In Aspen speech, Ritter defends his roadless position

Gov. Bill Ritter in Aspen Thursday night defended his position on roadless lands, which has been under fire from environmentalists. Ritter said his administration believes it is best to make “carve-outs” in roadless areas so there can be vehicular access to water-system infrastructure and powerlines. Colorado has about 4.5 million acres of roadless public lands. “Our process protected 95 or 96 percent of all roadless areas in the state but made carve-outs,” Ritter said. His administration was working on a state-specific roadless position while President Bush was still in office. Once President Obama took office, his secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, asked Colorado to resubmit its position. More public comment was collected, and the state's final proposal is being drafted for federal government review. Ritter commented on his team's work on roadless issues while he spoke in Aspen at a conference on the bark beetle epidemic hosted by a local nonprofit organization, For the Forest. “It is still our intention to do as much as we can to protect as much we can in terms of roadless,” Ritter said...read more

3 Colo. Counties Back Land Swap For Ski Village

Three southern Colorado counties support a federal-private land swap that could allow construction of a long-contested ski village, but congressman John Salazar hasn't signed on. Developers of the Village at Wolf Creek and the U.S. Forest Service would swap parcels of about 200 acres each. That would put most of the project away from wetlands and ski runs and place it adjacent to a highway, so no access road would be needed across federal land. Archuleta, Mineral and Rio Grande county commissioners have voted to endorse the swap. The site is near the point where the counties converge. A spokesman for Salazar, a Democrat, says he's waiting to see whether more consensus develops before writing legislation to allow the swap. AP

2 admit stealing seed pods in Zion Park

Two men have pleaded guilty to trying to steal 600 pounds of wildflower seed pods in southern Utah's Zion National Park in hopes of a payday on the commercial market. Cresencio Martinez-Guzman, 44, and Cresencio Lucena-Alvarez, 23, pleaded guilty to felony theft of government property and were sentenced to probation Dec. 7. They also admitted being in the U.S. illegally and agreed not to fight deportation. The pair had apparently spent weeks in a remote portion of the park pinching Palmer's penstemon, a tall-growing native plant whose seeds are often used by government agencies for reseeding projects, according to court records. They were arrested in September after Zion park rangers spotted them with several large bags of seed pods inside the park's western boundary. The commercial value of the pair's cache was about $25,000, according to court documents. Commercial seed collecting is a bustling business in southern Utah, and it's legal on other federal lands with a permit — but not in Zion...read more

Song Of The Day #204

Ranch Radio is back! This Monday we bring you a double dose of The Original Texas Playboys. The first tune is Cowboy Christmas and the second tune, in keeping with our toe-tapping Mondays, is I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. That's Leon Rausch with the vocals on both songs. Both selections are from their LP Western Swing Christmas.

Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Holiday tips for fun, food and gifts

Julie Carter

Last minute Christmas shoppers are about to be loosed on the streets and a few suggestions for the shopping list could possibly make the process go better.

The recession seems to not only be over in some parts of rural America, but appears to be encouraging early shopping by a few thoughtful men.

One gal just received a new set of back tires for the 4-wheeler, which is an important tool for her to gather his roping cattle while checking the water tanks in the assorted pastures.

Just down the road, her cousin reported that she had gotten a new pressure washer and was expected to test it out regularly. Another said that while she has had a good year of use on last year's gift of a riding mower, her new gift was an umbrella so she could endure a few more hours in the sun while keeping the home place trimmed up.

While these gift items don't overshadow the often given pick axe and wood splitting maul, no one ever accused a cowboy of not being practical in his giving.

Holiday eating

In a season of over-indulgence in food and sweets, eating fruit is frequently suggested to cleanse the pallet as well as fill the belly with something nutritious. A few suggestions to those insisting on a generous intake of fruit might be:
• Apple cake with cream cheese frosting or apple pie
• Pineapple upside- down cake
• Peach cobbler or peach pie
• Nectarine or blackberry swirl mousse
• Banana cream pie or banana nut cake with praline frosting
• Raspberry white chocolate tart
• Lemon icebox pie
• Cherry pie
• Strawberries stuffed with cream cheese and nuts

On a healthier note, a fruity yogurt can be eaten while you are waiting for the other things to finish baking.

Seasonal recreation

Snow and holidays will bring out the snow skiing urge for many. Every now and then you see a cowboy and his family hit the slopes.
One such family ventured to the mountain where they were seen on the bunny slopes teaching the kids how to ski. Dad had the three little kids following him "bouncing down the bunny trail," as he put it.

"I don't know what happened," he said. "The next thing I knew I was flat on my back with my 8-year old looking down at me saying, 'Wow Dad! That was an awesome wreck.' "

Dad could not get up, but would not let Mom help him. So she left him there to sulk while she continued to teach the kids how to ski.
He continued to sit and sulk until his leg was so swollen he'd never be able to get up.

The ski patrol had to come haul him off the bunny slope in a stretcher and the medics with the ambulance were all asking, "How exactly did this happen?"

He didn't enjoy the question or the answer, so simply said, "I don't know what happened."

"Why didn't you get help before your leg swelled up so big that now we have to cut your pants off," they asked. He wouldn't answer and just glared at them.

At the ER, the same questions were asked by the admitting staff and again by the doctors.

All were expecting some story about going down the "face," hitting a tree or some similar description of a major wreck.
The "bunny slope" story only brought snickers and outright laughter.

As it turned out, he had blown out all there was to blow out in his knee. That eventually led to a knee replacement surgery.

When asked if he and the family ever went back to ski, he nodded and said, "Oh yes, we came back last year. I sat in the pickup and read a good book.”

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net

Buck Gets Antlers Tangled in Christmas Lights - Video

Making criminals out of all Americans

...The Founders viewed the criminal sanction as a last resort, reserved for serious offenses, clearly defined, so ordinary citizens would know whether they were violating the law. Yet over the last 40 years, an unholy alliance of big-business-hating liberals and tough-on-crime conservatives has made criminalization the first line of attack -- a way to demonstrate seriousness about the social problem of the month, whether it's corporate scandals or e-mail spam. At one point on Tuesday, Breyer protested: "I thought there was a principle that a citizen is supposed to be able to understand the criminal law." Good luck with that. There are now more than 4,000 federal crimes, spread out through some 27,000 pages of the U.S. Code. Some years ago, analysts at the Congressional Research Service tried to count the number of separate offenses on the books, and gave up, lacking the resources to get the job done. If teams of legal researchers can't make sense of the federal criminal code, obviously, ordinary citizens don't stand a chance...read more

Ohio court: Cell phone searches require warrant

Police officers must obtain a search warrant before scouring the contents of a suspect's cell phone unless their safety is in danger, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled Tuesday on an issue that appears never to have reached another state high court or the U.S. Supreme Court. The Ohio high court ruled 5-4 in favor of Antwaun Smith, who was arrested on drug charges after he answered a cell phone call from a crack cocaine user acting as a police informant. Officers took Smith's cell phone when he was arrested and, acting without a warrant and without his consent, searched it. They found a call history and stored numbers that showed Smith had previously been in contact with the drug user. Writing for the majority in Tuesday's ruling, Supreme Court Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger said the only case law available to guide the court appeared to be the conflicting federal court decisions. The U.S. Supreme Court hasn't taken up the issue and there appeared to be no decisions from top-level state courts on the matter, she wrote. Lanzinger said the majority didn't agree with the state's argument that a cell phone was akin to a closed container...read more

Does the Second Amendment Apply in Chicago?

Last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller definitively settled the fact that the Second Amendment secures an individual right—not a collective one—to keep and bear arms. Yet that ruling applied only to the federal government (which oversees Washington, D.C.). Does the Second Amendment apply against state and local governments as well? Through a series of legal decisions handed down over the past century, the Supreme Court has gradually held that most of the protections in the Bill of Rights apply to the states via the 14th Amendment, which declares, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Second Amendment, however, has been glaringly absent from this process, leaving state and local governments free to systematically violate gun rights. Until now. Later this term, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in McDonald v. Chicago, a case that centers on whether the Windy City’s notorious handgun ban violates the 14th Amendment. As we’ll see, it most certainly does. The text of the 14th Amendment, the historical events leading to its adoption, the goals of its framers, and the statements of purpose made both by its supporters and by those who ratified it, all point in the exact same direction: The amendment was designed to secure individual rights—including the right of armed self-defense—against abusive state and local governments...read more

Gun Laws are Getting Looser across Much of US

It's been the year of the gun in Tennessee. In a flurry of legislative action, handgun owners won the right to take their weapons onto sports fields and playgrounds and, at least briefly, into bars. A change in leadership at the state Capitol helped open the doors to the gun-related bills and put Tennessee at the forefront of a largely unnoticed trend: In much of the country, it is getting easier to carry guns. A nationwide review by The Associated Press found that over the last two years, 24 states, mostly in the South and West, have passed 47 new laws loosening gun restrictions. Among other things, legislatures have allowed firearms to be carried in cars, made it illegal to ask job candidates whether they own a gun, and expanded agreements that make permits to carry handguns in one state valid in another...read more

House Delays Patriot Act Spy Vote

The House of Representatives tabled on Wednesday legislation to reform U.S. surveillance law. The two-month delay puts off a collision with a competing Senate version. The move automatically extends provisions of the Patriot Act that would otherwise expire at year’s end. The Senate is likewise expected to delay the matter. The act, hastily adopted six weeks after the 2001 terror attacks, greatly expanded the government’s ability to spy on Americans in the name of national security. A key difference between the House and Senate packages concerns the standard by which the FBI may issue so-called National Security Letters — although Wednesday’s vote prolongs the time for more backroom negotiations. Reforming NSL powers is a key bone of contention in the Patriot Act debate, even though it is not one of the three Patriot Act provisions that was scheduled to expire Dec. 31. NSLs allow the FBI, without a court order, to obtain telecommunication, financial and credit records relevant to a government investigation. The FBI issues about 50,000 NSLs annually, and an internal watchdog has found repeated abuses of the NSL powers. A House version permits NSLs in cases concerning terrorism or spy activities of an agent of a foreign power. If it became law, such a plan would vastly reduce whom the government could target. The Senate version generally would leave NSLs under the status quo...read more

Short Patriot Act extensions may open door to tinkers

Opponents of the USA Patriot Act say that a congressional move to consider temporarily extending three key provisions that are due to expire at year's end opens the door to try to alter or eliminate some of the national security strategies implemented by former President George W. Bush and embraced by President Barack Obama. Extending the provisions — elements that Patriot Act opponents don't like — was part of Congress' to-do list before it adjourns for the holidays. However, Congress may turn to temporary extensions because of the pressure to pass health care legislation and complete other legislative business before going home. The three Patriot Act provisions that would expire allow the federal government to collect business, credit card and even library records of national security targets, use roving wiretaps to keep tabs on suspects who try to avoid detection by repeatedly changing cell phone numbers and track so-called "lone wolves," individuals who may be working on behalf of foreign governments or terrorist groups. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., a House Judiciary Committee member, said that extending the Patriot Act provisions temporarily would buy opponents time to press the White House to back House of Representatives and Senate proposals that would establish uniform procedures for courts and judges to deal with government state-secrets claims...read more

Justice Department restrains lawyers in Panther probe

The Justice Department has told the federal attorneys who filed a civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party for disrupting a Philadelphia polling place last year not to cooperate with an investigation of the incident by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The commission last week subpoenaed at least two Justice Department lawyers and sought documents from the department to explain why the complaint was dismissed just as a federal judge was about to punish the New Black Panther Party and three of its members for intimidating voters. Joseph H. Hunt, director of the Justice Department's Federal Programs Branch, ordered the lawyers' silence in a letter to the attorney for J. Christian Adams, the lead attorney for the department in the New Black Panther case. The letter said "well-established" and "lawful" Justice Department guidelines prohibited Mr. Adams' cooperation in the commission probe...read more

FBI Linguist Guilty of Leaking Classified Documents

An Israeli-American lawyer who worked as an FBI linguist pleaded guilty Thursday to providing an unidentified blogger with classified documents derived from U.S. communications intelligence. Shamai Kedem Leibowitz, 39, of Silver Spring, Maryland, pleaded to one felony count of disclosing to an unauthorized party five documents that were classified “secret” that he obtained through his work with the FBI. Leibowitz leaked the documents to the unnamed blogger in April 2009. The blogger — identified as “Recipient A” in court filings — then wrote a post based on the classified documents. “As a trusted member of the FBI ranks, Leibowitz abused the trust of the FBI and the American public by using his access to classified information for his own purposes,” said the FBI special agent in charge, Richard A. McFeely, in a press release...read more

Terrorists, Crooks Allowed to Keep FAA Pilot's Licenses

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has asked the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Inspector General to investigate why suspect individuals - including terrorists and drug kingpins - have been able to retain their Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) pilot's licenses. In a letter to DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner, the senators cited media reports, including an ABC News investigation, that questioned the ability of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to purge the FAA's aviation list of individuals posing a threat to transportation security. In one high-profile case reported by the Blotter, a well-known drug boss named Fernando Zevallos Gonzalez was able to keep his U.S. aviation license despite being on a "black list" of foreign drug kingpins since 2004. The Blotter also reported the names of two other men tied to drug trafficking and two convicted arms traffickers who still had their licenses as of Oct. The New York Times revealed that individuals charged or convicted of terrorism-related crimes were also able to retain their FAA licenses. While some of the individuals named in the ABC News and Times reports have since been stripped of their licenses, others have not, according to Safe Banking Systems (SBS), the New York computer security firm that first uncovered the suspect cases...read more

RAND Corporation Blueprint for Militarized “Stability Police Force”

The RAND Corporation, one of the most fecund research arms of the Military-Industrial-Homeland Security Complex, has released a study entitled A Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Creating U.S. Capabilities. The SPFOR (to use the inevitable acronym) would be a “hybrid” military/law enforcement unit created within the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) for use “in a range of tasks such as crowd and riot control, special weapons and tactics (SWAT), and investigations of organized criminal groups” — both abroad, in UN-directed multilateral military operations, and at home, as dictated by the needs of the Regime. Initially as small as 2–6,000 personnel, the SPFOR’s size “could be increased by augmenting it with additional federal, state, or local police from the United States” as necessary. The RAND study, which was conducted for the U.S. Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, recommended using the Marshals Service rather than the US Army’s Military Police as host for the SPFOR in order to avoid conflicts with the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids (albeit in principle more than in practice) the domestic use of the military as a law enforcement body...read more

Pentagon: Insurgents hacked drones with cheap software

Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have intercepted live video feeds from Predator drones, a key weapon in a Pentagon spy system that serves as the military's eyes in the sky for surveillance and intelligence collection. Though militants could see the video, there is no evidence they were able to jam the electronic signals from the unmanned aerial craft or take control of the vehicles, a senior defense official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence issues. Obtaining the video feeds can provide insurgents with critical information about what the military may be targeting, including buildings, roads and other facilities...read more

Some agencies, such as the Forest Service, are already using drones domestically. Hope this slows them down.

Pentagon Told of UAV Hacking Threat in 2004

Senior military officers warned officials five years ago that video from Predator drone aircraft could be intercepted and doctored, but the Defense Department only began securing the signals this year, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The Journal was the first to report yesterday that Iraqi insurgents had hacked into the system to download video and communications from unmanned aerial vehicles. Today it is reporting that officers warned the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the downloads were vulnerable to intercept by Russia and China, but were not concerned that the feeds could be picked up by insurgents in either Iraq or Afghanistan. JCS Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen has confirmed that insurgents obtained data from the drones but caused no significant military damage, The Associated Press is reporting today...read more

D.A.: City crew acted like 'band of brigands'

Nine city workers who were assigned to clean up blight in Northeast Philadelphia instead acted like a "band of brigands" by illegally entering homes and ransacking them of cash, jewelry, TVs and guns, District Attorney Lynne Abraham said yesterday. The nine are current or former employees of the Department of Licenses and Inspections or the Mayor's Office of Community Services who were assigned to the Community Life Improvement Program (CLIP), an anti-blight program supervised by the Managing Director's Office. From June 2006 to January 2008, the nine conspired "to invade people's homes" to steal whatever they could, Abraham said at a news conference while announcing the results of a grand-jury investigation into the case. CLIP was implemented in Northeast Philly in 2002 to deal with quality-of-life issues, such as a homeowner who didn't mow his lawn, who left trash on his property or who didn't fix a broken window. If an owner failed to fix a problem after having been given notice, a city crew was sent to fix it and the owner was billed...

Mow that lawn or the gov't will steal your goods...in this case literally.

To Song Of The Day Fans

Can't get Factory File to work. Songs are there but they won't play. I've emailed their support staff and will start the feature again when the problem is solved. I had some really neat Christmas songs done western swing style by The Original Texas Playboys, but guess they'll have to wait until next year.