Memo to Li'l Tommy Daschle, "You're Busted."

To: Li'l Tommy Daschle, Majority (for now) Leader of the Senate (and to other interested folks)
From: J. Armor, Esq., AA to Congressman Billybob
Re: You're Busted

The last time I sent you a thoughtful memo, it had to do with your status as Majority Leader of the Senate. Turns out you were more right than I was on that one. You thought Senator Bob ("the Jersey Cur-Dog") Torricelli would escape indictment for bribery and hang on until a Democrat oiled his way back into the Governor's job in New Jersey.

(A brief explanation for those reading this who are not political junkies: Li'l Tommy holds his job of Majority Leader by a one-vote margin. Therefore, if Torricelli was knocked out while the Republicans still held the Governorship in New Jersey, Torricelli would have been replaced by a Republican appointee, and Li'l Tommy would have been out on his ear. Did that make sense to all concerned?)

Okay, I concede you have an instinct for hard-ball reality. Never mind all this truth, justice and fairness cr*p. The question is, when push comes to shove, who's gonna win.

All righty, then, as Jim Carrey is wont to say. I'll take your terms, play on your field, and still smash your nose in. First, to finish with this Torricelli business, you know to a lock-solid certainty that the Senate "Ethics" Committee isn't going to do diddly about Bob the Un-Bribed. Of course, they're going to find that he accepted "gifts" from that Chang guy who pleaded guilty. But Bob the Un-Bribed is only getting a slap on the wrist. The fix is in, and you knew the fix was in from when the "investigation" first began.

But that's not what I came to talk about today. I came to talk about the "South Dakota exemption" in the Defense Appropriation Bill.

I know what you did. You know what you did. But here's a recap for a few thousand Americans who are reading over your shoulder, as you peruse this:

1. Being Majority Leader means never having to say please. When you want a special favor stuck in any piece of legislation before the Senate, you just phone up the appropriate Committee Chairman and give him his marching orders. Trent Lott didn't run things that way when he was Majority Leader. But we both know that Trent has the cajones of a gelded flea, now don't we?

2. What better place to stick a special interest legal provision than in the bill to pay for America's defense? I mean, that bill's gonna pass like sh*t through a goose, and who's gonna be looking for funny business in it?

3. Now we get to the particulars of what you did. The inserted tidbit would have shut down the tree-hugger-driven litigation which has prevented the clearing of brush and deadwood from the forests, which in turn would have helped fight forest fires, but only in South Dakota.

Hey, so far, Buckwheat, that sounds like a pretty good idea generally. How come you had to sneak around like a thief in the night to promote a good idea?

The best way to figure out why someone has done something – in this case, you, Tommy, sneaking a couple of paragraphs into the defense funding bill – is to connect the dots between that act and the consuming passion of the actor. In other words, how does that legal tidbit connect to the driving ambitions of your life?

Let's take a look at your driving ambitions. I know you'd like to be taller and not have to sit on phone books any more at press conferences. I know you'd like to be respected as a national leader, rather than be generally known as a sneaky little weasel who can't be trusted for an instant. I know you'd like to be President of the United States. But we both know that you don't have a snowball's chance of achieving any of those goals. So let's talk about your real ambitions.

You're from South Dakota. Bummer. That makes you a nobody by anybody's standards, except the poor folks in North Dakota. (Their state is like yours, but without the "terrific" weather.) The only thing that makes you more than a blip on the radar is your position of Majority Leader in the Senate. Lose that, and you will cease to be anybody – even with elevator shoes and corrective underwear.

Now, how does that defense bill gambit connect with your ambition? If the Democrats lose one seat, net, in the Senate this fall, you are finished as Majority Leader, I mean out, I mean yesterday's news. But your situation gets worse than that. Your buddy, Tim Johnson, the other Senator from South Dakota, is on the ballot this fall. He's on the downside of a tough race.

If you can't pull the chestnuts out of the fire for your twin, Tim, what will happen to you in the Senate? Not only will you get booted over to the Minority Leader's office, but all the Senators will realize that you're a wuss. Can you imagine the humiliation of having the likes of Hillary! Clinton of New York or Paul Wellstone of Minnesota (if he survives) laughing at you behind your back? Yes, I think you have imagined that, and it makes your skin crawl.

If you lose the Johnson race in your home state, you are through. You might as well have a permanent sign on your back that says, "Kick me. I don't have any power left."

Now we're getting closer to your down and dirty motives. Congressman John Thune was the person who first thought of getting the lawsuits out of the way of the firefighting needs in the Western states. But good old John was up front about it. He introduced the idea in front of God and everybody in the House. He got shot down, largely by Democrats who didn't want to anger their tree-hugging friends. On the other hand, all the normal humans in a state threatened by wildfires would consider Thune's idea to be a good one. And here's the kicker: Thune is the candidate who's leading your surrogate, Johnson, in your back yard.

Now the plan is clear. The steps are: first, steal Thune's idea and use it to benefit Johnson; second, hide it in a huge, unrelated bill so maybe no one will notice at first; third, restrict the benefit just to the people of South Dakota. Screw all those people who are losing their homes, farms, towns and lives to fires in other Western states. Those other states have Republican Representatives and Senators mostly. So, as for their states, let ‘em burn.

So now we're at the heart of the matter. You are a legislative sneak thief, and your position as Majority Leader gave you the passkey to get into the house. Plus, of course, you are a liar and a hypocrite, but then we knew that already, didn't we?

The irony here is that the legislation you tried to sneak through, just for South Dakota, is probably a good idea for ALL the states that are subject to deadly and destructive fires. The environmental laws and regulations, driven by the tree-huggers, has made the national forests in the West into tinder boxes waiting for anything – a match from an arsonist, a natural lightning strike – to set them ablaze. And part of that can be laid at the doorstep of Bill Clinton. You remember him; he used to be President -- it was in all the papers. You defended him and went right down the line with him on all issues (except welfare reform), including the insane policies about the national forests.

A little comment here for readers who aren't familiar with the special nature of the national forests. I live in the middle of the Nantahala National Forest, hundreds of millions of acres across four states. Every year, I can see the beginnings of about a dozen forest fires from my front porch. But those fires are easily "knocked down," as the firefighters say.

Our rainfall averages just under 90 inches per year. Our woods are wet and stay wet. Most importantly, dead brush and fallen trees rot back into the soil, here. Following a policy of "leave ‘em alone" is fine in our forests. Not so in the West. Out there, unless something, or someone, clears out the dead brush and fallen trees from those forests, the debris just gets drier and drier until the inevitable fire takes it all – and the nearby homes and towns with it.

So if you'd stood up on your hind legs and said publicly "This change of policy makes sense," most of the people of South Dakota and all the other fire-threatened states would have agreed with you. And the change would have passed easily. Only trouble is, that would have required you to stand up on your hind legs and to exercise real leadership. You seem to have real trouble with both of those.

Ironically, the back-street game you've just been caught playing offers a clear solution to another national problem that scares the bejeebers out of most Democrats. Here are the operative provisions of the stealth law for South Dakota that you tried to get through. Just so no one thinks I am making this up, here's a direct quote from the Washington Times, which broke this story last week. Although an aide to you denounced the article by Audrey Hudson as "grossly inaccurate," he did not offer a single example of any inaccuracy in the story.

"The provision says that ‘due to extraordinary circumstances,' timber activities [in South Dakota, only] will be exempt from the National Forest Management Act and National Environmental Policy Act, is not subject to notice, comment or appeal requirements under the Appeals Reform Act, and is not subject to judicial review by any U.S. court."

You, Tommy Boy, may be a liar and a sneak, but you are not a fool. You knew your special law would have worked, that it was constitutional. Thank you for proving what I said in my column two weeks ago.

The overall solution to the judicial stupidity in the "In God we Trust" cases and the related ones is not to keep fighting such cases all the way to the Supreme Court to get a common sense decision from them. It is to withdraw the jurisdiction of the federal courts even to hear such cases. If your children aren't mature enough to deal with matches, you keep the matches away from them. The same goes for federal judges. Some of them, especially the kind that you want on the bench (your buddy Bill slipped through a bunch of these), out of malice or stupidity tend to set fire to the Constitution from time to time.

Your solution would work fine to stop those constitutional conflagrations, as well as the real fires in many states, not just South Dakota.

So, in your dishonest way, you may have just done the nation a great service – by pointing the way to shutting down these fires. Of course your intention was more modest. You intended to help Tim Johnson beat John Thune. The way things are going, come late October Tim Johnson may have to tell his voters (who are your voters as well in two years), that he's never heard of Li'l Tommy Daschle, to have a chance of victory. I don't think it will work – he has too much of your "foul stench" about him, as Princess Leia said of Darth Vader. But there is a certain rough justice in the fact that your underhanded way of trying to help Johnson, in order to help yourself, will have the result of sinking Tim Johnson.

So be it. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. That'll teach him to hang around with the legislative equivalent of the kids who cut school to hide behind the barn and smoke cigarettes.

Well, I've enjoyed this little chat. Maybe you have too, if you're a masochist. I'll be back in touch the next time you screw up big time. Somehow I feel it won't be long.

Another "Tommy Tidbit" just for good measure...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Taken from "The Engineer Update", July, 2002 issue available at www.usace.army.mil under publications

S. Dakota land transfer called "monumental"

"Monumental" and "unprecedented" describe many Omaha District projects, but perhaps none quite as much as the Title VI land transfer in South Dakota. The Title VI land transfer, mandated by Water Resources Development Act 106-53 in 1999, will transfer about 91,178 acres of recreation areas and wildlife lands from federal ownership to South Dakota. Included are sites at Lake Oahe, Lake Sharpe (Big Bend), Lewis & Clark Lake (Gavins Point) and Lake Francis Case (Fort Randall).

Of the 123 recreation areas at the reservoirs, 63 transferred to the state last February. Nine were leased in perpetuity to the state this year. The remaining 51 are on reservation lands, or outside South Dakota. Reservation land will transfer to the Department of the Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs and held in trust for the tribes in perpetuity.

Congress required the transfer be made by last Jan. 1, so the environmental impact statement (EIS) and a record of decision (ROD) had to be completed by last Dec. 31. The Corps' tasks included conducting an EIS, preparing data and documents, and the actual transfer to the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish & Parks.

Environmental impact statement

The complexities of the land transfer were intensified by the schedule. "We had a preliminary draft of the EIS in three months, which is unheard-of for a project of this complexity," said Candace Gorton, Chief of Environmental, Economics & Cultural Resources. "Usually it takes nine months to a year to have a draft."

Endangered species were one of several issues addressed in the EIS. Transferring land to a state normally means the lands would lose the protection of the Endangered Species Act, Gorton said. "That was resolved through a memorandum of agreement between the Corps and the Fish and Wildlife Service, which identified what activities the state would undertake to avoid affecting endangered species." Another issue was possible impact to cultural resources or archeological sites. "The tribes felt those lands would lose the protection of federal cultural resources laws once they transferred to the state," Groton said. "But the legislation had a provision that the three main cultural resources laws would continue to apply to the land after it transferred, so the Corps was to maintain responsibilities for compliance for those laws."

Early in the process, several tribes opposed the legislation and sought an analysis of existing treaties to determine whether the land transfer violated any treaties with the federal government. The Corps commander signed the ROD last Dec. 21.

Land transfer

Martin Timmerwilke, a recreation planner who coordinated operations for the transfer, feels that South Dakota will do a good job. "According to the legislation, they have to manage the land in perpetuity for recreation and wildlife management. It doesn't change the purpose of the land." The Corps' involvement with the lands does not, however, end when the transfer is complete because of specifications in Congress's mandate. For one, some areas by the dams will not transfer. "The federal government needs to own them for dam safety, protection, and instrumentation," Timmerwilke said. "We'll retain the land, but lease the recreation land to the state in perpetuity.

"We had to identify the recreation boundaries, the recreation areas, all leases, the boundaries for areas transferring, and boundaries for areas being leased," Timmerwilke added. "The lands in the boundaries of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and lands in the boundaries of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, transfer to the Department of the Interior to be held in trust for those tribes." The tribes take over the lands and management. Federal funds were set up for the state and tribe to use for the land. The land transfer to Interior for the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe was completed last summer; for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe before Jan. 1.

Court actions

In July 1999, the state requested that the Corps lease many of the recreation areas that would eventually transfer to it in fee title. An environmental assessment (EA) determined that this action would have no significant environmental impacts.

The recreation areas leased were reduced from the 54 to 22 and, in January 2001, three leases were executed with the state. On the day the leases were signed, the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe filed suit in district court to stop the leases and the eventual fee transfer of recreation areas and lands, arguing that the EA was not adequate.

As the arguments unfolded, the tribe's complaint turned from the EA to the EIS. They claimed that the Title VI statute set up an impossible situation. On one hand, the statute directed the Corps to transfer the recreation areas to the state last Jan. 1 but, on the other, it asserted that three cultural resource federal laws would apply to the state-owned lands.

To the tribe, this provision made the statute unconstitutional. The three federal laws are the National Historic Preservation Act, Archaeological Resource Protection Act, and Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

"A hearing was held in December 2001 on several pending motions," said Gary Henningsen, district counsel and the legal counsel to the project team. "But the judge focused everyone on the fact that the case was not so much on the lease actions, but on the transfer of the recreation areas."

The land transfer was completed Feb. 8 by handing over to the state 13 quit claim deeds covering 12,289 acres of land. In the Title VI provision, Congress said those three federal laws would be implemented after the land transfer. "But the law didn't say how that was to occur or who was to do it," Henningsen said. "We decided it would be necessary to enter into a memorandum of agreement with the state to set out how we'll accomplish this requirement. That became a major issue because the tribe said, 'You can't do that. The Corps implements the laws, but the state owns the land. Since these laws apply to only federal lands, and these lands are no longer federal, it's an impossibility.' "Congress said these laws will apply after the land is transferred to the state," he added. "I'm not aware this has been done before."

Wildlife land

Wildlife land will not transfer until a trust fund is fully capitalized in 2007, according to John Cooper with the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish & Parks. "Once it's fully capitalized at its $108 million level, the interest will be available from that trust fund to manage and operate those lands. Then those lands will transfer to the state, much like the recreational lands were just transferred."

The process that led to Title VI was started "to put together a plan to return the lands, raise the priority for recreation and wildlife management, settle the jurisdictional issues [between the state and the Sioux tribes] and provide money to do that, and that's what Title VI is," Cooper said. "I give a lot of credit to the staff in Omaha. In general, the Corps wasn't in favor of Title VI, but after the commitment was made, after Title VI passed, the relationship we developed with Omaha was excellent."

And people wonder how he keeps getting elected.

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