Free Republic

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration says it will defend a 2001 rule imposed by President Bill Clinton that blocked road construction and other development on tens of million acres of remote national forests. The administration's decision was contained in court papers filed Thursday in a case in Wyoming that could help settle the fate of remote federal forests. The administration is siding with environmentalists in the case.

Is Huckabee's highway plan the nuttiest thing to come out of this presidential election? I don't want to speak too authoritatively, because I certainly haven't tried to catalogue every nutty thing everyone has said. But it certainly seems like a good candidate. I say that as the daughter of an avid transportation infrastructure advocate--indeed, my dad just co-authored a report on transportation finance for the next 50 years, which I hope he'll be joining me for a podcast on next week. Transportation spending takes years, even decades, to complete, which makes it less than ideal for stimulus spending. In a...

WASHINGTON - Governors are being given 18 months to change the Bush administration's plan to open up to 58.5 million acres of remote national forestland to road building, timbering and other commercial activity. In one of its biggest environmental decisions, the administration will let governors petition for more or fewer restrictions against developing nearly a third of the 191 million acres of national forests, according to briefing documents obtained by The Associated Press. The U.S. Forest Service planned to announce the new "roadless" rule later Thursday. It replaces one that former President Clinton had put in place little more than...