Sens. Grassley, Leahy Demand Answers on IRS Secret Cellphone Tracking

Two top senators Thursday demanded that the Obama administration explain why the Internal Revenue Service is using technology to secretly track cellphones that is normally the domain of law-enforcement agencies. The move by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont followed IRS Commissioner John Koskinen's admission to the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday that the agency uses the technology. The technology is known as cell-site simulators, or StingRays, The Washington Times reports. The Guardian recently reported that the IRS had spent more than $71,000 on upgrading a version of the device and for training from a company that makes the devices. The technology can sweep up the cellphone signals of innocent Americans, the senators contended in a letter to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew. Grassley chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, while Leahy serves as the panel's ranking Democrat.  "We were surprised to learn that IRS investigators may be using these devices," the senators said in their letter. "Cell-site simulators mimic cell towers, forcing cell phones in the area to convey their approximate location and registration information. "While the devices can be useful tools for identifying the location of a suspect’s cell phone or identifying an unknown cell phone, we have previously expressed concerns about the privacy implications of these devices, as well as the inconsistent practices and policies across the federal, state and local agencies that employ them...more

Immigrants caught at border believe families can stay in US, collect benefits

Hundreds of immigrant families caught illegally crossing the Mexican border told U.S. immigration agents they made the dangerous journey in part because they believed they would be permitted to stay in the United States and collect public benefits, according to internal intelligence files from the Homeland Security Department. The interviews with immigrants by federal agents were intended to help the Obama administration understand what might be driving a puzzling surge in the numbers of border crossings that started over the summer. The explanations suggest the U.S. government’s efforts to discourage illegal crossings may have been unsuccessful. Its efforts have included public service campaigns in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to highlight the dangers and consequences of making the trek across Mexico to cross illegally into the United States. The Associated Press obtained copies of the interview summaries, which were compiled in reports by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Intelligence. They said hundreds of people traveling as part of families consistently cited opportunities to obtain permission to stay in the U.S., claim asylum and receive unspecified benefits. Immigrants spoke of “permisos,” or a pass to come into the United States...more

Mexican National Accused of Buying Ammo for Cartels in El Paso, Texas

U.S. federal agents in El Paso, Texas, have arrested a Mexican national woman for allegedly buying close to 11,000 rounds of ammunition for Mexican drug cartels. Earlier this week, Maria Del Rosario Antunez Gutierrez went before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Castaneda who formally charged her with ammunition smuggling and ordered her held without bond. During her hearing, a Spanish-language interpreter was called to help translate the events in court. Antunez’s arrest came after agents with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations received information about a group of individuals who had been buying massive amounts of ammunition at local sporting-goods stores, court records obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed. Antunez is neither a U.S. citizen nor a resident. Records reveal that she only a has a border-crossing visa, thus making it illegal for her to purchase or possess any type of firearm or ammunition. U.S. federal agents began to look into the information. By checking store records and store video surveillance they identified four individuals. The groups would arrive at the store in a blue hatchback car, go purchase between 500 and 2,000 ammunition rounds and leave. Authorities then matched the group on the surveillance video with other video from bridge crossings that showed the same vehicle and individuals coming from and going into Mexico. The vehicles crossed into the border city of Juarez, an area in previous years synonymous with cartel violence...more

CBP seizes cocaine, marijuana in Santa Teresa

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized five pounds of cocaine and 552 pounds of marijuana Thursday at the Santa Teresa border crossing, officials said Friday. About 1 p.m., CBP officers found the cocaine hidden in the air intake manifold in the engine of a Ford Explorer coming from Mexico, officials said. CBP officers arrested Jose Carlos Payan Nuñez, 22, of Chihuahua City, in connection with the drug-smuggling attempt. About 4:30 p.m., CBP officers found 215 packages of marijuana in the walls of an empty horse trailer being pulled by a pickup, officials said. Adrian Valentin Perez Guillen, 28, of Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, was arrested on suspicion of drug smuggling.

Feds say 179,027 criminal illegals are loose on U.S. streets

Nearly 1 million immigrants have been ordered deported but still roam free in the U.S., including nearly 180,000 who have been convicted of crimes here, the Homeland Security Department said in information released Friday by the Senate immigration subcommittee. The release came the same day that two top lawmakers, the chairman of the House and Senate judiciary committees, demanded answers on how a man who’d been deported twice before snuck back into the U.S. and, according to a criminal complaint, then kidnapped and raped his estranged girlfriend. The level of criminal behavior by immigrants — both legal and illegal — has become a key part of the current political debate over immigration, border fencing and birthright citizenship. But the federal government does not have any way of tracking the overall criminal behavior of immigrants, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains and deports illegal immigrants, admitted in the information provided to the Senate. “ICE is unable to statistically report on the number of aliens who have been arrested for criminal offenses,” the agency said. ICE did, however, say it is making headway on trying to get sanctuary cities to cooperate with its new slimmed-down deportation program, known as the Priority Enforcement Program, or PEP. Of 340 jurisdictions identified as sanctuary cities or counties, ICE says more than half have expressed interest in cooperating with the PEP. What that means, exactly, is still unclear, because some jurisdictions have said they will only partially comply — yet are included on the government’s list of cooperators. All told, there are 918,369 immigrants living in the U.S. who have been ordered deported. Some of them are here under special court rulings or administration decisions that prevent them from being sent back to specific countries, while others just aren’t deemed serious enough criminals by the Obama administration to worry about. Of the total, 179,027 have criminal convictions. link

Georgia becomes 'border state' for violent illegal immigrants

...Diamant spent months analyzing millions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removal records for fiscal years 2003 through 2013. The information was released under the Freedom of Information Act. Of the 386,485 unauthorized immigrants removed from the United States in 2013, 222,972 of them - 60% - had at least prior removal. 42,116 of the total unauthorized immigrants removed that year had been convicted of an aggravated felony. Of those felons, 27,159 had been removed before. That's 64%. Among the aggravated felons who had been removed at least once before were 281 killers, 178 kidnappers, 1149 sex criminals and thousands convicted on drug charges. The data showed Georgia ranked first in deportations among all non-border states, and fourth overall behind only Texas, Arizona and California. In Georgia, federal authorities deported 7120 unauthorized immigrants in fiscal year 2013. 1173 of them had aggravated felony convictions. Of those, 513 (44%) had at least one prior removal. That includes nine convicted killers, 10 kidnappers, nearly 40 sex criminals and hundreds convicted on drug charges. Those numbers shocked Georgia Senator David Perdue, who sits on the Senate's Judiciary Committee. "These statistics that you're exposing now creates energy back home that creates pressure on politicians. And when you create pressure on politicians then things starts to happen (in Washington)," Perdue said. Diamant also showed the numbers to Congressman Doug Collins of Gainesville is on the House Judiciary Committee. "To the families who've been victimized by those who have been deported and come back and they've been victimized by these folks who shouldn't be in the country to begin with, this is not a political game, it's just the honest truth."...more

How Tasers became instruments of excessive force for the Border Patrol

Searching for a way to curb fatal border shootings, Border Patrol leaders decided in 2008 that their agents needed a new weapon on their belts. The agency began to supply Tasers, a hand-held device that delivers a paralyzing electric charge, as a way to end confrontations quickly and safely. But in scores of cases along the border, the Tasers became instruments of excessive force, a Los Angeles Times analysis found. The Times examined 450 uses of Tasers from 2010 to 2013 that were documented by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.  At least 70 times, agents fired the devices at people who were running away, even though there was no struggle or clear indication that agents were in danger, according to use-of-force reports. At least six times, agents used the weapons against people who were trying to climb over the border fence back into Mexico. Two people were shocked while they were handcuffed. Two were hit with five cycles of the weapon, even though the agency's policy says no one should receive more than three. Three people died after being hit by Tasers wielded by border agents or customs officers. In one episode, 24-year-old Alex Martin, who had led agents on a car chase, burned to death after a border agent smashed his car window and fired a Taser inside. The device ignited an explosion and fireball.  The Times' analysis found that most of the people subjected to Tasers had been caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border or were suspected of being in the country illegally, not fleeing arrest on more serious charges. "When you put that weapon out there and they have access to it, they're going to use it," said Ralph Basham, the former Customs and Border Protection commissioner who authorized the use of Tasers seven years ago. "Having spent my life in law enforcement, I know you hate to see someone getting away." Questions about fatal encounters with suspects have bedeviled Customs and Border Protection, the nation's largest law enforcement agency, mirroring the national debate over police use of force.

Ranch Radio Song Of The Day #1508

In 1975 Vassar Clements, Dave Bromberg, Doug Jernigan and others recorded an album titled Hillbilly Jazz. The selection I've chosen is It's Dark Outside. 

https://youtu.be/Afu9dssl95k

Chevron will lay off thousands more workers, slash spending

As some of its largest investments start to cross the finish line in the coming months and years, the multinational oil giant headquartered in San Ramon, California will ratchet back its spending plans, focusing heavily on “high-return, short-cycle investments”, deferring some projects, and reducing its workforce to match lower levels of activity, Watson said. The company plans to cut between 6,000 and 7,000 total jobs across the globe, some of which will happen in Australia, where two projects — the Gorgon and the Wheatstone — are starting to wind down. That total job loss number includes the 1,500 positions already trimmed from Chevron’s payroll, including 950 in Houston, spokesman Cam Van Ast said. Chevron has also cut jobs in the Marcellus Shale, where it has pared back drilling, and the North Sea. But other jobs may be lost as Chevron continues selling off assets that no longer fit into the company’s portfolio or strategy. In addition to its in-house job cuts, Chevron plans to slash an equal number of contractors as it hustles to reduce costs and revamp its spending budget amid the worst industry downturn in years. With crude and natural gas prices showing no signs of rebounding soon, Chevron plans to trim its capital and exploratory expenditures in 2016 by roughly 25 percent and will consider curtailing spending plans in 2017 and 2018 as well, depending on the market conditions...more

Oil rig count plunge returns to double-digits

The number of rigs actively drilling for oil fell by 16 this week, stretching the string of declines to more than two months, according to data Friday from oil field services firm Baker Hughes. The total count for oil rigs operating across North America now stands at 578, down from a peak of 1,609 in October 2014. The overall rig count fell by 12 to 775, after drillers added four natural gas rigs. The total count is now at its lowest since June 2010. This is the ninth week in a row the rig count has fallen. So far in 2015, Baker Hughes has recorded only seven week-over-week increases. With by far the most onshore rigs left operating, Texas has seen a more dramatic pullback from the oil patch in recent weeks than other states. Seven more were shut down this week, including two rigs apiece for the Eagle Ford Shale and plays in the Permian Basin...more

Environmentalists challenging federal coal find success in court

Climate change is not mentioned in a federal magistrate's 26-page decision calling for a more complete environmental analysis of Spring Creek Mine's 2,042-acre expansion. Instead, U.S. Magistrate Judge Carolyn Ostby found federal officials failed to complete several routine permitting steps, like notifying the public, when they approved the Cloud Peak Energy-owned mine's expansion plans in 2012.  The decision, announced Monday, makes Ostby's ruling more narrow than the earlier victory won by WildEarth Guardians, the New Mexico-based environmental group that brought the case against Spring Creek. In that earlier instance, a federal judge in Denver found Interior officials should have considered the impact on climate of approving a Colorado mine's 6,000-acre expansion. The Spring Creek ruling is nonetheless notable, legal observers said. Environmentalists, they noted, are finding increasing success at forcing the government to change its approach to coal leases. "The courts are taking a skeptical eye of how the agencies are handling coal mining authorizations and expansions," said Justin Pidot, an associate professor of law at the University of Denver. The Spring Creek ruling should serve as a warning to coal companies and the government that "they need to be dotting there I’s and crossing their T's when they’re approving this type of project," he added. WildEarth Guardians has waged an aggressive legal campaign against the federal coal program in recent years. The group has six cases pending in which it has challenged leases granted to 10 coal mines in five Western states...more

NASA Adds to Evidence of Mysterious Ancient Earthworks

High in the skies over Kazakhstan, space-age technology has revealed an ancient mystery on the ground. Stories from Our Advertisers Satellite pictures of a remote and treeless northern steppe reveal colossal earthworks — geometric figures of squares, crosses, lines and rings the size of several football fields, recognizable only from the air and the oldest estimated at 8,000 years old.  The largest, near a Neolithic settlement, is a giant square of 101 raised mounds, its opposite corners connected by a diagonal cross, covering more terrain than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Another is a kind of three-limbed swastika, its arms ending in zigzags bent counterclockwise. Described last year at an archaeology conference in Istanbul as unique and previously unstudied, the earthworks, in the Turgai region of northern Kazakhstan, number at least 260 — mounds, trenches and ramparts — arrayed in five basic shapes. Spotted on Google Earth in 2007 by a Kazakh economist and archaeology enthusiast, Dmitriy Dey, the so-called Steppe Geoglyphs remain deeply puzzling and largely unknown to the outside world...more

Obama, GOP Want To Sell Off 40 Percent Of US Strategic Oil Reserves To Fund Gov’t Programs

Lawmakers are pushing legislation that could result in the selling off of 266 million barrels of oil from the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) over the next decade, mostly to fund more government spending. Legislation for health care, highway funding and financing the government could end up drawing on down on oil supplies meant for emergency situations. If all three bills are signed into law, some 266 million barrels, or nearly 40 percent, of the current 695 million barrel SPR would be sold off in the next decade to raise about $23 billion.  “The 114th Congress has introduced three separate bills that would fund non-energy policy goals by mandating crude oil sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” according to an analysis by the consulting firm ClearView Energy. ClearView noted the health care bill, called the 21st Century Cures Act, was the least likely to hit President Barack Obama’s desk despite passing out of the House with a veto-proof majority. On the other hand, the two other bills passing a budget and funding highways are more pressing issues to Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Just those two bills alone would draw down on 186 million barrels...more

Ex-Sen. Fred Thompson, movie star and Watergate counsel, dies

Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), an actor-turned-politician who made his mark in the Senate as an investigator and ran for president, has died. Thompson, aged 73, died after a recurrence of lymphoma, according to a statement issued by his family and reported by The Tennessean. “He enjoyed a hearty laugh, a strong handshake, a good cigar, and a healthy dose of humility. Fred was the same man on the floor of the Senate, the movie studio, or the town square of Lawrenceburg, his home,” the statement read. Thompson, a successful actor who co-starred with Alec Baldwin in "The Hunt for the Red October" and Robert De Niro in "Cape Fear," was first elected to the Senate in 1994 in a special election to serve out the remainder of former Vice President Al Gore’s term. He won re-election in 1996 and led the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee during its 1997 investigation into the Democratic National Committee’s soft-money fundraising practices and the influence of Chinese donors on the Clinton White House. The investigator’s role seemed to come naturally to Thompson, who served as minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 and 1974. He returned to acting after retiring from the Senate in 2002, taking the role of District Attorney Arthur Branch on the NBC series "Law & Order." He suspended his acting career in 2007 to make an ill-fated bid for president. He was considered an early frontrunner but didn’t seem to have much of an appetite for putting in grueling hours on the campaign trail and was ridiculed for allegedly wearing Gucci loafers at the Iowa State Fair. Thompson later disputed the story as “a journalistic fabrication.” He dropped out after finishing third in South Carolina. He was born in Sheffield, Alabama, in 1942 and received his law degree from Vanderbilt University in 1967, gaining admittance to the Tennessee bar that year. "Fred once said that the experiences he had growing up in small-town Tennessee formed the prism through which he viewed the world and shaped the way he dealt with life,” the family statement read. “Fred stood on principle and common sense, and had a deep love for and connection with the people across Tennessee whom he had the privilege to serve in the United States Senate.”

Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Cowboy neighbors

by Julie Carter

Ranchers need help. They need lots of help. Top of the list of needs is extra cowboys to get the cattle work done in the spring and fall. Branding in the spring and shipping in the fall become top priority and must be done ranch wide in a day or two on some outfits or in weeks on the really big places. For that extra manpower, they call on their neighbors.

It’s called “neighboring.” Your neighbors come help you get your work done and then you go help them when they work their herd. A couple months on the calendar will quickly fill up with “working” dates as neighboring ranches try to schedule their work so no one is using the same help on the same days.

Some ranches use “day workers” - cowboys who hire out with or without their horses for a day’s work at a ranch. They get paid by the day with the going rate varying from $75-$150 a day but it’s not a get rich quick kind of job. Many times the average per hour will figure out to be about the price of a candy bar.

Day wages times 8 or 10 extra cowboys add up real quick and it is just too costly for most ranches. That’s why and where neighboring was born. Sharing the work and saving the dollars. It’s a hard-working social event for the cowboys and the only pay of the day will be the dinner they eat or maybe the cold beer they’ll be offered. 

Neighbors out in ranch country are pretty helpful.  They’ll drive the 20-or-so miles (or more, depending) of dirt road in the dark of night to help you out of a jam with anything. They’ll stay all night helping you pull a well. They’ll fetch parts in town, help you mechanic on equipment, or pick up your mail if you need them to do that.

Good deeds follow neighbors. One neighbor saw a stock trailer broke down along the highway and recognized it. The owner had been in a hurry to get to a cattle working, wheel bearing went out on the trailer, so he unhooked it and left it to get where he needed to be on time. His good neighbor tied up an axle, pulled the trailer back to the owner’s ranch and parked it for him.

That good deed kept vandals from working the trailer over alongside the road. When the owner came back that night he was sure someone had stolen it until he got home and saw it parked next to his barn.

An acquaintance of mine living out east of a city in a “ranchette” rural area complained that she may as well move to town. Her neighbors are close enough she can hear their music and she has to pull the drapes in her house for privacy. But last winter when the road was bad and she got stuck, she had no one to help her. Not the friendly, helpful sort of neighbors she was raised around. She is lonely in a crowd of “neighbors.”

It’s hard to explain to city dwellers the peace that comes in not hearing sirens, car engines, the pounding vibration from a car stereo, kids on bicycles and barking dogs three blocks away. But it’s even harder to explain how much fun 15-hour days of hard work in all kinds of weather with a meal as the paycheck can be. I guess you had to have been there.

The cattle trucks are rattling up and down the roads in great numbers. It makes me smile knowing all that it took to give them a job. Happy fall ya’all and neighbors too!

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarternm@gmail.com

The Vampires Cometh

Species Debacle brewing

Zoo Effect

The Vampires Cometh

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            The suggestion that man made climate change is tipping the balance of nature is in line for another high power jolt.

            The slow, but steady northward march through Mexico by vampire bats is expected to hit Texas and Florida within three to ten years. Just wait until we start hearing about that little soirée from the progressive pulp manufacturers of the mainstream media. This may relegate the northward flight of the Africanized bees to bush league status.

            Remember the blow by blow progress of the Afrikaners?

They were four miles from the border, killing people, and carrying off babies for afternoon hive snacks. They were 1.3 miles inside the border evicting victimized European honey bees with ruthless abandon. They were four miles north of the border capturing slaves and carting off good looking queens for evening conquests by the sinewy drones. Why, it was a veritable minute by minute face book account of the collision of two bee universes.

            What was missing were the calls from the victim hotlines to go easy on the illegals. When it was their collective potuties that appeared to be endangered, the progressives issued nary a single suggestion for empathy.

At that time, I was in California contracting with commercial beekeepers. One of our providers had experience in South America with the Afrikaners and he suggested we would grow to like them. Contrary to hysteria, he said the Africanized bees were certainly aggressive, but that aggression was reflected in working harder and flying longer.

“You just have to manage them,” he continued. “Just like the South Americans who now deal with them on a permanent basis.”

Nothing close to that message was ever offered by the press, though. The fear factor was played to the hilt. The question we can now ask is whether it was commercial dramatics or was their real personal fear of the outcome. I will offer that it was the latter. When their personal safety was involved, there was no politically correct lecture on sensitivity.

“Kill those mongrels and kill them dead!” was their demand.

The vampires cometh

The stakes may be higher this time.

The march north by the vampires is tracked by livestock rabies cases. For those of us old enough to be exposed to the horrors of Ol’ Yeller, we know what rabies can mean. We went in looking forward to seeing another adventure in the life of Lassie’s favorite cousin, but came out crying and being led off into the dark by incredulous parents trying to convince themselves Disney had scored again. What a great memory, eh? It is reminiscent to a visit to a WWII era dentist who was seeking a backwoods place to end his career and where the booze was cheap.

 The commonality, though, runs deeper than 14 gauge 1½” needles. The bats use their razor sharp incisors to open a small incision and then lick from the blood flow. Their saliva has an anticoagulant and they will lap blood up to 20 minutes. Following a night of blood letting, evidence to the layman will be dried blood on livestock or rabies if the bats are infected.

Control is where the green heartbreak commences.

The bats are fairly easy to capture using mist nets on approaches to and over corralled livestock. They can then be treated with a rodenticide which can be transported back to their running mates for a wider kill ratio. It will be interesting to observe the complaints from the biosocial justice crowd when the vampires start biting the dust. Will they scream for illegal animal rights or will they seek to protect their collective derrieres when the threat starts knocking on their doors. If history repeats, it will be the latter.

            “Kill those mongrels and kill them dead!”

The Zoo Effect

The further this country departs from a republic form of governance to rule by an environmental crazed hegemony, the closer the electorate is subjected to what we must recognize as the Zoo Effect. The phenomenon has always existed in a zoo setting whereby the sweaty commoners gather, eat popcorn, and observe the exotic fauna. They take pictures of their kids standing in front of exhibits and then finish their back to nature trip by eating overpriced hotdogs at the nearby cement table. They swat flies and remind each other how wonderful the thrills of nature are.

They load their cars and head off into the electronic jungles to compete for their share of the pie. They text and distribute their posed selfies to their comrades-in-cause and pledge to unite in an ever expanding web of saving stuff. It adds to their pet Chihuahua and subscription to a progressive rag for demonstration of caring about the world.

It also adds to the voting block to fund conservation causes and empower liberal bureaucrats and ensconced career politicians. It is easy and it is painless. They can frolic and dance to their great deeds.

That isn’t the case, though, with the individual who faces the wrath. Those Mexican ranchers who now face the vampires know the reality of the beast. To deal with adaptable arrivals that seek prey that are not genetically robust to deal with their menace is a whole different paradigm.

The Zoo Effect outcome is invariably devastating.

North of the border, it isn’t the natural spread of an adaptable nonresident that is disrupting communities. It is the shortsighted reintroduction of an animal that simply doesn’t have the genetic aptitude to survive under evolving, modern conditions. It is demonstrated in the artificial reintroduction of the Mexican Gray wolf. The polarizing impact and the real implications on the ground are catastrophic. Communities, already at high risk, are floundering. In those rural settings, agriculture, especially livestock operations, remains the only market driven industry aside from recreational hunting and tourism. The hunting, established by long standing tradition but now driven by growth in the recreational product business, is finding itself competing head to head with the government’s pet recovery effort. Two major alpha predators, man and wolves, are competing for a prey base that simply isn’t large enough to support them both. The result is the struggling livestock sector is the cupboard left standing to rob.

It is a terrible socio-economic debacle that has long past eroded the customs and culture of an area that is truly rich in natural resources, but garnered poor by the citizenry’s limited rights to access them. In every aspect, it is becoming the aristocracy’s forest with growing and conditional limits for the local citizenry. Under no circumstances does it equate to the visions of the Founders who knew full well the oppression holding them in bondage through the King’s reach.

In the modern version, though, the propagandized supporters that have become the proxies for local support don’t even live nearby. They reside far from battleground and do their part by supporting the grand, contrived spectacle on the basis of democracy. Votes count even if they are not real, but, rather, phantom votes through the actions of the environmental crazed hegemony.

This view through the zoo prism is rosy and void of vulnerability or responsibility. Unlike the locals who have to face the wrath, there is no adverse impact to the nonresident advocates. That isn’t the case for locals who face the ravages of the wolf, and it will not be the case of any citizen in the path of the vampires.

When rabies cases start appearing in safe and inoculated suburbia, watch for the squealing to commence.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Some modifier has to occur to alter impact of the ESA. Politicians don’t have the will to do it without something catastrophic. That may change with the vampires.”

Baxter Black - The day Ike toured Farview

Bein’ a country vet, I’ve had my share of emergency calls regarding escaped animals. Feeder steers in City Park, buffalo at the mall or snakes in the school yard. But none of my rescue missions can compare to Gary’s tale entitled “THE DAY IKE TOURED FAIRVIEW.”

Even thirty years ago Fairview, UT put on a pretty good rodeo. Gary happened to be mounted and in the arena when the bull ridin’ began. Ike was a big rough blue gray brahmer with horns like petrified cedar and the disposition of a constipated bank examiner! Ike dislodged his rider with ease, made straight for the 6 foot arena fence and cleared it by two cow lengths! He broke for downtown with Gary hot on his heels!

Ike’s first stop was a garage. The shocked owner saw the big bull gallop by and slide in. Thinking to trap him, he closed the garage door. Gary had just turned his horse into the driveway when the garage door exploded in a shower of splinters and glass! Ike thundered by him with a good portion of the door skewered to his head!

He ran across the street scattering lumber and drove himself between the shavs of a parked pony cart...head first! He picked it up and smashed it into the side of a car!

Gary went to buildin’ a loop as the headed down the street. Ike poked his head in a service station, decided against payin’ a visit, bounced across the next lawn and into the backyard where a picnic was in progress.

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Halloween Not So Scary for Parents

by  Iain Murray

When it comes to Halloween these days, it seems that parents scare more easily than their children. For the past 15 years, I have checked the news as Halloween approaches. It is always full of warnings from health and safety officialdom that parents should check their children’s collected candy for signs of tampering with nefarious intent. Here are just three examples I found with a 30 second Google search today. It’s just as much hogwash as it was when I started.

The best data we have on such Halloween sadism is compiled each year by University of Delaware professor Joel Best. His conclusion is simple:

In my own research, I have been unable to find a substantiated report of a child being killed or seriously injured by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating.

Yet the warnings persist. Why? I’m going to repeat what I said, along with my old colleague Howard Fienberg, back in 2001, when there was near panic around Halloween thanks to the events of a few weeks earlier:

So why do we persist in scaring ourselves this way? Strangely enough, the reason may lie in how safe our society is for our children. If our children are not subjected to the real horrors of everyday disease, starvation and war that have been major worries for parents throughout history, we still feel a need to protect them from something. The figure of the murderous candy-poisoner or foreign terrorist fills the vacuum well. But in protecting children from an unproven threat, parents may not just be taking some of the fun out of childhood but also raising children in an atmosphere of paranoia, which cannot be good for them. That is all the more true this year. Every day since Sept. 11, we have been subjected to scare stories and tales of imminent terror. But since that fateful day, very few have died. Three unfortunate people have died in the anthrax scare that has gripped the nation. Far more have died in car accidents -- some of which may have happened after people took the decision to drive rather than fly.

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Bubonic Plague Found in Oregon Teenager

The authorities in Oregon have confirmed a case of the bubonic plague in a teenage girl who was believed to have contracted the disease from a flea bite. Plague is rare and treatable with antibiotics if caught early, but federal authorities have been puzzled by an increase in cases this year. In a statement, state and local health officials in Oregon said they thought the girl was infected during a hunting trip on Oct. 16 near Heppner, a city located at the foothills of the Blue Mountains in the northeastern region of the state. She fell ill on Oct. 21 and was hospitalized days later. She is now in the intensive care unit...more

Volatile times loom for NM’s oil patch

New Mexico’s oil and gas industry is bracing for another round of volatile ups and downs in crude prices that could push the market – and ultimately production in the southeastern part of the state – to its lowest point in more than a decade. The industry has already been battered by steep price declines over the past year that cut the price of crude from more than a $100 a barrel in mid-2014 to about $44 now. That’s led to thousands of layoffs in New Mexico’s oil patch in the southeastern part of the state and, to a lesser extent, in the northwestern San Juan Basin. But things may get a lot worse thanks to Iran, which is expected to aggressively ramp up its oil production next year as international sanctions are lifted following last summer’s deal designed to limit Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran has enough oil reserves to rival Saudi Arabia on world markets and, as it begins to flood the West with new crude, prices are likely to crash to levels not seen since 2003, said Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. “Once Iran is able to export to western markets, it can rapidly move back to its full capacity, which in 1979 was 5.7 million barrels per day – second only to Saudi Arabia,” Fine said. “If Iran produces what it’s qualified to produce, world oil prices could drop back to the 2003 range of between $23 and $28 a barrel, which would have severe consequences for New Mexico. Harder times are coming.”...more