Coyote Gulch

Sunday, July 2, 2006

65% Solution
Wash Park Prophet: "Colorado voters will be considering a proposal called the '65% solution' devised by an Ohio politician, which limits how much money schools can spend on 'non-instructional activities'. A conservative pundit has called it one of worst ideas in education."
"denver 2006"
4:56:51 PM

Hamdan case
Andrew Sullivan: "America is not in essence a geographical entity. When it was founded, it occupied a fraction of the land it now does. Nor is it defined by an ethnic group or a royal line. Its core is essentially a piece of paper, a written constitution, a formal set of procedures designed, before everything else, to protect individual liberty. At the heart of that liberty is the right to a fair trial and the insistence that nobody - especially not the president - can take that away.

"That constitution has been tested before. It was tested when Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in the civil war. It was tested when Franklin D Roosevelt interned thousands of Japanese-American citizens in camps during the second world war. It was tested when Richard Nixon turned the presidency into a criminal conspiracy in Watergate. There was never any doubt that the war launched against the United States on September 11, 2001, would test it too. Wars do that, as Lincoln and Roosevelt demonstrate. No war by foreign enemies has implicated the American homeland as profoundly as this one."
"2008 pres"
4:47:55 PM

Clinton for president?
James Carville and Mark J. Penn (via the Washington Post): "We don't know if Hillary is going to run for president, but as advisers who have worked on the only two successful Democratic presidential campaigns in the past couple of decades, we know that if she does run, she can win that race, too.

"Why? First, because strength matters. Our problems as a party are less ideological than anatomical: Our candidates have been made to look like they have no backbone. But the latest Post-ABC News poll shows that 68 percent of Americans describe Hillary Clinton as a strong leader. That comes after years of her being in the national crossfire. People know that Hillary has strong convictions, even if they don't always agree with her. They also know that she's tough enough to handle the viciousness of a national campaign and the challenges of the presidency itself.

"One thing we know about Clinton campaigns: Nobody gets Swift Boated."

Thanks to TalkLeft for the link.
"2008 pres"
4:40:55 PM

Edwards for president?
Western Democrat: "This week, I spent a couple of days with Senator John Edwards - the once and future presidential candidate. I had a chance to ask him about the Western Democrat strategy: changing the map by contesting the inland mountain west. His answer surprised and impressed me. I asked a geographic question, and he gave me a cultural answer. To paraphrase, he argued that the lesson of the West is that authenticity and plain-speaking is critical."
"2008 pres"
4:31:51 PM

Signifcant nexus instruction from supremes

Here's an opinion piece about House Resolution 1356, the Clean Water Authority Restoration Act from the Denver Post. From the article, "...it follows that anything dumped into a water source - including pollutants - will eventually wend its way downstream through wetlands, tributaries, streams, rivers, ponds and lakes. For this reason, Congress passed the 1972 Clean Water Act to set a national standard protecting all the nation's waters. For more than three decades, the agencies charged with enforcing those safeguards have viewed the aquatic system as a whole. The benefits to the nation from this far-sighted legislation have been incalculable. On June 19, the U.S. Supreme Court threw it all into confusion. In a contentiously split decision (including five opinions totaling more than 100 pages), the court mandated that, for the present at least, questions of Clean Water Act jurisdiction over wetlands will have to be thrashed out on a case-by-case basis in the lower courts...

"Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., an architect of the 1972 Clean Water Act, recognized the threat when he said the court decision displays a 'disdain for Congress' and its clear intent that the law be a national standard protecting all the nation's waters. The matter is vital. The confusion should be set aside. Congress and the president should act to clearly restate the principle that the Clean Water Act applies to all the nation's waters, both the great and the small."
"colorado water"
9:19:28 AM

Ruedi will not fill this year

Ruedi reservoir will not fill this year, according to the Aspen Times. From the article, "Hot, dry weather this spring and summer will prevent Ruedi Reservoir from filling to capacity, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. 'We're not going to fill up Ruedi this year. We're going to get really close,' bureau spokeswoman Kara Lamb said. She downplayed the significance of the shortage. She said the reservoir will fill to between 97,000 and 99,000 acre feet rather than the 101,000-acre-foot capacity. There is plenty of water for recreation and for the bureau to meet its obligations to entities that have purchased water, Lamb said...

"Ruedi participated in a coordinated release of water in May with other reservoirs in the state to benefit endangered fish on the Colorado River in Grand Junction. For about one week the reservoir released its highest level of water in 11 years. The agency's water managers were also concerned about creating enough storage space in Ruedi to make room for what had been a higher-than-average snowpack in the upper Fryingpan Valley for most of the winter...

"In addition to releases, bureau water managers have to contend with diversions. About 56,000 acre feet has been diverted from the Fryingpan's headwaters to east of the Continental Divide so far this year, according to bureau data."
"colorado water"
8:06:51 AM

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