Category: Law, Government, Politics

The United States entered World War II shortly after the bombing at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Just a few months later, in the Spring of 1942, at the close of the Devils Lake Junior College school year, a handful of young men from Devils Lake, the nucleus of the school's hockey team,  finished … Continue reading The Greatest Man I Ever Knew

Is half a loaf better than none? Put another way, does protecting half of Pretty Butte from oil development do any damn good at all? That’s what happened at the North Dakota Industrial Commission meeting Monday. Passing up a chance to display real leadership in the face of overwhelming pressure from the oil industry to … Continue reading Special Places? It’s All Over Except The Drilling

We have much to worry about in western North Dakota these days. I try to limit my worrying to the dangers posed by unbridled oil development to the countryside and its residents, both domestic and wild in the part of the state in which I grew up and have lived most of my life. Many … Continue reading The Democratization of Conservation

Well, I haven’t done this for a while, but I have a few things on my mind, and it is a weekend, so I thought I’d just share them with you today. NOBODY LOSES Okay, so the paper says today that Warren Buffett’s BNSF Railway is going to upgrade its oil tanker fleet to make … Continue reading Weekenders

SURFACE OWNER PROTECTION Okay, I know I said I was done writing about this “Special Places” thing Wayne Stenehjem has going, but people keep bringing it up to me and there always seem to be some new ideas floating around, so I’m going to take one more whack at it. Not that I really think … Continue reading A New Look At A Couple Of Old Problems

Well, okay, if you have been following my attention to Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem’s effort to designate a bunch of places as “extraordinary” and to be careful when permitting oil wells around them, you know that I’ve kind of hoped that we had arrived at a policy that could be signed off on by all … Continue reading “Hey, Sailor . . .”

So, now it is up to the President. The Keystone Pipeline will be built, or not, depending on, unfortunately, which political faction he wants to believe. Sadly, it has come to that. President Obama was elected partly, maybe even substantially, by people who believed he wanted to protect the environment and people who believed he … Continue reading “Let’s Build Our Own Pipeline”

Act 1, Scene 1 Tuesday afternoon, January 28, 2014 Stage is dark, we hear the sound of a cell phone ringing, ringtone music: “Take the Money and Run.” Man's Voice: Hello, this is Jack. Hi, Jack, Harry Hamm here. Boy it sure is nice to have the Governor’s private cell phone number so I don’t … Continue reading A One-Act Play

Well, I don’t want to always be the bearer of bad tidings, but it is good to know what is going on in the world around us. In the words of British philosopher Sir Francis Bacon, “Knowledge is power.” The Dakota Resource Council has brought us some knowledge this week about bad things happening around … Continue reading Here’s The Map North Dakota Leaders Didn’t Want You to See

The last thing anyone expected at Wednesday’s North Dakota Industrial Commission meeting was a motion made by Wayne Stenehjem, a second by Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring, and a unanimous vote of approval by the two of them and Jack Dalrymple. But that’s what happened. Nor was the motion quite what we expected, but for now, … Continue reading A New Approach To “Special Places”