You probably already know

about Congressman Richard W. Pombo’s (R-CA) efforts to “modernize” the ridiculously outdated 1872 Mining Patents Act. Many people agree this act does not

charge enough for the resources one can grab through it. So, to his credit, Pombo wants to charge more — up to $1000 / acre, instead of

pennies — though probably not what the minerals or land are really worth.

My gripe is the underlying assumption — widely held in

the GOP — that the public should own less land. They regularly sneer at all the land “the government owns.” Wrong! You and I own that

land and it serves many uses, including just sitting there for the hell of it. It is neither necessary nor healthy to require every acre

of the earth to belong to someone and “produce” something.

Read through these 4 articles (two by the same author); the third one

attempts to refute the concerns raised by the others.

Our own Saint Pete may be a key player here. Let him know what you think

about this. mjh

Write Your Representative – Contact your Congressperson in the U.S.

House of Representatives.

U.S. Senate: Senators Home
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ABQjournal: Plan for Selling Public Lands Worries Govs. By Jennifer

Talhelm, The Associated Press

Six Western governors, including New Mexico’s Bill Richardson, and a growing number of senators say

they fear a congressional plan allowing the sale of millions of acres of public lands could do permanent harm to everything from

agriculture and the environment to the ski industry.

“It’s got implications for hunters, sportsmen, people who use lands for

grazing and basically anybody who uses public lands,” said Angela de Rocha, a spokeswoman for Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard, one of a

handful of Republican senators expressing concern about the proposal.
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House Stealth Measure Sells Off Public Lands BY

MIKE DOMBECK AND JACK WARD THOMAS, Former chiefs, U.S. Forest Service

Sometime around 1 a.m. Nov. 18, the House of Representatives

passed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 by a vote of 217-215. Buried in the 680-page
bill was language that lifts an 11-year

moratorium on the patenting, or sale, of public lands to mining companies, and appears to pave the way for the sale of public lands to

mining companies and other development interests for as little as $1,000 per acre.

These public lands are a birthright that

should not be gambled on legislation passed in the dark of the night with an essential absence of any public notice or scrutiny. …

There are few decisions that Congress makes that have irreversible consequences. Selling off our public land legacy is one that does.

…

Some believe that something so valuable should not be owned by all U.S. citizens but should instead be devolved into other

ownership or corporate control. To be certain, it is the prerogative of members of Congress to change laws as they see fit in the best

interest of their constituents. And it is our duty as citizens to ensure they know our views before they vote. Legislation that has the

potential to remove public lands from public hands should only be brought to a vote after a full and vigorous debate. …

But that

debate, and the debates to follow, can and will occur only so long as public lands remain in public ownership. Within the next few weeks,

the public land sales provisions that passed the House of Representatives will be considered in a conference between the Senate and the

House. Members should be urged to strip out the provisions of the House-passed bill that allows for the sale of our public lands — the

heritage of future generations. Then, by all means, let the debate relative to the provisions of the 1872 Mining Act began in the full

light of public scrutiny.
—–

New land rush? Not so fast! by Editor Hering

First,

the person must hold a valid mining claim open to actual mining, having completed all the required state and federal paperwork. Then the

claim must be contiguous to claims where mining has been or is being done. And finally mining on the claim itself must be taking place.

The committee sums things up by citing as fiction: “Real estate speculators, oil and gas companies, foreign mining corporations

or anyone who is willing to pay as little as $1,000 per acre could buy the land and develop it any way they wanted.”

“The

statement,” the committee answers, “fails to pass the laugh test. Unless real estate speculators, oil and gas companies and the like want

to enter the mining industry and begin staking mining claims and developing hardrock minerals, they would not qualify under the

provisions of this bill to purchase lands.”

If you want more or to check yourself, be my guest. The site is resourcescommittee.house.gov.

A few things about the

preceding defense of the proposed changes. First, how many times have we heard “trust us” only to find out later that, oops, we didn’t

realize this might happen. Second, what an odd tone from a congressional committee — the “laugh test”?! Sounds like it was written by

some corporation that has spent millions already and has no intention of letting anything spoil the deal. Finally, if this is such a

noble effort, why is it buried in a 600+ page budget bill? mjh

—–

Greedy

grab for public land

There are plenty of examples of how companies have used the 1872 mining law to get their hands on public

resources. In 1970, Frank Melluzzo “patented” — bought — public land near Phoenix for $150. Ten years later, he sold it for more than

$400,000. Today, the Pointe Hilton Hotel in Phoenix sits on this mining claim. …

Now a few folks in Congress want to turn back

the clock. The results of these policies will be a fleecing of taxpayers and a cheating of future generations of public land.

Roosevelt said: “The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation

increased, and not impaired, in value.”

A majority of Americans distrust Duhbya and

dislike Cheney (even fear/hate/loathe him). A majority believes we were ‘manipulated’ into war. A majority gives at least lip service

to freedom of speech and dissent. Yet, a majority believes talking about the war hurts troop morale. So, are we to just shut up or is

lowered morale the price we must pay to get at the truth? mjh

Newsday.com:

Poll: Dems’ barbs hurt troops THE WASHINGTON POST

[A] new poll conducted Nov. 17-20 indicates most Americans are sympathetic

to Cheney’s point. Seventy percent of people said that criticism of the war by Democratic senators hurts troop morale – with 44 percent

saying morale is hurt “a lot,” according to a poll taken by RT Strategies.

Even self-identified Democrats agree: 55 percent

believe criticism hurts morale, while 21 percent say it helps morale.
—–

As VP goes on attack, poll numbers fall off CHICAGO

TRIBUNE

The vice president’s hard-line language fires up the conservative base that remains fond of Cheney, it does not appear to

impress much of the rest of the country. Polls show Cheney is less popular than Bush, who himself is suffering from the lowest ratings of

his presidency.

Cheney’s image has not been helped by such moves as his decision to attend an upcoming fundraiser for Rep. Tom

DeLay, R-Texas, the in-dicted former House majority leader. A cartoon in The Washington Post recently showed a glowering Cheney, angry

that Bush pardoned the Thanksgiving turkey.

Among Republicans, 80 percent in a Nov. 11-13 Gallup survey said they approved of

Bush’s job performance, while 68 percent ap-proved of Cheney’s.

A majority of all 1,006 voters surveyed rated Cheney’s

advice to the president as “bad.” [mjh: amen.]
—–

The Phony War Against the Critics By

Michael Kinsley

“One might also argue,” Vice President Cheney said in a speech on Monday, “that untruthful charges against the

commander in chief have an insidious effect on the war effort.” That would certainly be an ugly and demagogic argument, were one to make

it. …

Lest one fear that he might be saying that, Cheney immediately added, “I’m unwilling to say that” —

“that” being what he had just said. He generously granted critics the right to criticize (as did the president this

week). Then he resumed hurling adjectives like an ape hurling coconuts at unwanted visitors. “Dishonest.” “Reprehensible.” “Corrupt.”

“Shameless.” President Bush and others joined in, all morally outraged that anyone would accuse the administration of misleading us into

war by faking a belief that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear and/or chemical and biological weapons.

class="mine">A friend sent me a link to the following column by Jonah Goldberg of the Los Angeles Times. I read the LA Times

occasionally. I had the impression that it was a serious newspaper until a month or two ago, when they announced they were going to focus

more on Hollywood and less on anything that matters more. Let’s listen to Goldberg for a moment:

A lie for a

just cause by Jonah Goldberg

Roosevelt got Pearl Harbor instead, which was a surprise but nonetheless “rescued” the president,

in Hofstadter’s words, from the “dilemma” of needing to start a war the American people opposed.

Does this make

FDR a bad president? No. While I have my problems with FDR, most historians are right to be forgiving of deceit in a just

cause. World War II needed to be fought, and FDR saw this sooner than others.

Even the most cursory reading of any

presidential biography will tell you that statesmanship requires occasional duplicity. If great foreign policy could be

conducted Boy Scout-style — “I will never tell a lie” — foreign policy would be easy (and Jimmy Carter would be hailed as the American

Bismarck). This isn’t to say that the public’s trust should be breached lightly, but there are other competing goods involved

in any complex situation.

Now, you might say that Iraq was no WWII, Saddam was no Hitler, and 9/11 was no Pearl Harbor. Those are

all fair arguments with varying degrees of merit. But WWII wasn’t “the good war” in our hearts until after Pearl Harbor and even until

after the Holocaust, and a lot of Hollywood burnishing.

Big-money conservatives will never get over their

rage at FDR, even if they dismantle every trace of progressive government and globally search and replace Raygun for FDR. It’s like the

Civil War — the hate and anger is passed down the generations.

Still, Goldberg speaks for me when he says Iraq is no WWII, etc.,

though he doesn’t recognize Duhbya’s no FDR — that would undermine his rather stretched point.

The Bush Doctrine

is not chiefly about WMD and never was. Like FDR’s vision, it balances democracy, security and

morality. Still, the media and anti-Bush partisans have been bizarrely unmoved by the revelations of Hussein’s killing fields, his

torture chambers for tots and democracy’s tangible progress in the Middle East.

Now, talk about

rewriting history! The big push to invading Iraq was entirely about WMD — how else did WMD become a universally recognized abbreviation?

BushCo tried desperately to convince us that the UN weapons inspectors — remember them? — were inept or corrupt. Duhbya, Cheney and

Rice all invoked the mushroom cloud, in spite of evidence to the contrary. I don’t recall once hearing anything about bringing democracy

to Iraqis until the WMD vanished after the invasion.

Just to reassure Goldberg, I am not unmoved about what a despot Hussein was

or how, one day, Iraqis will be better off without him. However, some make the same argument about Cuba, which would be much easier to

invade and overwhelm. Some make the same argument about North Korea, which would bring about the joyous Armageddon. I’m sure more than a

few say the same about invading the US and freeing us. Noble causes abound — they aren’t all equally good ideas to pursue. It is quite

possible that BushCo spoke in-house about the democratic dominoes they would push over. Chalk this up to another consequence of their

obsessive secrecy — they didn’t tell us until it was so late it looked like an after-thought.

Perhaps Americans aren’t

adequately worked up over Hussein’s evil. Or secret CIA prisons, prisons held at the whim of a dubious President who simultaneously

declares there will be no torture while demanding the right to torture. Am I calling Bush Hussein’s moral equal? No. But let’s not

presume all we can do is good.

Let’s turn the tables on Goldberg and say that Duhbya has never, ever lied. Now what? No matter

how just the cause, hasn’t everyone at BushCo made countless errors? Why does the Radical Right support Duhbya in never once admitting a

mistake? Why is incompetence better than duplicity?

Just in case you missed it, Jonah Goldberg, who sees the wisdom in lying for

the good of others, has moved up at the LAT at exactly the same time as one of LAT’s most progressive long-time writers and fierce

anti-war critics got canned. Should be great for business in AmeriCo.

In all of this, I continue to feel manipulated. I feel that

the citizenry is being set at each other’s throats because it benefits those who work in secret. While conservatives and liberals rage

at each other, thieves are at work, stealing our heritage and rights, changing everything they can before they get caught.

Democracy Now! | LA Times Fires Longtime Progressive

Columnist Robert Scheer

The only other fact here that I would throw in, the paper is concerned about what the Bush

administration thinks, because the Tribune Company bought the Times Mirror Corporation and now owns a television station, a very

profitable one, in the same market in Los Angeles as the newspaper. And next year they have asked — they have to get a waiver in order

to be able to do that, because that violates the law right now. They expected Congress — when they bought the property, they thought

Congress would pass that law allowing them to have those two major outlets in the same market. It is now illegal, and in 2006 they are

coming up for a waiver, and the Bush administration’s F.C.C. could easily deny that waiver to them. …

The Los Angeles Times

publisher, Jeffrey Johnson, said, “You’ve got a new editorial page editor and a new publisher. We sat down and talked about the pages and

decided to make changes.” …

These people are just going to suck what they can out of the property. So this guy, Jeff Johnson,

who is an accountant who cares nothing at all about a free press and cares nothing about journalism, he’s a right winger who supported

the war, you know, who two years ago told people he couldn’t stand a word that I wrote. Why? Because I exposed how the whole Jessica

Lynch thing was a fraud ….

AMY GOODMAN: The author Jonah Goldberg will now be an L.A. Times op-ed columnist, the author of

Liberal Fascism. Your response, Robert.

ROBERT SCHEER: Yeah, well, that gives the – I think it shows what they’re really all

about. The publisher has told – you know, if these editors, Andres Martinez and Nick Goldberg, were the least bit honest about this, they

would tell you the publisher has told them he wants the editorial page to be conservative. He has specifically told them that. And so why

don’t they tell their readers that? Why doesn’t the editor of the editorial page tell the readers our publisher, my publisher, my boss,

the guy who owns this press — remember A.J. Liebling’s thing: Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. The owner of this paper

has taken direct control over the editorial page. Jeff Johnson is an accountant. He’s not a journalist. He has said, “I am going to run

the editorial page. I’m going to run the columns and the editorials,” very clearly, and he’s told both of those individuals very

clearly in those meetings he referred to that “I’m in charge and I want this page to be more conservative.” … And here he

picks Jonah Goldberg, one of the most conservative columnists, to do his bidding for him.

By

the way, The LA Times also fired Michael Ramirez, a Pulitzer-Prize winning conservative staff cartoonist. Now, I despised Ramirez’s

messages. Still, he is a great artist and very effective at what he does. I assume he jabs me the way Oliphant jabs the Radical Right. As

long as Oliphant is published, I want to see Ramirez’s work, too. mjh

Notice in the following

that Cal Thomas is belittling the notion of a “uniter versus a divider,” rejecting the concept of “why can’t everyone just get along”

and cheering Duhbya, et. al., for becoming more aggressive in attacking any who dare to disagree. Saint Thomas the Uniter, nice guy of

the year. Republicans are spoiling for a fight anywhere they can find it; their blood-lust is intense. mjh

Bush and Rove find offense

matters by Cal Thomas

Democrats reacted immediately, accusing the president of using Veterans Day to politicize the war. What

have they been doing the other 364 days of the year, if not trying to undermine the war effort by playing politics and

contributing to disunity, thus encouraging the enemy? …

What these two speeches have in common is their aggressive tone. Before

demagoguery became the primary product of contemporary politics, we once saw more politicians battling it out with the opposition instead

of the namby-pamby, feel-good, kumbayah, can’t-we-all-get-along approach that is as palatable as cold oatmeal. Why haven’t we

heard more of this rhetoric from the administration instead of the unattainable objective of “changing the tone in Washington”?

The Bush and Rove speeches should signal a new battle strategy for the administration. … It’s time to play hardball with the

left and this would be a good first pitch. Offense wins football games and wars. It also shapes public opinion. Stack this political

offense with more of the type of rhetoric used last week by President Bush and Karl Rove.

New Mexico’s Steve

Pearce got some mention in the national press on the matter of Iraq — as yet another bullying demagogue. mjh

Another Set of Scare Tactics By E. J. Dionne Jr.

There is a great missing

element in the argument over whether the administration manipulated the facts. Neither side wants to talk about the context in which Bush

won a blank check from Congress to invade Iraq. He doesn’t want us to remember that he injected the war debate into the 2002 midterm

election campaign for partisan purposes, and he doesn’t want to acknowledge that he used the post-Sept. 11 mood to do all he

could to intimidate Democrats from raising questions more of them should have raised. …

He pressured Congress for a

vote before the 2002 election, and the war resolution passed in October. …

Grand talk about liberating Iraq gave way to cheap

partisan attacks. In New Mexico, Republican Steve Pearce ran an advertisement against Democrat John Arthur Smith

declaring: “While Smith ‘reflects’ on the situation, the possibility of a mushroom cloud hovering over a U.S. city still remains.” Note

that Smith wasn’t being attacked for opposing the war, only for reflecting on it. God forbid that any Democrat dare even think

before going to war. …

The bad faith of Bush’s current argument is staggering. He wants to

say that the “more than a hundred Democrats in the House and Senate” who “voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power” thereby

gave up their right to question his use of intelligence forever after. But he does not want to acknowledge that he forced the war

vote to take place under circumstances that guaranteed the minimum amount of reflection and debate, and that opened anyone who

dared question his policies to charges, right before an election, that they were soft on Hussein.

By linking the war on terrorism

to a partisan war against Democrats, Bush undercut his capacity to lead the nation in this fight. And by resorting to partisan attacks

again last week, Bush only reminded us of the shameful circumstances in which the whole thing started.

Hagel Defends Criticisms of Iraq Policy
Administration Calls Statements by

Democrats Harmful to War Effort, Troops
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer

A Conversation with Senator Chuck Hagel on The

Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy [Prepared Remarks] – Council on Foreign Relations Chuck Hagel, Member, U.S. Senate

(R-NE)

We must avoid the traps of hubris and imperial temptation that come with great power. Our

foreign policy should reflect the hope and promise of America tempered with a mature wisdom that is the mark of our national character.

In this new era of possibilities and responsibilities, America will require a wider lens view of how the world sees us, so that we can

better understand the world, and our role in it. …

The Iraq war should not be debated in the United States on a partisan

political platform. This debases our country, trivializes the seriousness of war and cheapens the service and sacrifices of our men and

women in uniform. War is not a Republican or Democrat issue. The casualties of war are from both parties. The Bush

Administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for

disagreeing with them. Suggesting that to challenge or criticize policy is undermining and hurting our troops is not democracy nor what

this country has stood for, for over 200 years. The Democrats have an obligation to challenge in a serious and responsible manner,

offering solutions and alternatives to the Administration’s policies.

Vietnam was a national tragedy partly because Members of

Congress failed their country, remained silent and lacked the courage to challenge the Administrations in power until it was too late.

Some of us who went through that nightmare have an obligation to the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam to not let that happen again.

To question your government is not unpatriotic—to not question your government is unpatriotic. America owes its men and women in uniform

a policy worthy of their sacrifices. …

Terrorism is a real threat and a present danger that we must confront and defeat. But we

must not sacrifice the strengths and ideals of America that the world has come to respect and trust, and that define us. That is why I

co-sponsored Senator McCain’s amendment to prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment of any detainee under the custody

of any branch of the U.S. Government. I strongly oppose any exception to this prohibition. …

The recent media reports of a

worldwide American system of secret, black-hole jails, run by the Central Intelligence Agency, and developed explicitly to circumvent our

obligations under the Geneva Convention, sullies everything that America represents. It further erodes the world’s confidence in

America’s word and our purpose. …

The Constitution also establishes Congress’ authority and responsibility regarding decisions

to go to war. The course of events in Iraq has laid bare the failure to prepare for, plan for, and understand the broad consequences and

implications of the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq. Where is the accountability?

ABC News: The Note: All the Vice

President’s Men

During the question and answer period that followed his speech, Hagel warned that “there will be

consequences” if the Bush Administration continues to demonize critics of the Iraq war.

“The American people will not put

up with that,” he said.

“The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history,” said Retired Army Lt. Gen. William

Odom, a Vietnam veteran.

Nieman

Watchdog > Ask This > What’s wrong with cutting and running?

The US invasion of Iraq only serves the interest of:

1)

Osama bin Laden (it made Iraq safe for al Qaeda, positioned US military personnel in places where al Qaeda operatives can kill them

occasionally, helps radicalize youth throughout the Arab and Muslim world, alienates America’s most important and strongest allies – the

Europeans – and squanders US military resources that otherwise might be finishing off al Qaeda in Pakistan.);

2) The Iranians

(who were invaded by Saddam and who suffered massive casualties in an eight year war with Iraq.);

3) And the extremists in both

Palestinian and Israeli political circles (who don’t really want a peace settlement without the utter destruction of the other side, and

probably believe that bogging the United States down in a war in Iraq that will surely become a war between the United States and most of

the rest of Arab world gives them the time and cover to wipe out the other side.) …

The first step, of course, is to establish

as conventional wisdom the fact that the war was never in the US interest and has not become so. It is such an obvious case to make that

I find it difficult to believe many pundits and political leaders have not already made it repeatedly.

Lieutenant General

William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the

National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988 [mjh: under Raygun]
—–

BTC News »

Worst national security administration ever

The Bush administration and Republicans in general have made national security

their defining theme since 911, but as is so often the case, the record belies the rhetoric. On almost every front — foreign policy, the

military, intelligence, even security related domestic issues such as the deficit — the administration have damaged the country’s

security, sometimes in ways that may take a generation to repair.

Since 911, the administration have corrupted our intelligence

agencies; led the country into a ruinous war on false pretenses; added nearly $2 trillion to the national debt (and counting); increased

the trade deficit; increased the poverty rate; emasculated critically important federal agencies (such as FEMA); slighted our allies

abroad; broken a variety of international laws; and, on at least two occasions, compromised our own and other countries’ security by

leaking the identities of secret intelligence assets for purely political reasons.