bill (H.R. 1286) now heads to the Senate where the situation is much more complex. Dr. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has been a leader on repealing the NPS gun ban. Sen. Coburn previously introduced a bill (S. 2619) to rescind the ban, but it remains bottled up by senate leadership. Earlier this year, Sen. Coburn entered into a so-called unanimous consent agreement with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to get a vote on his repeal language, but Sen. Reid reneged on his promise and blocked the vote. Sen. Coburn remains committed to forcing a vote on killing the NPS gun ban, and Sen. Reid seems equally committed to blocking that vote. Reid's most recent maneuver to silence Coburn is to introduce (as one measure) a package of bills that Coburn has held up on constitutional grounds. Rolling many bills into one, loaded with pork and pet projects to dole out to a variety of senators, is a transparent attempt to erode the widespread support Sen. Coburn has among his colleagues. If Reid is successful in passing so many bills at one time without debate, the ability of individual senators to force deliberate consideration and roll call votes on important legislation will be threatened. The reason each state has two senators is stop large population centers (such as an unholy alliance of NYC, Chicago and Los Angeles) from dictating their will upon the rest of the country. Historically, the rules of the Senate have always allowed any individual senator to keep the full body from acting in an unconstitutional manner. If other senators allow Reid to act as the dictator of the senate, Coburn's ability to stop the expansion of the NPS gun ban will be severely threatened. Unless Sen. Coburn's effort is successful in repealing the gun ban, the 600 mile Washington-Rochambeau -- which encompasses parts of major thoroughfares such as I-95 -- will become yet another Second Amendment infringement zone affecting hundreds of thousands of gun owners up and down the East Coast....
Pickens: Oil at $300 a barrel? Maybe Oil prices could hit $300 a barrel if the United States does not take drastic action to reduce its heavy dependence on foreign oil, but neither of the top presidential candidates is addressing the crisis, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens said Monday. To prevent economic bankruptcy as a result of sending $700 billion a year overseas to unstable oil producers in the Middle East and Africa, the nation needs to mobilize behind a plan to shift toward domestic energy sources such as natural gas, wind and solar power, he told reporters and editors of The Washington Times. "We are getting in trouble fast" and the economy is "already in the tank" because the nation is importing 70 percent of the fuel it needs each day, he said. "The price of oil will be $300 a barrel if you sit here and let it go" for another 10 years, said Mr. Pickens, chairman and chief executive officer of BP Capital. "We have no control over the price of gasoline and diesel. Whatever they're going to stick us with, we'll pay it."....
The lowdown on offshore oil reserves U.S. offshore oil fields could hold enough crude to supply all of the country's needs for more than 11 years. Or they might not. No one knows for certain because, with new offshore oil drilling banned on the East and West coasts, no one has gone looking for oil there in years. Now congressional Republicans are pushing hard to make offshore drilling a key issue in the presidential campaign, hoping to channel the anger Americans feel over historically high oil and gasoline prices. More oil, they argue, will bring lower prices. The federal government estimates the nation's outer continental shelf might hold 85.9 billion barrels of crude, including 10.13 billion barrels off California. For comparison, the United States consumes about 7.56 billion barrels of oil per year. The nation's sea floor also could hold 419.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, equal to U.S. consumption for 14 1/2 years. But the federal estimates are just that - estimates. "You don't really know what's there until you go out and drill a well," said Ken Medlock, an energy research fellow at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. "And even then, you're not 100 percent sure of what you're going to get."....
ANWR split gives GOP 2 platforms The official platform of the Republican Party this year may contrast with Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) position on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Differences between the party platforms and the policies of presidential nominees are rare, but this year they could be unavoidable on the Republican side because McCain has broken with the GOP on high-profile issues in recent years. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), co-chairman of the Republican Platform Committee, pointed out on Tuesday that McCain is open to having two platforms — one for the party and one for his campaign. House Republicans have called for an “all of the above” solution to the energy crisis, a broad plan that includes drilling in ANWR. McCain opposes drilling in ANWR, which he has called “a pristine place.”....
Senate Dems offer moderate concessions on drilling Senate Democrats on Tuesday announced modest concessions, such as expedited offshore leases, on expanded oil drilling, even as talks on an overall energy bill were teetering on the verge of collapse. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) unveiled a proposal to quicken the pace of processing new and existing applications for offshore leases. Such a proposal would be part of an overall bill that also includes a speculation crackdown and initiatives promoting renewable energy as well as conservation and a loosening of the policies that govern the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Bingaman said Democrats will not support lifting the congressional ban on offshore oil drilling in areas not currently leased. President Bush lifted an executive ban earlier this month and urged Congress to follow suit. “But we are saying that as to existing leases, there can be steps taken to ensure more diligent development of those leases, and would give authority to the Secretary of the Interior to take those steps,” Bingaman said. “As to parts of the Outer Continental Shelf that are not currently leased but could be leased, we say we can have accelerated leasing and investigation of those areas to see what areas could be leased.”....
Agencies, ranchers shift gears as wolves re-listed under ESA The landscape for the region's 1,500 wolves has shifted in ways big and small as a result of U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy's decision late Friday to grant a preliminary injunction restoring federal protection in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. In his ruling, Molloy said the federal government had not met its standard for wolf recovery, especially for wolves breeding across the region to ensure healthy genetics. The judge also indicated the dozen environmental groups that sought the injunction would prevail on the merits when the full case goes to court. Meanwhile, the circumstances under which wolves can be killed has been tightened again. Under state management plans, wolves were listed as a species in need of management in Montana, as a big game species in Idaho, and as a predator that could be killed anytime in most of Wyoming. All three states also had tentative wolf hunting seasons. Federal protection halts any wolf hunting and prohibits wolves from being killed except under certain conditions when they are attacking or threatening to attack livestock and domestic animals....
Wyoming's cavalier wolf plan set back delisting Blame it on Wyoming. Idaho's estimated 1,000-plus wolves are back under federal control largely because Wyoming has written a faulty plan for handling its own wolves. Late Friday, Missoula, Mont.-based U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy returned wolves to federal jurisdiction, for the time being. His injunction is a setback for Idahoans who have waited to manage wolves. It's all the more disappointing because Molloy generally endorsed Idaho's plan for wolves removed from the federal government's endangered species list. Molloy offers a sharp reminder. Idaho is not an island, and its wolves don't live in isolation. Recovering the wolf across the Northern Rockies - the goal of reintroduction - will require a regional effort. In the absence of one, a federal judge will step in on the wolves' behalf....
Wolf relisting is an unfortunate outcome After waiting for years to gain control over wolf management in the state, Wyoming finally got that authority when wolves were removed from the federal endangered species list in late March. Now that a federal judge in Montana has reinstated federal protection for the animals, it could be years before the state regains control. In some respects, Wyoming officials have themselves to blame. Their focus now should be on doing what it takes so the animals can be delisted again. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy's Friday ruling wasn't based solely on Wyoming's wolf management laws, which allow unregulated killing of the animals throughout most of the state. But there's no question that the Cowboy State's approach was a big reason the judge granted a preliminary injunction preventing Wyoming, Montana and Idaho from managing wolves while the March delisting is contested in court. In actuality, the injunction isn't warranted. There was little danger that the Northern Rockies wolf population would vanish under the states' management....
State still compensates ranchers for wolf depredation Although the federal government is once again in charge of wolf management in the Northern Rockies, the state of Wyoming will still be reimbursing ranchers whose livestock get killed by wolves, a state official said Tuesday. Regardless of whether wolves are considered endangered, Cowboy State law ensures that stock growers in the wolf trophy game zone -- in the extreme northwest corner of the state— -- will be compensated for confirmed wolf kills, said Eric Keszler, spokesman for the Game and Fish Department. And the program will continue, he said, unless state law is changed. The state Legislature appropriated $2.4 million to manage wolves during the 2009-10 budget period. That includes $540,000 to compensate ranchers for wolf depredation....
Fishermen are set to clash with ranchers Anglers are catching 20-inch trout where they haven't fished in a decade since the Utah Supreme Court decided they could walk on riverbeds on private land. Where the beds are considered private property, "the public has the right to touch privately owned beds of state waters in ways incidental to all recreational rights provided for in the easement," the 10-page Supreme Court opinion issued July 18 states. The decision stems from a case that involved a group of rafters in Morgan County who were charged with trespassing for standing in the Weber River near the Summit County line. The Conatser family was fishing when they encountered a fence stretched across the river by landowners trying to keep people out. The ruling could heighten the tension between ranchers and fishermen. "Hopefully, everybody can get along," said Chad Jaques, the owner of Trout Bum 2, a Snyderville Basin fly shop. The decision pleased many anglers, he said. "They feel like they are fishing somewhere where no one has been fishing for quite some time," Jaques said. But fishermen shouldn't taunt landowners, he warned....
Bombs Away? R-Calf says that the U.S. Air Force is proposing an expansion of a training range for B1 and B52 bombers over parts of the south Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. "You need to know how this could affect the operation of your ranch, the wildlife, the value of your land, and certainly the welfare of your livestock and/or farming operation, and it is important that you participate," urges longtime R-CALF USA Member Pat Goggins, who owns several large ranches in the Powder River Training Complex. "It's also important that homeowners, environmental stewards and sportsmen get concerned. This plan is detrimental to all aspects of life in this area as we know it." Goggins says the plan is for the U.S. Air Force's Strategic Air Command to use B1 and B52 bombers in the PRTC area for training missions, including high-altitude, sound-barrier breaking flights, and low-altitude runs down to within 500 feet of ground level. He says it also calls for night training missions where the use of flares could potentially start fires, as well as missions to drop training chaff to confuse radar transmissions. Flights could contain from four to 24 ships in a mission, covering from 37,800 square miles for high-altitude maneuvers, and 31,700 square miles of Military Operations Areas (MOAs) for low-altitude training....
No plastic bags in LA stores beginning July 2010 Los Angeles shoppers soon won't hear the question, "Paper or plastic?" at the checkout line. The City Council voted Tuesday to ban plastic shopping bags from stores, beginning July 1, 2010. Shoppers can either bring their own bags or pay 25 cents for a paper bag. The council's unanimous vote also puts pressure on the state, which is considering an Assembly bill that would ban plastic bags in 2012 and charge at least 15 cents per paper bag. "We've gotten to a point where we need to act as a city, where we can have real results," said Councilman Ed Reyes, who proposed the bag ban. "We're trying to do it in a way where we can educate and inform the public of what we're doing." Reyes said the ban will minimize cleanup costs for the city and reduce trash that collects in storm drains and the Los Angeles River. The city estimates more than 2 billion plastic bags are used each year in Los Angeles. About 5 percent of plastic bags and 21 percent of paper bags are recycled in California. Three percent of the bag fee will be returned to the retailer, 3 percent will go to the state, and the rest will go back to the city to fund an education campaign....A tax increase cloaked in environmentalism.
Argentine meat ban advances American ranchers and rural lawmakers won a quick victory last week. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved an addition to the agriculture spending bill that would effectively ban Argentine meat imports. Similar stand-alone legislation was introduced just this month in the Senate by Sens. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and in the House by Reps. Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.). Over the past year, ranchers and cattlemen have lobbied against Argentine imports due to worries that foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) had not been eradicated from Argentina’s livestock. Airborne and highly contagious, foot-and-mouth disease can devastate herds. Cooked Argentine meat can be imported here. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering allowing fresh and frozen meat in as well. Cattlemen celebrated the Senate action....
Tuberculosis threatens California dairy cows More than 4,800 dairy cows at risk of carrying tuberculosis were being slaughtered this month in central California, where nearly 16,000 cattle in the country's largest milk-producing region have been quarantined, federal officials said. Undersecretary of Agriculture Bruce Knight met privately with local dairy operators July 8 along with the state veterinarian and other industry officials monitoring three new cases of TB recently discovered in Fresno County dairies. Federal and state agriculture officials were still tightlipped about the identities and locations of the three dairies where cows tested positive for the disease, which can be transmitted to humans and other mammals through the air or through drinking unpasteurized milk from an infected cow. The discovery of the highly contagious respiratory disease prompted changes in interstate shipping regulations....
The lowdown on offshore oil reserves U.S. offshore oil fields could hold enough crude to supply all of the country's needs for more than 11 years. Or they might not. No one knows for certain because, with new offshore oil drilling banned on the East and West coasts, no one has gone looking for oil there in years. Now congressional Republicans are pushing hard to make offshore drilling a key issue in the presidential campaign, hoping to channel the anger Americans feel over historically high oil and gasoline prices. More oil, they argue, will bring lower prices. The federal government estimates the nation's outer continental shelf might hold 85.9 billion barrels of crude, including 10.13 billion barrels off California. For comparison, the United States consumes about 7.56 billion barrels of oil per year. The nation's sea floor also could hold 419.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, equal to U.S. consumption for 14 1/2 years. But the federal estimates are just that - estimates. "You don't really know what's there until you go out and drill a well," said Ken Medlock, an energy research fellow at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. "And even then, you're not 100 percent sure of what you're going to get."....
ANWR split gives GOP 2 platforms The official platform of the Republican Party this year may contrast with Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) position on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Differences between the party platforms and the policies of presidential nominees are rare, but this year they could be unavoidable on the Republican side because McCain has broken with the GOP on high-profile issues in recent years. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), co-chairman of the Republican Platform Committee, pointed out on Tuesday that McCain is open to having two platforms — one for the party and one for his campaign. House Republicans have called for an “all of the above” solution to the energy crisis, a broad plan that includes drilling in ANWR. McCain opposes drilling in ANWR, which he has called “a pristine place.”....
Senate Dems offer moderate concessions on drilling Senate Democrats on Tuesday announced modest concessions, such as expedited offshore leases, on expanded oil drilling, even as talks on an overall energy bill were teetering on the verge of collapse. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) unveiled a proposal to quicken the pace of processing new and existing applications for offshore leases. Such a proposal would be part of an overall bill that also includes a speculation crackdown and initiatives promoting renewable energy as well as conservation and a loosening of the policies that govern the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Bingaman said Democrats will not support lifting the congressional ban on offshore oil drilling in areas not currently leased. President Bush lifted an executive ban earlier this month and urged Congress to follow suit. “But we are saying that as to existing leases, there can be steps taken to ensure more diligent development of those leases, and would give authority to the Secretary of the Interior to take those steps,” Bingaman said. “As to parts of the Outer Continental Shelf that are not currently leased but could be leased, we say we can have accelerated leasing and investigation of those areas to see what areas could be leased.”....
Agencies, ranchers shift gears as wolves re-listed under ESA The landscape for the region's 1,500 wolves has shifted in ways big and small as a result of U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy's decision late Friday to grant a preliminary injunction restoring federal protection in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. In his ruling, Molloy said the federal government had not met its standard for wolf recovery, especially for wolves breeding across the region to ensure healthy genetics. The judge also indicated the dozen environmental groups that sought the injunction would prevail on the merits when the full case goes to court. Meanwhile, the circumstances under which wolves can be killed has been tightened again. Under state management plans, wolves were listed as a species in need of management in Montana, as a big game species in Idaho, and as a predator that could be killed anytime in most of Wyoming. All three states also had tentative wolf hunting seasons. Federal protection halts any wolf hunting and prohibits wolves from being killed except under certain conditions when they are attacking or threatening to attack livestock and domestic animals....
Wyoming's cavalier wolf plan set back delisting Blame it on Wyoming. Idaho's estimated 1,000-plus wolves are back under federal control largely because Wyoming has written a faulty plan for handling its own wolves. Late Friday, Missoula, Mont.-based U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy returned wolves to federal jurisdiction, for the time being. His injunction is a setback for Idahoans who have waited to manage wolves. It's all the more disappointing because Molloy generally endorsed Idaho's plan for wolves removed from the federal government's endangered species list. Molloy offers a sharp reminder. Idaho is not an island, and its wolves don't live in isolation. Recovering the wolf across the Northern Rockies - the goal of reintroduction - will require a regional effort. In the absence of one, a federal judge will step in on the wolves' behalf....
Wolf relisting is an unfortunate outcome After waiting for years to gain control over wolf management in the state, Wyoming finally got that authority when wolves were removed from the federal endangered species list in late March. Now that a federal judge in Montana has reinstated federal protection for the animals, it could be years before the state regains control. In some respects, Wyoming officials have themselves to blame. Their focus now should be on doing what it takes so the animals can be delisted again. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy's Friday ruling wasn't based solely on Wyoming's wolf management laws, which allow unregulated killing of the animals throughout most of the state. But there's no question that the Cowboy State's approach was a big reason the judge granted a preliminary injunction preventing Wyoming, Montana and Idaho from managing wolves while the March delisting is contested in court. In actuality, the injunction isn't warranted. There was little danger that the Northern Rockies wolf population would vanish under the states' management....
State still compensates ranchers for wolf depredation Although the federal government is once again in charge of wolf management in the Northern Rockies, the state of Wyoming will still be reimbursing ranchers whose livestock get killed by wolves, a state official said Tuesday. Regardless of whether wolves are considered endangered, Cowboy State law ensures that stock growers in the wolf trophy game zone -- in the extreme northwest corner of the state— -- will be compensated for confirmed wolf kills, said Eric Keszler, spokesman for the Game and Fish Department. And the program will continue, he said, unless state law is changed. The state Legislature appropriated $2.4 million to manage wolves during the 2009-10 budget period. That includes $540,000 to compensate ranchers for wolf depredation....
Fishermen are set to clash with ranchers Anglers are catching 20-inch trout where they haven't fished in a decade since the Utah Supreme Court decided they could walk on riverbeds on private land. Where the beds are considered private property, "the public has the right to touch privately owned beds of state waters in ways incidental to all recreational rights provided for in the easement," the 10-page Supreme Court opinion issued July 18 states. The decision stems from a case that involved a group of rafters in Morgan County who were charged with trespassing for standing in the Weber River near the Summit County line. The Conatser family was fishing when they encountered a fence stretched across the river by landowners trying to keep people out. The ruling could heighten the tension between ranchers and fishermen. "Hopefully, everybody can get along," said Chad Jaques, the owner of Trout Bum 2, a Snyderville Basin fly shop. The decision pleased many anglers, he said. "They feel like they are fishing somewhere where no one has been fishing for quite some time," Jaques said. But fishermen shouldn't taunt landowners, he warned....
Bombs Away? R-Calf says that the U.S. Air Force is proposing an expansion of a training range for B1 and B52 bombers over parts of the south Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. "You need to know how this could affect the operation of your ranch, the wildlife, the value of your land, and certainly the welfare of your livestock and/or farming operation, and it is important that you participate," urges longtime R-CALF USA Member Pat Goggins, who owns several large ranches in the Powder River Training Complex. "It's also important that homeowners, environmental stewards and sportsmen get concerned. This plan is detrimental to all aspects of life in this area as we know it." Goggins says the plan is for the U.S. Air Force's Strategic Air Command to use B1 and B52 bombers in the PRTC area for training missions, including high-altitude, sound-barrier breaking flights, and low-altitude runs down to within 500 feet of ground level. He says it also calls for night training missions where the use of flares could potentially start fires, as well as missions to drop training chaff to confuse radar transmissions. Flights could contain from four to 24 ships in a mission, covering from 37,800 square miles for high-altitude maneuvers, and 31,700 square miles of Military Operations Areas (MOAs) for low-altitude training....
No plastic bags in LA stores beginning July 2010 Los Angeles shoppers soon won't hear the question, "Paper or plastic?" at the checkout line. The City Council voted Tuesday to ban plastic shopping bags from stores, beginning July 1, 2010. Shoppers can either bring their own bags or pay 25 cents for a paper bag. The council's unanimous vote also puts pressure on the state, which is considering an Assembly bill that would ban plastic bags in 2012 and charge at least 15 cents per paper bag. "We've gotten to a point where we need to act as a city, where we can have real results," said Councilman Ed Reyes, who proposed the bag ban. "We're trying to do it in a way where we can educate and inform the public of what we're doing." Reyes said the ban will minimize cleanup costs for the city and reduce trash that collects in storm drains and the Los Angeles River. The city estimates more than 2 billion plastic bags are used each year in Los Angeles. About 5 percent of plastic bags and 21 percent of paper bags are recycled in California. Three percent of the bag fee will be returned to the retailer, 3 percent will go to the state, and the rest will go back to the city to fund an education campaign....A tax increase cloaked in environmentalism.
Argentine meat ban advances American ranchers and rural lawmakers won a quick victory last week. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved an addition to the agriculture spending bill that would effectively ban Argentine meat imports. Similar stand-alone legislation was introduced just this month in the Senate by Sens. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and in the House by Reps. Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.). Over the past year, ranchers and cattlemen have lobbied against Argentine imports due to worries that foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) had not been eradicated from Argentina’s livestock. Airborne and highly contagious, foot-and-mouth disease can devastate herds. Cooked Argentine meat can be imported here. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering allowing fresh and frozen meat in as well. Cattlemen celebrated the Senate action....
Tuberculosis threatens California dairy cows More than 4,800 dairy cows at risk of carrying tuberculosis were being slaughtered this month in central California, where nearly 16,000 cattle in the country's largest milk-producing region have been quarantined, federal officials said. Undersecretary of Agriculture Bruce Knight met privately with local dairy operators July 8 along with the state veterinarian and other industry officials monitoring three new cases of TB recently discovered in Fresno County dairies. Federal and state agriculture officials were still tightlipped about the identities and locations of the three dairies where cows tested positive for the disease, which can be transmitted to humans and other mammals through the air or through drinking unpasteurized milk from an infected cow. The discovery of the highly contagious respiratory disease prompted changes in interstate shipping regulations....
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
The Lawnmower Men ...In a huge document released last Friday, the EPA lays out the thousands of carbon controls with which they'd like to shackle the whole economy. Central planning is too artful a term for the EPA's nanomanagement. Thankfully none of it has the force of law -- yet. However, the Bush Administration has done a public service by opening this window on new-wave green thinking like Mr. Gore's, and previewing what Democrats have in mind for next year...Justice Antonin Scalia noted in his dissent that under the Court's "pollutant" standard "everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies," which the EPA appears to have taken literally. It is alarmed by "enteric fermentation in domestic livestock" -- that is, er, their "emissions." A farm with over 25 cows would exceed the EPA's proposed carbon limits. So would 500 acres of crops, due to harvesting and processing machinery. But never fear. The EPA would regulate "farm tractors" too, plus "lawn and garden equipment." For example, it "could require a different unit of measure [for carbon emissions] tied to the machine's mission or output -- such as grams per kilogram of cuttings from a 'standard' lawn for lawnmowers." In fact, the EPA has new mandates for everything with an engine. There's a slew of auto regulations, especially jacking up fuel-efficiency standards well beyond their current levels, and even controlling the weight and performance of cars and trucks. Carbon rules are offered for "dirt bikes and snowmobiles." Next up: Nascar...If this power grab wasn't enough, "EPA also believes that . . . it might be possible for the Agency to consider deeper reductions through a cap-and-trade program." The EPA thinks it can levy a carbon tax too, as long as it's called a "fee." In other words, the EPA wants to impose via regulatory ukase what Congress hasn't been able to enact via democratic debate....
Gore's nutty idea He's a former vice president of the United States, Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author, so the lavish news coverage of Al Gore's latest brainstorm was inevitable. Less understandable is why an idea so irresponsible - in economic terms, in fact, just this side of deranged - attracted so little ridicule. Gore proposed last week that the United States "commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years." Not just all new electricity, mind you, which would be challenging enough. But all existing electricity, too. This would of course require utilities to mothball hundreds of existing power plants as they launched a crash construction program of solar plants, wind farms and transmission lines costing hundreds of billions and perhaps trillions of dollars. Gore would subject 300 million people to an experiment in which baseload power that is needed 24 hours a day to keep the economy - and our livelihoods - humming is replaced willy nilly by power sources still susceptible to natural disruption (such as lack of wind or lingering cloud cover), that cost more (at least in the case of solar) and are far less plentiful in some regions than others (Colorado is lucky at least in that regard). He'd inflict monumental utility price hikes on consumers who'd pay for both the shutdown of old plants and construction of the new - with who knows what economic fallout...
Forest Service boots resort owner After shutting down his resorts twice and suspending his permits in May, the U.S. Forest Service is now permanently barring the owner of two Big Horn Mountain resorts from operating his businesses in the National Forest. Following a series of investigations and closures for alleged health and safety violations, the Bighorn National Forest announced Friday it is revoking the special use permits for Meadowlark Lake and Deer Haven resorts. It noted, among other things, the owner has failed to adequately fix two faulty septic pumps and other items that have fallen into disrepair, according a written statement from the U.S. Forest Service on Friday. Jim McCotter, owner of Big Horn Mountain Resorts and Wyoming Mountain Resorts LLC, has 45 days to appeal the decision. McCotter told The Associated Press in May that the problems at the two resorts would be repaired. At the time he said a winter manager at the two locations allowed the resorts to fall into disrepair. "There was another manager at the resorts this winter that had an option to purchase and was legally responsible for the resorts, but he did not raise all his money for purchase and did not make his payments and now has since left the resorts," McCotter said. "While there he did not keep things up as we had previously, but we are now back in control, and have turned back on the power, and are now getting everything repaired and ready again for this summer's activities."....
Natural gas drilling hurting land The industrial takeover of the West is not about oil or the price of gasoline at the pump. Domestic oil production, in fact, has suffered from a shell game. Nearly all the drilling on public lands is, in fact, about methane: natural gas. The booty at the wellhead is methane and stockholder cash. The victims are taxpayers who own public lands - especially hunters and anglers, who've watched as a national legacy is slaughtered like bison. "While there is little to no relationship between the price of gasoline and development of natural gas on public lands - which is what most of this development has been about, as opposed to oil - our rush to produce short-term energy supplies can have a profound effect on the fish and wildlife habitats and water supplies that define the West," said Chris Wood, a Trout Unlimited executive. Wood spoke Monday at a phone conference called by Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development. The coalition wants "multiple use" returned to public lands that have been hijacked by a singular abuse....
Hunters, fishermen call for curbs on oil and gas drilling Two top-ranking U.S. Forest Service officials from the Clinton administration today pitched in on a campaign by hunters and fishermen to rein in oil and gas development in five Rocky Mountain states. The drilling has skyrocketed under the Bush administration, alienating many in the hook-and-bullet crowd. The group calls itself Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development. Introducing a "new vision" (PDF) of how federal oil and gas leases should be awarded were Mike Dombeck, chief of the Forest Service under Clinton and on into the early Bush administration, and Chris Wood, Dombeck's old aide, who is now chief operating officer at Trout Unlimited. Joined by former Wyoming Game and Fish Director John Baughman, Dombeck and Wood released a new report focused on the increased oil and gas drilling that they say is having a big impact from Montana to New Mexico. Dombeck emphasized that the report "is not about dissecting a problem ad nauseum, it's about looking at the challenges in front of us and looking for solutions that can be implemented in a common-sense, doable way." They reached their conclusions after a fairly exhaustive process that involved sending questionnaires to experts, then convening about 200 of them for a meeting....
In reversal, Ford veers from SUV's Ford Motor, which devoted itself for nearly 20 years to putting millions of Americans into big pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles, is about to drastically alter its focus to building more small cars. The struggling automaker, reacting to what it sees as a rapid and permanent shift in consumer tastes brought on by high gas prices, plans to unveil its new direction on Thursday, when it will report quarterly earnings. Among the changes, Ford is expected to announce that it will convert three of its North American assembly plants from trucks to cars, according to people familiar with the plans. And as part of the huge bet it is placing on the future direction of the troubled American auto industry, Ford will realign factories to manufacture more fuel-efficient engines and produce six of its next European car models for the United States market....
Forest Service boots resort owner After shutting down his resorts twice and suspending his permits in May, the U.S. Forest Service is now permanently barring the owner of two Big Horn Mountain resorts from operating his businesses in the National Forest. Following a series of investigations and closures for alleged health and safety violations, the Bighorn National Forest announced Friday it is revoking the special use permits for Meadowlark Lake and Deer Haven resorts. It noted, among other things, the owner has failed to adequately fix two faulty septic pumps and other items that have fallen into disrepair, according a written statement from the U.S. Forest Service on Friday. Jim McCotter, owner of Big Horn Mountain Resorts and Wyoming Mountain Resorts LLC, has 45 days to appeal the decision. McCotter told The Associated Press in May that the problems at the two resorts would be repaired. At the time he said a winter manager at the two locations allowed the resorts to fall into disrepair. "There was another manager at the resorts this winter that had an option to purchase and was legally responsible for the resorts, but he did not raise all his money for purchase and did not make his payments and now has since left the resorts," McCotter said. "While there he did not keep things up as we had previously, but we are now back in control, and have turned back on the power, and are now getting everything repaired and ready again for this summer's activities."....
Natural gas drilling hurting land The industrial takeover of the West is not about oil or the price of gasoline at the pump. Domestic oil production, in fact, has suffered from a shell game. Nearly all the drilling on public lands is, in fact, about methane: natural gas. The booty at the wellhead is methane and stockholder cash. The victims are taxpayers who own public lands - especially hunters and anglers, who've watched as a national legacy is slaughtered like bison. "While there is little to no relationship between the price of gasoline and development of natural gas on public lands - which is what most of this development has been about, as opposed to oil - our rush to produce short-term energy supplies can have a profound effect on the fish and wildlife habitats and water supplies that define the West," said Chris Wood, a Trout Unlimited executive. Wood spoke Monday at a phone conference called by Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development. The coalition wants "multiple use" returned to public lands that have been hijacked by a singular abuse....
Hunters, fishermen call for curbs on oil and gas drilling Two top-ranking U.S. Forest Service officials from the Clinton administration today pitched in on a campaign by hunters and fishermen to rein in oil and gas development in five Rocky Mountain states. The drilling has skyrocketed under the Bush administration, alienating many in the hook-and-bullet crowd. The group calls itself Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development. Introducing a "new vision" (PDF) of how federal oil and gas leases should be awarded were Mike Dombeck, chief of the Forest Service under Clinton and on into the early Bush administration, and Chris Wood, Dombeck's old aide, who is now chief operating officer at Trout Unlimited. Joined by former Wyoming Game and Fish Director John Baughman, Dombeck and Wood released a new report focused on the increased oil and gas drilling that they say is having a big impact from Montana to New Mexico. Dombeck emphasized that the report "is not about dissecting a problem ad nauseum, it's about looking at the challenges in front of us and looking for solutions that can be implemented in a common-sense, doable way." They reached their conclusions after a fairly exhaustive process that involved sending questionnaires to experts, then convening about 200 of them for a meeting....
In reversal, Ford veers from SUV's Ford Motor, which devoted itself for nearly 20 years to putting millions of Americans into big pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles, is about to drastically alter its focus to building more small cars. The struggling automaker, reacting to what it sees as a rapid and permanent shift in consumer tastes brought on by high gas prices, plans to unveil its new direction on Thursday, when it will report quarterly earnings. Among the changes, Ford is expected to announce that it will convert three of its North American assembly plants from trucks to cars, according to people familiar with the plans. And as part of the huge bet it is placing on the future direction of the troubled American auto industry, Ford will realign factories to manufacture more fuel-efficient engines and produce six of its next European car models for the United States market....
Monday, July 21, 2008
Animal rights group targets popular rodeo
Critics say steer roping is cruel, as are shock devices to make horses buck
CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Western heritage runs deep in this high plains city, and nothing typifies the local cowboy and ranching culture more than the 10-day Cheyenne Frontier Days celebration, which boasts the world's largest outdoor rodeo.
Yet, as this year's "Daddy of 'Em All" rodeo gets under way this weekend, the event is fighting off allegations of animal cruelty, which prompted the rock band Matchbox Twenty to cancel a scheduled performance.
Animal-rights activists want certain rodeo events banned. Organizers and competitors are calling it an attack on Western tradition.
"I feel like it's like gun control. If you let him take one event, they're going to try to get another. And then, I think, it's just going to snowball from there," said Brian McNamee, a past rodeo competitor from Wyoming.
Culture clash
The culture clash comes amid a national debate on the treatment of sporting animals following the death of a race horse in the Kentucky Derby.
Animal-rights groups have long fought to eliminate cockfighting, dogfighting and game-farm hunts, and they have advocated for better treatment of zoo and circus animals. But rodeos are starting to gain more of their attention, and in some cases protests.
One animal-rights activist has been aggressively targeting Frontier Days, in the hopes of forcing change.
"These animals are suffering and dying in the name of family entertainment, in the name of Americana," said Steve Hindi, president of SHARK, or Showing Animals Respect and Kindness.
Among other things, he wants rodeos to enforce rules against shocking horses and bulls with electronic devices to make them buck, ban steer roping and change calf roping so the animals are not violently jerked backward.
There are an estimated 10,000 rodeos held across the United States each year. The Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo, which started in 1897, is among the oldest, richest and most prestigious.
"We have had a longtime respect for and reverence for the customs and traditions that got us where we are as a group of people," said Cheyenne Frontier Days spokesman Bob Budd.
Rules in place to protect animals
The rodeo has rules to protect the animals, and violations can lead to fines and suspensions for cowboys, Budd said. The rodeo recently announced tighter restrictions to prevent the use of shock devices.
"The harming of an animal is just something that no one that I know finds in any way something that they would want to do," Budd said.
Hindi, however, likens certain rodeo events to dogfighting and bullfighting. He especially targets steer roping, in which steers are roped around the neck and flipped over. Frontier Days, which has had steer roping since 1898, is among a minority of rodeos in the U.S. that hold the event.
Hindi asserts that more animals are killed during many steer-roping competitions than at bullfights in Mexico, assuming injured steers are killed rather than treated to save money.
The former hunter and fisherman has posted video on the Internet showing calves wrenching backward after being roped around the neck and horses dragging roped steers in the mud.
Hindi has targeted rodeos around the country but has concentrated recently on Frontier Days because of its high profile.
"It's very important to us that CFD 'get it' as far as the animal abuse because what CFD does will have a major impact on the rest of the rodeo world," Hindi said.
Hindi, who is attending this year's Cheyenne rodeo, said he appreciates the rodeo's ties to Western history.
"We don't want to beat American history down," he said. "So what we're saying is, look, let's find a way, let's find a way to work together."
Critics decry efforts to 'ban' rodeo
But some in the sport believe his goal is to eliminate rodeos altogether.
"It's important for people to understand that organizations such as (Hindi's) want to ban rodeo and use of animals," said Cindy Schonholtz, animal welfare coordinator for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, an organization that promotes and sanctions some 650 rodeos in the United States and Canada, including the annual National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas.
The PRCA said it has rules for the treatment of rodeo animals and requires veterinarians at sanctioned events. In 2006, a PRCA survey of 159 rodeos showed 38 animals were injured out of the 61,992 times they were used in rodeo events.
Hindi dismissed the PRCA survey, saying the organization can choose to include only those rodeos with the least number of injuries. Schonholtz said the survey selects rodeos at random.
Hindi has been trying to persuade entertainers to stay away from rodeos and corporate sponsors to withdraw financial support. The booking company for Frontier Days has sued Hindi for interfering in its business, saying he caused Matchbox Twenty to cancel its performance this year and Carrie Underwood to withdraw in 2006.
While Matchbox Twenty cited the allegations of animal mistreatment in announcing its decision not to perform at Frontier Days, Underwood has not said why she canceled her performance.
The lawsuit, which did not name Matchbox Twenty or Underwood, is pending in federal court.
Those who love the rodeo say the events represent what occurs on ranches across the West every day, and that the animals are treated well.
Budd, the Frontier Days spokesman, said the video released by the animal rights activists show just a few minutes of 40 to 50 hours of rodeo action a year at Cheyenne.
"We're not denying that there aren't injuries," Budd said. "I mean, there are going to be injuries just like a high school football game or anything else."
MSNBC is running a poll on this issue, go here to vote NO.
Critics say steer roping is cruel, as are shock devices to make horses buck
CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Western heritage runs deep in this high plains city, and nothing typifies the local cowboy and ranching culture more than the 10-day Cheyenne Frontier Days celebration, which boasts the world's largest outdoor rodeo.
Yet, as this year's "Daddy of 'Em All" rodeo gets under way this weekend, the event is fighting off allegations of animal cruelty, which prompted the rock band Matchbox Twenty to cancel a scheduled performance.
Animal-rights activists want certain rodeo events banned. Organizers and competitors are calling it an attack on Western tradition.
"I feel like it's like gun control. If you let him take one event, they're going to try to get another. And then, I think, it's just going to snowball from there," said Brian McNamee, a past rodeo competitor from Wyoming.
Culture clash
The culture clash comes amid a national debate on the treatment of sporting animals following the death of a race horse in the Kentucky Derby.
Animal-rights groups have long fought to eliminate cockfighting, dogfighting and game-farm hunts, and they have advocated for better treatment of zoo and circus animals. But rodeos are starting to gain more of their attention, and in some cases protests.
One animal-rights activist has been aggressively targeting Frontier Days, in the hopes of forcing change.
"These animals are suffering and dying in the name of family entertainment, in the name of Americana," said Steve Hindi, president of SHARK, or Showing Animals Respect and Kindness.
Among other things, he wants rodeos to enforce rules against shocking horses and bulls with electronic devices to make them buck, ban steer roping and change calf roping so the animals are not violently jerked backward.
There are an estimated 10,000 rodeos held across the United States each year. The Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo, which started in 1897, is among the oldest, richest and most prestigious.
"We have had a longtime respect for and reverence for the customs and traditions that got us where we are as a group of people," said Cheyenne Frontier Days spokesman Bob Budd.
Rules in place to protect animals
The rodeo has rules to protect the animals, and violations can lead to fines and suspensions for cowboys, Budd said. The rodeo recently announced tighter restrictions to prevent the use of shock devices.
"The harming of an animal is just something that no one that I know finds in any way something that they would want to do," Budd said.
Hindi, however, likens certain rodeo events to dogfighting and bullfighting. He especially targets steer roping, in which steers are roped around the neck and flipped over. Frontier Days, which has had steer roping since 1898, is among a minority of rodeos in the U.S. that hold the event.
Hindi asserts that more animals are killed during many steer-roping competitions than at bullfights in Mexico, assuming injured steers are killed rather than treated to save money.
The former hunter and fisherman has posted video on the Internet showing calves wrenching backward after being roped around the neck and horses dragging roped steers in the mud.
Hindi has targeted rodeos around the country but has concentrated recently on Frontier Days because of its high profile.
"It's very important to us that CFD 'get it' as far as the animal abuse because what CFD does will have a major impact on the rest of the rodeo world," Hindi said.
Hindi, who is attending this year's Cheyenne rodeo, said he appreciates the rodeo's ties to Western history.
"We don't want to beat American history down," he said. "So what we're saying is, look, let's find a way, let's find a way to work together."
Critics decry efforts to 'ban' rodeo
But some in the sport believe his goal is to eliminate rodeos altogether.
"It's important for people to understand that organizations such as (Hindi's) want to ban rodeo and use of animals," said Cindy Schonholtz, animal welfare coordinator for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, an organization that promotes and sanctions some 650 rodeos in the United States and Canada, including the annual National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas.
The PRCA said it has rules for the treatment of rodeo animals and requires veterinarians at sanctioned events. In 2006, a PRCA survey of 159 rodeos showed 38 animals were injured out of the 61,992 times they were used in rodeo events.
Hindi dismissed the PRCA survey, saying the organization can choose to include only those rodeos with the least number of injuries. Schonholtz said the survey selects rodeos at random.
Hindi has been trying to persuade entertainers to stay away from rodeos and corporate sponsors to withdraw financial support. The booking company for Frontier Days has sued Hindi for interfering in its business, saying he caused Matchbox Twenty to cancel its performance this year and Carrie Underwood to withdraw in 2006.
While Matchbox Twenty cited the allegations of animal mistreatment in announcing its decision not to perform at Frontier Days, Underwood has not said why she canceled her performance.
The lawsuit, which did not name Matchbox Twenty or Underwood, is pending in federal court.
Those who love the rodeo say the events represent what occurs on ranches across the West every day, and that the animals are treated well.
Budd, the Frontier Days spokesman, said the video released by the animal rights activists show just a few minutes of 40 to 50 hours of rodeo action a year at Cheyenne.
"We're not denying that there aren't injuries," Budd said. "I mean, there are going to be injuries just like a high school football game or anything else."
MSNBC is running a poll on this issue, go here to vote NO.
Teamsters May Withdraw Support for ANWR Oil Exploration One of the nation’s most powerful labor unions is “reexamining” its support for drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a policy it has supported for several years. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents 1.4 million workers nationally, has supported expanded drilling in Alaska in the past. But that could change, said Leslie Miller, spokeswoman for the Teamsters, because, as she said, there needs to be a solution in the short term for reducing oil prices and boosting the economy. “We have (supported ANWR drilling) in the past, but I believe we are reexamining that position,” Miller told Cybercast News Service. “There may be an announcement coming up on that.” In May 2006, the Teamsters signed a letter along with six other unions calling on Congress to allow drilling in ANWR....
Senate Democratic Leaders May Allow Drilling Vote The Senate Democratic leadership said on Thursday that if Republicans cooperate with a bill that targets oil speculators, they will allow the Republicans to bring an “energy alternative” of their own to the Senate floor. Such an alternative would certainly include lifting the ban on offshore drilling, which would probably pass the Senate with bipartisan support, two Republican Senators told Cybercast News Service on Thursday. “We have proposed to the Republicans that we will bring this speculation measure to the floor and they can offer an alternative,” Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), the minority whip, told reporters at a press conference. “You can’t be any fairer than that.” “We would offer a package and allow the Republicans to offer the same,” said Durbin. (The Washington Times on Wednesday listed Durbin as one of several Democrats who are “wavering on offshore drilling.) Republicans told Cybercast News Service on Thursday that such an alternative would include lifting the congressional moratorium on offshore drilling. “I can’t imagine us having a debate about energy and not having, as a proposal, lifting the moratorium,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told Cybercast News Service on Thursday. “I think there is actually very strong bipartisan support for lifting the ban.”....
Tax Credit Bill: Help from High Gas Prices An Ohio congressman has introduced legislation that he said would relieve consumers at the gasoline pump by providing a tax credit for the purchase of fuel this year. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) said his Gasoline Price Relief Act (H.R. 1659), would allow couples who file joint tax returns to reduce their 2008 tax bills by up to $2,000 ($1,000 for individuals), as long as they own validly registered vehicles (including motorcycles and hybrids) fueled by gasoline or diesel. “Prices at the pump are hurting an awful lot of people in this country, and this is a way of getting some of that money back in their pockets so that we can keep the economy moving,” Chabot told Cybercast News Service. Chabot’s bill, meanwhile, would also mandate that the president withhold foreign assistance and arms exports to any oil-exporting countries that are engaged in international price-fixing arrangements....
Warming Is Major Threat To Humans, EPA Warns Climate change will pose "substantial" threats to human health in the coming decades, the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday -- issuing its warnings about heat waves, hurricanes and pathogens just days after the agency declined to regulate the pollutants blamed for warming. In a new report, the EPA said "it is very likely" that more people will die during extremely hot periods in future years -- and that the elderly, the poor and those in inner cities will be most at risk. Other possible dangers include more powerful hurricanes, shrinking supplies of fresh water in the West, and the increased spread of diseases contracted through food and water, the agency said. The strong warnings highlighted the contorted position that the EPA has staked out on climate change. Last week, the agency decided not to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, at least not until after President Bush's term ends....
Gore Sets 'Moon Shot' Goal on Climate Change Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace. The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president said fellow Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain are "way ahead" of most politicians in the fight against global climate change. Rising fuel costs, climate change and the national security threats posed by U.S. dependence on foreign oil are conspiring to create "a new political environment" that Gore said will sustain bold and expensive steps to wean the nation off fossil fuels. Gore said he fully understands the magnitude of the challenge. The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that he chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand....
Cosmic Markdown: EPA Says Life Is Worth Less Someplace else, people might tell you that human life is priceless. In Washington, the federal government has appraised it like a '96 Camaro with bad brakes. Last week, it was revealed that an Environmental Protection Agency office had lowered its official estimate of life's value, from about $8.04 million to about $7.22 million. That decision has put a spotlight on the concept of the "Value of a Statistical Life," in which the Washington bureaucracy takes on a question usually left to preachers and poets. This value is routinely calculated by several agencies, each putting its own dollar figure on the worth of life -- not any particular person's life, just that of a generic American. The figure is then used to judge whether potentially lifesaving policy measures are really worth the cost. A human life, based on an economic analysis grounded in observations of everyday Americans, typically turns out to be worth $5 million to $8 million -- about as much as a mega-mansion or a middle infielder. Now, for the first time, the EPA has used this little-known process to devalue life, something that environmentalists say could set a scary precedent, making it seem that lifesaving pollution reductions are not worth the cost....
Green Becomes Official Color of Baseball When baseball's legendary greats came rolling up Sixth Avenue this month for the annual Hall of Fame parade, the familiar red carpet was distinctly green. That's not talking about the hue. The carpet, stretching for 20 blocks through Midtown, was made entirely of recycled fiber and manufactured using solar and wind power. "We did the Oscars. We advised the Grammies. But this is our first green red carpet!" said a clearly excited Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the nonprofit environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The red carpet was just the most visible manifestation of the greening of America's pastime. Across the country, baseball parks now have recycling bins for plastic cups, and solar panels are providing at least some of the energy. Men's rooms are being fitted with no-flush urinals to save water. Grounds crews are switching to chemically benign cleaners, and vending machines are being made more energy-efficient. Teams are even taking the environmental impact into consideration when they decide how to travel for road games....
'Storn Over Rangeland' still rages 17 years later It took 17 years for the late rancher Wayne Hage to win a groundbreaking lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service in a long-running dispute over property rights, water rights and grazing on federal land. A federal judge finally ruled last month that the government had engaged in an unconstitutional “taking” of Hage’s water rights and awarded more than $4 million to Hage’s estate. But his family and supporters - while relishing the victory - fear the fight is far from won. “What happened to us in the 1980s and 1990s is now happening across the West, so it is going to be vitally important for Western ranchers to understand what they own and how to defend it, “said Ramona Morrison, one of Hage’s daughters and a member of the Nevada State Agriculture Board who was a freshman in high school when the dispute began. “It doesn’t do you a lot of good to own that water if you really, effectively can’t use it,” said Lyman “Ladd” Bedford, a San Francisco-based lawyer who has argued the case since Hage first filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service in 1991. Morrison said the federal agency continually harassed her father, who once was a leader of the Western movement for more local control of public land called the “Sagebrush Rebellion” and who wrote the 1989 book “Storm Over Rangelands: Private Rights in Federal Lands.”....
Judge: Water delivery system harms Calif. salmon A federal judge ruled Friday that California's water systems threaten to push native, wild salmon into extinction but stopped short of ordering any immediate water cutbacks farmers said would have cost them millions in lost crops. The ruling in a Fresno federal court Friday ultimately could force regulators to change the way they move and use water to help endangered salmon spawn in the state's rivers and swim downstream into the Pacific Ocean. Environmentalists and fishermen had asked the judge to order immediate protections for the fishes' habitat, arguing that the collapse of one of the West Coast's biggest wild salmon runs earlier this spring foretold the extinction of related species. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger denied the groups' request to release more water from a federal reservoir to help young endangered winter-run Chinook salmon reach the ocean. That could have left hundreds of acres of almonds, walnuts and tomatoes without irrigation supplies next month, at the height of California's drought. "I'm on cloud nine here," said Jeff Sutton, who manages a canal system that delivers water to farms from near Redding to just north of Sacramento. "We're obviously ecstatic that the service area is going to continue to finish the irrigation season and be able to harvest the crops." Still, the battle is far from over. The judge's ruling established that the canals and pumps that deliver water to 23 million Californians are causing "irreparable harm" to two salmon species, as well as the threatened Central Valley steelhead. The second salmon population, the Central Valley spring-run Chinook, is on the federal list of threatened species. On Wednesday, attorneys for federal and state regulators, farmers, environmentalists and fishermen are scheduled to meet in Wanger's courtroom to discuss how to protect the fish for the next nine months, while federal biologists rewrite their plan to operate water projects tied to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta....
Home, home on the holistic range Last week's sage-scented verdict from a federal appeals court sent us two sharp reminders: Judicial decisions are awfully blunt tools with which to craft environmental policy. The most endangered species in Oregon may be the cowboy. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals just ordered the federal Bureau of Land Management to take a look -- again -- at how it's managing more than 4 million acres in eastern Oregon. The court's message was clear: The BLM better bear in mind the rising wilderness values of our state's shrub-steppe range. The decision marked one more victory for high-desert environmentalists in their battle to make Uncle Sam a better steward of Oregon's dry side. It sent, too, a clear signal to Oregon cattlemen: Get smarter, or get ready to get off the public range. Last week's decision came hard on the hoofs of a 2000 ruling in which the Supreme Court voted 9-0 to uphold much tighter regulation of grazing on public lands -- a decision that sent shivers through nearly 1,500 ranchers who hold grazing leases on 13 million acres of BLM land in Oregon....
Using food for fuel not solution As Americans continue to look for alternative fuels to power our homes, schools, businesses, and automobiles, we must rethink one such “alternative” that is taking a big bite out of major food crops — ethanol. Far more corn grown in this country is going toward fuel production, not food consumption, causing food prices to escalate around the world. The World Bank’s World Economic Outlook 2008 reports that, “although biofuels still account for only 1.5 percent of the global liquid fuels supply, they accounted for almost half of the increase in consumption of major food crops, mostly because of corn-based ethanol produced in the United States.” Midwest farmers are the benefactors of government subsidies, tax credits, mandates, and production requirements, which are in fact working against policy goals relating to energy security, environmental protection, and rural prosperity. The government, not the market place, is dictating crop selection and prices. The consequences are being felt around the world and right here at home in New Mexico....
Piñon takings "unlikely" A top Army civilian said Friday that the Army will purchase land to expand Piñon Canyon only from "willing sellers" and that it is "very, very unlikely" that condemnation will be used for those purchases. Keith Eastin, assistant secretary of the Army for installations and environment, said that if the Army can acquire 100,000 acres on the south end of the existing maneuver site, it probably would not return to ask for any more land in the near future. "I think it highly unlikely that we would be back in any foreseeable future," Eastin said Friday at Fort Carson. "One hundred thousand acres makes sense; anything added right now is outside of our budget." The Army, in an attempt to "turn down the volume" on objections to expansion of the 235,000- acre site, said it believes it has made a forthright effort at compromise. But farmers and ranchers in the area, led by Lon Robertson from the Piñon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition, said: "This is them just trying to twist things. Just because they say they're doing the right thing, it must be the right thing. It isn't." Robertson said the Army still has not answered the question of whether expansion of the current site is needed at all. The Army announced Wednesday that it has scaled back plans to acquire 418,000 acres at Piñon Canyon and will settle for 100,000 acres. The Army said it still needs more land and is looking outside other existing installations. One of those is Fort Polk, La....
More realistic plan for base may avoid condemnation nightmare The showdown between the Army and several members of Colorado's congressional delegation over expanding the training grounds at Pinon Canyon may not be resolved any time soon, notwithstanding a compromise offered by the Army last week. We're glad to see the Army formally back down from its plan to add 418,000 acres of what is primarily private property to the 235,000-acre maneuver site near Fort Carson. Instead, it's now looking for an extra 100,000 acres, and says it expects to find willing sellers to provide the land. This latest plan does have a far more realistic chance of acquiring the desired property without resorting to condemnation. The chance of that happening under the earlier schemes was effectively zero, despite the Army's assurances that it preferred voluntary transactions. But 100,000 is still a lot of territory. Can the Army indeed find enough willing sellers? Assistant Secretary Keith Eastin believes it can. One landowner who controls much of the sought-after property, Denver businessman Craig Walker, has indicated he would now listen to a pitch from the Army....
Federal agency gets 13,000 comments on wolf plans Many of the more than 13,000 people commenting on how to improve U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to reintroduce the Mexican wolf into the wild either strongly support or object to the program. Problem is, that's not the question. The federal agency took public comments from Aug. 7 to Dec. 31 on how best to pursue the wolf reintroduction program, not whether or not the program should exist. The agency received comments from 13,598 people after its call for public input and divided the responses into 26 topics. The topics included: cost of the program; protecting livestock and humans from the wolves; using professional mediation to help ranchers and environmentalists resolve their differences; the boundaries of the area the wolves are being introduced into; disease and wolves; the interaction between wolves and house pets; and the importance of having top predators in an ecosystem. John Slown, a biologist overseeing the process to modify the rules for the Wolf Reintroduction Project, said the issues raised by the public will be used to frame a range of alternatives....
War over how to thin herds rages in mustang country Five mustangs pounded across the high desert recently, their dark manes and tails giving shape to the wind. Pursued by a helicopter, they ran into a corral - unwilling recruits in an emotional debate over whether euthanasia should be used to thin a captive herd that already numbers 30,000. The champions of wild mustangs have long portrayed them as the victims of ranchers who preferred cattle on the range, middlemen who wanted to make a buck selling them for horsemeat, and misfits who shot them for sport. But some environmentalists and scientists have come to see the mustangs, which run wild from Montana to California, as top-of-the-food-chain bullies, invaders whose hooves and teeth disturb the habitats of endangered tortoises and desert birds. Even the language has shifted. In a 2006 article in Audubon magazine, wild horses lost their poetry and were reduced to "feral equids." "There's not just horses out there, there's other critters, from the desert turtle in the south to the bighorn sheep in the north," said Paula Morin, author of the book "Honest Horses." "We've come a long way in our awareness of the web of life and maintaining the whole ecology. We do the horses a disservice when we set them apart." Environmentalists' attitudes toward the horses have evolved so far that some are willing to say what was heresy a few years ago: that euthanasia is acceptable if the alternatives are boarding the mustangs for life at taxpayers' expense or leaving them to overpopulate, damage the range and die of hunger or thirst....
Mountain Megas Rapid change is enveloping the American West. States in the southern Intermountain West—Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah—are experiencing some of the fastest population growth and economic and demographic transition anywhere in the country. The region is growing up, flexing its muscles, and distancing itself from California, which historically has had an outsized impact on the West’s development. In fact, thanks to such maturation, the southern Intermountain West is well on its way to earning itself the title of the New American Heartland as its economy, people, and politics become more central to the nation. Politically, the Intermountain West could be home to several swing states in the 2008 election and in time play the storied “kingmaking” role the Midwest does now. Which is where this document begins: Prepared as part of the Brookings Institution’s Blueprint for American Prosperity initiative, “Mountain Megas: America’s Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper” describes and assesses the new supersized reality of the Intermountain West and proposes a more helpful role for the federal government in empowering regional leaders’ efforts to build a uniquely Western brand of prosperity that is at once more sustainable, productive, and inclusive than past eras of boom and bust....
Utah Court Says Rivers And Streams Are Public, Regardless Of Location Utah's highest court has ruled that streams and rivers are public even where the land under them is privately owned. Friday's decision means landowners can't stop people from walking on and along riverbeds while fishing or floating. The case turned on a Roy couple's trespassing citation in 2000 for leaving their raft to go fishing and take down some fencing that was strung across Weber River. The ticket was dropped when Kevin and Jodi Conatser appealed a justice-court conviction, but they filed a civil suit to improve on state law that said they could touch a riverbed only to free a stuck raft or assist in floating. ``I'd call it a landmark decision,'' said Robert H. Hughes, the couple's lawyer, who argued the case in April. The Utah Supreme Court said people have to behave reasonably and cause no property damage when they wade or walk immediately along stream and river beds....
Cape Cod patient tested for mad cow disease Public health officials in Massachusetts are investigating whether a patient in a Cape Cod hospital has the human form of mad cow disease. Dr. Alfred DeMaria, the state's director of communicable disease control, confirmed Sunday to The Associated Press that tests are being done to see if the patient has Creutzfeldt-Jakob (KROYTS'-felt JAY'-kuhb) disease, and whether it's the variant attributed to mad cow. There have only been three cases of the human form of mad cow disease reported in the United States in the last several years, and officials say it's extremely unlikely the patient in Cape Cod Hospital has the disease. DeMaria says it will take a few more days before the test results are available. He said there are about a half-dozen cases reported every year in Massachusetts and about 300 nationwide....
PETA Expands Ad Campaign That Uses Teen Pregnancy to Push Pet Message Animal rights group PETA is rolling out its controversial "Sex Talk" ad — in which two parents urge their daughter to have a lot of sex and "pop out all the kids you want" — in the top 10 teen pregnancy states to promote spaying and neutering of pets. The 30-second commercial was launched in January in Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears' hometown of Kentwood, La., after news emerged of then 16-year-old Jamie Lynn's pregnancy. The "Zoey 101" star, who turned 17 in April, has since given birth to a baby girl. "People often point their fingers at parents of pregnant teens, and we want to let the people who let their animals breed feel the heat too," People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals spokeswoman Melissa Karpel told FOXNews.com. "It's a fun, edgy way to get the message out about a very serious issue." Karpel said 8 million companion animals are currently languishing in shelters across the United States. Not everyone is happy about the ad, however. Karpel said the commercial is only airing in big cities in part because their markets are more likely to accept it, and some stations that were approached won't run it....
Home on the Range My father's 1960 Ford tractor is dependable, and he keeps his baler and other equipment together with duct tape, wire and prayers. If only his health was as dependable as that tractor. Time has taken its toll. My father, Eugene, is a proud, 75-year-old rancher from Chama. He takes pride in his humble profession that pays little but continues a long tradition. And in the ranching tradition, he rarely complains. He is a man who can bolt heavy machinery together, despite being nearly blind as a result from heart complications suffered in 2004. He has the courage to rescue solitary animals from coyote packs, and the tenderness to gently bottle-feed calves at 2 a.m. in below-zero snowstorms. Small ranchers like my father are more common in the state than one might imagine. According to Travis Hoffman of the Colorado Beef Council, 64 percent of the state's 13,100 ranches consist of herds fewer than 50 head. (The national average is 77 percent.) The numbers suggest Colorado's ranching families are "dedicated to their operations . . . the backbone of agriculture," Hoffman said....
George Causey: High plains pioneer No story of the High Plains would be complete without mentioning T.L. “George” Causey, for whom Causey was named. Causey was a rancher, freighter, and most famously, a buffalo hunter. It was his heavy wagons and ox teams hauling the hides to market that made the Portales Road more easily followed by travelers on the Llano Estacado. In the 1860s George Causey had worked for the U.S. Government in Kansas hauling supplies to the Army outposts with a mule team. He soon formed a buffalo hunting outfit and began following the herds as they moved southward into Texas on their annual migration. As the land along the Rio Grande was occupied, the Hispanic settlers from Las Vegas, N.M. and Fort Sumner made annual hunting trips to the plains to hunt the buffalo and antelope for their winter meat. After the meat was “jerked,” that is sliced and dried, it would keep indefinitely....
Senate Democratic Leaders May Allow Drilling Vote The Senate Democratic leadership said on Thursday that if Republicans cooperate with a bill that targets oil speculators, they will allow the Republicans to bring an “energy alternative” of their own to the Senate floor. Such an alternative would certainly include lifting the ban on offshore drilling, which would probably pass the Senate with bipartisan support, two Republican Senators told Cybercast News Service on Thursday. “We have proposed to the Republicans that we will bring this speculation measure to the floor and they can offer an alternative,” Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), the minority whip, told reporters at a press conference. “You can’t be any fairer than that.” “We would offer a package and allow the Republicans to offer the same,” said Durbin. (The Washington Times on Wednesday listed Durbin as one of several Democrats who are “wavering on offshore drilling.) Republicans told Cybercast News Service on Thursday that such an alternative would include lifting the congressional moratorium on offshore drilling. “I can’t imagine us having a debate about energy and not having, as a proposal, lifting the moratorium,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told Cybercast News Service on Thursday. “I think there is actually very strong bipartisan support for lifting the ban.”....
Tax Credit Bill: Help from High Gas Prices An Ohio congressman has introduced legislation that he said would relieve consumers at the gasoline pump by providing a tax credit for the purchase of fuel this year. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) said his Gasoline Price Relief Act (H.R. 1659), would allow couples who file joint tax returns to reduce their 2008 tax bills by up to $2,000 ($1,000 for individuals), as long as they own validly registered vehicles (including motorcycles and hybrids) fueled by gasoline or diesel. “Prices at the pump are hurting an awful lot of people in this country, and this is a way of getting some of that money back in their pockets so that we can keep the economy moving,” Chabot told Cybercast News Service. Chabot’s bill, meanwhile, would also mandate that the president withhold foreign assistance and arms exports to any oil-exporting countries that are engaged in international price-fixing arrangements....
Warming Is Major Threat To Humans, EPA Warns Climate change will pose "substantial" threats to human health in the coming decades, the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday -- issuing its warnings about heat waves, hurricanes and pathogens just days after the agency declined to regulate the pollutants blamed for warming. In a new report, the EPA said "it is very likely" that more people will die during extremely hot periods in future years -- and that the elderly, the poor and those in inner cities will be most at risk. Other possible dangers include more powerful hurricanes, shrinking supplies of fresh water in the West, and the increased spread of diseases contracted through food and water, the agency said. The strong warnings highlighted the contorted position that the EPA has staked out on climate change. Last week, the agency decided not to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, at least not until after President Bush's term ends....
Gore Sets 'Moon Shot' Goal on Climate Change Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace. The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president said fellow Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain are "way ahead" of most politicians in the fight against global climate change. Rising fuel costs, climate change and the national security threats posed by U.S. dependence on foreign oil are conspiring to create "a new political environment" that Gore said will sustain bold and expensive steps to wean the nation off fossil fuels. Gore said he fully understands the magnitude of the challenge. The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that he chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand....
Cosmic Markdown: EPA Says Life Is Worth Less Someplace else, people might tell you that human life is priceless. In Washington, the federal government has appraised it like a '96 Camaro with bad brakes. Last week, it was revealed that an Environmental Protection Agency office had lowered its official estimate of life's value, from about $8.04 million to about $7.22 million. That decision has put a spotlight on the concept of the "Value of a Statistical Life," in which the Washington bureaucracy takes on a question usually left to preachers and poets. This value is routinely calculated by several agencies, each putting its own dollar figure on the worth of life -- not any particular person's life, just that of a generic American. The figure is then used to judge whether potentially lifesaving policy measures are really worth the cost. A human life, based on an economic analysis grounded in observations of everyday Americans, typically turns out to be worth $5 million to $8 million -- about as much as a mega-mansion or a middle infielder. Now, for the first time, the EPA has used this little-known process to devalue life, something that environmentalists say could set a scary precedent, making it seem that lifesaving pollution reductions are not worth the cost....
Green Becomes Official Color of Baseball When baseball's legendary greats came rolling up Sixth Avenue this month for the annual Hall of Fame parade, the familiar red carpet was distinctly green. That's not talking about the hue. The carpet, stretching for 20 blocks through Midtown, was made entirely of recycled fiber and manufactured using solar and wind power. "We did the Oscars. We advised the Grammies. But this is our first green red carpet!" said a clearly excited Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the nonprofit environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The red carpet was just the most visible manifestation of the greening of America's pastime. Across the country, baseball parks now have recycling bins for plastic cups, and solar panels are providing at least some of the energy. Men's rooms are being fitted with no-flush urinals to save water. Grounds crews are switching to chemically benign cleaners, and vending machines are being made more energy-efficient. Teams are even taking the environmental impact into consideration when they decide how to travel for road games....
'Storn Over Rangeland' still rages 17 years later It took 17 years for the late rancher Wayne Hage to win a groundbreaking lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service in a long-running dispute over property rights, water rights and grazing on federal land. A federal judge finally ruled last month that the government had engaged in an unconstitutional “taking” of Hage’s water rights and awarded more than $4 million to Hage’s estate. But his family and supporters - while relishing the victory - fear the fight is far from won. “What happened to us in the 1980s and 1990s is now happening across the West, so it is going to be vitally important for Western ranchers to understand what they own and how to defend it, “said Ramona Morrison, one of Hage’s daughters and a member of the Nevada State Agriculture Board who was a freshman in high school when the dispute began. “It doesn’t do you a lot of good to own that water if you really, effectively can’t use it,” said Lyman “Ladd” Bedford, a San Francisco-based lawyer who has argued the case since Hage first filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service in 1991. Morrison said the federal agency continually harassed her father, who once was a leader of the Western movement for more local control of public land called the “Sagebrush Rebellion” and who wrote the 1989 book “Storm Over Rangelands: Private Rights in Federal Lands.”....
Judge: Water delivery system harms Calif. salmon A federal judge ruled Friday that California's water systems threaten to push native, wild salmon into extinction but stopped short of ordering any immediate water cutbacks farmers said would have cost them millions in lost crops. The ruling in a Fresno federal court Friday ultimately could force regulators to change the way they move and use water to help endangered salmon spawn in the state's rivers and swim downstream into the Pacific Ocean. Environmentalists and fishermen had asked the judge to order immediate protections for the fishes' habitat, arguing that the collapse of one of the West Coast's biggest wild salmon runs earlier this spring foretold the extinction of related species. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger denied the groups' request to release more water from a federal reservoir to help young endangered winter-run Chinook salmon reach the ocean. That could have left hundreds of acres of almonds, walnuts and tomatoes without irrigation supplies next month, at the height of California's drought. "I'm on cloud nine here," said Jeff Sutton, who manages a canal system that delivers water to farms from near Redding to just north of Sacramento. "We're obviously ecstatic that the service area is going to continue to finish the irrigation season and be able to harvest the crops." Still, the battle is far from over. The judge's ruling established that the canals and pumps that deliver water to 23 million Californians are causing "irreparable harm" to two salmon species, as well as the threatened Central Valley steelhead. The second salmon population, the Central Valley spring-run Chinook, is on the federal list of threatened species. On Wednesday, attorneys for federal and state regulators, farmers, environmentalists and fishermen are scheduled to meet in Wanger's courtroom to discuss how to protect the fish for the next nine months, while federal biologists rewrite their plan to operate water projects tied to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta....
Home, home on the holistic range Last week's sage-scented verdict from a federal appeals court sent us two sharp reminders: Judicial decisions are awfully blunt tools with which to craft environmental policy. The most endangered species in Oregon may be the cowboy. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals just ordered the federal Bureau of Land Management to take a look -- again -- at how it's managing more than 4 million acres in eastern Oregon. The court's message was clear: The BLM better bear in mind the rising wilderness values of our state's shrub-steppe range. The decision marked one more victory for high-desert environmentalists in their battle to make Uncle Sam a better steward of Oregon's dry side. It sent, too, a clear signal to Oregon cattlemen: Get smarter, or get ready to get off the public range. Last week's decision came hard on the hoofs of a 2000 ruling in which the Supreme Court voted 9-0 to uphold much tighter regulation of grazing on public lands -- a decision that sent shivers through nearly 1,500 ranchers who hold grazing leases on 13 million acres of BLM land in Oregon....
Using food for fuel not solution As Americans continue to look for alternative fuels to power our homes, schools, businesses, and automobiles, we must rethink one such “alternative” that is taking a big bite out of major food crops — ethanol. Far more corn grown in this country is going toward fuel production, not food consumption, causing food prices to escalate around the world. The World Bank’s World Economic Outlook 2008 reports that, “although biofuels still account for only 1.5 percent of the global liquid fuels supply, they accounted for almost half of the increase in consumption of major food crops, mostly because of corn-based ethanol produced in the United States.” Midwest farmers are the benefactors of government subsidies, tax credits, mandates, and production requirements, which are in fact working against policy goals relating to energy security, environmental protection, and rural prosperity. The government, not the market place, is dictating crop selection and prices. The consequences are being felt around the world and right here at home in New Mexico....
Piñon takings "unlikely" A top Army civilian said Friday that the Army will purchase land to expand Piñon Canyon only from "willing sellers" and that it is "very, very unlikely" that condemnation will be used for those purchases. Keith Eastin, assistant secretary of the Army for installations and environment, said that if the Army can acquire 100,000 acres on the south end of the existing maneuver site, it probably would not return to ask for any more land in the near future. "I think it highly unlikely that we would be back in any foreseeable future," Eastin said Friday at Fort Carson. "One hundred thousand acres makes sense; anything added right now is outside of our budget." The Army, in an attempt to "turn down the volume" on objections to expansion of the 235,000- acre site, said it believes it has made a forthright effort at compromise. But farmers and ranchers in the area, led by Lon Robertson from the Piñon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition, said: "This is them just trying to twist things. Just because they say they're doing the right thing, it must be the right thing. It isn't." Robertson said the Army still has not answered the question of whether expansion of the current site is needed at all. The Army announced Wednesday that it has scaled back plans to acquire 418,000 acres at Piñon Canyon and will settle for 100,000 acres. The Army said it still needs more land and is looking outside other existing installations. One of those is Fort Polk, La....
More realistic plan for base may avoid condemnation nightmare The showdown between the Army and several members of Colorado's congressional delegation over expanding the training grounds at Pinon Canyon may not be resolved any time soon, notwithstanding a compromise offered by the Army last week. We're glad to see the Army formally back down from its plan to add 418,000 acres of what is primarily private property to the 235,000-acre maneuver site near Fort Carson. Instead, it's now looking for an extra 100,000 acres, and says it expects to find willing sellers to provide the land. This latest plan does have a far more realistic chance of acquiring the desired property without resorting to condemnation. The chance of that happening under the earlier schemes was effectively zero, despite the Army's assurances that it preferred voluntary transactions. But 100,000 is still a lot of territory. Can the Army indeed find enough willing sellers? Assistant Secretary Keith Eastin believes it can. One landowner who controls much of the sought-after property, Denver businessman Craig Walker, has indicated he would now listen to a pitch from the Army....
Federal agency gets 13,000 comments on wolf plans Many of the more than 13,000 people commenting on how to improve U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to reintroduce the Mexican wolf into the wild either strongly support or object to the program. Problem is, that's not the question. The federal agency took public comments from Aug. 7 to Dec. 31 on how best to pursue the wolf reintroduction program, not whether or not the program should exist. The agency received comments from 13,598 people after its call for public input and divided the responses into 26 topics. The topics included: cost of the program; protecting livestock and humans from the wolves; using professional mediation to help ranchers and environmentalists resolve their differences; the boundaries of the area the wolves are being introduced into; disease and wolves; the interaction between wolves and house pets; and the importance of having top predators in an ecosystem. John Slown, a biologist overseeing the process to modify the rules for the Wolf Reintroduction Project, said the issues raised by the public will be used to frame a range of alternatives....
War over how to thin herds rages in mustang country Five mustangs pounded across the high desert recently, their dark manes and tails giving shape to the wind. Pursued by a helicopter, they ran into a corral - unwilling recruits in an emotional debate over whether euthanasia should be used to thin a captive herd that already numbers 30,000. The champions of wild mustangs have long portrayed them as the victims of ranchers who preferred cattle on the range, middlemen who wanted to make a buck selling them for horsemeat, and misfits who shot them for sport. But some environmentalists and scientists have come to see the mustangs, which run wild from Montana to California, as top-of-the-food-chain bullies, invaders whose hooves and teeth disturb the habitats of endangered tortoises and desert birds. Even the language has shifted. In a 2006 article in Audubon magazine, wild horses lost their poetry and were reduced to "feral equids." "There's not just horses out there, there's other critters, from the desert turtle in the south to the bighorn sheep in the north," said Paula Morin, author of the book "Honest Horses." "We've come a long way in our awareness of the web of life and maintaining the whole ecology. We do the horses a disservice when we set them apart." Environmentalists' attitudes toward the horses have evolved so far that some are willing to say what was heresy a few years ago: that euthanasia is acceptable if the alternatives are boarding the mustangs for life at taxpayers' expense or leaving them to overpopulate, damage the range and die of hunger or thirst....
Mountain Megas Rapid change is enveloping the American West. States in the southern Intermountain West—Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah—are experiencing some of the fastest population growth and economic and demographic transition anywhere in the country. The region is growing up, flexing its muscles, and distancing itself from California, which historically has had an outsized impact on the West’s development. In fact, thanks to such maturation, the southern Intermountain West is well on its way to earning itself the title of the New American Heartland as its economy, people, and politics become more central to the nation. Politically, the Intermountain West could be home to several swing states in the 2008 election and in time play the storied “kingmaking” role the Midwest does now. Which is where this document begins: Prepared as part of the Brookings Institution’s Blueprint for American Prosperity initiative, “Mountain Megas: America’s Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper” describes and assesses the new supersized reality of the Intermountain West and proposes a more helpful role for the federal government in empowering regional leaders’ efforts to build a uniquely Western brand of prosperity that is at once more sustainable, productive, and inclusive than past eras of boom and bust....
Utah Court Says Rivers And Streams Are Public, Regardless Of Location Utah's highest court has ruled that streams and rivers are public even where the land under them is privately owned. Friday's decision means landowners can't stop people from walking on and along riverbeds while fishing or floating. The case turned on a Roy couple's trespassing citation in 2000 for leaving their raft to go fishing and take down some fencing that was strung across Weber River. The ticket was dropped when Kevin and Jodi Conatser appealed a justice-court conviction, but they filed a civil suit to improve on state law that said they could touch a riverbed only to free a stuck raft or assist in floating. ``I'd call it a landmark decision,'' said Robert H. Hughes, the couple's lawyer, who argued the case in April. The Utah Supreme Court said people have to behave reasonably and cause no property damage when they wade or walk immediately along stream and river beds....
Cape Cod patient tested for mad cow disease Public health officials in Massachusetts are investigating whether a patient in a Cape Cod hospital has the human form of mad cow disease. Dr. Alfred DeMaria, the state's director of communicable disease control, confirmed Sunday to The Associated Press that tests are being done to see if the patient has Creutzfeldt-Jakob (KROYTS'-felt JAY'-kuhb) disease, and whether it's the variant attributed to mad cow. There have only been three cases of the human form of mad cow disease reported in the United States in the last several years, and officials say it's extremely unlikely the patient in Cape Cod Hospital has the disease. DeMaria says it will take a few more days before the test results are available. He said there are about a half-dozen cases reported every year in Massachusetts and about 300 nationwide....
PETA Expands Ad Campaign That Uses Teen Pregnancy to Push Pet Message Animal rights group PETA is rolling out its controversial "Sex Talk" ad — in which two parents urge their daughter to have a lot of sex and "pop out all the kids you want" — in the top 10 teen pregnancy states to promote spaying and neutering of pets. The 30-second commercial was launched in January in Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears' hometown of Kentwood, La., after news emerged of then 16-year-old Jamie Lynn's pregnancy. The "Zoey 101" star, who turned 17 in April, has since given birth to a baby girl. "People often point their fingers at parents of pregnant teens, and we want to let the people who let their animals breed feel the heat too," People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals spokeswoman Melissa Karpel told FOXNews.com. "It's a fun, edgy way to get the message out about a very serious issue." Karpel said 8 million companion animals are currently languishing in shelters across the United States. Not everyone is happy about the ad, however. Karpel said the commercial is only airing in big cities in part because their markets are more likely to accept it, and some stations that were approached won't run it....
Home on the Range My father's 1960 Ford tractor is dependable, and he keeps his baler and other equipment together with duct tape, wire and prayers. If only his health was as dependable as that tractor. Time has taken its toll. My father, Eugene, is a proud, 75-year-old rancher from Chama. He takes pride in his humble profession that pays little but continues a long tradition. And in the ranching tradition, he rarely complains. He is a man who can bolt heavy machinery together, despite being nearly blind as a result from heart complications suffered in 2004. He has the courage to rescue solitary animals from coyote packs, and the tenderness to gently bottle-feed calves at 2 a.m. in below-zero snowstorms. Small ranchers like my father are more common in the state than one might imagine. According to Travis Hoffman of the Colorado Beef Council, 64 percent of the state's 13,100 ranches consist of herds fewer than 50 head. (The national average is 77 percent.) The numbers suggest Colorado's ranching families are "dedicated to their operations . . . the backbone of agriculture," Hoffman said....
George Causey: High plains pioneer No story of the High Plains would be complete without mentioning T.L. “George” Causey, for whom Causey was named. Causey was a rancher, freighter, and most famously, a buffalo hunter. It was his heavy wagons and ox teams hauling the hides to market that made the Portales Road more easily followed by travelers on the Llano Estacado. In the 1860s George Causey had worked for the U.S. Government in Kansas hauling supplies to the Army outposts with a mule team. He soon formed a buffalo hunting outfit and began following the herds as they moved southward into Texas on their annual migration. As the land along the Rio Grande was occupied, the Hispanic settlers from Las Vegas, N.M. and Fort Sumner made annual hunting trips to the plains to hunt the buffalo and antelope for their winter meat. After the meat was “jerked,” that is sliced and dried, it would keep indefinitely....
Sunday, July 20, 2008
The Old Cowboy
A tough old cowboy from Texas counseled his grandson that if he wanted to live a long life, the secret was to sprinkle a pinch of gun powder on his oatmeal every morning.
The grandson did this religiously to the day he died at the age of 103.
He left behind 14 children, 30 grand children, 45 great grand children, 25 great great-grand children and a 15 foot hole where the crematorium used to be.
A tough old cowboy from Texas counseled his grandson that if he wanted to live a long life, the secret was to sprinkle a pinch of gun powder on his oatmeal every morning.
The grandson did this religiously to the day he died at the age of 103.
He left behind 14 children, 30 grand children, 45 great grand children, 25 great great-grand children and a 15 foot hole where the crematorium used to be.
I just want to rope
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy
Julie Carter
Cowboys love good horses, cold beer and pretty women, and not necessarily in that order.
Let's tune in to our token team roper Dan's love life for an example of the possible entertainment value.
A couple of years ago, Dan hooked up with Prissy, and his life changed quickly and drastically.
The first thing she did was make Dan upgrade his trailer house with a hot water heater. Until then, a tank heater in the tub before he left for work warmed the water enough for a bath when he got home. He even missed roping on a Saturday to get the water heater installed, indicative of true love.
It took about a year, but the flush of new romance wore off. His bright orange leatherette couch with the tufted bird dog in the center had disappeared. So did his recliner that was worn in only a few places.
Moving from bachelorhood to significant other-hood was expensive. The heart-stopping bills for the new furniture arrived in the mail just before the letter from the lawyer. Prissy was moving out.
A ton of her friends swooped in to help pack and move, none of which seemed to be around during the arrival phase. It took two days for them to pack up all the new dishes.
According to Dan, who grabbed the dog and slipped out the back door, the women on the crew looked mean and unhappy, much like a roommate he recalled that complained of constipation.
They left Dan with a five-gallon bucket and a piece of plywood for a chair and the telephone. He spent a little time scouting around to see which of his friends ended up with the orange couch. Of course, he had to ask if they had a new girlfriend yet, knowing that would determine their willingness to part with it.
Better days were ahead. A free man, Dan was able to do a lot of ropin' without a lot of explainin'.
Then it happened. A few weeks ago, he was sitting horseback at a big roping minding his own business, visiting with his friend and roping partner, the pretty, blonde Sally. Up rides this pushy gal, forces her horse between him and Sally. She then strikes up an overly friendly conversation with Dan using all her feminine wiles.
Dan knew who she was from his work. He also knew who her husband was and none of this was looking very healthy for him. He quickly deducted she was making a move for him and at all costs, he needed to keep from getting shot.
Her calls rolled into his phone. He never returned them. She confronted him at work and informed him that "that blonde" he was with at the roping was married. "So are you," he reminded her while not explaining about Sally.
In the meantime, she announced to her husband she was leaving him and marrying Dan. The news hadn't yet reached Dan, so when the husband asked him to help move a couch over to his estranged wife's apartment, he agreed.
Imagine his surprise when they shoved the couch through the door only to see, on the opposite wall, a gigantic framed photograph of Dan and his paint horse Pittsburgh heeling a steer at a recent roping.
Apparently, the gal had paid a call to the event photographer and parted with a sizeable amount of money to make a point.
Shortly after, the husband told Dan that he had come into some money, the bills were paid off and the wife had moved home to enjoy the make-up phase of their 50 millionth honeymoon.
The best part of this latest development was that Dan got the picture. It was delivered by the husband and now hangs in Dan's office. Ain't love grand.
This should be the end of the story, but isn't. The improper aggressor is back stalking Dan.
With a sigh he says, "I just want to rope."
Stay tuned. With a little help from his friends, the action heats up.
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy
Julie Carter
Cowboys love good horses, cold beer and pretty women, and not necessarily in that order.
Let's tune in to our token team roper Dan's love life for an example of the possible entertainment value.
A couple of years ago, Dan hooked up with Prissy, and his life changed quickly and drastically.
The first thing she did was make Dan upgrade his trailer house with a hot water heater. Until then, a tank heater in the tub before he left for work warmed the water enough for a bath when he got home. He even missed roping on a Saturday to get the water heater installed, indicative of true love.
It took about a year, but the flush of new romance wore off. His bright orange leatherette couch with the tufted bird dog in the center had disappeared. So did his recliner that was worn in only a few places.
Moving from bachelorhood to significant other-hood was expensive. The heart-stopping bills for the new furniture arrived in the mail just before the letter from the lawyer. Prissy was moving out.
A ton of her friends swooped in to help pack and move, none of which seemed to be around during the arrival phase. It took two days for them to pack up all the new dishes.
According to Dan, who grabbed the dog and slipped out the back door, the women on the crew looked mean and unhappy, much like a roommate he recalled that complained of constipation.
They left Dan with a five-gallon bucket and a piece of plywood for a chair and the telephone. He spent a little time scouting around to see which of his friends ended up with the orange couch. Of course, he had to ask if they had a new girlfriend yet, knowing that would determine their willingness to part with it.
Better days were ahead. A free man, Dan was able to do a lot of ropin' without a lot of explainin'.
Then it happened. A few weeks ago, he was sitting horseback at a big roping minding his own business, visiting with his friend and roping partner, the pretty, blonde Sally. Up rides this pushy gal, forces her horse between him and Sally. She then strikes up an overly friendly conversation with Dan using all her feminine wiles.
Dan knew who she was from his work. He also knew who her husband was and none of this was looking very healthy for him. He quickly deducted she was making a move for him and at all costs, he needed to keep from getting shot.
Her calls rolled into his phone. He never returned them. She confronted him at work and informed him that "that blonde" he was with at the roping was married. "So are you," he reminded her while not explaining about Sally.
In the meantime, she announced to her husband she was leaving him and marrying Dan. The news hadn't yet reached Dan, so when the husband asked him to help move a couch over to his estranged wife's apartment, he agreed.
Imagine his surprise when they shoved the couch through the door only to see, on the opposite wall, a gigantic framed photograph of Dan and his paint horse Pittsburgh heeling a steer at a recent roping.
Apparently, the gal had paid a call to the event photographer and parted with a sizeable amount of money to make a point.
Shortly after, the husband told Dan that he had come into some money, the bills were paid off and the wife had moved home to enjoy the make-up phase of their 50 millionth honeymoon.
The best part of this latest development was that Dan got the picture. It was delivered by the husband and now hangs in Dan's office. Ain't love grand.
This should be the end of the story, but isn't. The improper aggressor is back stalking Dan.
With a sigh he says, "I just want to rope."
Stay tuned. With a little help from his friends, the action heats up.
FLE
Prosecutor flagged by US terror watch list The Justice Department's former top criminal prosecutor says the government's terror watch list likely has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise hassled. Former Assistant Attorney General Jim Robinson would know: he's one of them. Robinson joined another mistaken-identity American and the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday to urge fixing the list that's supposed to identify suspected terrorists. "It's a pain in the neck, and significantly interferes with my travel arrangements," said Robinson, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division during the Clinton administration. He believes his name matches that of someone who was put on the list in early 2005, and is routinely delayed while flying — despite having his own government top-secret security clearances renewed last year. "I suppose if I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it," Robinson said. "But I doubt it." He added: "I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list who find themselves inconvenienced."....
Terrorism Funds May Let Brass Fly in Style The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents. Production of the first capsule -- consisting of two sealed rooms that can fit into the fuselage of a large military aircraft -- has already begun. Air Force officials say the government needs the new capsules to ensure that leaders can talk, work and rest comfortably in the air. But the top brass's preoccupation with creating new luxury in wartime has alienated lower-ranking Air Force officers familiar with the effort, as well as congressional staff members and a nonprofit group that calls the program a waste of money. Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror....
Gun Debate Is Hardly Over The Supreme Court may have confirmed that Americans have the right to own guns for protection, but the gun debate is hardly over. The District of Columbia, whose handgun ban was struck down by the Supreme Court, is still planning on banning most handguns. And the court decision has spurred the media into overdrive to paint guns as dangerous to their owners. No one who has taken even a quick glance at the crime data can seriously argue that the D.C. gun ban lowered murder or violent crime rates. The concerns being raised are not the threat from criminals, but that guns pose a risk to their owners. In particular, buying a gun and having it in your home is said to increase the likelihood of suicide. Mike Stobbe for the Associated Press emphasized the problem by pointing out that the majority of gun deaths are suicides. He also noticed that Supreme Court Justice Breyer mentioned his concerns about gun suicides 14 times in his dissent. By contrast, he mentioned accidental gun deaths only three times. That is not surprising, given that the accidental death rate from guns is so low not only absolutely but in comparison to other common household items. A nationally syndicated article by Shankar Vedantam, a Washington Post columnist, has a similar concern. Vedantam points to a 1991 study in the New England Journal of Medicine that claims that after examining data from 1968 to 1987, “the gun ban correlated with an abrupt 25 percent decline in suicides in the city” and that the “decline was entirely driven by a decline in firearm-related suicide.” Yes, suicides did indeed decline after the ban. However, it is unlikely to have much to do with banning guns as non-gun suicides fell even slightly faster than gun suicides (see the graph) (pdf). If the gun ban caused the drop in suicides, why would the non-gun suicide rate fall at least as much as the gun suicide rate? A far more likely explanation is that something else was changing and causing people to not want to commit suicide, no matter what method they might consider. Yet, the D.C. experience isn’t unique. The National Academy of Sciences released a 2004 report that comprehensively reviewed academic research studying guns and suicide. The panel set up under the Clinton administration surveyed the extensive literature from public health, economics and criminology. The Academy concluded that "Some gun control policies may reduce the number of gun suicides, but they have not yet been shown to reduce the overall risk of suicide in any population.”....
DC Rejects Heller's Handgun Application District residents can start registering their guns today. But at least one very high profile application was already rejected. Dick Heller is the man who brought the lawsuit against the District's 32-year-old ban on handguns. He was among the first in line Thursday morning to apply for a handgun permit. But when he tried to register his semi-automatic weapon, he says he was rejected. He says his gun has seven bullet clip. Heller says the City Council legislation allows weapons with fewer than eleven bullets in the clip. A spokesman for the DC Police says the gun was a bottom-loading weapon, and according to their interpretation, all bottom-loading guns are outlawed because they are grouped with machine guns....
Opponents promise challenge of new D.C. gun law The doors opened Thursday to post-handgun ban era here, with gun rights advocates vowing another legal challenge to the city's newly approved gun control law. Less than a month after the Supreme Court overturned the city's 32-year-old handgun ban — the most restrictive in the nation — the same litigant in the landmark case appeared at police headquarters and said he likely would wage a new fight. Dick Heller, whose legal challenge prompted the Supreme Court ruling, said he would challenge new city regulations that continue to ban District residents from owning semi-automatic weapons. "The city still does not yet understand the decision of the Supreme Court," Heller said from the steps of police headquarters. "We have been denied again." Dane von Breichenruchardt, president of the Bill of Rights Foundation, said the city was attempting to make gun ownership as "difficult and restrictive as possible." "We're going to be back in court. There is no doubt about that," he said. The permits require every gun owner to pass a written test and vision exam, submit the weapons for ballistic testing and offer proof of residency. The provisions still rank as some of the toughest in the nation. But perhaps the most controversial aspect of the law, gun rights advocates say, mandates that gun owners keep their weapons unloaded, disassembled or secured with trigger locks, unless they face a "threat of immediate harm." The National Rifle Association has signaled it also will challenge the new D.C. regulation, describing the law as extreme and in "complete defiance of the Supreme Court's decision."....
Take Your Paws off the Presidency! Suppose the worst happens, and the next terrorist attack hits Washington hard, taking out the president and the vice president. What happens next? New Yorker writer Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side, opens with a shocker. Apparently sometime in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan issued a "secret executive order" that in the event of the death of the president and the vice president "established a means of re-creating the executive branch." Reagan's order violated the express terms of the Constitution and governing statutes. Does a similar order exist today? We aren't told. But we do know that Dick Cheney participated in the secret "doomsday" exercises under the Reagan order, and given his central role at present, it is imperative for Congress to find out. Congress last considered the problem of a dual vacancy in the presidency and the vice presidency when Harry Truman was in the White House. In the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, lawmakers stipulated that if both positions are empty, power passes first to the Speaker of the House or, if she, too, does not survive, to the president pro tem of the Senate. But relying on James Mann's earlier book Rise of the Vulcans, Mayer reports that Reagan "amended the process for speed and clarity … without informing Congress that it had been sidestepped." We don't know how. But if the order bypasses the speaker and the Senate president pro tempore in favor of an official in the executive branch, we have a recipe for a constitutional crisis....
Congress, Bush clash on control of spy secrets The House on Wednesday passed legislation governing next year's intelligence budget that demands lawmakers be given greater access to the nation's most closely held secrets. The bill is the latest attempt by Democrats, struggling to challenge President Bush on major national security issues, to step up their role in overseeing an intelligence program they say has gone astray. Lawmakers complain that the Bush administration left most of them out of the loop on highly classified — and controversial — matters, including creation and destruction of CIA interrogation tapes and Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. The bill, which passed on a voice vote, would block two-thirds of the federal covert operations budget until each member of the congressional intelligence committees is briefed on all secret operations underway. Panel members also would be granted access to any other details necessary to assess the value of intelligence operations. The White House has threatened to veto the bill because it says it would go too far and infringe upon the president's right to protect intelligence....
More border states plan to ease travel with enhanced licenses A growing number of states on the borders with Canada and Mexico are establishing or considering enhanced driver's licenses designed to give residents a more convenient identification option for border crossings. In February, Washington became the first state to establish the new licenses. To receive a license labeled "enhanced," applicants are required to show proof of U.S. citizenship in addition to the other identification documents required for obtaining traditional licenses. Since then, 21,000 Washington residents have received the licenses, which allow them to get back into the USA through any border crossing or seaport without a passport, according to Department of Licensing spokeswoman Gigi Zenk. New York and Vermont will follow in coming months. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano has proposed the idea for residents there, and Michigan is working toward a plan. The move toward enhanced driver's licenses in states bordering Canada and Mexico is being driven by the federal Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. In June 2009, the initiative will begin requiring U.S. citizens to have a proof-of-citizenship document, passport or some other federally approved identification for getting into the country through land or sea ports, said Kathy Kraninger, the Department of Homeland Security's deputy assistant secretary for policy.
TSA launches leak investigation Federal officers charged with keeping terrorists off planes are now searching their own ranks for staff who told CNN that few flights were protected by air marshals. The Transportation Security Administration rejected as a "myth" CNN's report that less than 1 percent of the nation's daily flights carry armed federal air marshals. Now the agency is conducting an investigation into who talked to CNN and who encouraged other agents to do the same. A spokesman for the TSA confirmed the investigation. Spokesman Christopher White said a TSA investigator is looking into the "possible unauthorized release of sensitive and classified information to the news media by covered parties." "As part of this ongoing investigation, several individuals, both current and former employees, have been contacted as is typical in any investigation," he said in an e-mail to CNN. CNN spoke to more than a dozen current and former air marshals, pilots and federal law enforcement officials for the report, which aired in March on "Anderson Cooper 360º." Repeatedly, the sources told CNN that as few as 280 of an estimated 28,000 daily flights had armed federal air marshals aboard. That amounts to less than 1 percent....
Mexico drug traffickers make car bombs Mexican drug traffickers have built makeshift car bombs to attack police, troops and rival smugglers as the country's drugs war turns increasingly violent, police said. Soldiers found two car bombs in a safe house in the city of Culiacan in western Mexico on Monday. One car was packed with cans of gasoline and another stuffed with canisters of gas, police said. Both devices were wired to be detonated by cell phones, said a police official in Culiacan, capital of Sinaloa state, which is home to one of Mexico's biggest trafficking cartels. "We believe these two car bombs were being designed to harm the military, the police and rivals," the official said on Wednesday. He declined to be named. Any use of car bombs would be an escalation of Mexico's brutal drug war that has killed more than 4,200 people since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched a military-backed assault on drug cartels....
Court seeks to stay US executions The US has been advised not to execute five Mexican nationals on death row by the International Court of Justice. The ICJ - the UN's highest court - had previously ruled that the men had been denied the right to help from their consulate after their arrests. A 2005 ruling by President George W Bush that the cases should be reviewed was overturned by the US Supreme Court. But the Hague-based court told the US it should not execute the men before it made its final judgement. In a majority ruling, the ICJ said the US should "take all measures necessary to ensure (they) are not executed pending judgment... unless and until these five Mexican nationals receive review and reconsideration (of their sentences)". Mexico welcomed the ruling. Jorge Lomonaco Tonda, representing Mexico at the court, said: "The Mexican government is satisfied with the ruling of the court... we have full confidence that the ruling will be applied."....
New Camera Issues Tire Tread Tickets Now that speed cameras use is established in Europe and parts of the US, the concept of automated ticketing is beginning to expand far beyond moving violations. Already, automated ticketing machines are deployed in the US to hit vehicles that overstay in a parking spot by a minute or that have excessive tailpipe emissions. The newest addition to this growing list is camera that scans the tires of passing cars and mails tickets if the depth of the tire tread is deficient by a fraction of an inch. Although not currently deployed, the German company ProContour hopes to sell this system to state and local governments looking for a way out of tight budget situations with a positive, pro-safety message. "Car tires are technically, the number one cause of car accidents in Germany," ProContour states on its website. "An average of four car accidents occur daily with personal injuries as the result of smooth or defective tires."....
Prosecutor flagged by US terror watch list The Justice Department's former top criminal prosecutor says the government's terror watch list likely has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise hassled. Former Assistant Attorney General Jim Robinson would know: he's one of them. Robinson joined another mistaken-identity American and the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday to urge fixing the list that's supposed to identify suspected terrorists. "It's a pain in the neck, and significantly interferes with my travel arrangements," said Robinson, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division during the Clinton administration. He believes his name matches that of someone who was put on the list in early 2005, and is routinely delayed while flying — despite having his own government top-secret security clearances renewed last year. "I suppose if I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it," Robinson said. "But I doubt it." He added: "I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list who find themselves inconvenienced."....
Terrorism Funds May Let Brass Fly in Style The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents. Production of the first capsule -- consisting of two sealed rooms that can fit into the fuselage of a large military aircraft -- has already begun. Air Force officials say the government needs the new capsules to ensure that leaders can talk, work and rest comfortably in the air. But the top brass's preoccupation with creating new luxury in wartime has alienated lower-ranking Air Force officers familiar with the effort, as well as congressional staff members and a nonprofit group that calls the program a waste of money. Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror....
Gun Debate Is Hardly Over The Supreme Court may have confirmed that Americans have the right to own guns for protection, but the gun debate is hardly over. The District of Columbia, whose handgun ban was struck down by the Supreme Court, is still planning on banning most handguns. And the court decision has spurred the media into overdrive to paint guns as dangerous to their owners. No one who has taken even a quick glance at the crime data can seriously argue that the D.C. gun ban lowered murder or violent crime rates. The concerns being raised are not the threat from criminals, but that guns pose a risk to their owners. In particular, buying a gun and having it in your home is said to increase the likelihood of suicide. Mike Stobbe for the Associated Press emphasized the problem by pointing out that the majority of gun deaths are suicides. He also noticed that Supreme Court Justice Breyer mentioned his concerns about gun suicides 14 times in his dissent. By contrast, he mentioned accidental gun deaths only three times. That is not surprising, given that the accidental death rate from guns is so low not only absolutely but in comparison to other common household items. A nationally syndicated article by Shankar Vedantam, a Washington Post columnist, has a similar concern. Vedantam points to a 1991 study in the New England Journal of Medicine that claims that after examining data from 1968 to 1987, “the gun ban correlated with an abrupt 25 percent decline in suicides in the city” and that the “decline was entirely driven by a decline in firearm-related suicide.” Yes, suicides did indeed decline after the ban. However, it is unlikely to have much to do with banning guns as non-gun suicides fell even slightly faster than gun suicides (see the graph) (pdf). If the gun ban caused the drop in suicides, why would the non-gun suicide rate fall at least as much as the gun suicide rate? A far more likely explanation is that something else was changing and causing people to not want to commit suicide, no matter what method they might consider. Yet, the D.C. experience isn’t unique. The National Academy of Sciences released a 2004 report that comprehensively reviewed academic research studying guns and suicide. The panel set up under the Clinton administration surveyed the extensive literature from public health, economics and criminology. The Academy concluded that "Some gun control policies may reduce the number of gun suicides, but they have not yet been shown to reduce the overall risk of suicide in any population.”....
DC Rejects Heller's Handgun Application District residents can start registering their guns today. But at least one very high profile application was already rejected. Dick Heller is the man who brought the lawsuit against the District's 32-year-old ban on handguns. He was among the first in line Thursday morning to apply for a handgun permit. But when he tried to register his semi-automatic weapon, he says he was rejected. He says his gun has seven bullet clip. Heller says the City Council legislation allows weapons with fewer than eleven bullets in the clip. A spokesman for the DC Police says the gun was a bottom-loading weapon, and according to their interpretation, all bottom-loading guns are outlawed because they are grouped with machine guns....
Opponents promise challenge of new D.C. gun law The doors opened Thursday to post-handgun ban era here, with gun rights advocates vowing another legal challenge to the city's newly approved gun control law. Less than a month after the Supreme Court overturned the city's 32-year-old handgun ban — the most restrictive in the nation — the same litigant in the landmark case appeared at police headquarters and said he likely would wage a new fight. Dick Heller, whose legal challenge prompted the Supreme Court ruling, said he would challenge new city regulations that continue to ban District residents from owning semi-automatic weapons. "The city still does not yet understand the decision of the Supreme Court," Heller said from the steps of police headquarters. "We have been denied again." Dane von Breichenruchardt, president of the Bill of Rights Foundation, said the city was attempting to make gun ownership as "difficult and restrictive as possible." "We're going to be back in court. There is no doubt about that," he said. The permits require every gun owner to pass a written test and vision exam, submit the weapons for ballistic testing and offer proof of residency. The provisions still rank as some of the toughest in the nation. But perhaps the most controversial aspect of the law, gun rights advocates say, mandates that gun owners keep their weapons unloaded, disassembled or secured with trigger locks, unless they face a "threat of immediate harm." The National Rifle Association has signaled it also will challenge the new D.C. regulation, describing the law as extreme and in "complete defiance of the Supreme Court's decision."....
Take Your Paws off the Presidency! Suppose the worst happens, and the next terrorist attack hits Washington hard, taking out the president and the vice president. What happens next? New Yorker writer Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side, opens with a shocker. Apparently sometime in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan issued a "secret executive order" that in the event of the death of the president and the vice president "established a means of re-creating the executive branch." Reagan's order violated the express terms of the Constitution and governing statutes. Does a similar order exist today? We aren't told. But we do know that Dick Cheney participated in the secret "doomsday" exercises under the Reagan order, and given his central role at present, it is imperative for Congress to find out. Congress last considered the problem of a dual vacancy in the presidency and the vice presidency when Harry Truman was in the White House. In the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, lawmakers stipulated that if both positions are empty, power passes first to the Speaker of the House or, if she, too, does not survive, to the president pro tem of the Senate. But relying on James Mann's earlier book Rise of the Vulcans, Mayer reports that Reagan "amended the process for speed and clarity … without informing Congress that it had been sidestepped." We don't know how. But if the order bypasses the speaker and the Senate president pro tempore in favor of an official in the executive branch, we have a recipe for a constitutional crisis....
Congress, Bush clash on control of spy secrets The House on Wednesday passed legislation governing next year's intelligence budget that demands lawmakers be given greater access to the nation's most closely held secrets. The bill is the latest attempt by Democrats, struggling to challenge President Bush on major national security issues, to step up their role in overseeing an intelligence program they say has gone astray. Lawmakers complain that the Bush administration left most of them out of the loop on highly classified — and controversial — matters, including creation and destruction of CIA interrogation tapes and Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. The bill, which passed on a voice vote, would block two-thirds of the federal covert operations budget until each member of the congressional intelligence committees is briefed on all secret operations underway. Panel members also would be granted access to any other details necessary to assess the value of intelligence operations. The White House has threatened to veto the bill because it says it would go too far and infringe upon the president's right to protect intelligence....
More border states plan to ease travel with enhanced licenses A growing number of states on the borders with Canada and Mexico are establishing or considering enhanced driver's licenses designed to give residents a more convenient identification option for border crossings. In February, Washington became the first state to establish the new licenses. To receive a license labeled "enhanced," applicants are required to show proof of U.S. citizenship in addition to the other identification documents required for obtaining traditional licenses. Since then, 21,000 Washington residents have received the licenses, which allow them to get back into the USA through any border crossing or seaport without a passport, according to Department of Licensing spokeswoman Gigi Zenk. New York and Vermont will follow in coming months. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano has proposed the idea for residents there, and Michigan is working toward a plan. The move toward enhanced driver's licenses in states bordering Canada and Mexico is being driven by the federal Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. In June 2009, the initiative will begin requiring U.S. citizens to have a proof-of-citizenship document, passport or some other federally approved identification for getting into the country through land or sea ports, said Kathy Kraninger, the Department of Homeland Security's deputy assistant secretary for policy.
TSA launches leak investigation Federal officers charged with keeping terrorists off planes are now searching their own ranks for staff who told CNN that few flights were protected by air marshals. The Transportation Security Administration rejected as a "myth" CNN's report that less than 1 percent of the nation's daily flights carry armed federal air marshals. Now the agency is conducting an investigation into who talked to CNN and who encouraged other agents to do the same. A spokesman for the TSA confirmed the investigation. Spokesman Christopher White said a TSA investigator is looking into the "possible unauthorized release of sensitive and classified information to the news media by covered parties." "As part of this ongoing investigation, several individuals, both current and former employees, have been contacted as is typical in any investigation," he said in an e-mail to CNN. CNN spoke to more than a dozen current and former air marshals, pilots and federal law enforcement officials for the report, which aired in March on "Anderson Cooper 360º." Repeatedly, the sources told CNN that as few as 280 of an estimated 28,000 daily flights had armed federal air marshals aboard. That amounts to less than 1 percent....
Mexico drug traffickers make car bombs Mexican drug traffickers have built makeshift car bombs to attack police, troops and rival smugglers as the country's drugs war turns increasingly violent, police said. Soldiers found two car bombs in a safe house in the city of Culiacan in western Mexico on Monday. One car was packed with cans of gasoline and another stuffed with canisters of gas, police said. Both devices were wired to be detonated by cell phones, said a police official in Culiacan, capital of Sinaloa state, which is home to one of Mexico's biggest trafficking cartels. "We believe these two car bombs were being designed to harm the military, the police and rivals," the official said on Wednesday. He declined to be named. Any use of car bombs would be an escalation of Mexico's brutal drug war that has killed more than 4,200 people since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched a military-backed assault on drug cartels....
Court seeks to stay US executions The US has been advised not to execute five Mexican nationals on death row by the International Court of Justice. The ICJ - the UN's highest court - had previously ruled that the men had been denied the right to help from their consulate after their arrests. A 2005 ruling by President George W Bush that the cases should be reviewed was overturned by the US Supreme Court. But the Hague-based court told the US it should not execute the men before it made its final judgement. In a majority ruling, the ICJ said the US should "take all measures necessary to ensure (they) are not executed pending judgment... unless and until these five Mexican nationals receive review and reconsideration (of their sentences)". Mexico welcomed the ruling. Jorge Lomonaco Tonda, representing Mexico at the court, said: "The Mexican government is satisfied with the ruling of the court... we have full confidence that the ruling will be applied."....
New Camera Issues Tire Tread Tickets Now that speed cameras use is established in Europe and parts of the US, the concept of automated ticketing is beginning to expand far beyond moving violations. Already, automated ticketing machines are deployed in the US to hit vehicles that overstay in a parking spot by a minute or that have excessive tailpipe emissions. The newest addition to this growing list is camera that scans the tires of passing cars and mails tickets if the depth of the tire tread is deficient by a fraction of an inch. Although not currently deployed, the German company ProContour hopes to sell this system to state and local governments looking for a way out of tight budget situations with a positive, pro-safety message. "Car tires are technically, the number one cause of car accidents in Germany," ProContour states on its website. "An average of four car accidents occur daily with personal injuries as the result of smooth or defective tires."....
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