Idaho politicians love to conduct the nation’s business dressed in cowboy boots. Their boots aren’t just for walkin.’ On the capital’s marble floors they ring out an attitude of cowboy values and ornery independence, of things being different way out West. Loafers they are not. Daandy as they may be, cowboy boots reflect life in […]
Politics
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
As Congress adjourns, the environment is left in limbo
As Congress wraps up its business for the year, Western lawmakers will be heading home with a little bit of pork and a whole lot of change. That’s not pocket change, however: New laws passed this year could mean some big changes across the Western landscape. The 108th Congress has passed a significant number of […]
Posted inWotr
Getting ready to wreck the vote
Let’s just get this out of the way: As a nerd, and an overly opinionated one at that, Election Day — not Thanksgiving — has always been my favorite “holiday.” Some kids couldn’t wait to turn 16 and drive; I couldn’t wait to turn 18 and vote. Simply put, I’m a maniac for democracy. That […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Freaky Fridays with the Bush administration
Officials deliver bad news on the environment when no one is listening
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Ready, set, vote
George Bush and Howard Dean aren’t the only ones gearing up for the 2004 election — grassroots organizers across the country are getting ready, too. A coalition called America Votes plans to link grassroots groups to pump up election-day turnout. Sixteen organizations, ranging from the AFL-CIO and ACORN to the Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood, […]
Posted inWotr
A South Dakota hero has a great fall
I was probably the only 3-year-old in South Dakota to own a “Janklow Sucks” t-shirt during Bill Janklow’s second of four terms as governor. Janklow served two terms from 1978 to 1986 and two more from 1994 to 2002; in 2002 we elected him to represent our state — which has fewer people than metro […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Western patriots are rebelling against the Patriot Act
A quick opinion poll: The mass murders of Sept. 11, 2001, were allowed to happen because: A. Letting airline passengers carry potentially deadly weapons such as box-cutters was a bad idea. B. Airport security is a job too important to delegate to corporations. C. Cockpit doors were either unlocked or missing. D. Americans enjoy so […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Where’s Teddy when you need him?
What do Westerners keep in their bedrooms? My wife and I have the assorted bric-a-brac of family photos, a Navajo rug, a miniature Apache burden basket, and far too many books. We have a few plants, early drawings by our two boys, and a vintage log cabin syrup can, because we’ll never be able to […]
Posted inWotr
Some issues are uncomfortably gray
My opposition to the Holcim Company’s proposal to burn more than one million tires every year at a cement plant at the headwaters of the Missouri River started as a no-brainer. I have three children growing up downwind of that plant. I float those rivers. Several friends work with the advocacy group, Montanans Against Toxic […]
Posted inWotr
Western patriots are rebelling against the Patriot Act
A quick opinion poll: The mass murders of Sept.11, 2001, were allowed to occur because: A. Letting airline passengers carry potentially deadly weapons such as box-cutters was a bad idea. B. Airport security is a job too important to delegate to corporations. C. Cockpit doors were either unlocked or missing. D. Americans enjoy so much […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 2003: Courting the Bomb
NEPA gets short shrift in the courts
For more than a year, environmentalists have been warning that the Bush administration is attempting an unprecedented rollback of the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). A recent study of NEPA court cases by the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife indicates that such warnings have merit. Supporters of NEPA describe it as the Magna Carta […]
Posted inWotr
From Washington, D.C., comes a new spoils system
Under the guise of flexibility, the Bush administration is quietly engineering a corporate takeover of government. President Bush has ordered all federal agencies to solicit bids from private corporations to replace 425,000 civil service jobs by the next election. That’s nearly one-quarter of the entire permanent federal workforce. The National Park Service has been one […]
Posted inWotr
The EPA needs an urban pit bull
You walk past a wrecking yard and see on the other side of a high, chain link fence, not a pit bull with a mouth full of teeth but a goldfish in a tank. That”s the image called up by Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt’s nomination as head of the Environmental Protection Administration. It”s a nomination […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Back on the range?
A century ago, the federal government took the Salish and Kootenai tribes’ land and bison for a wildlife refuge. Now, the tribes want to take back control. MOIESE, montana — Here on the National Bison Range, 350 to 500 bison roam a lush, mountain-hemmed prairie, part of a rich community of wildlife that includes bighorn […]
Posted inWotr
Environmentalists made a deal with the devil
In its effort to gain support from Americans whose connections to the natural world have become less direct and more emotional, environmentalists made a deal with a devil that is coming back to haunt them. The devil in question is the animal-rights movement. For nearly four decades, it has skillfully manipulated the media to propagate […]
Posted inWotr
Green Republicans: It’s not an oxymoron
In the seven years since I co-founded Republicans for Environmental Protection, officially known as REP America, I have answered two questions more often than any others: “Isn’t Republicans for Environmental Protection an oxymoron?” And, “If you care so much about conservation and environmental protection, why don’t you become a Democrat?” The first one is easy […]
Posted inWotr
Why Greens need blue blazers
One of my childhood friends, Karl Warkomski, is the first and only elected Green Party member in ultra-right-wing Orange County, Calif. Orange Country — home to the mega-hawk and former congressman “B2 Bob” Dornan — is a place where people get misty-eyed remembering the Reagan presidency. So how in the world did Karl get elected? […]
Posted inWotr
No way to run Wyoming
Imagine, for a moment, that some kooky politicians in Washington, D.C.. decided they wanted to invade Iraq with feather dusters . Now, imagine a colonel in the Army warned them that this was a bad idea, and they need would need real tools of war, helicopters and tanks and such, to execute such a plan. […]
Posted inWotr
In Iraq, there’s hope of restoring the Garden of Eden
Watching the chaotic aftermath of repression andwar in Iraq hurts my heart. As an antidote, I conjure a vision of hope: a shimmering expanse of water and life that may once again grace the Iraqi desert. Until a decade ago, southern Iraq boasted one of the world’s largest wetlands, the Mesopotamia Marshes, almost 7,800 square […]
Posted inWotr
Bruce Babbitt and I have seen the past, and it no longer works
“That was the biggest bunch of BS I’ve ever heard,” complained one man. His friend agreed: “Yeah, I’ll bet neither Babbitt nor Williams have ever been near a timber mill.” Those comments were overheard as the two young men heard left a University of Montana auditorium after I’d introduced former Interior Secretary of the Interior […]