'Research hunts' weighed for wolves

Wildlife officials in the Northern Rockies said Wednesday they are considering hunting gray wolves in the name of research to get around a recent court ruling that restored federal protections for the animals. Environmentalists derided the proposal, vowing to challenge in court any new plans for hunting the estimated 1,367 wolves in Idaho and Montana. Hunters in Idaho and Montana killed 258 wolves during hunts last fall — the first for wolves in the lower 48 states in decades. State officials said the hunts proved wolves can be hunted without driving the population to extinction. But the Aug. 5 ruling from U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy is likely to cancel or postpone wolf seasons scheduled to start next month in the two states. Still, the ruling left officials scrambling for new ways to control a predator responsible for increasing attacks on livestock and big game herds. Montana wolf program coordinator Carolyn Sime said one option under consideration was to apply for a federally permitted "research hunt" to better understand the impact of public hunting on wolf populations. In the absence of hunting, more than 1,200 wolves have been killed during the last 15 years by government agents and ranchers in response to livestock attacks. Sime said a research hunt could reveal if a regulated public harvest could accomplish the same task...more

Wolf Hunt Canceled, Debate Rages On

In a showdown between the federal courts and state government, a judge ruled that wolves in Montana and Idaho should be protected under the federal Endangered Species Act last week. The ruling effectively canceled planned hunts in the two states and baffled hunters and wildlife officials across the West. Thankfully, Montana wildlife officials are not giving up just yet. They announced a plan today to seek a special federal permit that would allow public wolf hunting despite the court order. But because of the large amount of red tape involved, even if the permit is granted it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to save the 2010 wolf hunt in either Montana or Idaho. Another option could be trying to downgrade wolves to threatened and then getting federal permission to hunt them. The ruling last week came shortly after Montana decided to more than double its wolf hunt quota from 75 to 186. Idaho had also decided to increase the number of wolves hunters could take in the 2010 season (both states had their first wolf hunt in decades last year). But as of right now, all of that counts for nothing and the wolf hunt is off the table...more

State of Texas Challenges Federal Government's Offshore Drilling Moratorium

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today filed a legal challenge to the Obama Administration’s offshore drilling moratorium. The State’s legal challenge charges the Administration with violating a federal law that requires the Secretary of Interior to consult with affected states before imposing an offshore drilling moratorium. Filed on behalf of the State of Texas, Governor Rick Perry and Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, today’s legal action names the following defendants: the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI); DOI Secretary Kenneth Salazar; the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement – formerly known as the Minerals Management Service – and BOEM Director Michael Bromwich. “The federal government ignored the State of Texas and failed to comply with the law when the Secretary of the Interior unilaterally imposed the Administration’s offshore drilling ban,” Attorney General Abbott said. “Under federal law, affected states are guaranteed the right to participate in offshore drilling-related policy decisions, but the Obama Administration did not bother to communicate, coordinate or cooperate with Texas. Worse, the Secretary of the Interior failed to consider the economic consequences of his decision, which will cost the Texas economy millions of dollars – and threatens far too many hard-working Texans’ jobs.”...more

Moratorium and litigation may stall drilling for years

Will one-third of U.S. oil continue to be produced offshore? Political forces at play in the aftermath of BP's disastrous oil spill make it increasingly doubtful. Failure to consider the full effect of proposed laws and moratoria, as well as the operation of existing laws, could jeopardize thousands of jobs and further damage the Gulf Coast economy. The Deepwater Horizon accident, taking 11 lives and slowly impacting countless livelihoods, was shocking. BP's brown muck of oil, coating wildlife and marshes and once-pristine beaches, creates a powerful visual argument against future drilling. But this horrific incident contrasts with a decades-long history of safety. Since 1980, the largest spill from a blowout in federal waters besides the Deepwater Horizon was only 800 barrels. For every barrel produced, only .000001 was spilled. It is certainly possible to produce oil offshore with reliability and safety...more

Feds round up more than 100 mustangs along CA-NV border

Federal land managers have captured more than 100 wild horses a day after an appellate court refused to stop the mustang roundup along the California-Nevada border. The Bureau of Land Management District Manager Nancy Haug says 119 animals gathered Wednesday were reported to be in good health. The roundup of about 2,000 wild horses is expected to last at least a month. Horse protection advocates had sought an emergency injunction for the roundup. In Defense of Animals argued the horses have more legal right to the public range than the thousands of livestock grazing there. The BLM says the overpopulated mustang herds about 120 miles north of Reno are damaging public rangeland and threatening their own well being. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the advocates' request Tuesday night. AP

Horse Sanctuary Closer to Reality

Philanthropist and businesswoman Madeleine Pickens says she is one step closer to her dream of a sprawling sanctuary for wild horses to be built in northern Nevada. Pickens first told the I-Team about her plan for a sanctuary two years ago during an aerial tour of northern Nevada ranches. She hoped to buy a ranch with her own money, donate it to a non-profit foundation, then add public range creating an eco-tourism center in Elko County which could be home to thousands of already captured mustangs. Wednesday, Pickens confirmed she has signed a deal for ranch property up north. "I'm really excited. The check went out today. It got wire transferred. I'm purchasing a ranch and hopefully the BLM will co-operate, if not I guess I"ll just have to graze cows like everyone else. It would be a shame because my desire is not to be a cattle rancher," she added, "We are asking the government since they have removed these horses from the public land that they have a fiscal and moral responsibility to take care of these horses." Pickens says the combined property encompasses more than 900 square miles. Though she still needs the BLM to give its permission to use adjacent public range for horses instead of for cattle grazing...more

Chupacabra Ca-Ching

Once relegated to South Texas, the mythical chupacabra, or “goat sucker,” is migrating north. This spring, Runaway Bay, a town northwest of Fort Worth, made the chupacabra its official town mascot. That was after a groundskeeper at the municipal golf course found what mayor Robert Ryan describes as a “very strange-looking dead animal that was hairless with a long beak near the 14th hole.” “Apparently there was an understanding that it must be a chupacabra,” Ryan said. “At least that’s what went out in our press release.” El chupacabra didn’t always roam our state. The first reported sighting was in Puerto Rico in 1995, where the beast earned its nom de guerre for sucking the blood from livestock animals, its favorite flavor being goat. The sightings spread from there to Mexico and the rest of Latin America. Over the years it has been described as everything from a bug-eyed alien on two claw-like feet to a hairless blue-skinned mutated dog-like creature. No one loves a chupacabra. Or do they? The creature has the undeniable ability to make money for small towns across Texas. Call it the chupacabra stimulus. In Runaway Bay, the town’s Chamber of Commerce knew it was onto something good. The chamber commissioned golf shirts and T-shirts for sale. The shirt features the chupacabra holding a golf club, surrounded by a corona of fireworks. A local restaurant created the “legendary chupacabra burger.” The merchandise alone has already generated $4,000 for city coffers...more

Longhorn bulls, lightning rods, a floating coffin and a bird of paradise

When Zachary Taylor’s army marched from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande in 1846, a soldier, out of boredom, shot at a longhorn bull. The bull charged the soldier, who ran into the column of troops for protection. The bull charged into their midst, shaking his horns and scattering several regiments. The feisty little bull came out on the other side of the column, unhurt, but he left a scattered army behind him. John Dunn wrote about another bull in “Perilous Trails of Texas.” A company of Rangers, camped near King Ranch, would build a bonfire on cold nights. Dunn noticed that after the men went to sleep an old bull would slip into camp and settle down by the fire. One night the bull got too close to the fire. He got burned and went ballistic, snorting and bellowing, and the Rangers, startled from sleep, fired their guns, thinking they were under attack. The bull scattered coals of the fire and some bedrolls went up in flames. Casualties were two wounded men, some burned blankets, a broken bridle bit, a broken wagon tongue, and a saddle shot full of holes. Dunn saw the scorched bull three miles from camp. He thought he must have been a sensible animal who learned from experience. He never came back to claim a warm spot by the fire...more

NATIONAL COWGIRL HALL OF FAME TO INDUCT FIVE WOMEN

Fort Worth, Texas (August 10, 2010) - The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame is proud to announce Betty Dusek, Kay Gay, Temple Grandin, Joyce Gibson Roach and Hortense Ward as inductees to the Hall of Fame for 2010. All five women will be honored during the 35th annual Induction Luncheon Ceremony on October 28, 2010, at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth, Texas...

Betty Dusek
Vancourt, Texas

Part of the golden age of the all-girl rodeo, Betty Dusek aided in the early development of the Girls Rodeo Association as director of calf roping contests. Betty won several awards including world champion calf roping, team roping, flag racing and ribbon roping through the GRA. Betty is a long-time member of several organizations including, the 4-H Adult Leaders Association, Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers Association, American Quarter Horse Association, West Texas Barrel Racer Association, and Women's Pro Rodeo Association. Receiving her GRA Gold Card in 1985, Betty is an all-around champion, having won 14 titles.

Kay Gay
Terrell, Texas

Kay Gay is an important part of Texas rodeo history. From scheduling long-haul truckers for rodeo stock to serving as secretary to keeping time, she has filled most roles within the rodeo arena.For the Mesquite Championship Rodeo, among others, she coordinated the grand entry and opening ceremonies, carried the American flag and competed as a barrel racer. Her interest in the preservation of Western culture is evident through not only working with the Mesquite Rodeo and others, but also for taking charge of the Pivot Setters and Rodeo costumes at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. Her work with the wardrobe often meant designing and even sewing costumes. Kay is generally acknowledged as being one who is encouraging and nurturing to all competitors, and her dedication to maintaining and promoting professional rodeo and our Western heritage is readily seen through her life's work.

Temple Grandin
Fort Collins, Colorado

Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is a champion of the agriculture and livestock industry. Temple has published four books and well over 200 articles and essays on the subjects of animal welfare, livestock handling and other topics relevant to the livestock industry. Having designed the livestock facilities for six different countries, at least 30 percent of the handling done in North America is done through one of Temple's designs. She developed a system that causes the animal to feel minimal anxiety while providing greater safety and efficiency for the plant. Temple overcame double adversities of being female in a male-dominated industry and the challenges associated with being autistic. She has published on the subject of autism and speaks publicly to better inform others about the developmental disorder. Temple is currently a professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University.

Joyce Roach
Keller, Texas

Joyce Gibson Roach is an author, teacher, cattle rancher and naturalist. Her writing credits include awards and prizes in non-fiction, short story, children's literature, and humorous prose, all of which focus on Texas and the Southwest. As adjunct professor of English at TCU, she taught the Western Novel and reintroduced Literature of the Southwest as a part of regional studies. She is a Fellow of Texas State Historical Association, Fellow of Texas Folklore Society, an elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters and Philosophical Society of Texas, and is national president of the Horned Lizard Conservation Society. "The Cowgirls," in print since 1978, is considered the foundational textabout women on horseback from ranch to arena. The family ranch, Crosswinds, is located in the Western Cross Timbers in Wise County, Texas, whereshe has established the Center for Western Cross Timbers Studies dedicated to communicating about and conserving the region.

Hortense Ward
Houston
(1872- 1944)

Known as a defender of women's rights and as the first woman admitted into the Texas Bar Association, Hortense broke barriers for women during the beginning of the 20th century. Five years after being admitted to the Texas bar, Hortense became the first woman from Texas, as well as the first woman below the Mason-Dixon Line admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. Hortense was the president of the Houston Equal Suffrage Association, Chief Justice of the All-Woman Supreme Court and vice president of the Women Lawyers Association. She was also the first woman registered to vote in Harris County. In the 1920s, she publicly supported the campaign of Miriam A. "Ma" Ferguson, the first woman governor of Texas. Hortense spearheaded the Married Woman's Property Rights law, which became known as the "Hortense Ward Act," and allowed married women in Texas to control their own property and earnings.

[link]

Song Of The Day #378

Here is the #5 song from 1959: Billy Bayou by Jim Reeves.

Maes beats McInnis

Poised for an improbable triumph, Republican Dan Maes took the stage just before midnight to declare victory over former Congressman Scott McInnis for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. Maes — an unknown, underfinanced gubernatorial candidate who has never held public office — was ahead by more than 1 percentage point, leading McInnis 50.7 percent to 49.3 percent, with 93 percent of the vote counted. "I am confident I am your Republican candidate for governor," Maes told supporters at Lodo's Bar & Grill in Denver. The Denver Post called the race for Maes shortly after midnight...more

This is good news to the ranchers and others opposed to the expansion of Fort Carson's Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. McInnis was a prominent proponent of the expansion and had been critical of those opposing the expansion.

A good day for property rights.

Invasion of the Invasive Species! - Local biodiversity is increasing

Here’s a fact that I suspect most people don’t know: Wherever we humans have gone in the past two centuries, we have increased local and regional biodiversity. Biodiversity, in this case, is defined as increasing species richness. Yet, “the popular view [is] that diversity is decreasing at local scales,” Brown University biologist Dov Sax and University of California, Santa Barbara biologist Steven Gaines report [PDF]. Ample scientific evidence shows that this popular view is wrong, however. For example, more than 4,000 plant species introduced into North America during the past 400 years grow naturally here and now constitute nearly 20 percent of the continent’s vascular plant biodiversity. The fear among opponents of "invasive species" is the aggressive outsiders will cause a holocaust among the native plants. That might initially seem reasonable because there are a few species, like kudzu, purple loosestrife, and water hyacinth, that grow with alarming speed wherever they show up. But that doesn't mean other species are in danger. “There is no evidence that even a single long term resident species has been driven to extinction, or even extirpated within a single U.S. state, because of competition from an introduced plant species,” Macalester College biologist Mark Davis notes [PDF]. Yet this spurious threat of extinction persists as one of the chief reasons given for trying to prevent the introduction of exotic species. Meanwhile, there are plenty more examples in which local and regional species richness has been increasing...more

Wilderness ad campaign stirs lively debate

An advertising campaign by one group supporting the creation of federal wilderness in Do-a Ana County proved to be the elephant in the room Tuesday, at a meeting of the Advertising Federation of Las Cruces. The campaign and differing stances in the wilderness debate have created a wedge of sorts between two major business groups locally: the Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce and the Hispano Chamber of Commerce de Las Cruces. Leaders from both groups, as well as other supporters and opponents of the wilderness bill, were present at the monthly Advertising Federation meeting. Their assignment? To talk about the advertising and publicity strategies each has used so far to get its message to the public. It was about 45 minutes into the session before the Hispano Chamber's campaign, which includes an ongoing TV commercial on Comcast Cable, gained the spotlight. eting organizers played the commercial, which urges support for Senate Bill 1689, saying it will conserve the outdoors for future generations. Afterward, wilderness bill critics from the Greater Las Cruces Chamber and People for Preserving Our Western Heritage, a ranchers group opposed to creating wilderness, pressed Hispano Chamber representatives to reveal the source of funding behind the campaign...more

Cougars invade sheep ranch, kill five

Over the past two months, six cougars have attacked sheep on a Linn County ranch, killing five of them. Cathy Stepp and her son 12-year-old son, Colton, said they feel like they’ve been cast in a movie with their sheep as the “disposable” extras and cougars playing the elusive killers. “It’s kind of like being in a scary movie,” said Cathy. “You’re just very, very cautious, constantly.” Five of the six cougars have been killed by the county trapper. “You never know when something’s going to be laying on the hay pile or lurking around or whatever,” Cathy said. Colton is no longer allowed to play in the woods...more

Las Vegas Considers Hula-Hoop Ban

This is a city where tourists are welcome to wander certain streets with open bottles of alcohol, where the phone books contain hundreds of color page ads for "escorts" and where gambling is so ubiquitous that slot machines appear in most 7-Elevens. Yet the Las Vegas City Council is now zeroing in on halting a new public menace: Hula-Hoops. OK, not all Hula-Hooping. Specifically, city leaders later this month may ban the use of the usually plastic, hip-gyrating equipment on a five-block pedestrian mall known as the Fremont Street Experience in the city's downtown core because, they argue, their use obstructs traffic flow and causes public disruptions...more

Los Payasos at work again.

Cow whisperer aims to improve livestock handling

The herd of lowing cows parted like a wave before Curt Pate, who rode straight up to the bull and let him know who was in charge without making a sound. Pate, a 49-year-old Montana cowboy who consulted on the 1998 Robert Redford film "The Horse Whisperer," switched his focus to cows about five years ago and has been traveling the country teaching ranchers to think like cattle and use low-stress methods of handling livestock. At the moment, his work is sponsored by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which is eager to counter bad publicity generated by a widely seen, secretly recorded video of cows on an Ohio dairy farm being beaten and prodded with pitchforks. "It makes me ill," Pate said. "I really can't stand it. If you care about animals, you just can't stand those things." He said his goal is to teach modern ranchers traditional livestock handling methods used 100 years ago. Back then, there were fewer corrals and fences, and a ranch manager didn't spend as much time on a computer as with livestock. When he confronted the bull, Pate was demonstrating how to steer it away from the agitated females and into an empty pasture without upsetting it or getting the cows even more excited...more

I wonder if there is a market for my skills - I'm a wife whisperer.

U.S. farm group wants crackdown on meatpackers

A grass-roots group of U.S. farmers and ranchers on Tuesday called for tighter government oversight of beef and poultry companies, charging that corporate monopolies are unfairly squeezing independent producers. The outcry is aimed at rallying support for the Agriculture Department's Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA), which is completing a new rule aimed at promoting fairness in the marketing of livestock and poultry. GIPSA published the rule in June and a comment period expires Nov 22. Competition in the U.S. meat industry is also getting the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice which is holding a forum on industry antitrust concerns in Colorado on Aug. 27. The group of farmers and ranchers meeting in Omaha this week are working to rally support for the GIPSA rule and to beat back an intense lobbying effort by the corporate meat companies and organizations working to weaken regulation...more

USMEF, NCBA Applaud Mexico's Elimination Of Anti-dumping Duties

In a decision announced today, Mexico’s Ministry of the Economy has eliminated anti-dumping duties that have been imposed on imports of U.S. beef for the past ten years. The Ministry's resolution goes into effect tomorrow (Aug. 11, 2010) and eliminates the duties effective April 29, 2010. U.S. beef arriving at Mexico's border starting tomorrow should enter the market duty-free. Companies that have paid duties since April 29 are entitled to a refund of all duties paid. The U.S. beef industry has been seeking resolution of this issue for many years. With full support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) have led a coalition of U.S. beef industry interests seeking elimination of the duties, which ranged from 3 cents to 29 cents per pound. The duties applied to about half of U.S. beef production, which steared some U.S. companies away from Mexico's market...more

Judge dismisses lawsuit over Geronimo's remains

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by descendants of Apache warrior Geronimo that claimed his remains were stolen in 1918 by a student secret society at Yale University. The lawsuit was filed last year in Washington, D.C., by 20 descendants who want to rebury Geronimo near his New Mexico birthplace. It claimed Skull and Bones members took remains from a burial plot at Fort Sill, Okla., where Geronimo died in 1909. Judge Richard Roberts last month granted a Justice Department motion to dismiss, saying the plaintiffs failed to establish that the government waived its right not to be sued. He also dismissed the lawsuit against Yale and the society, saying the plaintiffs cited a law that only applies to Native American cultural items excavated or discovered after 1990. Skull and Bones is not affiliated with Yale. AP

Baxter Black: The horse gets the last laugh

The owner told Warren that Della had a reputation of being hard to show. She was an 18-year-old mare whose foals were sought after for the cutting genes she passed down. He had been offered $50,000 for her but declined. He wanted her shod. Since Warren did the shoeing, he was chosen to confront her. Horses have individual eccentricities. Some are cinchy, some don't like their ears touched, their bean cleaned, mane combed or feet messed with. Della did not abide any touching of her legs above the hocks. An odd quirk, probably the result of some past experience, but it was no odder than people who refuse to wear orange, politicians who can't give a straight answer or cowboys who insist on going outside to tinkle. To do the job meant Warren had to put himself in harm's way to hammer new iron on her feet. To aid in restraint, the owner administered a healthy dose of Acepromazine tranquilizer, and they confined her in a 12-by-12-foot stall. Even then, with the owner on the head and Warren pushing the hip against the wall, she fought it all the way. But our boys are stubborn. They hung on as Della made three circles backward around the stall dragging them like two lion cubs trying to take down an injured gnu. They finally got her cranked into a corner so Warren could delicately reach down and handle the hoof. The tranquilizer finally took the wind out of her sails and one side was done. The procedure was repeated in the other direction including the backward whirlpooling and the job was finished. Hallelujah. But eventually the next time came around...more

Song Of The Day #377

Ranch Radio will take a look at 1959 for the rest of this week.

We'll start with the #1 and #2 songs in 1959 - Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton and Three Bells by The Browns.

Ranchers report smuggler scouts on the border area hilltops

One of the more interesting aspects of the battle to secure our borders is the tactics of the drug and people smugglers operating across the line. I have talked to many ranchers who run cattle near the border and on the cartel smuggling corridors on US public lands north of the border to the outskirts of Tucson. I hear the same story over and over….the smugglers have scouts all over the place on tops of hills and mountains watching what is going on and communicating with the coyotes down in the canyons when to move and when to hide from the Border Patrol. The smugglers are avoiding roads and staying in canyons and washes where the Border Patrol can only go on foot or on horseback. The BP is mostly concentrated in vehicles on the road system. Aid workers looking to assist undocumented entrants in trouble confirm the road avoidance strategy of illegal entrants and smugglers. The cowboys are seeing the scouts constantly. According to the ranchers, the scouts are camping on this high points for days at a time. The cowboys are trying to avoid getting in the crossfire between the smugglers, bandits and others running around the back country with guns. They see the scouts, they go the other way. One rancher, whose family has been down here since the 1850’s, described the situation is being similar to the Apache War…with the smuggler scouts using the exact same observation sites the Apaches did 150 years ago...more

ICE expands its jail print program all along border

Immigration officials announced Tuesday that all 24 counties along the Southwest border are now part of a federal program designed to run fingerprint-based immigration history checks on suspects booked into local jails. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement program, dubbed Secure Communities, debuted in Harris County's jails in October 2008. Since then, the program has expanded to 544 jurisdictions and is scheduled to be used across the country by 2013. Since its launch, the program has helped remove more than 34,600 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, including more than 9,800 classified as "aggravated felons," ICE officials said...more

FBI - Public Corruption: A Few Bad Apples

In the surveillance footage taken hours before his arrest, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer Michael Gilliland can be seen nonchalantly waving a car through his lane at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in San Diego. He was knowingly allowing illegal aliens across the border, and he would do this several more times throughout the evening. His actions that night would earn him nearly the equivalent of his annual salary—and eventually a five-year prison term. Gilliland, a former U.S. Marine and veteran Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer with 16 years of experience, has been in jail since 2007. But his case continues to illustrate the pervasive problem of corruption along the Southwest border and the damage that can occur when officials betray the public's trust. Of our 700 agents assigned to public corruption investigations nationwide, approximately 120 of them are located in the Southwest region. We work closely with many federal agencies, including CBP and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The result has been more than 400 public corruption cases originating from the Southwest region—and in the past fiscal year more than 100 arrests and about 130 state and federal cases prosecuted. We have 12 border corruption task forces in the Southwest, which consist of many state and local law enforcement agencies as well as our federal partners. Recently, we established a National Border Corruption Task Force at FBI Headquarters to coordinate the activities of all regional operations...more

Montana Landowners brace for eminent domain fight over MATL power line

Tonbridge Power Inc. of Toronto, Canada, values the land, too, which is owned by Salois' 83-year-old mother, Shirley. The company plans to erect 90-foot-tall poles on the property as part of a 215-mile transmission line for electricity it is building from Lethbridge, Alberta, to Great Falls. The company has filed a condemnation complaint on the Salois land to gain access it says is needed for the greater good, but Larry Salois is digging in his heels. He disputes the claim that the project is in the public interest, and he isn't sure whether Tonbridge, which is a for-profit private company based in a foreign country, even has the right to condemn the land. "I'm going to do my best to keep 'em outside of the fence for as long as I can," Salois said. MATL is one of several large transmission lines being built statewide to meet growing demand from developers that want to tap Montana's renowned winds. They then want to send the green energy to larger markets across the West, fueled by federal stimulus funds and state tax breaks for renewable-energy projects. But producing wind energy, as opposed to using fossil fuels, also has big impacts, including the need for towering poles and power lines across private property to get the electricity from where it's produced to where it's used, Opper said...more

The article also says:

The DOE announced in January that it was providing up to $30 billion in loan guarantees nationwide for renewable-energy projects, including $2 billion in loans for transmission projects. Tonbridge received a $161 million loan from that funding to help construct MATL...

The feds are subsidizing the condemnation of private property all in the name of renewable energy. Market forces aren't producing this outcome, government policy is.

Another property-grabbing virus set loose by the DC Deep Thinkers.

Montana, Idaho consider wolf-control options with hunts shut down

Montana's Fish, Wildlife and Parks commissioners had just finished their meeting Thursday afternoon when the wolf returned to their door. The commissioners ordered FWP director Joe Maurier to appeal the ruling and look for other ways to reduce the state's wolf population - since the ruling canceled Montana's wolf hunting season. But fast decisions at the top may not translate into action in the woods this fall. "We're not going to sit on the sidelines," Sime said. "It looks like Idaho is pursuing their most readily available course, and we're pursuing options that are a better fit for Montana. Clearly the spotlight's on Wyoming right now. Wyoming has put a speed bump there in terms of Montana managing its own wildlife." Idaho plans to manage wolves under what's called the 10/J rule of the Endangered Species Act. That allows the state and private individuals to shoot wolves that threaten livestock or contribute to declines in big-game herds. "We have good estimates of the wolf population," Unsworth said. "We will make an estimation of the number of wolves we would like to reduce and move forward. We're put in a position of more active management, although we would have preferred to use hunters." That includes a near-term effort to reduce wolf numbers in Idaho's Lolo area from the current 75 to 100 animals down to 20 or 30 this year. Idaho's Lolo hunting districts cover 1.5 million acres roughly between the St. Joe River and the Lochsa River west of Montana's Lolo Pass. Idaho Fish and Game spokesman Neils Nokkentved said the state wanted to hold wolves in that area to the lower number for at least five years. The original plan was to use public hunters to do the killing. Now the state will apply for federal 10/J permission using government hunters...more

The Fiery Touch

Wildfire arson has become an increasingly serious problem as the wildland-urban interface expands. In California, fire authorities have traced 7 to 12 percent of wildfires in recent years to arsonists. The picture varies depending on the locale, but extrapolating from California, arson likely accounts for 10,000 to 12,000 wildfires a year nationwide. In California alone in the past 10 years, 13 people have died in wildfires that were either confirmed or suspected arson. But wildfire arson convictions don't come easily. Typically the crime scene is empty country; witnesses are few or nonexistent. The arsonist may be long gone by the time the flames spring to life, and the simple ignition devices are often destroyed; a single match is enough to start a blaze in light grass. Evidence is also often obliterated by firefighters hosing water, digging fireline and driving fire engines. And the wildland arsonist's motives are harder to fathom than those of his urban counterparts, who often ignite buildings simply to collect insurance or to kill a particular person. As wildfires occur more often in the wildland-urban interface, the penalties for arson have ratcheted upward. Until Oyler, the most notorious wildfire arsonist was probably Terry Lynn Barton, a seasonal Forest Service employee whose duties ironically included spotting smoke. Barton touched off Colorado's 2002 Hayman Fire, which burned a state record of 138,000 acres, destroying 133 homes and 466 other structures, and causing the evacuation of 8,000 people...more

Sierra Club files pipeline appeal

The Sierra Club announced Friday it has filed an appeal with the Interior Land Board of Appeals over El Paso Corp.’s Ruby Pipeline. The appeal is against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s approval of rights of way for the 680-mile pipeline that extends from Wyoming to Oregon. The Sierra Club is proposing an alternate route along existing roads, railroads and utility corridors that David Hornbeck, chairman of the Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club, said would add 55 miles to the route. “The Sierra Club doesn’t oppose the pipeline as such and is proposing a better route,” he said Friday. “We think our alternative is better.”...more

I guess they didn't get any money.

Pinnacles National Monument might become national park

Pinnacles National Monument, a landscape of massive spires and sheer-walled canyons east of Salinas Valley, would become California's newest national park under legislation introduced in Congress recently. Pinnacles now gets about 165,000 visitors a year who are drawn by the condors, caves, challenging rock climbs and spectacular wildflowers. Elevating it to a national park "will draw even more visitors to this spectacular piece of California's natural and cultural heritage," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), author of the bill. Boxer's bill would also boost the area of officially designated wilderness in the monument from 16,000 acres to 19,000. The National Wilderness Preservation System is the nation's strongest form of public land protection...more

Massive Iceberg in Greenland

An ice island four times the size of Manhattan has broken off from the Petermann Glacier in Greenland, the largest calving of an iceberg in the Arctic since 1962. The iceberg covers at least 100 square miles and is roughly 700 feet thick — about half the height of the Empire State Building. University of Delaware ocean scientist Andreas Muenchow said that so much freshwater is stored in the massive iceberg that it could keep all U.S. public tap water flowing for four months and could sustain the flow of the Hudson and Delaware rivers for two years. Muenchow said it is unclear whether this massive calving event is related to rising air temperatures in Greenland and the Arctic, but another researcher said that the calving was probably hastened by rising sea and air temperatures in northern Greenland...more

Supersized power hub in southeastern N.M. to link 3 major U.S. grids

Phil Harris is masterminding an electricity superhighway — a facility near Clovis that will connect the nation's three main power grids for the first time. The Tres Amigas Superstation will link the Western Interconnection, Eastern Interconnection and Texas Interconnection at a point in southeastern New Mexico. It also will provide the transmission capacity that power managers say is needed to handle the renewable energy expected from new solar and wind sources. The hub will allow energy to flow between the grids via superconductor cables in underground pipelines and AC/DC converters. The multifacility project will be built on 22.5 square miles of land leased from the New Mexico State Land Office. The superstation will be built in 500-megawatt units. Harris hopes to commence construction on the first one next year. The projected cost for the first phase is about $600 million. Eventually, Tres Amigas will have the capacity to move as much as 30 gigawatts of power between the three grids...more

Scientists find new evidence of genetically modified plants in the wild

Scientists currently performing field research in North Dakota have discovered the first evidence of established populations of genetically modified plants in the wild. Meredith G. Schafer from the University of Arkansas and colleagues from North Dakota State University, California State University, Fresno and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established transects of land along 5,400 km of interstate, state and county roads in North Dakota from which they collected, photographed and tested 406 canola plants. The results—which were recorded in early July and are set to be presented at ESA's Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh—provide strong evidence that transgenic plants have established populations outside of agricultural fields in the U.S. Of the 406 plants collected, 347 (86%) tested positive for CP4 EPSPS protein (confers tolerance to glyphosate herbicide) or PAT protein (confers tolerance to glufosinate herbicide). "There were also two instances of multiple transgenes in single individuals," said one of the study's coauthors Cynthia Sagers, University of Arkansas. "Varieties with multiple transgenic traits have not yet been released commercially, so this finding suggests that feral populations are reproducing and have become established outside of cultivation. These observations have important implications for the ecology and management of native and weedy species, as well as for the management of biotech products in the U.S."...more

Richardson urged to support coal waste reform in the state

New Mexico advocacy groups are urging Gov. Bill Richardson to support what they call strong, federal regulations that would govern the disposal of toxic leftovers from burning coal for electricity. Thirteen groups have sent the governor a letter asking him to protect New Mexicans from the millions of tons of coal combustion waste that are produced each year by coal-fired power plants in northwestern New Mexico. Their plea comes as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency develops the first-ever national rules for the disposal and management of coal ash as a special waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The agency is considering two options, one of which calls for state or federal permit programs and direct federal enforcement. The groups seeking Richardson's support say New Mexico is among the top 10 producers of coal combustion waste. A total of about 3.6 million tons is produced annually by the Four Corners Power Plant, the nearby San Juan Generating Station and the Escalante Generating Station near Prewitt, Lorimier said. Pat Vincent-Collawn, president and chief executive of PNM Resources, the parent company of utility Public Service Co. of New Mexico, told The Associated Press on Monday that the EPA proposals could impact coal ash disposal costs for the Four Corners and San Juan plants, depending on how the waste is ultimately classified. PNM has a stake in each plant. Vincent-Collawn could not immediately provide a dollar figure but said it would be "pretty significant."...more

Group Seeks Stiffer Anti-Soring Rules

A group of equine welfare advocates want the USDA to adopt new regulations designed to beef-up enforcement of the Horse Protection Act (HPA) of 1970 at Tennessee Walking Horse exhibitions. The act forbids soring, the deliberate injury to a horse's legs to achieve an exaggerated "big lick" gait. In a legal petition filed on August 4, The Humane Society of the Untied States, The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, American Horse Protection Association, Friends of Sound Horses and former Maryland Sen. Joseph Tidings, original sponsor of the HPA legislation, asked the USDA to permanently ban repeat HPA violators and horses scarred by soring from competing in future shows. The petition also asks the agency to require Horse Industry Organizations (HIOs) to adopt minimum HPA violation penalties, and to decertify HIOs that chronically refuse to comply with USDA rules. USDA Horse Protection Coordinator Rachel Cezar, DVM, said the agency is reviewing the petition...more

Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter

Our earliest ancestors ate their food raw — fruit, leaves, maybe some nuts. When they ventured down onto land, they added things like underground tubers, roots and berries. It wasn't a very high-calorie diet, so to get the energy you needed, you had to eat a lot and have a big gut to digest it all. But having a big gut has its drawbacks. "You can't have a large brain and big guts at the same time," explains Leslie Aiello, an anthropologist and director of the Wenner-Gren Foundation in New York City, which funds research on evolution. Digestion, she says, was the energy-hog of our primate ancestor's body. The brain was the poor stepsister who got the leftovers. Until, that is, we discovered meat. "What we think is that this dietary change around 2.3 million years ago was one of the major significant factors in the evolution of our own species," Aiello says. Meat is packed with lots of calories and fat. Our brain — which uses about 20 times as much energy as the equivalent amount of muscle — piped up and said, "Please, sir, I want some more." As we got more, our guts shrank because we didn't need a giant vegetable processor any more. Our bodies could spend more energy on other things like building a bigger brain. Sorry, vegetarians, but eating meat apparently made our ancestors smarter — smart enough to make better tools, which in turn led to other changes, says Aiello...more

Song Of The Day #376

Today is Sweet Sharon's birthday, so Ranch Radio dedicates this song to her. The tune is Right On The Money by Alan Jackson.

Love you Darlin'.

USDA plans to require ID for interstate livestock

Federal officials looking to head off livestock disease outbreaks are drafting regulations that would require farmers to identify animals that move across state lines. The aim is to reduce illness and deaths by making it easier for officials to trace brucellosis, tuberculosis and other diseases to a particular group of animals, location and time. The regulations are being drafted six months after the U.S. Department of Agriculture dropped an unpopular voluntary program meant to trace livestock movement, and they are expected to be implemented in 2013. "A voluntary system has not worked so far, and that's why the USDA has gone back to the drawing board and created a system that relies much more strongly on compulsory or mandatory identification instead of voluntary," said Marty Zaluski, the Montana state veterinarian and a member of the USDA working group drafting the new rule. Last year, more than 19 million of the nation's 30 million beef cows and 9 million dairy cows crossed state lines. Data from 2006 and 2007 show that only 28% of the nation's adult cattle had any form of official identification that would allow them to be tracked, said David Morris of the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. States will have authority to decide how to track livestock moving within their own borders, but they will be accountable to the federal government for the system they choose...more

Nothing voluntary ever satisfies a government agency. It takes too much work. They prefer to just point to a rule and say do this or don't do that. Much easier.

Marijuana a growing problem in Oregon forests

Unlike domestic pot operations of years past, many of the plantations now growing on federal land are operated by Mexican drug-trafficking organizations who are well-financed and well-armed, the sheriffs said. "The longer it goes on, the harder it will be for us to overcome," Winters told Walden. "They are better funded than us ... There are more of them than there are of us." In fact, the U.S. Department of Justice's National Drug Intelligence Center's 2010 national drug threat assessment released in February reported that the number of plants removed from public land grew more than 300 percent from 2004 to 2008, primarily from pot gardens operated by Mexican drug cartels. The pot growers favor public land because of its remoteness and because it can't be seized or traced to an owner, the report said...more

Seems any productive use of federal lands is either illegal, or the legal uses are being slowly constricted and eliminated.

Mendocino public land at center of pot war

Mendocino County officials say they're determined to take back public lands from armed marijuana growers, with or without declaring a state of emergency requested by concerned citizens earlier this week. “I've had it. We're going to get the illegal growers out of the national forest,” said Mendocino County Supervisor John Pinches. Sheriff Tom Allman said he's already working on a plan for a large-scale attack on the illegal growers in the Mendocino National Forest. Armed pot growers are keeping hikers, hunters, fishermen, equestrians and cattle ranchers from utilizing land that belongs to the public, county residents said. People who live near and use the forest land are demanding that something be done. On Tuesday, they called on supervisors to declare a state of emergency and bring in the National Guard to help clear the forest of dangerous intruders. “It's an armed invasion of American soil,” said Ann Marie Bauer, a fifth generation rancher in Round Valley. Suspected pot growers have fired over her head to scare her away while she was moving cattle on forest land the family leases. She said she is afraid to retrieve a group of cattle that is grazing down a trail where she knows marijuana has been growing. The gun-toting invaders, many of them Mexican nationals, are cultivating massive amounts of marijuana on public land for Mexican cartels, law authorities contend...more

There's an easy way to stop this. Make these guys do a NEPA analysis of their operation and they will give up and go away.

Officials: Wolf kills 100-pound dog in Utah

A wolf attacked and killed a dog that was guarding sheep near the Wyoming border, the Utah Department of Agriculture confirmed Wednesday. The wolf killed the dog a week ago on private lands in the Chalk Creek area east of Coalville, Department of Agriculture spokesman Larry Lewis said. Lewis said the 100-pound Great Pyrenees was no match for the wolf, which injured a second guard dog in the same attack. The other dog was missing for several days but turned up Wednesday nursing injuries from the attack, he said. Wildlife officers were able to confirm the wolf kill by collecting fur from the scene, and a livestock herder reported that he saw a wolf limping away from the attack, Lewis said. The wolf is still on the loose. An effort to trap it was unsuccessful. Lewis said he couldn't identify the sheep herder or landowner because they don't want publicity that could draw tourists or vigilantes to their ranch. Government trappers, meanwhile, confirmed another report that one or two wolves killed a 350-pound calf earlier this week near Hardware Ranch Wildlife Management Area, 15 miles east of Hyrum in Cache County. The calf's mother was found dead for unknown reasons — there was no evidence it was attacked by a wolf, Lewis said. The trappers determined it was a wolf kill from the condition of the calf carcass, said Kevin Bunnell, mammals program coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources...more

Global Warming, R.I.P

In a remarkable monograph, Roy W. Spencer presents hard evidence that 75% of the observed warming since the start of the 20th century is due to natural processes. He offers a detailed model describing how one of these processes, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), operates in the real world. Most importantly, he demonstrates that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a minor contributor to a global climate largely insensitive to man-made CO2. Thanks to this highly skilled climatologist and his The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled The World's Top Climate Scientists, we can now taunt the often corrupt and overtly political planetary high priests with this: PDO means AGW is DOA. Written in a style that should be attractive to both warming newcomers and scientists from other fields, the volume's appearance is not a welcome event for the world's strident purveyors of global warming orthodoxy...more

So Long to the Dusty Trail

Why couldn't we have had the EPA in the Great Depression? If they had issued their proposed "no dust" regs in 1930, we would have been spared the decade of human suffering from sustained drought and agricultural devastation in the Dust Bowl. Of course, then John Steinbeck wouldn't have had a reason to write The Grapes of Wrath. What a wonderful notion: federal regulators, by simple rule-making fiat, saving us from the natural world. Farm and road dust -- largely minerals comprising silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, magnesium and sodium, with a variety of organic compounds thrown in -- has always been with us, especially in the modern era. But now the EPA, living in a dust-free but not idiot-free zone inside the Beltway, insists that the rest of us live in a biosphere bubble, inoculated from anything that might fail the Good Housekeeping test...more

Climate Change: How Adapting to Warming Could Make It Worse

Positive feedback cycles—they're what keeps climatologists up at night. The term describes the way that certain ecological responses to a warming climate can further accelerate warming, creating a feedback cycle that can spiral out of control. Take the billions and billions of tons of methane buried beneath the Arctic permafrost. Methane is about 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but fortunately, those vast stores in the Arctic are locked beneath frozen soil, for the most part unable to escape and add to the greenhouse effect. But as the planet—and especially the Arctic—continues to warm, some of that permafrost will melt, potentially leaking methane into the atmosphere and amplifying global warming. And the warmer it gets, the more Arctic permafrost will thaw and the more methane will be released—so on and so on. But as the planet itself reacts to warming, so will we. People will move away from the coasts as sea level rises, or shift agriculture to the north as the land we farm now becomes too hot and too dry to be productive. Human influence on the planet will shift as we adapt to warming—and we may end up doing even more damage to the Earth than climate change itself. That's the warning raised by in a new paper published in the August 6 edition of Conservation Letters...more

Texas Defies EPA on Regulation of Greenhouse Gas

Texas officials warned U.S. EPA this week they won't change or reinterpret their air pollution laws to comply with federal greenhouse gas regulations, arguing that the Obama administration's climate rules are illegal. EPA plans to begin regulating stationary sources of greenhouse gases next January and asked states to inform the agency by this week whether they would need to change state laws or regulations to comply with federal policies. But Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Chairman Bryan Shaw and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) blasted EPA for unlawfully attempting to force states to "pledge allegiance to its rules." The dispute marks the latest in a series of altercations between the Obama EPA and Texas as federal officials have moved to overhaul the state's air permitting program. "On behalf of the state of Texas, we write to inform you that Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring, or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions," the Texas officials say...more

Minerals Service Had a Mandate to Produce Results

For decades, Washington and Louisiana were joined in the quest for red-jacket days, and the minerals agency was expected to provide them. Washington got oil and royalty fees; Louisiana got jobs; and the agency got frequent reminders of the need to keep both happy. Seldom do regulators work in a place so dependent on the industry they oversee. From the top of Louisiana’s tallest building (One Shell Square) to the bottom of its largest aquarium (with a sunken rig), oil saturated the state’s culture long before it covered its marshes. It is prized as a source of jobs and as a source of tax revenue. While Floridians stage protests to prevent drilling, Louisianians stage a Shrimp and Petroleum Festival to “prove that oil and water really do mix.” When Mr. Oynes’s wife, Rena, won a teaching award, it was sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute. Across South Louisiana, regulators have grown up hunting and fishing — and working on oil rigs — with the people they oversee...more

Los Payasos - BP Scores Stimulus Cash

The federal government is giving a joint venture involving oil giant BP millions of dollars in stimulus money to build a power plant on farmland near the tiny Kern County town of Tupman, even as the company faces heavy government pressure and a criminal probe into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. BP is benefiting from a $308 million federal grant over several years for the cutting-edge power plant on cotton and alfalfa fields seven miles from the western edge of Bakersfield. More than half of the money, $175 million, is coming from stimulus funds. The rest is coming from another federal program. The stimulus portion alone ranks as the second biggest award in California to a corporation and among the largest in the country benefiting private interests, according to data reported to the government by stimulus recipients...more

Let's see. Investigate them and fine them with one hand, while you're passing them government handouts with the other.

Our government clowns at work.

Horse rancher challenges fence law

A Blanchard horse rancher's fight over the arcane state law on fences has been rebuffed by every court he's turned to, but La Verne Koenig's beef about a century-old North Dakota law has some state lawmakers saying his complaint might have merit. A jury in May found the 59-year-old Koenig guilty of allowing livestock to run at large because authorities said he failed to maintain a legal fence on his spread near Blanchard in southeastern North Dakota. Koenig was ordered to pay $5,400 for injuries allegedly inflicted on a neighbor's horse by one of Koenig's horses. Koenig has filed a laundry list of complaints about the case, including his claim that a creek and a ditch should have qualified as a legal fence - per a state law that has been on the books for more than 100 years. While Koenig appears to have little chance in the courts, some lawmakers believe there's something wrong about a law on fences that was enacted when Theodore Roosevelt was president. "There is a whole section on this and it's all 100-year law," said state Sen. Randy Christmann, R-Hazen, himself a rancher and fence mender. "It is so dated. It talks about standards for what's an acceptable fence, and they're nothing like how we build our fences nowadays." The law lists several fences considered to be legal, including a smooth wire fence with five wires, and a barbed wire fence with three wires. Other legal fences include a 4½-foot structure of rails, timber, boards, stone walls or any combination, and all "brooks, rivers, ponds, creeks, ditches or hedges," provided they are approved by county "fence viewers."

Fugitive Ahwatukee cow has the law on her side

Atakulov said that after the heifer was released into a corral in June, it struggled with ranch hands, broke down a fence and ran off toward the South Mountain preserve. It has been running ever since, becoming the talk of bemused Ahwatukee Foothills residents and a source of irritation for their Phoenix City Council representative. "It just jumped over the fence," Atakulov said, gesturing toward South Mountain. "I don't know how it is surviving out there." Apparently, the young female cow is surviving pretty well. Since late June, the shiny black bovine with large horns has been spotted munching grass and sipping from fountains in Ahwatukee Foothills, lounging under trees in South Mountain Park and drinking from a stream near a small south Phoenix resort. And, as the heifer slips in and out of Ahwatukee Foothills to nibble lawns, it also is eluding capture by slipping between the lines of state and city authority. Even if she tramples anyone's prized bushes or hits a motor vehicle, the law is on her side. Arizona's Open Range Law, crafted to protect the state's cattle industry, makes it illegal for anyone to simply go out and capture or otherwise harm a cow...more

Song Of The Day #375

It's Swingin' Monday and Ranch Radio has been told the Crayola Cowboy is a fan of Artie Shaw. Since this is for Mr. Etcheverry, we'll give you a double dose of Artie Shaw from 1936. First up is his swingin' version of It Ain't Right, followed by some softer swing on My Blue Heaven. The tunes are available on Chronological Classics #0855 and #0866. You can also catch the Crayola Cowboy on facebook by going here.

Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

The husband sitter

by Julie Carter

Word recently came that the Husband Sitter had left town and Ineta was back in the spotlight as the fulltime recipient of her spouses attention. The demands were wearing her patience thin.

"What's a husband sitter?" you ask.

What would normally seem to be an awkward situation when Ineta's ex-husband and her current husband, Daryl, re-instituted their long-standing friendship. In reality, it was a convenient brotherhood on many levels.

Ineta's definition of a husband sitter is: Constant companion to validate every comment, complaint, and action of the husband. Who better to do that than an ex-spouse of the current wife?

Daryl and the Husband Sitter were team ropers. Daryl had a flourishing but time-consuming business to run, so he needed help to keep his considerable collection of rope horses ridden and tuned as well as seeking a steady practice partner.

Putting the Husband Sitter on the payroll to do that job made perfect sense, as least to Daryl, and certainly to the Sitter, who preferred that to any structured, "real" job. You recall that I mentioned that he's a team roper.

Only someone with Ineta's sense of humor could look at the situation, laugh at it and actually enjoy the fact that Daryl had a friend to go play with, leaving her some freedom to do other things.

After all, as she pointed out, the Husband Sitters job description including being available at all times to keep the husband company.

The Husband Sitter was in charge of all the "honey-do chores" the husband couldn't or wouldn't do and no errand was too menial for him to accomplish.

He tuned and trained the rope horses; saw to it that they were fed, vetted, shod and ready to haul.

He frequently chauffeured Daryl's rig and horses to ropings that were days and statelines away, meeting Daryl at a nearby airport when his private plane landed.
Other times, he was steady company for Daryl on all the long road trips.

Evening television was a bonding sport for Daryl and his Sitter. They liked to watch the same cop shows, Westerns and hours of RFD TV. Like two kids at a matinee movie, they'd sit and laugh or discuss the programs as they aired.

The Sitter also provided for a ready and willing breakfast, lunch and dinner partner. He was available to be a constant drinking companion and conversations about the "old days" could be repeated frequently without a note of "I've already heard that."

In deference to a testosterone related malady that causes exaggeration and expansion of the feats related in the "old stories," the Sitters job required that he never doubted the facts as presented. He also knew there would be only one storyteller and it wasn't him.

The benefits for Daryl were many. He had a built-in "Wife Complaint Department."
Since the Husband Sitter was on the payroll, he automatically always agreed and usually limited his comments to, "I know what you mean."

When the drinking partnership was in play, the Sitter could be known, to Daryl's delight, to add a few observations of his own.

Details of the broken partnership are sketchy, but Daryl seems to be content not to have to complain about his former Sitter, which sounded much like his complaints about his wife. A pattern may be emerging.

Much to Ineta's relief, already a new Husband Sitter is in place and this time, one that has not shared any "family" history.

The concept of a Husband Sitter isn't really as unusual as it may sound. Tell the story a few times and you'll almost always get a return story of equal or better value.

Human nature is entertaining when we step back and let ourselves look at ourselves.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net . For those interested, Walmart will soon offer a "husband sitter" section located next to household goods.

A pardon for the notorious Billy the Kid?

Billy the Kid is dead and probably doesn't care, but a pardon for the cold-blooded killer may be in the offing.

Gov. Bill Richardson, called a "Billy the Kid buff," is looking at an old promise by another governor, and not the Kid's reputation, in deciding whether to issue a posthumous pardon, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

No matter that Billy the Kid has been in the ground since 1881. That hasn't dimmed interest in the cattle-rustling outlaw. Tourists, especially from Europe, are fascinated with Billy the Kid, born Henry McCarty, but also known as William H. Bonney and Henry Antrim. He died at the hands of Sheriff Pat Garrett when he was only 21.

New Mexico's tourism website even has a travel guide to Billy the Kid territory.

"His nickname carries a lyrical quality that still gallops across the high plains of our imagination," according to the text next to the only known photograph of Bonney.

"If he does anything, [Richardson] will review the promise made by Lew Wallace to Billy the Kid," Alarie Ray-Garcia, Richardson's communications director, said Thursday, a day after the governor met with descendants of Garrett.

The Garrett family and others oppose the pardon. Besides arguing that Billy the Kid was an incorrigible killer, they want to make sure Pat Garrett is absolved of wrongdoing related to the killing and a Bonney jail escape.

Jarvis Patrick Garrett, 51, two other grandchildren and two great-grandchildren of Pat Garrett met for an hour with Richardson.

"People had forgotten that Pat Garrett was one of the first individuals to bring law and order to Lincoln County," Jarvis Garrett said.

This latest chapter in the story of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid has more twists than a lariat.

Popular history has Bonney gunning down 21 men, but many historians say the number was closer to nine. According to other legends, Bonney did not die at Garrett's hands and is not buried in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. He went to Texas and became known as "Brushy Bill" Roberts, they say.

Poppycock, the Garretts argue.

They asked Richardson to sign a petition signed by 100 people that reads, "Whereas we the undersigned accept and agree the traditional history of Sheriff Pat F. Garrett and Billy the Kid (William Bonney), and believe that Billy the Kid died at Pat F. Garrett's hand. Therefore we oppose a postphumous (sic) pardon for Billy the Kid as Brushy Bill Roberts."

Garrett killed Bonney on July 14, 1881, in Fort Sumner weeks after Bonney escaped from a jail. The sheriff, legend has it, was hiding in the dark and shot Bonney when he entered a room.

Garrett himself was gunned down in 1908 at age 57.

Richardson "agrees with the heart of the petition," but is asking his legal department to look at it, Ray-Garcia said.

But the petition doesn't affect the Lew Wallace matter.

Mark Lee Gardner, author of "To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West," called for a pardon in an op-ed piece last month for the Los Angeles Times.

According to Gardner and other historians, Billy the Kid wrote to Wallace, then the New Mexico territory's governor, asking him to honor a deal. Wallace had promised to grant Bonney amnesty for his role in shooting Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady and other "misdeeds" if he agreed to testify before a grand jury investigating another murder. The pardon didn't happen. The Garretts argue Bonney decided to flee house arrest, making the pardon moot.

"Still, regardless of Billy's crimes, the motives of Richardson or the hollowness of posthumous justice, it all comes back to Wallace's promise. A deal is a deal, and 129 years doesn't change that. Billy is owed a pardon," Gardner wrote.

Bill Garrett, 72, of Alamogordo, New Mexico, said he opposes the pardon. His grandfather was Pat Garrett's brother.

"I am very passionate about this," Garrett said. "He [Bonney] was a killer."

Garrett, who was not at Wednesday's meeting but has written to Richardson, said Wallace did not exonerate Bonney.

"I think he might be better off doing something else," Bill Garrett, a retired bailiff, said of Richardson.

Richardson has been interested in Billy the Kid officially since 2003. "He thought it would be interesting to review this promise by Lew Wallace," said Ray-Garcia.

A sheriff, a deputy and others got involved and moved to have the bodies of Bonney and his mother exhumed for DNA testing to prove they are buried at the Fort Sumner Cemetery. But a judge ruled against the efforts.

Richardson wasn't interested in that aspect and the group's interest in whether Bonney became "Brushy Bill" Roberts, Ray-Garcia said. Ray-Garcia disputed contentions that the sheriff was following orders from Richardson.

According to a letter the Garretts wrote to the governor, Richardson declared support in 2003 for reopening the investigation of Bonney's death.

The investigation cited probable cause for allegations that Garrett killed an innocent victim instead of Bonney and that person is buried in the outlaw's grave, the Garretts said. There also were allegations the sheriff was an accomplice of Bonney in the murder of two deputies in April 1881 and the rustler's subsequent escape.

"This is an abomination as well as an inexcusable defamation of a great man," the letter said of the claims.

Ray-Garcia said Richardson, who leaves office in five months, had nothing to do with the probable cause claims. "The governor told them [the Garretts] that Sheriff Garrett was an honorable man."

She also denied state money went toward the investigation.

Former Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Sullivan was among those involved in the investigation. He opposes the pardon, saying Billy the Kid "was nothing but a glorified cop killer," but said there are many questions about the circumstances of his death and Garrett's conduct.

He said he raised the probable cause questions so that an investigation would glean what really happened with Garrett and Bonney.

"Nobody wants to know the truth," Sullivan said Thursday.

Jarvis Garrett and others in the family said they will continue their campaign to clear Garrett, who they said enjoyed a little gambling.

They are hoping Richardson won't issue a pardon.

"If Billy the Kid was living amongst us now, would you issue a pardon for someone who made his living as a thief and, more egregiously, who killed four law enforcement officers and numerous others?" the Garrett family wrote Richardson.

Author Gardner said there is a reason for an abiding interest in Bonney and curiosity about whether he actually died in the dark and did not escape.

"If you have a folk hero die, you want him to go out with a blaze of glory."

CNN

The ruling elite called

I just got off the horn with the Ruling Elite. We had an emergency conference call and to tell you the truth, they ain't happy. You little people are not responding the way you are supposed to...These damn bloggers, with their facts and critical thinking, are throwing a wrench into the gears. Obama and his crack team are working round the clock to lock down the internet, but it will take time...The worshippers of Keynes, that rule the country, are pissed off at you. Don't you realize that government spending of your money, borrowed from the Chinese, with the bill passed to your grandchildren, was supposed to reinvigorate your animal spirits...Here is the message from the ruling elite to you ignorant masses: Debt got us into this mess and it sure as hell is going to get us out...more

You better read this to find out how you're screwing up.

There is also a 10 point plan for you to get back in the good graces of the ruling elite.

Song Of The Day #374

The Gospel song on Ranch Radio this Sunday morning is John, John, John by Anita & Helen Carter.

National Insecurity

There’s a country that earlier generations might not recognize in which the national government’s criminal investigative agency can execute its own warrants without court approval; present them to private companies and demand information about people who are not necessarily suspected of criminal wrongdoing; and — if that were not enough — forbid those companies from telling anyone — not even the target of the investigation. The country I have in mind is not a Latin American banana republic or a Middle Eastern dictatorship. It’s the United States of America. The warrant-like orders requiring no judge’s signature are called national security letters. In the last nine years the FBI, Defense Department, and CIA have issued well over a hundred thousand national security letters. The FBI has exceeded even the broad powers granted by Congress, and that overreach continued for years after it came to the attention of bureau lawyers. Nevertheless, it doesn’t go far enough for President Obama, who campaigned against Bush administration civil-liberties violations like warrantless wiretapping. Obama wants Congress to expand the scope of national security letters even more...more

Appeals court limits use of GPS to track suspects

A federal appeals court ruled for the first time Friday that police cannot use a Global Positioning System device to track a person's movements for an extended time without a warrant, clearing the way for the Supreme Court to decide the privacy impact of the new surveillance technology in products from cellphones to vehicle-navigation systems. The decision, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, created a split with federal circuit courts in New York and California that have upheld warrantless GPS-tracking of a vehicle by law enforcement. Feeding the national debate, a half-dozen state courts have issued conflicting rulings, while police across the country embrace GPS tools in hunting drug dealers, sexual predators and violent criminals. In striking down the drug conviction of Antoine Jones, former co-owner of a District nightclub called Levels, the D.C. court said the FBI and District police overstepped their authority by tracking his movements round-the-clock for four weeks, placing a GPS monitoring device on his Jeep after an initial warrant expired. U.S. Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, writing for a unanimous and ideologically diverse panel that included judges David S. Tatel and Thomas B. Griffith, said such surveillance technology represents a leap forward in potential government intrusion that violates constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. "A single trip to a gynecologist's office tells little about a woman, but that trip followed a few weeks later by a visit to a baby supply store tells a different story," Ginsburg wrote. He added, "A person who knows all of another's travels can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups -- and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts."...more

New York Lawsuit Seeks Injunction Against Restrictive Gun Licensing Law

Fresh off gun rights activists’ major victory in Chicago, The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) has joined a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which demands a permanent injunction against a state law that requires applicants for gun permits to demonstrate “good cause.” "American citizens should not have to demonstrate good cause in order to exercise a constitutionally-protected civil right," said SAF executive vice president Alan Gottlieb. "Our civil rights, including the right to keep and bear arms, should not be subject to the whims of a local government or its employees,” he added. “Our lawsuit is a reminder to state and local bureaucrats that we have a Bill of Rights in this country, not a ‘Bill of Needs’,” he stressed...more