babylonDon

Title
Border Fence Will Skirt Laws

Link
Border fence will skirt laws -- chicagotribune.com
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Excerpt

Environmental rules waived to finish barrier

By Richard Marosi and Nicole Gaouette | Tribune Newspapers
1:34 AM CDT, April 2, 2008



WASHINGTON — In an aggressive move to finish 370 miles of barriers on the U.S. border with Mexico by the end of the year, the Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that it will waive federal and state environmental laws to meet that goal.

The two waivers are the most expansive the department has issued on the southwest border. They will allow Homeland Security to slash through a thicket of more than 30 environmental and cultural laws to speed construction.

Environmentalists and border communities have strenuously opposed some of the planned infrastructure projects, saying they will damage the land and disrupt wildlife.

Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday that the Homeland Security Department is committed to minimizing the impact to the environment. He said that draft environmental assessments show the projects will have only "insignificant impacts on the environment and cultural resources."


But environmental and wildlife groups said the waivers are intended to sidestep growing and unexpectedly fierce opposition, especially in Texas and Arizona, where concerns were raised about endangered species and fragile ecosystems along the Rio Grande.

"The Bush administration's latest waiver of environmental and other federal laws threatens the livelihoods and ecology of the entire U.S.-Mexico border region," said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. "Secretary Chertoff chose to bypass stakeholders and push through this unpopular project on April Fool's Day. We don't think the destruction of the borderlands region is a laughing matter."

The government's push to build the fence came after Congress failed to overhaul Immigration laws, a debate that sparked an outcry over illegal border crossings. In 2006, conservatives in Congress championed the Secure Fence Act, despite the reluctance of President Bush, who has insisted that a comprehensive approach is needed.

Congress subsequently gave Chertoff the power to waive federal law to hasten construction. The Homeland Security Department has faced intense opposition from border communities and has had to go to court against more than 50 property owners simply to survey land for the fence.

Legal experts said the two waivers will make it extremely difficult for successful legal challenges based on environmental or cultural claims. But the waivers will not affect the legal battles between the Homeland Security Department and private landowners.

300 miles finished
Homeland Security has completed about 300 miles of pedestrian and vehicle barriers. Another 370 miles remain to be built, along with all-weather roads, cameras, lighting and other infrastructure projects, officials said.

Republicans in Congress hailed Chertoff's decision, saying the accelerated plans for completing border projects will help stem illegal Immigration and drug smuggling.

"It's great; this is the priority area where most of the illegal activity is going on and where most of the deaths are occurring," said Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus.

But backers of comprehensive Immigration reform said the waivers do little to address the fundamental weaknesses of Immigration policy and will not lead to tighter border controls. "This isn't the first time the DHS has used this authority, and each time it has resulted in increased frustration by all stakeholders," said Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.).

Little warning
Until Tuesday, the department had given few hints that waivers would be used. Homeland Security had followed the environmental impact statement process, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. The public was allowed to comment on the draft environmental impact statements and assessments. Some environmental groups said they were awaiting the final reports when Chertoff made the announcement.

Chertoff said the department has been a careful steward of the environment, even after exercising waiver authority. Three previous waivers have been issued by Homeland Security.

One in September 2005 was issued to complete about 14 miles of fence near San Diego, and another in January 2007 was to build infrastructure near the Barry M. Goldwater military range in southern Arizona. A third waiver was issued in October 2007 near the San Pedro National Riparian Conservation Area, also in southern Arizona.

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Comment:

The Dept. of Homeland Security protecting Americans from roadside bags of oranges.

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McCain '08: 'He'll Get Those Kids Off Your Lawn'

The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.-Maureen Dowd

Chungar

Did you ever notice that they are calling it the "Border Fence" instead of a wall. Ya think that in 50 years the European leaders will be pushing George Bush the 8th to 'TEAR DOWN THE WALL'.
I think that between Pink Floyd's The Wall, the Roger Waters concert at the Berlin Wall and Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev Tear Down That Wall" it has made it unpopular to build a "Wall". But that basically is what it is.

babylonDon

'Good fences make good neighbors'

That's a line from a Frost poem, I think.

But I absolutely agree with you, this administration displays a mastery of that kind of thing. It's like the whole country is being run by an advertising firm.

Fences are what YOU have around your house. Walls are what the evil doers du jour have around their houses....

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McCain '08: 'He'll Get Those Kids Off Your Lawn'

The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.-Maureen Dowd

Chungar

An Advertising firm that plugs away with it's decissions and THEN gets concerned with public opinion.
And I'm not sure if it's just this Administration.
They all seem to play the same game...
W. is just the latest & greatest

bornright

No one that has seen the border could possibly think the border fence would be detrimental to the environment.

babylonDon

No no....Let me guess.

You met a species, and it told you that it prefers being endangered. And that it wishes the liberal media would stop portraying it's demise as a negative.

Or better yet, you bought the existing laws a milkshake and you two discussed how happy they are being broken.

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McCain '08: 'He'll Get Those Kids Off Your Lawn'

The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.-Maureen Dowd

Rollerball

That's because it isn't a wall. It's a fence. Fences are much nicer than walls.




We don't hate the Mexicans, we just want to show them where the line is, that's all.

Good fences make good neighbors.





And while we're at it, let's stop calling that little dispute over in the middle east a "war".

Rollerball

Hey! BR! How's that reptilian brainstem doing? Still running things as usual?

Chungar

We don't hate the Mexicans...

We love illegal Mexicans as long as they pick our veggies and fruit and build our houses! And take that away... Guess what, on top of soaring gas prices that have driven the prices of consumer goods through the roof we're going to drive the illegals out of business and replace them with what teenagers and collage kids

cheapseats

Pardon my French, my ass. You are either the shittiest flock of chickenshits or the carpetbaggingest assembly of charlatans EVER.

The power that you have bestowed upon Michael Chertoff is unconscionable and unacceptable...a complete abrogation of duty and an engraved invitation to abuse. You are obliged to correct yourselves as promptly as you were able to rally to hopefully...we pray, we pray...spare the life of ONE human vegetable.

The Columbian trade deal? Just say Wait. Think running out the clock...you know, STRATEGERY.

I recently spent five weeks with Southern Money, another five last year, the head of which household and support staff is an old-school-military-school Southern gentleman who is gracious and relaxed, in a my-way-or-the-highway kinda way, whilst driving his minions bonkers with incessant interrogations and orders. One day he returned from business in a foul FOUL mood...in all my time under their roof, including through a family ordeal, I had never before witnessed him in A Mood despite fair warning that he was capable of conjuring a doozie.

It would be just he and I for dinner, oh yay. Faced with the prospect of dining opposite a dark cloud, it would occur to a person of even average intelligence to simply beg off of dinner...after weeks of Southern fried this and Southern fried that, no one is going to starve by skipping a meal. But see above regarding Southern graciousness...it wouldn’t even be worth the argument. Too, oddly, cheap as rich people unfailingly are, they are never pleased to have their largesse declined. Go figure.

“You drive,” he commanded.

Since you put it so nicely...

Having a lifetime’s experience with mercurial, imperious, cold-blooded, hot-tempered Rich White Men, I know the drill. Lift the lid, lance the boil, put salve on the burn or, conversely, turn up the heat. If exiting stage left isn’t an option, join the condemnation or be condemned.

“Wow. I’ve never seen you like this before. Que paso?”

It was brave of me to ask, considering it invited recitation of the long list of smart alecs who continually try but fail to take advantage of him and the not-smart alecs who DO take continual advantage of him through their sheer stupidity.

“Maybe they’re not as stupid as you think.”

We’d been ‘round this mulberry bush before. But there is sometimes suddenly a day, a moment, when someone has “had it up to here” with one thing, and does another thing about it.

It was such a day with him.

“Man, I’m tellin’ ya...I kicked ass and took names today,” he said with a satisfaction that may have been attributable to reflecting upon his kick-ass day or it may have been attributable to downing the pre-dinner double scotch on shaved ice that he was drinking, in the car, en route to the restaurant. That is illegal in all 50 states, is it not?

What care I? This man...pure, deep South for the whole of his life...is COMPLETELY connected, with an old-school-military-school Southern son in the Georgia Police Department and another in the Georgia Bar, for good measure. It’s the same everywhere...I don’t have to tell you...it’s who ya know and how much money ya got.

You know what this well-connected, well-mannered, well-educated, well-moneyed Southern Landed Gentry says about All Y’all in Washington? “They’re all a buncha crooks,” is a direct quote.

He and “his” will vote for John McCain as the lesser of evils, but y’know what? He is OPEN to a bid by an independent candidate, a matter on which I had approached him last year. For a minute there, it looked like Sam Nunn might get something off the ground, didn’t it?

This man agrees that prostitution should be legal, that marijuana should be legal, and that abortion should be removed from public policy. This man agrees that half as many of you, paid twice as much, could do ten times the work twenty times more effeicently...so long as none of you were among the half. He would, as you might imagine, make an exception for his good friend and arch-conservative Senator Westmoreland.

More importantly, this man will vouche for me. He and his wife, both, and a slew of other red-necked, right-winged, pure, deep Southerners will testify that I am not seditious. LOL and screw you.

This man still gives money to the Republican party, but not his wife. I don’t mean that he doesn’t give his wife money. I mean that...like so many other rich people, they keep separate money...his wife no longer makes her own contributions to the Republican party.

She’s in her 70’s now, and had given money to the Republican party since they married, 50 years ago. But she stopped abruptly, vowing never to resume, when Republicans spearheaded the leasing of our ports to the United Arab Emirates. We need only briefly ponder the Confederacy to know that, when Southerners say something, they mean it.

Lotsa calls of the please-donate, Republicanism-forever, crush-terrorists-and-liberals variety come to their home. She is flawlessly polite when she declines to contribute to Republican coffers, each time telling the caller that...post-port proposal, which she terms treasonous...she will not EVER give money to the Republican party again, and that the caller may wish to remove her name from the list in order to save time and spare rejection. That’s how polite Southerners are...they wouldn’t say, as I would, “Tell you what, give me YOUR phone number and I’LL call YOU when it’s convenient for ME...I prefer after midnight to dinner-time.”

For real, if we were all kids instead of Big Kids and you, as little shits, were pulling the shit that you, as Big Kids, are pulling? Entire classes of hard-working, fun-loving, rule-regarding kids would be warning, “If you don’t cut it out, we’re telling.” Subsequently, they would chant in that irritating sing-song way, “You’re gon-na ge-et it.”

I’m telling, and you are.

For one thing, I’m telling my Governor...that’s Terminator, to you...and the United Nations that, as an American dissident, I require special protection.

“You will have to kill me to shut me up” and “give me liberty or give me death” seem theatrical, perhaps farcical. At the same time...given America’s increasingly and disturbingly and increasingly disturbingly heavy-handedness...they seem reckless, perhaps life-threatening. True, however...they both seem True. Let me hasten to add, particularly since the American people are so slow to anger and so quick to forget, that I will be happy...in the great American me-first tradition...to go into exile pending guarantee of safe passage.

But I have officially had it up to here. I am kicking ass and taking names, or dying trying.

A number of you would do your families and your country a service by announcing that you will not seek re-election. Path of least resistance, you know it well.

Lords & Ladies

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