Posted on 09/21/2006 8:35:16 AM PDT by presidio9
A federal judge on Wednesday reinstated the "Roadless Rule," a Clinton-era ban on road construction in nearly a third of national forests.
U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte ruled that the Bush administration failed to conduct necessary environmental studies before making changes that allowed states to decide how to manage individual national forests.
The 2001 rule prohibits logging, mining and other development on 58.5 million acres in 38 states and Puerto Rico, but the Bush administration replaced it in May 2005 with a process that required governors to petition the federal government to protect national forests in their states.
Laporte sided with 20 environmental groups and four states — California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington — that sued the U.S. Forest Service over the changes.
"This is fantastic news for millions of Americans who have consistently told the Forest Service that they wanted these last wild areas of public land protected," said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for Earthjustice, which represented the environmental groups.
The Bush administration was reviewing the ruling to decide on an appeal, said Dave Tenny, deputy undersecretary for the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service.
Representatives of the timber industry denounced the decision, saying it would leave roadless areas vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires because firefighters could not access blazes in remote forests.
Chris West, vice president of the Portland-based American Forest Industry Council, said states should be allowed to decide how best to manage and protect their forests. West said, "This lawsuit and this decision is all about politics."
Despite the judge's ruling, logging would likely continue in two regions of Oregon — Mike's Gulch and Blackberry on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest — where timber sales were approved after the rule was changed, said Mike Carrier, natural resources adviser to Gov. Ted Kulongoski.
Colorado Gov. Bill Owens criticized the ruling, saying a task force that takes citizens' input is the right way to manage the state's wilderness.
"It would be very unfortunate if we were to revert back to a rule established hastily without public input during the waning days of the Clinton administration," Owens said. "We simply should not have a federal magistrate in San Francisco unilaterally dictating natural resource policy for the entire country."
Laporte's ruling does not affect about 9.3 million acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, which is covered by a separate rule on road construction and other development.
Why, oh why do we tolerate these damnable judges running our country?
Now THERE is a thought for some good conservative legislation---any action that "sequesters" or "takes" property out of use "for environmental purposes" has to have an "economic impact" statement done.
Time to take the judges to task....in a most severe manner.
maybe its time the electorate voted in federal judges.
More environmental policy which will screw up the environment.
The Ninth Circuit is an appeals court and has nothing to do with to this case, that's not say that it eventually wouldn't end up on their docket.
What does "roadless" mean?
Just goes to show you that once the government gets its hands on something it's gone forever.
Wild fires are good at managing forest growth.. and promoting new growth..Mother nature takes care of what the government cannot legislate
Ninth Circuit is where it's headed next. I think we can predict the outcome.
The judge must have ruled that Clinton is still president. It must have took some serious legal gymnastics to come up with this ruling.
bump
It means the Feds don't allow anyone in for any reason.
Let's see, what kind of environmental studies did Clinton offer as an excuse.
Congress needs to fix this.
Another WATERMELON judge.
POTP (Profile of the Perp):
Court: U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of California
Date of Birth: July 10, 1953
Appointed: 1997, by the judges of the Northern District
LawSchool: Yale University Law School
Previous Judicial Position: : Administrative Law Judge, California Department of Insurance
August, 1999
By Paul Elias
From her 15th-story warren of offices in the Federal Building, Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte has a spectacular view of her past employers at the gilded San Francisco City Hall.
Laporte was a deputy city attorney under Louise Renne before being appointed to her eight-year term on the bench in December 1997. In Renne's office, Laporte spearheaded complex litigation, playing an integral role in initiating the city's groundbreaking suit against Big Tobacco.
But Laporte is now where she wants to be -- serving as a magistrate judge in the Northern District of California.
Northern California magistrate judges play a bigger role on the court than their equals in most other federal districts. They are on "the wheel," meaning they are randomly assigned civil cases like their Article III colleagues with lifetime appointments. As long as both sides in a dispute stipulate to having a magistrate judge hear a case -- which happens most of the time -- the magistrate presides from start to finish. One exception: Magistrates cannot preside over felony criminal trials.
Laporte first took the bench four months after her appointment, which after two years with the city. Prior to that, she served as an administrative law judge in the state Department of Insurance for five years. Her first opinion came in the seminal Proposition 103 dispute that prompted the 1994 California Supreme Court decision 20th Century Insurance Co. v. Garamendi, 32 Cal.Rptr.2d 807. Her ruling, upholding the measure rolling back insurance rates, was affirmed.
These days her time is taken up refereeing discovery disputes, setting bail and presiding over settlement conferences. So far, she has earned high marks from the attorneys who have appeared before her -- especially when it comes to settlements.
"She is very incisive," said Arthur Levy of Levy, Ram & Olson. "And she has good emotional intelligence. She is very good in sizing up the dynamic of a room."
Levy said that if it wasn't for Laporte, his suit, Stewart v. Baby Bjorn AB, 98-4778, against Swedish baby carrier manufacturer Baby Bjorn would not have settled in May.
"It was hotly contested," Levy recalled. "And other settlement conferences before other judges had failed."
Levy said Laporte got all the parties into her office one day "and wouldn't let us leave until we had a settlement."
Laporte has had to bone up on criminal law, having spent her entire career practicing civil law. She's come to find bail hearings, a big part of a magistrate's job, to be "more of an art than a science." But she said she has a "good instinct" when it comes to setting bail.
"Besides," she said, "the lawyers are always willing to help you out." She also relies on bail recommendations from the court's division of Pretrial Services.
Another big part of the job is resolving discovery disputes in civil litigation. "The issues run the gambit from the sublime to the ridiculous," she said. However, she said she tries to remain patient through even the silliest battles.
"It's a goal of mine to think like a practicing attorney -- to be service-oriented," she said. "You can't please everybody but hope to give everybody a fair hearing and issue a prompt decision. That's what I wanted as a lawyer, and I think that's what all lawyers want."
Clinton owns more Judges than does all the rest of organized crime, combined.
Invest in judges, it pays higher dividends than the Stock Market.
So this twit is not a Federal Judge. A Federal Judge--a lifetime appointment--requires a presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. A Federal Magistrate is appointed by Federal Judges and serves an eight-year term.
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