Veggie Libel Laws Ag-Gag

---<div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/paul-krugman-great-salt-lake/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/paul-krugman-great-salt-lake/</a></div><div>
</div><div>dry up</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">an 10 22</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="">Fork 1 Bush 41 Sabotage Climate Conference</div><div style="">Fork 2 Exxon Knew, abandons clean energy</div><div style="">Fork 3: Bush 43 abandons Kyoto</div><div style="">Fork 4: Trump abandons Paris</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">=</div><div style=""><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/smithfield-right-to-rescue-precedent/">
</a></div><div style=""><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/smithfield-right-to-rescue-precedent/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/smithfield-right-to-rescue-precedent/</a></div><div style="">no lnx</div><div style="">Acquittal of activists who saved dying piglets from Smithfield Foods sets 'right to rescue' precedent</div><div style="">
</div><div style=""> Kenny Stancil and Common Dreams October 09, 2022</div><div style="">   </div><div style="">
</div><div style="">Opponents of factory farms and animal cruelty celebrated Saturday night when jurors acquitted two activists who were each facing up to five-and-a-half years in prison on felony burglary and theft charges stemming from the 2017 removal of a pair of sick piglets from a Smithfield Foods factory farm in Utah.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">The not-guilty verdict—a landmark decision establishing the legal "right to rescue" distressed animals in need of care—is "the culmination of a more than five-year pursuit that multiple agencies, including the FBI and the Utah attorney general's office," The Intercept's Marina Bolotnikova reported.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">As Bolotnikova noted, the case "began after the activists published undercover footage revealing gruesome conditions at Smithfield, the nation's largest pork producer," in violation of Utah's 2012 ag-gag law criminalizing the collection of evidence of animal abuse and other illegal activities on factory farms.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">Wayne Hsiung and Paul Picklesimer, members of the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), rescued two dangerously underweight piglets, whom they named Lily and Lizzie, from Circle Four Farms in Beaver County in March 2017. The men took the piglets to receive emergency veterinary care and then transported them to an animal sanctuary in Colorado.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">Cheers erupted in the courtroom on Saturday when Judge Jeffrey Wilcox announced the jury's unanimous decision to acquit both defendants following more than seven hours of deliberation. The trial had to be moved from Beaver County to neighboring Washington County after activists endured threats of violence and intimidation from local authorities, prompting a civil rights lawsuit.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">"They just let a guy who walked into a factory farm and took two piglets out without the consent of Smithfield walk out of the courtroom free," Hsiung, who co-founded DxE in 2013, told reporters outside the courthouse in St. George, Utah. "If it can happen in southern Utah, it can happen anywhere."</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">During his closing remarks to jurors, Hsiung, a former Northwestern Law visiting professor who represented himself at trial, said: "I don't actually want you to acquit us on a legal technicality. I want you to acquit us as a matter of conscience. There's a big difference between stealing and rescue."</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">If you help establish the "right to rescue," Hsiung told the jury, "companies will be a little more compassionate to creatures under their stewardship. Governments will be a little more open to animal cruelty complaints. And maybe just maybe, a baby pig like Lily won't have to starve to death on the floor of a factory farm."</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">"We all have a duty to be kind," said Hsiung. "And your decision today, if you make a good one, will make the world a little bit of a kinder place, even for a baby pig of a factory farm."</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">As DxE pointed out in a statement:</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">A most unlikely character witness, Rick Pitman, testified in support of the defendants Friday. Pitman is the owner of Norbest, a turkey farming company in Utah, which Hsiung and Picklesimer previously investigated and were charged for, before striking up a friendship and annual Thanksgiving turkey rescue tradition.</div><div style="">During cross-examination, Assistant Utah Attorney General Janise Macanas asked Pitman if Hsiung's actions had caused him financial harm. Pitman replied, 'There's a difference between stealing a turkey and rescuing a turkey who is suffering.'</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">The case had been criticized by legal scholars as unconstitutional and politically motivated, given Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes' possible financial ties to Smithfield.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">"State and federal authorities have consistently shielded factory farms from transparency and accountability," said Matthew Strugar, an attorney who has been involved in every successful effort to overturn "ag-gag" statutes in the United States. "In nearly two decades of legal work, this case is one of the most egregious I've seen, in terms of denying defendants' constitutional right to a rigorous defense."</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">Although Hsiung and Picklesimer "documented dead and dying piglets in piles of feces and blood and claim the two piglets they removed were injured, sick, and starving," DxE noted, Wilcox ruled in February that "video of the rescue—and any evidence of the condition of the animals—is barred because it might arouse 'horror' in the jury."</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">As Bolotnikova explained Saturday, citing previous reporting by The Intercept, the FBI in August 2017 "chased the piglets across state lines and raided the sanctuary where they were living, bringing with them veterinarians who sliced off a piece of Lizzie's ear to perform a DNA test and confirm that she was the property of Smithfield Foods. (The animals were not removed from the sanctuary, and still live there to this day.)"</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">"Prosecutors alleged that the baby pigs, who were barely a week old when the activists removed them, were worth $42.20 each, or $84.40 in total, to Smithfield," Bolotnikova reported. "The U.S.-based pork producer is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based pork company WH Group, which reported $24 billion of revenue in 2019."</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">Hadar Aviram, a professor at UC Hastings Law who testified in favor of the activists, told The Intercept that "Smithfield has an enormous amount of financial interests that are wrapped up in this."</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">"They have an enormous amount to lose if this trial becomes public, and they cannot afford, or maybe they think they cannot afford, to give an inch to these people," said Aviram.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">The pig rescue occurred during a DxE investigation to uncover whether Smithfield had followed through on its pledge to stop using two-foot by seven-foot gestation crates that make it impossible for pregnant pigs to turn around.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">Hsiung, Picklesimer, and three others who pleaded out of the case discovered rows of pregnant pigs confined to such cages despite the company's promise to swear off of them. Evidence from the probe has been used in a lawsuit against Smithfield for misleading consumers, and it sparked nationwide protests against Costco, one of Smithfield's major buyers.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">The animal rights activists also found "a facility packed with farrowing crates—similar to gestation crates, but with just enough additional room to fit nursing piglets—where female pigs are moved when they're ready to give birth," The Intercept noted. "The group found dead and rotting piglets inside the facility, as well as visibly ill and injured ones like Lily and Lizzie."</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">"A key part of the defense's case was that the piglets were on the verge of death when Hsiung and Picklesimer took them, and Smithfield routinely throws sick or dead animals away," the news outlet noted. "Had the animals remained in the company's possession, the defense argued, they would have been worthless."</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">By setting a "right to rescue" precedent, the activists' major victory against a multi-billion dollar industry could have far-reaching implications.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">"This is huge. On many levels," Bolotnikova tweeted. "And it shows a hell of a lot about how out-of-touch red-state prosecutors and politicians are from the people they represent."</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">The U.S. Supreme Court, she added, will soon hear arguments over California's ban on gestation crates, which "were on trial in this case even though the judge didn't want them to be."</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div>=an 1 22 Utah-based technology company’s founder and chairman who is also a big GOP donor is falsely <a href="https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/entrata-chair-emails-tech-ceos-claiming-covid-vaccine-part-of-sterilization-plot-by-the-jews" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">claiming the highly-effective COVID-19 vaccines are part of a plot by “the Jews”</a> to “euthanize the American people,” while insisting to a local reporter, “Some of my closest friends are Jews.”David Bateman, who founded Entrata, a property management technology company, sent the email title “GENOCIDE” to fellow tech company CEOs and to political leaders including the Governor of Utah. Some subsequently shared it with Fox 13. Bateman has admitted to sending the message, while claiming he “loves” Jewish people.<div id="story_page_incontent_p2_target" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-5155643920455169" data-ad-slot="6339868799" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 20px; display: block;" /></div>“I write this email knowing that many of you will think I’m crazy after reading it. I believe there is a sadistic effort underway to euthanize the American people. It’s obvious now. It’s undeniable, yet no one is doing anything. Everyone is discounting their own judgment, and dismissing their intuition,” Bateman wrote in his email, Fox 13 reports.The missive gets wildly antisemitic and conspiratorial.=anti gerry comm?=texas paxton bs suit<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/paxton/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/paxton/</a>=<h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 25px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">g<a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/utah-governor/" aria-label="GOP governor sounds off about vaccine hesitancy -- slamming his own political party" data-type="text" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" word-break="word-break" break-word="break-word" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" font-size="font-size" px="px" line-height="line-height">OP governor sounds off about vaccine hesitancy -- slamming his own political party</a></h1><div class="social-author clearfix" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/meaghanellis" data-type="text" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative;">Meaghan Ellis</a></div><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body css-listicle-body-2653800563" style="margin-top: 10px; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; margin-bottom: 15px; display: -webkit-box; text-overflow: ellipsis; line-height: 23px; -webkit-line-clamp: 3; overflow: hidden; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description" style="">Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) blasted right-wing media outlets for "propaganda" he believes has influenced the widespread vaccine hesitancy contributing to the current uptick in COV...</div></div>=an 920w<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/watch-fact-free-utah-rally-goes-viral-after-attendees-spout-conspiracies-and-compare-wearing-masks-to-george-floyd-telling-police-i-cant-breathe/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4; display: inline !important;">atch: Fact-free Utah rally goes viral after attendees spout conspiracies and compare wearing masks to George Floyd telling police ‘I can’t breathe’</a><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/ayshaqamar/" title="Posts by Aysha Qamar" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Aysha Qamar</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/daily-kos/" title="Posts by Daily Kos" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Daily Kos</a></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As health experts continue to encourage mask-wearing across the country, some anti-maskers just won’t give up.</div>=<div>=</div><div>dakota nurse (highest death rate in world 11/20) yelled at till intubated, hoax must be something else killing me</div><div><div>---</div><div><h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">p<a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/truth/" aria-label="Pro-Trump coronavirus truthers try to invade Utah hospital overrun with COVID-19 patients: report" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; word-break: break-word; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 25px;">ro-Trump coronavirus truthers try to invade Utah hospital overrun with COVID-19 patients: report</a></h1><div class="social-author clearfix" style="margin-top: 10px; display: inline-block; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/alex-henderson" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">Alex Henderson</a></div> <div class="social-date" style="margin-top: 8px; display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> November 18, 2020</div><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body css-listicle-body-2648965138" style="margin-top: 10px; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; text-overflow: ellipsis; display: -webkit-box; -webkit-line-clamp: 4; overflow: hidden; line-height: 31px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description">When President Donald Trump was voted out of office in the 2020 election, one of the top reasons why millions of U.S. residents voted to replace him with former Vice President Joe Biden was his woefully inadequate response to the coronavirus pandemic.</div></div></div><div>
</div><div>=</div></div>=<div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-placing-re-election-hopes-on-religious-group-that-rejected-him-in-2016-report/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-placing-re-election-hopes-on-religious-group-that-rejected-him-in-2016-report/</a></div><div>
</div><div>According to a report in Politico, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/13/trump-biden-mormons-church-412234" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Donald Trump’s re-election campaign</a> is attempting to woo members of the Church of Latter-day Saints this campaign cycle after they roundly rejected him in 2016.</div>Faced with an Electoral College numbers game that currently does not favor him, the president needs to lockdown Utah and hang onto Arizona –two states with large Mormon populations.As the report notes, in 2016 “Mormons rejected Donald Trump in numbers unheard of for a Republican nominee — viewing the thrice-married, immigrant-bashing Republican as an affront to their values.”Faced with losing states in the battleground Midwest that helped propel him into the Oval Office, the president needs to stop the bleeding in Arizona which could go for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in what might be a high-turnout election.<span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding">noting that Utah and Arizona contain over a half-million Latter-day Saints combined, Politico reports that “A 2010 <a class="editor-rtfLink" href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/125021/mormons-conservative-major-religious-group.aspx" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">Gallup survey</a><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding"> found that “Mormons are both the most Republican and the most conservative of any of the major religious groups in the U.S. today.”However, “Mormon support for the Republican ticket dropped from 80 percent in 2004 and 78 percent in 2012, to 61 percent in 2016,” the report notes.“Trump dispatched Vice President Mike Pence to Mesa, Ariz. last month for the kickoff of ‘Latter-day Saints for Trump.’ The president’s campaign is planning more events in the coming weeks with prominent Mormons, including former Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer, Utah Sen. Mike Lee, and McDaniel,” the report states. “The campaign and Republican National Committee have scheduled trips to Arizona for out-of-state Mormons to canvass fellow church members for votes. On Saturday, Trump traveled to Nevada — a state that Democrats had been confident was in their column — and he will be in Arizona this week.”According to Evan McMullin, a Mormon who ran a third-party campaign in 2016, he doesn’t see members of his church embracing Trump in 2020 any more than they did in 2016.Explaining, “most people who voted third party in 2016 will be supporting Biden in this election,” McMullin added some Mormon voters who reflexively went with Republican Trump in 2016, have since “soured on him.”The Politico report goes on to note, “Trump is trailing Biden by about 5 points in Arizona, according to polling averages, and LDS voters could be decisive if the race tightens. In 2018, Kyrsten Sinema won massive Maricopa County — which includes the historically Mormon suburb of Mesa — becoming the first Democrat to win an Arizona Senate seat since the 1980s.”You can <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/13/trump-biden-mormons-church-412234" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">read more here</a>.<div>=</div><div>=</div><div><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/whats-behind-the-extreme-charges-for-3-nonviolent-protesters-in-salt-lake-city/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">What’s behind the extreme charges for 3 nonviolent protesters in Salt Lake City?</a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/roryfleming1/" title="Posts by Rory Fleming" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Rory Fleming</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/filter/" title="Posts by Filter " class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Filter</a></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Salt Lake City is a world apart from the rest of Utah culturally and politically, and its choice of district attorney shows that—at least on a surface level. Sim Gill,…<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/whats-behind-the-extreme-charges-for-3-nonviolent-protesters-in-salt-lake-city/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/whats-behind-the-extreme-charges-for-3-nonviolent-protesters-in-salt-lake-city/</a>
salt Lake City is a world apart from the rest of Utah culturally and politically, and its choice of district attorney shows that—at least on a surface level. Sim Gill, first elected to the seat in 2010, has made some modest criminal justice reform moves, like expressing support for reducing the number of people on probation or court supervision. As a first-generation immigrant from India, he’s one of the few Asian-American elected prosecutors nationwide. Faced with a conservative Republican challenger in 2018, Gill emerged victorious by 14 percentage points.
However, DA Gill’s recent reaction to the vandalizing of his office shows a different, more vindictive side to him. In early July, protesters gathered to criticize Gill for refusing to indict the police officer who killed a young Latino man named Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal. A group of protesters allegedly painted “the road outside of the district attorney’s downtown Salt Lake City office and its facade red.” On July 28, three protesters, all women no older than 25, were charged with several criminal mischief and rioting felonies.
The local paper originally reported the criminal mischief charges as first-degree felonies, which carry a minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum of life under state law. However, there is no first-degree felony under the statute. Assuming the women were charged under the harshest provision under that particular criminal law, a second-degree felony, they would all be facing one-to-fifteen years in prison on just one of the charges filed.
Buildings and streets can be repainted. No violence was alleged, nor any threat of violence. So the worst that this incident represents is property damage. What was the DA thinking?
Unfortunately, Salt Lake County DA Sim Gill has a tendency to react this way when challenged. For example, when Utah County Commissioners were poised to create the state’s first commission on prosecutorial misconduct, Gill joined then-Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman and others to decry it as a violative encroachment on prosecutors’ authority. Even though the commission would only have affected the Utah County DA office, and even though Buhman had a documented record of alleged misconduct and bullying of defense attorneys.
Gill’s defensiveness came in the context of his questionable ongoing political durability. In Utah County, the second-largest in the state, new Republican DA David Leavitt is just as “progressive” as Gill, if not more so. He ran as a pro-reform counterpoint to Buhman; after taking office, he has deprioritized drug cases, to the chagrin of many in the local law enforcement rank and file. These moves are braver to make in a place like Utah County, which has a much more traditional, tough-on-crime electorate than Salt Lake County. Meanwhile, Gill has refused to support marijuana legalization or the end to mandatory minimum prison sentences for drugs in his jurisdiction, the much more liberal Salt Lake County.
Then there were the revelations in a September 2018 Buzzfeed expose that at least four women were vying to use a state constitutional provision to initiate prosecutions against the men they accused of sexually assaulting them. All four were vocally disappointed that DA Gill’s office found their allegations unconvincing, and found an ally in University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell, a prominent victims’ rights advocate who represented one of the women in court. It was the kind of bombshell story that ends some elected prosecutors’ careers, though it failed to get much attention in the local press.
Gill, a registered Democrat, probably won reelection last time mainly due to the influence of partisan politics. A 2017 analysis found that nearly all of Utah’s Democratic legislators come from Salt Lake City and surrounding areas. In 2016, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by nine points in Salt Lake County—a margine which likely would have been larger if not for Utah voters’ affinity for independent third-party candidates. By September, the partisan primaries were closed, and Gill’s only opponent was Nathan Evershed, his former deputy, who ran as a Republican without the advantage of incumbency.
Since winning re-election, Gill said that “justice reform” would be his main focus, which means that he is setting himself up for failure in 2022. Despite his occasionally announcing abstract support for a more humane and proportional justice system—especially the kinds of everyday cases that fall through the national media cracks—his promise belies the truth on the ground.
With criticism levied against him for not charging officers, Gill is again proclaiming support for reforms, this time squarely on the issue of police accountability. Ironically, Ian Adams, the leader of the Utah Fraternal Order of Police, was actually more believable when he said that Gill’s real police reform proposal is “to save Sim Gill’s job.” But perhaps some outcry over felony charges for three young, nonviolent protesters will make that harder than ever.
This article was originally published by Filter, a magazine covering drug use, drug policy and human rights.no lnx<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div></div></div><div>=</div><div>=</div><div>BUFFER</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-national-monuments-2645060606.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-national-monuments-2645060606.html</a></div><div>The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/trump-administration" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Trump administration</a> <a href="https://www.blm.gov/press-release/blm-restores-access-blueprint-managing-national-monuments-and-public-lands-utah" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">finalized plans Thursday</a> to open <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-lands" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">public lands</a> in Utah to the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">fossil fuel</a> industry.<div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-2" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-national-monuments-2645060606.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2" data-id="2" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The move completes a process begun in 2017 when the administration announced the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amp/trump-utah-national-monuments-2514084239" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">largest rollback of land protection in U,S. history</a>: It shrank Utah's <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/bears-ears" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Bears Ears National Monument</a> by 85 percent and its <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/grand-staircase-escalante" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument</a> by nearly half. Now, the Interior Department is releasing a land-use blueprint that would allow <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oil" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">oil</a>, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/natural-gas" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">gas</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">coal</a> companies to lease land for drilling and mining on around 861,974 acres that were once part of Grand Staircase-Escalante, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/climate/trump-grand-staircase-monument.html?auth=link-dismiss-google1tap" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">The New York Times reported</a>."These plans are atrocious, and entirely predictable," <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Natural Resources Defense Council</a> (NRDC) Senior Director for Lands Sharon Buccino said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. "They are the latest in a series of insults to these magnificent lands by the Trump administration that began when Trump illegally dismantled Bears Ears and Grand Staircase at the behest of corporate interests two years ago."</div></div><div>...</div><div></div>see SLCAnd with Washington effectively gridlocked, the fight has moved elsewhere. When Trump pulled out of the climate accords, for instance, he explained that he’d been elected to govern “Pittsburgh, not Paris.” The next day the mayor of Pittsburgh said his town was now planning on 100 percent renewable energy, a pledge that’s been made by places as diverse as Atlanta, San Diego and Salt Lake City. Next year, representatives of thousands of regions, provinces, cities, parishes, arrondissements, districts and counties will descend on San Francisco for a Paris-like gathering of subnational actors, summoned by California Gov. Jerry Brown. According to Brown (who is as sadly compromised as most other leaders – he continues to allow wide-scale fracking and oil production across the state), Trump’s decision to leave the path of gradualism “is a stimulus … In a way, it’s a rising of … awareness.”<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21012020/utah-climate-change-plan-conservative-legislature-coal-emissions-salt-lake">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21012020/utah-climate-change-plan-conservative-legislature-coal-emissions-salt-lake</a>turning pt?https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/23/grand-staircase-escalante-national-monument-management-plan-blm-oil-gas-drilling-trump<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/they-loan-you-money-then-they-get-a-warrant-for-your-arrest/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/they-loan-you-money-then-they-get-a-warrant-for-your-arrest/</a>
romney crit trump again 10/19 called for impeach? had mtg?
=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/utah-anti-impeachment-rally-backfires-as-trump-critics-vastly-outnumber-supporters/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/utah-anti-impeachment-rally-backfires-as-trump-critics-vastly-outnumber-supporters/</a>...<a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2019/10/09/competing-rallies-face/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Salt Lake Tribune’s Lee Davidson reports</a> that the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee this week held a rally outside the offices of Rep. Ben McAdams (D-UT) to get him to back off his support of impeaching President Donald...<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/hmhmwlfjfgnznwppzsbffzfppszpjchdmgfnbvlcbqm_xchvdcsctdrrscbrcsd.html?a=&b=244&c=21989&d=2" style="">Welcome to the beginning of the fascist takeover’: Utah judge suspended for 6 months without pay after series of anti-Trump remarks</a><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Georgia, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-style="font-style" italic="italic" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" padding="padding"> In Utah, Judge Michael Kwan has made it clear that…romney will bring utah values to senate, just rolled on something? djt?=Utah Sen.-elect Mitt Romney signaled he may focus on climate change when he's sworn in in January.In a brief interview with E&E News yesterday, the former Republican presidential nominee said he sees climate change as a "critical area."Asked if it was an issue he planned to be active on in the Senate, Romney said that he intends "to be active in everything I can be active in" after he takes his post.Romney, a 2012 Republican presidential nominee who easily won his race to replace outgoing Sen. Orrin Hatch (R), has swung on the issue of greenhouse gas emissions for years.As governor of the blue state of Massachusetts, he pushed to close old coal-fired power plants and helped create the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative — essentially a cap-and-trade plan — in the Northeast (<a href="https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060105501" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; font-weight: bold;">Climatewire</a>, Nov. 8).He has also long advocated increased oil and gas production in an effort to increase U.S. energy independence, including drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.As a presidential candidate in a competitive GOP primary, Romney took a modified tone, shifting some of the dialogue to questions of economics as opposed to science."My view is that we don't know what's causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us," he said during a 2011 fundraiser, according to ABC News.But for the past six years, the Republican has been fairly consistent in emphasizing climate change as an urgent problem that humans contribute to and demands action.Last year, Romney told college students in St. Louis that he was "concerned about the anti-scientific attitude" expressed by some of his Republican colleagues and that he was convinced humanity has played a part in global warming (<a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060100361/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; font-weight: bold;">Climatewire</a>, Oct. 3)."I happen to believe that there is climate change, and I think humans contribute to it in a substantial way, and therefore I look with openness to all the ideas that might be able to address that," he said at the time.<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/lake-powell-pipeline-2579462134.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/lake-powell-pipeline-2579462134.html</a>=<h3 style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; line-height: 1.25em; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Utah</h3><ul style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em 2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: square;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.5em; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R), <a href="http://www.utah.gov/governor/news_media/article.html?article=6847" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">who is</a> “fighting to turn federal lands in our state over to Utahns,” has also <a href="http://www.utah.gov/governor/news_media/article.html?article=6847" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">described himself</a> as a “leader in the Sagebrush Rebellion.”</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.5em; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R) <a href="http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/green/news/2014/05/22/90206/bundys-buddies-the-15-members-of-congress-who-share-cliven-bundys-desire-to-seize-or-sell-off-americas-public-lands/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">introduced legislation</a> to sell off more than 3 million acres of federal lands to private interests. He also has <a href="http://www.utah.gov/governor/news_media/article.html?article=6847" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">said</a> that ownership of public lands is “as much about state sovereignty as it is about our state economy” and joined Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and the Utah delegation to “demand [the] transfer of public lands to Utah.”</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.5em; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop (R) is one of the <a href="http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/green/news/2014/05/22/90206/bundys-buddies-the-15-members-of-congress-who-share-cliven-bundys-desire-to-seize-or-sell-off-americas-public-lands/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">strongest congressional proponents</a> of turning federal land over to the states. In May, Rep. Bishop <a href="http://www.c-span.org/video/?319128-3/washington-journal-management-public-land&save" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">said</a>, “states have shown themselves to be far more qualified than the federal government has” and that “we should try and transpose as much land to the state control as is humanly possible.”</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.5em; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart (R) campaigned for Congress in 2012 <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Chris_Stewart_Energy+Oil.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">on a platform</a> supporting the sell-off of public lands to private entities for energy development.</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.5em; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R) <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr1126/text" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">authored</a> legislation to sell off more than 3 million acres of public lands to private interests.</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.5em; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Former Mayor Mia Love (R), who is <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/58233068-90/campaign-candidate-democratic-district.html.csp" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">leading</a> in the polls for Utah’s open 4th Congressional District seat, has clearly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DteIZEI3J9E&feature=youtu.be&t=17m29s" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">stated</a> that she supports the “return of Utah lands from the federal government back to the state of Utah.”</li></ul>==

53m$ to boost 4 mines to export to china thru oakland

alec bsNavajo tribes in southern Utah enjoy free access to the federally owned region called Bears Ears. The land is managed by both the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management through resource management plans. These plans are developed in collaboration with state, local and tribal governments, even though most of the time the federal agencies ignore their concerns. However, a coordinated campaign of out-of-state environmental groups and Indian tribes are trying to make Bears Ears into a national monument. To do this, they are pressuring President Obama to declare the land a national monument through the Antiquities Act of 1906. Federal regulation could restrict the tribes from practicing their sacred traditions if Bears Ears is declared a national monument.Currently, the local Indian tribes can worship and perform their traditional rites like hunting, gathering wood and food and harvesting herbs for medicine. However, with a national monument designation, this activity would be illegal or significantly curtailed. If Bears Ears becomes a national monument, the tribes could be subject to fees to enter the park or be barred altogether from visiting sites where ceremonial rituals are performed.The President does not need congressional or state consent to declare the Bears Ears region a national monument. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/history/local-law/FHPL_AntiAct.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.2s;">The Antiquities Act of 1906</a> gives him full authority to establish national monuments. This Act can be a very valuable policy tool enabling a U.S. President to offer national monument status to protect important historical sites from looting, vandalism and other damaging events when congressional action is not rapid enough. However, Bears Ears is an instance where the declaration is likely to restrict access to the area to the very people for whom access is most culturally vital – Utah’s and the surrounding states’ Native populations.President Obama has used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to a greater extent than any of his predecessors. To date, he has designated a total of 24 national monuments, effectively rendering <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/24/obama-declares-new-national-monument-maine/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.2s;">265 million</a> acres of public land “off-limits”. One of his most recent designations was the Katahdin Woods and Waters Monument. <a href="http://www.foxbangor.com/news/item/16232-state-leaders-and-others-respond-to-national-monument-designation" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.2s;">Representative Bruce Poliquin</a>, whose district contains the new national monument, has indicated that the locals are completely against it, observing that “several communities most impacted by such a plan voted in non-binding referendums on the proposal in the Katahdin Region and in every instance the people voted in large numbers to oppose the concept.” Residents are distressed that the land will now become inaccessible for traditional outdoor activities and that nearby lumber mills could be impacted, and the new national monument status for this territory disregards local residents’ right to enjoy their own land. This situation mirrors what is happening at Bears Ears.According to an article in the <a href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865659464/Big-money-environmentalists-and-the-Bears-Ears-story.html?pg=all" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.2s;">Deseret News</a>, out-of-state interest groups are the main drivers behind making Bears Ears a national monument for conservation purposes. Two California-based groups, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, donated $20 million to the campaign. This past July, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation announced $15.6 million in donations to various environmental causes, including some reportedly for the Bears Ears campaign. This influx of outside money has raised questions about how much local tribal grassroots support there is for the designation.Currently, Utah Congressional leaders such as like Senator Mike Lee, Rep. Rob Bishop, Rep. Chris Stewart and Rep. Jason Chaffetz are trying to address <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/home/4116187-155/bishop-chaffetz-unveil-long-awaited-lands-bill" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.2s;">unreasonable federal overreach</a>. This past year, Rep. Bishop and Rep. Chaffetz introduced the Utah Public Lands Initiative Act of 2016 (<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/5780" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.2s;">H.R. 5780</a>) and Utah Public Lands Initiative Partner Act (<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/5781" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.2s;">H.R. 5781</a>). H.R. 5780 is a compromise between the tribes, conservationists and industry. The bill would allow for a large portion of Bears Ears to be conserved while giving parts to the local Navajo Tribe and business interests who want to develop the land. H.R. 5781 prevents the Federal government from declaring Bears Ears a national monument. Senator Lee has been visiting the Bears Ears region, hosting events where the community is invited to voice its concerns, and actively letting Congress know the Bears Ears community’s thoughts on the matter.Chronic National Park Service (NPS) budget shortfalls (not to mention a $12 billion backlog of deferred maintenance in national park units) added to the social costs imposed on a population that has long been mistreated by the federal government suggests that now is an inopportune time to designate additional federal lands as national monuments.brennan ctr: <span style="font-family: nimbus-sans, Helvetica, Arial, " nimbus="Nimbus" sans="Sans" l="L" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">For example, in a scandal one news report called a “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/us/politics/a-campaign-inquiry-in-utah-is-the-watchdogs-worst-case.html" rel="nofollow" target="blank" nimbus="Nimbus" sans="Sans" l="L" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">nightmare scenario</a><span style="font-family: nimbus-sans, Helvetica, Arial, " nimbus="Nimbus" sans="Sans" l="L" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">” of corruption, former Utah Attorney General John Swallow used “independent” groups to orchestrate advertising for his 2012 campaign from payday loan companies, which he had <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1088927-utah-house-special-investigation-committee-final.html" rel="nofollow" target="blank" nimbus="Nimbus" sans="Sans" l="L" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">in exchange promised to regulate lightly</a><span style="font-family: nimbus-sans, Helvetica, Arial, " nimbus="Nimbus" sans="Sans" l="L" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">, according to an investigation by Utah’s legislature. Swallow’s campaign staff had created a web of benignly named groups, like the Proper Role of Government Education Association, to conceal more than $450,000 in spending by the lenders.kickass CPA lyman:<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">ST. GEORGE — San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman reported to jail Tuesday to serve a 10-day sentence for an illegal ATV protest ride in a protected southern Utah canyon.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Officers booked Lyman into the Purgatory Correctional Facility in Washington County. He is scheduled to be released April 28.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">A jury convicted Lyman and Monte Wells in May on misdemeanor charges of conspiring to operate off-road vehicles on public lands closed to off-road vehicles, and operation of off-road vehicles on public lands closed to off-road vehicles.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">U.S. District Judge David Nuffer sentenced Lyman to 10 days in jail and Wells to five days in jail. He allowed Lyman, a certified public accountant, to report after the April 18 tax filing deadline. Wells served his time in January. The judge also imposed 36 months' probation and $96,000 in restitution on the two men.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Both men appealed their convictions to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. Lyman, acting as his own attorney, was granted more time to file his initial brief due April 20. He now has until May 20.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Lyman has said he wants to prove he didn't trespass or encourage others to break the law during the May 2014 ride designed to express frustration over federal land management practices.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">— Dennis Romboyhttp://www.deseretnews.com/article/865652554/San-Juan-County-Commissioner-Phil-Lyman-reports-to-jail-for-illegal-ATV-ride.html?pg=all---http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865660141/Commissioner-Phil-Lyman-tells-of-jail-Hamilton-and-his-right-to-public-land.htmlBLANDING — San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman had a lot of time to think in his jail cell. He said he had several epiphanies while he read "Hamilton," jotted notes in the margin with a borrowed golf pencil and chatted with his 20-year-old, drug-addicted bunkmate.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Perspectives change behind bars. Lyman says he walked out of the Washington County Jail humbled. But one thing didn't change: He still doesn't believe he broke the law when he led an ATV protest ride in nearby Recapture Canyon.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"My only argument in this whole thing is I didn't trespass," Lyman said during a recent hike on the same path that put him on the wrong side of the federal government. "I didn't trespass."<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Now four months removed from his 10-day jail stint, Lyman, 52, hasn't given up on clearing his name. He's working on an appeal of his conviction. But he also has some new interests born of sharing a cell with a drug addict. He also continues to speak out on federal land management issues and states rights and, interestingly, opposes Utah Rep. Rob Bishop's controversial Public Lands Initiative.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">A jury convicted Lyman and Monte Wells in May 2015 on misdemeanor charges of conspiring to operate off-road vehicles on public lands closed to off-road vehicles, and operation of off-road vehicles on public lands closed to off-road vehicles. Wells spent five days in jail. They're also on the hook for $96,000 in trail restoration costs.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Some 200 people followed him on the protest ride, and as U.S. District Judge David Nuffer told him, "when you strike a match, you're responsible for the fire."<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">The Bureau of Land Management temporarily closed sections of the 37-mile-long canyon to motorized vehicles in 2007 over concerns of damage to ancestral Puebloan ruins. Many locals objected, asserting the closure was arbitrary and unnecessary, and thwarted a mandated federal review process.Not the outdoorsy type, Lyman and his illegal ATV ride was only his second venture into Recapture Canyon, the first coming when he was in high school. He doesn't own an ATV and rented one for the ride, yet he became the poster child for ATV rights.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"A sad irony," he says.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Recapture Canyon<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Vegetation now chokes much of the trail along Recapture Creek, a tributary of the San Juan River, just outside Blanding. Centuries-old cliff dwellings of Ancestral Pueblo peoples overlook the canyon which also contains burial sites and artifacts. Signs of any kind of traffic, foot or otherwise, are absent.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Lyman stops at the turnaround point of the May 10, 2014 ATV ride on what's called the pipeline road. He again makes his argument for why he believes the federal government wrongly prosecuted him. He maintains the road belongs to the county road and as county commissioner he had a right to drive on it.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"I've always been taught to live your life above reproach. It doesn't mean that you hide and don't ever do anything. It means that whatever you do, you make sure that you have a good foundation for why you're doing it and that you know why you're doing it," Lyman said.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"In this situation, I believe that my actions from start to finish are above reproach."<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Prosecutors didn't see it that way, telling the jury during the trial that Lyman knew what he was doing was illegal but did it anyway. He chose crime, they said.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Lyman disagrees and said he would do it again to stand up for his principles and for the people he represents as an elected official.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"If it means going to jail, I would go to jail again for your rights or anyone else's rights to do what is not illegal in America and without the fear of prosecution," he said.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Lyman, a certified public accountant, said defending himself has cost $330,000 so far, money he says that came from his own pocket, family, friends and people he still hasn't paid back. He's now representing himself because "I'm broke," and writing his own appeal.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"Even though it's not a really good legal brief, it's a really good factual brief. And that's all I was interested in, getting the fact on the record in court," he said.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Lyman spent his time in jail reading "Hamilton," making notes in the margin and writing his thoughts. He talked a lot to his cellmate who is in for drug possession.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"You're incarcerated. You're a prisoner. It's not a field trip. It takes away a lot of your dignity," he said.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Lyman is on federal probation for three years, and must regularly communicate with a probation officer. He's also supposed to let the officer know if he comes in contact with anyone who has a criminal record.<p style="text-align: center; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"I said are you kidding? I live in Blanding, Utah. Everyone has a criminal record thanks to you guys. I said my home teacher can't come without me checking in with you," said Lyman, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Unexpected lessons<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Lyman said some "deeply personal things" happened in jail that he doesn't want to get into publicly.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">But he said he came to a realization about the way society treats drug addicts. He said his cellmate, who he called a "fantastic kid," lost his job, apartment and truck due to his addiction. He said he's not a dangerous person, just someone who needs love and support.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Only an "insane society," Lyman said, would ruin something it could repair so easily.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"It's kind of shifted my focus from some of these public lands issues to incarcerating people under this war on drugs and destroying families," he said.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Still, he's never far away from the lands controversy. He's against the proposed Bears Ears National Monument, a designation he said should be an honor not a punishment. At the same, time the Republican commissioner doesn't support Bishop's public lands proposal.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">San Juan County, he said, didn't get what a local public lands advisory council spent many meeting agreeing on. He said he was surprised to see energy zones, resolution to some historic road issues and several key land exchanges removed from the plan, and told Bishop so at public hearing on Bears Ears earlier this month.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"I feel betrayed by the PLI at this point, but I am still in favor of the process that was initially promised," he said.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Whether Congress passes Bishop's bill and resolves some of the divisive land management issues in southeastern Utah remains to be seen. And Lyman's protest ride didn't change anything but left Recapture Canyon a symbol of conflict. The same concerns that existed then, exist now, and maybe further entrenched the various and opposing interests.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Lyman, who hasn't decided whether to run for a third term as commissioner, said he won't back down from doing what he believes is right for San Juan County and its residents.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"I love this country, its founder, its principles. I hate to see the law perverted and used against innocent people. You feel like you have an obligation to stand up," he said.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"But at the same time, I am very respectful. I am one of the most — I sound like Donald Trump — I am one of the most respectful people I can think of to interface with the BLM on this and for them to paint me as the opposite of that it's not fair, it's not right, it's counterproductive."<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Lyman said his father's advice to him was to never equivocate. His mother's advice was to always be a gentleman.<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; border: 0px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); line-height: 1.3;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"What it comes down to," he said, "is you have people who are passionate and I hope that at some point when I meet my maker that I will not be guilty of ambiguity and equivocation."=https://www.hcn.org/articles/is-san-juan-countys-phil-lyman-the-new-calvin-black...pothunter suiicde...But leading man Lyman — who vaguely resembles the actor John C. Reilly — refused to adhere to the Sagebrush Rebel script. He expressed disdain for the BLM, sure, and even quoted political theorist Thomas Paine. But then he adopted a soothing tone, and pleaded with the 200 or so in the audience to forgo the civil disobedience portion of the protest. He urged the group not to ride down Recapture at all, and particularly not to violate the trail closure. “My fear is that this event is looking like conflict for the sake of conflict,” he said. “I think we do more harm than good to actually cross that line today. It takes a lot of courage to go down that road, it takes a lot of courage to say you know it’s going to do more damage than good for our cause today in the media.”<div class="fb-quote fb_iframe_widget" fb-xfbml-state="rendered" fb-iframe-plugin-query="app_id=&container_width=721&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hcn.org%2Farticles%2Fis-san-juan-countys-phil-lyman-the-new-calvin-black&locale=en_US&sdk=joey" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; position: absolute; left: -23.5px; top: 2676px;"></div>The Bunkerville crew let out a collective grumble of dismay. “If we don’t open it, then we might as well go home right now,” hollered Ryan Bundy, wearing a black cowboy hat. “To hell with the media,” yelled another. When an older local bemoaned the BLM “police state,” someone said, "You've got guns, too. By God, that's what they're for!"As the crowd fired up their ATVs, bedecked with American and Gadsden flags, a rift revealed itself between the Nevada Sagebrush Rebels and the Utah ones, between the old-school, militant rebels and the more reluctant, newer strain.*San Juan County contains some of the most spectacular landscapes in the United States, maybe the world (as is evidenced by the huge number of foreign tourists who visit each year). It is bordered on the west by the Colorado River and Lake Powell; the San Juan River slices through its southern edge; countless canyons drop out of the Abajo mountains and snake their way through seas of slickrock. Much of the land has been inhabited by Native Americans for centuries. The county holds a higher concentration of Ancestral Puebloan dwellings than just about anywhere else, and is now home to the Utah Navajos, the White Mesa Utes (a branch of the Ute Mountain Utes) and the San Juan Paiutes. Native Americans make up about 50 percent of the county’s population of 15,000.About a quarter of the roughly 8,000-square-mile county is Indian land, and much of the rest is managed by the BLM or the U.S. Forest Service. Sandwiched in between are a handful of small communities, surrounded by farms and ranches. Members of those communities, particularly Blanding and Monticello, have long butted heads with the feds and environmentalists over how the public land should be managed. Much of the action in Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gangtakes place in San Juan County, and the novel’s main antagonist, Bishop Love, is modeled on the late Calvin Black, a San Juan County Commissioner in the 60s, 70s and 80s, uranium miner, real estate tycoon and businessman, who is often referred to as the original Sagebrush Rebel.The ideological underpinning of Black’s rebellion has been passed down to the current generation: Black resented what he called “federal colonialism,” the notion that lawmakers in Washington, D.C. can dictate what Utahns can or can’t do in their own back yards. Lyman and his ilk toe the same rhetorical line. But the context and goals have changed. Black’s primary beef with the feds was that they were purportedly closing off lands to uranium mining and other extractive industries and cattle grazing, which at the time comprised the livelihoods of Black and the county’s communities. Since then, the market has hurt those industries far more than have any governmental restrictions. The region has become far more dependent on tourism, which is in turn dependent on a landscape that hasn't been drilled, mined and grazed into a wasteland. Some of those tourists come to jeep or ride the thousands of miles of roads and trails in the county that remain open to motorized travel, giving today’s rebels some economic justification for their fights. But mostly, they seem to be fighting for motorized access as an end in itself.And things can still get ugly. In 2012, the grassroots group Great Old Broads for Wilderness received <a href="https://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/fear-and-loathing-in-san-juan-county" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit;">threats</a> when they held an event in San Juan County. Earlier that year, the BLM physically blocked a roadway in the county with a dirt berm; the county alleged that the closure was on a county road, and was illegal. After locals “outed” the BLM official allegedly responsible for the closure, someone tore around the official’s yard on an ATV, and a fellow student harassed the officer’s kid at school. In a county meeting that March, as the officer explained that the agency had blocked a user-created trail, not a county road, he was met with general hostility, even from a local sheriff’s deputy. After the officer asked that personal attacks on him and his property cease, Lyman responded: “That (personal attacks) should not happen … but I do understand how you might take something like that (the road closure) personally.” He then invoked the 2009 raids on pothunters and the Recapture issue, which, of course, is at the root of the May 10 protest....My name is Monte Wells. My background includes 15 years as a combat medic in the Army, Army National Guard & Reserves, and working in private security, local, county, and federal law enforcement. I obtain a degree in Anthropology/ Archaeology from Boise State University and my wife and I have lived in Monticello for 10 years. We have six children with one in collage, three at the Monticello High School, and two still in elementary school. In 2004 we started our own business called, “Your Map Source, LLC” and “Off The Beaten Path Maps” dba. We have grown this business from a part time endeavor to a full time job. Our map products are featured in hunting magazines and on cable outdoor programs. We have expanded our business from mapping to outdoor equipment and tactical gear and firearms. I am actively involved in political issues that we are facing as a nation, county, and city. As a result we just started an online news website called “The Petroglyph.” The Petroglyph was established to set the record straight on environmental issues. I also operate a Facebook page called, “A Voice for the People of San Juan County Utah” where folks can find out what is going on and have a place to voice their opinions and concerns. Being a small business owner I care about what happens in Monticello and the surrounding area. This is why I have been actively involved with local, county, state, and federal government politics. I am one of the few if not the only private business owner running for city council during this election. I believe that as a private business owner it will allow me to bring another perspective to the table. I also believe it makes me more aware of some of the challenges that private businesses are facing today.

Read more:<a href="http://www.sjrnews.com/view/full_story/23254844/article-Monte-Wells#ixzz4HL7SzEBn" style="text-decoration: none;">San Juan Record - Classifieds, Events, Businesses in Monticello, San Juan County, Utah - Monte Wells</a>http://www.alternet.org/environment/utah-monument-fight-pits-native-americans-against-land-use-militantsBy all accounts, the looting was terrible. Across the Southwest a century ago, thousand-year-old Native American granaries were pillaged by clay pot hunters. Grave robbers worked in the open. In the sandstone dwellings perched high in the cliffs, tourists cut souvenirs out of the ancient ceiling beams. Vandals carted off heirlooms by the wagonload.In response, Congress acted swiftly. In the summer of 1906, the House and the Senate passed, and President Theodore Roosevelt quickly signed, a law known as the Antiquities Act, which was designed to protect America’s cultural and physical treasures. Results were immediate. Within two years, Roosevelt had invoked the new law to protect Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower (held sacred by the Cheyenne and the Lakota as “Bears Lodge”) from timber and mining interests, to provide new security to Chaco Canyon and Gila Cliff Dwellings in New Mexico, and to safeguard Arizona’s Montezuma’s Castle and the Grand Canyon.A century later, a similar (if less intense) looting spree is once again destroying tribal artifacts in Utah’s red rock country, in an area known as Bears Ears. According to archaeologists, San Juan County, Utah, may be home to as many as 100,000 archaeological and cultural sites. Grave robbing and vandalism, always a problem in the vast and under-policed region, is on the rise. Since 2011, federal officials have reported <a href="mailto:https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2016/06/13/139344/bears-ears-cultural-area-the-most-vulnerable-u-s-site-for-looting-vandalism-and-grave-robbing/%20" style="text-decoration: none;">at least 25 incidents of looting</a> and disturbance of human remains, though citizen watchdog groups say the number is likely twice as high. In one instance, vandals dismantled a 19th-century Navajo hogan for firewood. Prehistoric petroglyphs have been found pockmarked with bullet holes—the North American equivalent of, say, using the Chartres Cathedral’s rose window for target practice.Native Americans are in shock. “In the region here, the looting and vandalism of cultural sites is pretty rampant. It’s a serious offense, but if it gets reported, it doesn’t get dealt with,” Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk, a councilmember of the Ute Mountain Ute, told The American Prospect. “This is the final resting place of our ancestors. We feel they deserve the same respect as, say, the battlefield at Gettsyburg. … When places like that get destroyed, it’s like ripping a page out of history.”For now, the Bears Ears, a pair of red sandstone buttes popping out of the pinyon-juniper forest—the southern one cocked in what does resemble ursine curiosity—is ground zero in the dispute about who should get to manage western lands, how they should be managed, and, to some, whether there is even such a thing as federal lands.In response, the Ute Mountain Ute have joined with four other native nations—the Navajo, the Hopi, the Utes, and the Pueblo of Zuni—in an unprecedented tribal alliance to press for additional federal protections for southeastern Utah. The five tribes—historic enemies still riven by contemporary disputes over resource allocation—have set aside their differences to join in the common cause of calling on President Obama to establish a 1.9 million–acre Bears Ears National Monument. But GOP lawmakers and some Utahns with links to the Bundy militia are intensely opposed to any monument designation, turning this swath of high desert into the latest front in a long-running war over public lands policy in the West. For now, the Bears Ears, a pair of red sandstone buttes popping out of the pinyon-juniper forest—the southern one cocked in what does resemble ursine curiosity—is ground zero in the dispute about who should get to manage western lands, how they should be managed, and, to some, whether there is even such a thing as federal lands.The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition is barely a year old, but the group has an important ally in the Obama administration. On July 15 and 16, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, National Park Service Director John Jarvis, and Neil Kornze, the head of the Bureau of Land Management, traveled to Utah for public hearings over the proposed monument. Jewell, for one, was moved by what she heard from tribal members. “Everyone recognizes this is a special area,” <a href="mailto:http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865658180/Jewell-shocked-at-lack-of-protection-for-Bears-Ears-cultural-resources.html%3Fpg=all" style="text-decoration: none;">Jewell said</a> while standing in the middle of the Bears Ears meadow. “What I have seen on this trip, and especially here, is this incredible treasure trove of cultural resources. It’s beyond imagination. I am also shocked at the lack of protection for many of these resources.”Utah’s congressional delegation is also aghast—at the prospect of a new national monument in their region. Representative Rob Bishop, a Republican who chairs the Natural Resources Committee, has called the Antiquities Act <a href="mailto:http://www.sltrib.com/home/4108601-155/rolly-maine-man-utahs-rob-bishop%20" style="text-decoration: none;">“the most evil act ever invented.”</a> The San Juan County Commission, dominated by Bundy-clan sympathizers, is also vehemently opposed to the potential monument. Utah’s<a href="mailto:https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-major-native-american-site-is-being-looted-will-obama-risk-armed-conflict-to-save-it/2016/06/05/bf2dfcfc-1dff-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Senator Orrin Hatch has hinted</a> that a monument designation by Obama could lead to violence.For the Native American nations spearheading the Bears Ears campaign, the drive for a national monument in their ancestral lands marks a major turnabout. The relationship between tribes and the federal land-management agencies has long been marked by mistrust, the natural result of centuries of dispossession and exclusion. The Obama administration has sought to hit the reset button on federal-tribal relations; at Grand Canyon National Park, for example, deputy superintendent Brian Drapeaux, a member of the Rosebud Sioux, has increased tribal representation at the main tourist spots, while boosting Indian involvement in the lucrative sale of concessions.But tribal leaders remain suspicious. “Historically, we haven’t been part of the [land] management process,” says Carleton Bowekaty, a Zuni tribal councilmember and the co-chair of the Bears Ears alliance. “Normally, we are consulted afterward.”The Inter-Tribal Alliance’s proposal is as audacious as it is ambitious. The five tribes are asking the government to let the native nations co-manage Bears Ears National Monument, an arrangement without precedent. The tribes envision an oversight commission that would include the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land management, state and county representatives, and the five tribes in the coalition. “Here we want to make sure the tribes have a voice from the beginning,” Bowekaty says. “And that’s important because the voice we want to include doesn’t have to do with the material, but with the spiritual, and that’s normally foreign to federal policy.”For their part, national conservation groups such as the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, which normally lead campaigns to protect public lands, have deliberately stepped back, acknowledging that the tribes have the highest moral ground when it comes to Bears Ears. “This is exactly what the Antiquities Act was designed to do—protect archaeological and cultural sites,” says Matt Lee-Ashley, director of the public lands program at the Center for American Progress. “The tribes are obviously able to speak to that very well. They’ve mapped out what needs protection, and how to engage in co-management to protect it.”
The dispute has devolved into the use of dark ops. Lands-rights activists have sought to gin up resistance among area Indians by floating rumors that monument designation would put an end to the common (and lawful) practice of collecting firewood and gathering medicinal herbs and plants for spiritual ceremonies. This spring, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/06/03/3784314/fake-flyers-bear-ears-monument/" style="text-decoration: none;">leaflets that faked the appearance of Interior Department press releases</a> began appearing in public places on the Navajo Nation, stating falsely that the monument would seize four million acres of tribal land. Another phony flyer announced a party celebrating the Bears Ears Monument, and provocatively blared that “everyone is excited except Utah Navajos.”But the local opposition to the monument proposal is fierce. While the Indians merely mistrust the feds, many whites in southern Utah have openly voiced hatred against them. San Juan County is a hotbed of don’t-tread-on-me Sagebrush Rebellion sentiment. In 2014, right after the armed standoff at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, some local residents, led by County Commissioner Phil Lyman, violated federal laws by riding all-terrain vehicles into a canyon where they’d been banned after damage to archaeological sites. Many of the lawbreakers were packing guns. On his Facebook page, Lyman has described the BLM as “despotic.” <a href="mailto:http://www.sltrib.com/home/3928251-155/rolly-bears-ears-opponents-posting-phony%3Ffullpage=1" style="text-decoration: none;">He has also been quoted as saying</a> that Native Americans have no standing on public lands issues because “they lost the war.”Native proponents of the monument dismiss this as nothing but dishonest scaremongering, and say their monument would not ban such traditional land uses as wood and plant gathering. “There is a lot of misinformation out there, a lack of understanding about the access to resources,” Bowekaty says. “This is not exclusionary.” Nevertheless, the inaccurate rumors have misled some area natives. A video produced by the Sutherland Institute, a Utah think tank “supporting limited government and private property rights,” features a string of Indian speakers coming out against the Bears Ears proposal and asking that Obama not “take our land.”Monument opponents’ most vocal champion on Capitol Hill is Utah’s Bishop, who has said that anyone who likes the Antiquities Act as written should “die” because he “needs stupidity out of the gene pool.” Bishop has repeatedly introduced or co-sponsored legislation that would dilute and render meaningless the Antiquities Act, and has supported calls for the transfer of federal lands to state governments to allow for more mining or oil and gas extraction.In an effort to forestall a monument designation, Bishop and fellow Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz introduced a bill in early July called the Public Lands Initiative as an alternative to the tribal plan. Bishop’s proposal would protect 1.4 million acres in the Bears Ears region as National Conservation Areas (a designation that offers less protection than a national monument) while giving the state of Utah new powers to open 300,000 acres of federal land to oil and gas drilling.Bishop has sought to sell his legislation as a “grand bargain” that could appeal to all sides. But it has left many cold. Green groups blasted it as an effort to “divest Americans of their shared public lands.” The tribal leaders pushing for Bears Ears protection were nonplussed. “Where was the state delegation, and why haven’t they approached the tribal governments earlier?” asks Lopez-Whiteskunk, of the Ute Mountain Utes. If anything, Lopez-Whiteskunk adds, Bishop has mostly been useful to the monument campaign as a political foil. “I would thank him for giving us an opposition. You always need an opposition.”==

<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://click.lists.propublica.net/?qs=49facf6e682cc0c6c38ccbe11518f3f375b8e02d9b719f4c958974032edc9903" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429110159195_5526" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; outline: none; line-height: 16.9px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Utah TV dumps turning into an e-waste nightmare, liability for taxpayers</a>

Salt Lake Tribune

==

<a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/content/utahs-solar-power-homeowners-fight-proposed-utility-fee">http://insideclimatenews.org/content/utahs-solar-power-homeowners-fight-proposed-utility-fee</a>

If Rocky Mountain Power (RMP) gets its way, French will see $4.25 tacked onto his monthly bill — money the utility says <a href="https://www.rockymountainpower.net/netmetering" target="_blank" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">net-metered customers should</a> pay to cover their share of the transmission system’s fixed costs.

"We want to produce clean power from the sun because it won’t pollute our air, unlike much of the power generated by our coal-oriented electricity provider, Rocky Mountain Power," French said Thursday in his Yalecrest backyard. at a press event opposing the new charge

"We hope that our utility will listen to the growing number of Utahns who want less dirty power produced by burning coal and more clean power from renewable sources such as solar."

The Utah <a href="http://www.psc.utah.gov/utilities/electric/elecindx/2013/13035184indx.html" target="blank" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">Public Service Commission</a> is now weighing the utility’s request for the "facilities charge" on net metered customers as part of a <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/57358650-79/mountain-power-rocky-rate.html.csp" target="blank" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">contentious rate adjustment</a>.

==

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has an excellent article in their magazine, The News Media and the Law, about efforts by Big Ag to criminalize photography and video of factory farms, and what this means for journalists.

I’m part of a lawsuit challenging Utah’s ag-gag law, along with Amy Meyer (the first person prosecuted under ag-gag), PETA, and others.

As <a href="http://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news-media-law/news-media-and-law-summer-2013/ag-gag-efforts-face-setback#sthash.N8gm2cfm.dpuf" target="_blank" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; text-decoration: underline;">Jeff Zalesin writes in his piece</a>: <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/reporters-committee-freedom-of-the-press-ag-gag/7362/#more-7362" class="more-link" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; text-decoration: underline;">[click to continue…]</a>

==

<div class="byline environment"><a href="http://alternet.org/">AlterNet</a> [1] / By <a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/ocean-robbins">Ocean Robbins</a> [2]</div>

</div>

<h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title">Unbelievable Ways Companies Are Trying to Keep You From Seeing Where Your Meat Comes From</h1>

</div>

<div class="story-date">August 9, 2013  |  </div>

Amy Meyer wanted to see for herself where her food was coming from. But in the state of Utah, she discovered, that was against the law.

On February 8, <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56240592-78/case-meyer-law-gag.html.csp" target="_hplink">Meyer drove</a> [3] to Dale Smith Meatpacking Company in Draper City, Utah, and took a look from the side of the road. She gasped as she peered through the barbed wire fence and saw what appeared to be a sick cow being treated like rubble as it was carried in a tractor. So she did what many people would do in this day and age. She got out her smartphone to begin recording.

For this, Meyer was arrested and prosecuted under Utah's new "ag-gag" law.

It turns out that similar laws are now in place not just in Utah, but also in Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, and Missouri. And many other states are considering similar legislation.

The goal of these laws, it would appear, is to keep consumers from seeing where modern meat really comes from. Considering that <a href="http://www.aspca.org/about-us/press-releases/aspca-research-shows-americans-overwhelmingly-support-investigations-expose" target="_hplink">94 percent of the American public</a> [4] believes that animals raised for food should be free from abuse and cruelty, the modern meat industry has some good reasons to fear the public finding out that Old MacDonald's farm isn't so happy these days.

Charges against Meyer were subsequently <a href="http://news.msn.com/us/nations-first-ag-gag-prosecution-dismissed-in-utah" target="hplink">dropped</a> [5], but Utah's law is still on the books. And now Amy Meyer is joining with award-winning author Will Potter and a team of organizations in <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/utah-ag-gag-lawsuit-filed/7197/" target="hplink">filing a lawsuit</a> [6] challenging her state's controversial law in the courts.

Soon thereafter, in Kansas on June 28th, a photographer working for a publication not generally seen as promoting a radical agenda, National Geographic, was <a href="http://hutchnews.com/Todaystop/Nat--Geographic-photog-arrested-in-GC" target="_hplink">arrested and briefly jailed</a> [7] after taking aerial pictures of a feedlot for a series on food issues to be published some time next year.

George Steinmetz has taken award-winning photos in many dangerous situations, including a series depicting post-Gaddafi Libya. But it was his photographs of U.S. feedlots, taken from a paraglider in an area with <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/national-geographic-photographer-arrested-taking-photos-kansas-feedlot-194419678.html" target="_hplink">hundreds of thousands of cattle</a> [8], that got him put behind bars.

Kansas has its own "ag-gag bill," called the "<a href="http://kansasstatutes.lesterama.org/Chapter_47/Article_18/47-1827.html" target="_hplink">Farm Animal and Field Crop and Research Facilities Protection Act</a> [9]." This law makes it illegal to "enter an animal facility to take pictures by photograph, video camera or by any other means."

Apparently, the feedlot executives may have <a href="http://hutchnews.com/Todaystop/Nat--Geographic-photog-arrested-in-GC" target="_hplink">considered paragliding</a> [7] to be a form of illegal entry, and they wanted Steinmetz to feel the force of the law. Industry officials said they believe his actions represent a "food security issue." Steinmetz had also parked and taken off from private property, so "trespassing" is central to the charge he now faces. But do you really think he'd have been arrested for parking there had he merely stopped to read a book?

The spread of ag-gag bills is alarming for many reasons. Aside from exposing specific incidents of animal abuse, undercover videos have also <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/ag-gag-public-health/" target="_hplink">drawn attention</a> [10] to industry practices such as housing chickens in cramped battery cages that hasten the sickening of birds and the spread of salmonella.

Elizabeth Holmes, an attorney with the nonprofit Center for Food Safety, comments: "The reason these are public health issues, and not just animal rights issues, is that those unsanitary conditions provide breeding grounds (for disease)."

Holmes has a point. Keeping animals alive in wretched conditions requires the use of massive amounts of pharmaceutical drugs. Nearly <a href="http://www.pewhealth.org/other-resource/record-high-antibiotic-sales-for-meat-and-poultry-production-85899449119" target="_hplink">80 percent</a> [11] of the antibiotics used in the United States are given to animals, not people. The antibiotic overuse that allows meat producers to keep animals in filth and misery is spawning drug-resistant superbugs.

Earlier this year, an <a href="http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/superbugs/" target="_hplink">Environmental Working Group study</a> [12] found antibiotic resistant "super bugs" on 81 percent of the ground turkey and 55 percent of the ground beef in America's supermarkets.

With antibiotic resistant bacteria costing us more than <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/antibiotic-resistant-infections-cost-the-us-healthcare-system-in-excess-of-20-billion-annually-64727562.html" target="hplink">$55 billion</a> [13] and killing <a href="http://www.scripps.edu/philanthropy/antibioticresist.html" target="hplink">tens of thousands</a> [14] of people each year, you could even argue that today's factory farms have become a form of biological weapons factory.

But don't we have meat inspectors who monitor animal treatment? Isn't it their job to insure that the laws against excessive animal cruelty to animals, however weak they may be, are enforced? Aren't they being paid to look out for the public interest?

Unfortunately, thanks to the weight of agribusiness interests, even USDA meat inspectors don't always feel free to protect animals or public health.

After 29 years as a USDA meat inspector, Jim Schrier was <a href="http://www.kansascity.com/2013/06/28/4320072/animal-abuse-persists-at-some.html" target="hplink">recently stationed</a> [15] at a Tyson Foods slaughter facility in Iowa where he reported clear humane handling violations to his supervisor. That's what he was supposed to do -- report the violations to his superior in the chain of command. But when Schrier presented his concerns, the supervisor reportedly <a href="http://www.foodwhistleblower.org/the-lifecycle-of-food/life-on-the-farm/inhumane-handling/jim-schrier" target="hplink">became very angry</a> [16], and a week later required Jim to work at another facility 120 miles away. Then the USDA reassigned Jim permanently to a plant in another state.

In what looks an awful lot like a form of whistleblower retaliation, after 29 years of service, Schrier must now choose between his job, and his family.

When Jim's wife, Tammy, <a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/help-a-meat-inspector-punished-for-reporting-inhumane-conditions" target="_hplink">launched a petition on change.org</a> [17] exposing this story and calling for Jim Schrier to get his old job back, some of the first signers were other employees who had worked at the same plant and who corroborated Schrier's findings. Instead of being punished, they said, he should be rewarded and the whole plant should be inspected.

The significance of all this is huge. The <a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html" target="_hplink">first amendment</a> [18] to the United States constitution states: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." There are serious questions about whether ag-gag bills, and retaliation against whistleblowers like Jim Schrier, are even constitutional. But whatever the courts decide, we are already paying a terrible price for the climate of repression they institutionalize.

Shutting up people like Amy Meyer, George Steinmetz, and Jim Schrier makes it hard for any of us to know where our food comes from. Shutting them up also allows the meat industry to get away with treating animals terribly, and with jeopardizing public health by breeding antibiotic resistant bacteria. But there's more.

Tyrants of all stripes thrive in the darkness. As Thomas Jefferson once said, "A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate."

If journalists and whistleblowers aren't allowed to speak the truth, we're going to have an awfully hard time retaining any semblance of a functioning democracy.

<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ocean-robbins/whats-the-real-price-of-a_b_3705201.html">This story</a> [19] first appeared on the Huffington Post.

</div>

==

can't find recent 4/13 story on how energy key to annual event (n Utah?)

It is time for the <a href="http://www.aipn.org/">Association of International Petroleum Negotiators </a>(AIPN) annual Student Writing Competition and Student Scholarship Program.

The prize for the winners of the <a href="http://www.aipn.org/StudentComp.aspx">AIPN Student Writing Competition</a> includes registration, travel and accommodations for the AIPN International Conference, which will be held this year at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, Banff, Alberta, Canada, on September 13-16, 2011.

For the <a href="http://www.aipn.org/ScholarshipProg.aspx">AIPN Scholarship Program</a>, AIPN will be underwriting eight scholarships in the amount of US $5,000 each, which will be awarded to up to eight students for the academic semester beginning in Fall 2011. Applicants must apply by June 1, 2011. The scholarships will be disbursed over the Fall Semester 2011 and Spring semester 2012 ($2,500 each semester). The funds will be paid directly to the recipient’s college or university to offset tuition. Previous AIPN Scholarship winners are not eligible to participate.<a href="http://www.aipn.org/ScholarshipProg.aspx"> </a>

These are just two examples of the AIPN’s efforts to encouage student interest in the international energy industry. Students can join the AIPN for only $25 per year. The on-line application for membership in the AIPN can be found at <a href="https://www.aipn.org/StudentMembershipInfo.aspx">https://www.aipn.org/StudentMembershipInfo.aspx</a>.

</div>

===

smog http://grist.org/news/utah-republican-proposes-bill-to-prepare-for-climate-change-worsened-wildfires/

--

cmd on alec:

The romance between ALEC and fracking continued at this year's ALEC meeting in Utah -- an appropriate location for the frack-friendly ALEC crew. In May, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar <a href="http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/newsroom/2012/may/nr_05_08_2012.html" title="reference on approved" target="blank">approved</a> a major shale gas project by Texas-based <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anadarko_Petroleum" title="reference on Anadarko Petroleum" target="self">Anadarko Petroleum</a> Corp. in Utah's Uinta Basin -- expected to develop more than 3,600 new wells over the next decade.

In another industry-friendly move, Utah's Governor Gary Herbert, who spoke the ALEC conference's opening luncheon, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/24/us-utah-lands-idUSBRE82N03420120324" title="reference on signed a bill into law" target="blank">signed a bill into law</a> in March demanding that Congress hand over 30 million acres of federal land to the state by 2015 or the state will sue. <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/lawmakers-pick-fight-feds-over-public-lands-083347841.html" title="reference on According" target="blank">According</a> to the Associated Press, Lawmakers in Utah and Arizona have said the legislation is endorsed by ALEC. As documented by the Center for Media and Democracy's <a href="http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed" title="reference on ALEC Exposed" target="blank">ALEC Exposed</a> Project, ALEC drafted the "<a href="http://heartland.org/sites/all/modules/custom/heartland_migration/files/pdfs/6252.pdf" title="reference on Sagebrush Rebellion Act" target="blank">Sagebrush Rebellion Act</a>," which was "designed to establish a mechanism for the transfer of ownership of unappropriated lands from the federal government to the states." According to the <a href="http://www.suwa.org/2012/07/30/herbert-dodges-on-costs-and-effects-of-his-federal-land-grab-efforts/" title="reference on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance" target="_blank">Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance</a>, the governor's initiative would open up millions of acres of the "Wilderness Study Areas and proposed wilderness areas to oil and gas development" but in the process would cost Utah taxpayers enormously.

At the meeting, the CEO of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_for_Energy_Research" title="reference on Institute for Energy Research" target="self">Institute for Energy Research</a> (IER) Dr. Robert Bradley was one of the featured speakers. Bradley, formerly a director of policy analysis at Enron, also spoke at the 2011 ALEC conference in New Orleans. He is also an "adjunct scholar" at the right-wing think tank the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cato_Institute" title="reference on Cato Institute" target="self">Cato Institute</a> and specializes in "global warming alarmism." IER is a non-profit group focused on global energy markets that pushes for deregulation, advances climate change denial, and attempts to discredit renewable energy sources. The group's 2010 IRS 990 form said that its focus was narrowed in on "impediments to domestic energy production, including government restrictions on access, burdensome regulations, and the favoritism of energy sources that are unsustainable in the marketplace."

The PR Bus of AEA and Koch's AFPIER <a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=115" title="reference on received" target="blank">received</a> some $307,000 from Exxon Mobil between 2003 and 2007, according to the publicly traded company's "Corporate Giving Reports." IER also received a total of $235,000 from Koch Family foundations between 1997-2010, according to a <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/koch-industries/institute-for-energy-research/?utma=1.1699501272.1343492602.1343492602.1344377276.2&utmb=1.1.10.1344377276&utmc=1&utmx=-&utmz=1.1344377276.2.2.utmcsr=sourcewatch.org%7Cutmccn=%28referral%29%7Cutmcmd=referral%7Cutmcct=/index.php&utmv=-&utmk=176160674" title="reference on Greenpeace report" target="blank">Greenpeace report</a>. Koch Industries, an ALEC member, also profits from the <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/02/436669/how-the-kochs-are-fracking-america/" title="reference on expansion" target="_blank">expansion</a> of fracking. Unlike Exxon, because Koch is not a publicly-traded company, any corporate donations to groups like IER, AEA, or AFP are not publicly disclosed.

IER is a "partner" organization of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Energy_Alliance" title="reference on American Energy Alliance" target="self">American Energy Alliance</a>, a 501(c)4 organization which calls itself the "grassroots arm" of IER. Thomas Pyle is president of both organizations, and is a former lobbyist for Koch Industries and former energy policy aide for former House Majority Leader <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Thomas_D.DeLay" title="reference on Thomas D. DeLay" target="self">Thomas D. DeLay</a>, who resigned from the leadership following his indictment on conspiracy charges. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Wayne_Gable" title="reference on Wayne Gable" target="self">Wayne Gable</a>, also a former lobbyist for Koch Industries and former president for two of the Koch Family foundations, is on the board of both IER and AEA.

In 2011 IER and AEA launched "<a href="http://www.energyforamerica.org/" title="reference on Energy for America" target="blank">Energy for America</a>" as a joint initiative with a laser point in on fracking, with an aim to "educate" the public on the practice. In October 2011, AEA and IER, in partnership with Koch Industries' astroturf group <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity" title="reference on Americans for Prosperity" target="self">Americans for Prosperity</a>, started a "Energy for America" <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/10/18/346518/kochs-afp-starts-big-oil-bus-tour/" title="reference on bus tour" target="_blank">bus tour</a> to encourage the expansion of domestic exploration of oil, gas and coal, targeting U.S. Senate battleground states for the upcoming 2012 elections.

Additionally, <a href="http://www.bhfs.com/" title="reference on Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck" target="blank">Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck</a> is one of the three chairs of the ALEC <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Energy,Environment,and_Agriculture_Task_Force" title="reference on Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force" target="self">Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force</a>. One of its clients is <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=LNG_Terminals" title="reference on Freeport LNG" target="blank">Freeport LNG</a>, which owns and operates one of the first liquefied natural gas import terminals built in the United States. According to the law firm's <a href="http://www.bhfs.com/Practices/CaseStudies/ShiftingGearsforFreeportLNGsChangingNaturalGasMarket" title="reference on website" target="blank">website</a>, "For the last nine years, Brownstein has been the lead counsel in the structuring, strategy and development of the $1.2 billion receiving and regasification facility with commercial output capacity of more than 2.0 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day."

---

The state legislature of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/tennessee" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Tennessee">Tennessee</a> has given legal cover to public school teachers to challenge the science of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/evolution" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Evolution">evolution</a> and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Climate change">climate change</a>, in a move that looks set to deepen a debate about politicisation of the classroom.

The bill passed in the Tennessee Senate this week provides legal protection to teachers who personally do not believe in evolution or the human causes of climate change, and instead want to teach the "scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories".

It comes at a time when science associations are increasingly concerned by moves to inject religious or ideological beliefs into science teaching ahead of the release next month of a new set of education standards which give a central place to climate change.

The new standards, based on recommendations from the National Research Council, are not mandatory for all states. But they have already provoked a backlash from states, such as Utah, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/12/utah-climate-alarmists" title="">which have officially ruled climate change is not settled science</a>. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/leak-exposes-heartland-institute-climate?intcmp=239" title="">An unauthorised release of documents</a> from the rightwing Heartland Institute last month revealed an ambitious plan in 2012 to discredit existing teaching on climate change.

The Tennessee measure, which passed by 24-8 votes, was strongly criticised by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Centre for Science Education, who called it a step backward. The house approved a similar version of the measure last year.

<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/20/448762/anti-science-monkey-bill-passes-tennessee-senate/" title="">Bloggers called the move a throwback to the Scopes monkey trial of the 1920s</a>, when a Tennessee public school teacher was convicted and fined for teaching evolution.

<a href="http://grist.org/news/utah-oks-nations-first-tar-sands-mine/">http://grist.org/news/utah-oks-nations-first-tar-sands-mine/</a>