Fuck that.  The Rule of Law is Dead and the United States of America is entering uncharted waters.  Do we rebel?  Do we sit by and take it?

The Rule of Law is Dead and what constitutes being an American has changed.  Does an American follow Congress and the President's lead and eviscerate the 4th Amendment and live with it for safeties sake or do we fight?

They are going to cage protesters at the Democratic National Convention, they are going to limit travel, assembly, and the right to bear arms.  They will be listening to whatever International calls are made during the convention.  Do we take it or do we fight it?

My 15 year old son and I spent Father's Day scouting the area where we are going to hunt elk this year. We got to the trail head at 7:00AM, and got out out bows and our day packs.  We had thumper tips on our arrows so we could practice shooting stumps as we worked through woods looking for elk sign and a potential site for our camp.  I had been pouring over maps since the Winter and after we got word that we had drawn a license on the 10th, I had decided that this would be the best possible way to spend Father's day.

My dad and I were talking about it, and we decided the best use of the rebate check was to send it straight to the ACLU.  It will stimulate the economy and protect the Constitution at the same time.  They'll buy paper, underpay their lawyers and pay their rent and fight BushCO and his criminal family.

The best part is the reaction you get from Repugs when you tell them how your going to spend your rebate check.

We have are having a session in Colorado where the Republicans have literally lost their collective minds related to Sportsmen's issues.  Read about what is going on in Colorado, call your Senator and House Representative and find out what is happening in your neck of the woods.  These issues are easy coalition builders between environmentalists, recreational businesses and Sportsmen.  We filled a meeting room at the Capitol full to overflowing and managed to corner a couple of these Repugs and even though their attitude and answers pissed me off to no end, I recognize a political opportunity when I see one.

I went to the Sportsmen's Caucus at the Colorado Capitol on January 24th.  Currently the Republicans are playing games with Sportsmen's issues.  They think they have the Sportsmen's vote locked up and what they do won't hurt them at the ballot box; I want to make them pay for their hubris. The next Sportsmen's Caucus is February 20th for Colorado.  When does your Sportsmen's caucus meet?

The issues we are dealing with in Colorado include Off Road Vehicle Regulation, Internet Hunting, wasting meat, water, easements and habitat preservation.  What's happening in your neck of the woods?  

More below the fold:

Everybody is patting themselves on the back.  Representative  John Hall had a recommended diary touting Victory on the Energy Bill.  SusanG frontpaged the Houses' passage of the bill in Democrats Pass House Energy Bill, 235-181.  Most comments were supportive of the bill, but one headline was missing:

THE ROAN PLATEAU GETS SCREWED!

The contraversy is big news here.  Both the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News are covering the Roan provisions specifically, and I'm sure outdoor columnist Ed Dentry is going to be breathing fire next week.  

Every Democratic member of the Colorado delegation is against this provision and 20 state legislators have sent a letter to Governor Ritter to stop the rape of the Roan Plateau.

I've been talking about the Roan Plateau, hunting, fishing and the extractive industries since'05.  Well, I thought we were out of the woods when we won the house and the Senate in '06.  I thought there was no way that a Democratic controlled Congress would go against  Rep. Salazar (D-CO CD3), Senator Salazar, and Mark Udall (D-CO CD2).

I guess this is the way Pelosi and Reid lead.  

WASHINGTON — Legislation that would have barred surface drilling on Colorado's Roan Plateau and limited oil-shale development in the state was left out of a major energy package poised to pass the House today.
The fight over the Roan now shifts to the Senate, where Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., says he will seek a one-year moratorium on Roan drilling. But his effort is unlikely to happen until after the new year.
Meanwhile, a political slugfest erupted Wednesday over questions about the 3,500-foot mesa in northwestern Colorado and the motivations for protecting it.

More below the fold.

I am only going to hunt next year with a bow and a revolver; I was in the gun shop picking up a Smith and Wesson Performance Center .44 with a 7.5 inch barrel and 4X Leopold Scope.  I also grabbed a variety of ammo. My 15 year old son and I had a successful hunt this year(an elk and an antelope), and I might as well start preparing for next year now.

While I was waiting to mount and bore sight my scope, a lively discussion began concerning the Constitution, Ron Paul's appearance on Jay Leno, Dennis Kucinich's Cheney impeachment resolution, and how if Hillary is elected the sun might stop rising.

I have written a couple of times about the tangible ways that the Republic Party's ties to the extraction industry will start costing them votes.  Things have are hitting critical mass this season.  The votes are there for the taking if Democrats in the wild west court the hook and bullet crowd.  This article by Rocky Mountain News Hunting and Fishing Columnist Ed Gentry from November 2, 2007 titled Real anti-hunters finally are being exposed boils it down.

The stove was searing. Sportsmen, conservation groups and Granby residents were outraged by BLM's plans to lease 31,000 acres in Grand County, including land around Hot Sulphur Springs, to gas drillers.

Last week, the agency fielded a volcanic eruption of protests over plans to develop prime elk and deer wintering habitat at the headwaters of the Colorado River. In less than a week, BLM actually heard the shouting and flinched. It withdrew all of Grand County from a lease sale scheduled for Thursday.

Can the Democrats in the Rocky Mountain West craft a message that speaks to the people.  Can we tie the Republicans and the scares on our land together?

The Democratic Party has perfected the victim's response. With painful regularity, the Democrats will be outmaneuvered, smeared, and generally worked over by BushCO and the Republicans.  After it's all over they will whine about how the facts and the law were on their side, but they just couldn't stop the Republican juggernaut.  If the media had done their job, if the FBI wasn't corrupt, if, if, if.  It doesn't matter if Democrats control the House and the Senate.  It doesn't matter if we have the Presidency, the Republicans are going to work over whatever Democrats they can get their hands on and the Democrats will continue to look for some authority to save their ass.  The problem is that they are "the authorities."  A story about gay bashing illustrates my point and the solution.

Big Game Hunting season starts in Colorado with Archery at the end of August and runs to the end of September.  Muzzle loaders get a week long season mid-September and the first rifle seasons get started the second week of October and runs through middle of January.  I hunt for Elk, Mule Deer, and Antelope.  Here's a picture of part of the area I hunted for Elk and Deer this year.

During the course of scouting my hunting grounds, archery hunting and finally rifle hunting, I had quite a few experiences that capture the beauty and tension in the wild places of Colorado.

I learned so much at YearlyKOS.  I learned about education, rural issues, immigration and Latino issues, and I learned that my fellow netroots warriors are as varied, passionate, articulate, and good looking as I expected.

Not to mention we have bucks; we are the first group that has cleaned out the cash machines at the Hyatt in two years.  We aren't playing with credit, we pay as we go/drink/stumble......

One of the things that really came together for me was a gun control policy that would work at the Federal level, satisfy hunters, and sport shooters.  The "no gun" crowd and "I want a fucking rocket launcher" crowd wouldn't like it, but the rest of the country could cope or further regulate locally.

I'm going to YearlyKOS and I gotta say I haven't been this excited since fishing in Alaska last August.  I'm going to meet a bunch of the folks that I have been reading for years.  I'm what I call a lurker that posts occasionally when somehting interesting happens to me.  I not some scholar, but I do understand some things and I know that the small role I've played over the last few years combined with everybody elses small efforts has put Americans in a position to claim back their country from BushCO.  Everbody who has been part of the netroots has made a difference.

Loofah boy came up at the gun shop today.  Usually I report on encouraging signs that the liberatarian gun nuts are coming around down at the gun shop.  Not this time.

I hope this fight in the Senate goes on for a while and I hope Senator Salazar finds his sack and puts himself in the middle of the fight.  With that in mind, I called Cabela's and ordered him an Army cot and shipped it to him overnight for $145.79.

I'm leaving to go camping, but I thought the folks that have been following the changes in the customers' attitudes down at the gunshop would be intrested to know that the concensus of the six white men at the gunshop today is that the best handgun round is a either .45 ACP or the .38 Super and the best rifle round is either a 150 grain .308 or 155 grain .30 06.  In addition, we ALL agreed that President Bush and Vice president Cheney are bastards, they both need to be impeached, and Democrats are bunch of gutless pukes for not getting the job done.

I've been really busy working this Spring; gotta make hay while the grass green.  The gun shop has generate ten dairies worth of material, but this is my first diary since HR 1022 got the guys all hot and bothered about the new Democratic majority taking away their "black guns."  

For those of you that have never read one of these trips to the dark side, mellow out.  I know our necks are red, our boots are worn, and our language is crude.

Today I will talk about the three guns every progressive should own, how to cook antelope, and why the rifle club recently switched to black guns for the youth program.

I'm interested in the environment in a very hands on way.  I like to camp, fish, hunt, and hike.  I spend thousands of dollars playing outside every year from my annual fishing trip to Alaska for salmon and halibut, to catch and release trout fishing in the Rockies, to hunting big game in the high country.  I love the outdoors and enjoy sharing my love with my sons.

Anyone who spends any amount of time outdoors has noticed things are changing.  The elk are coming down from the high country later.  You can hunt above 8000 feet into December now. The elk's migration routes are starting to change.  The salmon are coming in a little earlier, the runoff peaks earlier and the rivers and streams run lower sooner in Colorado.  Snowfields that were there in 1991 in August haven't been around for a while near Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park.

So, I'm reading the NY Times and I run across this article From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype by William J. Broad.  I read the article.  I read it again. Somethings wrong with this article.

I was an unaffiliated voter until Spring of 2002.  I saw the fascist tendencies of BushCO, went down to the clerk and changed my affiliation to the Democratic Party.  Over the last few years, I have given thousands to Democratic candidates, spent countless hours walking for candidates, organized a phone bank to hassle right wing talk show hosts in 2006, and have tried to influence the rednecks that I tend hang out with to vote for Democrats.

One of the most frequently voiced concerns is that the Democrats want to take away our guns.  Over and over, I would point to Schwietzer, Tester, Udall, Richardson, Dean and other Democrats that not only don't want to take your guns, but are strong supporters of the 2nd amendment.  We got a lot of their votes in 2006, and Colorado has Democratic led delegation in DC,  a Democratic Governor, a Democratic State House and Senate and is trending strongly Deomcratic for 2008.  We're kicking ass and taking names out West, but one issue can wreck the coalition - Guns.  We need that 3-5% to keep everything moving in the right direction.  Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) is trying to fuck it up and based on the reception I got down at the gun shop yesterday, she's well on her way.

I study and teach Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Broomfield, CO.  We have over a hundred students and fair number compete on a regular basis.  One of the truths of a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Tournement is the idea of "tap or snap."  This is contrasted with the training ethic of "take care of your partner."  During Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training you spar at a pace that allows you perform the techniques as fast as you can completely control the technique.  If you correctly perform a finishing move, e.g. arm bar, keylock, ankle lock, groin splitter, twister..., you sink it in and take it to the point of injuring your training partner.  If the person your training with is ignorant that they are caught or are being stubborn.  You take care of them and back off on the technique.  Sometimes you'll show them how they were caught and why they should have tapped.  In competition, you perform the technique in a controlled manner, but if the person your fighting with doesn't tap, you snap it.  Imagine several carrots being broken at once.