Coalition Sues to Limit Drilling for Oil and Gas in New Mexico By SIMON ROMERO, NYTimes

Several cattle ranchers joined the unusual coalition because, they said, they had few options for preserving their ranches from the disruption caused by widespread drilling and road-building.

”What’s happening now in Northwestern New Mexico will happen 10 years down the road in many other parts of the West,” said Tweeti Blancett, a cattle rancher and hotel operator in Aztec, N.M. She said she was disillusioned with the Bush administration’s energy policies; she served on Mr. Bush’s presidential campaign in New Mexico four years ago.

Bush Expected to Endorse Amendment Defining Marriage By RICHARD W. STEVENSON, NYTimes

The ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ”is deeply troubling,” Mr. Bush said.

”Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman,” he said. ”If activist judges insist on re-defining marriage by court order, the only alternative will be the constitutional process. We must do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage.” …

Many social conservatives, though, have been impatient with the president on the issue, pressing him to take a stand. Mr. Bush’s conservative base is especially important to him in this election year because his political strategists say that his re-election could hinge much more on his ability to turn out the vote among conservative voters than on winning over a diminishing pool of more moderate swing voters. …

White House officials have always been more concerned about religious and social conservatives at the grass-roots level. Mr. Rove has fretted publicly on a number of occasions about Mr. Bush’s failure to motivate more evangelical Christians to vote in the 2000 election, saying millions of them stayed home that year.

When Christian Extremists start appointing judges and amending the Constitution, we’re all going to Hell. mjh

CNN.com – Pentagon halts Internet voting system – Feb. 5, 2004

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has halted a Pentagon project that would have allowed military personnel, including troops deployed overseas, to vote via the Internet in the November presidential election.

Wolfowitz said the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) could not guarantee voting records would be kept secure, thereby calling into question the integrity of the process.

This is very good news. The project was unsecure and would have cast great doubts on the entire election. Wolfowitz deserves some praise for this; the Pentagon was determined to go forward with this. mjh

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: SERVE Bush?

Digital Democracy 2/4/04 (Flash Animation)

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: Will Your Vote Be Counted? Or Changed?

Howard Dean Calls FCC Probe of Breast Incident ‘Silly’

Howard Dean, a physician and a Democratic presidential candidate, on Monday dismissed as ”silly” a government inquiry into whether indecency rules were broken during the broadcast of the Super Bowl halftime show when pop diva Janet Jackson’s bodice was ripped to expose her right breast.

”I find that to be a bit of a flap about nothing,” the former Vermont governor said. ”I’m probably affected in some ways by the fact that I’m a doctor, so it’s not exactly an unusual phenomenon for me.” …

Dean, who does not have cable television at his home in Burlington, Vermont, said Americans could inadvertently turn on “far worse things” while “cruising through cable at regular viewing hours.”

“I don’t find it terribly shocking relative to some of the things you can find on standard cable television,” he added. “I think the FCC probably has a lot of other things they should be pursuing.”

Scalia Flew as Cheney’s Guest to Hunting Trip

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia traveled as an official guest of Vice President Dick Cheney on a small government jet that served as Air Force Two when the pair came here last month to hunt ducks.

The revelation cast further doubts about whether Scalia can be an impartial judge in Cheney’s upcoming case before the Supreme Court, legal ethics experts said. The hunting trip took place just weeks after the court agreed to take up Cheney’s bid to keep secret the details of his energy policy task force.

According to those who met them at the small airstrip here, the justice and the vice president flew from Washington on Jan. 5 and were accompanied by a second, backup Air Force jet that carried staff and security aides to the vice president.

Two military Black Hawk helicopters were brought in and hovered nearby as Cheney and Scalia were whisked away in a heavily guarded motorcade en route to a secluded, private hunting camp owned by an oil industry businessman.

The Los Angeles Times previously reported that the two men hunted ducks together while the case was pending, but it wasn’t clear then that they had traveled together or that Scalia had accompanied Cheney on Air Force Two.

The couple was seen holding hands and sharing a sleeping bag. mjh

Read more about the Dishonorable Scalia.