Free Republic

9th U.S. Circuit - Sen. Smith's brother blasts decisions, then faces blowbackWednesday, July 25, 2007 It's a common refrain in Northwest timber country: Misguided federal judges are hastily shutting down logging instead of letting professional foresters do their jobs. Now the refrain is coming from a judge on the top federal court in the West -- who also happens to be the brother of Oregon Republican Sen. Gordon Smith. In an unusually blunt and wide-ranging opinion on a lawsuit over a small Idaho timber sale, Milan D. Smith Jr. blamed his own court for taking the law too far and...

Washington, DC - The following is a statement by Keith Ashdown, Vice-President of Taxpayers for Common Sense on the Corporate Tax Bill: More boring than War & Peace and more complicated than ancient Greek, the 900-page corporate tax bill is riddled with wasteful add-ons for almost every special interest in Washington. In fact, if you work on K Street and aren’t getting anything out of this legislation, you should be fired. 147 out of 265 provisions in the corporate tax bill were added since October and we still have dozens of amendments to debate. Some of the highlights in the...

<p>Forest pathology specialist Matteo Garbelotto researches Sudden Oak Death in Marin County, Calif.</p> <p>SAN FRANCISCO — On the rolling hills and low mountains of coastal Northern California, green and lush now after winter rains, live oaks, tan oaks, black oaks and madrones have been dying for more than two years. A mysterious microscopic organism that causes Sudden Oak Death has been found on a widening list of trees. Even the stately redwood, a California icon as well as a valuable timber product, may be vulnerable. But a far more troubling scenario is gaining currency among plant pathologists and federal regulators: that the disease will make its way out of California and infect the forests of the interior United States with potentially disastrous results.</p>