by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel Range Magazine features a story called “Where the Desert Bloomed” about the Bend, Oregon, region along the Deschutes River. It could just as well be about the Grand Valley. It describes a once-arid desert turned into a lush valley of productive agriculture by irrigation [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel In 1867, Harper’s Magazine published a story about Tennessee Congressman Davey Crockett and his encounter with an angry constituent. It began with Crockettt’s first House term in 1827, when there was a great fire in Georgetown. Many houses were burned and families made homeless, [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel The Fifth Amendment is an essential part of the Bill of Rights, ensuring, “nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” Sometimes private property stands in the way of public progress, such as when highways are built. The public good [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow As appearing in the Daily Sentinel I did a double take when I saw the headline, “Meeker County to call on Congress to pay up for federal lands.” I thought it must be a typo because Meeker is a town not a county (it’s in Rio Blanco [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow As appearing in the Daily Sentinel Last week we mentioned the Biden administration’s “Investing in America Agenda,” and how the Interior Department is spending $44 million of its windfall share of the recent massive spending bills. It is ironic, to say the most, to call government spending [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow As appearing in the Daily Sentinel Fans of Aaron Sorkin’s classic TV series “The West Wing,” marveled at how realistic some of the strategy sessions seemed. In one episode, the president is being investigated by a special prosecutor for failing to disclose his debilitating disease. Strategists gather [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow As appearing in the Daily Sentinel Several years ago in a speech to a Republican Party gathering, I was mentioning the GOP’s history in founding the original conservation movement in America. I pointed to the first preservation of public lands by Abraham Lincoln (Yosemite), the first National [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow As appearing in the Daily Sentinel Sometimes a story gets interrupted, and conversation veers temporarily in a different direction. When that ends, the original storyteller might resume with, “Let’s see now, where was I? Oh, yes…” That’s where we are now in the discussion of natural resources, [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow As appearing in the Daily Sentinel Whenever someone talks about the “good old days,” there is the inevitable question, “good for whom?” America is not perfect, and never was. That’s why they call self-government by ordinary people “the American Experiment.” Every generation tries to come closer to [...]
by E&E Legal Senior Legal Fellow As Appearing in The Daily Sentinel Observing a monarch butterfly in the 1850s, Emily Dickinson wrote about its apparently aimless flitting, "Repairing everywhere, without design that I could trace, except to stray abroad on miscellaneous enterprise, the clovers understood." She knew butterflies were somewhat mysterious. They still are. Someone [...]
