The Albuquerque

Tribune: National
Forest land sale planned
By James W. Brosnan
Scripps Howard News Service

The Bush administration

proposes to sell up to 307,000 acres of National Forest in 32 states to developers, including 7,447 acres in New Mexico, to

subsidize schools in timber country. …

More than one-quarter of the acres considered for sale are in California, with 85,465

acres. Idaho is next with 26,194 acres, followed by Colorado, 21,572 acres, and Missouri, 21,566 acres. …

The Forest Service

hopes to generate $800 million over five years from the sale of isolated parcels that are difficult for foresters to manage, said Mark

Rey, undersecretary of Agriculture for natural resources and environment.

In New Mexico, the proposal includes 18 tracts

acres to 640 acres.

The Cibola areas are all west of Grants, in the Zuni Mountains, said Cibola National Forest spokesman

Mark Chavez.

The Forest Service plans to publish maps of the proposed sale properties on its Web site Feb. 28 and take comments on

which ones to remove. …

“Public lands are an asset that need to be managed and conserved,” said Idaho Republican Sen.

Larry Craig.
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State Total 
Ala. 3,220 
Alaska 99 
Ariz. 1,030 
Ark. 3,612 
Calif. 85,465



Colo. 21,572 
Fla. 973 
Ga. 4,522 
Idaho 26,194 
Ill. 191 
Ky. 4,518 
La. 3,895 



Mich. 5,880 
Minn. 2,622 
Miss. 7,503 
Mo. 21,566 
Mont. 13,948 
Neb. 360 
Nev. 2,782 



N.M. 7,447 
N.C. 9,828 
Ohio 420 
Okla. 3,572 
Ore. 10,581 
S.C. 4,665 
S.D. 13,961 
Tenn. 2,996 


Texas 4,813 
Utah 5,398 
Va. 5,717 
Wash. 7,516 
W.Va. 4,836 
Wis. 80 
Wyo. 17,659 
Nation 

309,441 
Source: United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service

Secure Rural Schools Forest Service FY 2007

Initiative

A hunting tale peppered with discrepancies By Calvin Woodward, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Vice President Dick Cheney said he didn’t immediately disclose his hunting accident because he wanted the confusing details to come out right. Instead, authorized accounts came out slowly – and often still wrong.

The result: a week of shifting blame, belatedly acknowledged beer consumption (not “zero” drinking after all) and evolving discrepancies in how the shooting happened, its aftermath and the way it was told to the nation.

“There’s a reason they call this crisis management,” said corporate damage-control specialist Eric Dezenhall, “and that’s because it’s a mess.” …

Although there is no evidence that beer impaired Cheney’s judgment, initial denials that he had consumed alcohol were wrong.

“No one was drinking,” Armstrong said at the outset. “No, zero, zippo.” She said the hunters washed down lunch with Dr Pepper. Later, she qualified her comments and said beer might have been in the cooler but she did not think anyone drank any. …

Cheney acknowledged Wednesday, “I had a beer at lunch” several hours before the group’s afternoon hunt, asserting “nobody was under the influence.” …

“If I recall,” Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said of Armstrong, “she pointed out that the protocol was not followed by Mr. Whittington, when it came to notifying the others that he was there.”

The about-face came Wednesday when Cheney made his first public comment on the accident.

“It was not Harry’s fault,” he said. “You can’t blame anybody else. I’m the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend.”

I’m a very ‘lucky’ guy, says man hit by veep BY KENNETH R. BAZINET, DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Browbeaten by late-night comedians and an aggressive press corps, Cheney acknowledged he’d endured “a very long week.” Even loyal Republicans said the GOP has been hurt by Cheney’s stonewalling tactics and stubborn resistance to answer questions.

Potential GOP presidential candidate and Vietnam vet Chuck Hagel took a whack at Cheney’s five draft deferments that kept him from serving in Vietnam.

“If he’d been in the military, he would have learned gun safety,” the Nebraska senator told the Omaha World-Herald.

The whole time I read Cal Thomas’ indictment of Al Gore for treason, I kept thinking about this series of pictures, including Bush kissing the Saudi prince and holding his hand.

Calcified Cal seems to forget that, not only is Saudi Arabia an official ally in the War Without End, but that the royal family is joined at the hips with our own King George. mjh

Cal Thomas Al Gore’s diminished capacity

Last Sunday, Gore spoke to the Jeddah Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia. He trashed his country on the soil of one of the most repressive regimes on earth — a monarchy that incubated 15 of the 19 hijackers who killed 3,000 of his fellow citizens on Sept. 11, 2001, and is the home country of Osama bin Laden. …

That Gore has “lost it” is evident from his personal attacks on the president, whom he has called “the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon” and a man who “has brought deep dishonor to our country.” Gore has called the president a “moral coward” and referred to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse as “the Bush Gulag.” He has accused the administration of an alliance with “digital brownshirts,” called the administration “simultaneously dishonest and incompetent,” and said the president is “out of touch with reality.” [mjh: Note that Gore may not have said any of these things during his “treasonous” speech in Saudi Arabia, but Cal Thomas is happy to leave you with that impression.]

Even allowing for excesses of political rhetoric, such comments are way over extreme. …

For Gore to make his anti-American remarks in Saudi Arabia is at least as bad as what Nazi sympathizers said in this country and abroad leading up to and during World War II. One definition of “treason” is: Violation of allegiance toward one’s country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.

By any objective standard, Al Gore’s remarks in Saudi Arabia appear to fit the definition.

Clever Trever belittles the issue of the Vice-President, Dead-eye Dick, shooting a man in the face as merely grist for a petulant press corps.

Meanwhile, our own gun-smoking President makes this observation:

“This is a man who likes the outdoors, and he likes to hunt. And he heard a bird flushed, and he turned and pulled the trigger and saw his friend get wounded,” Bush said.

“Saw his friend get wounded”? True but so is “shot his friend in the face.” mjh

Most reprints of the first story below titled it “Politicians are stifling dissent, critics say.” When the Albuquerque Journal published the following story, they titled it “A Trend Against Dissent?” and cut it in half, eliminating 15 paragraphs, including more specific examples of this trend. One wonders if they didn’t diminish the impact of the story in the process. mjh

Politicians are stifling dissent, critics say By Steven Thomma, Knight Ridder Newspapers

It’s a crime, punishable by up to six months in prison, to “disrupt” an event guarded by the Secret Service, which includes presidential rallies. (A proposed extension of the Patriot Act now being negotiated in Congress would broaden such prohibitions to other vaguely defined national events.)

Does a T-shirt “disrupt” an event? To the political operatives who ejected people on the basis of their shirts – or ordered them arrested – a shirt can be disruptive. …

The Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that it wasn’t illegal to wear an obscene anti-Vietnam war jacket in a California courthouse, despite a state law prohibiting such messages because they might incite violence.

“The state may not, consistently with the First and 14th amendments, make the simple public display of this four-letter expletive a criminal offense,” the court said. …

This trend has a chilling effect on those who disagree with people in power, analysts say.

“The long-term consequence is a higher degree of self-censorship,” O’Neil said. “Society is the poorer when deprived of the marketplace of ideas.”

TRIBUNE COLUMN By TONY MESSENGER

[T]his isn’t a column about the war. It’s not about the president. It’s not about party politics.

This is a column about free speech.

It’s a column about dissent.

It’s a column about the right in America to wear a damn T-shirt. …

During [Gov. Matt] Blunt’s State of the State speech last month in Jefferson City [, Missouri], Capitol police got into the censorship routine on their own. Tim Shaw was one of 11 people forced to either turn their shirts inside out or leave the House gallery.

Shaw is a member of Show Me ADAPT, a disability-rights organization that has been highly critical of Blunt’s Medicaid cuts, particularly those that negatively affected folks with disabilities. …

At Blunt’s speech, Shaw and 10 other members of the group were told they couldn’t watch the governor’s address while wearing their shirts. The reason? Capitol Police Chief Todd Hurt said the shirts were considered lobbying. …

Does either party really want to create a country where no dissent is allowed? A country where all forms of free speech that get in the way of political spin are somehow seen as subversive?

The thought scares Shaw, and he chooses his words carefully.

“It is reminiscent of regimes of power in world history that are not representative of our Constitution,” Shaw says.

President George W. Bush used the word “freedom” 17 times in his speech the other night. He used it more than any other word, and yet I wonder about its place atop the president’s lexicon.

ABQjournal: Bush Visit Lights Up Rio Rancho By Joshua Akers, Journal Staff Writer

The Rio Rancho Department of Public Safety reported one arrest during the event.

DPS spokesman John Francis said Robert Chavez, 56, of Albuquerque, was arrested after failing to obey a police officer.

Francis said Chavez was told to stay on the sidewalk three times. When Chavez stepped around a DPS officer and into the street, he was arrested around 9 a.m.

DPS did not have a crowd count for protesters or supporters outside the event.

I put a protest tarp up on my roof just a few hours before Duhbya got to town. I decided on the classic “BUllSHit,” which I coined for Poppy Bush so many years ago — like father, like son. On the deep blue tarp, I made the “BU” and the “SH” white and the “ll” and the “it” red. Very patriotic, like dissent.

Just my luck that the next 24 hours were the windiest of the year. No amount of bricks will hold a tarp flat on a New Mexican roof in a good stiff wind. But, though it wrinkled a bit, at least it didn’t fly.

Did Duhbya see it? Well, there is no question that a few years ago, his plane flew straight over my house, over my DUMP BUSH and No W tarps. Don’t know about this time.

Reading the anemic coverage about local protests and a blog entry about protests in Nashville, I decided to dust off my own story of protest just over 2 years ago — when I got within 6 feet of the presidential limosine.

Continue reading Speak Up! →