Democrats to let offshore drilling ban expire Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in a months-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told reporters Tuesday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election. Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign issue after gasoline prices spiked this summer and public opinion turned in favor of more drilling. President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling in July. While the House would lift the long-standing drilling moratoriums for both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, a drilling ban in waters within 125 miles of Florida's western coast would remain in force under a law passed by Congress in 2006 that opened some new areas of the east-central Gulf to drilling....

Democrats alter oil-shale strategy Democratic leaders Tuesday removed language from a spending measure that would have allowed state-by-state approvals of oil-shale development. Citing President Bush's threat to veto the bill with limits on energy development, lawmakers said it would be stripped out. That leaves unresolved what will happen to barriers on commercial oil-shale leasing, which could affect federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. A moratorium that blocked the Bureau of Land Management from issuing final regulations on oil-shale development expires Sept. 30. Placed in a spending bill last year, it would have to be extended either directly or with language renewing all provisions of earlier spending bills. Instead of individual budgets, Congress is passing one spending resolution to keep the government running next year....

3 Utahns with animal-rights group claim they freed minks Three Utah members of the Animal Liberation Front claimed credit Monday for breaking into a Kaysville farm early Sunday, destroying property and releasing thousands of minks. A statement posted on the ALF Web site states that the group entered the farm, released the minks and destroyed all breeding records. It states that they destroyed an electrical fence, vandalized trucks and equipment and cut about 100 holes in the perimeter fence. The FBI has labeled ALF a domestic terrorist organization. The group has resorted to arson and the use of explosives to protest what they call the exploitation of animals for fur, food and lab testing. Juan Becerra, spokesman for the the FBI's Salt Lake City office, said his bureau was assisting local detectives, but that it was too early in the investigation to speculate on "subjects or suspects" involved....

The Oil and Gas Conservation Commission adopts rules a green group calls "a model" for the U.S. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission on Tuesday adopted rules to protect wildlife from drilling operations — one of the most contentious pieces of the commission's nine-month overhaul of state regulations. The rules focus on protecting species such as mule deer, elk, pronghorn antelope, golden lesser prairie chickens, bald and golden eagles, and several sage-grouse species. One rule protects the state's Gold Medal trout streams. With approval of the rules, on an 8-1 vote, the commission has provisionally adopted the bulk of the new and revised rules to manage the burgeoning industry. In the past three months, about 100 new rules covering a broad range of issues have been passed. They include drinking-water protection, odor and dust control, and disclosure of toxic-chemical drilling....

Tribe to lose historic lands if dam is raised In this valley where four rivers meet, the Winnemen Wintu tribe fished and farmed for centuries, its villages always near the water's edge. Much of that heritage was lost during California's era of dam building. The tribe's ancestral land in Northern California was submerged when the federal government built a 602-foot dam downstream of their ceremonial and prayer grounds in 1945. Now the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is considering enlarging Shasta Dam as a way to boost California's water supply. If allowed to go forward, the project would flood what little remaining land once belonged to a tribe whose name translates as "Middle Water."....

Aggies and Enviros Make Nice in Historic Alliance The battle lines are decades old, the rhetoric around them spoken on a nearly weekly basis at the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors — north versus south, progressives versus conservatives, agriculturists versus environmentalists, rural-dwellers versus urbanites. No matter what the specific debate is about, the discourse is often bitter, frequently heated, and almost always destructive to compromise. Simply put, when it comes to balancing Santa Barbara County’s undeniably vital agricultural identity with environmental and social concerns, you can only count on one thing: conflict. That is, until now. Gathered at the historic San Julian Ranch just south of Lompoc earlier this week, an unprecedented and highly unlikely union held their coming out party under bright blue skies on Monday afternoon. After 15 months of semi-secret meetings at the Alma Rosa Winery, a coalition of farmers, ranchers, environmentalists, and community activists officially announced the formation of Santa Barbara County’s Ag Futures Alliance, an entity with a mission statement aimed specifically at keeping farmers in farming while also being eco-minded stewards of the land....

Cattle Shootings In the last few months, cattle and horses have been shot in the back country. The latest incident happened in Bingham County. One bull and five cows were shot. A lot of ranchers are upset and want to catch whoever is doing it. Many of these ranchers are joining the Range Deputy Program that Bingham and Bonneville County officially kicked off Tuesday morning. The hope is, with more eyes and ears out there, the faster they can put a stop to this. "It's a serious deal. Shouldn't be messing with someone else's livelihood," says Matt Thompson, an upset rancher. A livelihood that's costing ranchers more than they can spare. "We've had nine to ten cows shot in the last two months," he says. For Thompson, that's 15-hundred per cow and it adds up. "We've lost probably fifteen thousand dollars," says Thompson. Ranchers are tired of it....

Texas cattle rancher rounds up herd scattered by Hurricane Ike Bill White spent much of Monday the same way he did the day before Hurricane Ike hit his ranch on the Texas Gulf Coast: on horseback, moving cows. Mr. White's ranch, on the Jefferson County coast, was on the bull's eye for Ike's storm surge. As the hurricane approached, he and some friends pulled off an instant cattle drive, shifting the cattle to the highest enclosed ground they could find. By sunset, he realized that wasn't going to be high enough. So as the winds and rains started to lash the coast, Mr. White opened the gates and let his cattle out to fend for themselves. The strategy worked, he said Monday, talking on his phone while on horseback with cattle lowing around him. While he estimated it would take at least a month to sort his cows from the thousands of other cattle roaming Jefferson and Chambers counties, he figured most of his herd survived....

Country-of-origin food-labeling rules about to take effect Starting next week, grocery shoppers will be able to distinguish more easily between U.S.-grown foods and imported products. Foods such as meat, fruits and vegetables will carry country-of-origin labeling beginning Sept. 30, under federal legislation that requires retailers to inform consumers where certain agricultural products come from. COOL applies to fresh beef, lamb, chicken, goat and pork, as well as fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, macadamia nuts, pecans, ginseng and peanuts. Wild and farm-raised fish and shellfish have had to disclose country of origin since 2005. Retailers may use a wide range of methods to show country of origin, including labels, placards, stamps, bands, twist-ties and pin tags. Some product labels, such as those on meat, may list multiple countries if the animals were born, raised and finished in different countries. The new rule also allows state, local or regional labeling of produce, such as "California Grown," "Washington apples" or "Idaho potatoes," to be used to identify origin....

Dozens of Senators Now Supporting Effort To Repeal The DC Gun Ban
But Majority Leader Harry Reid is blocking a vote on the bill

Gun Owners of America
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102
Springfield, VA 22151
(703)321-8585
Monday, September 22, 2008

Your hard work is reaping benefits once again!

Last week, we told you how the U.S. House of Representatives had overwhelmingly voted to pass a bill repealing the D.C. gun ban (HR 6842).

But we also warned you that there was not much time left in the legislative session, and that Majority Leader Harry Reid might try to kill the bill.

That's why we asked you to petition your Senators to urge Reid for a vote in the Senate.

Well, the good news is that 47 Senators have listened to you and have cosigned a letter addressed to the Majority Leader from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. These signatures were obtained in two short days with Senators getting ready to leave town.

The bad news is that our predictions have come true. Sen. Reid is trying to use procedural maneuvers to keep the bill from coming to the Senate floor for a vote.

Without a vote in the Senate, it becomes clear that the House vote was an election year ploy... a deal cut by two anti-gunners: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Put another way, the House vote merely provides "cover" for many "F" rated Democrats.

After all, 47 congressmen who voted in favor of the bill are rated "F" by Gun Owners of America. Included in this number are three Democrats who are running statewide for open U.S. Senate seats (Tom Udall in New Mexico, Mark Udall in Colorado and Tom Allen in Maine).

Four congressmen who voted to repeal D.C.'s gun laws also cosponsored a bill to ban so-called assault weapons!

So after giving "F" rated Democrats in the House a chance to vote pro-gun, the Democrat leadership is keeping their party members in the Senate from voting on the bill (to prevent the bill from being signed into law by the President).

It is vital that more Senators support the Hutchison effort. Her letter states that, "For more than thirty years, the District of Columbia has subjected residents to the most prohibitive gun control laws of any city in the nation, requiring rifles and shotguns to be registered, stored unloaded, and either locked or disassembled. Despite the Court's ruling in June, the District of Columbia city council has continued to exact onerous and unconstitutional firearm regulations on law-abiding residents."

That's why HR 6842 is needed. Time is of the essence....

Idaho Republicans going green in red state Republican Lt. Gov. Jim Risch ticks off a list of environmental accomplishments he made in his short term - seven months - as governor. The candidate for U.S. Senate said he stopped a coal-fired power plant in the Magic Valley, signed rules that kept new mercury sources out of the state, negotiated a new rule to protect roadless national forests and signed a bill to increase alternative energy use in the state to 25 percent by 2025. "I've got a green streak a quarter-mile wide across my back," Risch boasted. Risch's unabashed efforts to court environmental voters represent a major shift for Idaho Republicans. For more than a generation Idaho Republican candidates, like current U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, ran against environmentalists as much as they ran against Democrats. Now Republicans Sen. Mike Crapo and Rep. Mike Simpson have wilderness bills pending in Congress. Gov. Butch Otter has led the drive to get state agencies to reduce greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming....

Not one more acre in Pinon Canyon So, years after the Pentagon's plans to massively expand the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in southeastern Colorado became public knowledge, Keith Eastin turned up in Trinidad last month to "open dialogue" with the local community. He was touting the latest in a long line of expansion plans — in this one, the Army has temporarily scaled back its request for 418,000 acres of our native grasslands to "just" 100,000 acres and apparently believes it has a willing seller for nearly all of that despite a funding ban. Judging by the commentary from some politicians and media outlets, we are meant to accept this as a fair compromise that should be allowed to proceed unhindered — as if no harm could possibly come of this. Those commentators will no doubt feign astonishment when they discover that when we said "not one more acre," we meant it. So did every member of the diverse alliance of groups fighting expansion, all the southern Colorado county commissioners and state and federal representatives who have clearly voiced their opposition, and especially those in Congress who voted overwhelmingly to block funding for all aspects of the Pentagon's plans. There are many reasons why the expansion plan should never happen. The environmental consequences for this fragile ecosystem and the rare wildlife it supports would be catastrophic. Ranchers whose relationships with the native grasslands go back many generations would lose our lands and our livelihoods. The region's ranching- and agriculture- based economy and the communities that depend upon it would be devastated. And a vast trove of historical, archaeological and paleontological treasures would be lost....

Ban Near on Diverting Water From Great Lakes The House began debate Monday on a sweeping bill that would ban almost any diversion of water from the Great Lakes’ natural basin to places outside the region. The measure is intended to put to rest longstanding fears that parched states or even foreign countries could do long-term damage to the basin by tapping into its tremendous body of fresh water. The bill, which would also put in place strict conservation rules for the eight states that border the lakes, is expected to win House approval, perhaps as soon as Tuesday. It has already been passed by the Senate, and the Bush administration has signaled its support. So House backing for the measure, known as the Great Lakes Compact, is regarded by its many advocates across the Midwest and in New York and Pennsylvania as a long-sought final piece to a complicated puzzle whose solution started taking shape a decade ago in an effort to give the region control over its water. The fear was that without strict, consistent rules on who is entitled to that water, it might start disappearing....

Rancher, Douglas County fight over water rights This county, one of the richest in the country, is running out of water. Rancher Chuck Quisenberry says that's why local officials are preventing him from selling his water on the open market - so they can buy it cheap for themselves. Douglas County officials say they're simply enforcing zoning rules to protect future water supplies. In a lawsuit, Quisenberry, whose 106-acre ranch sits along Parker Road, charges that the county is abusing land-use rules to force him to keep his water, which he estimates at 400 million gallons annually, on his property. Quisenberry maintains that he could sell it for tens of thousands of dollars to water-strapped towns and cities statewide. At the center of the dispute are two ponds on Quisenberry's ranch that he wants to fill and use as "recharge pits," storage areas. He claims that the county has consistently required him to obtain "special use by review permits" to fill the ponds. The catch, he said, is that the county won't grant the permits unless he dedicates his water to the property for future development needs....

US to reopen training center An education and training center for troubled youths that once employed 70 people in Great Smoky Mountains National Park will soon reopen under the control of the U.S. Forest Service. The Oconaluftee Job Corps Center will be the third Job Corps under Forest Service control in North Carolina and will be one of 22 the agency runs nationwide. The Forest Service also manages the Lyndon B. Johnson Job Corps Civilian Conservation Center in Franklin and Schenck Job Corps Civilian Conservation Center near Brevard. The government spent $2.1 million on repairs at the facility, including $224,898 on the dining hall roof. Seyden said 12 former National Park Service workers would become Forest Service employees in the changeover....The Forest Service runs 22 Job Corps Centers? Why? Shows you what I know - I thought the Job Corps shut down years ago.

Matheson adds to shale bill Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, won a huge round Monday in the fight to allow oil-shale development in Utah — even as environmental groups redoubled efforts against it. Matheson persuaded House Democratic leaders to include in a bill a provision that would lift a ban on developing oil shale on federal lands in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. The bill is needed to prevent a government shutdown. The language would formally lift a moratorium that Congress imposed last year to prevent the Bureau of Land Management from issuing final rules for oil-shale leases there. Matheson's language would allow commercial oil-shale leases in any state that also approves allowing them, and Utah politicians generally favor that. Matheson similarly persuaded leaders last week to put an identical provision into a Democratic energy bill. However, that bill has only a long shot at eventually becoming law....

Wild horse roundup planned at Nev. wildlife refuge The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service intends to round up hundreds of wild horses this week from a national wildlife refuge on the Nevada-Oregon line, putting most up for adoption and sterilizing males before they are returned to the wild in an effort to keep the herd in check. The gather at the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge was scheduled to begin Tuesday, officials said. Refuge managers said of the 340 horses targeted for roundup, 200 of those deemed most desirable will be put up for adoption through the Tennessee-based Carr's Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Center, a private agency that has placed thousands of gathered mustangs and burros for nearly 30 years. The remaining 140 will be released back into the wild, but males will be sterilized through vasectomy to try to stem population growth, officials said....

Bishop wants federal workers under scrutiny to 'step aside' for now The Interior Department's inspector general has started a probe into inappropriate ties between environmental lobbyists and the National Landscape Conservation System, according to Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. Bishop - ranking member of the national parks, forests and public lands subcommittee - called for quick action and demanded that federal employees under scrutiny be removed, at least temporarily. "The department must insist that any employee [under investigation for possible] violations of the anti-lobbying law step aside until the inspector general or the Justice Department has reviewed his or her conduct," Bishop said. "We will not tolerate misconduct by public officials." Interior officials have told Bishop's staff that they have documents that indicate "extensive coordination" between top conservation-system employees and lobbyists for environmental groups. It is against the law for federal funds to be used to lobby Congress....

Proposition 2 anti-agriculture, would be harmful to California On Nov. 4, California voters will consider Proposition 2, “Standards for Confining Farm Animals.” Specifically the proposal requires that certain farm animals be allowed (for the majority of every day) to fully extend their limbs and wings, lie down, stand up, and turn around. Voter approval of this ballot initiative could lead to the rapid demise of California’s egg industry. According to the 2007 California Agricultural Resource Directory, 10 million layers produced 4.9 billion eggs which added $212 million to California’s economy. Results from a University of California-funded study conducted by the University of California Agricultural Issues Center explored the potential economic effects on California egg farmers and consumers if Proposition 2 passes. The study found that the state’s egg industry would be severely hobbled. Costs of production would rise and more eggs shipped in from other states, which would not be required to meet the regulations set for California production. “The most likely outcome, therefore, is the elimination of almost all of the California egg industry over a very few years,” said the study’s lead author Daniel Sumner, director, Agricultural Issues Center, and Frank H. Buck, jr. professor, UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics....

Beach erosion from Ike may make homes illegal Even people whose coastal houses were spared by Hurricane Ike could see them condemned under a little-known Texas law, and hundreds whose beachfront homes were wrecked could be barred from rebuilding there. Now here's the saltwater in the wound: It could be a year before the state tells these homeowners what they may or may not do. And if these homeowners do lose their beachfront property, they may get no compensation from the state. The reason: the 1959 Texas Open Beaches Act. Under the law, the strip of beach between the average high-tide line and the average low-tide line is considered public property, and buildings are illegal there. Over the years, the state has repeatedly invoked the law to seize houses in cases where a storm eroded a beach so badly that a home was suddenly sitting on public property. The aftermath of Ike could see the biggest such use of the law in Texas history....