But This Time They Promised!

July 23, 2021

One of today’s great Native American writers is David Treuer, a Leech Lake Ojibwe historian and author of “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present.” It is a great read about the relationship between native tribes and the U.S. government over the past 130 years, though mostly maddening, tragic, and […]

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Does Congress Authorize, or Direct?

July 16, 2021

The forest health crisis in America has reached such staggering proportions, it is no exaggeration to say, that one generation of national leaders has squandered the greatest legacy of the conservation movement – our national forests. During the last 20 years, over 100 million acres of national forests have burned to the ground, including the […]

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Checks and Balances, and the Rule of Law

July 9, 2021

Harry Truman was famous for the simple instruction, “Say what you mean, mean what you say.” He was talking about personal communication, not differing interpretations of law. In his day, the law was generally clear about what was legal and what was not, and Congressional bills were not thousands of pages long. Today’s bloated legislation […]

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No Boating or Swimming Here

July 2, 2021

When I open Google or any other search engine, I not only get the search box, but also a host of suggested articles that some algorithm thinks I might care about. I rarely open any of them, but this morning one caught my eye that said “See the most dangerous water in Colorado.” It turned […]

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You Guys Should Talk

June 25, 2021

When different branches of the same organization work at cross purposes, it is often said that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. One seemingly unrelated pair of current political initiatives illustrates the point. Several times over the past six years we have discussed the roller coaster of constantly changing legal […]

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To Divide is to Conquer

June 18, 2021

Julius Caesar is said to have coined the phrase “divide et impera,” which means divide and conquer. It was his successful war strategy against the Gauls, and it has been working for military generals, and for political opponents, ever since. On the battlefield, armies that are split up are smaller and easier to defeat. In […]

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What Are the Wires For?

June 11, 2021

Our family once knew a little girl whose eyesight was so bad that when she finally got glasses, and saw details clearly for the first time in her life, she asked her parents, “Why are there wires on the telephone poles?” Like millions of Americans, she had always seen the utility poles, but never really […]

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The Oregon Compromise of 2021

June 2, 2021

This month, voters in five counties of eastern Oregon voted to instruct local officials to take action to secede from Oregon, and join Idaho instead. Separatist movements are not especially uncommon in the West – several have sprouted in Colorado over the years – but it is rare that voters actually have a chance to […]

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How Much We Care

May 7, 2021

A common adage, repeated by political consultants for 30 years, advises candidates seeking to broaden their base that “nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” It may seem trite, but it is extraordinarily apt when describing today’s environmental disputes. Those disputes are heightened by an Administration pushing an environmental […]

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What Would Harry Say Now?

April 30, 2021

I couldn’t help thinking about my friend, the late Harry Talbott, this week when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) designated nearly 300,000 acres as critical habitat for the yellow-billed cuckoo. Harry was a conservation icon, not only because of his leadership in preserving Palisade’s orchards and open space throughout the region, nor just […]

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