I just sent a comment to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) regarding its proposal to list the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard (DSL) on the “endangered” list of the Endangered Species Act, and I feel great about it.   Absolutely great!  After I pressed the “enter” button on my computer and sent this comment to the FWS, I celebrated by eating a third of a roll of raw Christmas cookie dough instead of baking these cookies for an up-coming Christmas party.  My friends at the party will understand – this was done in the name of something big!

My comment to the FWS can be found here.  I encourage everyone in west Texas and eastern New Mexico to submit a similar comment (either e-mail or snail-mail) to the FWS by using this link.  Your jobs and economy are at stake. All comments are due by January 19, 2012.

In fact, you don’t even need to live in west Texas or eastern New Mexico to submit a comment to the FWS.  You can write as an American who will be affected by such a ruling.  And believe me, if this little lizard is listed as “endangered,” we will all be affected in a big way.

Here is how it works: some critter somewhere gets listed as endangered, and the US government springs into action.  To stop everyone else’s actions.

In this case, this lizard hangs out in a small bush called the shinnery oak tree and sleeps in the sands nearby.  This lizard seems to live only in an oil-rich part of the country (oil exploration companies, take note), specifically the Permian Basin area of west Texas and eastern New Mexico.  There have been previous efforts to list this lizard as endangered, and last year a formal proposal was made to do just that.  The proposal was originally to be acted on by this month, but Senators Cornyn and Inhofe wrote a letter to the Interior Department, which prompted new deadlines for this proposal, including the new comment deadline.

An endangered listing for the DSL would ruin the oil drilling industry in the Permian Basin, that area of west Texas and eastern New Mexico that produces about 20% of all the oil from the lower 48 states and 5% of total oil produced in the US.  The oil produced there also constitutes 68% of all oil produced in the state of Texas.

The FWS proposal itself, found here, contemplates not only denying all new oil-drilling permits, but curtailing current oil drilling, seismic testing and even operating oil pipelines in the area.  All these activities supposedly disrupt the DSL, possibly leading to its extinction.

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The Subcommittee on Water and Power held an oversight hearing last week in Washington to examine the FY 2012 budget request for the Bureau of Reclamation. Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock made the following opening statement at the hearing:

With today’s hearing, the Water and Power Sub-Committee will begin the process of restoring abundance as the principal objective of America’s Federal water and power policy. We meet today to receive testimony from the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Service on their plans for the coming year. We do so in conjunction with our responsibility under the Federal Budget Act to provide guidance to the House Budget Committee as it prepares the 2012 budget and with our responsibility under House Resolution 72 to identify regulations and practices of the government that are impeding job creation and burdening economic growth.

In my opinion, all of these hearings and all of the actions stemming from them must be focused on developing the vast water and hydro-electric resources in our nation. The failure of the last generation to keep pace with our water and power needs has caused chronic water shortages and skyrocketing electricity prices that are causing serious economic harm.

In addition, willful policies that have deliberately misallocated our resources must be reversed.

California’s Central Valley, where 200 billion gallons of water were deliberately diverted away from vital agriculture for the enjoyment and amusement of the 2-inch Delta Smelt is a case in point. These water diversions have destroyed a quarter million acres of the most fertile farmland in America, thrown tens of thousands of farm families into unemployment and impacted fruit, vegetable and nut prices in grocery stores across America.

In Northern Arizona, 1,000 megawatts of hydroelectricity – enough to power a million homes – has been lost due to environmental mandates for the humpback chub.

In the Klamath, the federal government is seeking to destroy four perfectly good hydroelectric dams at the cost of more than a half billion dollars at a time when we can’t guarantee enough electricity to keep refrigerators running this summer. The rationale is to save the salmon, but the same proposal would close the Iron Gate Fish Hatchery that produces 5 million salmon smolt each year.

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The Commerce Clause that regulates interstate commerce is at issue in the legal battle of Obamacare.  Can the federal government tell individuals that they must buy insurance?  Not as well known is how the same commerce clause is destroying farms and raising food prices by stopping the flow of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers to the Central Valley in California.      The feds at the urging of the state government has literally turned off the tap, destroying prime farmland in order to benefit the sex lives of the Delta Smelt.

Approximately 85-90% of the water from this primary source has been shut off to the Central Valley.   The smelt is a fish so insignificant that no one other than the Bezerkely-enviro-wackos and some local fisherman have heard about this tiny fish.

The smelt is fish that is native to California and, for the most part, is known to fisherman simply as “bait”.   The California enviros’ zeal to increase the population of smelt has led to a terrible federal, legal decision that shut down the water to thousands of farmers in the Central Valley; the nation’s largest and most productive farm land.    Thousands of farmers there are suffering with unemployment over 20%, scores of farms have been lost and tens of thousands of agricultural workers are now without jobs.   If California didn’t have enough economic problems, you can add shooting yourself in the foot.  The inmates are now officially running the asylum.   If we needed a poster for enviro-insanity it would be the promotion of the lowly smelt over the interests of: farmers, food production, food prices, jobs and California families.

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California has long been the land of fruits and nuts – and now runaway federal courts.

Of course, a long time ago, in a place far, far away, the legislatures of individual States of these United States, had a far greater say in the lives of their citizens.  Indeed, for the first 150 years of our existence, the federal government – the Congress and the Courts – had little to say or do in the lives of Americans – the Civil War excluded.

With the advent of the Democrats’ Big Government New Deal, of course, all of that changed.  The Roosevelt Democrats increased the federal budget tenfold – but not without the considerable help of a very activist Supreme Court.  Recall that Roosevelt threatened to pack the Supreme Court which then proceeded through resignations and reinterpretations to redefine our Constitution.  The result was a Big Government takeover the like of which the Supreme Court originally struck down during Roosevelt’s first term.

It also was the dawning of the age of the activist courts which threatens our Liberties to this very day.  Thomas Jefferson, of course, warned us of this possibility.  According to Jefferson:

The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary.  That body, like Gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, & unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulphing insidiuously the special governments [i.e, the states] into the jaws of that which feeds them.

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