Death penalty sought for 3 tied to border group

Prosecutors said Thursday they plan to seek the death penalty against the leader of an anti-illegal immigrant group and two others charged in an Arizona home invasion that left a 9-year-old girl and her father dead. The trio are alleged to have dressed as law enforcement officers and forced their way into a home about 10 miles north of the Mexican border in rural Arivaca on May 30, wounding a woman and fatally shooting her husband and their daughter. A notice of intent to seek the death penalty against Shawna Forde, Jason Eugene Bush and Albert Robert Gaxiola was filed Monday, Deputy Pima County attorney Kellie Johnson said. Forde is the leader of the Minutemen American Defense border watch group. She's accused of planning the attack to help fund her anti-immigrant operations. Prosecutors argued that the three committed the crime in a cold and calculated manner, that they did it for money and had previous convictions for serious offenses...AtlanticCity

Two convicted for refusal to decrypt data (UK)

Two people have been successfully prosecuted for refusing to provide authorities with their encryption keys, resulting in landmark convictions that may have carried jail sentences of up to five years. The government said today it does not know their fate. The power to force people to unscramble their data was granted to authorities in October 2007. Between 1 April, 2008 and 31 March this year the first two convictions were obtained. The disclosure was made by Sir Christopher Rose, the government's Chief Surveillance Commissioner, in his recent annual report. The former High Court judge did not provide details of the crimes being investigated in the case of either individual - neither of whom were necessarily suspects - nor of the sentences they received. The Crown Prosecution Service said it was unable to track down information on the legal milestones without the defendants' names. Failure to comply with a section 49 notice carries a sentence of up to two years jail plus fines. Failure to comply during a national security investigation carries up to five years jail...TheRegister

Redford joins call to conserve the West

During a gathering of politicos, analysts and policy wonks at the Colorado History Museum on Thursday, celebrity Robert Redford wowed the crowd with his thoughts on how to save the West. Sponsored by Project New West, the day-long gathering of several hundred people listened to lectures and discussed ways of expanding and solidifying the West's new-found political power. Seated on stage in two leather chairs, Redford and U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., informally chatted about Redford's rise from movie actor to high-profile environmental champion. "I think the New West should return to the Old West, when there was an emphasis on communities, on families and neighbors," Redford said, comfortable in bluejeans and a blue shirt. "Dams, all dams, should go away, the faster the better," he said. "The Colorado River today has only half the flow it used to have. "Time and resources are running out for the West. Compromises are needed. I hope we wake up before we lose it for our children." In his outspoken manner, Redford called the leaders of his home state, Utah, "retarded and no friends of the environment," although he had some praise for former Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican who recently resigned to become U.S. ambassador to China. Seated in the front row was Utah's delegation to the conference, including state Senate Minority Leader Patricia Jones...DenverPost

Having Children Brings High Carbon Impact

Having children is the surest way to send your carbon footprint soaring, according to a new study from statisticians at Oregon State University. The study found that having a child has an impact that far outweighs that of other energy-saving behaviors. Take, for example, a hypothetical American woman who switches to a more fuel-efficient car, drives less, recycles, installs more efficient light bulbs, and replaces her refrigerator and windows with energy-saving models. If she had two children, the researchers found, her carbon legacy would eventually rise to nearly 40 times what she had saved by those actions. “Clearly, the potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle,” the report states. The impact of children varies dramatically depending on geography: An American woman who has a baby will generate nearly seven times the carbon footprint of that of a Chinese woman who has a child, the study found...NYTimes

I hate to think about where this might lead.

Climate Change Measure Should Be Set Aside, U.S. Senators Say

The U.S. Senate should abandon efforts to pass legislation curbing greenhouse-gas emissions this year and concentrate on a narrower bill to require use of renewable energy, four Democratic lawmakers say. “The problem of doing both of them together is that it becomes too big of a lift,” Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas said in an interview last week. “I see the cap-and-trade being a real problem.” The resistance by Lincoln and her Senate colleagues undercuts President Barack Obama’s effort to win passage of legislation that would cap carbon dioxide emissions and establish a market for trading pollution allowances, said Peter Molinaro, the head of government affairs for Midland, Michigan- based Dow Chemical Co., which supports the measure. “Doing these energy provisions by themselves might make it more difficult to move the cap-and-trade legislation,” said Molinaro, who is based in Washington. “In this town if you split two measures, usually the second thing never gets done.” Ben Nelson of Nebraska and North Dakota Senators Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan joined Lincoln in suggesting that the climate measure be put off...Bloomberg

Obama moves to block road building in national forests

The Obama administration says it will defend a 2001 rule imposed by President Bill Clinton that blocked road construction and other development on tens of millions of acres of remote national forests. The administration's decision was contained in court papers filed Thursday in a case in Wyoming that could help settle the fate of remote federal forests. The administration is siding with environmentalists in the case. Conflicting court opinions have variously upheld and blocked the so-called Roadless Rule, which prohibited commercial logging, mining and other development on about 58 million acres of national forest in 38 states and Puerto Rico. A subsequent Bush administration rule had cleared the way for more commercial activity there. A spokesman for the Justice Department said the appeal notice, filed in U.S. District Court in Wyoming, meets a Friday deadline to preserve the government's right to pursue the appeal...AP

Obama EPA approves another mountaintop removal mine

The Obama administration late last week quietly approved one of six major mountaintop removal permits that were said to be undergoing close scrutiny by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Without announcing the move publicly, EPA gave the nod for the federal Army Corps of Engineers to issue a Clean Water Act permit for CONSOL Energy Inc.'s Peg Fork Surface Mine near Chattaroy in Mingo County. EPA approved all eight valley fill waste piles originally proposed by CONSOL, provided that additional water testing is done before six of those fills are constructed, agency officials said. Corps officials in Huntington approved the permit on Friday. Copies of key permit documents were not yet being made public, despite a promise from the Obama White House of increased transparency in the permit review process...WVGazette

Exxon Fined for Causing Bird Deaths

Exxon Mobil has agreed to pay $600,000 in penalties after approximately 85 migratory birds died of exposure to hydrocarbons at some of its natural gas facilities across the Midwest. The fine amounts to about $7,000 per dead bird. The oil major pleaded guilty to causing the deaths of waterfowl, hawks, owls and other protected species, which perished around natural gas well pits or water storage areas in Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas over the last five years. The deal was struck with the Department of Justice in a federal court in Denver. Exxon had been charged with violating a 1918 federal law designed to protect migratory birds...NYTimes

Enviro Groups Tread Lightly With Endangered Species Act in Appalachia

The last ice age turned the Appalachians into North America's Noah's Ark. The mountain peaks provided a last green refuge above the glaciers, drawing species from across the eastern half of continent. Some 10,000 years later, many have stayed, and the mountains are home to one of the highest concentrations of biodiversity -- from flying squirrels to freshwater mussels -- in the country. Just last month, biologists stumbled across an entire new genus of salamanders in Southern Appalachia, the first new vertebrate genus discovered in the United States in 50 years. Beneath that biodiversity sits 28.5 billion tons of anthracite coal, according to 1998 Department of Energy estimates. The mineral is so central to the region's identity and economy that West Virginia last month declared it the official state rock. The lucrative coal is obtained through mountaintop removal -- dynamiting the tops off the mountains and dumping the leftovers into mountain valleys and stream beds. Environmental groups say the practice is horribly destructive to the region's water, land and wildlife -- but they have been reluctant to use a powerful weapon, the Endangered Species Act, in fighting it. The few national groups that have tried have run up against a special species review process for coal mining, and most have avoided it entirely for fear of upsetting a fragile partnership with their regional blue-collar allies...NYTimes

The Earth Is Warming? Adjust the Thermostat

President Obama and the rest of the Group of 8 leaders decreed last month that the planet’s average temperature shall not rise more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit above today’s level. But what if Mother Earth didn’t get the memo? How do we stay cool in the future? Two options: Plan A. Keep talking about the weather. This has been the preferred approach for the past two decades in Western Europe, where leaders like to promise one another that they will keep the globe cool by drastically reducing carbon emissions. Then, when their countries’ emissions keep rising anyway, they convene to make new promises and swear that they really, really mean it this time. Plan B. Do something about the weather. Originally called geoengineering, this approach used to be dismissed as science fiction fantasies: cooling the planet with sun-blocking particles or shades; tinkering with clouds to make them more reflective; removing vast quantities of carbon from the atmosphere. Today this approach goes by the slightly less grandiose name of climate engineering, and it is looking more practical. Several recent reviews of these ideas conclude that cooling the planet would be technically feasible and economically affordable...NYTimes

Late Cindy Walker leaves songs to Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

Country artists have given songbooks to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. They’ve given hand-scrawled song manuscripts, as well, and guitars on which songs were written. But until now, no one has given the actual songs. Wednesday afternoon at the Hall’s Ford Theater, old and familiar songs like “You Don’t Know Me,” “Sugar Moon” and “Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)” rang out, heralding an unprecedented gift from the late Cindy Walker, who authored those compositions in life and who bequeathed them in death to the Hall. Museum director Kyle Young announced the gift Wednesday, at a ceremony that found Vince Gill and Grammy-nominated group the Time Jumpers performing Walker’s work. What does one do with 500 songs? Make “mailbox money,” for one thing. Royalties are divided between publisher and songwriter, and the Hall of Fame has already collected more than half a million dollars on two years’ worth of Walker’s share of royalties...Tennessean

Guitar legend Les Paul dies at age 94

Les Paul, the guitarist and inventor who changed the course of music with the electric guitar and multitrack recording and had a string of hits, many with wife Mary Ford, died on Thursday. He was 94. According to Gibson Guitar, Paul died of complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital. His family and friends were by his side. As an inventor, Paul helped bring about the rise of rock ‘n’ roll and multitrack recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the “tracks” in the finished recording. A tinkerer and musician since childhood, he experimented with guitar amplification for years before coming up in 1941 with what he called “The Log,” a four-by-four piece of wood strung with steel strings. “I went into a nightclub and played it. Of course, everybody had me labeled as a nut.” He later put the wooden wings onto the body to give it a tradition guitar shape. In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar. Over the years, the Les Paul series has become one of the most widely used guitars in the music industry. In 2005, Christie’s auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600...AP

Song Of The Day #107

In recognition of Les Paul's passing we will feature some of his music today.

The obits I've seen are not mentioning his country roots. Paul started performing as a country guitarist at the age of 13 and was playing professionally at 17 (he quit high school.) His first two records were released in 1936 and one was under the name of Rhubarb Red. Our first two selections are I Never See Maggie Alone and The Old Spinning Wheel by Rhubarb Red & His Rubes. The first is indicative of the type of country music they were doing, and the second is a good example of Les Paul backing up a fiddle player. You rhythm guitar players should listen closely to the runs and licks he hits.

Les Paul and his wife, Mary Ford had many top hits in the fifties. Player 2 has Chicken Reel, which showcases his guitar style at that time, and one of their biggest hits, Vaya Con Dios

Bronco Buster CD 9023 Rhubarb Red & His Rhubes contains the first two selections. His Capitol recordings are available on the 4 disc box set The Legend and the Legacy

In addition to all his musical accomplishments, Les Paul is also famous among guitar pickers for the following:

In January 1948, Paul was injured in a near-fatal automobile accident in Oklahoma, which shattered his right arm and elbow. Doctors told Paul that there was no way for them to rebuild his elbow in a way that would let him regain movement, and that his arm would remain permanently in whatever position they placed it in. Paul then instructed the surgeons to set his arm at an angle that would allow him to cradle and pick the guitar. It took him a year and a half to recover. His right elbow being set at a permanent 90 degree angle is the reason for the small size and unusual shape of the original "Les Paul" guitar body.

Get The Cluck Out, Judge Orders Mr. Clucky and Girl-Hen

It's official. Mr. Clucky, the Miami Beach rooster, his guinea hen girlfriend Wallflower, and their poultry guardian Mark Buckley lost their appeal in Miami Beach's chicken eviction case. Special Master Joe Kaplan issued a fowl, anti-poultry ruling (see below) against Buckley today, holding that: Mr. Buckley's argument that his rooster and hen constituted an exception to the [City] Code because he considered them to be his "pets", to be without merit. Is it over for these fine feathered friends? Is their legal jig up on the streets of Miami Beach? [Mr. Clucky] Mr. Clucky and Wallflower have been officially ordered to get the cluck out of Buckley's Miami Beach condo. Kaplan ordered that "Mr. Buckley shall be punished" by having to pay a $50.00 fine by Sept. 12, 2009...Courtside

Senator Barrasso says ‘Cap and Tax’ will be harmful to agriculture

Senator John Barrasso, Chairman of the Senate Western Caucus, is standing up for Wyoming agriculture and speaking out against the Administration’s job-killing Cap-and-Tax plan. Barrasso’s comments came during a hearing by the Senate Western Caucus. Barrasso outlined the consequences for Western Agriculture if the “Waxman-Markley bill,” also known as the “Cap-and-Tax bill” passes in the Senate. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill in early July. “Cap-and-Tax would only deal another blow to our farmers and ranchers during this recession,” Barrasso said. “Farming and ranching are energy-intensive businesses. Energy costs work into every detail of American farmers’ lives. Farmers use fuel for tractors and combines, require natural gas to make fertilizer, and farm equipment uses energy for irrigation pumps and drying grain before storing it.” The Executive Vice President of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, Jim Magagna of Rock Springs, testified at the hearing. “Agriculture producers face tough markets in today’s economic climate. Implementing a policy that would increase energy and input costs during these tough times will be harmful to farms and ranches across the West,” Magagna said. “This bill will particularly impact our young producers — those who represent a bright future for American agriculture,” Magagna said...ChicagoReview

Climate bill could cost 2 million jobs

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) released a study Wednesday that found under a high-cost scenario the House global warming bill could reduce economic growth by 2.4 percent and cost 2 million jobs by 2030. Environmentalists were quick to criticize the study for underselling the development of climate-friendly sources of power and not releasing other assumptions NAM and ACCF fed into the computer model to get their economic forecast, which takes more of a glass-half-empty view than recent governmental reports. But the business groups’ figures will likely provide opponents of capping carbon more ammunition and could add to the angst of senators from industrial states. One key finding is that the climate bill will hurt the manufacturing sector particularly hard. As much as 66 percent of the total job loss from the climate bill could come from manufacturers, the report notes. And though the impact of the bill will grow over time, the economy will start feeling the effects of the carbon cap almost immediately. “Industrial production begins to decline immediately in 2012, relative to the baseline,” the report notes...TheHill

Wolf release in Mexico sparks concern in US

American wildlife officials and ranchers are raising questions over a plan to release a rare North American gray wolf to its historic range in northern Mexico: Will it stay south of the border and what can be done if it threatens livestock? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said this week it learned of the plan to release captive-bred Mexican gray wolves during a meeting with Mexican officials. A male, female and two yearlings could be released in Sonora state, bordering Arizona and New Mexico, as early as October. Another release is planned for December and more could happen next year as part of an effort by both countries to return the wolves to the wild. What if the wolves cross into the United States? Will they be protected under the federal Endangered Species Act? Or will they have the same "nonessential, experimental" designation as wolves released as part of a reintroduction effort in New Mexico and Arizona? The Fish and Wildlife Service has posed those questions to the agency's attorneys and are hoping for answers in coming weeks. Wolves returning to the wild in Mexico only complicates a troubled effort in the United States, especially if the animals cross the border, said Caren Cowan, executive director of the New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association. "You've got the potential of wolves coming down on you from the north that have one endangered status, and you've got wolves coming from the south that may have a different status," she said. "How are you supposed to tell the difference?"...AP

Phantom Hill Pack Kills 12 Idaho Sheep

Members of the valley's Phantom Hill wolf pack have been linked to the deaths of 12 domestic sheep in the Baker Creek drainage last Sunday and may be killed. According to Suzanne Stone, Northern Rockies representative for the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife, officials within the Idaho Department of Fish and Game said late Tuesday afternoon that they have authorized the killing of Phantom Hill wolves. Stone said they wouldn't tell her how many members of the pack might be killed. Calls to Fish and Game were not immediately returned. At last count, the pack numbered around 10 to 11 members, not counting any new pups that may have been born this spring. Stone's group is involved in a project to keep wolves and sheep separate in the upper Wood River Valley, the Phantom Hill wolves' home range. The effort, called the Wood River Wolf Project, has succeeded in greatly limiting the number of sheep killed in the area after the Phantom Hill pack was discovered in 2007. But that successful streak may have ended earlier this week...IdahoMtnExpress

At rancher's request, Phantom Hill wolves get a reprieve

After consulting with the rancher whose sheep were killed by wolves in the lower end of Baker Creek last Sunday, officials with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game have elected to "postpone" any retaliatory action against the valley's Phantom Hill wolf pack. According to Jerome Hansen, Fish and Game's Magic Valley regional manager, the decision was reached after Gooding rancher John Faulkner requested that the wolves be given a reprieve. Fish and Game was prepared to kill members of the pack linked to the deaths of 12 sheep, but have decided to hold off for now. The incident occurred near the Newman Creek corrals in the lower end of Baker Creek. The deaths touched off intense behind-the-scenes talks between wolf advocates, Fish and Game, federal Wildlife Services and Faulkner, which reportedly resulted in today's decision. Hansen said Fish and Game will continue to monitor the situation in the upper Big Wood River drainage northwest of Ketchum. He said additional sheep deaths could cause Fish and Game to take action and kill members of the valley's well-known pack. Faulkner's band is still on Sawtooth National Forest land, but will begin trailing south out of the area in the coming two to three days, officials say. The longtime rancher has agreed to allow participants in the Wood River Wolf Project—which seeks to keep wolves and sheep separate in the upper valley—to take additional measures, including setting up night pens, to keep his sheep safe as they trail out of the area, the officials added. IdahoMtnExpress

BLM sued over road maintenance at Steens Mountain

A conservation group has sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management over maintenance work on old roads in congressionally protected areas around Steens Mountain in the high desert of Eastern Oregon. The lawsuit filed by the Oregon Natural Desert Association claims BLM violated environmental laws by running a road grader and a backhoe over 15 miles of overgrown jeep trails that were supposed to melt back into the landscape as part of special protections enacted by Congress in 2000. BLM resource area manager Joan Suther says the work - done to improve access for a wild horse roundup and controlled burning - was covered by existing management plans that went through environmental review. The association and BLM are to meet Friday to discuss their differences. AP