SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
Ag Week
by Larry Gabriel
Agriculture is the most important industry in South Dakota. This is the week we celebrate that fact. March 19 through 25 is National Ag Week.
South Dakota produces about $6 billion worth of crops and livestock each year, but the total economic impact of agriculture on the state's economy is almost $17 billion, according to an SDSU study in 2002.
These dollar amounts are significant. They impact every person living in this state. But they don't tell the whole story.
Not so long ago, some doubted that our industry would be able to feed the world. They reasoned that there is only so much arable land and fresh water, and since most of that is already in use, production will not be able to keep up with population growth.
Those people who doubted were mistaken. During the last 40 years, food production has grown faster than world population. There is no reason to believe it won't continue.
According to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization, world food production must double by 2025 to feed the world. We can do that. We have done it before.
Our farmers and ranchers are extremely productive when we allow them to be. Americans spend less than 10 percent of their income on food. No country in the world can match that.
United States taxpayers work three times longer to pay annual taxes than they work to pay for all the food they buy each year. Even then, about 27 percent (96 billion pounds) of that food is thrown away or wasted.
In addition to food, agriculture provides us with many other products, such as: alternative fuels, pharmaceuticals, surgical sutures, ointments, latex gloves, x-ray film, gelatin for capsules, heart valves, lumber, paints, brushes, tar paper, dry wall, tool handles, lubricants, antifreeze, tires, upholstery, adhesives, solvents, detergents, paper, ink, film, shampoo, cosmetics, lotions, fingernail polish, toothpaste, crayons, textbooks, chalk, desks, pencils, clothing, baseball bats, leather equipment, and shoes.
In addition to providing food security, cheap food, and thousands of other products, our farmers and ranchers contribute to the society in many other ways. They are the best stewards of the land. They provide food and habitat for 75 percent of the nation's wildlife. Ninety percent are still "family" farms and ranches that are producing the next generation of rural Americans.
Today's farmers and ranchers are better educated and more sophisticated than some traditional "business people". Today's ag is expanding into new products, developing specialty crops, and improving methods of producing and using traditional crops. Can they feed the future world? Absolutely! A farmer can harvest enough wheat for 70 loaves of bread in 9 seconds.
All that we need is for the international politicians to get out of the way, and let our farmers and ranchers do what they do better than anyone in the world.
Mr. Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
If we have tomorrow
By Julie Carter
Most often in the lines of this column I laugh with you, laugh at myself or just tell you a story.
Today I'm not writing funny stories because I find a burden in my heart for so many. Sometimes it takes another's misfortune for us to recognize our own good fortune.
Never has it seemed more evident to me than in the past year of hurricanes and fires, that we live in a world where nothing is certain. Not for even for a moment.
As I watched in horror the photos and videos of hundreds of thousands of acres of charred Texas land, burned cattle and lost homes, I knew that there "but for the grace of God" go most of us.
By us, I mean just about everyone who is reading this that doesn't live on a boat or isn't slushing through mud and snow to do morning chores.
This part of the West is a tinderbox and we are only one fool away from the very the same flames that are devouring the Panhandle. One dropped cigarette, one careless "oh look we are camping" fire, or one illegal fire cracker will put us on the national news by nightfall.
Then there are the uncalculated dangers of downed sparking power lines, an errant strike of fire from a passing train, or a car pulled off the road onto a grassy shoulder -- its own heat sparking a fire before it even occurs to the driver it could happen.
How do we even grasp what it is like for those farmers and ranchers who are finding their livestock either burned alive or long gone through fences that burned to the ground?
If their homes are still intact, are they standing on the porch viewing blackened pastures and farm ground wondering where and how to deal with tomorrow?
Do they find within themselves the ability to say, "it could have been worse" and know that if they have their lives they have the only thing that is really important? Could I do that?
We live in a world long past understanding what is foundationally important in life. Gone are the days when people worked back-breaking hard to just survive and didn't have time to fuss over things that had no value in the survival scheme. They went to bed tired and woke in the morning thinking they were blessed.
We live in a world where we expect much and offer little. Disasters have a way of leveling the playing field. When the fires rolled over the Texas plains it didn't have an address list for the big shots so it could miss them.
This country and its people are being tested, one test at a time. We are being put in a place to choose between fluff and value with the ability to do that buried somewhere deep within us.
We are two generations away from any learned survival skills for the really tough stuff. Our hardest decisions usually revolve around satellite or cable, butter or margarine, and finding the gas station with the cheapest fuel.
God bless those people who got the test first. May we learn from them and seek our own response to disaster before we need it.
And let us not forget that tomorrow is never promised
© Julie Carter 2006
Sunday, March 19, 2006
OPINIONL/COMMENTARY
LIABILITY – From Indonesian Troops to Saskatchewan Wolves
Wolves are killing all manner of dogs wherever they encounter them. Wolves are killing all manner of livestock regularly. Wolves are reducing big game herds and steadily eliminating annual surpluses of such wildlife and thereby hunting seasons and hunting license revenue. Wolves are causing increasingly restricted and stressful rural living for the elderly, parents leaving children at winter bus stops, and visiting grandchildren; thereby reducing rural residency and rural economies. Other effects go unmentioned such as when fewer dogs are use for hunting, fewer hunting licenses are sold and less money is spent in rural economies and for sporting goods. All of the above represent losses of property both private (dogs, stock, rural land values, etc.) and public (huntable wildlife populations, “user-pays” fish and wildlife agencies). Rural economies are hobbled as “Critical Habitats” (for other “Endangered Species”), Wilderness, Road Closures, and elimination of natural resource management programs couple with wolf epidemiology to take their toll. Additionally, the loss of “domestic tranquility” (a primary Constitutional charge to the US Federal government) and the mental stress caused throughout rural areas inhabited by wolves are also losses caused by wolves. But it is not these catastrophic effects of wolves that is the subject of this piece, it is rather the liability for homicide and endangering the life of another. Specifically, I am referring to the liability for the death of a Mr. Carnegie recently in Saskatchewan and the attack on Mr.Desjariasis a resident of Saskatchewan. Both men were attacked by wolves. Mr. Desjariasis was, very fortunately, able to fend off the wolves due to his strength and determination. Mr. Carnegie was not so fortunate, he disappeared but the evidence at the scene of his disappearance left no doubt that wolves had killed him. Mr. Desjariasis’ account is irrefutable. Wolves attacked with the intent to kill him and probably eat him. End of story. So it not unexpectedly receives little press coverage outside the local area. Mr. Carnegie’s legacy (since the only witness is gone) is subject to and the victim of government, University, and environmental organization cover-up, distortion and lies....
Running Out of Oil? History, Technology and Abundance
Almost since the first discoveries of oil in the U.S. in 1859, people have been saying we're running out. In 1874, the state geologist of the nation's leading oil producer, Pennsylvania, warned the U.S. had enough oil to last just four years. In 1914, the federal government said we had a ten-year supply. The government announced in 1940 that reserves would be depleted within a decade and a half. The Club of Rome made similar claims in the 1970s. President Carter famously predicted in 1977 that unless we made drastic cuts in our oil consumption, "Within ten years we would not be able to import enough oil — from any country, at any acceptable price." And so it goes today, where a slew of books and Web sites make fantastic claims about dwindling supplies of crude. The chief problem with those who say the world is running out is that they have always looked at the issue the wrong way. Questions about energy supply shouldn't be thought of in terms of how much is available, but in terms of how good mankind is at finding and extracting it. In the years after Col. Drake discovered oil at Titusville, Pennsylvania, on the eve of the Civil War, wildcatters could only drill down several hundred feet. If we were confined to relying solely upon the technology available in the 19th century — or, for that matter, the tools available just three decades ago — then yes, quite possibly we could be looking at the end of oil....
Ethanol is good, except when it's not
Ethanol is a fuel made from corn or other plants. Basically, it is moonshine: corn is ground up and soaked until it ferments (becomes alcoholic), and then distilled so that it becomes even stronger. At this point you could drink it (and get drunk very easily), or you could put in your gas tank. If you want to sell it for human consumption, the federal government would probably hit you with the liquor tax. If you want to sell it for automotive consumption, the federal government and state governments will subsidize you until you start blushing. The Bush administration, like the Clinton administration and the first Bush administration, say that we subsidize ethanol because it's good for the planet. They explain that when ethanol is burnt in a car engine, it gives off much less pollution and CO2 than does petroleum. On that very specific claim, they are correct. However, some scientists argue that ethanol, on the whole, is worse for the planet: it leads farmers to plant only corn, thus degrading the soil; the fuel needed to grow, distill, and ship the ethanol is more than the end product yields; and it evaporates more easily, leading to more hydrocarbons in the air. But the federal government doesn't give these claims or studies much weight....
Burning Forests for Energy
Environmental causes are endlessly fashionable in Europe and America. You know a movie star or successful entrepreneur has arrived when he or she announces they have become an environmentalist. What’s usually overlooked is how these fashionable causes play out in the rest of the world, particularly underdeveloped countries. There’ve been more than a few bad examples. The banning of DDT has led to a huge resurgence of malaria in the tropics. Boycotting genetically engineered foods in Europe has played havoc with African farming. Now it’s emerging that “biofuels”—the latest environmental craze— is leading to the decimation of forests in South America and Asia. The result may be the end of a few more endangered species plus a big new boost in global warming. Turning our attention to another pet cause of fashionable environmentalists, now comes the news that biofuels are accelerating the decimation of tropical forests. American and European environmentalists have long urged that we should replace oil imports with “solar energy” by burning corn-based ethanol in our gas tanks. President Jimmy Carter gave it a federal gas tax exemption, of which Archer-Daniels, the agribusiness giant, has become the chief beneficiary, producing more than half our output. Seven percent of the U.S. corn crop now goes into “gasohol,” a 90/10 blend of gasoline and ethyl alcohol that replaces 2 percent of our oil. Still, environmentalists aren’t satisfied. They point to Brazil, where one quarter of the cars are built to burn any amount of alcohol from sugar cane. Why can’t we be like them? What they don’t recognize is that Brazil is cutting down huge tracts of Amazon forest in order to make way for this crop. In spite of this destruction in the name of (ostensibly) sound environmental policy, Southeast Asia is joining the parade. Tropical forests are being cleared for palm oil plantations, where the entire crop will be sold to Europe and America as “biodiesel.”....
No Policy Is a Good Policy
An attempt to create a national energy policy is about as likely to succeed as an attempt to set a national dinner menu. The energy sources pushed in these policies fail in the market and will only be made with heavy government support. An article in the April Discover magazine tells the story of a plant in Carthage, Missouri that turns turkey guts and pig fat into high quality oil. The article goes on at great length about the technical marvel they have achieved, which they have. But the kicker is that the people running the project originally estimated that their production costs for a 42-gallon barrel would total $15, and that the plant would be profitable from day one. In fact, production costs are around $80 per barrel. Only when the government granted a subsidy of a dollar a gallon was the plant able to begin turning a slim profit of $4 per barrel. Each barrel produced by the plant now costs taxpayers $42. A recent Indianapolis Star commentary piece by Peter Grossman, a professor of Economics at Butler University, pointed out that replacing 85% of our oil use with corn-based ethanol would require quadrupling the acreage planted in corn, with all of the output going for ethanol production. That, according to Professor Grossman, would result in dramatically higher prices for most foods and the ethanol, which is already economically uncompetitive. It would probably also result in environmental degradation, since more grasslands and wooded areas would have to be put to the plow. This is already happening in Brazil and Southeast Asia, as William Tucker noted in his TAE Online Right Idea column. The basic problem with setting a national energy policy is that it presupposes the ability of a few wise heads to outperform the countless number of decisions made by consumers and businesses that represent the collective wisdom of markets....
U.S. regulations big part of high gas prices
It isn't an anniversary to celebrate, but Chicago passed the one-year mark of gasoline above $2 per gallon. And, thanks in part to our federal government, another year at this level is a real possibility. Of course, the main culprit is the high price of oil. After staying comfortably below $20 per barrel throughout most the 1990s, the cost of crude ballooned to $56 in 2005, and currently sits at $62.17. Each dollar-per-barrel rise translates into roughly 2.5 cents more per gallon. Strong global demand is the primary cause of the increase. But oil prices aren't the only reason. Federal regulations also have played a big part. This includes complicated fuel requirements that have led to a variety of costly, specialized gasoline blends, dubbed "boutique fuels." In addition, the EPA has created a maze of red tape that makes it difficult for refiners to expand capacity to meet growing demand. These regulations have disproportionately hurt the Chicago market, which has both tough fuel requirements and tight refining capacity....
PETA's Three-Ring Hypocrisy
This week a Virginia jury tossed a lawsuit brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) against the owner of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus. The animal rights group claimed (and ultimately failed to prove) that he engaged in a "massive conspiracy" to harm PETA -- including infiltrating the group, monitoring its activities, and acquiring secret documents from inside PETA. In other words, PETA accused the circus of playing by PETA's rules. If infiltrating and spying on adversaries is the stuff lawsuits are made of, PETA had better hire a fleet of new defense attorneys. On one of its websites, PETA urges activists to "apply for a full-time position as an undercover investigator." In one infamous 1997 case, Michelle Rokke (then a PETA employee) kick-started the violent campaign against a New Jersey medical research company by stealing 8,000 pages of documents and making 50 hours of secret video recordings during her "undercover" work. PETA's ring of spies has secretly surveilled other business that run afoul of the group's "total animal liberation" ethic -- including an animal shelter, a kosher slaughterhouse, a pet food company, and even circuses. And PETA's vendetta against the Greatest Show on Earth includes targeting children who would otherwise actually enjoy themselves at the circus....
LIABILITY – From Indonesian Troops to Saskatchewan Wolves
Wolves are killing all manner of dogs wherever they encounter them. Wolves are killing all manner of livestock regularly. Wolves are reducing big game herds and steadily eliminating annual surpluses of such wildlife and thereby hunting seasons and hunting license revenue. Wolves are causing increasingly restricted and stressful rural living for the elderly, parents leaving children at winter bus stops, and visiting grandchildren; thereby reducing rural residency and rural economies. Other effects go unmentioned such as when fewer dogs are use for hunting, fewer hunting licenses are sold and less money is spent in rural economies and for sporting goods. All of the above represent losses of property both private (dogs, stock, rural land values, etc.) and public (huntable wildlife populations, “user-pays” fish and wildlife agencies). Rural economies are hobbled as “Critical Habitats” (for other “Endangered Species”), Wilderness, Road Closures, and elimination of natural resource management programs couple with wolf epidemiology to take their toll. Additionally, the loss of “domestic tranquility” (a primary Constitutional charge to the US Federal government) and the mental stress caused throughout rural areas inhabited by wolves are also losses caused by wolves. But it is not these catastrophic effects of wolves that is the subject of this piece, it is rather the liability for homicide and endangering the life of another. Specifically, I am referring to the liability for the death of a Mr. Carnegie recently in Saskatchewan and the attack on Mr.Desjariasis a resident of Saskatchewan. Both men were attacked by wolves. Mr. Desjariasis was, very fortunately, able to fend off the wolves due to his strength and determination. Mr. Carnegie was not so fortunate, he disappeared but the evidence at the scene of his disappearance left no doubt that wolves had killed him. Mr. Desjariasis’ account is irrefutable. Wolves attacked with the intent to kill him and probably eat him. End of story. So it not unexpectedly receives little press coverage outside the local area. Mr. Carnegie’s legacy (since the only witness is gone) is subject to and the victim of government, University, and environmental organization cover-up, distortion and lies....
Running Out of Oil? History, Technology and Abundance
Almost since the first discoveries of oil in the U.S. in 1859, people have been saying we're running out. In 1874, the state geologist of the nation's leading oil producer, Pennsylvania, warned the U.S. had enough oil to last just four years. In 1914, the federal government said we had a ten-year supply. The government announced in 1940 that reserves would be depleted within a decade and a half. The Club of Rome made similar claims in the 1970s. President Carter famously predicted in 1977 that unless we made drastic cuts in our oil consumption, "Within ten years we would not be able to import enough oil — from any country, at any acceptable price." And so it goes today, where a slew of books and Web sites make fantastic claims about dwindling supplies of crude. The chief problem with those who say the world is running out is that they have always looked at the issue the wrong way. Questions about energy supply shouldn't be thought of in terms of how much is available, but in terms of how good mankind is at finding and extracting it. In the years after Col. Drake discovered oil at Titusville, Pennsylvania, on the eve of the Civil War, wildcatters could only drill down several hundred feet. If we were confined to relying solely upon the technology available in the 19th century — or, for that matter, the tools available just three decades ago — then yes, quite possibly we could be looking at the end of oil....
Ethanol is good, except when it's not
Ethanol is a fuel made from corn or other plants. Basically, it is moonshine: corn is ground up and soaked until it ferments (becomes alcoholic), and then distilled so that it becomes even stronger. At this point you could drink it (and get drunk very easily), or you could put in your gas tank. If you want to sell it for human consumption, the federal government would probably hit you with the liquor tax. If you want to sell it for automotive consumption, the federal government and state governments will subsidize you until you start blushing. The Bush administration, like the Clinton administration and the first Bush administration, say that we subsidize ethanol because it's good for the planet. They explain that when ethanol is burnt in a car engine, it gives off much less pollution and CO2 than does petroleum. On that very specific claim, they are correct. However, some scientists argue that ethanol, on the whole, is worse for the planet: it leads farmers to plant only corn, thus degrading the soil; the fuel needed to grow, distill, and ship the ethanol is more than the end product yields; and it evaporates more easily, leading to more hydrocarbons in the air. But the federal government doesn't give these claims or studies much weight....
Burning Forests for Energy
Environmental causes are endlessly fashionable in Europe and America. You know a movie star or successful entrepreneur has arrived when he or she announces they have become an environmentalist. What’s usually overlooked is how these fashionable causes play out in the rest of the world, particularly underdeveloped countries. There’ve been more than a few bad examples. The banning of DDT has led to a huge resurgence of malaria in the tropics. Boycotting genetically engineered foods in Europe has played havoc with African farming. Now it’s emerging that “biofuels”—the latest environmental craze— is leading to the decimation of forests in South America and Asia. The result may be the end of a few more endangered species plus a big new boost in global warming. Turning our attention to another pet cause of fashionable environmentalists, now comes the news that biofuels are accelerating the decimation of tropical forests. American and European environmentalists have long urged that we should replace oil imports with “solar energy” by burning corn-based ethanol in our gas tanks. President Jimmy Carter gave it a federal gas tax exemption, of which Archer-Daniels, the agribusiness giant, has become the chief beneficiary, producing more than half our output. Seven percent of the U.S. corn crop now goes into “gasohol,” a 90/10 blend of gasoline and ethyl alcohol that replaces 2 percent of our oil. Still, environmentalists aren’t satisfied. They point to Brazil, where one quarter of the cars are built to burn any amount of alcohol from sugar cane. Why can’t we be like them? What they don’t recognize is that Brazil is cutting down huge tracts of Amazon forest in order to make way for this crop. In spite of this destruction in the name of (ostensibly) sound environmental policy, Southeast Asia is joining the parade. Tropical forests are being cleared for palm oil plantations, where the entire crop will be sold to Europe and America as “biodiesel.”....
No Policy Is a Good Policy
An attempt to create a national energy policy is about as likely to succeed as an attempt to set a national dinner menu. The energy sources pushed in these policies fail in the market and will only be made with heavy government support. An article in the April Discover magazine tells the story of a plant in Carthage, Missouri that turns turkey guts and pig fat into high quality oil. The article goes on at great length about the technical marvel they have achieved, which they have. But the kicker is that the people running the project originally estimated that their production costs for a 42-gallon barrel would total $15, and that the plant would be profitable from day one. In fact, production costs are around $80 per barrel. Only when the government granted a subsidy of a dollar a gallon was the plant able to begin turning a slim profit of $4 per barrel. Each barrel produced by the plant now costs taxpayers $42. A recent Indianapolis Star commentary piece by Peter Grossman, a professor of Economics at Butler University, pointed out that replacing 85% of our oil use with corn-based ethanol would require quadrupling the acreage planted in corn, with all of the output going for ethanol production. That, according to Professor Grossman, would result in dramatically higher prices for most foods and the ethanol, which is already economically uncompetitive. It would probably also result in environmental degradation, since more grasslands and wooded areas would have to be put to the plow. This is already happening in Brazil and Southeast Asia, as William Tucker noted in his TAE Online Right Idea column. The basic problem with setting a national energy policy is that it presupposes the ability of a few wise heads to outperform the countless number of decisions made by consumers and businesses that represent the collective wisdom of markets....
U.S. regulations big part of high gas prices
It isn't an anniversary to celebrate, but Chicago passed the one-year mark of gasoline above $2 per gallon. And, thanks in part to our federal government, another year at this level is a real possibility. Of course, the main culprit is the high price of oil. After staying comfortably below $20 per barrel throughout most the 1990s, the cost of crude ballooned to $56 in 2005, and currently sits at $62.17. Each dollar-per-barrel rise translates into roughly 2.5 cents more per gallon. Strong global demand is the primary cause of the increase. But oil prices aren't the only reason. Federal regulations also have played a big part. This includes complicated fuel requirements that have led to a variety of costly, specialized gasoline blends, dubbed "boutique fuels." In addition, the EPA has created a maze of red tape that makes it difficult for refiners to expand capacity to meet growing demand. These regulations have disproportionately hurt the Chicago market, which has both tough fuel requirements and tight refining capacity....
PETA's Three-Ring Hypocrisy
This week a Virginia jury tossed a lawsuit brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) against the owner of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus. The animal rights group claimed (and ultimately failed to prove) that he engaged in a "massive conspiracy" to harm PETA -- including infiltrating the group, monitoring its activities, and acquiring secret documents from inside PETA. In other words, PETA accused the circus of playing by PETA's rules. If infiltrating and spying on adversaries is the stuff lawsuits are made of, PETA had better hire a fleet of new defense attorneys. On one of its websites, PETA urges activists to "apply for a full-time position as an undercover investigator." In one infamous 1997 case, Michelle Rokke (then a PETA employee) kick-started the violent campaign against a New Jersey medical research company by stealing 8,000 pages of documents and making 50 hours of secret video recordings during her "undercover" work. PETA's ring of spies has secretly surveilled other business that run afoul of the group's "total animal liberation" ethic -- including an animal shelter, a kosher slaughterhouse, a pet food company, and even circuses. And PETA's vendetta against the Greatest Show on Earth includes targeting children who would otherwise actually enjoy themselves at the circus....
Friday, March 17, 2006
Eminent Domain
Woman vs. eminent domain
Eighty-year-old Emma Dimasi has told friends and neighbors she wants to live the rest of her years on the corner of Clifton and Dixmyth avenues, in the small brick house she's owned since 1959. The city has given her until Saturday to get out. In a case that could have statewide implications, a Hamilton County magistrate will decide Monday whether the city of Cincinnati has the right to take Dimasi's house for a $4 million relocation of Dixmyth Avenue. The taking of Dimasi's house is a routine and long-accepted use of eminent domain for a city like Cincinnati, which has filed 21 such court actions for road projects since 2003. But Dimasi argues that private economic development - not public transportation - is driving the road project. That's because Good Samaritan Hospital is contributing $1.28 million toward the project, which would give the hospital more room to grow as it continues a $122 million expansion. Under its agreement with the city, the hospital also stands to get whatever land is left over after road construction for $1. The case is the first to test an Ohio law banning for one year the use of eminent domain for economic development if the property will ultimately end up in the hands of another private owner. And it's a prime example of what critics say is a legal system that stacks the deck against property owners....
Plans to condemn Southern Baptist church proceed after 6-0 vote for eminent domain
Another step was taken toward the destruction of the Filipino Baptist Fellowship building March 13 when the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency Board voted 6-0 to condemn the church in order to build condominiums, despite testimonies from community members regarding the public good that flows from the religious institution. “I had no illusions that we were going to stop the vote, but what was most discouraging yesterday was the utter lack of any evidence on why this was necessary to cure some blighted areas blocks away,” John Eastman, director of The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence who is defending the church, told Baptist Press. “They didn’t bother to answer that. That was their legal obligation, and they went ahead and condemned a church anyway.” During the hearing, the redevelopment agency voted to authorize the city attorney to begin condemnation proceedings, Eastman explained. The next step will be for the city attorney to file a complaint to condemn the property, which includes demonstrating that it meets the statutory requirements for condemnation....
Groups File Lawsuit In Fight Over Golf Club
Lawsuits were filed Tuesday aimed at stopping an affluent suburban village from using the legal concept of eminent domain to take over a privately owned golf course. "This proposed condemnation may be the most extreme abuse of eminent domain in the country," said John Wilson, a Deepdale Golf Club member named as a plaintiff. The village's mayor said the federal and state lawsuit were a "pre-emptive strike" and no decision has been made on whether to proceed with a takeover of Deepdale, considered one of the finest golf courses in the country. But in North Hills -- a 2.8 square mile community of 1,800 residents on Long Island's "gold coast," where housing prices begin in the millions -- members of the Deepdale Club are rallying to save their 175-acre facility from being taken by village officials. The federal suit questions the village's right to seize the property through eminent domain; the state case challenges the village's alleged abuse of zoning law to cut secret deals with private developers. Wilson said in a statement that the takeover "has nothing to do with a master plan that promotes the public good or eliminating blight, issues usually behind eminent domain. Rather, it is a naked grab for private property in an apparent effort to satisfy the private desires of a few elected officials."....
Eminent domain fears aired
Gopal Panday says after he built Rainbow Liquors on Broadway in Long Branch into a million-dollar-a-year business, it turned worthless overnight in the eyes of New Jersey's much-maligned eminent-domain law. "Under eminent domain laws, it doesn't provide you with anything for your business," Panday said Monday after testifying before the Assembly Commerce and Economic Development Committee. "Just the land," he said. Flood victim Linda Brnicevic of Bound Brook described how she says eminent domain there is being used to uproot minorities. Residents of Camden's Cramer Hill neighborhood asked why eminent domain has them being moved out of a stable and tidy area. Eminent domain, the process whereby government exercises legal steps to take private property for what it envisions as the good of the community, is under fire in New Jersey for instances in which it is being used to promote economic redevelopment....
Stockbridge couple have ally in mayor
The couple fighting the city of Stockbridge's efforts to use eminent domain laws to forcibly buy their business might get to keep the property after all. At a raucous City Council meeting Monday evening, Stockbridge Mayor R.G. "Rudy" Kelley said he would ask his fellow council members to vote on whether Mark and Regina Meeks may keep their florist shop. The vote is contingent on getting written notification from the couple that they want to keep the shop. "I will send them a letter tomorrow," said a smiling Mark Meeks. The Meekses' battle shined a spotlight on eminent domain — laws allowing governments to force property owners to sell their land. State lawmakers are considering legislation changing how it's used in Georgia. Last March, the Stockbridge City Council approved plans to redevelop its struggling downtown with a new City Hall, homes, shops and offices on about 22 acres. The Meekses have vigorously resisted the city's efforts — saying Stockbridge negotiated in bad faith. City officials deny such claims....
Eminent domain debated
State legislatures and city councils around the country are debating what limits should be put on the power of local governments to take property by eminent domain. In November, Ohio voters might also get a say. Some lawmakers say nothing short of amending the state constitution - requiring a vote on a statewide ballot - will curb perceived abuses of eminent domain by cities. That's because Ohio's 1912 constitution gives cities and villages the power of home rule - allowing them to set their own standards for the taking of private property. "No bill that we pass will impact every local government unless we amend the constitution," said state Sen. Kevin Coughlin, R-Cuyahoga Falls, the author of one such amendment. His proposal, outlined for a special legislative task force Thursday, wouldn't change the way eminent domain is used in Ohio - he'd leave that up to state lawmakers. His amendment would require only that all municipalities follow state law when they take property....
Voters Block Taking Of Souter’s Property By Eminent Domain
There won’t be any “taking” of Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s farmhouse to make way for the Lost Liberty hotel. By a 3-1 margin, voters in Souter’s hometown voted down a proposal Tuesday 1,167 too 493 that would have allowed the town to seize his 200-year-old farmhouse under eminent domain. Angered by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision last year in the property rights case of Kelo v. New London, activists sought to take Souter’s property as a payback. Voters instead asked the town Board of Selectman to urge the state to adopt a law that would forbid seizures of property by eminent domain. Souter, a long-time resident of Weare, home to about 9,500, was in the majority for the 5-4 eminent domain case of Kelo v. City of New London , Conn., last June in which the Supreme Court ruled that government entities can take private property if the land is for public use. In Kelo, the Court said New London could take private property through eminent domain for the development of a hotel and convention center. A group of activists, led by California resident Logan Darrow Clements, wanted Souter's 200-year-old farmhouse and eight acres seized for the purpose of building an inn to be known as the Lost Liberty Hotel....
New Mexico governor’s property ripe for eminent domain?
After the infamous 2005 Kelo v. City of New London decision, Logan Darrow Clements started an eminent domain campaign against US Supreme Court Justice Souter’s New Hampshire home. The point: Build Lost Liberty Hotel in its place, which would provide greater economic benefits to the community. Clements was justified: The Court’s slim 5-4 decision cited economic development as justification for essentially taking one’s property and delivering it to another private party. Darrow should go after any property New Mexico Gov. Richardson owns in “The Land of Enchantment”. Why? On March 8, Richardson became the first governor since Kelo to veto legislation that would have helped protect property owners against condemnation. The Rio Grande Foundation (RGF), a New Mexico think tank, distributed a media release deriding Richardson’s property rights snub....
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In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo decision regarding eminent domain, we are delighted to inform you that our recent Independent Policy Forum, "Eminent Domain: Abuse of Government Power?", will air on C-SPAN2 on Sunday, March 19th.
http://www.independent.org/events/detail.asp?eventID=114
Here is the exact airing time:
Sunday, March 19th, 1:15 p.m. ET (10:15 a.m. PT) C-SPAN2
http://www.booktv.org/General/index.asp?segID=6696&schedID=408
The program features presentations by:
STEVEN GREENHUT, Senior Editorial Writer, Orange County Register, and author of Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain.
TIMOTHY SANDEFUR, Staff Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation.
Woman vs. eminent domain
Eighty-year-old Emma Dimasi has told friends and neighbors she wants to live the rest of her years on the corner of Clifton and Dixmyth avenues, in the small brick house she's owned since 1959. The city has given her until Saturday to get out. In a case that could have statewide implications, a Hamilton County magistrate will decide Monday whether the city of Cincinnati has the right to take Dimasi's house for a $4 million relocation of Dixmyth Avenue. The taking of Dimasi's house is a routine and long-accepted use of eminent domain for a city like Cincinnati, which has filed 21 such court actions for road projects since 2003. But Dimasi argues that private economic development - not public transportation - is driving the road project. That's because Good Samaritan Hospital is contributing $1.28 million toward the project, which would give the hospital more room to grow as it continues a $122 million expansion. Under its agreement with the city, the hospital also stands to get whatever land is left over after road construction for $1. The case is the first to test an Ohio law banning for one year the use of eminent domain for economic development if the property will ultimately end up in the hands of another private owner. And it's a prime example of what critics say is a legal system that stacks the deck against property owners....
Plans to condemn Southern Baptist church proceed after 6-0 vote for eminent domain
Another step was taken toward the destruction of the Filipino Baptist Fellowship building March 13 when the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency Board voted 6-0 to condemn the church in order to build condominiums, despite testimonies from community members regarding the public good that flows from the religious institution. “I had no illusions that we were going to stop the vote, but what was most discouraging yesterday was the utter lack of any evidence on why this was necessary to cure some blighted areas blocks away,” John Eastman, director of The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence who is defending the church, told Baptist Press. “They didn’t bother to answer that. That was their legal obligation, and they went ahead and condemned a church anyway.” During the hearing, the redevelopment agency voted to authorize the city attorney to begin condemnation proceedings, Eastman explained. The next step will be for the city attorney to file a complaint to condemn the property, which includes demonstrating that it meets the statutory requirements for condemnation....
Groups File Lawsuit In Fight Over Golf Club
Lawsuits were filed Tuesday aimed at stopping an affluent suburban village from using the legal concept of eminent domain to take over a privately owned golf course. "This proposed condemnation may be the most extreme abuse of eminent domain in the country," said John Wilson, a Deepdale Golf Club member named as a plaintiff. The village's mayor said the federal and state lawsuit were a "pre-emptive strike" and no decision has been made on whether to proceed with a takeover of Deepdale, considered one of the finest golf courses in the country. But in North Hills -- a 2.8 square mile community of 1,800 residents on Long Island's "gold coast," where housing prices begin in the millions -- members of the Deepdale Club are rallying to save their 175-acre facility from being taken by village officials. The federal suit questions the village's right to seize the property through eminent domain; the state case challenges the village's alleged abuse of zoning law to cut secret deals with private developers. Wilson said in a statement that the takeover "has nothing to do with a master plan that promotes the public good or eliminating blight, issues usually behind eminent domain. Rather, it is a naked grab for private property in an apparent effort to satisfy the private desires of a few elected officials."....
Eminent domain fears aired
Gopal Panday says after he built Rainbow Liquors on Broadway in Long Branch into a million-dollar-a-year business, it turned worthless overnight in the eyes of New Jersey's much-maligned eminent-domain law. "Under eminent domain laws, it doesn't provide you with anything for your business," Panday said Monday after testifying before the Assembly Commerce and Economic Development Committee. "Just the land," he said. Flood victim Linda Brnicevic of Bound Brook described how she says eminent domain there is being used to uproot minorities. Residents of Camden's Cramer Hill neighborhood asked why eminent domain has them being moved out of a stable and tidy area. Eminent domain, the process whereby government exercises legal steps to take private property for what it envisions as the good of the community, is under fire in New Jersey for instances in which it is being used to promote economic redevelopment....
Stockbridge couple have ally in mayor
The couple fighting the city of Stockbridge's efforts to use eminent domain laws to forcibly buy their business might get to keep the property after all. At a raucous City Council meeting Monday evening, Stockbridge Mayor R.G. "Rudy" Kelley said he would ask his fellow council members to vote on whether Mark and Regina Meeks may keep their florist shop. The vote is contingent on getting written notification from the couple that they want to keep the shop. "I will send them a letter tomorrow," said a smiling Mark Meeks. The Meekses' battle shined a spotlight on eminent domain — laws allowing governments to force property owners to sell their land. State lawmakers are considering legislation changing how it's used in Georgia. Last March, the Stockbridge City Council approved plans to redevelop its struggling downtown with a new City Hall, homes, shops and offices on about 22 acres. The Meekses have vigorously resisted the city's efforts — saying Stockbridge negotiated in bad faith. City officials deny such claims....
Eminent domain debated
State legislatures and city councils around the country are debating what limits should be put on the power of local governments to take property by eminent domain. In November, Ohio voters might also get a say. Some lawmakers say nothing short of amending the state constitution - requiring a vote on a statewide ballot - will curb perceived abuses of eminent domain by cities. That's because Ohio's 1912 constitution gives cities and villages the power of home rule - allowing them to set their own standards for the taking of private property. "No bill that we pass will impact every local government unless we amend the constitution," said state Sen. Kevin Coughlin, R-Cuyahoga Falls, the author of one such amendment. His proposal, outlined for a special legislative task force Thursday, wouldn't change the way eminent domain is used in Ohio - he'd leave that up to state lawmakers. His amendment would require only that all municipalities follow state law when they take property....
Voters Block Taking Of Souter’s Property By Eminent Domain
There won’t be any “taking” of Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s farmhouse to make way for the Lost Liberty hotel. By a 3-1 margin, voters in Souter’s hometown voted down a proposal Tuesday 1,167 too 493 that would have allowed the town to seize his 200-year-old farmhouse under eminent domain. Angered by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision last year in the property rights case of Kelo v. New London, activists sought to take Souter’s property as a payback. Voters instead asked the town Board of Selectman to urge the state to adopt a law that would forbid seizures of property by eminent domain. Souter, a long-time resident of Weare, home to about 9,500, was in the majority for the 5-4 eminent domain case of Kelo v. City of New London , Conn., last June in which the Supreme Court ruled that government entities can take private property if the land is for public use. In Kelo, the Court said New London could take private property through eminent domain for the development of a hotel and convention center. A group of activists, led by California resident Logan Darrow Clements, wanted Souter's 200-year-old farmhouse and eight acres seized for the purpose of building an inn to be known as the Lost Liberty Hotel....
New Mexico governor’s property ripe for eminent domain?
After the infamous 2005 Kelo v. City of New London decision, Logan Darrow Clements started an eminent domain campaign against US Supreme Court Justice Souter’s New Hampshire home. The point: Build Lost Liberty Hotel in its place, which would provide greater economic benefits to the community. Clements was justified: The Court’s slim 5-4 decision cited economic development as justification for essentially taking one’s property and delivering it to another private party. Darrow should go after any property New Mexico Gov. Richardson owns in “The Land of Enchantment”. Why? On March 8, Richardson became the first governor since Kelo to veto legislation that would have helped protect property owners against condemnation. The Rio Grande Foundation (RGF), a New Mexico think tank, distributed a media release deriding Richardson’s property rights snub....
***********************************************************************************
In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo decision regarding eminent domain, we are delighted to inform you that our recent Independent Policy Forum, "Eminent Domain: Abuse of Government Power?", will air on C-SPAN2 on Sunday, March 19th.
http://www.independent.org/events/detail.asp?eventID=114
Here is the exact airing time:
Sunday, March 19th, 1:15 p.m. ET (10:15 a.m. PT) C-SPAN2
http://www.booktv.org/General/index.asp?segID=6696&schedID=408
The program features presentations by:
STEVEN GREENHUT, Senior Editorial Writer, Orange County Register, and author of Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain.
TIMOTHY SANDEFUR, Staff Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation.
Senate backs drilling But outcome in House remains 'hard to tell'
By the barest of margins, the Senate approved legislation late today that would allow energy companies to hunt for crude in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But whether drilling supporters now can rustle up the votes they were lacking in the House just three months ago remains unclear. "It's kind of hard to tell yet," said Lee Fuller, vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America. In what has become a running battle in the halls of Congress, the Senate voted 51-49 Thursday to approve a budget bill that would end a 26-year moratorium and clear the way for oil and gas companies to explore in the northern Alaska refuge....
By the barest of margins, the Senate approved legislation late today that would allow energy companies to hunt for crude in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But whether drilling supporters now can rustle up the votes they were lacking in the House just three months ago remains unclear. "It's kind of hard to tell yet," said Lee Fuller, vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America. In what has become a running battle in the halls of Congress, the Senate voted 51-49 Thursday to approve a budget bill that would end a 26-year moratorium and clear the way for oil and gas companies to explore in the northern Alaska refuge....
HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY
Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he'd just been run over by a train. His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut and bruised and he's walking with a limp.
"What happened to you?" asks Sean, the bartender.
"Jamie O'Conner and me had a fight," says Paddy.
"That little shit, O'Conner," says Sean, "He couldn't do that to you, he must have had something in his hand."
"That he did," says Paddy, "a shovel is what he had, and a terrible lickin' he gave me with it."
"Well," says Sean, "you should have defended yourself, didn't you have something in your hand?"
That I did," said Paddy. "Mrs. O'Conner's breast, and a thing of beauty it was, but useless in a fight."
*************************************************************************
An Irishman who had a little too much to drink is driving home from the city one night and, of course, his car is weaving violently all over the road.
A cop pulls him over.
"So," says the cop to the driver, where have ya been?"
"Why, I've been to the pub of course," slurs the drunk.
"Well," says the cop, "it looks like you've had quite a few to drink this evening."
"I did all right," the drunk says with a smile.
"Did you know," says the cop, standing straight and folding his arms across his chest, "that a few intersections back, your wife fell out of your car?"
"Oh, thank heavens," sighs the drunk. "For a minute there, I thought I'd gone deaf."
*************************************************************************
Brenda O'Malley is home making dinner, as usual, when Tim Finnegan arrives at her door.
"Brenda, may I come in?" he asks. "I've somethin' to tell ya".
"Of course you can come in, you're always welcome, Tim. But where's my husband?"
"That's what I'm here to be telling ya, Brenda." There was an accident down at the Guinness brewery..."
"Oh, God no!" cries Brenda. "Please don't tell me."
"I must, Brenda. Your husband Shamus is dead and gone. I'm sorry.
Finally, she looked up at Tim. "How did it happen, Tim?"
"It was terrible, Brenda. He fell into a vat of Guinness Stout and drowned."
"Oh my dear Jesus! But you must tell me true, Tim. Did he at least go quickly?"
"Well, Brenda... no. In fact, he got out three times to pee."
*************************************************************************
Mary Clancy goes up to Father O'Grady after his Sunday morning service, and she's in tears.
He says, "So what's bothering you, Mary my dear?"
She says, "Oh, Father, I've got terrible news. My husband passed away last night."
The priest says, "Oh, Mary, that's terrible. Tell me, Mary, did he have any last requests?"
She says, "That he did, Father." The priest says, "What did he ask, Mary?"
She says, He said, 'Please Mary, put down that damn gun...'
*************************************************************************
A drunk staggers into a Catholic Church, enters a confessional booth, sits down but says nothing.
The Priest coughs a few times to get his attention but the drunk continues to sit there.
Finally, the Priest pounds three times on the wall.
The drunk mumbles, "ain't no use knockin, there's no paper on this side
either."
Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he'd just been run over by a train. His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut and bruised and he's walking with a limp.
"What happened to you?" asks Sean, the bartender.
"Jamie O'Conner and me had a fight," says Paddy.
"That little shit, O'Conner," says Sean, "He couldn't do that to you, he must have had something in his hand."
"That he did," says Paddy, "a shovel is what he had, and a terrible lickin' he gave me with it."
"Well," says Sean, "you should have defended yourself, didn't you have something in your hand?"
That I did," said Paddy. "Mrs. O'Conner's breast, and a thing of beauty it was, but useless in a fight."
*************************************************************************
An Irishman who had a little too much to drink is driving home from the city one night and, of course, his car is weaving violently all over the road.
A cop pulls him over.
"So," says the cop to the driver, where have ya been?"
"Why, I've been to the pub of course," slurs the drunk.
"Well," says the cop, "it looks like you've had quite a few to drink this evening."
"I did all right," the drunk says with a smile.
"Did you know," says the cop, standing straight and folding his arms across his chest, "that a few intersections back, your wife fell out of your car?"
"Oh, thank heavens," sighs the drunk. "For a minute there, I thought I'd gone deaf."
*************************************************************************
Brenda O'Malley is home making dinner, as usual, when Tim Finnegan arrives at her door.
"Brenda, may I come in?" he asks. "I've somethin' to tell ya".
"Of course you can come in, you're always welcome, Tim. But where's my husband?"
"That's what I'm here to be telling ya, Brenda." There was an accident down at the Guinness brewery..."
"Oh, God no!" cries Brenda. "Please don't tell me."
"I must, Brenda. Your husband Shamus is dead and gone. I'm sorry.
Finally, she looked up at Tim. "How did it happen, Tim?"
"It was terrible, Brenda. He fell into a vat of Guinness Stout and drowned."
"Oh my dear Jesus! But you must tell me true, Tim. Did he at least go quickly?"
"Well, Brenda... no. In fact, he got out three times to pee."
*************************************************************************
Mary Clancy goes up to Father O'Grady after his Sunday morning service, and she's in tears.
He says, "So what's bothering you, Mary my dear?"
She says, "Oh, Father, I've got terrible news. My husband passed away last night."
The priest says, "Oh, Mary, that's terrible. Tell me, Mary, did he have any last requests?"
She says, "That he did, Father." The priest says, "What did he ask, Mary?"
She says, He said, 'Please Mary, put down that damn gun...'
*************************************************************************
A drunk staggers into a Catholic Church, enters a confessional booth, sits down but says nothing.
The Priest coughs a few times to get his attention but the drunk continues to sit there.
Finally, the Priest pounds three times on the wall.
The drunk mumbles, "ain't no use knockin, there's no paper on this side
either."
NEWS ROUNDUP
Top Birder Challenges Reports of Long-Lost Woodpecker The ivory billed woodpecker? That is the bird that went extinct and was rediscovered, and then there was some argument. But it is all settled now, and the great creature lives, elusively, in an Arkansas swamp, with a chunk of federal money to keep it comfortable. Right? Maybe not. The nation's best known birder, David A. Sibley, whose book "The Sibley Guide to Birds" is a bible for field identification, has decided that the happy ending is too good to be true. Mr. Sibley, a soft-spoken, attention-avoiding writer and illustrator of many other bird books, says in an article being published today in Science that a blurry videotape that was the strongest evidence of the woodpecker's continued existence does not show an ivory bill at all. He and three colleagues write that the bird on the tape was almost certainly a common pileated woodpecker and that there is simply no conclusive evidence that the ivory bill has escaped extinction. The videotape, which has been called an ornithological Zapruder film, was made on April 25, 2004, by M. David Luneau Jr., an engineering professor at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Professor Luneau had joined a search led by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to gather more evidence after two serious birders reported seeing the ivory bill fly in front of their canoe. Along with sightings, the tape was the centerpiece of a spring 2005 paper, also in Science, that caused jubilation among conservationists and birders and prompted the federal government to commit $10 million for ivory bill conservation....
With Energy-Tax Bonanza, Wyoming Schools Enjoy Windfall Forget the bucking bronco. A clattering cash register has become the more apt symbol of Wyoming in the energy rush. Over the past four years, as natural gas prices have spiked and drillers have descended here on the nation's least-populous state, Wyoming has collected about $65 million a month more in energy taxes than the government can spend. The numbers, in their cumulative power and duration, are starting to change the state's vision of what it could be and how to get there. Money has been poured into wildlife protection, historical preservation and the support of families of National Guard troops in Iraq. A $100 million tax cut this year eliminated the sales tax on groceries. (There is no personal or corporate income tax to cut.) But that still left hundreds of millions to be set aside in an all-purpose savings account that some state officials fantasize could one day grow large enough to subsidize the state budget itself — Wyoming as trust-fund kid, or cowboy emirate....
Cattle may use creek again after salt water spill Ranchers who relied on a McKenzie County creek to water their cattle may use it again, because a hazard posed by a salt water spill has passed, a state Health Department official says. The company responsible for the pollution, Zenergy Inc. of Tulsa, Okla., is cleaning up the salt-contaminated soil. Charbonneau Creek was polluted in early January when a salt water disposal pipeline ruptured, spilling briny water into a stock pond, a beaver dam and the creek itself. Salt water is a waste product of oil production. The creek, which is fed by spring water and is flowing, empties into the Yellowstone River. Dave Glatt, chief of the Health Department's environmental section, said it does not appear the Yellowstone was harmed by the accident. Recent melting snow has caused salt levels in the creek to recede, Glatt said. The creek will be monitored to make sure salt from the creek bed does not leach again into the water, he said....
Additional Proposed Changes to Federal Oil and Gas Regulations In a move that will help the nation meet its energy needs, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service are jointly proposing further revisions of regulations governing oil and gas activity on the public lands. These further proposed revisions supplement an earlier proposal – published by the two agencies in July 2005 – that would revise an existing set of regulations known as Onshore Oil and Gas Order Number 1. The Order’s regulations establish the requirements that companies must meet to obtain approval for oil and gas exploration and development on all Federal and Indian lands (except those of the Osage Tribe). The BLM’s and Forest Service’s latest proposed regulatory revisions, published in today’s Federal Register, would implement portions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 by making Order Number 1’s drilling permit provisions consistent with those in the Act. The new energy law contains a timeline for processing drilling permit applications – known as Applications for Permits to Drill (APDs) – that differs slightly from the one contained in the regulatory proposal of July 2005. Besides making the timeline in Order Number 1 consistent with that in the Energy Policy Act, today’s further proposed revision specifies what constitutes a “complete” APD package. This latest proposal also makes clear that the BLM and Forest Service intend to continue requiring an on-site inspection before determining that an APD package is complete. In addition, the proposal published today would require additional bonding in split-estate situations where a lessee cannot reach agreement with an Indian surface owner. The Federal Register notice published today opens up a 30-day comment period during which the public may submit written comments on the further proposed revisions to Onshore Oil and Gas Order Number 1. (The notice also re-opens for 30 days the comment period on the July 2005 regulatory proposal.)....
States Calculate Global Warming Pricetag In a new sign of growing concern about the impact of global warming on the health of the U.S. economy, the insurance commissioners of the 50 U.S. states last week voted unanimously to establish a task force on the possible impact of climate change on the insurance industry and its consumers. The decision, taken by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, came during the same week that the world's biggest insurance broker, Marsh & McLennan, briefed its corporate clients, which include roughly 75 percent of the "Fortune 500" biggest companies, on the potential impact of global warming on their businesses. Marsh's clients heard from, among others, Carol Browner, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) when former President Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and Robert Watson, the chief climate scientist at the World Bank and former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)....
More indictments in NW ecoterrorism probe Two more people were indicted Thursday on charges they were part of a group calling itself "The Family" that was responsible for a series of firebombings around the Northwest from 1996 to 2001 claimed by the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front. The indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in Eugene brings to 13 the number of people who will go on trial Oct. 31 on 65 counts, including conspiracy, arson, and use of a destructive device in a crime of violence. The targets included U.S. Forest Service ranger stations in Oregon, government and university research labs in Washington, a horse slaughterhouse in Oregon, a tree farm in Oregon, a power transmission tower in Oregon, a Colorado ski resort, lumber mills in Oregon, and federal wild horse corrals in Oregon, Wyoming and California. The fires caused more than $100 million in damages....
Forest Land Sale Plan Goes Forward The Bush administration formalized its plan to sell more than 300,000 acres of national forest to help pay for rural schools in 41 states, submitting legislation to Congress on Thursday to funnel $800 million to the schools over the next five years. The schools would get $320 million next year, but the figure would drop sharply after that, to $40 million in its final year, officials said. That would be a 90% decrease from current spending — a figure Western lawmakers called unacceptable. The legislation came as four former Forest Service chiefs criticized the land sale plan as contrary to more than a century of agency practice. "Selling off public lands to fund other programs, no matter how worthwhile those programs, is a slippery slope," the retired chiefs said, calling the land sale "an unwise precedent." The letter was signed by Max Peterson, Dale Robertson, Jack Ward Thomas and Michael Dombeck. The men led the agency under four presidents from both parties....
Report: Losses from decay heavy from Biscuit Fire Losses from unsalvaged timber from the 2002 Biscuit fire in southwest Oregon stand to approach $140 million if nothing is done to harvest it, according to a report from the U.S. Forest Service. Some Biscuit sales were logged in 2004 and 2005. The report said data "shows clearly that 42 percent of the volume per acre has been lost since late 2002," largely from decay. However, the thought of logging the area is anathema to many scientists and environmentalists who say the best way to help the area recover is to leave it alone. The report, released by Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., placed the value of the timber that could be legally and profitably cut immediately after the fire at about $171.8 million. It said about $32.3 million of that has been recovered to date....
A Century of Debate Just how exciting can a book about the Antiquities Act of 1906 be? Probably more so than you would think--certainly it was for me. It's not the history of an obscure, 100-year-old law; this is the story of fundamental questions of importance to all Americans. It is the story of visionaries trying to preserve a heritage that, even then, was vanishing. It is the story of bruising political battles that continue even to today. It is the story of how public archaeology came into being in the United States. Ultimately, it is the story of how we decided to treasure our nation's cultural--and natural--heritage. The Antiquities Act is brief, and only the second and third of its four sections are important today. The second deals with the creation of National Monuments: lofty ideals, vague wording, and a sweeping presidential prerogative. The third provides access to the sites and artifacts found on the Monuments for scholars, museums, and universities, but this access comes with certain responsibilities. All this in some 269 words. It is an extraordinary document. The book about all of this, The Antiquities Act: A Century of American Archaeology, Historic Preservation, and Nature Conservation (University of Arizona Press, 2006; cloth $45.00, paper $19.95), is edited by David Harmon (conservationist, George Wright Society), Francis P. McManamon (archaeologist, National Park Service), and Dwight T. Pitcaithley (historian, New Mexico State University). The editors contributed an introduction and concluding chapter, but the main portion of the book is a collection of 15 chapters authored by various specialists and grouped according to four themes....
US hails calm world reaction to new mad cow case The low-key world reaction to discovery of the third U.S. case of mad cow disease is a sign that trading partners recognize American beef is safe, an Agriculture Department spokesman said on Tuesday. The new case was an elderly Santa Gertrudis beef cow from a small herd in Alabama and the first found since November 2004. The cow was buried on the farm. "It was not an animal that got in the (human) food supply. It did not get in the animal feed supply. Our firewalls worked," Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns told reporters in Berlin, his third stop on a trip to Europe. "I think overall there has been a very measured reaction to the announcement," USDA spokesman Ed Loyd wrote in responses to e-mail questions. Loyd cited "an increasing understanding worldwide of (the) safety of U.S. beef" and acceptance of international guidelines that say beef can be traded when nations take steps to prevent the spread of mad cow, formally named bovine spongiform encephalopathy....
Horse Owners Are Bridling at Changes It used to be a place where a middle-class family could own a small house on a large parcel with a horse corral out back and a few chickens and roosters running around the yard. But these days in Sylmar, the human population is going up while the number of horses is dropping. And this has some longtime residents concerned that a way of life in this foothill community on the northeastern edge of the San Fernando Valley is disappearing. Even its name sounds pastoral, derived from a combination of the word "sylvan" and the Spanish word mar, roughly translating into "sea of trees." In Sylmar, olive trees once grew thick on land tilled by farmers and ranchers, who turned the arid countryside into a hub for olive growing and related agricultural enterprises. After World War II, the land was subdivided into generous lots, giving it the feel of the country, even though it was only about 26 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. But developers looking for places to build in today's hot real estate market have discovered Sylmar. They are razing the ranch-style houses and replacing them with tracts of single-family homes, condominiums and town houses....
Rancher Carlton goes to the grave in her pickup A gun-toting wisp of a woman who favored jeans and John Wayne went out the way she lived. At Fleta Carlton's funeral Wednesday, ranch hands loaded her casket into the bed of Old Blue, the gas-belching pick-up she drove all over the 1,400-acre Carlton Triangle Ranch. Friend Ed Bledsoe steered the beat-up Dodge to the Old Miakka Cemetery, where folks in boots and Wranglers, suits and ties sang "Amazing Grace." Carlton was buried in a plaid cowboy shirt and jeans. "A dress? She would have been angry at us for that," said niece Stacey Carlton. In her pocket, her little brother Tony put something familiar: her Old Timer pocketknife, which she only put down at night. And a sharpening stone, just in case the thing gets dull....
Top Birder Challenges Reports of Long-Lost Woodpecker The ivory billed woodpecker? That is the bird that went extinct and was rediscovered, and then there was some argument. But it is all settled now, and the great creature lives, elusively, in an Arkansas swamp, with a chunk of federal money to keep it comfortable. Right? Maybe not. The nation's best known birder, David A. Sibley, whose book "The Sibley Guide to Birds" is a bible for field identification, has decided that the happy ending is too good to be true. Mr. Sibley, a soft-spoken, attention-avoiding writer and illustrator of many other bird books, says in an article being published today in Science that a blurry videotape that was the strongest evidence of the woodpecker's continued existence does not show an ivory bill at all. He and three colleagues write that the bird on the tape was almost certainly a common pileated woodpecker and that there is simply no conclusive evidence that the ivory bill has escaped extinction. The videotape, which has been called an ornithological Zapruder film, was made on April 25, 2004, by M. David Luneau Jr., an engineering professor at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Professor Luneau had joined a search led by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to gather more evidence after two serious birders reported seeing the ivory bill fly in front of their canoe. Along with sightings, the tape was the centerpiece of a spring 2005 paper, also in Science, that caused jubilation among conservationists and birders and prompted the federal government to commit $10 million for ivory bill conservation....
With Energy-Tax Bonanza, Wyoming Schools Enjoy Windfall Forget the bucking bronco. A clattering cash register has become the more apt symbol of Wyoming in the energy rush. Over the past four years, as natural gas prices have spiked and drillers have descended here on the nation's least-populous state, Wyoming has collected about $65 million a month more in energy taxes than the government can spend. The numbers, in their cumulative power and duration, are starting to change the state's vision of what it could be and how to get there. Money has been poured into wildlife protection, historical preservation and the support of families of National Guard troops in Iraq. A $100 million tax cut this year eliminated the sales tax on groceries. (There is no personal or corporate income tax to cut.) But that still left hundreds of millions to be set aside in an all-purpose savings account that some state officials fantasize could one day grow large enough to subsidize the state budget itself — Wyoming as trust-fund kid, or cowboy emirate....
Cattle may use creek again after salt water spill Ranchers who relied on a McKenzie County creek to water their cattle may use it again, because a hazard posed by a salt water spill has passed, a state Health Department official says. The company responsible for the pollution, Zenergy Inc. of Tulsa, Okla., is cleaning up the salt-contaminated soil. Charbonneau Creek was polluted in early January when a salt water disposal pipeline ruptured, spilling briny water into a stock pond, a beaver dam and the creek itself. Salt water is a waste product of oil production. The creek, which is fed by spring water and is flowing, empties into the Yellowstone River. Dave Glatt, chief of the Health Department's environmental section, said it does not appear the Yellowstone was harmed by the accident. Recent melting snow has caused salt levels in the creek to recede, Glatt said. The creek will be monitored to make sure salt from the creek bed does not leach again into the water, he said....
Additional Proposed Changes to Federal Oil and Gas Regulations In a move that will help the nation meet its energy needs, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service are jointly proposing further revisions of regulations governing oil and gas activity on the public lands. These further proposed revisions supplement an earlier proposal – published by the two agencies in July 2005 – that would revise an existing set of regulations known as Onshore Oil and Gas Order Number 1. The Order’s regulations establish the requirements that companies must meet to obtain approval for oil and gas exploration and development on all Federal and Indian lands (except those of the Osage Tribe). The BLM’s and Forest Service’s latest proposed regulatory revisions, published in today’s Federal Register, would implement portions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 by making Order Number 1’s drilling permit provisions consistent with those in the Act. The new energy law contains a timeline for processing drilling permit applications – known as Applications for Permits to Drill (APDs) – that differs slightly from the one contained in the regulatory proposal of July 2005. Besides making the timeline in Order Number 1 consistent with that in the Energy Policy Act, today’s further proposed revision specifies what constitutes a “complete” APD package. This latest proposal also makes clear that the BLM and Forest Service intend to continue requiring an on-site inspection before determining that an APD package is complete. In addition, the proposal published today would require additional bonding in split-estate situations where a lessee cannot reach agreement with an Indian surface owner. The Federal Register notice published today opens up a 30-day comment period during which the public may submit written comments on the further proposed revisions to Onshore Oil and Gas Order Number 1. (The notice also re-opens for 30 days the comment period on the July 2005 regulatory proposal.)....
States Calculate Global Warming Pricetag In a new sign of growing concern about the impact of global warming on the health of the U.S. economy, the insurance commissioners of the 50 U.S. states last week voted unanimously to establish a task force on the possible impact of climate change on the insurance industry and its consumers. The decision, taken by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, came during the same week that the world's biggest insurance broker, Marsh & McLennan, briefed its corporate clients, which include roughly 75 percent of the "Fortune 500" biggest companies, on the potential impact of global warming on their businesses. Marsh's clients heard from, among others, Carol Browner, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) when former President Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and Robert Watson, the chief climate scientist at the World Bank and former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)....
More indictments in NW ecoterrorism probe Two more people were indicted Thursday on charges they were part of a group calling itself "The Family" that was responsible for a series of firebombings around the Northwest from 1996 to 2001 claimed by the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front. The indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in Eugene brings to 13 the number of people who will go on trial Oct. 31 on 65 counts, including conspiracy, arson, and use of a destructive device in a crime of violence. The targets included U.S. Forest Service ranger stations in Oregon, government and university research labs in Washington, a horse slaughterhouse in Oregon, a tree farm in Oregon, a power transmission tower in Oregon, a Colorado ski resort, lumber mills in Oregon, and federal wild horse corrals in Oregon, Wyoming and California. The fires caused more than $100 million in damages....
Forest Land Sale Plan Goes Forward The Bush administration formalized its plan to sell more than 300,000 acres of national forest to help pay for rural schools in 41 states, submitting legislation to Congress on Thursday to funnel $800 million to the schools over the next five years. The schools would get $320 million next year, but the figure would drop sharply after that, to $40 million in its final year, officials said. That would be a 90% decrease from current spending — a figure Western lawmakers called unacceptable. The legislation came as four former Forest Service chiefs criticized the land sale plan as contrary to more than a century of agency practice. "Selling off public lands to fund other programs, no matter how worthwhile those programs, is a slippery slope," the retired chiefs said, calling the land sale "an unwise precedent." The letter was signed by Max Peterson, Dale Robertson, Jack Ward Thomas and Michael Dombeck. The men led the agency under four presidents from both parties....
Report: Losses from decay heavy from Biscuit Fire Losses from unsalvaged timber from the 2002 Biscuit fire in southwest Oregon stand to approach $140 million if nothing is done to harvest it, according to a report from the U.S. Forest Service. Some Biscuit sales were logged in 2004 and 2005. The report said data "shows clearly that 42 percent of the volume per acre has been lost since late 2002," largely from decay. However, the thought of logging the area is anathema to many scientists and environmentalists who say the best way to help the area recover is to leave it alone. The report, released by Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., placed the value of the timber that could be legally and profitably cut immediately after the fire at about $171.8 million. It said about $32.3 million of that has been recovered to date....
A Century of Debate Just how exciting can a book about the Antiquities Act of 1906 be? Probably more so than you would think--certainly it was for me. It's not the history of an obscure, 100-year-old law; this is the story of fundamental questions of importance to all Americans. It is the story of visionaries trying to preserve a heritage that, even then, was vanishing. It is the story of bruising political battles that continue even to today. It is the story of how public archaeology came into being in the United States. Ultimately, it is the story of how we decided to treasure our nation's cultural--and natural--heritage. The Antiquities Act is brief, and only the second and third of its four sections are important today. The second deals with the creation of National Monuments: lofty ideals, vague wording, and a sweeping presidential prerogative. The third provides access to the sites and artifacts found on the Monuments for scholars, museums, and universities, but this access comes with certain responsibilities. All this in some 269 words. It is an extraordinary document. The book about all of this, The Antiquities Act: A Century of American Archaeology, Historic Preservation, and Nature Conservation (University of Arizona Press, 2006; cloth $45.00, paper $19.95), is edited by David Harmon (conservationist, George Wright Society), Francis P. McManamon (archaeologist, National Park Service), and Dwight T. Pitcaithley (historian, New Mexico State University). The editors contributed an introduction and concluding chapter, but the main portion of the book is a collection of 15 chapters authored by various specialists and grouped according to four themes....
US hails calm world reaction to new mad cow case The low-key world reaction to discovery of the third U.S. case of mad cow disease is a sign that trading partners recognize American beef is safe, an Agriculture Department spokesman said on Tuesday. The new case was an elderly Santa Gertrudis beef cow from a small herd in Alabama and the first found since November 2004. The cow was buried on the farm. "It was not an animal that got in the (human) food supply. It did not get in the animal feed supply. Our firewalls worked," Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns told reporters in Berlin, his third stop on a trip to Europe. "I think overall there has been a very measured reaction to the announcement," USDA spokesman Ed Loyd wrote in responses to e-mail questions. Loyd cited "an increasing understanding worldwide of (the) safety of U.S. beef" and acceptance of international guidelines that say beef can be traded when nations take steps to prevent the spread of mad cow, formally named bovine spongiform encephalopathy....
Horse Owners Are Bridling at Changes It used to be a place where a middle-class family could own a small house on a large parcel with a horse corral out back and a few chickens and roosters running around the yard. But these days in Sylmar, the human population is going up while the number of horses is dropping. And this has some longtime residents concerned that a way of life in this foothill community on the northeastern edge of the San Fernando Valley is disappearing. Even its name sounds pastoral, derived from a combination of the word "sylvan" and the Spanish word mar, roughly translating into "sea of trees." In Sylmar, olive trees once grew thick on land tilled by farmers and ranchers, who turned the arid countryside into a hub for olive growing and related agricultural enterprises. After World War II, the land was subdivided into generous lots, giving it the feel of the country, even though it was only about 26 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. But developers looking for places to build in today's hot real estate market have discovered Sylmar. They are razing the ranch-style houses and replacing them with tracts of single-family homes, condominiums and town houses....
Rancher Carlton goes to the grave in her pickup A gun-toting wisp of a woman who favored jeans and John Wayne went out the way she lived. At Fleta Carlton's funeral Wednesday, ranch hands loaded her casket into the bed of Old Blue, the gas-belching pick-up she drove all over the 1,400-acre Carlton Triangle Ranch. Friend Ed Bledsoe steered the beat-up Dodge to the Old Miakka Cemetery, where folks in boots and Wranglers, suits and ties sang "Amazing Grace." Carlton was buried in a plaid cowboy shirt and jeans. "A dress? She would have been angry at us for that," said niece Stacey Carlton. In her pocket, her little brother Tony put something familiar: her Old Timer pocketknife, which she only put down at night. And a sharpening stone, just in case the thing gets dull....
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Rabies Confirmed in Lea County Horse
Department of Health Reminds Public To Vaccinate Animals
The New Mexico Department of Health and the New Mexico Livestock Board reported that a horse from Lea County tested positive for rabies, and three people who were potentially exposed to the infected horse are receiving rabies vaccine to prevent them from developing the deadly viral disease. Rabies is a fatal disease if it is not treated before symptoms develop. The Department of Health and Livestock Board would like to remind people that it is important to vaccinate their animals to protect them from rabies. “This should serve as a wakeup call to people who keep horses and other livestock, that there are wild animals in the area infected with rabies, most likely skunks,” said Dr. Dave Fly, deputy state veterinarian with the New Mexico Livestock Board. “Owners of valuable livestock should consult with their veterinarian about protecting these animals by giving them rabies vaccine.” The horse began behaving abnormally last week and then became very aggressive before it died. Tissue samples sent in by a local veterinarian tested positive for rabies at the Department of Health’s Scientific Laboratory Division. Other livestock on the ranch that were exposed to the horse will be given rabies vaccine and quarantined for six months. According to residents in the area, wild skunks have been attacking livestock for several weeks. “Since pet dogs and cats that roam and hunt can come into contact with rabid animals and potentially transmit it to people, it is also very important to make sure all dogs and cats have current rabies vaccinations,” said Dr. Paul Ettestad, state public health veterinarian at the Department of Health....
Department of Health Reminds Public To Vaccinate Animals
The New Mexico Department of Health and the New Mexico Livestock Board reported that a horse from Lea County tested positive for rabies, and three people who were potentially exposed to the infected horse are receiving rabies vaccine to prevent them from developing the deadly viral disease. Rabies is a fatal disease if it is not treated before symptoms develop. The Department of Health and Livestock Board would like to remind people that it is important to vaccinate their animals to protect them from rabies. “This should serve as a wakeup call to people who keep horses and other livestock, that there are wild animals in the area infected with rabies, most likely skunks,” said Dr. Dave Fly, deputy state veterinarian with the New Mexico Livestock Board. “Owners of valuable livestock should consult with their veterinarian about protecting these animals by giving them rabies vaccine.” The horse began behaving abnormally last week and then became very aggressive before it died. Tissue samples sent in by a local veterinarian tested positive for rabies at the Department of Health’s Scientific Laboratory Division. Other livestock on the ranch that were exposed to the horse will be given rabies vaccine and quarantined for six months. According to residents in the area, wild skunks have been attacking livestock for several weeks. “Since pet dogs and cats that roam and hunt can come into contact with rabid animals and potentially transmit it to people, it is also very important to make sure all dogs and cats have current rabies vaccinations,” said Dr. Paul Ettestad, state public health veterinarian at the Department of Health....
Kempthorne biography
Governor Dirk Kempthorne was reelected as Idaho’s governor in November of 2002. He was first elected as Idaho’s 30th chief executive in 1998, following a six-year term in the United States Senate. Kempthorne began his commitment to public service as the highly successful mayor of Boise. During his seven years in office, he helped direct a renaissance in the state's capital city that resulted in record growth, economic development and numerous national honors and recognitions for quality of life, business climate and family issues. Kempthorne established a statewide voluntary immunization registry to help ensure that more Idaho children from birth to 18 months receive the full complement of vaccinations recommended by pediatricians. He also worked with the Legislature to enact an Idaho reading initiative, designed to have every Idaho child reading at grade level by the third grade. Following the devastating wildfires of 2000, he worked with fellow western governors and federal officials to fundamentally change the approach to forest health and wildfire management. Under his leadership, Idaho has developed wolf and grizzly bear management plans aimed at delisting the endangered species and protecting state's rights by giving the state management responsibilities. Idaho has instituted the first-ever tax credit for companies that expand high-speed voice and data broadband communications lines, and the state has provided funding for regional economic development experts in 12 regions of the state. These professionals work with local communities to attract and retain businesses. In his years of service as governor of Idaho, Kempthorne has signed into law more than 50 bills which have provided either significant tax relief or tax credits for Idahoans. Governor Kempthorne has been recognized by his peers as a national leader. His colleagues elected him as the chairman of the National Governor's Association in August of 2003. In this role, he has launched an initiative to bring a national focus on the looming crisis of long-term care. He has served as president of the Council of State Governments and chairman of the Western Governors Association. He serves on the executive committees of the National Governors Association and the Republican Governors Association. U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige appointed Governor Kempthorne to the national assessment governing board and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge appointed him to the homeland security task force. Governor Kempthorne and his wife Patricia are both University of Idaho graduates and have two grown children, Heather and Jeff.
Governor Dirk Kempthorne was reelected as Idaho’s governor in November of 2002. He was first elected as Idaho’s 30th chief executive in 1998, following a six-year term in the United States Senate. Kempthorne began his commitment to public service as the highly successful mayor of Boise. During his seven years in office, he helped direct a renaissance in the state's capital city that resulted in record growth, economic development and numerous national honors and recognitions for quality of life, business climate and family issues. Kempthorne established a statewide voluntary immunization registry to help ensure that more Idaho children from birth to 18 months receive the full complement of vaccinations recommended by pediatricians. He also worked with the Legislature to enact an Idaho reading initiative, designed to have every Idaho child reading at grade level by the third grade. Following the devastating wildfires of 2000, he worked with fellow western governors and federal officials to fundamentally change the approach to forest health and wildfire management. Under his leadership, Idaho has developed wolf and grizzly bear management plans aimed at delisting the endangered species and protecting state's rights by giving the state management responsibilities. Idaho has instituted the first-ever tax credit for companies that expand high-speed voice and data broadband communications lines, and the state has provided funding for regional economic development experts in 12 regions of the state. These professionals work with local communities to attract and retain businesses. In his years of service as governor of Idaho, Kempthorne has signed into law more than 50 bills which have provided either significant tax relief or tax credits for Idahoans. Governor Kempthorne has been recognized by his peers as a national leader. His colleagues elected him as the chairman of the National Governor's Association in August of 2003. In this role, he has launched an initiative to bring a national focus on the looming crisis of long-term care. He has served as president of the Council of State Governments and chairman of the Western Governors Association. He serves on the executive committees of the National Governors Association and the Republican Governors Association. U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige appointed Governor Kempthorne to the national assessment governing board and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge appointed him to the homeland security task force. Governor Kempthorne and his wife Patricia are both University of Idaho graduates and have two grown children, Heather and Jeff.
Bush Nominates Idaho Governor Kempthorne as Interior Secretary
President George W. Bush nominated Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne as his new secretary of the Interior, the federal department that oversees one out of every five acres of land in the nation. Kempthorne, 54, a Republican and former U.S. senator, was named to replace Gale Norton, who announced last week she is leaving at the end of the month. The nomination is subject to approval of the U.S. Senate. Kempthorne has ``been a responsible steward'' of Idaho's public lands and is ``the right man'' to continue the work started by Norton in managing U.S.-owned land, Bush said today in making the announcement in the Oval Office. Kempthorne is approaching the end of his second term as Idaho's governor and can't run again. He previously served one term as U.S. senator from the state and as mayor of Boise, Idaho's capital....
President George W. Bush nominated Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne as his new secretary of the Interior, the federal department that oversees one out of every five acres of land in the nation. Kempthorne, 54, a Republican and former U.S. senator, was named to replace Gale Norton, who announced last week she is leaving at the end of the month. The nomination is subject to approval of the U.S. Senate. Kempthorne has ``been a responsible steward'' of Idaho's public lands and is ``the right man'' to continue the work started by Norton in managing U.S.-owned land, Bush said today in making the announcement in the Oval Office. Kempthorne is approaching the end of his second term as Idaho's governor and can't run again. He previously served one term as U.S. senator from the state and as mayor of Boise, Idaho's capital....
Bush picks Idaho's Kempthorne for Interior
President George W. Bush on Thursday chose Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne as his choice to replace Gale Norton as Interior secretary, a Republican official said. Bush was expected to make a formal announcement at 5:30 p.m. EST on Thursday. Kempthorne, who was first elected governor in 1998, is also a former senator. The Interior secretary job, which oversees federal lands, requires Senate confirmation....
President George W. Bush on Thursday chose Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne as his choice to replace Gale Norton as Interior secretary, a Republican official said. Bush was expected to make a formal announcement at 5:30 p.m. EST on Thursday. Kempthorne, who was first elected governor in 1998, is also a former senator. The Interior secretary job, which oversees federal lands, requires Senate confirmation....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Deer breeders sue state A group of deer breeders has sued the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, asking a Travis County district judge to determine who owns the white-tailed deer and mule deer held in breeding pens in Texas. The current state statute under which breeders operate allows them to buy, sell, breed, medicate and even shoot released deer for sport but retains ownership of the deer for the State of Texas. Licensed breeders, though, claim ownership of the deer they breed and want the courts to decide whether the state could be taking away their property rights. "I just firmly believe they ought to be our deer," said Quinlan rancher James Anderton, one of the eight plaintiffs listed in the suit filed Friday in Austin. "I want to know if they're my deer or if the state can shut me down and say they own the deer." Texas has about 800 breeding facilities, comprising more than 40,000 animals with an estimated worth of more than $100 million. Individual breeding bucks have sold for as much as $450,000 in Texas....
Wildfires might claim 10,000 head of cattle Panhandle ranchers scrambled to move livestock to safe ground Wednesday as wildfires, revived in places by 30-mph winds, were claiming up to an estimated 10,000 head of cattle over 840,000 blackened acres. “It burned every inch of our ranch,” said Glenda Adcock of the Lazy 11 near Miami, her voice breaking. “And we’re still fighting it. We probably lost more than 100 cattle, and we’re not completely through. They found 30 baby calves and lot of mama cows.” Ted McCollum, a livestock specialist with the Texas Cooperative Extension service, said few cattle producers carry insurance against fire loss. He said that aside from the cost of replacing livestock and miles of fencing at $5,500 to $10,000 a mile, there might also be a psychological toll. “There are ranches completely consumed,” McCollum said. “All that’s left is the house. One can only imagine what they are dealing with emotionally in terms of the losses and trying to determine how to go from here.”....
Yellowstone bison sent to slaughter without testing Roughly 30 bison captured near the western border of Yellowstone National Park were shipped to slaughter without being tested for the disease brucellosis, a state livestock official said Wednesday. Marc Bridges, executive director of the state Department of Livestock, said authorities had to set up a portable trap and plow through deep snow to get to the bison Tuesday. He said officials had tried to haze the animals but deemed them ``unhazable.'' Hazing and capture of bison are allowed under a state-federal management plan that's aimed at reducing the potential spread of brucellosis from bison to cattle in Montana. Brucellosis is found in the Yellowstone bison herd, and the disease can cause cows to abort. If it were to show up in cattle, it could cost the state its prized brucellosis-free status — a real worry to ranchers. But activists have countered that there's no proof of bison spreading brucellosis to cattle in the wild....
Killing of Carnivores Won't Protect Sheep Industry Decades of U.S. government-subsidized predator control has failed to prevent a long-term decline in the sheep industry, according to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which says that market forces – not predators – are responsible for the drop-off in sheep numbers. The study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Conservation Biology, says that more than 80 years of federally subsidized predator control with a total investment of more than 1.6 billion dollars have not been able to stave off an 85 percent decline in the sheep industry since its peak of 56.2 million animals in 1942. According to the study, predation by coyotes is often cited as the primary cause of the decline. However, 80 years of historical data reveal that a variety of market trends ranging from fluctuating hay prices and rising wages for livestock workers, to the drop in wholesale prices of lamb and wool, are the real culprits behind the industry’s drop-off. As evidence, the study points to a 141-percent increase in wages, 23 percent decrease in lamb prices, and 82 percent decrease in wool prices during the period in which sheep numbers were reduced by 85 percent....
One man’s journey to the end of the Colorado River Now, however, the U.S. is crushing the hopes of Gonzalez and his neighbors for a little more water and the better future it could bring. The U.S. is beginning projects that will further cut the already diminished flow of fresh water to Mexico from the Colorado River. With minimal international consultation, the U.S. — along with the Metropolitan Water District and other water agencies — is turning down the spigot to Mexico to divert more water for new housing developments in Los Angeles and cities across Southern California. In so doing, water managers not only will starve Mexico for water, but likely will set up Los Angeles and urban Southern California for water shortages by enabling more growth than the river ultimately can support. Each new development approved by local city councils flush with builder cash in Southern California — from Playa Vista in Los Angeles to teeming subdivisions in the Inland Empire and San Diego County — represents death by a thousand cuts for the many cultures, economies and nature itself along the 1,450-mile-long Colorado River, which slakes the thirst and waters the crops of 30 million people in seven Western states and Mexico. It’s a case of history be damned to the people on both sides of the border and all along the river who have staked their lives on farming, fishing, ranching and recreation....
Klamath water crisis may lead to salmon season cancellation The Klamath River and the dependence of fishermen and irrigators for its water has once again reached the crisis point as federal salmon fishing season decision makers are proposing to limit or completely eliminate the salmon catch so stocks can replenish. No final decision has been made by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, and the proposals will go out to public hearings before being sent to U.S. Commerce Department for final adoption. The three possible options are to completely ban salmon fishing along the California coast from Monterey to the Oregon border, set catch numbers at last year's levels that reduced the catch by 60 percent or further reduce the catch below last year's levels. What has caused the reduced numbers of fish has been debated for years. Fishermen say the causes are low water levels, dams and contaminants because of diversions to farmers. Irrigators claim other factors, including warm water, disease and overcrowding have reduced salmon runs....
Feds have wolf delisting plan U.S. Interior Secretary Gail Norton is expected to announce a plan today to hand over management of wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan to natural resource agencies in those states. The plan, in the works for a decade, will give the states leeway to trap and shoot wolves in areas where livestock or pets have been killed. It could lead to limited state trapping and hunting seasons if wolves remain prolific. Under the proposal, wolves will lose their federal Endangered Species Act threatened status in Minnesota and endangered status in Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The plan is a scaled-down version of one proposed by Norton in 2004 that was struck down by two federal courts, in Oregon and Vermont, in 2005....
Agreement ends sheep grazing in area rife with wolves, bears Domestic sheep don't mix well with grizzly bears and wolves. Now they won't mix at all on more than 70,000 acres in the Absaroka-Beartooth wilderness. A 74,000-acre sheep grazing allotment south of Big Timber in the Gallatin National Forest has been permanently closed, and the ranchers who used it for generations have been paid to move their sheep elsewhere, according to a deal expected to be announced today. The agreement is the eighth -- and second-largest -- in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem in recent years that has led to the retirement of about 300,000 acres from grazing. "Ultimately, this is going to be one of the most effective solutions we have to deal with chronic conflicts between wildlife and livestock," said Hank Fischer of the National Wildlife Federation, one of the groups that helped organize the deals....
Farmers' vote could keep state out of court Farmers who irrigate from the Harlan County Reservoir at Alma agreed Wednesday to sell $2.5 million in water to the state to satisfy the terms of a Republican River compact and fend off a Kansas lawsuit. Mike Delka, manager of the Bostwick Irrigation District, said those attending a meeting at district headquarters in Red Cloud voted 172-14 to advance the unprecedented agreement. The outcome also addresses a multi-year drought, depleted rivers and streams, heavy groundwater pumping in the area and the likelihood Bostwick irrigators will get no water from the reservoir this year. Gov. Dave Heineman praised the landowners who voted and others involved in the agreement....
Gunnison's prairie dog not on endangered list The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reviewed a petition to list the Gunnison's prairie dog under the Endangered Species Act and has concluded the petition does not contain substantial scientific information that the petitioned action is warranted. The finding was published in the Federal Register. The FWS made the determination in response to a petition received on Feb. 23, 2004, from Forest Guardians and 73 other organizations and individuals. The petition requested that the Gunnison's prairie dog found in the Four Corners region of northern Arizona, southwestern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah be listed as threatened or endangered. Under the ESA, the FWS is required to review the petition to decide whether it contained substantial scientific information that warrants a more thorough review. "The service remains interested in the population status, trends and ongoing management actions important to the conservation of the Gunnison's prairie dog," said Mitch King, the FWS director of the Mountain-Prairie Region, "and we encourage interested parties to continue to gather data that will assist in these conservation efforts. More research is needed to better determine the distribution and abundance of the species throughout its range."....
Editorial: Resigning U.S. secretary of the Interior lauded by industry but despised by environmentalists THE first female head of the Interior Department, departing Secretary Gale Norton, remained true to the pro-industry, antiregulation philosophy she learned as a protege of James Watt, the controversial interior secretary in the Reagan administration. During her five years in office, Norton accomplished many of the goals that Watt's careless rhetoric placed beyond his reach. At President Bush's direction, Norton put wilderness and wildlife preservation second behind opening federal lands to expanded logging, mining and drilling activities. Coal and natural gas production on public lands rose during her tenure. As federal lands provide the United States with 30 percent of its energy, and as the nation is increasingly dependent on imported oil and gas, efficient use of domestic resources must be looked on as a plus. Unfortunately, Norton needlessly outraged environmental protection organizations by rolling back Clinton-era restrictions on wilderness development and supporting congressional efforts to dismember the landmark Endangered Species Act....
Norton mum on plans after resigning as interior secretary In her first visit home since announcing her resignation, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said Wednesday another Westerner should replace her as chief manager of the nation's public lands and resources. "I think it's important to have somebody who really understands what a significant role the Interior Department can play in people's lives here in the West," she said. Norton, a former Colorado attorney general, plans to step down at the end of the month after five years heading the department that oversees the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and other agencies that manage millions of acres of public land. Norton said she wanted to leave as early as possible in President Bush's second term to allow her successor time to take over and continue programs. She said she might have left earlier if not for such tasks as restoring offshore energy production after the hurricanes that racked the Gulf Coast....
Beyond the Gale The rumor mill is churning fast as Interior Secretary Gale Norton prepares to bid adieu to the Bush administration, and two names on the short list of possible replacements are leading the pack: for an outside-the-Beltway pick, Dirk Kempthorne, Republican governor of Idaho; for an inside-the-agency pick, Lynn Scarlett, currently Norton's No. 2, who will likely run the department anyway until a permanent replacement is secured. "This administration has done things two ways when it comes to nominations," observes Frank Maisano, a lobbyist for the energy industry. "They find a high-profile person outside Washington who can be easily confirmed, carry his own water, and lift the profile of the agency" -- think Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey governor who served as Bush's first EPA administrator -- "or the under-the-radar administrative person who can make the trains run on time, is an effective manager, and has the respect of agency staffers" -- think current EPA administrator Stephen Johnson. Whichever course the Bush administration chooses in this case, it's a safe bet that the outcome will be business as usual....
Key Environmental Law Ever-Tangled in Litigation The American Bar Association's environmental law conference at Keystone, Colorado, drew several hundred attorneys, and it may take all of them – and then some – to deal with the ever-growing mountain of legal battles surrounding the Endangered Species Act (ESA). "It's death by a 1,000 cuts," said Eileen Sobeck, a U.S. Department of Justice attorney who handles many endangered species cases for the Department of the Interior. "The Department of Justice and the Department of Interior can't handle the volume. There are 30 challenges to critical habitat pending (in court) in California alone," Sobeck said last weekend during a panel discussion on the big daddy of environmental laws. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, charged with managing rare and threatened plants and critters, can't seem to win for losing. Some critical habitat cases are in their third or fourth round of litigation, said panelist Michael Senatore, with the Washington, D.C.-based Defenders of Wildlife. Sometimes, as was recently the case with Canada lynx, the agency is challenged when it doesn't designate habitat quickly enough. When it does come out with a critical habitat delineation, challenges frequently come from both sides....
Column: We Can't Afford This Public Land Sale Selling federal forest land to subsidize rural schools and road projects is a bad idea for many reasons. But a proposal to do just that, incorporated into the Bush administration's 2007 budget, has one powerful virtue: It has focused welcome public attention on a century-old welfare program that has yet to achieve its goals. Bush and his Department of Agriculture, which runs the U.S. Forest Service, have proposed extending a law that gives money to logging-dependent counties to compensate them for revenue losses caused by declining timber harvests. That law was signed by President Clinton in 2000 after protections for the northern spotted owl and other endangered species reduced logging in the Pacific Northwest, causing rural revenues to tumble. But thanks to such fiscal irritants as the war in Iraq, tax cuts and a reluctance to veto even the most outlandish congressional spending proposals, the administration can't afford to keep the rural subsidy afloat. Rather than find offsetting savings elsewhere, or let the program expire as lawmakers apparently intended six years ago, the president and Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey want to prolong it another five years and sell more than 300,000 acres of national forest land to pay the $800 million bill....
Red-legged frogs hamper efforts to clear storm drains After more than two decades, Bob Loya of Cordelia's A.R. Loya Electrical Construction, Inc., said the well-being of a frog could put his business at risk. Loya's is among several firms in the Cordelia Industrial Owner's Association's industrial condo business park at Lopes Road and Fulton Avenue that were flooded in the New Year's Eve storms. Loya said a subsequent investigation found that a clogged drainage system caused part of the flooding. Attempts to get that cleared out, however, are blocked by rules designed to protect an endangered species of frog, he said....
County trades land to protect rare cactus The county approved a land swap yesterday that it says will help protect the endangered Pima pineapple cactus. The county gave up 640 acres off South Swan Road and will receive 529 acres near Elephant Head in the Santa Rita foothills, about 30 miles south of Tucson. Developer Donald Diamond's South Wilmot LLC plans a major development in the Swan Road area, and cactuses on the parcel next to it are mysteriously dying off. Only three of the 28 plants put on the preserve survived and officials are not sure why. The Elephant Head habitat is expected to be more hospitable. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which regulates endangered species, has approved the land swap, said County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry....
Leader Urges Argentinians to Eat Less Beef Argentines rank among the world's biggest meat-eaters. But President Nestor Kirchner has told his carnivorous compatriots it's time to consume less if beef prices continue to rise and threaten his campaign against inflation. But isn't that like shunning the tango or telling a soccer-mad nation to skip the World Cup? Just ask Argentines, who made Kirchner's stridently public threats of a near-boycott on beef the talk of the town Wednesday at barbecue pits and steakhouses across this vast cattle-raising country. What's the Argentine president's beef with beef? Kirchner on Tuesday urged consumers to "buy less beef if they don't lower the price," speaking of industry prices he is trying to control. "Let's make them feel the power of the consumer so they don't sell at whatever prices they want," he said....
Back At Home On The Range Long ago in Texas’ more sordid past, fed-up ranchers would host “neck-tie parties” to exact their own brand of justice against cattle thieves. But, while mob rule is no longer an acceptable approach, make no mistake about it -- the very crime of “rustling” continues to this day in Gillespie County. Modern advancements in crime lab forensics have refined investigations to a science, and yet many unsavory sorts are still blinded by high cattle prices and see the risk of thievery worth taking. Nowadays, cattle rustlers use a “blending in” method, a clever study of schedules and modern transport to pull off their crimes....
Deer breeders sue state A group of deer breeders has sued the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, asking a Travis County district judge to determine who owns the white-tailed deer and mule deer held in breeding pens in Texas. The current state statute under which breeders operate allows them to buy, sell, breed, medicate and even shoot released deer for sport but retains ownership of the deer for the State of Texas. Licensed breeders, though, claim ownership of the deer they breed and want the courts to decide whether the state could be taking away their property rights. "I just firmly believe they ought to be our deer," said Quinlan rancher James Anderton, one of the eight plaintiffs listed in the suit filed Friday in Austin. "I want to know if they're my deer or if the state can shut me down and say they own the deer." Texas has about 800 breeding facilities, comprising more than 40,000 animals with an estimated worth of more than $100 million. Individual breeding bucks have sold for as much as $450,000 in Texas....
Wildfires might claim 10,000 head of cattle Panhandle ranchers scrambled to move livestock to safe ground Wednesday as wildfires, revived in places by 30-mph winds, were claiming up to an estimated 10,000 head of cattle over 840,000 blackened acres. “It burned every inch of our ranch,” said Glenda Adcock of the Lazy 11 near Miami, her voice breaking. “And we’re still fighting it. We probably lost more than 100 cattle, and we’re not completely through. They found 30 baby calves and lot of mama cows.” Ted McCollum, a livestock specialist with the Texas Cooperative Extension service, said few cattle producers carry insurance against fire loss. He said that aside from the cost of replacing livestock and miles of fencing at $5,500 to $10,000 a mile, there might also be a psychological toll. “There are ranches completely consumed,” McCollum said. “All that’s left is the house. One can only imagine what they are dealing with emotionally in terms of the losses and trying to determine how to go from here.”....
Yellowstone bison sent to slaughter without testing Roughly 30 bison captured near the western border of Yellowstone National Park were shipped to slaughter without being tested for the disease brucellosis, a state livestock official said Wednesday. Marc Bridges, executive director of the state Department of Livestock, said authorities had to set up a portable trap and plow through deep snow to get to the bison Tuesday. He said officials had tried to haze the animals but deemed them ``unhazable.'' Hazing and capture of bison are allowed under a state-federal management plan that's aimed at reducing the potential spread of brucellosis from bison to cattle in Montana. Brucellosis is found in the Yellowstone bison herd, and the disease can cause cows to abort. If it were to show up in cattle, it could cost the state its prized brucellosis-free status — a real worry to ranchers. But activists have countered that there's no proof of bison spreading brucellosis to cattle in the wild....
Killing of Carnivores Won't Protect Sheep Industry Decades of U.S. government-subsidized predator control has failed to prevent a long-term decline in the sheep industry, according to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which says that market forces – not predators – are responsible for the drop-off in sheep numbers. The study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Conservation Biology, says that more than 80 years of federally subsidized predator control with a total investment of more than 1.6 billion dollars have not been able to stave off an 85 percent decline in the sheep industry since its peak of 56.2 million animals in 1942. According to the study, predation by coyotes is often cited as the primary cause of the decline. However, 80 years of historical data reveal that a variety of market trends ranging from fluctuating hay prices and rising wages for livestock workers, to the drop in wholesale prices of lamb and wool, are the real culprits behind the industry’s drop-off. As evidence, the study points to a 141-percent increase in wages, 23 percent decrease in lamb prices, and 82 percent decrease in wool prices during the period in which sheep numbers were reduced by 85 percent....
One man’s journey to the end of the Colorado River Now, however, the U.S. is crushing the hopes of Gonzalez and his neighbors for a little more water and the better future it could bring. The U.S. is beginning projects that will further cut the already diminished flow of fresh water to Mexico from the Colorado River. With minimal international consultation, the U.S. — along with the Metropolitan Water District and other water agencies — is turning down the spigot to Mexico to divert more water for new housing developments in Los Angeles and cities across Southern California. In so doing, water managers not only will starve Mexico for water, but likely will set up Los Angeles and urban Southern California for water shortages by enabling more growth than the river ultimately can support. Each new development approved by local city councils flush with builder cash in Southern California — from Playa Vista in Los Angeles to teeming subdivisions in the Inland Empire and San Diego County — represents death by a thousand cuts for the many cultures, economies and nature itself along the 1,450-mile-long Colorado River, which slakes the thirst and waters the crops of 30 million people in seven Western states and Mexico. It’s a case of history be damned to the people on both sides of the border and all along the river who have staked their lives on farming, fishing, ranching and recreation....
Klamath water crisis may lead to salmon season cancellation The Klamath River and the dependence of fishermen and irrigators for its water has once again reached the crisis point as federal salmon fishing season decision makers are proposing to limit or completely eliminate the salmon catch so stocks can replenish. No final decision has been made by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, and the proposals will go out to public hearings before being sent to U.S. Commerce Department for final adoption. The three possible options are to completely ban salmon fishing along the California coast from Monterey to the Oregon border, set catch numbers at last year's levels that reduced the catch by 60 percent or further reduce the catch below last year's levels. What has caused the reduced numbers of fish has been debated for years. Fishermen say the causes are low water levels, dams and contaminants because of diversions to farmers. Irrigators claim other factors, including warm water, disease and overcrowding have reduced salmon runs....
Feds have wolf delisting plan U.S. Interior Secretary Gail Norton is expected to announce a plan today to hand over management of wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan to natural resource agencies in those states. The plan, in the works for a decade, will give the states leeway to trap and shoot wolves in areas where livestock or pets have been killed. It could lead to limited state trapping and hunting seasons if wolves remain prolific. Under the proposal, wolves will lose their federal Endangered Species Act threatened status in Minnesota and endangered status in Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The plan is a scaled-down version of one proposed by Norton in 2004 that was struck down by two federal courts, in Oregon and Vermont, in 2005....
Agreement ends sheep grazing in area rife with wolves, bears Domestic sheep don't mix well with grizzly bears and wolves. Now they won't mix at all on more than 70,000 acres in the Absaroka-Beartooth wilderness. A 74,000-acre sheep grazing allotment south of Big Timber in the Gallatin National Forest has been permanently closed, and the ranchers who used it for generations have been paid to move their sheep elsewhere, according to a deal expected to be announced today. The agreement is the eighth -- and second-largest -- in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem in recent years that has led to the retirement of about 300,000 acres from grazing. "Ultimately, this is going to be one of the most effective solutions we have to deal with chronic conflicts between wildlife and livestock," said Hank Fischer of the National Wildlife Federation, one of the groups that helped organize the deals....
Farmers' vote could keep state out of court Farmers who irrigate from the Harlan County Reservoir at Alma agreed Wednesday to sell $2.5 million in water to the state to satisfy the terms of a Republican River compact and fend off a Kansas lawsuit. Mike Delka, manager of the Bostwick Irrigation District, said those attending a meeting at district headquarters in Red Cloud voted 172-14 to advance the unprecedented agreement. The outcome also addresses a multi-year drought, depleted rivers and streams, heavy groundwater pumping in the area and the likelihood Bostwick irrigators will get no water from the reservoir this year. Gov. Dave Heineman praised the landowners who voted and others involved in the agreement....
Gunnison's prairie dog not on endangered list The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reviewed a petition to list the Gunnison's prairie dog under the Endangered Species Act and has concluded the petition does not contain substantial scientific information that the petitioned action is warranted. The finding was published in the Federal Register. The FWS made the determination in response to a petition received on Feb. 23, 2004, from Forest Guardians and 73 other organizations and individuals. The petition requested that the Gunnison's prairie dog found in the Four Corners region of northern Arizona, southwestern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah be listed as threatened or endangered. Under the ESA, the FWS is required to review the petition to decide whether it contained substantial scientific information that warrants a more thorough review. "The service remains interested in the population status, trends and ongoing management actions important to the conservation of the Gunnison's prairie dog," said Mitch King, the FWS director of the Mountain-Prairie Region, "and we encourage interested parties to continue to gather data that will assist in these conservation efforts. More research is needed to better determine the distribution and abundance of the species throughout its range."....
Editorial: Resigning U.S. secretary of the Interior lauded by industry but despised by environmentalists THE first female head of the Interior Department, departing Secretary Gale Norton, remained true to the pro-industry, antiregulation philosophy she learned as a protege of James Watt, the controversial interior secretary in the Reagan administration. During her five years in office, Norton accomplished many of the goals that Watt's careless rhetoric placed beyond his reach. At President Bush's direction, Norton put wilderness and wildlife preservation second behind opening federal lands to expanded logging, mining and drilling activities. Coal and natural gas production on public lands rose during her tenure. As federal lands provide the United States with 30 percent of its energy, and as the nation is increasingly dependent on imported oil and gas, efficient use of domestic resources must be looked on as a plus. Unfortunately, Norton needlessly outraged environmental protection organizations by rolling back Clinton-era restrictions on wilderness development and supporting congressional efforts to dismember the landmark Endangered Species Act....
Norton mum on plans after resigning as interior secretary In her first visit home since announcing her resignation, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said Wednesday another Westerner should replace her as chief manager of the nation's public lands and resources. "I think it's important to have somebody who really understands what a significant role the Interior Department can play in people's lives here in the West," she said. Norton, a former Colorado attorney general, plans to step down at the end of the month after five years heading the department that oversees the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and other agencies that manage millions of acres of public land. Norton said she wanted to leave as early as possible in President Bush's second term to allow her successor time to take over and continue programs. She said she might have left earlier if not for such tasks as restoring offshore energy production after the hurricanes that racked the Gulf Coast....
Beyond the Gale The rumor mill is churning fast as Interior Secretary Gale Norton prepares to bid adieu to the Bush administration, and two names on the short list of possible replacements are leading the pack: for an outside-the-Beltway pick, Dirk Kempthorne, Republican governor of Idaho; for an inside-the-agency pick, Lynn Scarlett, currently Norton's No. 2, who will likely run the department anyway until a permanent replacement is secured. "This administration has done things two ways when it comes to nominations," observes Frank Maisano, a lobbyist for the energy industry. "They find a high-profile person outside Washington who can be easily confirmed, carry his own water, and lift the profile of the agency" -- think Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey governor who served as Bush's first EPA administrator -- "or the under-the-radar administrative person who can make the trains run on time, is an effective manager, and has the respect of agency staffers" -- think current EPA administrator Stephen Johnson. Whichever course the Bush administration chooses in this case, it's a safe bet that the outcome will be business as usual....
Key Environmental Law Ever-Tangled in Litigation The American Bar Association's environmental law conference at Keystone, Colorado, drew several hundred attorneys, and it may take all of them – and then some – to deal with the ever-growing mountain of legal battles surrounding the Endangered Species Act (ESA). "It's death by a 1,000 cuts," said Eileen Sobeck, a U.S. Department of Justice attorney who handles many endangered species cases for the Department of the Interior. "The Department of Justice and the Department of Interior can't handle the volume. There are 30 challenges to critical habitat pending (in court) in California alone," Sobeck said last weekend during a panel discussion on the big daddy of environmental laws. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, charged with managing rare and threatened plants and critters, can't seem to win for losing. Some critical habitat cases are in their third or fourth round of litigation, said panelist Michael Senatore, with the Washington, D.C.-based Defenders of Wildlife. Sometimes, as was recently the case with Canada lynx, the agency is challenged when it doesn't designate habitat quickly enough. When it does come out with a critical habitat delineation, challenges frequently come from both sides....
Column: We Can't Afford This Public Land Sale Selling federal forest land to subsidize rural schools and road projects is a bad idea for many reasons. But a proposal to do just that, incorporated into the Bush administration's 2007 budget, has one powerful virtue: It has focused welcome public attention on a century-old welfare program that has yet to achieve its goals. Bush and his Department of Agriculture, which runs the U.S. Forest Service, have proposed extending a law that gives money to logging-dependent counties to compensate them for revenue losses caused by declining timber harvests. That law was signed by President Clinton in 2000 after protections for the northern spotted owl and other endangered species reduced logging in the Pacific Northwest, causing rural revenues to tumble. But thanks to such fiscal irritants as the war in Iraq, tax cuts and a reluctance to veto even the most outlandish congressional spending proposals, the administration can't afford to keep the rural subsidy afloat. Rather than find offsetting savings elsewhere, or let the program expire as lawmakers apparently intended six years ago, the president and Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey want to prolong it another five years and sell more than 300,000 acres of national forest land to pay the $800 million bill....
Red-legged frogs hamper efforts to clear storm drains After more than two decades, Bob Loya of Cordelia's A.R. Loya Electrical Construction, Inc., said the well-being of a frog could put his business at risk. Loya's is among several firms in the Cordelia Industrial Owner's Association's industrial condo business park at Lopes Road and Fulton Avenue that were flooded in the New Year's Eve storms. Loya said a subsequent investigation found that a clogged drainage system caused part of the flooding. Attempts to get that cleared out, however, are blocked by rules designed to protect an endangered species of frog, he said....
County trades land to protect rare cactus The county approved a land swap yesterday that it says will help protect the endangered Pima pineapple cactus. The county gave up 640 acres off South Swan Road and will receive 529 acres near Elephant Head in the Santa Rita foothills, about 30 miles south of Tucson. Developer Donald Diamond's South Wilmot LLC plans a major development in the Swan Road area, and cactuses on the parcel next to it are mysteriously dying off. Only three of the 28 plants put on the preserve survived and officials are not sure why. The Elephant Head habitat is expected to be more hospitable. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which regulates endangered species, has approved the land swap, said County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry....
Leader Urges Argentinians to Eat Less Beef Argentines rank among the world's biggest meat-eaters. But President Nestor Kirchner has told his carnivorous compatriots it's time to consume less if beef prices continue to rise and threaten his campaign against inflation. But isn't that like shunning the tango or telling a soccer-mad nation to skip the World Cup? Just ask Argentines, who made Kirchner's stridently public threats of a near-boycott on beef the talk of the town Wednesday at barbecue pits and steakhouses across this vast cattle-raising country. What's the Argentine president's beef with beef? Kirchner on Tuesday urged consumers to "buy less beef if they don't lower the price," speaking of industry prices he is trying to control. "Let's make them feel the power of the consumer so they don't sell at whatever prices they want," he said....
Back At Home On The Range Long ago in Texas’ more sordid past, fed-up ranchers would host “neck-tie parties” to exact their own brand of justice against cattle thieves. But, while mob rule is no longer an acceptable approach, make no mistake about it -- the very crime of “rustling” continues to this day in Gillespie County. Modern advancements in crime lab forensics have refined investigations to a science, and yet many unsavory sorts are still blinded by high cattle prices and see the risk of thievery worth taking. Nowadays, cattle rustlers use a “blending in” method, a clever study of schedules and modern transport to pull off their crimes....
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
FLE
Border Agents Denied Bail
A judge denied bail Tuesday for two supervising Border Patrol agents accused of taking $300,000 in bribes and releasing illegal immigrants from custody. After an hour-long detention hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge William McCurine found that agents Mario Alvarez and Samuel McClaren, both of Imperial, were a risk to flee and a danger to the community. McCurine rejected requests by defense attorneys to release their clients on $50,000 bonds secured by property. The judge said Alvarez and McClaren were men of "considerable accomplishment," but had shown "a tragic willingness to put at risk the lives of their colleagues." An eight-count indictment alleges that the defendants, who worked in the Mexican Liaison Unit in El Centro and were assigned to administer the Guide Identification Prosecution Program, "unlawfully released or facilitated the unlawful release of numerous previously apprehended illegal aliens from custody and returned them to members of an alien smuggling ring in exchange for cash."....
Combating Southwest Border Violence
As the agency with the broadest law enforcement authority within the Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is said to be uniquely positioned to combat vulnerabilities and threats to America from individuals involved in terrorism, organized crime, human smuggling and narco-terrorism at US borders. According to DHS officials, ICE has established aggressive intelligence and investigative operations at the nation’s borders, ports of entries, and between the ports and the nation’s interior. The southern border of the US is a region particularly vulnerable to cross-border criminal organizations and enterprises and the violence associated with them. In recent years, ICE has witnessed an unprecedented surge in brutality by drug and human smuggling and trafficking organizations along the Southwest border. Below are a few of the initiatives that ICE has launched to combat the criminal organizations behind this activity....
Barriers at border go up as debate on effects goes on
While politicians in Phoenix and Congress talk about building a tall fence along Arizona's border with Mexico, workers here are completing a shorter and more modest obstacle. This low-slung vehicle barrier will do nothing to stop people from walking into Southern Arizona illegally. But on public lands where the obstacles are popping up, officials say the devices have succeeded in stopping the so-called drive-throughs that can imperil law enforcement and scar the thin-skinned desert for decades. Homeland Security and other officials have disclosed plans to build similar barriers along most of the border between Yuma and Nogales, though the cost and timing of many proposals are unclear. On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved at least 200 miles of barriers along Arizona's border with Mexico. To some, barriers that block only vehicles are Band-Aids on a hemorrhaging wound. Vehicles can still drive around the ends, and smugglers are already scheming ways to defeat the new obstacles. In a 2004 report by the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, congressional staff reported seeing photos of a special truck that could park perpendicular to the barrier on the Mexican side, unfold a set of rails over the barrier and unfold another set of rails behind it. "Other vehicles could then drive up the back of the modified truck, across its top and down its front, over the vehicle barrier and into the United States," the report said....
Days of DeWine and Ruses? Reporters May Be Exempt from Eavesdropping Bill
Reporters who write about government surveillance could be prosecuted under proposed legislation that would solidify the administration's eavesdropping authority, according to some legal analysts who are concerned about dramatic changes in U.S. law. But an aide to the bill's chief author, Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said that is not the intention of the legislation. "It in no way applies to reporters — in any way, shape or form," said Mike Dawson, a senior policy adviser to DeWine, responding to an inquiry Friday afternoon. "If a technical fix is necessary, it will be made." The Associated Press obtained a copy of the draft of the legislation, which could be introduced as soon as next week. The draft would add to the criminal penalties for anyone who "intentionally discloses information identifying or describing" the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program or any other eavesdropping program conducted under a 1978 surveillance law. Under the boosted penalties, those found guilty could face fines of up to $1 million, 15 years in jail or both. Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the measure is broader than any existing laws. She said, for example, the language does not specify that the information has to be harmful to national security or classified. "The bill would make it a crime to tell the American people that the president is breaking the law, and the bill could make it a crime for the newspapers to publish that fact," said Martin, a civil liberties advocate....
FBI documents raise new questions about extent of surveillance
An FBI counterterrorism unit monitored - and apparently infiltrated - a peace group in Pittsburgh that opposed the invasion of Iraq, according to internal agency documents released on Tuesday. The disclosure raised new questions about the extent to which federal authorities have been conducting surveillance operations against Americans since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Previous revelations include FBI monitoring of environmental and animal rights organizations, scrutiny of anti-war organizations by a top-secret Pentagon program and eavesdropping by the National Security Agency on domestic communications without court authorization. Federal officials insist that the efforts are legal, although the Pentagon has admitted that the top-secret TALON program mistakenly retained in its database reports on scores of anti-war protests and individuals as part of an effort to identify terrorist threats against defense facilities and personnel. The documents released on Tuesday were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act. They showed that the Joint Terrorism Task Force of the FBI's Pittsburgh office conducted a secret investigation into the activities of the Thomas Merton Center beginning as early as Nov. 29, 2002, and continuing as late as March 2005....
200,000 People in U.S. Terror Database
Police and other government workers in the U.S. have come in contact with terrorists or people suspected of foreign terror ties more than 6,000 times in the past 28 months, the director of the federal Terrorist Screening Center said Tuesday. The encounters in traffic stops, applications for permits and other situations have resulted in fewer than 60 arrests, said Donna Bucella, whose agency maintains a list of 200,000 people known or suspected to be terrorists. The list contains an additional 150,000 records that have only partial names, Bucella said. The vast majority of people on the list are not in this country, and many have only tenuous or inconclusive ties to terrorism, Bucella said at a briefing for reporters at FBI headquarters. The TSC list, conceived after the intelligence failures before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, combines about a dozen databases from nine agencies that any government official — from a Customs agent to a state trooper — can use to check the name of someone who has been screened or stopped. When there is a possible match, the screening center verifies the information is accurate and advises what steps to take. In most of the more than 6,000 incidents Bucella described, officials collected additional information and let the person go....
Barr Slams Patriot Act Renewal
The attempts to reform the national security letter powers that were expanded by the Patriot Act in 2001, failed as Congress renewed the Patriot Act without making meaningful changes. However, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle did agree that more needs to be done to protect our fundamental freedoms while making sure intelligence agents have the tools they need to investigate terrorists. The botched reforms failed to make necessary changes, in fact, government agents are still allowed to look into ordinary citizens' private records without any evidence that they have any connection to a suspected terrorist or terrorist organization. Not only is this the case, but the provision which the President can declare any event a "special event of national significance," giving Secret Service agents expanded powers to exclude, expel and arrest persons not wanted at the event, remains as well. The Congress even snuck in a provision to include penalties regarding the trafficking in contraband cigarettes or smokeless tobacco – which, of course, is not a key factor in the fight against terrorism. The balance of government powers and the Constitution must be upheld....
U.S. Limits Demands on Google
After the Justice Department drastically reduced its request for information from Google, a federal judge said on Tuesday that he intended to approve at least part of that request. The government first subpoenaed Web data from Google last August, as part of its defense of an online pornography law. At a hearing in Federal District Court here, Judge James Ware said that in supporting the government's more limited request, he would nonetheless pay attention to Google's concerns about its trade secrets and the privacy of its users. The government is now requesting a sample of 50,000 Web site addresses in Google's index instead of a million, which it was demanding until recently. And it is asking for just 5,000 search queries, compared with an earlier demand for an entire week of queries, which could amount to billions of search terms. A Justice Department lawyer said at the hearing that the government would review just 10,000 Web sites and 1,000 search queries out of those turned over....
Government Lawyer's Error Upsets Families of 9/11 Victims
Yesterday was another day of frustration for families of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001. They have waited more than four years through delays and appeals for Zacarias Moussaoui's trial to begin. Satellite courtrooms, established by Congress, have been set up in Boston, Manhattan, Long Island, Newark and Philadelphia so they could watch the government make its case that the only person convicted in the United States in the terrorist attacks should be executed. Although the families might disagree about what role Moussaoui played in the attacks and what his sentence should be, many have said that they looked forward to the trial as a vehicle to gather information, heal wounds and, for some, seek some closure. Some family members said they were upset that the actions of a Transportation Security Administration lawyer, Carla J. Martin, could potentially derail the government's case. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema decided yesterday to exclude all aviation security evidence after Martin violated a court order by e-mailing trial transcripts to seven witnesses and coaching them about their upcoming testimony. Some family members questioned how Martin could have blatantly disregarded a court order -- or not been aware of it. Some wondered whether she was being used as a scapegoat for other government officials who did not want the aviation security evidence to be made public. "I don't think she is alone," Dillard said in a telephone interview last night. "I just don't think she could have gotten away with that. Somebody helped her or prompted her. It just makes me wonder whether this is one more thing where no one is going to be held accountable.... It's almost too clean. I wonder if there is more to the story than we know."....
Government case in Moussaoui trial hurt
The judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui sentencing case decided Tuesday to allow the government to continue to seek the death penalty against the confessed al-Qaida conspirator, but she also barred part of the government's case, which she said had been riddled with “significant problems.” Exasperated by mounting government missteps, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that no testimony about aviation security measures would be allowed during the trial into whether Moussaoui is executed or spends life in prison. “I don’t think in the annals of criminal law there has ever been a case with this many significant problems,” Brinkema said. She ruled the trial could proceed after a daylong hearing into whether coming witnesses had been tainted by improper coaching by a federal lawyer. Brinkema added, “More problems arose today that none of us knew about yesterday.” She said that her order to isolate planned witnesses from trial transcripts and news reports had been violated. She also said she was troubled that one witness sought by defense lawyers was told by federal attorney Carla J. Martin that he could not speak to them and that Martin falsely told the defense that two others were not willing to speak to them. “I wouldn’t trust anything Martin had anything to do with at this point,” Brinkema said. The jury was not present for Tuesday’s questioning and ruling....Anyone who has read Constitutional Chaos by Judge Andrew Napolitano won't be surprised by this prosecutiorial misconduct. Looks, though, like they've run up against a judge who won't put up with it.
Prosecutors Scramble to Salvage 9/11 Case After Ruling
Federal prosecutors yesterday implored a judge to reverse her decision banning key witnesses from testifying at the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, saying the misconduct of a government lawyer they labeled a "lone miscreant" should not imperil the case. Calling it unprecedented and "grossly punitive," prosecutors said her ruling devastates their argument that Moussaoui should be executed for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema on Tuesday barred seven witnesses and all aviation security evidence from the trial, saying the actions of Transportation Security Administration lawyer Carla J. Martin had tainted the process beyond repair. At a minimum, prosecutors urged Brinkema to let them present a portion of the disputed evidence through a new witness who had no contact with Martin. A veteran government lawyer, Martin shared testimony and communicated with the seven witnesses in violation of a court order and committed what Brinkema called other "egregious errors." After her ruling Tuesday, prosecutors told Brinkema in a teleconference that she had threatened the sentencing phase of the only person convicted in the United States on charges stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert A. Spencer told her that resuming the proceedings, which began last week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria and are on hold until Monday, would "waste the jury's time."....
U.S. case vs. Hells Angels fizzles
A much ballyhooed racketeering case against Arizona's Hells Angels Motorcycle Club has all but ended in federal court with the U.S. Attorney's Office dismissing charges against some defendants and settling for lesser convictions against the rest. When the two-year sting known as Operation Black Biscuit became public in 2003, it was touted as the most successful infiltration ever of the notorious biker group. Undercover agents were feted in Washington, with Top Cop awards from the National Association of Police Officers. The government's case of drug violations, gun running, murder, racketeering and other crimes came to a close Wednesday, in part because of a feud between federal prosecutors and undercover agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives....
Rushmore to Judgment
America's judges would like to write off last year's anti-court orgy as a political spasm. Tom ("Judges need to be intimidated") DeLay is on the back bench, the testy Supreme Court confirmation hearings are over, and the judge in Terri Schiavo's case no longer needs a deputy to escort him every time he walks his dog. But better times aren't coming back soon. The newest front in the war on the courts is being fought in South Dakota, where, in the shadow of Mt. Rushmore, a group called "J.A.I.L. 4 Judges" is promoting one of the most radical threats to justice this side of the Spanish Inquisition. It's extreme and it's incoherent, but it's got more than 40,000 petition signatures—and it will go to the state's voters as a constitutional amendment in November. A national network of supporters is waiting in the wings, threatening to export the revolution to other states if they do well this fall. The group's proposed measure would wipe out a basic doctrine called judicial immunity that dates back to the 13th century, protecting judges from personal liability for doing their job ruling on the cases before them. A special grand jury—essentially a fourth branch of government—would be created to indict judges for a string of bizarre offenses that include "deliberate disregard of material facts," "judicial acts without jurisdiction," and "blocking of a lawful conclusion of a case," along with judicial failure to impanel a jury for infractions as minor as a dog-license violation. After three such "convictions," the judge would be fired and docked half of his or her retirement benefits for good measure....
Cost Concerns for F.B.I. Computer Overhaul
The long-stalled effort to overhaul the Federal Bureau of Investigation's antiquated computer system could cost another half-billion dollars to complete, and it runs the risk of continued overruns, a Justice Department report concluded Monday. The report, prepared by the Justice Department's inspector general, found that the F.B.I. had taken "important steps" to learn from mistakes that dogged the project. But it also identified what it called "continuing concerns" in budgeting and management. Moreover, the inspector general's office said it was not yet satisfied that the overhaul, even if successful, would allow the bureau to share information adequately with other intelligence and law enforcement agencies. If information-sharing is not built into the system, the report warned, a result may be "costly and time-consuming modifications" of the computer systems at the Justice Department, the Homeland Security Department and elsewhere. The F.B.I. has struggled for more than a decade to develop a modern computer system to allow its agents to analyze data, follow developments in investigations and talk to one another. The agency was forced last year to scrap the final phase in a three-part computer overhaul after spending $170 million on its failed Virtual Case File system. Bureau officials would not discuss the contracting process or the expected cost of the project because the job has not yet been awarded, but the inspector general said the F.B.I. expected the system to cost $400 million to $500 million over the next three to four years. The inspector general promised to "examine in detail the winning bidder's cost estimates" once the job was awarded....
Border Agents Denied Bail
A judge denied bail Tuesday for two supervising Border Patrol agents accused of taking $300,000 in bribes and releasing illegal immigrants from custody. After an hour-long detention hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge William McCurine found that agents Mario Alvarez and Samuel McClaren, both of Imperial, were a risk to flee and a danger to the community. McCurine rejected requests by defense attorneys to release their clients on $50,000 bonds secured by property. The judge said Alvarez and McClaren were men of "considerable accomplishment," but had shown "a tragic willingness to put at risk the lives of their colleagues." An eight-count indictment alleges that the defendants, who worked in the Mexican Liaison Unit in El Centro and were assigned to administer the Guide Identification Prosecution Program, "unlawfully released or facilitated the unlawful release of numerous previously apprehended illegal aliens from custody and returned them to members of an alien smuggling ring in exchange for cash."....
Combating Southwest Border Violence
As the agency with the broadest law enforcement authority within the Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is said to be uniquely positioned to combat vulnerabilities and threats to America from individuals involved in terrorism, organized crime, human smuggling and narco-terrorism at US borders. According to DHS officials, ICE has established aggressive intelligence and investigative operations at the nation’s borders, ports of entries, and between the ports and the nation’s interior. The southern border of the US is a region particularly vulnerable to cross-border criminal organizations and enterprises and the violence associated with them. In recent years, ICE has witnessed an unprecedented surge in brutality by drug and human smuggling and trafficking organizations along the Southwest border. Below are a few of the initiatives that ICE has launched to combat the criminal organizations behind this activity....
Barriers at border go up as debate on effects goes on
While politicians in Phoenix and Congress talk about building a tall fence along Arizona's border with Mexico, workers here are completing a shorter and more modest obstacle. This low-slung vehicle barrier will do nothing to stop people from walking into Southern Arizona illegally. But on public lands where the obstacles are popping up, officials say the devices have succeeded in stopping the so-called drive-throughs that can imperil law enforcement and scar the thin-skinned desert for decades. Homeland Security and other officials have disclosed plans to build similar barriers along most of the border between Yuma and Nogales, though the cost and timing of many proposals are unclear. On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved at least 200 miles of barriers along Arizona's border with Mexico. To some, barriers that block only vehicles are Band-Aids on a hemorrhaging wound. Vehicles can still drive around the ends, and smugglers are already scheming ways to defeat the new obstacles. In a 2004 report by the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, congressional staff reported seeing photos of a special truck that could park perpendicular to the barrier on the Mexican side, unfold a set of rails over the barrier and unfold another set of rails behind it. "Other vehicles could then drive up the back of the modified truck, across its top and down its front, over the vehicle barrier and into the United States," the report said....
Days of DeWine and Ruses? Reporters May Be Exempt from Eavesdropping Bill
Reporters who write about government surveillance could be prosecuted under proposed legislation that would solidify the administration's eavesdropping authority, according to some legal analysts who are concerned about dramatic changes in U.S. law. But an aide to the bill's chief author, Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said that is not the intention of the legislation. "It in no way applies to reporters — in any way, shape or form," said Mike Dawson, a senior policy adviser to DeWine, responding to an inquiry Friday afternoon. "If a technical fix is necessary, it will be made." The Associated Press obtained a copy of the draft of the legislation, which could be introduced as soon as next week. The draft would add to the criminal penalties for anyone who "intentionally discloses information identifying or describing" the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program or any other eavesdropping program conducted under a 1978 surveillance law. Under the boosted penalties, those found guilty could face fines of up to $1 million, 15 years in jail or both. Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the measure is broader than any existing laws. She said, for example, the language does not specify that the information has to be harmful to national security or classified. "The bill would make it a crime to tell the American people that the president is breaking the law, and the bill could make it a crime for the newspapers to publish that fact," said Martin, a civil liberties advocate....
FBI documents raise new questions about extent of surveillance
An FBI counterterrorism unit monitored - and apparently infiltrated - a peace group in Pittsburgh that opposed the invasion of Iraq, according to internal agency documents released on Tuesday. The disclosure raised new questions about the extent to which federal authorities have been conducting surveillance operations against Americans since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Previous revelations include FBI monitoring of environmental and animal rights organizations, scrutiny of anti-war organizations by a top-secret Pentagon program and eavesdropping by the National Security Agency on domestic communications without court authorization. Federal officials insist that the efforts are legal, although the Pentagon has admitted that the top-secret TALON program mistakenly retained in its database reports on scores of anti-war protests and individuals as part of an effort to identify terrorist threats against defense facilities and personnel. The documents released on Tuesday were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act. They showed that the Joint Terrorism Task Force of the FBI's Pittsburgh office conducted a secret investigation into the activities of the Thomas Merton Center beginning as early as Nov. 29, 2002, and continuing as late as March 2005....
200,000 People in U.S. Terror Database
Police and other government workers in the U.S. have come in contact with terrorists or people suspected of foreign terror ties more than 6,000 times in the past 28 months, the director of the federal Terrorist Screening Center said Tuesday. The encounters in traffic stops, applications for permits and other situations have resulted in fewer than 60 arrests, said Donna Bucella, whose agency maintains a list of 200,000 people known or suspected to be terrorists. The list contains an additional 150,000 records that have only partial names, Bucella said. The vast majority of people on the list are not in this country, and many have only tenuous or inconclusive ties to terrorism, Bucella said at a briefing for reporters at FBI headquarters. The TSC list, conceived after the intelligence failures before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, combines about a dozen databases from nine agencies that any government official — from a Customs agent to a state trooper — can use to check the name of someone who has been screened or stopped. When there is a possible match, the screening center verifies the information is accurate and advises what steps to take. In most of the more than 6,000 incidents Bucella described, officials collected additional information and let the person go....
Barr Slams Patriot Act Renewal
The attempts to reform the national security letter powers that were expanded by the Patriot Act in 2001, failed as Congress renewed the Patriot Act without making meaningful changes. However, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle did agree that more needs to be done to protect our fundamental freedoms while making sure intelligence agents have the tools they need to investigate terrorists. The botched reforms failed to make necessary changes, in fact, government agents are still allowed to look into ordinary citizens' private records without any evidence that they have any connection to a suspected terrorist or terrorist organization. Not only is this the case, but the provision which the President can declare any event a "special event of national significance," giving Secret Service agents expanded powers to exclude, expel and arrest persons not wanted at the event, remains as well. The Congress even snuck in a provision to include penalties regarding the trafficking in contraband cigarettes or smokeless tobacco – which, of course, is not a key factor in the fight against terrorism. The balance of government powers and the Constitution must be upheld....
U.S. Limits Demands on Google
After the Justice Department drastically reduced its request for information from Google, a federal judge said on Tuesday that he intended to approve at least part of that request. The government first subpoenaed Web data from Google last August, as part of its defense of an online pornography law. At a hearing in Federal District Court here, Judge James Ware said that in supporting the government's more limited request, he would nonetheless pay attention to Google's concerns about its trade secrets and the privacy of its users. The government is now requesting a sample of 50,000 Web site addresses in Google's index instead of a million, which it was demanding until recently. And it is asking for just 5,000 search queries, compared with an earlier demand for an entire week of queries, which could amount to billions of search terms. A Justice Department lawyer said at the hearing that the government would review just 10,000 Web sites and 1,000 search queries out of those turned over....
Government Lawyer's Error Upsets Families of 9/11 Victims
Yesterday was another day of frustration for families of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001. They have waited more than four years through delays and appeals for Zacarias Moussaoui's trial to begin. Satellite courtrooms, established by Congress, have been set up in Boston, Manhattan, Long Island, Newark and Philadelphia so they could watch the government make its case that the only person convicted in the United States in the terrorist attacks should be executed. Although the families might disagree about what role Moussaoui played in the attacks and what his sentence should be, many have said that they looked forward to the trial as a vehicle to gather information, heal wounds and, for some, seek some closure. Some family members said they were upset that the actions of a Transportation Security Administration lawyer, Carla J. Martin, could potentially derail the government's case. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema decided yesterday to exclude all aviation security evidence after Martin violated a court order by e-mailing trial transcripts to seven witnesses and coaching them about their upcoming testimony. Some family members questioned how Martin could have blatantly disregarded a court order -- or not been aware of it. Some wondered whether she was being used as a scapegoat for other government officials who did not want the aviation security evidence to be made public. "I don't think she is alone," Dillard said in a telephone interview last night. "I just don't think she could have gotten away with that. Somebody helped her or prompted her. It just makes me wonder whether this is one more thing where no one is going to be held accountable.... It's almost too clean. I wonder if there is more to the story than we know."....
Government case in Moussaoui trial hurt
The judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui sentencing case decided Tuesday to allow the government to continue to seek the death penalty against the confessed al-Qaida conspirator, but she also barred part of the government's case, which she said had been riddled with “significant problems.” Exasperated by mounting government missteps, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that no testimony about aviation security measures would be allowed during the trial into whether Moussaoui is executed or spends life in prison. “I don’t think in the annals of criminal law there has ever been a case with this many significant problems,” Brinkema said. She ruled the trial could proceed after a daylong hearing into whether coming witnesses had been tainted by improper coaching by a federal lawyer. Brinkema added, “More problems arose today that none of us knew about yesterday.” She said that her order to isolate planned witnesses from trial transcripts and news reports had been violated. She also said she was troubled that one witness sought by defense lawyers was told by federal attorney Carla J. Martin that he could not speak to them and that Martin falsely told the defense that two others were not willing to speak to them. “I wouldn’t trust anything Martin had anything to do with at this point,” Brinkema said. The jury was not present for Tuesday’s questioning and ruling....Anyone who has read Constitutional Chaos by Judge Andrew Napolitano won't be surprised by this prosecutiorial misconduct. Looks, though, like they've run up against a judge who won't put up with it.
Prosecutors Scramble to Salvage 9/11 Case After Ruling
Federal prosecutors yesterday implored a judge to reverse her decision banning key witnesses from testifying at the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, saying the misconduct of a government lawyer they labeled a "lone miscreant" should not imperil the case. Calling it unprecedented and "grossly punitive," prosecutors said her ruling devastates their argument that Moussaoui should be executed for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema on Tuesday barred seven witnesses and all aviation security evidence from the trial, saying the actions of Transportation Security Administration lawyer Carla J. Martin had tainted the process beyond repair. At a minimum, prosecutors urged Brinkema to let them present a portion of the disputed evidence through a new witness who had no contact with Martin. A veteran government lawyer, Martin shared testimony and communicated with the seven witnesses in violation of a court order and committed what Brinkema called other "egregious errors." After her ruling Tuesday, prosecutors told Brinkema in a teleconference that she had threatened the sentencing phase of the only person convicted in the United States on charges stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert A. Spencer told her that resuming the proceedings, which began last week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria and are on hold until Monday, would "waste the jury's time."....
U.S. case vs. Hells Angels fizzles
A much ballyhooed racketeering case against Arizona's Hells Angels Motorcycle Club has all but ended in federal court with the U.S. Attorney's Office dismissing charges against some defendants and settling for lesser convictions against the rest. When the two-year sting known as Operation Black Biscuit became public in 2003, it was touted as the most successful infiltration ever of the notorious biker group. Undercover agents were feted in Washington, with Top Cop awards from the National Association of Police Officers. The government's case of drug violations, gun running, murder, racketeering and other crimes came to a close Wednesday, in part because of a feud between federal prosecutors and undercover agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives....
Rushmore to Judgment
America's judges would like to write off last year's anti-court orgy as a political spasm. Tom ("Judges need to be intimidated") DeLay is on the back bench, the testy Supreme Court confirmation hearings are over, and the judge in Terri Schiavo's case no longer needs a deputy to escort him every time he walks his dog. But better times aren't coming back soon. The newest front in the war on the courts is being fought in South Dakota, where, in the shadow of Mt. Rushmore, a group called "J.A.I.L. 4 Judges" is promoting one of the most radical threats to justice this side of the Spanish Inquisition. It's extreme and it's incoherent, but it's got more than 40,000 petition signatures—and it will go to the state's voters as a constitutional amendment in November. A national network of supporters is waiting in the wings, threatening to export the revolution to other states if they do well this fall. The group's proposed measure would wipe out a basic doctrine called judicial immunity that dates back to the 13th century, protecting judges from personal liability for doing their job ruling on the cases before them. A special grand jury—essentially a fourth branch of government—would be created to indict judges for a string of bizarre offenses that include "deliberate disregard of material facts," "judicial acts without jurisdiction," and "blocking of a lawful conclusion of a case," along with judicial failure to impanel a jury for infractions as minor as a dog-license violation. After three such "convictions," the judge would be fired and docked half of his or her retirement benefits for good measure....
Cost Concerns for F.B.I. Computer Overhaul
The long-stalled effort to overhaul the Federal Bureau of Investigation's antiquated computer system could cost another half-billion dollars to complete, and it runs the risk of continued overruns, a Justice Department report concluded Monday. The report, prepared by the Justice Department's inspector general, found that the F.B.I. had taken "important steps" to learn from mistakes that dogged the project. But it also identified what it called "continuing concerns" in budgeting and management. Moreover, the inspector general's office said it was not yet satisfied that the overhaul, even if successful, would allow the bureau to share information adequately with other intelligence and law enforcement agencies. If information-sharing is not built into the system, the report warned, a result may be "costly and time-consuming modifications" of the computer systems at the Justice Department, the Homeland Security Department and elsewhere. The F.B.I. has struggled for more than a decade to develop a modern computer system to allow its agents to analyze data, follow developments in investigations and talk to one another. The agency was forced last year to scrap the final phase in a three-part computer overhaul after spending $170 million on its failed Virtual Case File system. Bureau officials would not discuss the contracting process or the expected cost of the project because the job has not yet been awarded, but the inspector general said the F.B.I. expected the system to cost $400 million to $500 million over the next three to four years. The inspector general promised to "examine in detail the winning bidder's cost estimates" once the job was awarded....
NEWS ROUNDUP
The Klamath: The Basin, The Bucket and Backbone The other definition of watershed is of interest to everyone who's aware of the Klamath. Watershed - A crucial dividing point, line or factor: a turning point. 2001 was a watershed year for the Klamath and for America. There are many reasons for this, but there is one besides 9-11 that will forever be branded in the hearts and minds of Klamath Basin residents and the people nationwide that became involved in the Klamath Basin in the summer of 2001. In 2001, the Klamath's farming community lost its guarantee of water -- a guarantee that had stood the Klamath and America's consumers in good stead for nearly a century. For all the talk of "restoration," the Klamath has never been static....
Colorado gets cloud-seeding gift Ranchers in parched southwestern Colorado are saying a quiet thanks to cities once considered the robber barons of water: Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles. The cities, maligned by Coloradans for their heavy use of the Colorado River over the years, have agreed to contribute $45,000 this spring to keep cloud-seeding programs going in the San Miguel, Dolores and Las Animas watersheds to boost snowpacks and, with luck, increase the spring runoff in the heavily used Colorado River. It is the first time Nevada, Arizona and California have helped Colorado in this way, said Rod Kuharich, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. "This has a lot of symbolic meaning down here," said Don Schwindt, a rancher outside Cortez, who also sits on the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Schwindt's small water district had run out of money to keep its cloud-seeding program going this year....
Cedar Breaks might become national park Is there room for a sixth national park in Utah? Federal officials and Iron County planners say there might be - at Cedar Breaks. The 6,000-acre national monument, with its stunning redrock amphitheater and high alpine scenery, already draws over 500,000 visitors annually. Monument manager Paul Roelandt and Forest Service district ranger Dayle Flanigan told Iron County commissioners this week that by expanding the monument to include the adjacent Ashdown Gorge Wilderness Area and Flanigan Arch, which lies just outside the wilderness area, a new park would not only be feasible - but a boon to the county's economy. "It would make the monument more noticeable and probably bring in more tourists," Roelandt told commissioners during their weekly meeting....
Evangelicals embrace `creation care' of God's green Earth And in early September, he became one of 86 church leaders to sign the Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation, a call to conservation from religious conservatives. "Because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation," the statement says. "Therefore we repent of the way we have polluted, distorted, or destroyed so much of the Creator's work." It adds, "Because we await the time when even the groaning creation will be restored to wholeness, we commit ourselves to work vigorously to protect and heal that creation for the honor and glory of the Creator." Jim Ball, executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, called the ministers' manifesto "groundbreaking." His group, based in Wynnewood, Pa., orchestrated the release of last year's statement. The ecological goals of the "creation care movement" sound like the Sierra Club's agenda: Protect the water, the air, the land, and the creatures that inhabit them. But biblical imperatives are fundamental to the evangelists' movement....
Conservancy groups launch mega-campaign The Gig Harbor-based Russell Family Foundation has promised $3 million over the next two years to an initial $80 million campaign to conserve and restore the Puget Sound shoreline. The donation will kick off a coordinated effort by People for Puget Sound, The Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land to secure public and private money to create 10 new parks and natural areas along the Sound’s shoreline over the next three years. “We will leave it up to them to identify the sites. We haven’t picked any place and said save that one,” said Nancy McKay, who manages the foundation’s efforts to promote environmental sustainability. The Russell foundation typically designates about $3 million in grants annually to organizations dedicated to environmental conservation efforts. This new commitment to the Puget Sound is in addition to what has been doled out to between 75 and 80 grant recipients every year, she said....
Dunes stay off-limits to off-roaders A federal judge Tuesday struck down a plan by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to allow off-roading once more on large sections of desert sand dunes closed six years ago to protect a plant threatened with extinction. U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston, in her long-awaited ruling, sides with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups in saying the bureau violated the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws in proposing to open four areas of the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area to dune buggies and other all-terrain vehicles. "This decision is about as strong as it gets and confirms all of our concerns about the dunes environment," said Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs. For now, those areas -- nearly 50,000 acres in all or about one-third of the dunes in southeastern California, also known as Glamis -- will remain closed while the bureau reviews the ruling, said Doran Sanchez, an agency spokesman. The ruling is a significant blow to Inland off-roaders who spend weekends at the dunes camping out in motor homes and cresting the wind-sculpted dunes that reach 300 feet high....
Actions Renew Tensions Over Use of Desert Land A pair of decisions in the last two days governing recreation, conservation and development across several million acres of California desert are reigniting tensions over endangered species and motorized access in the fast-growing region. Late Tuesday, U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials signed the west Mojave management plan, designed to streamline construction and map areas for motorized recreation and wildlife protection on 9.3 million acres of public land in five counties and 11 cities. Parts of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, Kern and Inyo counties are included in the plan, which took 12 years to craft. But the plan was promptly lambasted by environmentalists and off-road vehicle groups, who said that thousands of miles of riding trails had been improperly mapped, that there were no funds for enforcement or implementation, and that lawsuits were inevitable. "They don't have a nickel — not a nickel — to implement any of it," said Roy Denner, president of the Off-Road Business Assn., who was appointed by Interior Secretary Gale Norton to serve on the BLM's Desert District Advisory Council and who has monitored the plan closely....
"Shark Parks?" Oceans said in need of protection With tracts of the ocean as little known as Mars, discoveries of a stunning richness of life in the depths are spurring calls for more protection from trawlers, oil drillers and prospectors. Only about 0.5 percent of the oceans are in protected areas, compared to about 12 percent of the earth‘s land surface set aside in parks for creatures ranging from lions in South Africa to polar bears in Alaska. A United Nations meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Brazil from March 20-31 will review calls to extend protected areas into the high seas to help safeguard marine life ranging from seaweeds to sharks and from starfish to corals. Scientists say the issue is pressing because life is being found in parts of the ocean long thought barren -- in the sediments of abyssal plains on the ocean floor, around subsea mountains, deep sea corals or hydrothermal vents....
Cattle ranchers describe 'worst nightmare' Ranchers saw the end of their world Monday. Dead cattle mottled the landscape a day after winds whipped fire into a murderous frenzy across six Texas Panhandle counties. "It's like Armageddon out here," McLean-area rancher Bill Bryant said. "We hauled - I don't remember - 15 to 18 calves that were dead. They just get into a corner and the fire consumes them." Worse than the dead were the dying. Cattle without ears. Tails amputated by fire. Eyelids melted shut. Ranchers had no choice but to put the burned cattle down. "Imagine your worst nightmare, and it can't even come close to this," said Brad Overstreet, a hand on the Taylor Ranch. Fire killed four horses in a pasture on the ranch six miles north of Alanreed. "All the horses were dead when we found them," Overstreet said. "They didn't have a hair on them. "It's the worst thing you've ever seen in your life."
Government to Scale Back Mad Cow Testing Despite the confirmation of a third case of mad cow disease, the government intends to scale back testing for the brain-wasting disorder blamed for the deaths of more than 150 people in Europe. The Agriculture Department boosted its surveillance after finding the first case of mad cow disease in the United States in 2003. About 1,000 tests are run daily, up from about 55 daily in 2003. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns pointed out testing is not a food safety measure. Rather, it's a way to find out the prevalence of the disease. "Keep in mind the testing was for surveillance," Johanns told reporters Monday in Warsaw, Poland, where he was attending trade talks. "It was to get an idea of the condition of the herd." Higher testing levels were intended to be temporary when they were announced two years ago. Yet consumer groups argue more animals should be tested, not fewer. Officials haven't finalized new levels, but the department's budget proposal calls for 40,000 tests annually, or about 110 daily....
U.S. District Court Denies Humane Society of the United States' Request for Preliminary Injunction The United States District Court for the District of Columbia today denied a request by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) for a preliminary injunction that would effectively suspend operations at the nation's three USDA-approved horse processing plants. On Feb. 22, HSUS filed for a preliminary injunction to prevent the inspections of horsemeat until a pending lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibiting the fee-for-service inspections could be settled. The Court also dismissed two of the three claims filed in that lawsuit on grounds that the plaintiffs lack standing. In the U.S., horses are slaughtered in the identical way to cattle, and are protected under USDA's humane slaughter regulations. "The chief executive officer of the multi-million dollar Humane Society of the United States once stated that his personal goal was the abolition of all animal agriculture," said Charlie Stenholm, Senior Government Affairs Advisor, Olsson, Frank and Weeda and spokesperson for the three processing plants. "I'm happy to say, he's lost a very important battle today, and animal agriculture won."....
Bitterroot man digs for truth about Billy the Kid Blowing snow cast a pall over a small horse pasture outside the kitchen window of Dale Tunnell's rural home. In the distance, a line of traffic crawled south on U.S. Highway 93. Tunnell flipped through a box of papers on a small table in the kitchen, choosing a copy of a letter dated March 27, 1881, from W. Bonney to the governor of New Mexico Territory. "Dear Sir: For the last time I ask, will you keep your promise? I start below tomorrow. Send answer by bearer." Soon after sending the letter, for which he received no reply, Bonney better known as Billy the Kid killed two deputies in his escape from the Lincoln County (N.M.) Courthouse. Had he remained in custody, Bonney would likely have been hanged for murder. Instead, he was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett that July. The piece of correspondence is one small part of a historical puzzle that Tunnell, a retired federal investigator, has been attempting to solve with a former sheriff, a mayor and others, all from New Mexico. The group has uncovered new physical evidence, Tunnell said last week, and has even exhumed the body of a man who died in 1937 and who claimed to be Billy the Kid. DNA samples from the body are being compared with samples taken from blood stains on a carpenter's bench that supposedly held Bonney's body after he was shot by Garrett. "I want to set the record straight. If Billy the Kid, from 1881 to 1937, lived the life of an honest man, a hardworking fool, then I say he paid his debt to society," Tunnell said....
Cussin' grandson kept promise to grandfather George McEntire trekked from Texas to Cumberland Gap to honor his grandfather's dying wish. "We tell visitors about him," said Janice S. Miracle, a ranger at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. "But we do clean up the language." On Sept. 9, 1863, a Yankee army captured the famous mountain pass and its Rebel defenders. The Confederate prisoners of war included Lt. William R. McEntire. "In 1917, on his deathbed, he made his young grandson George promise he would return to the Gap on the 100th anniversary of his capture, face the North and curse the Yankees for five minutes," Miracle said. George McEntire kept his word on Sept. 9, 1963....
The Klamath: The Basin, The Bucket and Backbone The other definition of watershed is of interest to everyone who's aware of the Klamath. Watershed - A crucial dividing point, line or factor: a turning point. 2001 was a watershed year for the Klamath and for America. There are many reasons for this, but there is one besides 9-11 that will forever be branded in the hearts and minds of Klamath Basin residents and the people nationwide that became involved in the Klamath Basin in the summer of 2001. In 2001, the Klamath's farming community lost its guarantee of water -- a guarantee that had stood the Klamath and America's consumers in good stead for nearly a century. For all the talk of "restoration," the Klamath has never been static....
Colorado gets cloud-seeding gift Ranchers in parched southwestern Colorado are saying a quiet thanks to cities once considered the robber barons of water: Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles. The cities, maligned by Coloradans for their heavy use of the Colorado River over the years, have agreed to contribute $45,000 this spring to keep cloud-seeding programs going in the San Miguel, Dolores and Las Animas watersheds to boost snowpacks and, with luck, increase the spring runoff in the heavily used Colorado River. It is the first time Nevada, Arizona and California have helped Colorado in this way, said Rod Kuharich, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. "This has a lot of symbolic meaning down here," said Don Schwindt, a rancher outside Cortez, who also sits on the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Schwindt's small water district had run out of money to keep its cloud-seeding program going this year....
Cedar Breaks might become national park Is there room for a sixth national park in Utah? Federal officials and Iron County planners say there might be - at Cedar Breaks. The 6,000-acre national monument, with its stunning redrock amphitheater and high alpine scenery, already draws over 500,000 visitors annually. Monument manager Paul Roelandt and Forest Service district ranger Dayle Flanigan told Iron County commissioners this week that by expanding the monument to include the adjacent Ashdown Gorge Wilderness Area and Flanigan Arch, which lies just outside the wilderness area, a new park would not only be feasible - but a boon to the county's economy. "It would make the monument more noticeable and probably bring in more tourists," Roelandt told commissioners during their weekly meeting....
Evangelicals embrace `creation care' of God's green Earth And in early September, he became one of 86 church leaders to sign the Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation, a call to conservation from religious conservatives. "Because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation," the statement says. "Therefore we repent of the way we have polluted, distorted, or destroyed so much of the Creator's work." It adds, "Because we await the time when even the groaning creation will be restored to wholeness, we commit ourselves to work vigorously to protect and heal that creation for the honor and glory of the Creator." Jim Ball, executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, called the ministers' manifesto "groundbreaking." His group, based in Wynnewood, Pa., orchestrated the release of last year's statement. The ecological goals of the "creation care movement" sound like the Sierra Club's agenda: Protect the water, the air, the land, and the creatures that inhabit them. But biblical imperatives are fundamental to the evangelists' movement....
Conservancy groups launch mega-campaign The Gig Harbor-based Russell Family Foundation has promised $3 million over the next two years to an initial $80 million campaign to conserve and restore the Puget Sound shoreline. The donation will kick off a coordinated effort by People for Puget Sound, The Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land to secure public and private money to create 10 new parks and natural areas along the Sound’s shoreline over the next three years. “We will leave it up to them to identify the sites. We haven’t picked any place and said save that one,” said Nancy McKay, who manages the foundation’s efforts to promote environmental sustainability. The Russell foundation typically designates about $3 million in grants annually to organizations dedicated to environmental conservation efforts. This new commitment to the Puget Sound is in addition to what has been doled out to between 75 and 80 grant recipients every year, she said....
Dunes stay off-limits to off-roaders A federal judge Tuesday struck down a plan by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to allow off-roading once more on large sections of desert sand dunes closed six years ago to protect a plant threatened with extinction. U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston, in her long-awaited ruling, sides with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups in saying the bureau violated the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws in proposing to open four areas of the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area to dune buggies and other all-terrain vehicles. "This decision is about as strong as it gets and confirms all of our concerns about the dunes environment," said Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs. For now, those areas -- nearly 50,000 acres in all or about one-third of the dunes in southeastern California, also known as Glamis -- will remain closed while the bureau reviews the ruling, said Doran Sanchez, an agency spokesman. The ruling is a significant blow to Inland off-roaders who spend weekends at the dunes camping out in motor homes and cresting the wind-sculpted dunes that reach 300 feet high....
Actions Renew Tensions Over Use of Desert Land A pair of decisions in the last two days governing recreation, conservation and development across several million acres of California desert are reigniting tensions over endangered species and motorized access in the fast-growing region. Late Tuesday, U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials signed the west Mojave management plan, designed to streamline construction and map areas for motorized recreation and wildlife protection on 9.3 million acres of public land in five counties and 11 cities. Parts of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, Kern and Inyo counties are included in the plan, which took 12 years to craft. But the plan was promptly lambasted by environmentalists and off-road vehicle groups, who said that thousands of miles of riding trails had been improperly mapped, that there were no funds for enforcement or implementation, and that lawsuits were inevitable. "They don't have a nickel — not a nickel — to implement any of it," said Roy Denner, president of the Off-Road Business Assn., who was appointed by Interior Secretary Gale Norton to serve on the BLM's Desert District Advisory Council and who has monitored the plan closely....
"Shark Parks?" Oceans said in need of protection With tracts of the ocean as little known as Mars, discoveries of a stunning richness of life in the depths are spurring calls for more protection from trawlers, oil drillers and prospectors. Only about 0.5 percent of the oceans are in protected areas, compared to about 12 percent of the earth‘s land surface set aside in parks for creatures ranging from lions in South Africa to polar bears in Alaska. A United Nations meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Brazil from March 20-31 will review calls to extend protected areas into the high seas to help safeguard marine life ranging from seaweeds to sharks and from starfish to corals. Scientists say the issue is pressing because life is being found in parts of the ocean long thought barren -- in the sediments of abyssal plains on the ocean floor, around subsea mountains, deep sea corals or hydrothermal vents....
Cattle ranchers describe 'worst nightmare' Ranchers saw the end of their world Monday. Dead cattle mottled the landscape a day after winds whipped fire into a murderous frenzy across six Texas Panhandle counties. "It's like Armageddon out here," McLean-area rancher Bill Bryant said. "We hauled - I don't remember - 15 to 18 calves that were dead. They just get into a corner and the fire consumes them." Worse than the dead were the dying. Cattle without ears. Tails amputated by fire. Eyelids melted shut. Ranchers had no choice but to put the burned cattle down. "Imagine your worst nightmare, and it can't even come close to this," said Brad Overstreet, a hand on the Taylor Ranch. Fire killed four horses in a pasture on the ranch six miles north of Alanreed. "All the horses were dead when we found them," Overstreet said. "They didn't have a hair on them. "It's the worst thing you've ever seen in your life."
Government to Scale Back Mad Cow Testing Despite the confirmation of a third case of mad cow disease, the government intends to scale back testing for the brain-wasting disorder blamed for the deaths of more than 150 people in Europe. The Agriculture Department boosted its surveillance after finding the first case of mad cow disease in the United States in 2003. About 1,000 tests are run daily, up from about 55 daily in 2003. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns pointed out testing is not a food safety measure. Rather, it's a way to find out the prevalence of the disease. "Keep in mind the testing was for surveillance," Johanns told reporters Monday in Warsaw, Poland, where he was attending trade talks. "It was to get an idea of the condition of the herd." Higher testing levels were intended to be temporary when they were announced two years ago. Yet consumer groups argue more animals should be tested, not fewer. Officials haven't finalized new levels, but the department's budget proposal calls for 40,000 tests annually, or about 110 daily....
U.S. District Court Denies Humane Society of the United States' Request for Preliminary Injunction The United States District Court for the District of Columbia today denied a request by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) for a preliminary injunction that would effectively suspend operations at the nation's three USDA-approved horse processing plants. On Feb. 22, HSUS filed for a preliminary injunction to prevent the inspections of horsemeat until a pending lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibiting the fee-for-service inspections could be settled. The Court also dismissed two of the three claims filed in that lawsuit on grounds that the plaintiffs lack standing. In the U.S., horses are slaughtered in the identical way to cattle, and are protected under USDA's humane slaughter regulations. "The chief executive officer of the multi-million dollar Humane Society of the United States once stated that his personal goal was the abolition of all animal agriculture," said Charlie Stenholm, Senior Government Affairs Advisor, Olsson, Frank and Weeda and spokesperson for the three processing plants. "I'm happy to say, he's lost a very important battle today, and animal agriculture won."....
Bitterroot man digs for truth about Billy the Kid Blowing snow cast a pall over a small horse pasture outside the kitchen window of Dale Tunnell's rural home. In the distance, a line of traffic crawled south on U.S. Highway 93. Tunnell flipped through a box of papers on a small table in the kitchen, choosing a copy of a letter dated March 27, 1881, from W. Bonney to the governor of New Mexico Territory. "Dear Sir: For the last time I ask, will you keep your promise? I start below tomorrow. Send answer by bearer." Soon after sending the letter, for which he received no reply, Bonney better known as Billy the Kid killed two deputies in his escape from the Lincoln County (N.M.) Courthouse. Had he remained in custody, Bonney would likely have been hanged for murder. Instead, he was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett that July. The piece of correspondence is one small part of a historical puzzle that Tunnell, a retired federal investigator, has been attempting to solve with a former sheriff, a mayor and others, all from New Mexico. The group has uncovered new physical evidence, Tunnell said last week, and has even exhumed the body of a man who died in 1937 and who claimed to be Billy the Kid. DNA samples from the body are being compared with samples taken from blood stains on a carpenter's bench that supposedly held Bonney's body after he was shot by Garrett. "I want to set the record straight. If Billy the Kid, from 1881 to 1937, lived the life of an honest man, a hardworking fool, then I say he paid his debt to society," Tunnell said....
Cussin' grandson kept promise to grandfather George McEntire trekked from Texas to Cumberland Gap to honor his grandfather's dying wish. "We tell visitors about him," said Janice S. Miracle, a ranger at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. "But we do clean up the language." On Sept. 9, 1863, a Yankee army captured the famous mountain pass and its Rebel defenders. The Confederate prisoners of war included Lt. William R. McEntire. "In 1917, on his deathbed, he made his young grandson George promise he would return to the Gap on the 100th anniversary of his capture, face the North and curse the Yankees for five minutes," Miracle said. George McEntire kept his word on Sept. 9, 1963....
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