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ven as President Obama highlights impending cuts to national parks because of the sequester, he plans to use his power as president to designate five new national monuments Monday, according to an administration official. The new monuments will be: the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico; the San Juan Islands National Monument in Washington State; the First State National Monument in Delaware and Pennsylvania; the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in Ohio and a monument commemorating Harriet Tubman and her role in helping black slaves reach freedom through the the Underground Railway in Maryland.

This site is called Mes Aynak and is nothing short of awe-inspiring: a massive walled-in Buddhist city featuring massive temples, monasteries, and thousands of Buddhist statues that managed to survive looters and the Taliban. Holding a key position on the Silk Road, Mes Aynak was also an international hub for traders and pilgrims from all over Asia. Mes Aynak is set for destruction at the end of December 2012. All of the temples, monasteries, statues as well as the Bronze age material will all be destroyed by a Chinese government-owned company called China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC). Six villages and...

It was during the first month of training in 1861 for the new 11th PA Volunteer Infantry Regiment when a stranger from town brought to the captain a puppy, barely four to five weeks old, and presented it to the regiment. She was a pug-nosed brindle bull terrier that soon won the admiration of all the men in the unit. She was cute, and the men named her after one of the local beauties in West Chester, PA, the site of training. In the weeks and months that followed, Sallie could count on the hundreds of uniformed men to play...

A leaked partial document produced by the Bureau of Land Management and obtained by Fox News suggests the Obama administration is considering a plan to lock up 13 million acres of land -- and the Department of Interior is refusing to answer questions...The plan may actually be more than 13 million acres. Republican members of the House have asked for the rest of the memo, but the Department of the Interior is refusing to hand it over...

HELENA, Mont. — Recently released documents show the Obama administration was getting ideas from environmental groups about setting aside millions of acres in the West, drawing the ire of land users who said discussions were being developed behind their back. In the documents — most of which are e-mail messages — the environmental groups suggest various ways to protect land, such as by creating national monuments, buying private land or through conservation easements.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was asked in a Feb. 26, 2010, letter from Western Caucus Chairman Rep. Rob Bishop, R-UT, and other representatives from western states for the missing pages from a leaked government memo that “contained detailed information about the administration’s plans to designate as many as 14 new national monuments and lock up as much as 13 million acres in states throughout the West.”

... But the word “secret,” especially when applied to the possible doings of far-away federal bureaucrats, is right up there with “monument” in its ability to unleash vitriol among Western conservatives. In 1996, President Bill Clinton created the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah with a surprise announcement that still resonates across the region as a symbol of government powers, or what critics call the abuse of those powers. The new Interior Department memorandum, people in both parties said, has reopened a wound from those days that never quite healed. “Given the lingering frustration felt by many...

http://republicans.resourcescommittee.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Ltr_to_Obama_Re_AntiquitiesAct_021810.pdf Hastings, Bishop Send Letter to President Over Potential Plans to Lock-Up Millions of Acres of Western Land Internal Document Reveals Administration Looking to Designate over a Dozen New National Monuments in the West WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb 18 - A recently obtained internal document from the U.S. Department of the Interior shows the Obama Administration is covertly considering designating up to 17 new National Monuments under the Antiquities Act. In addition, it shows that the Administration is also targeting thousands of acres of private land for potential acquisition by the federal government. The proposed designations and acquisitions would lock-up at...

Charles Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, is intent on raising $30 million for a new academic center in his New York district -- a center with his name on it. After securing an earmark and two other federal grants totaling some $2.6 million for the project, the Democratic congressman wrote letters on his congressional stationery to businesses with interests before his committee. They sought meetings to help him fulfill his "personal dream" of seeing the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service completed. ...Until roughly the 1960s, people had to die before a grateful nation memorialized...

U.S. Park Police Chief Dwight E. Pettiford yesterday was relieved of his duties while a panel of federal officials convenes to resolve problems within the agency that were identified last month in an inspector general's report, officials said. Chief Pettiford, who has run the department since March 2005, will retain his position but will be removed from duty while the group formulates a response to the report over the next two months, National Park Service spokesman David Barna said. Mr. Barna said Chief Pettiford was removed to allow him to concentrate on the work of the panel. But a report...

WASHINGTON - Inadequate security has left national icons such as the Washington Monument and the Statue of Liberty vulnerable, according to a government report on the U.S. Park Police released Monday. The Interior Department's inspector general accuses the Park Police of an "overall lack of commitment to its icon security responsibilities," citing chronic understaffing along with a lack of coordination and training. "We found that despite having increased security and law enforcement responsibilities since the events of September, 11, 2001, USPP's staffing levels are lower now than they were 6 years ago," the report states. For example, when two protesters...

A 62-year-old sculpture of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima is getting the heave-ho from the museum on the aircraft carrier Intrepid while the ship is docked in Staten Island for an overhaul, museum officials and the sculpture’s owner said yesterday. The five-ton sculpture, which served as a model for the United States Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va., has been on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum since 1995. But museum officials, who are starting to renovate the ship’s interior, said they declined to buy the sculpture from its owner, Rodney Hilton Brown, and asked him...

The names of the dead would be raised to the plaza from the pool level below, as many relatives have demanded. But thundering waterfalls would still cascade into those pools, at the bottom of two enormous voids marking the place where the twin towers stood. The reconceived World Trade Center memorial and museum, unveiled yesterday after weeks of anxious anticipation, tries to solve security problems, placate disaffected family members and, most of all, reduce the project cost from an estimated $672 million. A budget target of $500 million was set last month by Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael...

Something Has Gone Terribly Wrong With the Statues of Monumental Washington. Remember, tomorrow's Memorial Day. That's what it's for, remembering. The holiday's gone blurry. Now it's mostly fun (ballgames, setting up the barbecue, another day off work), but it used to be for focused recollections of the dead. ... The fallen mustn't be forgotten. We used words like "the fallen" then. That seriousness bred art. That art would shape the country's look, and Washington's especially. Vast amounts of money, artistry and effort would be expended on its making. The beauty of the art would illumine its high purpose -- to...

After snubbing his Democratic Party to deliver the Republican keynote address for President Bush, former Georgia Sen. Zell Miller seemed a good bet for an ambassadorship, adviser post or maybe even a Cabinet office. On Tuesday, the White House revealed Miller's choice: a seat on the American Battle Monuments Commission. "I'm just an old man looking after cemeteries," Miller said in an interview Tuesday after President Bush tapped him for the job. Although Miller has retired from virtually all aspects of public life since leaving the Senate in January, he acknowledged letting Bush know of his interest in the commission...

Shuffling out of the movie theater last weekend, I emitted a silent scream, frustrated by yet another example of Christianity under assault, the tumescent epic, “Kingdom of Heaven,” a film so utterly contemptuous of Christians and adoring of Muslims that a leading authority on the Crusades branded it “Osama Bin Laden's version of history.” “What insane times we live in,” one film critic notes. “Here we are in the midst of the War on Terror, and all Hollywood can do is continually bash Christianity.” In an industry historically known for coddling communists (the blacklist, Jane Fonda, Stone, Spielberg and others...

Moscow MY parents named me Victor in honor of the Soviet Union's victory over Hitler, and I am proud of my name. I see no reason to cast doubt on the historical significance of that victory; for years the Russian people, who lost millions of soldiers in the war, have united around the celebration of Victory Day. Yet, as we mark the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, we are seeing not so much a celebration as a major disagreement between millions of people, and even between nations. This city, having summoned distinguished foreign guests for the...

Security concerns outlined last month by the New York Police Department have set off a serious reassessment of plans for the former World Trade Center site. People involved in the rebuilding effort say that the revisions that need to be made to the site's most prominent feature, the Freedom Tower, could delay the start of construction from several months to a year. As a result, the lead developer at the site, Larry Silverstein, has proposed seeking public financing - possibly hundreds of millions of dollars - to pay for addressing the Police Department's security concerns. Such a development would be...

Fortunately, Thomas Jefferson can't see the ugly concrete barriers and metal fences impinging on his monument; he is facing the other way, across the Tidal Basin. The barriers were shoved into place about two years ago, closing off the Jefferson Memorial parking lot. Now, as Spencer S. Hsu recently reported in The Post, the National Park Service is proposing to make the closure permanent and to add new barricades around the Lincoln Memorial, too.

Visitors to Highland Park's Reservoir Drive entrance next spring will be treated to a sight not seen there in 60 years. Water will spring forth from a fountain that has been dormant for decades beneath a blanket of weeds and dirt. It will be accompanied by a garden with tens of thousands of tulips, peonies, narcissus, hydrangeas and other blooms. The project is expected to cost $700,000, covered mostly by Regional Asset District sales tax money.