The Daily Sandwich

"We have to learn the lesson that intellectual honesty is fundamental for everything we cherish." -Sir Karl Popper

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Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States

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Saturday, September 16, 2006

Slash and Burn

It's really amazing to see just how rapidly the Republican party has abandoned the stewardship of the nation and turned political office into little more than a moneymaking scheme. Get elected, make your fortune. Or second fortune, considering how much it costs to run in the first place. The mysterious Cipher sent this article showing that it isn't all about Jack Abramoff's cronies, big oil, and Halliburton.

On April 15, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed a proclamation creating the 328,000-acre Giant Sequoia National Monument. More than half of all the giant sequoia groves in the world are in this monument, with most of the remainder found in the adjacent Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. The popularity and awe-inspiring beauty of the giant sequoia forest led President Clinton to permanently protect it, expanding on orders to restrict logging in Sequoia given a few years earlier by President George Bush Sr. (. . .)

This fall, Sequoia National Monument will again become ground zero in the timber wars, with a California congressman proposing legislation to allow commercial logging on areas within its boundaries. Passage of The Giant Sequoia National Monument Transition Act of 2006 (HR 5760) would allow the forest service to proceed with commercial logging projects, ignoring the federal court ruling against such projects, a ruling based on potential harm to the landscape and the rare wildlife that depends on it. Written by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, HR 5760 would perform an "end run'' around that decision, and defy the legal tenets of the National Environmental Policy Act.