FLE
Federal Prosecutor, Agent Indicted in Detroit
A former federal prosecutor and a State Department security officer were indicted yesterday on charges that they lied during a bungled terrorism trial in Detroit and then sought to cover up their deceptions once the case began to fall apart. Former assistant U.S. attorney Richard G. Convertino, 45, and State Department special agent Harry R. Smith III, 49, were charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements in connection with the 2003 prosecution, according to an indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in Detroit. The charges mark the latest embarrassment for the government in a case that was once hailed by former attorney general John D. Ashcroft as one of the most important terrorism prosecutions since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It disintegrated after a federal judge ordered an investigation of Convertino's conduct. Legal experts said yesterday that an indictment of a prosecutor for improper conduct in a federal courtroom is extraordinarily rare, if not unprecedented, in modern times. "The charge is essentially that he prosecuted too aggressively and crossed the line," said Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor who specializes in legal ethics. "This is simply astonishing."....
Ex-Prosecutor in Terror Inquiry Is Indicted
A grand jury charged Wednesday that a former federal prosecutor in Detroit who led one of the Justice Department's biggest terrorism investigations concealed critical evidence in an effort to bolster the government's theory that a group of local Muslim men were plotting an attack. The former prosecutor, Richard G. Convertino, and a State Department employee who served as a chief government witness were each indicted on charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. The grand jury charged that they had conspired to conceal evidence about photographs of a military hospital in Jordan that was the supposed target of a terrorist plot by the Detroit defendants. Mr. Convertino, once a rising star at the Justice Department who fell out of favor with supervisors in Washington, denied that he had ever withheld evidence, and he pledged that he would be vindicated. "These charges are clearly vindictive and retaliatory, and it's an effort to discredit and smear someone who tried to expose the government's mismanagement of the war on terrorism," he said in a telephone interview. "I can't recall a case like this in recent memory where you have not only the collapse of the prosecution's entire case, but now the prosecutor himself indicted," said Brian Levin, a professor at California State University, San Bernardino, who has written on terrorism prosecutions....
Ex-F.B.I. Agent Accused of Role in Four Organized Crime Killings
A former F.B.I. agent was accused in an indictment today of "acting in concert" with members of organized crime in the murder of four people during the 1980's and early 1990's, according to District Attorney Charles J. Hynes of Brooklyn. "This is the most stunning example of official corruption I have ever seen," Mr. Hynes said in a statement. He said a federal agent whose job is to protect lives instead assisted in murder. The retired agent, R. Lindley DeVecchio, 65, is charged with providing the gangster Gregory Scarpa Sr. with information that led to the killings. Mr. DeVecchio, who retired in 1996, was the leader of the F.B.I. team that investigated the Colombo crime family and developed ties to Mr. Scarpa, a captain in the Colombo family, in investigating mob activities. Mr. DeVecchio was to be released on $1 million bail after arraignment this afternoon. The bail was to be $100,000 cash with the remainder guaranteed by five former F.B.I. agents, who were among the 45 retired agents that gathered in the courtroom to express support for Mr. DeVecchio. New information provided by Mr. Scarpa's longtime companion, Linda Schiro, led to the indictments, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing nature of the investigation....
The Letter of the Law
In the dark days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a small group of lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department began meeting to debate a number of novel legal strategies to help prevent another attack. Soon after, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to begin conducting electronic eavesdropping on terrorism suspects in the United States, including American citizens, without court approval. Meeting in the FBI's state-of-the-art command center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the lawyers talked with senior FBI officials about using the same legal authority to conduct physical searches of homes and businesses of terrorism suspects--also without court approval, one current and one former government official tell U.S. News. "There was a fair amount of discussion at Justice on the warrantless physical search issue," says a former senior FBI official. "Discussions about--if [the searches] happened--where would the information go, and would it taint cases." FBI Director Robert Mueller was alarmed by the proposal, the two officials said, and pushed back hard against it. "Mueller was personally very concerned," one official says, "not only because of the blowback issue but also because of the legal and constitutional questions raised by warrantless physical searches." FBI spokesman John Miller said none of the FBI's senior staff are aware of any such discussions and added that the bureau has not conducted "physical searches of any location without consent or a judicial order." In December, the New York Times disclosed the NSA's warrantless electronic surveillance program, resulting in an angry reaction from President Bush. It has not previously been disclosed, however, that administration lawyers had cited the same legal authority to justify warrantless physical searches. But in a little-noticed white paper submitted by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to Congress on January 19 justifying the legality of the NSA eavesdropping, Justice Department lawyers made a tacit case that President Bush also has the inherent authority to order such physical searches. In order to fulfill his duties as commander in chief, the 42-page white paper says, "a consistent understanding has developed that the president has inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless searches and surveillance within the United States for foreign intelligence purposes." The memo cites congressional testimony of Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in 1994 stating that the Justice Department "believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes."....
Court Appears Wary of Terror War Tribunals
The Supreme Court gave a skeptical hearing Tuesday to the Bush administration's claim that the president has the power on his own to create and control special military tribunals to punish foreigners he deems to be war criminals. Five of the eight justices hearing the case commented that the laws of war and the Geneva Convention set basic rules of fairness for trying alleged war criminals. And they questioned whether the president was free to ignore those basic rules — as well as the rules of American military law. The justices' skepticism suggested a second setback might be looming for the administration's legal strategy in the fight against terrorism. Two years ago, the high court said war — even a new kind of war on terrorism — did not give the president a "blank check" to make new legal rules for capturing and holding prisoners. The case heard Tuesday concerned the rules for punishing these prisoners. But the tenor of the argument suggested the court would again reject President Bush's claim of unilateral power to try and punish alleged Al Qaeda conspirators....
Justices Hint That They'll Rule on Challenge Filed by Detainee
As the justices of the Supreme Court took their seats Tuesday morning to hear Osama bin Laden's former driver challenge the Bush administration's plan to try him before a military commission, one question — perhaps the most important one — was how protective the justices would be of their jurisdiction to decide the case. The answer emerged gradually, but by the end of the tightly packed 90-minute argument, it was fairly clear: highly protective. At least five justices — Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens — appeared ready to reject the administration's argument that the Detainee Treatment Act, passed and signed into law after the court accepted the case in November, had stripped the court of jurisdiction. It was less certain by the end of the argument how the court would then go on to resolve the merits of the case, a multipronged attack on the validity of the military commissions themselves and on their procedures. Lawyers for the former driver, a Yemeni named Salim Ahmed Hamdan who is charged with conspiracy, also argue that he cannot properly be tried before any military commission for that crime because conspiracy is not recognized as a war crime. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement was on the defensive throughout his argument. His stolid refusal to concede that any of the government's positions, on the jurisdictional as well as ultimate questions of the case, might present even theoretical problems provoked the normally soft-spoken Justice Souter into an outburst of anger....
Bill Would Speed Challenge to Surveillance
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, introduced a bill Wednesday that would put lawsuits challenging the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program on a fast track to the Supreme Court. With Congress and the Bush administration at odds over the legality of eavesdropping on Americans without court warrants, the legislation could produce a timely ruling by the court on the program's constitutionality, Mr. Schumer said. "We have a system of checks and balances," he said, "and, in this case, when the stakes are so high, the Supreme Court should be the ultimate check." The bill would permit lawsuits by scholars, journalists and others who assert that they have refrained from calls or e-mail messages to Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries because of "a reasonable fear" of N.S.A. eavesdropping. Such suits would be heard by a panel of three federal judges, whose decision could be appealed immediately to the Supreme Court.
The roots of the current debate over presidential power
The recent conflict over President Bush’s domestic surveillance program reflects one of the oldest recurring divisions in American politics, dating all the way to the 1790s. Bush’s Democratic critics have taken a stance that traces back to the Jeffersonian (or Democratic) Republicans, arguing that the U.S. government is rather flexibly bound, but still bound, by the values and rules embedded in our founding documents and, as such, is a government whose power is essentially limited. The Bush administration and its modern (anti-Democratic) Republican defenders have staked out a position that traces back to Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists, reasoning from the inherent nature of government and the overwhelming fearsomeness of the challenges the United States faces that the powers of its government must be essentially unlimited. The GOP-Federalist position applies especially to times of foreign crisis, a state that Federalists saw as virtually perpetual in the early Republic and the Republicans have likewise been warning about ever since the outbreak of the cold war in 1946. This recurring argument has often turned on the question of whether the norms and procedures of democracy and republicanism are adequate to national survival in a dangerous world of terrorists, Commies, and Frenchmen. Federalists and modern Republicans alike have often indicated their belief, expressed with varying degrees of regret, that the methods of democratic, accountable, transparent government are not strong enough to meet these challenges. Jeffersonian Republicans and modern Democrats, in turn, have tended to respond that they are....
Monday, April 03, 2006
Sunday, April 02, 2006
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
As the antenna turned
By Julie Carter
There are a couple generations still around who remember when life was simple.
You know -- the litany of basics kids today hate to hear us talk about because they have no clue what we are talking about.
One of those things is the TV antenna. You will remember that it never stayed pointed in the right direction to get a clear picture -- if ever you got a clear picture. I grew up thinking it "snowed" on the Ponderosa every Sunday night.
A recent discussion about the things individuals once braved in regards to the television antenna invoked memories of those simpler times.
Urban dwellers learned the fine art of rabbit ear adjustment including additional enhancements such as tin foil strategically placed.
Other adjustments could have included an additional wire run from the "ear" to a window screen or metal window frame. Was tin foil really tin or did we just call it that? And when did it become aluminum?
In rural areas, reception required an exterior antenna and usually the higher off the ground it was, the better the reception.
It often was several hundred miles to the nearest point of origin for the signal that brought one channel and a few favorite shows in black and white.
The common denominator for those antennas of old was the pipe it was mounted to in order to reach such heights and the fact it required regular adjustment by turning to bring it into signal alignment.
As a kid at home, one of four, the drill for us was to climb a ladder, shinny up a roof corner gutter and turn the antenna mounted on the peak of sharply angled tin roof. Someone had to stand at the back door and relay the status of the effort. "That's good!" or "Turn it a little more. No, no, go back a little. You passed it." And I might add we all lived to tell about it and not one of us ever fell off the roof.
In the aforementioned discussion, the use of channel-lock pliers or a pipe wrench for implementing the turn was a common practice. Many made claim to a luxury version of the rooftop set up with the antenna placed in a pipe set in the ground and accessed through a nearby window, avoiding the rooftop climbing adventure.
Inclement weather was a given when it was time to turn the antenna. Wind was the usual culprit to instigate the need but often with the wind came rain, hail, snow and even lightning. All of which put a challenge to the job and a bit of living dangerously.
Then came the really deluxe method of antenna alignment -- the motorized turner that operated from a box on the top of the television. Even that had its own personality with the ever consistent "ker-thunk, pause, ker-thunk, pause, ker-thunk, pause" as the antenna ker-thunked into position.
Today's youth are masters of the remote control that manages hundreds of channels on cable or satellite. Not only do they remain clueless about the character building efforts of antenna management, they have no idea about the curious wonders of the "sign-off."
You remember, the one where, as children, we stared at a screen with a target looking emblem accompanied by a piercing ringing sound and wondered what would happen next.
Yes,Virginia, there was a time when television was not available 24/7.
© Julie Carter 2006
As the antenna turned
By Julie Carter
There are a couple generations still around who remember when life was simple.
You know -- the litany of basics kids today hate to hear us talk about because they have no clue what we are talking about.
One of those things is the TV antenna. You will remember that it never stayed pointed in the right direction to get a clear picture -- if ever you got a clear picture. I grew up thinking it "snowed" on the Ponderosa every Sunday night.
A recent discussion about the things individuals once braved in regards to the television antenna invoked memories of those simpler times.
Urban dwellers learned the fine art of rabbit ear adjustment including additional enhancements such as tin foil strategically placed.
Other adjustments could have included an additional wire run from the "ear" to a window screen or metal window frame. Was tin foil really tin or did we just call it that? And when did it become aluminum?
In rural areas, reception required an exterior antenna and usually the higher off the ground it was, the better the reception.
It often was several hundred miles to the nearest point of origin for the signal that brought one channel and a few favorite shows in black and white.
The common denominator for those antennas of old was the pipe it was mounted to in order to reach such heights and the fact it required regular adjustment by turning to bring it into signal alignment.
As a kid at home, one of four, the drill for us was to climb a ladder, shinny up a roof corner gutter and turn the antenna mounted on the peak of sharply angled tin roof. Someone had to stand at the back door and relay the status of the effort. "That's good!" or "Turn it a little more. No, no, go back a little. You passed it." And I might add we all lived to tell about it and not one of us ever fell off the roof.
In the aforementioned discussion, the use of channel-lock pliers or a pipe wrench for implementing the turn was a common practice. Many made claim to a luxury version of the rooftop set up with the antenna placed in a pipe set in the ground and accessed through a nearby window, avoiding the rooftop climbing adventure.
Inclement weather was a given when it was time to turn the antenna. Wind was the usual culprit to instigate the need but often with the wind came rain, hail, snow and even lightning. All of which put a challenge to the job and a bit of living dangerously.
Then came the really deluxe method of antenna alignment -- the motorized turner that operated from a box on the top of the television. Even that had its own personality with the ever consistent "ker-thunk, pause, ker-thunk, pause, ker-thunk, pause" as the antenna ker-thunked into position.
Today's youth are masters of the remote control that manages hundreds of channels on cable or satellite. Not only do they remain clueless about the character building efforts of antenna management, they have no idea about the curious wonders of the "sign-off."
You remember, the one where, as children, we stared at a screen with a target looking emblem accompanied by a piercing ringing sound and wondered what would happen next.
Yes,Virginia, there was a time when television was not available 24/7.
© Julie Carter 2006
OPINION/COMMENTARY
MANAGING “ROADLESS” FOREST LANDS AS WILDERNESS IS ILLEGAL
The U.S. Forest Service may not manage federal land as wilderness unless Congress has designated that land as wilderness, a Colorado task force was advised today by a public interest law firm with years of experience regarding federal land management and the nation’s public land laws. Mountain States Legal Foundation, which has made numerous appearances before the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals, filed comments with the Colorado Roadless Areas Review Task Force. In 2004, Colorado enacted legislation creating the task force to advise Colorado’s governor how 4.4 million acres of inventoried “roadless” acres of Forest Service lands in Colorado should be managed. “In 1964, Congress adopted the Wilderness Act, pursuant to which it designated areas of federal land as wilderness; this is the only manner in which such a classification may be attached to federal land,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “In addition, Congress reasserted its constitutional authority over federal lands and put a clock on when, if ever, federal lands might be designated as wilderness. That clock has run, which requires that lands not designated by Congress as wilderness be managed as non-wilderness and open to all of the American people.” In 1924, the Forest Service established the first de facto wilderness area; by 1964, it had created 88 de facto wilderness areas totaling 15 million acres. In 1964, Congress dealt legislatively with the issue of wilderness: creating wilderness areas, reserving for itself the designation of wilderness areas, and setting a deadline for the study of potential new wilderness areas....
'Deadline' for Senate ESA rewrite likely to pass without action
Senators working to rewrite the Endangered Species Act appear to be backing away from a previously scheduled deadline to introduce a bill this week, though a spokesman for a key negotiator said the senators still hope to produce a compromise measure soon. Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) had previously set a deadline for the end of March to move a bill through committee. Meeting that deadline now looks less likely, if not impossible, with no bill yet on the table and no hearings scheduled on the issue for this week. Inhofe, ranking member Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Sens. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) have said they would like to work together to produce consensus ESA legislation. And discussions between staff members from both sides of the aisle are continuing, EPW Committee spokesman Bill Holbrook said yesterday. "We anticipate having a bipartisan bill soon," he said. Lobbyists following the issue said they expect to see legislation in April, possibly next week. Congress only has two weeks to work with before returning to their districts April 10 for the two-week spring recess. Analysts following the issue said parties are still having trouble with the "big ticket" issues, most importantly how to protect habitat for listed species....
FEDS MUST DELIST PREBLE’S MEADOW JUMPING MOUSE
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) was advised today by a Colorado public interest law firm that it must remove the Preble's Meadow Jumping Mouse (PMJM) from protection under the Endangered Species Act. In comments filed with the agency, Mountain States Legal Foundation noted that official documents prove that the PMJM is not a morphologically, genetically, or ecologically distinct subspecies of meadow jumping mouse, nor is the PMJM a distinct population segment of meadow jumping mouse. The comments follow a February 2006 decision by the FWS to reopen comments for proposed delisting of the PMJM as a result of an unpublished report in January 2006 arguing that the PMJM must be listed. At the time, the FWS was due to rule on delisting, thus ending a process that began with a January 2005 announcement by Secretary Norton following the filing a federal lawsuit challenging the listing of the PMJM. "Even if the agency does what the law requires, it is eight years too late for landowners and governments along the Front Range of Wyoming and Colorado who suffered distress at the hands of federal bureaucrats," said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “Experts long knew that the listing of the mouse is the epitome of junk science."....
Green Gold and Cargo Cults
The biggest environmental meeting of the year will run until the end of March in Curitiba, Brazil. If you ever wondered why efforts in the UN to protect the environment rarely succeed, all the reasons are on display. It is a case study for the Harvard Business Review. The meeting is described by code - "COP8MOP3". Like a message from Big Brother it is everywhere in Curitiba. It dominates the main conference room and is on the sides of buses and every branch in the city of the HSBC Bank, the conference sponsor. The environmental cognoscenti will instantly know the code means this is the eighth meeting of the members of the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) -- MOP8, joined with the third meeting of the parties to the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention -- COP3. So what is the meeting for? The Convention on Biodiversity enjoins the world to protect Biodiversity. It was never clear what that meant, leading the US Congress to warn the Administration -- any administration -- not to join it. That was sound advice. The main business at this conference is not to protect biodiversity, but to endorse a return to the sort of economic philosophy that has impoverished many nations. Explaining this is a difficult message. Maybe that is why the UN officials have used code to define the meeting....
Senate Shuts Out Dissent on Greenhouse Gas Limits
Next week’s scheduled Senate hearing on mandatory greenhouse gas emissions limits misses a valuable opportunity to present a representative view of the debate on the topic. Instead of soliciting testimony from a range of views, Energy & Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Ranking Member Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) have stacked the witness list with alarmist environmental activist groups and opportunistic corporations trying to profit from the artificial scarcity that would be imposed by caps on carbon emissions. “Not only have Senators Domenici and Bingaman refused to include reasonable input from skeptics of an emissions trading scheme, they seem to have forgotten to include a representative from the one corporation which most enthusiastically embraced emissions credits – Enron,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute President Fred L. Smith, Jr. “Many of Enron’s former employees would no doubt have been happy to remind the committee of the company’s strong lobbying for carbon caps and emissions trading and their plans to profit massively under such a system.” An emissions trading program of the kind envisioned by Domenici and Bingaman would amount to an undeclared tax on energy, raising costs to consumers and disadvantaging energy-intensive industry to the profit of a handful of well-positioned corporations....
UTAH FAMILY ADDS TWO COUNTS TO FEDERAL BOMBING SITE CASE
A Utah family, which for decades has urged the United States to fulfill its contractual and moral obligations to the family by cleaning up family property the United States used as a bombing and weapons testing site, today added two more counts in the family’s lawsuit against the United States in Utah federal district court. The lawsuit, filed by F. Douglas Cannon, Margaret Louise Cannon, and Allan Cannon, contends that the failure of the United States to reclaim some 1,417 acres of land that the Cannon family owns just south of the Army Dugway Proving Grounds in Tooele County in west central Utah violates the federal Solid Waste Disposal Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. The Cannon family’s grandfather signed a contract with the Army under which the land was to be reclaimed. “It is clear that the United States, by failing to do what it committed by contract to do, violated federal administrative procedure law as well as an environmental law adopted to protect the public from hazardous wastes,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents the family. “The United States agreed to restore the property to ‘as good as condition’ as it was in at the time of the contract, which the United States failed to do. Today we added two federal charges created by that failure.” In May 1945, during World War II, the U.S. Army entered into a contract with Jesse Fox Cannon to survey and to perform exploratory and construction work in a section of Mr. Cannon’s property. Instead, the Army began “Project Sphinx” in which, contrary to the contract, it bombed the entire property and used incendiary weapons such as butane, gasoline, and napalm, chemical munitions such as phosgene and mustard agent, and some defoliants....
Easing the natural-gas crunch
High gasoline prices have grabbed headlines over the past year, but the bigger story is natural gas. The rise in natural-gas prices has been considerably greater and imposes serious burdens on consumers and industries that use natural gas. Yet domestic gas production has been flat, largely due to legal and political constraints on drilling. Throughout the 1990s, natural gas was cheap and plentiful, and policymakers became complacent about its future. Yielding to opposition from environmentalists as well as legislators from Florida and a few other coastal states, the federal government placed strict limits on new exploration and drilling, especially in offshore areas. At the same time, tough Clean Air Act regulations raised the cost of generating coal-fired electricity, making natural gas an attractive alternative for utilities. As a result, most power plants built since 1990 have been natural gas-fired, further straining supplies. Plus, consumer demand for natural gas was rising, as were the needs of gas-dependent industries such as chemical and fertilizer production. With supplies limited and demand growing, price hikes were inevitable. Natural gas stayed around $2 per thousand cubic feet throughout the 1990s but has shot up since, averaging $9 per thousand cubic feet in 2005. If the price of gasoline had risen that much in percentage terms, it would exceed $5 per gallon....
Big Government’s New Pet Project If your cat is planning to have kittens, you better take a number. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has hatched the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The NAIS comes in response to fears of mad cow disease and bioterrorism, even though there are at most three instances of mad cow disease in U.S. history and no documented instances of animals being used for bioterrorism. This program, which began on a voluntary basis in 2004, becomes mandatory this year for 25 percent of premises where animals are kept. Eventually, all premises will be required to register their animals with the government or face criminal penalties, including a fine of $1,000 per day. Every animal on the premises must be given a radio-frequency identification tag (RFID). States can choose to administer the program themselves. Each state can determine the definition of a “premise.” Texas and most other states will likely exclude private pets, but persons who raise or transfer animals will be covered. Accordingly, if a litter of kittens is born and the owner wishes to sell or give them away, the owner must register his premises and tag the kittens with a 15-digit electronic identification device. While large agribusiness operations may have the wherewithal to implement this scheme, small farmers throughout the nation are bracing for an unbearable regulatory burden. Even high school 4-H or FFA programs will have to comply with this mandate, although the Commission is considering an amendment to allow them to register each project rather than every animal. The red tape associated with the NAIS does not end after a premises owner registers his premises and tags and registers his animals. Rather, the burden continues as the owner must report, within 24 hours, any missing animal, any missing tag, the sale of an animal, the death of an animal, the slaughter of an animal, the purchase of an animal, the movement of an animal off the farm or homestead, or the movement of an animal onto the farm or homestead....
Equal Rights for Animals?
Believe it or not, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals may have finally gone too far. The group, which decries the killing of chickens but apparently has no stand on the partial-birth abortion of human beings, has decided to suspend its latest animal rights campaign—just a few weeks after kicking off its national tour. The exhibit went by the bizarre title, “Are Animals the New Slaves?” It compared the lynching of black Americans to the killing of animals for food. Twelve panels showed such images as noosed black men hanging from trees, juxtaposed with shots of slaughtered cows. But, even though PETA now appears to be pulling back, the damage has already been done. The exhibit appeared in 17 cities before PETA decided to put the campaign on hold. PETA spokesperson Dawn Carr told the Associated Press, “We’re not continuing right now while we evaluate. We’re reviewing feedback we’ve received—most of it overwhelmingly positive and some of it quite negative.” I’d really like the chance to see those individuals who offered the positive feedback. Were they on two legs or four? PETA has certainly had some shenanigans to its credit in the past, but this latest stunt truly crosses the line. In New Haven, Connecticut, the situation surrounding the exhibit became so volatile that police had to be called in. This has to be insensitivity at its highest....
Animal-rights groups hide violent subculture
Given the animated debate over the use of live animals in medical education ("Wisconsin medical school's dog research draws scrutiny," March 12), it is worthwhile, I feel, to take a close look at the practice's chief antagonists: the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, or PCRM. The misnamed "physicians committee" is a PETA-affiliated animal-rights group whose membership includes fewer than 4 percent physicians. Dr. John Pippin is an exception, a doctor who openly associates with PCRM. Most mainstream physicians understand how radical the group really is, including Pippin's former employer. In 2004, the world-renowned Cooper Clinic terminated Pippin, its then-chief cardiovascular specialist, because the clinic learned he was moonlighting for the animal-rights fringe. Earlier in 2004, Newsweek reported that PCRM's president, psychiatrist Neal Barnard, had "co-signed letters on PCRM letterhead with the leader of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, an animal-rights group the Department of Justice calls a 'domestic terrorist threat."' That same leader, Kevin Kjonaas, who co-signed the letters with Barnard, was convicted earlier this month in federal court on domestic terrorism charges related to an animal-rights campaign....
MANAGING “ROADLESS” FOREST LANDS AS WILDERNESS IS ILLEGAL
The U.S. Forest Service may not manage federal land as wilderness unless Congress has designated that land as wilderness, a Colorado task force was advised today by a public interest law firm with years of experience regarding federal land management and the nation’s public land laws. Mountain States Legal Foundation, which has made numerous appearances before the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals, filed comments with the Colorado Roadless Areas Review Task Force. In 2004, Colorado enacted legislation creating the task force to advise Colorado’s governor how 4.4 million acres of inventoried “roadless” acres of Forest Service lands in Colorado should be managed. “In 1964, Congress adopted the Wilderness Act, pursuant to which it designated areas of federal land as wilderness; this is the only manner in which such a classification may be attached to federal land,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “In addition, Congress reasserted its constitutional authority over federal lands and put a clock on when, if ever, federal lands might be designated as wilderness. That clock has run, which requires that lands not designated by Congress as wilderness be managed as non-wilderness and open to all of the American people.” In 1924, the Forest Service established the first de facto wilderness area; by 1964, it had created 88 de facto wilderness areas totaling 15 million acres. In 1964, Congress dealt legislatively with the issue of wilderness: creating wilderness areas, reserving for itself the designation of wilderness areas, and setting a deadline for the study of potential new wilderness areas....
'Deadline' for Senate ESA rewrite likely to pass without action
Senators working to rewrite the Endangered Species Act appear to be backing away from a previously scheduled deadline to introduce a bill this week, though a spokesman for a key negotiator said the senators still hope to produce a compromise measure soon. Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) had previously set a deadline for the end of March to move a bill through committee. Meeting that deadline now looks less likely, if not impossible, with no bill yet on the table and no hearings scheduled on the issue for this week. Inhofe, ranking member Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Sens. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) have said they would like to work together to produce consensus ESA legislation. And discussions between staff members from both sides of the aisle are continuing, EPW Committee spokesman Bill Holbrook said yesterday. "We anticipate having a bipartisan bill soon," he said. Lobbyists following the issue said they expect to see legislation in April, possibly next week. Congress only has two weeks to work with before returning to their districts April 10 for the two-week spring recess. Analysts following the issue said parties are still having trouble with the "big ticket" issues, most importantly how to protect habitat for listed species....
FEDS MUST DELIST PREBLE’S MEADOW JUMPING MOUSE
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) was advised today by a Colorado public interest law firm that it must remove the Preble's Meadow Jumping Mouse (PMJM) from protection under the Endangered Species Act. In comments filed with the agency, Mountain States Legal Foundation noted that official documents prove that the PMJM is not a morphologically, genetically, or ecologically distinct subspecies of meadow jumping mouse, nor is the PMJM a distinct population segment of meadow jumping mouse. The comments follow a February 2006 decision by the FWS to reopen comments for proposed delisting of the PMJM as a result of an unpublished report in January 2006 arguing that the PMJM must be listed. At the time, the FWS was due to rule on delisting, thus ending a process that began with a January 2005 announcement by Secretary Norton following the filing a federal lawsuit challenging the listing of the PMJM. "Even if the agency does what the law requires, it is eight years too late for landowners and governments along the Front Range of Wyoming and Colorado who suffered distress at the hands of federal bureaucrats," said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “Experts long knew that the listing of the mouse is the epitome of junk science."....
Green Gold and Cargo Cults
The biggest environmental meeting of the year will run until the end of March in Curitiba, Brazil. If you ever wondered why efforts in the UN to protect the environment rarely succeed, all the reasons are on display. It is a case study for the Harvard Business Review. The meeting is described by code - "COP8MOP3". Like a message from Big Brother it is everywhere in Curitiba. It dominates the main conference room and is on the sides of buses and every branch in the city of the HSBC Bank, the conference sponsor. The environmental cognoscenti will instantly know the code means this is the eighth meeting of the members of the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) -- MOP8, joined with the third meeting of the parties to the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention -- COP3. So what is the meeting for? The Convention on Biodiversity enjoins the world to protect Biodiversity. It was never clear what that meant, leading the US Congress to warn the Administration -- any administration -- not to join it. That was sound advice. The main business at this conference is not to protect biodiversity, but to endorse a return to the sort of economic philosophy that has impoverished many nations. Explaining this is a difficult message. Maybe that is why the UN officials have used code to define the meeting....
Senate Shuts Out Dissent on Greenhouse Gas Limits
Next week’s scheduled Senate hearing on mandatory greenhouse gas emissions limits misses a valuable opportunity to present a representative view of the debate on the topic. Instead of soliciting testimony from a range of views, Energy & Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Ranking Member Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) have stacked the witness list with alarmist environmental activist groups and opportunistic corporations trying to profit from the artificial scarcity that would be imposed by caps on carbon emissions. “Not only have Senators Domenici and Bingaman refused to include reasonable input from skeptics of an emissions trading scheme, they seem to have forgotten to include a representative from the one corporation which most enthusiastically embraced emissions credits – Enron,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute President Fred L. Smith, Jr. “Many of Enron’s former employees would no doubt have been happy to remind the committee of the company’s strong lobbying for carbon caps and emissions trading and their plans to profit massively under such a system.” An emissions trading program of the kind envisioned by Domenici and Bingaman would amount to an undeclared tax on energy, raising costs to consumers and disadvantaging energy-intensive industry to the profit of a handful of well-positioned corporations....
UTAH FAMILY ADDS TWO COUNTS TO FEDERAL BOMBING SITE CASE
A Utah family, which for decades has urged the United States to fulfill its contractual and moral obligations to the family by cleaning up family property the United States used as a bombing and weapons testing site, today added two more counts in the family’s lawsuit against the United States in Utah federal district court. The lawsuit, filed by F. Douglas Cannon, Margaret Louise Cannon, and Allan Cannon, contends that the failure of the United States to reclaim some 1,417 acres of land that the Cannon family owns just south of the Army Dugway Proving Grounds in Tooele County in west central Utah violates the federal Solid Waste Disposal Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. The Cannon family’s grandfather signed a contract with the Army under which the land was to be reclaimed. “It is clear that the United States, by failing to do what it committed by contract to do, violated federal administrative procedure law as well as an environmental law adopted to protect the public from hazardous wastes,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents the family. “The United States agreed to restore the property to ‘as good as condition’ as it was in at the time of the contract, which the United States failed to do. Today we added two federal charges created by that failure.” In May 1945, during World War II, the U.S. Army entered into a contract with Jesse Fox Cannon to survey and to perform exploratory and construction work in a section of Mr. Cannon’s property. Instead, the Army began “Project Sphinx” in which, contrary to the contract, it bombed the entire property and used incendiary weapons such as butane, gasoline, and napalm, chemical munitions such as phosgene and mustard agent, and some defoliants....
Easing the natural-gas crunch
High gasoline prices have grabbed headlines over the past year, but the bigger story is natural gas. The rise in natural-gas prices has been considerably greater and imposes serious burdens on consumers and industries that use natural gas. Yet domestic gas production has been flat, largely due to legal and political constraints on drilling. Throughout the 1990s, natural gas was cheap and plentiful, and policymakers became complacent about its future. Yielding to opposition from environmentalists as well as legislators from Florida and a few other coastal states, the federal government placed strict limits on new exploration and drilling, especially in offshore areas. At the same time, tough Clean Air Act regulations raised the cost of generating coal-fired electricity, making natural gas an attractive alternative for utilities. As a result, most power plants built since 1990 have been natural gas-fired, further straining supplies. Plus, consumer demand for natural gas was rising, as were the needs of gas-dependent industries such as chemical and fertilizer production. With supplies limited and demand growing, price hikes were inevitable. Natural gas stayed around $2 per thousand cubic feet throughout the 1990s but has shot up since, averaging $9 per thousand cubic feet in 2005. If the price of gasoline had risen that much in percentage terms, it would exceed $5 per gallon....
Big Government’s New Pet Project If your cat is planning to have kittens, you better take a number. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has hatched the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The NAIS comes in response to fears of mad cow disease and bioterrorism, even though there are at most three instances of mad cow disease in U.S. history and no documented instances of animals being used for bioterrorism. This program, which began on a voluntary basis in 2004, becomes mandatory this year for 25 percent of premises where animals are kept. Eventually, all premises will be required to register their animals with the government or face criminal penalties, including a fine of $1,000 per day. Every animal on the premises must be given a radio-frequency identification tag (RFID). States can choose to administer the program themselves. Each state can determine the definition of a “premise.” Texas and most other states will likely exclude private pets, but persons who raise or transfer animals will be covered. Accordingly, if a litter of kittens is born and the owner wishes to sell or give them away, the owner must register his premises and tag the kittens with a 15-digit electronic identification device. While large agribusiness operations may have the wherewithal to implement this scheme, small farmers throughout the nation are bracing for an unbearable regulatory burden. Even high school 4-H or FFA programs will have to comply with this mandate, although the Commission is considering an amendment to allow them to register each project rather than every animal. The red tape associated with the NAIS does not end after a premises owner registers his premises and tags and registers his animals. Rather, the burden continues as the owner must report, within 24 hours, any missing animal, any missing tag, the sale of an animal, the death of an animal, the slaughter of an animal, the purchase of an animal, the movement of an animal off the farm or homestead, or the movement of an animal onto the farm or homestead....
Equal Rights for Animals?
Believe it or not, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals may have finally gone too far. The group, which decries the killing of chickens but apparently has no stand on the partial-birth abortion of human beings, has decided to suspend its latest animal rights campaign—just a few weeks after kicking off its national tour. The exhibit went by the bizarre title, “Are Animals the New Slaves?” It compared the lynching of black Americans to the killing of animals for food. Twelve panels showed such images as noosed black men hanging from trees, juxtaposed with shots of slaughtered cows. But, even though PETA now appears to be pulling back, the damage has already been done. The exhibit appeared in 17 cities before PETA decided to put the campaign on hold. PETA spokesperson Dawn Carr told the Associated Press, “We’re not continuing right now while we evaluate. We’re reviewing feedback we’ve received—most of it overwhelmingly positive and some of it quite negative.” I’d really like the chance to see those individuals who offered the positive feedback. Were they on two legs or four? PETA has certainly had some shenanigans to its credit in the past, but this latest stunt truly crosses the line. In New Haven, Connecticut, the situation surrounding the exhibit became so volatile that police had to be called in. This has to be insensitivity at its highest....
Animal-rights groups hide violent subculture
Given the animated debate over the use of live animals in medical education ("Wisconsin medical school's dog research draws scrutiny," March 12), it is worthwhile, I feel, to take a close look at the practice's chief antagonists: the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, or PCRM. The misnamed "physicians committee" is a PETA-affiliated animal-rights group whose membership includes fewer than 4 percent physicians. Dr. John Pippin is an exception, a doctor who openly associates with PCRM. Most mainstream physicians understand how radical the group really is, including Pippin's former employer. In 2004, the world-renowned Cooper Clinic terminated Pippin, its then-chief cardiovascular specialist, because the clinic learned he was moonlighting for the animal-rights fringe. Earlier in 2004, Newsweek reported that PCRM's president, psychiatrist Neal Barnard, had "co-signed letters on PCRM letterhead with the leader of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, an animal-rights group the Department of Justice calls a 'domestic terrorist threat."' That same leader, Kevin Kjonaas, who co-signed the letters with Barnard, was convicted earlier this month in federal court on domestic terrorism charges related to an animal-rights campaign....
Friday, March 31, 2006
SPLIT ESTATE
Please find below and attached a sample set of comments on the BLM Split Estate Issue. Given the poor attendance of landowers and users at the Listening Session in Albquerque, it is IMPERATIVE that LOTS of written comments go in.
If you have personal experience with impacts of the oil and gas industry on the surface estate, please include them. The more personal you can make the comments, the better off we will be thanks.
The comment deadline is tomorrow, April 1, 2006.
Thanks!
March 31, 3006
Mr. Jim Perry, Environmental Scientist
Fluid Minerals Group
Bureau of Land Management
1620 L Street NW, Room 501
Washington DC, 20036 email: splitestate@blm.gov
RE: Review of policies, regulations & laws directing leasing and development of federally managed oil and natural gas under privately owned surface lands
Dear Mr. Perry:
Landowners in the West should not and cannot bear the uncompensated costs of affordable fluid energy for our entire nation. As Americans continue to pay ever-increasing prices at the gas pump, it seems that the fluid energy industry that is making literally billions upon billions of dollars should be ready, willing and able to do their share in protecting private property rights and conservation of our nation’s natural resources that reside on the surface. Given that the industry is unwilling to do so, it is incumbent upon the government and its’ regulatory agencies to provide the structure necessary.
As members of the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association (NMCGA), we fully support the detailed comments that the Association has submitted. We want to be sure that the following items are addressed as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) addresses the need to balance fluid energy production with private property rights and natural resource conservation:
The Mining Act must be amended to reflect appreciation of the surface estate over public minerals
Changes need to be made in Onshore Order #1
The BLM must exercise its’ regulatory authority to ensure that:
the best technologies are used to create the least amount of surface damage, even if they are not the least expensive options,
surface use agreements are required
bonding is adequate for the damage anticipated
reclamation is accomplished
Thank you for your consideration. We understand the need for a secure domestic energy supply and fully support responsible energy development. As rural citizens, we are perhaps more dependent upon fluid energy than our urban counter parts for livelihood. It is essential that the BLM find a way to protect surface values, property rights and the water so precious to the West, while permitting responsible oil and gas development.
Sincerely,
Caren Cowan
Executive Director
New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association
Albuquerque, New Mexico
505.247.0584 phone
505.842.1766 fax
Please find below and attached a sample set of comments on the BLM Split Estate Issue. Given the poor attendance of landowers and users at the Listening Session in Albquerque, it is IMPERATIVE that LOTS of written comments go in.
If you have personal experience with impacts of the oil and gas industry on the surface estate, please include them. The more personal you can make the comments, the better off we will be thanks.
The comment deadline is tomorrow, April 1, 2006.
Thanks!
March 31, 3006
Mr. Jim Perry, Environmental Scientist
Fluid Minerals Group
Bureau of Land Management
1620 L Street NW, Room 501
Washington DC, 20036 email: splitestate@blm.gov
RE: Review of policies, regulations & laws directing leasing and development of federally managed oil and natural gas under privately owned surface lands
Dear Mr. Perry:
Landowners in the West should not and cannot bear the uncompensated costs of affordable fluid energy for our entire nation. As Americans continue to pay ever-increasing prices at the gas pump, it seems that the fluid energy industry that is making literally billions upon billions of dollars should be ready, willing and able to do their share in protecting private property rights and conservation of our nation’s natural resources that reside on the surface. Given that the industry is unwilling to do so, it is incumbent upon the government and its’ regulatory agencies to provide the structure necessary.
As members of the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association (NMCGA), we fully support the detailed comments that the Association has submitted. We want to be sure that the following items are addressed as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) addresses the need to balance fluid energy production with private property rights and natural resource conservation:
The Mining Act must be amended to reflect appreciation of the surface estate over public minerals
Changes need to be made in Onshore Order #1
The BLM must exercise its’ regulatory authority to ensure that:
the best technologies are used to create the least amount of surface damage, even if they are not the least expensive options,
surface use agreements are required
bonding is adequate for the damage anticipated
reclamation is accomplished
Thank you for your consideration. We understand the need for a secure domestic energy supply and fully support responsible energy development. As rural citizens, we are perhaps more dependent upon fluid energy than our urban counter parts for livelihood. It is essential that the BLM find a way to protect surface values, property rights and the water so precious to the West, while permitting responsible oil and gas development.
Sincerely,
Caren Cowan
Executive Director
New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association
Albuquerque, New Mexico
505.247.0584 phone
505.842.1766 fax
NEWS ROUNDUP
Creature Feeds Conspiracies, Controversy, Part II In Eastern Montana, permits had been issued and a plan formed to take care of a wandering creature, wolf or not, that had killed 36 sheep and injured some 71 more. But the level of frustration in the prairie communities continued to build, further feeding a divide between two cultures -- one rooted to the land the animal was wandering, and the other filled with regulations designed to protect the animal. Some of the first questions about how to deal with the stock-killer concerned the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge. Among the least popular of the federal government's many, many unpopular endeavors in the region, the CM Russell's one million acres (including the vast acreage of the surface of Fort Peck Reservoir) has been a flash point since it was set aside as a "game range" in 1936, following the general exodus of human population from the region in the wake of the Dust Bowl years. Among the extremely hardy agricultural people who did not leave, who stayed on, year after year, building larger and larger holdings in order to survive, there is ongoing suspicion that the Refuge, which has been the site of prairie dog town recovery (an idea that disgusts many ranchers who have battled the rodents for decades) is also the secret site of wolf re-introductions. Such secret re-introductions, it is theorized, will have the conspiratorial effect of bringing down even more federal regulations on ranching operations and have the wolves killing stock that will help to ease ranchers into the financial abyss. That event will force the sale of private property and begin the creation of the Big Open, or the even more despised notion of the Buffalo Commons, a huge, unpeopled, wildlife reserve, running through the parts of the Great Plains states that have suffered big declines in agriculture and population since the 1920's....
Desert water more precious than gold Water has been called "the essential element" and nowhere was and still is that more true than Tooele County. When you think of the water resources of Tooele County, you may say as Sir Richard Burton did in 1860 "Water, Water, everywhere and not a drop to drink." Millions and millions of gallons of water cover vast tracts of the county in Great Salt Lake and out in the Great Salt Lake Desert. Unfortunately, this water is useless except for the heavy metals, salt and brine shrimp extracted from it in mass quantities each year. This is not the complete story of water in the county, however, as there are several significant sources, several of which remain untapped. It was said back in the Old West that the only thing more valuable than gold was water. If you were a cattle rancher or a farmer, your spread could only grow as far as your water resources and the conditions of the range would allow. Water has been utilized by the people of the county in many interesting ways since the first settlers eked out their first season at the mouth of Settlement Canyon. The first obvious use was for culinary purposes and the second was irrigation. But after that, the pioneers put the water resources of the county to work in all kinds of interesting ways. Saw mills were constructed on Settlement Canyon Creek and near the Benson Grist Mill in the early 1850s. The power of water was utilized to mill the lumber that built the early settlers' homes, churches, barns and other buildings. Water power was also used to grind the wheat into flour that was brought to the mill....
Rancher lifestyle endures In Rush Valley father Johnson and his family continue a lifestyle generations old & growing hay and raising cattle. Johnson, 64, says to him the lifestyle is priceless & worth far more than any profit he could make through selling his water rights. As suburbanization encroaches culturally and physically, the Johnsons could make a a bundle to sell out. The water used to grow just one acre of alfalfa can serve as many as five suburban homes. Darrell's father Orson is in his 80s. Father and son & one at the age of retirement and one well past it & drive their tractor together around the farm, work and talk. Sons and grandsons work on the farm and help out. Family members have sometimes worked jobs in town in order to make ends meet. Johnson combined his passion with practical necessity for about ten years when he worked for a bank in Salt Lake loaning money to ranchers. He was willing to do what was needed to preserve the rural lifestyle they love. Another generation down Darrell sees future ranchers. "I've got a 4-year old grandson helping me all morning and you can bet he's going to want to stay out here and do this," Johnson said. "This little guy knows as much about cows as I do. It's a good life....
Irrigators wrestle with water ruling Klamath Reclamation Project irrigators huddled Tuesday to decide their next step after a federal judge required accelerated implementation of a Klamath River management plan. U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong's decision Monday put the river's water allocation plan into effect immediately rather than over the next five years. If flows drop to levels that threaten coho salmon, water could be withheld from irrigators. Most local irrigators agree that's not likely to happen this summer because of the significant snowpack in the mountains. As of Monday, the Klamath Basin's snowpack was 163 percent of average - compared with one-third of average a year ago. Oregon has the West's best overall snowpack with 136 percent of average. Despite that, the president of Klamath Water Users Association expressed frustration with the scope of Armstrong's ruling. Steve Kandra said the Klamath Project is only a small part of the Klamath River system, but was hit with accelerated phases of river management because that's all the judge could legally affect....
National director says agency improving work relationship with oil and gas industry The national director for the Bureau of Land Management told oil and gas producers in Eddy County Thursday that the agency's goal is to work smarter, more efficiently and cooperatively with the oil and gas industry. She said that the Carlsbad Field Office is one of several pilot offices in the Western states that will be implementing the new initiatives, which have a goal of decreasing processing times for applications for oil and gas drilling and inspections of oil and gas wells. The pilot offices have three years to demonstrate their effectiveness. At the end of the third year, the BLM will have to report to Congress, said Alan Kesterke, who heads the BLM national energy policy liaison Energy Act implementation team. Dale Hall, national director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who accompanied Clarke from Washington, said pilot offices like Carlsbad BLM office are the key to doing business in a new way. He said part of the pilot office program is to staff the local BLM office with a biologist from Fish and Wildlife and another person from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. In essence, it will be a one-stop office for the oil and gas industry. The Local BLM office is also in the process of hiring 23 more people....
Manmade Ponds Help Preserve Wetlands More people building ponds for golf courses and subdivisions or to retain stormwater and wastewater helped create the nation's first net gain in wetlands in a half-century of government record-keeping. About 5 percent of the contiguous United States, or almost 108 million acres, was covered with wetlands as of 2004, the Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service reported Thursday. It found a net gain of 191,800 acres of wetlands since the last report in 1997. Bush administration officials cast the report as evidence that the nation has turned a corner on years of wetlands losses. State wetland managers and advocacy groups for hunting, recreation and environmental causes all called the report misleading. The Fish and Wildlife Service reported a gain of 715,300 acres of shallow-water wetlands - mainly artificial varieties of ponds - which offset a continued loss of 523,500 acres of marshes, swamps, and other more traditional and natural wetlands that are the so-called nurseries of life....
Hearing opens on water plan for Nevada lobbyist-developer Nevada's state engineer opens hearings Tuesday on contested plans for water that lobbyist-turned-developer Harvey Whittemore needs for a huge project, 60 miles north of Las Vegas, that eventually could include 50,000 homes and 10 golf courses. State Engineer Hugh Ricci has scheduled three days for a review of applications by Lincoln County and the Vidler Water Co. to pump 14,000 acre-feet of water a year from Kane Valley to supply the big Coyote Springs development. Whittemore says he already has water rights available for the first 5,000 homes. The additional water would allow for continued growth of the development, which could include condominiums and hotels in addition to individual homes. Vidler attorney Steve Hartman said the firm would be comfortable if Ricci approves 5,000 acre-feet and then orders a prolonged test to see if there are any adverse effects on the 28-mile-long Kane Valley. The plan has generated protests from the federal government, which claims the pumping would harm the Lake Mead National Recreation Area and threaten some endangered species, including a small fish known as the Moapa dace and the Southwestern willow flycatcher, a small bird....
Column: Gale's Greatest Hits Five years ago, the Interior Department, which oversees one-quarter of the nation's land, 9,000 employees and nine federal agencies, appeared to have turned a corner. Outgoing Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt had just pulled off a remarkable conservation offensive, getting his boss, Bill Clinton, to create and expand more than a dozen national monuments in the West. The monuments capped the Babbitt team's many efforts, from trying to reform the 1872 Mining Law to implementing habitat protection plans for imperiled species living in the path of growth. So thoroughly had Babbitt pushed conservation that when Gale Norton, a former attorney general from Colorado, took over the reins in 2001, several pundits predicted that she would have a difficult time dismantling a "reborn" Interior Department. But that's not how things worked out....
Staying down on the farm Over the past quarter-century, Arizona farmers and ranchers have sold an average of 1,320 acres a day. Houses and shops have replaced almost one-third of the state's farmland. But as more farmers sell their land to developers, a handful of die-hards are turning to agritourism, also known as agritainment, to preserve their farms and their way of life. "We are losing our farmers, our locally grown food and the knowledge of how fertile this region was before the houses came," said Katie Decker, spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Agriculture, which charts the state's ongoing loss of farmland. Agritourism, which combines agriculture and tourism by providing the public with a farming experience, also gives farmers who want to keep plowing a way to fight off developers....
Johanns releases farm program wish list March is among thousands who have given wish lists to the Agriculture Department as it prepares for an overhaul of farm programs next year. Many talked in person to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns during a nationwide series of forums. On Wednesday, Johanns issued an exhaustive summary of the comments, more than 4,000 in all. Comments and summaries are available on the department's Web site, http://www.usda.gov. The department did not say which issues were most talked about. But a Washington-based group, the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, reviewed transcripts of the forums earlier this year and said that 40 percent of those who spoke mentioned conservation. Next comes a series of analysis papers on different issues. Johanns said he will decide what to ask Congress for later, likely early next year....
We’re Thinking About Tomorrow Susie Morales lives west of Nogales in a remote canyon crisscrossed by smuggling trails. From her kitchen door, she can look out and sees burreros — drug mules — backpacking marijuana into the country. They're close enough to wink at her. Her house has been broken into many times, and she had to protect it — it looks like a fort, with security doors, window bars, and an expensive alarm system. At suppertime, when her husband is outside talking to passing illegals, she keeps a rifle on the table while she cooks. As maddening as that insecurity is, what bothers Susie most is that she can no longer live the way she was raised. For generations on this border, residents have shown generosity and kindness to passersby. But rampant drug-running and illegal immigration have driven a stake through the heart of that way of life. The invasion has brutalized border country, and for Susie, who is fifth generation, that means making the heart-breaking decision to stop offering food and water to illegals. They come in hordes now, and the danger has grown too great. "I can't describe how upsetting it is to have to change who I am," says Susie. "Why, after 50 years, should I have to face this moral conflict?" In Cochise County, rancher John Ladd fights to keep what he owns. With 10 1/2 miles of land abutting the Mexican line, he watches the border war every day through his living room window. In the early 2000s, the Border Patrol averaged 350 arrests every 24 hours on his property, including 700 in a single night....
Creature Feeds Conspiracies, Controversy, Part II In Eastern Montana, permits had been issued and a plan formed to take care of a wandering creature, wolf or not, that had killed 36 sheep and injured some 71 more. But the level of frustration in the prairie communities continued to build, further feeding a divide between two cultures -- one rooted to the land the animal was wandering, and the other filled with regulations designed to protect the animal. Some of the first questions about how to deal with the stock-killer concerned the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge. Among the least popular of the federal government's many, many unpopular endeavors in the region, the CM Russell's one million acres (including the vast acreage of the surface of Fort Peck Reservoir) has been a flash point since it was set aside as a "game range" in 1936, following the general exodus of human population from the region in the wake of the Dust Bowl years. Among the extremely hardy agricultural people who did not leave, who stayed on, year after year, building larger and larger holdings in order to survive, there is ongoing suspicion that the Refuge, which has been the site of prairie dog town recovery (an idea that disgusts many ranchers who have battled the rodents for decades) is also the secret site of wolf re-introductions. Such secret re-introductions, it is theorized, will have the conspiratorial effect of bringing down even more federal regulations on ranching operations and have the wolves killing stock that will help to ease ranchers into the financial abyss. That event will force the sale of private property and begin the creation of the Big Open, or the even more despised notion of the Buffalo Commons, a huge, unpeopled, wildlife reserve, running through the parts of the Great Plains states that have suffered big declines in agriculture and population since the 1920's....
Desert water more precious than gold Water has been called "the essential element" and nowhere was and still is that more true than Tooele County. When you think of the water resources of Tooele County, you may say as Sir Richard Burton did in 1860 "Water, Water, everywhere and not a drop to drink." Millions and millions of gallons of water cover vast tracts of the county in Great Salt Lake and out in the Great Salt Lake Desert. Unfortunately, this water is useless except for the heavy metals, salt and brine shrimp extracted from it in mass quantities each year. This is not the complete story of water in the county, however, as there are several significant sources, several of which remain untapped. It was said back in the Old West that the only thing more valuable than gold was water. If you were a cattle rancher or a farmer, your spread could only grow as far as your water resources and the conditions of the range would allow. Water has been utilized by the people of the county in many interesting ways since the first settlers eked out their first season at the mouth of Settlement Canyon. The first obvious use was for culinary purposes and the second was irrigation. But after that, the pioneers put the water resources of the county to work in all kinds of interesting ways. Saw mills were constructed on Settlement Canyon Creek and near the Benson Grist Mill in the early 1850s. The power of water was utilized to mill the lumber that built the early settlers' homes, churches, barns and other buildings. Water power was also used to grind the wheat into flour that was brought to the mill....
Rancher lifestyle endures In Rush Valley father Johnson and his family continue a lifestyle generations old & growing hay and raising cattle. Johnson, 64, says to him the lifestyle is priceless & worth far more than any profit he could make through selling his water rights. As suburbanization encroaches culturally and physically, the Johnsons could make a a bundle to sell out. The water used to grow just one acre of alfalfa can serve as many as five suburban homes. Darrell's father Orson is in his 80s. Father and son & one at the age of retirement and one well past it & drive their tractor together around the farm, work and talk. Sons and grandsons work on the farm and help out. Family members have sometimes worked jobs in town in order to make ends meet. Johnson combined his passion with practical necessity for about ten years when he worked for a bank in Salt Lake loaning money to ranchers. He was willing to do what was needed to preserve the rural lifestyle they love. Another generation down Darrell sees future ranchers. "I've got a 4-year old grandson helping me all morning and you can bet he's going to want to stay out here and do this," Johnson said. "This little guy knows as much about cows as I do. It's a good life....
Irrigators wrestle with water ruling Klamath Reclamation Project irrigators huddled Tuesday to decide their next step after a federal judge required accelerated implementation of a Klamath River management plan. U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong's decision Monday put the river's water allocation plan into effect immediately rather than over the next five years. If flows drop to levels that threaten coho salmon, water could be withheld from irrigators. Most local irrigators agree that's not likely to happen this summer because of the significant snowpack in the mountains. As of Monday, the Klamath Basin's snowpack was 163 percent of average - compared with one-third of average a year ago. Oregon has the West's best overall snowpack with 136 percent of average. Despite that, the president of Klamath Water Users Association expressed frustration with the scope of Armstrong's ruling. Steve Kandra said the Klamath Project is only a small part of the Klamath River system, but was hit with accelerated phases of river management because that's all the judge could legally affect....
National director says agency improving work relationship with oil and gas industry The national director for the Bureau of Land Management told oil and gas producers in Eddy County Thursday that the agency's goal is to work smarter, more efficiently and cooperatively with the oil and gas industry. She said that the Carlsbad Field Office is one of several pilot offices in the Western states that will be implementing the new initiatives, which have a goal of decreasing processing times for applications for oil and gas drilling and inspections of oil and gas wells. The pilot offices have three years to demonstrate their effectiveness. At the end of the third year, the BLM will have to report to Congress, said Alan Kesterke, who heads the BLM national energy policy liaison Energy Act implementation team. Dale Hall, national director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who accompanied Clarke from Washington, said pilot offices like Carlsbad BLM office are the key to doing business in a new way. He said part of the pilot office program is to staff the local BLM office with a biologist from Fish and Wildlife and another person from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. In essence, it will be a one-stop office for the oil and gas industry. The Local BLM office is also in the process of hiring 23 more people....
Manmade Ponds Help Preserve Wetlands More people building ponds for golf courses and subdivisions or to retain stormwater and wastewater helped create the nation's first net gain in wetlands in a half-century of government record-keeping. About 5 percent of the contiguous United States, or almost 108 million acres, was covered with wetlands as of 2004, the Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service reported Thursday. It found a net gain of 191,800 acres of wetlands since the last report in 1997. Bush administration officials cast the report as evidence that the nation has turned a corner on years of wetlands losses. State wetland managers and advocacy groups for hunting, recreation and environmental causes all called the report misleading. The Fish and Wildlife Service reported a gain of 715,300 acres of shallow-water wetlands - mainly artificial varieties of ponds - which offset a continued loss of 523,500 acres of marshes, swamps, and other more traditional and natural wetlands that are the so-called nurseries of life....
Hearing opens on water plan for Nevada lobbyist-developer Nevada's state engineer opens hearings Tuesday on contested plans for water that lobbyist-turned-developer Harvey Whittemore needs for a huge project, 60 miles north of Las Vegas, that eventually could include 50,000 homes and 10 golf courses. State Engineer Hugh Ricci has scheduled three days for a review of applications by Lincoln County and the Vidler Water Co. to pump 14,000 acre-feet of water a year from Kane Valley to supply the big Coyote Springs development. Whittemore says he already has water rights available for the first 5,000 homes. The additional water would allow for continued growth of the development, which could include condominiums and hotels in addition to individual homes. Vidler attorney Steve Hartman said the firm would be comfortable if Ricci approves 5,000 acre-feet and then orders a prolonged test to see if there are any adverse effects on the 28-mile-long Kane Valley. The plan has generated protests from the federal government, which claims the pumping would harm the Lake Mead National Recreation Area and threaten some endangered species, including a small fish known as the Moapa dace and the Southwestern willow flycatcher, a small bird....
Column: Gale's Greatest Hits Five years ago, the Interior Department, which oversees one-quarter of the nation's land, 9,000 employees and nine federal agencies, appeared to have turned a corner. Outgoing Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt had just pulled off a remarkable conservation offensive, getting his boss, Bill Clinton, to create and expand more than a dozen national monuments in the West. The monuments capped the Babbitt team's many efforts, from trying to reform the 1872 Mining Law to implementing habitat protection plans for imperiled species living in the path of growth. So thoroughly had Babbitt pushed conservation that when Gale Norton, a former attorney general from Colorado, took over the reins in 2001, several pundits predicted that she would have a difficult time dismantling a "reborn" Interior Department. But that's not how things worked out....
Staying down on the farm Over the past quarter-century, Arizona farmers and ranchers have sold an average of 1,320 acres a day. Houses and shops have replaced almost one-third of the state's farmland. But as more farmers sell their land to developers, a handful of die-hards are turning to agritourism, also known as agritainment, to preserve their farms and their way of life. "We are losing our farmers, our locally grown food and the knowledge of how fertile this region was before the houses came," said Katie Decker, spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Agriculture, which charts the state's ongoing loss of farmland. Agritourism, which combines agriculture and tourism by providing the public with a farming experience, also gives farmers who want to keep plowing a way to fight off developers....
Johanns releases farm program wish list March is among thousands who have given wish lists to the Agriculture Department as it prepares for an overhaul of farm programs next year. Many talked in person to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns during a nationwide series of forums. On Wednesday, Johanns issued an exhaustive summary of the comments, more than 4,000 in all. Comments and summaries are available on the department's Web site, http://www.usda.gov. The department did not say which issues were most talked about. But a Washington-based group, the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, reviewed transcripts of the forums earlier this year and said that 40 percent of those who spoke mentioned conservation. Next comes a series of analysis papers on different issues. Johanns said he will decide what to ask Congress for later, likely early next year....
We’re Thinking About Tomorrow Susie Morales lives west of Nogales in a remote canyon crisscrossed by smuggling trails. From her kitchen door, she can look out and sees burreros — drug mules — backpacking marijuana into the country. They're close enough to wink at her. Her house has been broken into many times, and she had to protect it — it looks like a fort, with security doors, window bars, and an expensive alarm system. At suppertime, when her husband is outside talking to passing illegals, she keeps a rifle on the table while she cooks. As maddening as that insecurity is, what bothers Susie most is that she can no longer live the way she was raised. For generations on this border, residents have shown generosity and kindness to passersby. But rampant drug-running and illegal immigration have driven a stake through the heart of that way of life. The invasion has brutalized border country, and for Susie, who is fifth generation, that means making the heart-breaking decision to stop offering food and water to illegals. They come in hordes now, and the danger has grown too great. "I can't describe how upsetting it is to have to change who I am," says Susie. "Why, after 50 years, should I have to face this moral conflict?" In Cochise County, rancher John Ladd fights to keep what he owns. With 10 1/2 miles of land abutting the Mexican line, he watches the border war every day through his living room window. In the early 2000s, the Border Patrol averaged 350 arrests every 24 hours on his property, including 700 in a single night....
Thursday, March 30, 2006
First Commercially Cloned Mare Born
Scientists and veterinarians today (March 30) announced the birth of the first commercially cloned mare, created from the cells of champion cutting horse Royal Blue Boon. The filly, Royal Blue Boon Too, was carried to term by a recipient mare and was born on Feb. 19 at Royal Vista Southwest Farms in Purcell, Okla. Royal Blue Boon Too is one of several cloned foals that have been born in 2006--cloned foals have been born at Texas A&M University this spring. The first equine clones were born in 2003; mules in Idaho came first, followed by a filly in Italy. In 2005, the first commercially cloned horse was born, created from the genetic material of a champion endurance gelding. Registered Quarter Horse Royal Blue Boon is the all-time leading producer of cutting horses in the world. She earned $381,764 in her career, and her progeny have earned more than $2.5 million. The mare is 26 years old--long past her performance and breeding career--so her owner made the decision to have the mare cloned so that her genetic material could be preserved. Two companies, ViaGen and Encore Genetics, partnered on the project, and have continued to offer the opportunity to commercially clone horses. To produce a clone, a veterinarian takes a small tissue biopsy from the donor horse. He ships the cells to Viagen, whose scientists grow the cells in culture before performing nuclear transfer, where they take DNA from the donor cells and insert it into enucleated eggs (eggs from which the genetic material has been removed). The resulting embryos are grown in an incubator for several days, then a veterinarian places the embryos into recipient females as he would with any embryo transfer. Polejaeva assures that even though 26-year-old cells were used in Royal Blue Boon's cloning procedure, the genetic age of the clone is that of a foal. "During the cloning process, the age of the cell is reset, and therefore the life span of the animal will be the same as the genetic potential of that animal," she said....
First Two Commercially Cloned U.S. Horses Thriving
Livestock cloning company ViaGen, Inc. is partnering with equine marketing firm Encore Genetics to create the first commercial horse cloning operation in the country. Today the companies launched the new entity with announcements about the births of two famous horse clones and news of other pregnancies. The legendary cutting horse Royal Blue Boon, a registered American Quarter Horse, became the first mare to be commercially cloned when a foal was born to a recipient mare on Royal Vista Southwest farms in Purcell, Okla., on Feb. 19, 2006. The foal was born healthy and continues to thrive on the farm where she was born. She was joined soon after by a clone of the mare Tap O Lena, born at the same farm on March 9, 2006. Two clones of the famous mare Bet Yer Blue Boons are expected to be born any day. Including the foals announced today, seven clones of famous horses will be born this year. Many other pregnant ViaGen/Encore mares are due next year. The companies have also gene banked over 75 champion horses from multiple breeds and disciplines. "From the time I transferred the embryo into the recipient mare, these pregnancies were normal in every way and the births followed suit," said Dr. Jim Bailey, DVM and manager of Royal Vista Southwest, a breeding technology center in the heart of Oklahoma horse country. "The resulting foals were born normally and immediately stood to nurse. They bonded well with the recipient mares and continue to grow and play in the sun."....
Co. Produces Clones From Cutting Horses
A company that offers horse owners exact duplicates of their animals says it has successfully cloned two top-earning horses. ViaGen Inc. announced Thursday that two mares had delivered clones of top cutting horses, which are trained to help separate individual animals from cattle herds. The foals, born at a ranch near Purcell, were doing well, according to the Austin, Texas-based company. The first cloned horse was born in 2003 in Italy. In 2005, Texas A&M University created the first cloned horse in the United States. Elaine Hall of Weatherford, Texas, owns one of the horses that was cloned and said the foal is the image of its mother. "I can already see so many similarities from the original horse, a certain look about the eyes," she said....
Cloned horses latest move for controversial field
The company that cloned the first horse to be sold commercially said on Thursday it plans to market 22 similar animals before 2008, marking another step forward for the controversial technology. ViaGen Inc., based in Austin, Texas, said the mare was born on February 19 in Oklahoma, and predicted it would one day produce 100 cloned horses a year, each fetching about $150,000. The company‘s announcement comes three years after the first cloned horse was created by Italian scientists in 2003. A cloned calf can sell for as much as $82,000, compared to an average calf that costs less than $1,000. Even cloned horses carry a lofty price tag and The Jockey Club, which monitors thoroughbreds, does not allow cloned animals to race....
Thanks to Ol' Tick for the tip on this story.
Scientists and veterinarians today (March 30) announced the birth of the first commercially cloned mare, created from the cells of champion cutting horse Royal Blue Boon. The filly, Royal Blue Boon Too, was carried to term by a recipient mare and was born on Feb. 19 at Royal Vista Southwest Farms in Purcell, Okla. Royal Blue Boon Too is one of several cloned foals that have been born in 2006--cloned foals have been born at Texas A&M University this spring. The first equine clones were born in 2003; mules in Idaho came first, followed by a filly in Italy. In 2005, the first commercially cloned horse was born, created from the genetic material of a champion endurance gelding. Registered Quarter Horse Royal Blue Boon is the all-time leading producer of cutting horses in the world. She earned $381,764 in her career, and her progeny have earned more than $2.5 million. The mare is 26 years old--long past her performance and breeding career--so her owner made the decision to have the mare cloned so that her genetic material could be preserved. Two companies, ViaGen and Encore Genetics, partnered on the project, and have continued to offer the opportunity to commercially clone horses. To produce a clone, a veterinarian takes a small tissue biopsy from the donor horse. He ships the cells to Viagen, whose scientists grow the cells in culture before performing nuclear transfer, where they take DNA from the donor cells and insert it into enucleated eggs (eggs from which the genetic material has been removed). The resulting embryos are grown in an incubator for several days, then a veterinarian places the embryos into recipient females as he would with any embryo transfer. Polejaeva assures that even though 26-year-old cells were used in Royal Blue Boon's cloning procedure, the genetic age of the clone is that of a foal. "During the cloning process, the age of the cell is reset, and therefore the life span of the animal will be the same as the genetic potential of that animal," she said....
First Two Commercially Cloned U.S. Horses Thriving
Livestock cloning company ViaGen, Inc. is partnering with equine marketing firm Encore Genetics to create the first commercial horse cloning operation in the country. Today the companies launched the new entity with announcements about the births of two famous horse clones and news of other pregnancies. The legendary cutting horse Royal Blue Boon, a registered American Quarter Horse, became the first mare to be commercially cloned when a foal was born to a recipient mare on Royal Vista Southwest farms in Purcell, Okla., on Feb. 19, 2006. The foal was born healthy and continues to thrive on the farm where she was born. She was joined soon after by a clone of the mare Tap O Lena, born at the same farm on March 9, 2006. Two clones of the famous mare Bet Yer Blue Boons are expected to be born any day. Including the foals announced today, seven clones of famous horses will be born this year. Many other pregnant ViaGen/Encore mares are due next year. The companies have also gene banked over 75 champion horses from multiple breeds and disciplines. "From the time I transferred the embryo into the recipient mare, these pregnancies were normal in every way and the births followed suit," said Dr. Jim Bailey, DVM and manager of Royal Vista Southwest, a breeding technology center in the heart of Oklahoma horse country. "The resulting foals were born normally and immediately stood to nurse. They bonded well with the recipient mares and continue to grow and play in the sun."....
Co. Produces Clones From Cutting Horses
A company that offers horse owners exact duplicates of their animals says it has successfully cloned two top-earning horses. ViaGen Inc. announced Thursday that two mares had delivered clones of top cutting horses, which are trained to help separate individual animals from cattle herds. The foals, born at a ranch near Purcell, were doing well, according to the Austin, Texas-based company. The first cloned horse was born in 2003 in Italy. In 2005, Texas A&M University created the first cloned horse in the United States. Elaine Hall of Weatherford, Texas, owns one of the horses that was cloned and said the foal is the image of its mother. "I can already see so many similarities from the original horse, a certain look about the eyes," she said....
Cloned horses latest move for controversial field
The company that cloned the first horse to be sold commercially said on Thursday it plans to market 22 similar animals before 2008, marking another step forward for the controversial technology. ViaGen Inc., based in Austin, Texas, said the mare was born on February 19 in Oklahoma, and predicted it would one day produce 100 cloned horses a year, each fetching about $150,000. The company‘s announcement comes three years after the first cloned horse was created by Italian scientists in 2003. A cloned calf can sell for as much as $82,000, compared to an average calf that costs less than $1,000. Even cloned horses carry a lofty price tag and The Jockey Club, which monitors thoroughbreds, does not allow cloned animals to race....
Thanks to Ol' Tick for the tip on this story.
NEWS ROUNDUP
A Montana Wolf Mystery & the Fury it Breeds The creature, whatever it is, came out of Montana's own McCone County, wandering from the rough breaks of Timber Creek, just south of the Big Dry Arm of Fort Peck Reservoir, and the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge. Where it had wandered before that, Canada or North Dakota, nobody knows. Since December, it has struck six herds of sheep belonging to stockmen in McCone and Garfield Counties, killing 36 ewes, and injuring 71, many of which will succumb to their wounds. It leaves a track like a small wolf, or a dog, or a wolf-hybrid, but its killing habits are inefficient, nothing like the surgical lethality of a wolf taking meat from a herd of domestic sheep. Coyotes, those that survive here in the gauntlet of traps and aerial gunnery and cyanide "getters," kill a lot of sheep every year, but nothing like this. This creature is a traveler, and it is not always alone, though its companion leaves a smaller track still, adding to the mystery. Where it has stopped to kill, over an area of more than a hundred square miles, it has created a fury, one that is not entirely directed at the creature itself (the stockmen here know full well how to handle that problem) but at the federal and state governments, at complex regulations imposed to protect an animal that they despise, and at a far-away society that seems to have lost all respect for them and their constant struggle to remain self-reliant, solvent, and on the land....
Judge faults Bush call to ease logging restrictions A Bush administration decision to ease logging restrictions under the Northwest Forest Plan was arbitrary and should be invalidated, a federal judge has found. U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler made the recommendation this week in a report to U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez, who will consider it and make a final ruling. The Bush administration dropped wording from the forest plan in March 2004 that required certain projects to be evaluated for how they would affect their watershed before they could be approved. Theiler said officials were required to give a rational basis for the wording change and explain why the change would not harm protected salmon, but didn't. The change at issue concerned a section of the plan called the Aquatic Conservation Strategy, and it is one of several ways the Bush administration has eased logging requirements in the Northwest. A federal judge in Seattle has already struck down the administration's decision to stop requiring agencies to look for endangered species before logging or mining, and several states are suing over its move to open roadless national forest lands to mining, logging, road-building and other development....
C-130s stage at Kirtland AFB to answer the firefighting call The rancher fearing for his livestock or the people living in developed areas along the boundary of a fire probably don't realize the massive effort and the number of personnel supporting the C-130 they see dropping salvation from the sky, but cooperation among military members and civilians can save acres and lives when wildfires occur. Two military C-130s equipped with the Modular Airborne Firefighting System arrived on Kirtland late March 16 and were placed on standby at the air tanker base operated by the Cibola National Forest. MAFFS is a modular unit designed to be inserted into a C-130 to drop up to 2,700 gallons of fire retardant or water. If a fire escalates to the point where they're needed, they can be loaded and ready to fly in about two hours, said ANG Lt. Col. Rick Gibson, MAFFS liaison for the ANG....
Officials to review k-rat habitat The diminutive furry creature that has held up some development and mining in communities along the Santa Ana River and other streams will get another look from wildlife officials to see how much land it needs to survive. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will examine whether the endangered San Bernardino kangaroo rat really needs 33,295 acres in San Bernardino and Riverside counties to survive and recover. In a settlement to a lawsuit reached last week, the service has agreed to re-examine the "critical habitat" designations for five species, including the kangaroo rat and the Quino checkerspot butterfly in Riverside and San Diego counties. The deal concluded Friday does not require any changes to the designations; it only requires the service to do a more rigorous analysis of the economic effects of the critical habitat designation and any new research related to where the creature may live. "Most likely this will result in more limited habitat designations," said M. Reed Hopper, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property-rights group that brought the suit against the Fish and Wildlife Service....
U.S. Acts to Help Wild Salmon in Klamath River Federal wildlife agencies demanded Wednesday that the Klamath River's imperiled wild salmon be given a way to pass four towering hydroelectric dams that for nearly a century have blocked the waterway's upper spawning grounds. The owner of the dams, PacifiCorp of Portland, Ore., could face a costly decision: Should it spend up to $175 million to erect very long fish ladders, or should it abandon the dams and undertake the nation's largest removal project? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and other federal wildlife agencies presented their demands in response to PacifiCorp's application to renew its operating license for the dams. The structures — combined with diversions for irrigation, polluted runoff from ranching, logging and other factors — have caused Klamath fish populations to plummet. Salmon runs have fallen so low in the last three years that federal regulators next week will decide whether to recommend that the annual fishing season be canceled. PacifiCorp, owned by billionaire financial guru Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has in recent years agreed to demolish three other hydroelectric dams, including a 150-foot-tall concrete structure on the White Salmon River in southwest Washington....
Joint efforts revive species once nearly gone Two Wyoming species, the Wyoming toad and the black-footed ferret, are on their way back from the brink of extinction, thanks largely to captive breeding programs that have helped boost populations. People involved in the recovery efforts say the Endangered Species Act -- and the often-maligned monitoring and regulation that go with it -- is responsible for identifying problems with those species and helping scientists with their recovery. "I think if it hadn't been for the ESA, the Wyoming toad would probably be gone today," said Jeff Ettling, curator of amphibians and reptiles for the St. Louis Zoo, where the Wyoming toad has been a favorite of schoolchildren for more than a decade. "If they hadn't brought that last remnant population from Wyoming, we would just be reading about Wyoming toads now."....Nice, objective article by the AP. Surely they are not trying to influence legislation pending in Congress.
For Their Eyes Only It's tough to be a Texas blind salamander. Not only are you ugly, slithery, and totally blind, but you are also endangered. As rapid urbanization degrades the salamander's underwater habitat – primarily caves southwest of Austin, near San Marcos – many individuals venture out of their increasingly murky homes in search of food and cleaner water. All too frequently, however, only death and digestion await. Unused to full-light environments, the blind salamanders are quickly snatched up by predators; and even if they manage to hide from voracious hunters, the sunlight fries their delicate vestigial eye-spots. All that could change thanks to a new program by Texas Wildlife & Parks. The program, called Operation SHADE (Salamanders Helped by Awesome and Dramatic Eyewear) is an ambitious effort to fit the entire known population of Texas blind salamanders with designer-made dark lenses over their eye-spots. TWP believes the devices, called Amphibi-Lens, will help the creatures survive and thrive in strange, new environments. "The Amphibi-Lens will help the salamanders go incognito," said TWP spokesman Rusty McNeil. "Behind the large, dark, stylish frames, their customary predators will be unable to recognize them, and therefore will leave them alone."....Not quite April Fool's Day, but this has to be a joke. Go check out the picture.
More help for steelhead Federal officials Wednesday proposed to extend the protections of the Endangered Species Act to the Puget Sound region's stocks of steelhead, one of the most sought-after game fish in North America. The law already can be used to restrict building and drinking-water withdrawals to protect chinook salmon. In addition to extending those limits farther up into Puget Sound-area watersheds, the plan could curtail or even end fishing for the fabled steelhead around here. One of the Puget Sound area's most battered runs of steelhead spawns in the Cedar River, a source of Seattle's drinking water. Although some think the additional protections proposed Wednesday could spell trouble for that drinking-water supply, city officials say they could help the steelhead without reducing Seattleites' water supplies....
Groups sue agency over falcon habitat A coalition of environmentalists has sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, alleging the agency ignored the group's petition to designate critical habitat for the endangered northern aplomado falcon in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. Forest Guardians, the Chihuahuan Desert Conservation Alliance and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed their complaint Monday in federal court in Santa Fe, saying they filed the petition in September 2002 and that federal law requires the agency to act within a year. The coalition asked a federal judge to declare that Fish and Wildlife violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to make a determination on critical habitat and to order the agency to make a decision. Vicki Fox, a spokeswoman for Fish and Wildlife in Albuquerque, said Tuesday the agency does not comment on litigation. However, in similar cases elsewhere the agency has maintained that a lack of money and the number of petitions allows it to respond only to cases backed by a court order....
New Study Challenges Claims That States are Better Than Feds Recovering Endangered Species The federal endangered species program is as good as or better at removing species from legal protection as a result of recovery efforts than similar programs operated by states, finds a new study by World Wildlife Fund. Congress is considering dramatic changes to the act. The principle champions for changing the act have long argued that the federal law is a failure since few species protected by the statute have recovered to a point where they have been removed from legal protection, or "delisted." "This study shows that just passing the buck to the states isn't likely to solve the endangered species problem," said Ginette Hemley, vice president for species conservation at World Wildlife Fund. "Restoring endangered species is difficult no matter who's doing it. There are no quick fixes, and weakening the Endangered Species Act certainly isn't one of them." Hemley added that both state and federal endangered species conservation agencies are improving the status of endangered species and that critics have underestimated the difficulty of the task and oversimplified the job of evaluating progress....
Cattlemen focus on the border The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association ended its annual convention Wednesday determined to see a two-pronged approach to immigration reform and nervous about the impacts of the ongoing drought. Matt Brockman, the association's executive vice president, said the 13,600-member organization supports measures that increase border security, but also endorses an effective temporary worker program that addresses the ranching industry's labor needs. The association, which held a four-day annual convention in San Antonio this week, passed a resolution reaffirming support of the temporary guest worker program that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has proposed. It would require workers in the country illegally to return to their home countries, obtain required documentation and establish legal work status that allows them to return to the U.S....
A Montana Wolf Mystery & the Fury it Breeds The creature, whatever it is, came out of Montana's own McCone County, wandering from the rough breaks of Timber Creek, just south of the Big Dry Arm of Fort Peck Reservoir, and the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge. Where it had wandered before that, Canada or North Dakota, nobody knows. Since December, it has struck six herds of sheep belonging to stockmen in McCone and Garfield Counties, killing 36 ewes, and injuring 71, many of which will succumb to their wounds. It leaves a track like a small wolf, or a dog, or a wolf-hybrid, but its killing habits are inefficient, nothing like the surgical lethality of a wolf taking meat from a herd of domestic sheep. Coyotes, those that survive here in the gauntlet of traps and aerial gunnery and cyanide "getters," kill a lot of sheep every year, but nothing like this. This creature is a traveler, and it is not always alone, though its companion leaves a smaller track still, adding to the mystery. Where it has stopped to kill, over an area of more than a hundred square miles, it has created a fury, one that is not entirely directed at the creature itself (the stockmen here know full well how to handle that problem) but at the federal and state governments, at complex regulations imposed to protect an animal that they despise, and at a far-away society that seems to have lost all respect for them and their constant struggle to remain self-reliant, solvent, and on the land....
Judge faults Bush call to ease logging restrictions A Bush administration decision to ease logging restrictions under the Northwest Forest Plan was arbitrary and should be invalidated, a federal judge has found. U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler made the recommendation this week in a report to U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez, who will consider it and make a final ruling. The Bush administration dropped wording from the forest plan in March 2004 that required certain projects to be evaluated for how they would affect their watershed before they could be approved. Theiler said officials were required to give a rational basis for the wording change and explain why the change would not harm protected salmon, but didn't. The change at issue concerned a section of the plan called the Aquatic Conservation Strategy, and it is one of several ways the Bush administration has eased logging requirements in the Northwest. A federal judge in Seattle has already struck down the administration's decision to stop requiring agencies to look for endangered species before logging or mining, and several states are suing over its move to open roadless national forest lands to mining, logging, road-building and other development....
C-130s stage at Kirtland AFB to answer the firefighting call The rancher fearing for his livestock or the people living in developed areas along the boundary of a fire probably don't realize the massive effort and the number of personnel supporting the C-130 they see dropping salvation from the sky, but cooperation among military members and civilians can save acres and lives when wildfires occur. Two military C-130s equipped with the Modular Airborne Firefighting System arrived on Kirtland late March 16 and were placed on standby at the air tanker base operated by the Cibola National Forest. MAFFS is a modular unit designed to be inserted into a C-130 to drop up to 2,700 gallons of fire retardant or water. If a fire escalates to the point where they're needed, they can be loaded and ready to fly in about two hours, said ANG Lt. Col. Rick Gibson, MAFFS liaison for the ANG....
Officials to review k-rat habitat The diminutive furry creature that has held up some development and mining in communities along the Santa Ana River and other streams will get another look from wildlife officials to see how much land it needs to survive. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will examine whether the endangered San Bernardino kangaroo rat really needs 33,295 acres in San Bernardino and Riverside counties to survive and recover. In a settlement to a lawsuit reached last week, the service has agreed to re-examine the "critical habitat" designations for five species, including the kangaroo rat and the Quino checkerspot butterfly in Riverside and San Diego counties. The deal concluded Friday does not require any changes to the designations; it only requires the service to do a more rigorous analysis of the economic effects of the critical habitat designation and any new research related to where the creature may live. "Most likely this will result in more limited habitat designations," said M. Reed Hopper, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property-rights group that brought the suit against the Fish and Wildlife Service....
U.S. Acts to Help Wild Salmon in Klamath River Federal wildlife agencies demanded Wednesday that the Klamath River's imperiled wild salmon be given a way to pass four towering hydroelectric dams that for nearly a century have blocked the waterway's upper spawning grounds. The owner of the dams, PacifiCorp of Portland, Ore., could face a costly decision: Should it spend up to $175 million to erect very long fish ladders, or should it abandon the dams and undertake the nation's largest removal project? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and other federal wildlife agencies presented their demands in response to PacifiCorp's application to renew its operating license for the dams. The structures — combined with diversions for irrigation, polluted runoff from ranching, logging and other factors — have caused Klamath fish populations to plummet. Salmon runs have fallen so low in the last three years that federal regulators next week will decide whether to recommend that the annual fishing season be canceled. PacifiCorp, owned by billionaire financial guru Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has in recent years agreed to demolish three other hydroelectric dams, including a 150-foot-tall concrete structure on the White Salmon River in southwest Washington....
Joint efforts revive species once nearly gone Two Wyoming species, the Wyoming toad and the black-footed ferret, are on their way back from the brink of extinction, thanks largely to captive breeding programs that have helped boost populations. People involved in the recovery efforts say the Endangered Species Act -- and the often-maligned monitoring and regulation that go with it -- is responsible for identifying problems with those species and helping scientists with their recovery. "I think if it hadn't been for the ESA, the Wyoming toad would probably be gone today," said Jeff Ettling, curator of amphibians and reptiles for the St. Louis Zoo, where the Wyoming toad has been a favorite of schoolchildren for more than a decade. "If they hadn't brought that last remnant population from Wyoming, we would just be reading about Wyoming toads now."....Nice, objective article by the AP. Surely they are not trying to influence legislation pending in Congress.
For Their Eyes Only It's tough to be a Texas blind salamander. Not only are you ugly, slithery, and totally blind, but you are also endangered. As rapid urbanization degrades the salamander's underwater habitat – primarily caves southwest of Austin, near San Marcos – many individuals venture out of their increasingly murky homes in search of food and cleaner water. All too frequently, however, only death and digestion await. Unused to full-light environments, the blind salamanders are quickly snatched up by predators; and even if they manage to hide from voracious hunters, the sunlight fries their delicate vestigial eye-spots. All that could change thanks to a new program by Texas Wildlife & Parks. The program, called Operation SHADE (Salamanders Helped by Awesome and Dramatic Eyewear) is an ambitious effort to fit the entire known population of Texas blind salamanders with designer-made dark lenses over their eye-spots. TWP believes the devices, called Amphibi-Lens, will help the creatures survive and thrive in strange, new environments. "The Amphibi-Lens will help the salamanders go incognito," said TWP spokesman Rusty McNeil. "Behind the large, dark, stylish frames, their customary predators will be unable to recognize them, and therefore will leave them alone."....Not quite April Fool's Day, but this has to be a joke. Go check out the picture.
More help for steelhead Federal officials Wednesday proposed to extend the protections of the Endangered Species Act to the Puget Sound region's stocks of steelhead, one of the most sought-after game fish in North America. The law already can be used to restrict building and drinking-water withdrawals to protect chinook salmon. In addition to extending those limits farther up into Puget Sound-area watersheds, the plan could curtail or even end fishing for the fabled steelhead around here. One of the Puget Sound area's most battered runs of steelhead spawns in the Cedar River, a source of Seattle's drinking water. Although some think the additional protections proposed Wednesday could spell trouble for that drinking-water supply, city officials say they could help the steelhead without reducing Seattleites' water supplies....
Groups sue agency over falcon habitat A coalition of environmentalists has sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, alleging the agency ignored the group's petition to designate critical habitat for the endangered northern aplomado falcon in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. Forest Guardians, the Chihuahuan Desert Conservation Alliance and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed their complaint Monday in federal court in Santa Fe, saying they filed the petition in September 2002 and that federal law requires the agency to act within a year. The coalition asked a federal judge to declare that Fish and Wildlife violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to make a determination on critical habitat and to order the agency to make a decision. Vicki Fox, a spokeswoman for Fish and Wildlife in Albuquerque, said Tuesday the agency does not comment on litigation. However, in similar cases elsewhere the agency has maintained that a lack of money and the number of petitions allows it to respond only to cases backed by a court order....
New Study Challenges Claims That States are Better Than Feds Recovering Endangered Species The federal endangered species program is as good as or better at removing species from legal protection as a result of recovery efforts than similar programs operated by states, finds a new study by World Wildlife Fund. Congress is considering dramatic changes to the act. The principle champions for changing the act have long argued that the federal law is a failure since few species protected by the statute have recovered to a point where they have been removed from legal protection, or "delisted." "This study shows that just passing the buck to the states isn't likely to solve the endangered species problem," said Ginette Hemley, vice president for species conservation at World Wildlife Fund. "Restoring endangered species is difficult no matter who's doing it. There are no quick fixes, and weakening the Endangered Species Act certainly isn't one of them." Hemley added that both state and federal endangered species conservation agencies are improving the status of endangered species and that critics have underestimated the difficulty of the task and oversimplified the job of evaluating progress....
Cattlemen focus on the border The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association ended its annual convention Wednesday determined to see a two-pronged approach to immigration reform and nervous about the impacts of the ongoing drought. Matt Brockman, the association's executive vice president, said the 13,600-member organization supports measures that increase border security, but also endorses an effective temporary worker program that addresses the ranching industry's labor needs. The association, which held a four-day annual convention in San Antonio this week, passed a resolution reaffirming support of the temporary guest worker program that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has proposed. It would require workers in the country illegally to return to their home countries, obtain required documentation and establish legal work status that allows them to return to the U.S....
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Forest Service looks beyond timber sales for dollars The lure of money is shaping the nation's 155 national forests: more advertising, more fees, more roads to draw timber sales and lumber mill jobs. The Bush administration also wants to sell more than 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools in 41 states. The land sales, ranging from less than an acre to more than 1,000 acres, are expected to generate $800 million and would be the largest sale of forest land in decades. The Forest Service also hopes to raise money by allowing corporate advertisers to put up logos and banners at ski resorts, marinas or other buildings as well at events such as races, competitions and festivals held in national forests. The agency, part of the Agriculture Department, is also planning to conduct more frequent appraisals of 14,500 private cabins allowed in national forests the past 90 years, mainly in California, Oregon and Washington. Environmentalists are alarmed....
National Forest sale would be buyers' boon It could all be yours, for a price, under President's Bush's plan to sell an estimated 175,000 acres of National Forest land in Missouri and 34 other states to sustain a fund for rural schools and roads. The idea has drawn the wrath of everyone from conservationists to Missouri Republican members of Congress who say the state would get a paltry return for the sale. But the proposal promises to be hugely popular with one particular group - buyers. Rural property is in high demand in states such as Missouri, where up to 21,566 acres of Mark Twain National Forest could be put on the block. Real estate agents and landowners said the forest land would go quickly - and for a high price. "Land is just snapped up in a heartbeat around here unless they've got an incredible price on it," said Clete Baxter, a real estate agent who recently quickly sold 10 acres for $5,499 an acre near one of the Mark Twain parcels southeast of Columbia that could be for sale. U.S. Forest Service officials said they have heard from people who want the land - commonly in 40-acre parcels or more - for hunting, farming, residential or investment purposes. Adjoining landowners also want it, they said....
Bikers beware: Officials cracking down on illegal mountain bike use A mountain bike ride on the wrong side of the Blue Mountain Recreation Area could end up being a bit pricey. The U. S. Forest Service announced in an open letter last week that it will immediately begin enforcing a horse- and hiker-only rule on all trails north of Blue Mountain Road in the recreation area. “We have counted on signing, voluntary compliance and peer pressure to enforce this rule,” said Missoula District Ranger Maggie Pittman in the letter. “Unfortunately, these methods don't seem to be working. “The signs have been removed and vandalized, and the trail is being used by mountain bikers,” she said. Bikers caught illegally riding there could now end up paying a $150 fine, plus a $25 processing fee. The Blue Mountain National Recreation Trail has been designated a horse and hiker trail since its inception in the 1970s....
New Rules Rein In Off-Road Riders Spurred by homeowners tired of the noise, dust and environmental destruction, Riverside County on Tuesday approved a crackdown on off-road vehicle use on private property, and neighboring San Bernardino County may soon adopt its own restrictions. The off-roading limits have slowly gained political support in the fast-growing counties, where housing developments are encroaching on once-remote deserts and mountains that are popular destinations for Southern California dirt-bikers and other all-terrain-vehicle enthusiasts. The restrictions in Riverside County, which the Board of Supervisors approved 4 to 1, follow two years of protracted debate and will limit riding times and the number of vehicles residents can ride on their property. Supervisors also approved strict new noise limits, although they apply as much to garage bands as they do to dune buggies....
Road policy crosses public lands A new federal policy addressing ownership of thousands of miles of roads crisscrossing public land includes rights of way in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who’s leaving office, has directed her agencies to apply a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling nationwide when deciding whether local governments or individuals have valid claims to roadways across federal land. The policy is producing warnings of more conflicts, lawsuits, and trails in national parks and wilderness morphing into motorways. Some roads are present in the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, said Sellar-Baker, who added that those avenues are typically used as in-holdings for people who want legal access to their private property. At the core of the conflict is an 1866 mining law, known as Revised Statute 2477, that allowed local governments to claim rights of way across federal land. When the law was repealed in 1976, Congress allowed states and counties to keep using traditional highways. Left unresolved were disagreements over whether thousands of miles of dirt paths and trails qualify as roads. In 1997, Congress, wrangling over changes to the law, imposed a moratorium on approval of claims. That left places like Moffat County in northwestern Colorado with no recourse when federal agencies closed roads traveled since the 1880s by ranchers and others, said Jeff Comstock, the county’s natural resources director....
Drought spurs fears of active wildfire season A persistent drought, coupled with unseasonably high temperatures and gusty winds, have led to a record number of wildfires this year, and weather and fire officials say conditions are ripe for more activity this spring. From January 1 through March 22, more than 17,000 wildfires have been reported, with 1.5 million-plus acres burned across the country, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The number of fires eclipses the five-year average of slightly more than 11,000 fires for the same period. The acreage burned this year is triple the 549,866 acres of 2000, the previous high in the last six years. Weather and fire officials said they fear what has occurred in Texas and Oklahoma, where the greatest damage has been reported so far this year, could be a preview of what is possible for wide swaths of the Southwest and Great Plains over the next few months....
Condor nest spotted in Big Sur The first California condor nest seen in a century in Monterey County was spotted by a wildlife biologist Monday in a hollow redwood tree on the Big Sur Coast. The discovery is an important milestone in the effort to reintroduce condors into the wild, said Kelly Sorenson, executive director of the Ventana Wildlife Society. The society has been releasing condors raised in captivity on the Big Sur Coast since 1996 and at Pinnacles National Monument since 2004. The nesting pair was seen and photographed by Wildlife Society condor biologist Joseph Brandt after he saw the birds had apparently taken up housekeeping in the redwood tree. The condors were identified as a 9-year-old male, Condor 167, and an 8-year-old female, Condor 190....
Judge tosses suit seeking to halt pig kills on Santa Cruz Island A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to stop the killing of thousands of feral pigs on Santa Cruz Island as part of an effort to protect endangered island foxes. U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian said he disagrees with a Santa Barbara County businessman's claim that the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy, which co-own the island, rushed to eradicate the animals before developing an environmental plan. “The policy and scientific question of how to restore Santa Cruz Island has existed for years, as the number of Santa Cruz Island foxes declined ... and rare and endemic plant species on the Island began disappearing,” Tevrizian said in a ruling released on Tuesday. Both organizations have said that the pigs, which were introduced by ranchers in the 1850s, are destroying the island – part of the Channel Islands National Park – by causing erosion, uprooting native plants and helping spread invasive species....
Beaver dams may slow runoff State and federal officials, trying to keep more water in Cassia County, are considering bringing in some natural experts: beavers. "Beaver do better work than the Corps of Engineers," Mike Todd, regional wildlife habitat biologist with the Magic Valley Region of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, told the South Idaho Press. Water from snow melt tends to flow quickly through the southeast Idaho county, so fast that it doesn't have a chance to filter down to the aquifer or form pools that would remain through the dry summer months. "If you have a riparian system that needs to be repaired, beaver will bring back some stability," Todd said. "When drainages dry up, places with beaver ponds have water still available." Along with Todd, representatives of the U.S. Forest Service, Natural Resource Conservation Service, Mid-Snake Resource Conservation and Development Area, and other local soil and water conservation districts are discussing whether to transplant beavers to public land in the county....
Decades later, Leopold's outdoor wisdom still rings true Aldo Leopold's seminal work "A Sand County Almanac" is required reading for conservationists. It should be required reading for anyone who spends much time in the outdoors. I long have contended hunters and fishermen have more in common with environmentalists than either group believes. Books such as this represent a sort of middle ground of appreciation for the land. One oversized, coffee table edition of "A Sand County Almanac" (which is never out of print though it was written more than 50 years ago), is beautifully illustrated with full-page color photographs and contains an introduction by noted conservationist Kenneth Brower. He suggests that if there are "sacred texts - literary cornerstones" for environmentalists, this is one of them. Leopold (1887-1948) worked for the U.S. Forest Service, was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and was a noted conservationist. The Aldo Leopold Foundation is located in Baraboo, Wis., and there is a Leopold Education Project in St. Paul, Minn. He is not forgotten....
Lead poisoning in cattle threatens rancher's future A single can of paint in Don Koster's pasture could put the Ottawa County rancher out of business. Twenty-seven head of cattle belonging to Koster have died from lead poisoning in the past two weeks. Koster said he wasn't aware of the rusting paint can when he bought the pasture 10 years ago and didn't discover it until cattle began turning up dead earlier this month. "It's flat devastating," said Koster, who had 250 head in that pasture and must test them all at $15 each. "It could have happened to anybody." Officials say the blood tests will reveal which cattle, if any, have high levels of lead in their system. Those carrying too much lead won't be slaughtered for meat, so there is no risk to consumers. "The owner is doing the right thing by looking at the animals' blood level to ensure they do not show abnormal levels of lead," said Fred Oehme, a veterinary toxicologist at Kansas State University. "Normal cattle carry lead. It's a matter of dose." Lead poisoning is relatively uncommon in cattle, said Russell Van Meter, a veterinarian at Sunflower Veterinary Services in Minneapolis, Kan....
Roy Moore challenges tracking of mad cow Former Chief Justice Roy Moore, whose fight to put a Ten Commandments monument in the state courthouse led to his ouster, is challenging state and federal officials on another issue — tracking livestock to deter mad cow disease. Moore opposes such tracking, saying it represents unprecedented government intrusion into the right to own animals. He says an identification system — first for cattle and then for all types of livestock — is "more identifiable with communism than free enterprise." But with the third confirmed case of mad cow disease in the United States turning up recently in Alabama, critics say Moore is embarrassing the state while trying to run as a political outsider against Republican Gov. Bob Riley in the GOP's June 6 primary. Moore, whose anti-tracking position is shared by others nationally, finds the timing of Alabama's first mad cow case curious. It was announced as a bill moved through the Legislature to implement an animal identification system consistent with any developed by federal agriculture officials....
Ranchers file lawsuit against the packers A class action lawsuit was filed by several ranchers that claim United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials were not qualified enough to write an accurate market report on cattle prices. Some of the largest meatpackers in the nation want the report excluded from a federal trial that begins this week in South Dakota. Ranchers have said that meatpackers took advantage of the new mandatory price reporting law in 2001 to artificially lower prices for live cattle. Kansas feedlot operator Mike Callicrate says the USDA’s price reporting was flawed, but that doesn’t account for the 40 million dollars that he claims packers stole from cattle producers. “Our view of the law is it doesn’t matter if the packers knew or didn’t know or whether the USDA was messing up or not. The packers made money unfairly off of misreporting information and they should repay the producers,” said Callicrate in an interview with a South Dakota farm braodcaster. Callicrate believes the case is narrow and it shows the power of the big packers....
Cattle Producers Will Work Together to Remedy Supreme Court’s Pickett Decision Independent cattle producers across the United States were dealt a temporary setback Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court (Court) denied plaintiffs in the Pickett v Tyson Fresh Meats case the opportunity to appeal a lower court’s decision in favor of major meatpackers. “Recently, 36 cattle-producer groups – including R-CALF – asked the Supreme Court to review this case, and we believe this decision by the Court could profoundly undermine the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 (PSA),” said Randy Stevenson, a Wyoming feedlot operator who co-chairs R-CALF USA’s Marketing Committee. “While R-CALF is disappointed with this development, we’re not unprepared. Stevenson said both the executive and judicial branches of government have come up short in response to producer concerns about PSA. “It’s long past time to legislatively address this failure,” he continued. “Monday’s Court decision has reinvigorated producers around the country, and we will work together to pursue a legislative remedy that will clarify what Congress intended when it passed the Act back in 1921. “We especially want the Packers and Stockyards Act to be interpreted literally – to mean the same thing it did in 1921,” urged Stevenson. “Our industry must aggressively work together to accomplish this effort....
Forest Service looks beyond timber sales for dollars The lure of money is shaping the nation's 155 national forests: more advertising, more fees, more roads to draw timber sales and lumber mill jobs. The Bush administration also wants to sell more than 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools in 41 states. The land sales, ranging from less than an acre to more than 1,000 acres, are expected to generate $800 million and would be the largest sale of forest land in decades. The Forest Service also hopes to raise money by allowing corporate advertisers to put up logos and banners at ski resorts, marinas or other buildings as well at events such as races, competitions and festivals held in national forests. The agency, part of the Agriculture Department, is also planning to conduct more frequent appraisals of 14,500 private cabins allowed in national forests the past 90 years, mainly in California, Oregon and Washington. Environmentalists are alarmed....
National Forest sale would be buyers' boon It could all be yours, for a price, under President's Bush's plan to sell an estimated 175,000 acres of National Forest land in Missouri and 34 other states to sustain a fund for rural schools and roads. The idea has drawn the wrath of everyone from conservationists to Missouri Republican members of Congress who say the state would get a paltry return for the sale. But the proposal promises to be hugely popular with one particular group - buyers. Rural property is in high demand in states such as Missouri, where up to 21,566 acres of Mark Twain National Forest could be put on the block. Real estate agents and landowners said the forest land would go quickly - and for a high price. "Land is just snapped up in a heartbeat around here unless they've got an incredible price on it," said Clete Baxter, a real estate agent who recently quickly sold 10 acres for $5,499 an acre near one of the Mark Twain parcels southeast of Columbia that could be for sale. U.S. Forest Service officials said they have heard from people who want the land - commonly in 40-acre parcels or more - for hunting, farming, residential or investment purposes. Adjoining landowners also want it, they said....
Bikers beware: Officials cracking down on illegal mountain bike use A mountain bike ride on the wrong side of the Blue Mountain Recreation Area could end up being a bit pricey. The U. S. Forest Service announced in an open letter last week that it will immediately begin enforcing a horse- and hiker-only rule on all trails north of Blue Mountain Road in the recreation area. “We have counted on signing, voluntary compliance and peer pressure to enforce this rule,” said Missoula District Ranger Maggie Pittman in the letter. “Unfortunately, these methods don't seem to be working. “The signs have been removed and vandalized, and the trail is being used by mountain bikers,” she said. Bikers caught illegally riding there could now end up paying a $150 fine, plus a $25 processing fee. The Blue Mountain National Recreation Trail has been designated a horse and hiker trail since its inception in the 1970s....
New Rules Rein In Off-Road Riders Spurred by homeowners tired of the noise, dust and environmental destruction, Riverside County on Tuesday approved a crackdown on off-road vehicle use on private property, and neighboring San Bernardino County may soon adopt its own restrictions. The off-roading limits have slowly gained political support in the fast-growing counties, where housing developments are encroaching on once-remote deserts and mountains that are popular destinations for Southern California dirt-bikers and other all-terrain-vehicle enthusiasts. The restrictions in Riverside County, which the Board of Supervisors approved 4 to 1, follow two years of protracted debate and will limit riding times and the number of vehicles residents can ride on their property. Supervisors also approved strict new noise limits, although they apply as much to garage bands as they do to dune buggies....
Road policy crosses public lands A new federal policy addressing ownership of thousands of miles of roads crisscrossing public land includes rights of way in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who’s leaving office, has directed her agencies to apply a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling nationwide when deciding whether local governments or individuals have valid claims to roadways across federal land. The policy is producing warnings of more conflicts, lawsuits, and trails in national parks and wilderness morphing into motorways. Some roads are present in the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, said Sellar-Baker, who added that those avenues are typically used as in-holdings for people who want legal access to their private property. At the core of the conflict is an 1866 mining law, known as Revised Statute 2477, that allowed local governments to claim rights of way across federal land. When the law was repealed in 1976, Congress allowed states and counties to keep using traditional highways. Left unresolved were disagreements over whether thousands of miles of dirt paths and trails qualify as roads. In 1997, Congress, wrangling over changes to the law, imposed a moratorium on approval of claims. That left places like Moffat County in northwestern Colorado with no recourse when federal agencies closed roads traveled since the 1880s by ranchers and others, said Jeff Comstock, the county’s natural resources director....
Drought spurs fears of active wildfire season A persistent drought, coupled with unseasonably high temperatures and gusty winds, have led to a record number of wildfires this year, and weather and fire officials say conditions are ripe for more activity this spring. From January 1 through March 22, more than 17,000 wildfires have been reported, with 1.5 million-plus acres burned across the country, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The number of fires eclipses the five-year average of slightly more than 11,000 fires for the same period. The acreage burned this year is triple the 549,866 acres of 2000, the previous high in the last six years. Weather and fire officials said they fear what has occurred in Texas and Oklahoma, where the greatest damage has been reported so far this year, could be a preview of what is possible for wide swaths of the Southwest and Great Plains over the next few months....
Condor nest spotted in Big Sur The first California condor nest seen in a century in Monterey County was spotted by a wildlife biologist Monday in a hollow redwood tree on the Big Sur Coast. The discovery is an important milestone in the effort to reintroduce condors into the wild, said Kelly Sorenson, executive director of the Ventana Wildlife Society. The society has been releasing condors raised in captivity on the Big Sur Coast since 1996 and at Pinnacles National Monument since 2004. The nesting pair was seen and photographed by Wildlife Society condor biologist Joseph Brandt after he saw the birds had apparently taken up housekeeping in the redwood tree. The condors were identified as a 9-year-old male, Condor 167, and an 8-year-old female, Condor 190....
Judge tosses suit seeking to halt pig kills on Santa Cruz Island A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to stop the killing of thousands of feral pigs on Santa Cruz Island as part of an effort to protect endangered island foxes. U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian said he disagrees with a Santa Barbara County businessman's claim that the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy, which co-own the island, rushed to eradicate the animals before developing an environmental plan. “The policy and scientific question of how to restore Santa Cruz Island has existed for years, as the number of Santa Cruz Island foxes declined ... and rare and endemic plant species on the Island began disappearing,” Tevrizian said in a ruling released on Tuesday. Both organizations have said that the pigs, which were introduced by ranchers in the 1850s, are destroying the island – part of the Channel Islands National Park – by causing erosion, uprooting native plants and helping spread invasive species....
Beaver dams may slow runoff State and federal officials, trying to keep more water in Cassia County, are considering bringing in some natural experts: beavers. "Beaver do better work than the Corps of Engineers," Mike Todd, regional wildlife habitat biologist with the Magic Valley Region of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, told the South Idaho Press. Water from snow melt tends to flow quickly through the southeast Idaho county, so fast that it doesn't have a chance to filter down to the aquifer or form pools that would remain through the dry summer months. "If you have a riparian system that needs to be repaired, beaver will bring back some stability," Todd said. "When drainages dry up, places with beaver ponds have water still available." Along with Todd, representatives of the U.S. Forest Service, Natural Resource Conservation Service, Mid-Snake Resource Conservation and Development Area, and other local soil and water conservation districts are discussing whether to transplant beavers to public land in the county....
Decades later, Leopold's outdoor wisdom still rings true Aldo Leopold's seminal work "A Sand County Almanac" is required reading for conservationists. It should be required reading for anyone who spends much time in the outdoors. I long have contended hunters and fishermen have more in common with environmentalists than either group believes. Books such as this represent a sort of middle ground of appreciation for the land. One oversized, coffee table edition of "A Sand County Almanac" (which is never out of print though it was written more than 50 years ago), is beautifully illustrated with full-page color photographs and contains an introduction by noted conservationist Kenneth Brower. He suggests that if there are "sacred texts - literary cornerstones" for environmentalists, this is one of them. Leopold (1887-1948) worked for the U.S. Forest Service, was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and was a noted conservationist. The Aldo Leopold Foundation is located in Baraboo, Wis., and there is a Leopold Education Project in St. Paul, Minn. He is not forgotten....
Lead poisoning in cattle threatens rancher's future A single can of paint in Don Koster's pasture could put the Ottawa County rancher out of business. Twenty-seven head of cattle belonging to Koster have died from lead poisoning in the past two weeks. Koster said he wasn't aware of the rusting paint can when he bought the pasture 10 years ago and didn't discover it until cattle began turning up dead earlier this month. "It's flat devastating," said Koster, who had 250 head in that pasture and must test them all at $15 each. "It could have happened to anybody." Officials say the blood tests will reveal which cattle, if any, have high levels of lead in their system. Those carrying too much lead won't be slaughtered for meat, so there is no risk to consumers. "The owner is doing the right thing by looking at the animals' blood level to ensure they do not show abnormal levels of lead," said Fred Oehme, a veterinary toxicologist at Kansas State University. "Normal cattle carry lead. It's a matter of dose." Lead poisoning is relatively uncommon in cattle, said Russell Van Meter, a veterinarian at Sunflower Veterinary Services in Minneapolis, Kan....
Roy Moore challenges tracking of mad cow Former Chief Justice Roy Moore, whose fight to put a Ten Commandments monument in the state courthouse led to his ouster, is challenging state and federal officials on another issue — tracking livestock to deter mad cow disease. Moore opposes such tracking, saying it represents unprecedented government intrusion into the right to own animals. He says an identification system — first for cattle and then for all types of livestock — is "more identifiable with communism than free enterprise." But with the third confirmed case of mad cow disease in the United States turning up recently in Alabama, critics say Moore is embarrassing the state while trying to run as a political outsider against Republican Gov. Bob Riley in the GOP's June 6 primary. Moore, whose anti-tracking position is shared by others nationally, finds the timing of Alabama's first mad cow case curious. It was announced as a bill moved through the Legislature to implement an animal identification system consistent with any developed by federal agriculture officials....
Ranchers file lawsuit against the packers A class action lawsuit was filed by several ranchers that claim United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials were not qualified enough to write an accurate market report on cattle prices. Some of the largest meatpackers in the nation want the report excluded from a federal trial that begins this week in South Dakota. Ranchers have said that meatpackers took advantage of the new mandatory price reporting law in 2001 to artificially lower prices for live cattle. Kansas feedlot operator Mike Callicrate says the USDA’s price reporting was flawed, but that doesn’t account for the 40 million dollars that he claims packers stole from cattle producers. “Our view of the law is it doesn’t matter if the packers knew or didn’t know or whether the USDA was messing up or not. The packers made money unfairly off of misreporting information and they should repay the producers,” said Callicrate in an interview with a South Dakota farm braodcaster. Callicrate believes the case is narrow and it shows the power of the big packers....
Cattle Producers Will Work Together to Remedy Supreme Court’s Pickett Decision Independent cattle producers across the United States were dealt a temporary setback Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court (Court) denied plaintiffs in the Pickett v Tyson Fresh Meats case the opportunity to appeal a lower court’s decision in favor of major meatpackers. “Recently, 36 cattle-producer groups – including R-CALF – asked the Supreme Court to review this case, and we believe this decision by the Court could profoundly undermine the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 (PSA),” said Randy Stevenson, a Wyoming feedlot operator who co-chairs R-CALF USA’s Marketing Committee. “While R-CALF is disappointed with this development, we’re not unprepared. Stevenson said both the executive and judicial branches of government have come up short in response to producer concerns about PSA. “It’s long past time to legislatively address this failure,” he continued. “Monday’s Court decision has reinvigorated producers around the country, and we will work together to pursue a legislative remedy that will clarify what Congress intended when it passed the Act back in 1921. “We especially want the Packers and Stockyards Act to be interpreted literally – to mean the same thing it did in 1921,” urged Stevenson. “Our industry must aggressively work together to accomplish this effort....
FLE
Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement
When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers. The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates. Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it ''a piece of legislation that's vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people." But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a ''signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law. In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties." Bush wrote: ''The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information ..." The statement represented the latest in a string of high-profile instances in which Bush has cited his constitutional authority to bypass a law....
Two lawmakers demand Bush obey laws
Two senior Democratic House members yesterday demanded that President Bush withdraw his assertion that he can ignore portions of the USA Patriot Act calling on him to provide periodic reports to Congress on how new law-enforcement tactics are being used. Representatives Jane Harman of California and John Conyers of Michigan -- the ranking Democrats on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, respectively -- sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asking that Bush follow the law. ''We ask that the administration immediately rescind this statement and abide by the law," the lawmakers wrote. ''Many members who supported the final law did so based upon the guarantee of additional reporting and oversight. The administration cannot, after the fact, unilaterally repeal provisions of the law implementing such oversight." After some lawmakers raised concerns that the Patriot Act may pose a threat to civil liberties, Congress added a series of new oversight provisions to it. The law requires the Justice Department to keep track of how the FBI is using its expanded powers to monitor suspects and seize papers during counterterrorism investigations. The law required the administration to give Congress that information by certain dates. But after Bush signed the Patriot Act reauthorization on March 9, he issued a signing statement -- an official document in which a president lays out his understanding of the law -- asserting that he had the authority to withhold the information from Congress if he decided that disclosing it would interfere with foreign relations, national security, or executive branch operations. The signing statement, which went largely unnoted until The Boston Globe wrote about it last week, echoed a similar dispute three months ago when Congress passed a bill outlawing the torture of any detainee in US custody. Bush signed the antitorture law, but he also issued a statement asserting that he had the power, as commander in chief, to bypass the law if he decided that using aggressive interrogation techniques was necessary to protect national security. While previous presidents occasionally issued signing statements, Bush has done so more often, legal scholars say. The Bush White House has issued more than 100 signing statements that called into question more than 500 provisions of new laws....
FBI on trial, too, alongside Moussaoui
But after federal prosecutors finished laying out their case this week, even those who strongly supported an aggressive prosecution may wonder whether the trial has shed as much light on Moussaoui's culpability as it has on the missteps and mistakes by U.S. law enforcement agencies. The testimony of two prosecution witnesses, in particular, has brought renewed and unwelcome attention to how the FBI dealt with early warning signs. The government presentation, which ended Thursday, did not go smoothly. First, the prosecution nearly collapsed after the disclosure that a federal transportation lawyer working with the prosecutors had improperly coached aviation witnesses. Under cross-examination by Edward MacMahon, a court-appointed lawyer for Moussaoui, Samit acknowledged that after the attacks, he had written strongly worded reports saying his superiors had improperly blocked his attempts to investigate Moussaoui. He added that he was convinced that Moussaoui was a terrorist involved in an imminent hijacking plot. That senior FBI officials drag- ged their feet on investigating Moussaoui was not new. But it had never been presented as vividly as a reluctant Samit was obliged to do under cross-examination. He offered a devastating comment from a supervisor who said pressing too hard to obtain a warrant for Moussaoui would hurt his career. Samit also wrote that his superiors did not act because they were guilty of "criminal negligence" and were gambling that Moussaoui had little to offer. Samit was followed to the witness stand by Michael Rolince, a retired FBI counterterrorism supervisor who similarly recited a list of actions that the bureau could have taken if Moussaoui had told them about al Qaeda plans to take over planes with knives and fly into buildings. But when MacMahon began reading from a document detailing many suspicions about Moussaoui's intentions, Rolince interrupted, "Can I ask what document that's coming from?" MacMahon obliged, noting that it was an urgent memorandum written by Samit on Aug. 18, 2001, hoping to attract the attention of headquarters. Rolince had inadvertently underlined that the agent's suspicions had never risen to his attention....
Moussaoui's Guilt: Less Profound Than the FBI's Own Negligence?
FBI Special Agent Harry Samit's testimony yesterday at the Zacarias Moussaoui trial adds just one more piece of evidence to a growing list of incidents showing what Samit himself labeled "criminal negligence." Samit warned FBI headquarters on August 21, 2001, that Moussaoui wanted to hijack a plane "for the purpose of seizing control of the aircraft." Shortly thereafter he learned from French intelligence that Moussaoui had been a recruiter for a Chechyna group with ties to Osama bin Laden. Higher ups in the FBI blocked his efforts to get a search warrant, and edited out of his reports any reference to the French. Samit's testimony is but one of a growing list of incidents involving FBI's failure to take action on information it had received warning of an attack, while at the same time deliberately downplaying the possibilities of an attack. According to Bureau translators, agents learned in April that bin Laden was planning an attack involving hijacked airliners. Why this didn't sound the alarm, nobody knows. The matter disappeared into the bureaucracy. The role of the Bureau in muzzling Sibel Edmonds, the interpreter who tried to blow the whistle on the Bureau's translation operations pertaining to 9-11, is well known. The FBI and Justice Department fought to prevent Edmonds from giving public testimony and so far the courts have backed them up. The most startling occurrence involves the FBI's inability to detect the presence of the two hijackers who flew into Los Angles in 2000, and lived openly in San Diego. They socialized around town and even rented an apartment from the FBI's key informant in the Muslim community there....If the American public ever gets the entire truth on the events leading up to 911, we will most likely find that the problem wasn't the lack of a Patriot Act, but the incompetence and political correctness of our Federal officials.
Testers Slip Radioactive Materials Over Borders
Undercover Congressional investigators successfully smuggled into the United States enough radioactive material to make two dirty bombs, even after it set off alarms on radiation detectors installed at border checkpoints, a new report says. The test, conducted in December by the Government Accountability Office, demonstrated the mixed progress by the Department of Homeland Security, among other federal agencies, in trying to prevent terrorists from smuggling radioactive material into the United States. Nationally, at a cost so far of about $286 million, about 60 percent of all containerized commercial goods entering the United States by truck or ship and 77 percent of all private cars are now screened for radioactive material. But flaws in the inspection procedures and limitations with the equipment mean that nuclear materials may still be able to be sent illegally into the country through seaports or land borders, the study found. And because the program for installing radiation detectors is far behind schedule, many border crossing points, including many seaports, still have no detection equipment, the report says. In the test case, undercover investigators bought a small amount of radioactive material, most likely cesium. Then on Dec. 15, they drove across the border at undisclosed locations from Canada and Mexico, intentionally picking spots where the detection equipment had been installed. The alarms went off in both locations, and the investigators were pulled aside for questioning. In both cases, they showed the agents from the Customs and Border Protection agency forged import licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, based on an image of the real document they found on the Internet....
DOJ: NSA Could've Monitored Lawyers' Calls
The National Security Agency could have legally monitored ordinarily confidential communications between doctors and patients or attorneys and their clients, the Justice Department said Friday of its controversial warrantless surveillance program. Responding to questions from Congress, the department also said that it sees no prohibition to using information collected under the NSA's program in court. Because collecting foreign intelligence information without a warrant does not violate the Fourth Amendment and because the Terrorist Surveillance Program is lawful, there appears to be no legal barrier against introducing this evidence in a criminal prosecution," the department said in responses to questions from lawmakers released Friday evening. The department said that considerations, including whether classified information could be disclosed, must be weighed. In classified court filings, the Justice Department has responded to questions about whether information from the government's warrantless surveillance program was used to prosecute terror suspects. Defense attorneys are hoping to use that information to challenge the cases against their clients. Since the program was disclosed in December, some skeptical lawmakers have investigated the Bush administration's legal footing, raising questions including whether the program could capture doctor-patient and attorney-client communications. Such communications normally receive special legal protections. "Although the program does not specifically target the communications of attorneys or physicians, calls involving such persons would not be categorically excluded from interception," the department said....
At court, a terror case rife with tough issues
The case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver in Afghanistan, has the potential to become one of the most important US Supreme Court decisions of this generation. It will test the scope of presidential power in the war on terror. It may clarify how detained Al Qaeda suspects are treated by the US. More broadly, it challenges the justices to further define the balance of power among the three branches of government during times of national emergency. But before the high court takes up those weighty issues of constitutional law, it must decide a more basic question: whether it has jurisdiction to hear the case. If the justices decide the case is not yet ripe for their review, Mr. Hamdan's appeal ends there, at least for the time being. That is the unusual posture surrounding the Hamdan case on the eve of oral arguments Tuesday - litigation so multilayered that the high court has taken the unusual step of allotting 90 minutes for oral arguments, a half hour more than usual....
Terrorist Surveillance Act Introduced in Senate
A bill recently introduced in the Senate would legalize warrantless wiretapping at the President's discretion. Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH) introduced the bill, popularly named the Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006, on March 16, 2006. The bill was co-sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME). According to a press release by Senator DeWine, the bill would allow the President to authorize wiretapping on international communications by American citizens suspected of being affiliated with a terrorist organization. All the President has to have is probable cause and a belief that surveillance of the individual is necessary to protect national security. The provisions in this bill are sweeping. The President alone can determine what American citizens are potential threats to national security. There is no authorization under this bill from Congress or a court. The bill would allow the President to conduct surveillance for up to 45 days without a warrant, after which the President can reauthorize surveillance under one of two instances. The President must either obtain a warrant after compiling enough evidence to do so through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or the Attorney General must certify, under oath, when the President doesn’t have sufficient evidence for a warrant that continued surveillance is necessary. This bill would allow the President to conduct warrantless wiretapping in order to obtain the necessary evidence to get a warrant. This bill would allow unheard of Executive Power in conducting surveillance on Americans. Essentially, as long as the Attorney General accepts the decisions of the President, surveillance of Americans could go on indefinitely. These are the safeguards advocated by the sponsors of this bill....
The Letter of the Law
In the dark days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a small group of lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department began meeting to debate a number of novel legal strategies to help prevent another attack. Soon after, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to begin conducting electronic eavesdropping on terrorism suspects in the United States, including American citizens, without court approval. Meeting in the FBI's state-of-the-art command center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the lawyers talked with senior FBI officials about using the same legal authority to conduct physical searches of homes and businesses of terrorism suspects--also without court approval, one current and one former government official tell U.S. News. "There was a fair amount of discussion at Justice on the warrantless physical search issue," says a former senior FBI official. "Discussions about--if [the searches] happened--where would the information go, and would it taint cases." FBI Director Robert Mueller was alarmed by the proposal, the two officials said, and pushed back hard against it. "Mueller was personally very concerned," one official says, "not only because of the blowback issue but also because of the legal and constitutional questions raised by warrantless physical searches." FBI spokesman John Miller said none of the FBI's senior staff are aware of any such discussions and added that the bureau has not conducted "physical searches of any location without consent or a judicial order."....
Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement
When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers. The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates. Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it ''a piece of legislation that's vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people." But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a ''signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law. In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties." Bush wrote: ''The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information ..." The statement represented the latest in a string of high-profile instances in which Bush has cited his constitutional authority to bypass a law....
Two lawmakers demand Bush obey laws
Two senior Democratic House members yesterday demanded that President Bush withdraw his assertion that he can ignore portions of the USA Patriot Act calling on him to provide periodic reports to Congress on how new law-enforcement tactics are being used. Representatives Jane Harman of California and John Conyers of Michigan -- the ranking Democrats on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, respectively -- sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asking that Bush follow the law. ''We ask that the administration immediately rescind this statement and abide by the law," the lawmakers wrote. ''Many members who supported the final law did so based upon the guarantee of additional reporting and oversight. The administration cannot, after the fact, unilaterally repeal provisions of the law implementing such oversight." After some lawmakers raised concerns that the Patriot Act may pose a threat to civil liberties, Congress added a series of new oversight provisions to it. The law requires the Justice Department to keep track of how the FBI is using its expanded powers to monitor suspects and seize papers during counterterrorism investigations. The law required the administration to give Congress that information by certain dates. But after Bush signed the Patriot Act reauthorization on March 9, he issued a signing statement -- an official document in which a president lays out his understanding of the law -- asserting that he had the authority to withhold the information from Congress if he decided that disclosing it would interfere with foreign relations, national security, or executive branch operations. The signing statement, which went largely unnoted until The Boston Globe wrote about it last week, echoed a similar dispute three months ago when Congress passed a bill outlawing the torture of any detainee in US custody. Bush signed the antitorture law, but he also issued a statement asserting that he had the power, as commander in chief, to bypass the law if he decided that using aggressive interrogation techniques was necessary to protect national security. While previous presidents occasionally issued signing statements, Bush has done so more often, legal scholars say. The Bush White House has issued more than 100 signing statements that called into question more than 500 provisions of new laws....
FBI on trial, too, alongside Moussaoui
But after federal prosecutors finished laying out their case this week, even those who strongly supported an aggressive prosecution may wonder whether the trial has shed as much light on Moussaoui's culpability as it has on the missteps and mistakes by U.S. law enforcement agencies. The testimony of two prosecution witnesses, in particular, has brought renewed and unwelcome attention to how the FBI dealt with early warning signs. The government presentation, which ended Thursday, did not go smoothly. First, the prosecution nearly collapsed after the disclosure that a federal transportation lawyer working with the prosecutors had improperly coached aviation witnesses. Under cross-examination by Edward MacMahon, a court-appointed lawyer for Moussaoui, Samit acknowledged that after the attacks, he had written strongly worded reports saying his superiors had improperly blocked his attempts to investigate Moussaoui. He added that he was convinced that Moussaoui was a terrorist involved in an imminent hijacking plot. That senior FBI officials drag- ged their feet on investigating Moussaoui was not new. But it had never been presented as vividly as a reluctant Samit was obliged to do under cross-examination. He offered a devastating comment from a supervisor who said pressing too hard to obtain a warrant for Moussaoui would hurt his career. Samit also wrote that his superiors did not act because they were guilty of "criminal negligence" and were gambling that Moussaoui had little to offer. Samit was followed to the witness stand by Michael Rolince, a retired FBI counterterrorism supervisor who similarly recited a list of actions that the bureau could have taken if Moussaoui had told them about al Qaeda plans to take over planes with knives and fly into buildings. But when MacMahon began reading from a document detailing many suspicions about Moussaoui's intentions, Rolince interrupted, "Can I ask what document that's coming from?" MacMahon obliged, noting that it was an urgent memorandum written by Samit on Aug. 18, 2001, hoping to attract the attention of headquarters. Rolince had inadvertently underlined that the agent's suspicions had never risen to his attention....
Moussaoui's Guilt: Less Profound Than the FBI's Own Negligence?
FBI Special Agent Harry Samit's testimony yesterday at the Zacarias Moussaoui trial adds just one more piece of evidence to a growing list of incidents showing what Samit himself labeled "criminal negligence." Samit warned FBI headquarters on August 21, 2001, that Moussaoui wanted to hijack a plane "for the purpose of seizing control of the aircraft." Shortly thereafter he learned from French intelligence that Moussaoui had been a recruiter for a Chechyna group with ties to Osama bin Laden. Higher ups in the FBI blocked his efforts to get a search warrant, and edited out of his reports any reference to the French. Samit's testimony is but one of a growing list of incidents involving FBI's failure to take action on information it had received warning of an attack, while at the same time deliberately downplaying the possibilities of an attack. According to Bureau translators, agents learned in April that bin Laden was planning an attack involving hijacked airliners. Why this didn't sound the alarm, nobody knows. The matter disappeared into the bureaucracy. The role of the Bureau in muzzling Sibel Edmonds, the interpreter who tried to blow the whistle on the Bureau's translation operations pertaining to 9-11, is well known. The FBI and Justice Department fought to prevent Edmonds from giving public testimony and so far the courts have backed them up. The most startling occurrence involves the FBI's inability to detect the presence of the two hijackers who flew into Los Angles in 2000, and lived openly in San Diego. They socialized around town and even rented an apartment from the FBI's key informant in the Muslim community there....If the American public ever gets the entire truth on the events leading up to 911, we will most likely find that the problem wasn't the lack of a Patriot Act, but the incompetence and political correctness of our Federal officials.
Testers Slip Radioactive Materials Over Borders
Undercover Congressional investigators successfully smuggled into the United States enough radioactive material to make two dirty bombs, even after it set off alarms on radiation detectors installed at border checkpoints, a new report says. The test, conducted in December by the Government Accountability Office, demonstrated the mixed progress by the Department of Homeland Security, among other federal agencies, in trying to prevent terrorists from smuggling radioactive material into the United States. Nationally, at a cost so far of about $286 million, about 60 percent of all containerized commercial goods entering the United States by truck or ship and 77 percent of all private cars are now screened for radioactive material. But flaws in the inspection procedures and limitations with the equipment mean that nuclear materials may still be able to be sent illegally into the country through seaports or land borders, the study found. And because the program for installing radiation detectors is far behind schedule, many border crossing points, including many seaports, still have no detection equipment, the report says. In the test case, undercover investigators bought a small amount of radioactive material, most likely cesium. Then on Dec. 15, they drove across the border at undisclosed locations from Canada and Mexico, intentionally picking spots where the detection equipment had been installed. The alarms went off in both locations, and the investigators were pulled aside for questioning. In both cases, they showed the agents from the Customs and Border Protection agency forged import licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, based on an image of the real document they found on the Internet....
DOJ: NSA Could've Monitored Lawyers' Calls
The National Security Agency could have legally monitored ordinarily confidential communications between doctors and patients or attorneys and their clients, the Justice Department said Friday of its controversial warrantless surveillance program. Responding to questions from Congress, the department also said that it sees no prohibition to using information collected under the NSA's program in court. Because collecting foreign intelligence information without a warrant does not violate the Fourth Amendment and because the Terrorist Surveillance Program is lawful, there appears to be no legal barrier against introducing this evidence in a criminal prosecution," the department said in responses to questions from lawmakers released Friday evening. The department said that considerations, including whether classified information could be disclosed, must be weighed. In classified court filings, the Justice Department has responded to questions about whether information from the government's warrantless surveillance program was used to prosecute terror suspects. Defense attorneys are hoping to use that information to challenge the cases against their clients. Since the program was disclosed in December, some skeptical lawmakers have investigated the Bush administration's legal footing, raising questions including whether the program could capture doctor-patient and attorney-client communications. Such communications normally receive special legal protections. "Although the program does not specifically target the communications of attorneys or physicians, calls involving such persons would not be categorically excluded from interception," the department said....
At court, a terror case rife with tough issues
The case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver in Afghanistan, has the potential to become one of the most important US Supreme Court decisions of this generation. It will test the scope of presidential power in the war on terror. It may clarify how detained Al Qaeda suspects are treated by the US. More broadly, it challenges the justices to further define the balance of power among the three branches of government during times of national emergency. But before the high court takes up those weighty issues of constitutional law, it must decide a more basic question: whether it has jurisdiction to hear the case. If the justices decide the case is not yet ripe for their review, Mr. Hamdan's appeal ends there, at least for the time being. That is the unusual posture surrounding the Hamdan case on the eve of oral arguments Tuesday - litigation so multilayered that the high court has taken the unusual step of allotting 90 minutes for oral arguments, a half hour more than usual....
Terrorist Surveillance Act Introduced in Senate
A bill recently introduced in the Senate would legalize warrantless wiretapping at the President's discretion. Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH) introduced the bill, popularly named the Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006, on March 16, 2006. The bill was co-sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME). According to a press release by Senator DeWine, the bill would allow the President to authorize wiretapping on international communications by American citizens suspected of being affiliated with a terrorist organization. All the President has to have is probable cause and a belief that surveillance of the individual is necessary to protect national security. The provisions in this bill are sweeping. The President alone can determine what American citizens are potential threats to national security. There is no authorization under this bill from Congress or a court. The bill would allow the President to conduct surveillance for up to 45 days without a warrant, after which the President can reauthorize surveillance under one of two instances. The President must either obtain a warrant after compiling enough evidence to do so through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or the Attorney General must certify, under oath, when the President doesn’t have sufficient evidence for a warrant that continued surveillance is necessary. This bill would allow the President to conduct warrantless wiretapping in order to obtain the necessary evidence to get a warrant. This bill would allow unheard of Executive Power in conducting surveillance on Americans. Essentially, as long as the Attorney General accepts the decisions of the President, surveillance of Americans could go on indefinitely. These are the safeguards advocated by the sponsors of this bill....
The Letter of the Law
In the dark days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a small group of lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department began meeting to debate a number of novel legal strategies to help prevent another attack. Soon after, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to begin conducting electronic eavesdropping on terrorism suspects in the United States, including American citizens, without court approval. Meeting in the FBI's state-of-the-art command center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the lawyers talked with senior FBI officials about using the same legal authority to conduct physical searches of homes and businesses of terrorism suspects--also without court approval, one current and one former government official tell U.S. News. "There was a fair amount of discussion at Justice on the warrantless physical search issue," says a former senior FBI official. "Discussions about--if [the searches] happened--where would the information go, and would it taint cases." FBI Director Robert Mueller was alarmed by the proposal, the two officials said, and pushed back hard against it. "Mueller was personally very concerned," one official says, "not only because of the blowback issue but also because of the legal and constitutional questions raised by warrantless physical searches." FBI spokesman John Miller said none of the FBI's senior staff are aware of any such discussions and added that the bureau has not conducted "physical searches of any location without consent or a judicial order."....
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