U.S. to Open Public Land Near Parks for Drilling The Bureau of Land Management has expanded its oil and gas lease program in eastern Utah to include tens of thousands of acres on or near the boundaries of three national parks, according to revised maps published this week. National Park Service officials say that the decision to open lands close to Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument and within eyeshot of Canyonlands National Park was made without the kind of consultation that had previously been routine.The inclusion of the new lease tracts angered environmental groups, which were already critical of the bureau’s original lease proposal, made public this fall, because they said it could lead to industrial activity in empty areas of the state, some prized for their sweeping vistas, like Desolation Canyon, and others for their ancient petroglyphs, like Nine Mile Canyon. The bureau’s new maps, made public on Election Day, show not just those empty areas but 40 to 45 new areas where leasing will also be allowed. The tracts will be sold at auction on Dec. 19, the last lease sale before President Bush leaves office a month later....

Restitution tops $4M in eco-terrorism case A federal judge has raised restitution to $4.14 million in the case of an environmental activist who committed arson at Michigan State University and 12 other acts of destruction. This week was the deadline for Frank Ambrose or prosecutors to object to a new tally. Nothing was filed. Ambrose, 33, of Detroit recently was sentenced to nine years in federal prison. He and Marie Mason committed arson at MSU’s Agriculture Hall on New Year’s Eve 1999 to protest genetic-crop research. They admitted to many other acts, including tree spikings in Indiana and fires at four homes under construction in the Detroit area. U.S. Chief District Judge Paul Maloney had ordered $3.7 million in restitution Oct. 20 but raised it to $4.14 million after a “discrepancy.”....

Obama outlines views on agriculture Now that Obama has been elected, here’s a look at his views on agriculture as stated during the presidential campaign. Obama wants to make a disaster assistance program permanent so farmers would not have to wait for Congress to decide whether aid is needed in the wake of individual natural disasters. The Democrat supports country-of-origin labeling, which requires meat and perishable farm products to indicate from where they came. The Farm Bill expanded the list of products covered by the law effective Sept. 30. Obama would increase funding for a cost-sharing program for organic certification to help farmers afford the costs of complying with national standards for organic food, a fast-growing sector of the American food market. There are not enough young people entering farming, according to Obama, so he would help the public university system and farm extension service work with youth groups to identify and prepare future farmers. He also favors tax breaks for landowners selling to beginning family farmers and for people going into farming....

Ranchers cut herd size to survive drought California's worst drought in decades is forcing the state's cattle ranchers to downsize their herds because two years of poor rainfall has ravaged millions of acres of rangeland used to feed their cows and calves. The parched, yellow pastures on Joe Gonzales' cattle ranch attest to the severity of a dry spell that is devastating the economic fortunes of many of the state's beef producers. Gonzales, who normally runs 500 cows on his 2,000-acre spread about 30 miles south of San Jose, cut his herd by half over the past year and may have to sell more if the drought persists. "When there's no rain, there's no grass," said Gonzales, 65. "As the drought continues, you have to either continue to feed your cattle or sell them. ... It's the worst I've seen it in more than 30 years." During most dry years, California cattlemen send their herds to places with healthier pastures or buy supplemental feed to sustain their animals until the rainy season. But high fuel prices, a lack of green pastures in California and neighboring states, and the soaring cost of livestock feed have left ranchers little choice but to sell off their mother cows because they can ill afford to feed them....

Montague Stevens And Grizzly Bears In Catron County Montague Stevens, an Englishman, was one of the first and the last to hunt grizzly bears in Catron County. Stevens moved to New Mexico Territory in the 1800s and went into the cattle business establishing ranches near Alma, Reserve and Datil with his headquarters at Horse Springs. He published a book in 1942 titled Meet Mr. Grizzly and wrote about his move to New Mexico: “It was in the fall of 1882 that I bought my first ranches from early settlers and so little was known of New Mexico in the East that I was several times asked if we had monkeys and parrots here … I have ranches scattered over an area of some 80 by 30 miles, generally known as the SU Ranches and range, the SU being my cattle brand.” Grizzly bears were a major problem for Stevens and early settlers. They often attacked without warning, taking livestock and supplies. Stevens and his ranch foreman, Dan Gatlin, started training hounds to hunt grizzlies in 1889. By trial and error, Stevens and Gatlin raised an exceptional group of hunting dogs, which consistently tracked down grizzly bears when other hounds failed. Bounties were offered on troublesome grizzlies. Stevens described two grizzly bears and the naming of Bear-Trap-Canyon in the San Mateo Mountains. He wrote, “On a mountain 30 miles southwest of Magdalena, two grizzlies had been killing a good many cattle and a generous bounty was offered to anyone who would kill them. Two trappers, therefore, decided to try to catch a big grizzly in a bear-trap, so they camped near the place where the tracks of these bears seemed to show up the most and set their trap.” They waited outside the trap for longer than a week, but did not see the grizzlies. Next, they built a log cabin, about 8 feet by 10 feet with sturdy log walls. A trap door was placed at one end and a deer carcass at the other. When the trappers returned the next morning, the trap had been sprung and was empty. They found another grizzly had dug under the trap from the outside and helped free the one inside. They both escaped, and since the area has been referred to as Bear-Trap-Canyon....

Indian Trial Two Young County lawyers ably defended the arch villains of the frontier — Satanta and Big Tree — after the Warren Wagon Massacre. The trial was unusual and sensational in many ways.Indians had never been tried in the civil courts for their crimes on the frontier. The Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Army tried to keep the keep the Indians from raiding and attacking settlers. But both sides broke treaties and crossed boundaries. At that time, if Indians raided, they crossed the Red River into the safety of Indian Territory where soldiers were forbidden to go. Three Kiowa chiefs — Satank, Satanta and Big Tree — led an attack in Young County in retaliation for the earlier death of Satanta’s son. They attacked a group of teamsters carrying loads of corn and killed seven men. Since Gen. Sherman was there to see the aftermath, the Indian chiefs faced severe punishment. They were arrested and Satank committed suicide — only Satanta and Big Tree would face a jury. Neither the townspeople of Jacksboro or the army thought that the Indians would get a trial much less a real defense team....

Ex-FBI agent John Connelly found guilty of murder Jurors have found ex-FBI agent John Connolly guilty of second-degree murder for his role in helping Boston mobsters assassinate an accountant in South Florida in 1982. He was found not guilty of a second charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. In the 1970s and '80s, Connolly was a star agent in the FBI's Boston office, developing criminal informants and helping dismantle the New England Mafia. But in a closely followed saga in Boston and one the FBI's most embarrassing scandals, Connolly's two star informants corrupted him, prosecutors said. The allegation: James ''Whitey'' Bulger and Stephen ''The Rifleman'' Flemmi ordered the murder of John Callahan based on a tip from Connolly. The agent is accused of telling the gang Callahan would likely cooperate with agents probing the gang's 1981 murder of Oklahoma businessman Roger Wheeler, who owned World Jai-Alai and had resisted Callahan's overtures to buy the gambling company....

Mistrial ends murder case against Ariz. border agent A judge in Tucson declared a second mistrial in the high-profile murder prosecution of a Border Patrol agent. A defense attorney said he was told that prosecutors will not seek a third trial. The mistrial on Tuesday left Border Patrol agents feeling vindicated and human-rights groups worried that violence against illegal immigrants on the border could increase. The jury in the two-week-long retrial of agent Nicholas Corbett reached deadlock after deliberating three days. The reason for the impasse was unknown because the jury foreman's note to the judge was sealed....

Older? Female? No gun for you! Delaware State Police stopped Alvina Vansickle from purchasing a .22-caliber pistol for self-defense because she was too old and a woman, said Superintendent Col. Thomas MacLeish. The outrage that followed led to the revelation that Delaware State Police had been keeping lists of gun buyers for years; state law requires them to destroy these records after 60 days. Without so much as a traffic ticket, the 81-year-old Lewes resident should have sailed through the mandatory state police background check when she tried to buy a Taurus revolver from Charlie Steele's Lewes gun shop last August. Problems started after Steele made the required phone call to state police for approval of the firearms transaction....

Lawsuit aims to test Iowa's concealed weapons law An Ocheyedan man has filed a federal class-action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of an Iowa law that requires individuals obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon.Paul Dorr, 52, said Thursday that Osceola County Sheriff Douglas Weber wrongly denied on a political whim his and his 18-year-old son's requests for permits to carry concealed weapons. Dorr filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Sioux City against Weber and Osceola County because Weber turned down the permit applications of both Dorr and his son in 2007. Dorr alleges that the sheriff denied his Second Amendment right to bear arms and 14th Amendment right to due process. "He just denied my permit to carry without foundation," said Dorr, a consultant for taxpayer and political groups. "That denial just brought to mind the lack of objective process that Iowa code allows for sheriffs." Dorr is bringing the lawsuit on behalf of anyone who has been denied a permit to carry in Iowa. The case is believed to be the first of its kind challenging part of a state code that gives sheriffs discretion in deciding who should receive permits to carry concealed weapons, according to the Iowa attorney general's office....

ACORN uses public funds to steal elections, now your gun rights ACORN, the publicly-funded national organization linked to voter fraud in several states is now actively interfering with the exercise of firearm civil rights in New Jersey, and the Second Amendment Foundation is calling for an immediate federal investigation. “ACORN has, since 1998, received an estimated $31 million in government funding,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. “Now they have intervened in a New Jersey gun rights case in defense of an illegal Jersey City one-gun-a-month ordinance that violates the state preemption statute. “The organization is currently under FBI investigation over allegations of voter fraud in several states,” he added. “Bad enough that ACORN is implicated in fraudulent activities in several states, but now an ACORN chapter in the Garden State is working against the ability of New Jersey gun owners to exercise a constitutionally-protected individual civil right to own a handgun....

Pot Wins in a Landslide On Tuesday, largely under the radar of the pundits and political chattering classes, voters dealt what may be a fatal blow to America's longest-running and least-discussed war -- the war on marijuana. Michigan voters made their state the 13th to allow the medical use of marijuana by a whopping 63 percent to 37 percent, the largest margin ever for a medical marijuana initiative. And by 65 percent to 35 percent, Massachusetts voters decriminalized the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, replacing arrests, legal fees, court appearances, the possibility of jail and a lifelong criminal record with a $100 fine, much like a traffic ticket, that can be paid through the mail. What makes these results so amazing is that they followed the most intensive anti-marijuana campaign by federal officials since the days of "Reefer Madness." Marijuana arrests have been setting all-time records year after year, reaching the point where one American is arrested on marijuana charges every 36 seconds. More Americans are arrested each year for marijuana possession -- not sales or trafficking, just possession -- than for all violent crimes combined....

U.S. border agents detain Mexican troops Seven members of the Mexican military were found inside the United States on Friday, telling border agents they had become disoriented while on patrol and accidentally crossed into the country, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said. The incident began about 8 a.m. Friday, when the Border Patrol's Yuma, Arizona, sector was notified that a military-style Hummer was broken down, Customs and Border Patrol said in a written statement. Agents said they found the vehicle about 200 yards from the Colorado River, and the seven individuals were dressed in military-style clothing. Customs and Border Patrol later determined that the troops' entry was unauthorized. U.S. agents told the Mexican troops they were inside the United States and "peaceably" took them into custody, the statement said. "At no time were any hostilities exchanged between the agents and military officials."....

Roping on a reputation
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

By Julie Carter

There was a really big roping coming up where trucks, trailers, saddles, buckles and a pile of cash were to be awarded.

It had been advertised for months and Dan, Jess, Tim and the rest of the gang had decided to enter up. The only problem was that they all lived in the middle of Texas and the roping was down in Louisiana, fairly close to New Orleans.

Being cowboys, they were also experiencing a bit of a cash flow problem. The only solution was to win enough to pay for the fuel, and maybe even enough to fill up the new truck they hoped to win.

The plan would work. All they had to do was practice as much as possible and since they all had arena dust in their veins, this would not be a problem. They vowed that rain, sleet, snow or the necessity of making a living wouldn't get in their way.

Jess and Dan worked hard at perfecting their runs down the arena behind a spotted steer. There had been some discussion of changing ropes, changing loops or other possible improvements, but in the end, they stayed with what had worked before, most of the time anyway.

Blaine and Tim had made a few changes to their style. Tim had a new rope. It might catch the steer or it might catch the header. Sometimes he threw one of those soil sampler loops and the steer remained quite safe from capture.

Tim was hauling his old, experienced horse. Strychnine could get him into position most of the time, and didn't need to be scored any more.

The theory was that the horse was almost old enough to vote, and Tim had spent lots of time scoring cattle the first 15 years he owned him. Strychnine likely didn't have that many more runs left in him, and there was no point in wasting them.

Besides his regular partner Dan, Jess had picked up a new heeler for an extra entry at the big roping. There hadn't been much time to practice with this new guy, but everybody had heard the story that he had won $32,000 one time when he went to a big USTRC roping. That was a good enough resume for Jess.

When they got to the roping, everybody was wound pretty tight. Word in the warm-up arena was that these cattle would be Nascar fast. With the usual cautious optimism, each team in the crew figured they would probably draw the only dirty one in the bunch.

They had their hearts set on winning big cash and so they patiently waited their turn to rope with all the confidence they could muster through their nervous sweat. They knew they were good at what they did and held onto that thought.

As it turned out, there were hundreds of other "good-at-what-they-did" ropers entered and some of them were just a tick better than this bunch.

Jess and Dan had caught all their steers but were just a little long on time and out of the money. The new man caught one leg the first round and missed completely the second round.

They were all giving him a hard time about not using his skill that won him the reputation $32,000.

He grinned, "Well, I never said I won it roping. I was just at a roping. I won the money playing blackjack."

Julie’s new book, Cowboys You Gotta Love ’em is come of the presses the end of Nov. Order now at a sale price and/or bundle both books together for a deal. Think Christmas! www.julie-carter.com

Gone With The Wind

From California to Missouri, four of five environmental initiatives lost at the ballot box. Voters are clearly still not ready for exorbitant costs and excessive regulation without clear benefits.

President-elect Obama may have felt "a righteous wind" at his back during the campaign, but it did not translate into environmental victories at the ballot box, where one green initiative after another failed for a variety of reasons.

California voters shot down both clean-energy propositions on the ballot. Proposition 7 would have required utilities to generate 40% of their power from renewable energy by 2020 and 50% by 2025. It lost 65% to 35%.

Proposition 10 would have created $5 billion in general obligation bonds to help consumers and others purchase certain high-fuel-economy or alternative-fuel vehicles, and to fund research into alternative fuel technology. It failed 60% to 40%.

Even in San Francisco, the capital of liberalism and greenie fervor, voters rejected Proposition H, which would have mandated a rapid increase in the city's use of clean energy to achieve its goal of being 100% renewable by 2040. It would also have meant taking over the city's private electric company.

Obama took the former red state of Colorado, which also elected environmentalist Senate candidate Mark Udall over oil executive Bob Shaffer. Yet Coloradans struck down a measure to pay for conservation and clean energy by increasing taxes on oil companies.

Only in Missouri did green energy score a victory. There, Proposition C mandated a 15% increase in renewable energy by 2021 with slow and steady yearly increases that energy companies felt they could phase in without disruption and with which voters felt more comfortable.

The mantra is that oil and car companies are blocking the increased use of renewable energy. The truth is that consumers, through their choices and their votes, are slowing the stampede. They worry about the cost in tough economic times and whether such efforts are worth it based on dubious evidence of global warming. Energy independence is one thing, but going bankrupt to achieve it is quite another.

When gasoline prices were over $4 a gallon, the chant "drill baby drill" grew loud enough that Democrats were forced to back off renewing a ban on offshore drilling. Now in complete control, they can block offshore drilling, nuclear power and shale oil in their Ahab-like pursuit of alternative energy.

Texas consumers are finding out how expensive the pursuit of alternative energy can be. Their state generates more electricity from wind than any other, and people like oil legend T. Boone Pickens want to generate more.

A just published study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, "Texas Wind Energy: Past, Present and Future," says that to achieve even modest amounts of wind energy would cost rate payers and taxpayers at least $60 billion through 2025. That includes transmission costs, production costs, subsidies, tax breaks, economic disruption costs and grid-management costs.

Because of the intermittent nature of wind, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas uses a figure of only 8.7% of wind power's installed capacity when determining available power during peak periods.

On cloudy and windless days, solar and wind are useless and require conventional power sources as backup. Output is not steady and cannot be increased on demand. You can't make the sun shine brighter or the wind blow harder during peak periods.

A Feb. 27 Reuters story illustrated the point. Headlined "Loss Of Wind Causes Texas Power Grid Emergency," it told of an electric grid operator forced to curtail 1,100 megawatts of power to customers on just 10 minutes' notice. The wind simply stopped blowing.

Wind turbines generally operate at only 20% efficiency compared with 85% for coal, gas and nuclear plants. A single 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant would generate more dependable power than 2,800 1.5-megawatt, occasionally operating wind turbines sitting on 175,000 acres.

Nuclear power is clean energy, and you wouldn't have to wait for a sunny or windy day to plug in your electric car.

Obama's Washington: The O-List

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The New Republic has prepared a list of "The 30 people who matter most--in order."

The only eviro listed is Al Gore, who comes in at number twenty-two.

Obama, Kennedy & EPA

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The Huffington Post has interviewed Robert Kennedy Jr. on his being cosidered for the EPA position:

"You know what, I would be of service in any way that the administration asked me to be," Kennedy told the Huffington Post. "But I am also very happy and I believe I am being effective doing the stuff I am doing currently."...The appointment would represent a major and early victory for environmentalists and would undoubtedly please Kennedy's cousin, Caroline Kennedy and uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy - who was an instrumental Obama backer during the primary and is in poor health.

David Roberts at Grist Mill doesn't seem to be sold on Kennedy at EPA:

It might please Clinton and Kennedy, but by my count it will piss off just about everyone else. Enviros are still pissed about his opposition to Cape Wind. Sensible people are pissed about his naive acceptance of the phantom vaccine-autism connection. Many journalists are pissed that his overheated work on Republican vote theft in 2004 served to discredit more modest but verifiable theories. He's also, to put it bluntly, widely considered considered kind of an arrogant jerk -- which makes me like him more, but I don't know how it will play in a delicate and highly constrained bureaucratic position.

Two reporters at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer write:

He strikes us as a strange choice. Yes, he's unquestionably green and a magnificent orator... but he's not so much known for his administrative abilities. (He's a fascinating character in so many ways. Example: He got involved with the Riverkeeper organization after he was busted with a lot of heroin and sentenced to community service, which he served at Riverkeeper. He's been clean for years now and is said to not like to discuss this part of his life....

Finally, this Reuters article mentions:

These include Democratic Governors Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sibelius of Kansas, both of whom have pushed to limit greenhouse emissions...Mary Nichols, now head of California's Air Resources Board, has been active in opposing a state ballot proposition that she maintains would increase greenhouse emissions. As a member of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration, she is seen as having the ability to work across party lines...Kathleen McGinty, Pennsylvania's former Environment Secretary, has also been mentioned as a possible EPA chief...Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, which does policy research on environment and sustainability, is also considered a potential candidate.

The speculation is all over the place.

Stay tuned.

Al Gore group urges Obama to create U.S. power grid Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection has some environmental advice for the incoming Obama administration: focus on energy efficiency and renewable resources, and create a unified U.S. power grid. On Thursday, the group Gore founded rolled out a new media campaign to push for immediate investments in three energy areas it maintains would help meet Gore's previously announced challenge to produce 100 percent clean electricity in the United States in a decade. Pegged to Obama's election victory on Tuesday, the Gore group's ads on television, in newspapers and online, pose the question, "Now what?" Gore -- former vice president, Nobel Peace laureate and star of the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" -- has said repeatedly he wants to play no official government role in the fight against climate change. But with environmental activists talking about a possible "climate czar" in President-elect Barack Obama's White House, Gore's name inevitably gets mentioned. The plan advocates immediate investment in energy efficiency, renewable power generation -- including public investment in wind, solar and geothermal technology -- and the creation of a unified national smart grid....

Ottawa swoops in with climate-change offer Prime Minister Stephen Harper is proposing to strike a joint climate-change pact with president-elect Barack Obama, an initiative that would seek to protect Alberta's oil sands projects from potentially tough new U.S. climate-change rules by offering a secure North American energy supply. Key federal ministers issued the call for a climate-change pact yesterday, less than 24 hours after Mr. Obama won his historic election victory, in a clear bid by Ottawa to carve out a key place for Canada on the new administration's agenda. Energy security has been a major issue in the U.S. election, and Mr. Obama campaigned heavily on eliminating dependence on Middle East and Venezuelan oil. But he has also condemned the United States's reliance on "dirty oil" - his advisers have specifically criticized the oil sands - and has promised tougher climate-change action. A Canada-U.S. climate-change pact could tie those issues together by adopting common standards and mechanisms such as a market-based emission trading system, while acknowledging the important contribution the oil sands make to North American supplies and the need to adopt technologies that would reduce oil sands emissions....

Scientists say a rock can soak up carbon dioxide A rock found mostly in Oman can be harnessed to soak up the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at a rate that could help slow global warming, scientists say. When carbon dioxide comes in contact with the rock, peridotite, the gas is converted into solid minerals such as calcite. Geologist Peter Kelemen and geochemist Juerg Matter said the naturally occurring process can be supercharged 1 million times to grow underground minerals that can permanently store 2 billion or more of the 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted by human activity every year. Their study will appear in the November 11 edition of the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences. Peridotite is the most common rock found in the Earth's mantle, or the layer directly below the crust. It also appears on the surface, particularly in Oman, which is conveniently close to a region that produces substantial amounts of carbon dioxide in the production of fossil fuels....