Like every hunter worthy of the name, I want to protect our hunting heritage so men and women many years from now can experience the same love, awe and respect for wild animals that I’ve been privileged to know. But the two bedrock requirements for that to happen are the health of animal populations and […]
Politics
Posted inGoat
Winning the West: HCN @ the DNC
What’s a Colorado journalist to do when, for the first time in a century, the Democratic National Convention comes to your state? The first impulse of the newshound: Go to Denver, of course, and get yourself a scoop (not to mention free food). Then comes that slightly bitter aftertaste when you realize that there are […]
Posted inWotr
The way it looks in rural Oregon in this shaky economic world
A few years ago, local realtors in Joseph, a town of 1,000 in northeastern Oregon, were clamoring for houses and properties to put on the market; now, “for sale” signs are everywhere. Yet real estate deals in Wallowa County are stalled because the boom times in Bend, Ore., have come to a grinding halt. Four-dollar […]
Posted inArticles
Braving the political winds
EPA official Robbie Roberts took a stand against unbridled energy development
Posted inWotr
Democrats borrow from Madison Avenue
It’s like a supercharged dream: You find yourself sliding into the driver’s seat of a sleek, brand new car. Slap it into gear and you zoom ahead, through a spectacular wild-looking Western landscape. You take the curves faster than seemed possible, maybe around Utah’s eerie redrock spires, or between Rocky Mountain snowcaps, past waterfalls and […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Of populists and political fusion
The last time the Democratic Party held its national convention in Denver was exactly a century ago, in 1908. That was also the first time the Democrats convened west of Kansas City. The presidential nominee that year was no novelty, though; for the third time, William Jennings Bryan, once known as “the boy orator of […]
Posted inGoat
Not a moment too soon
“I can attest to the fact that (the Department of Interior) gets in your blood, but I can also say that it does not necessarily turn it green.” — Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary of the Interior, announcing his resignation this week. Hoffman, who got his post thanks to Vice President Dick Cheney, regularly […]
Posted inWotr
What Westerners would love to ask the candidates
For a Westerner, this year’s presidential campaign has been both exciting and disappointing. There was excitement when Sen. Barack Obama and the entire Clinton family fought for support in Wyoming; who could ever have imagined that Democratic presidential candidates would be battling for delegates in a state that no Democrat has carried in 44 years? […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Obama’s Western ace in the hole
Jim Messina is the presidential campaign’s chief of staff
Posted inGoat
Owl tales
Kim Todd’s feature – Conservation quandary in the August 4th edition – zeros in on key ethical questions which arise within the context of endangered species management in general and northern spotted owl (NSO) management in particular. But readers who are not familiar with the conflicts over forest management in the Pacific Northwest and northern […]
Posted inGoat
Fate of four Klamath River dams under negotiation
PacifiCorp – the Buffett-Berkshire Hathaway company which owns and operates the Klamath Hydroelectric Project – is in confidential negotiations with the federal Department of Interior and the States of California and Oregon concerning the fate of the Project and its five dams. Word has come from inside the talks that an “agreement in principle” to […]
Posted inGoat
Does Tom Udall put families before fish? NO!
Front and center are two peace-seeking, fish-loving, tax-hiking, tree-hugging, jewelry-wearing, long haired hippies. The brains behind the Pearce campaign seem to think that connecting Udall to 1960’s and 70’s-style environmentalism will be enough to discredit him. Whether or not this will be a successful strategy amid the West’s shifting political winds remains to be seen. […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Is anybody listening?
If there is a link between the fires of Northern California and the war in Iraq, it is the thread of human ignorance and our remarkable ability to keep our heads in the sand (HCN, 7/21/08). The fiasco that is Iraq was completely preventable and the result of intentional deceit, stunning hubris and callous disregard […]
Posted inJuly 21, 2008: A fractured party
A fractured party
The Republican Party, struggling with infighting and lacking a coherent vision may find new life — or self-destruction — in the West’s green politics
Posted inJuly 21, 2008: A fractured party
The debate that won’t happen
For a Westerner, this year’s presidential campaign has been both exciting and disappointing. There was excitement when Sen. Barack Obama and the entire Clinton family were stumping in Wyoming; who could ever have imagined that Democratic presidential candidates would be battling for convention delegates in a state that no Democrat has carried in 44 years? […]
Posted inJuly 21, 2008: A fractured party
‘Si, se puede’
Activist continues to inspire after 50 years
Posted inGoat
Utah ultra-conservatives kill a RINO
In what may be a sign of things to come, one of the country’s most conservative congressmen recently lost an election – to an even more conservative upstart. Despite being out-fundraised four to one, first-time office-seeker Jason Chaffetz defeated six-term U.S. House member Chris Cannon by 20 percentage points in Utah’s June 24 Republican primary. […]
Posted inGoat
Wanted: Dead or Mostly Dead
“The common understanding of the term ‘live’ is, quite simply, ‘not dead.’” It may sound like something out of a Monty Python movie, but the above is actually a portion of the plaintiff’s argument in a U.S. Court of Appeals case decided last month in the Ninth Circuit. Environmentalists had issued a challenge to salvage […]