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With Barack Obama drowning in Rev. Wright's waves, all Hillary really needs to do is keep her head down and show up on time to be endorsed today by NC Gov. Mike Easley. The last thing Clinton needs is to make a gaffe of her own. Now let's grant that the one we're about to discuss ranks rather low on the Gaffe-o-meter. If Sniper-gate was a 6.2, this might be a 2.1. But this particular misstep does have the demerit of undercutting a major Clinton campaign theme. Hillary's strategy nowadays consists of appealing to middle- and lower-income voters. Call it...

The Bakken shale formation in North Dakota holds up to 167 billion barrels of oil but only about 1 percent of it can be recovered using current technology, a new state study says. The study released Monday said current technology could lead to the recovery of about 2.1 billion barrels in North Dakota's the "middle Bakken" formation, where oil-producing rock is sandwiched between layers of shale about 10,000 feet under the ground. "The future potential is enormous - it means we will be able to exploit this for the rest of the century," said Lynn Helms, director of the state...

Energy: A North Dakota field holds at least 4 billion barrels of oil and possibly much more. But its Democratic senator demonstrates his party's schizophrenia on energy, preaching independence while doing nothing to achieve it.The price of crude hit a record $112 a barrel last week, just about the time the U.S. Geological Survey released its assessment of the oil and gas potential of a region known as the Bakken Formation. The USGS estimates that the shale formation straddling western North Dakota and Montana contains 3.65 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. The oil is trapped in a thin layer...

Map showing Williston Basin Province boundary (in red), Bakken-Lodgepole Total Petroleum System (TPS) (in blue), and major structural features in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation of the Williston Basin, according to a just-released assessment by the US Geological Survey (USGS). This latest assessment shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency’s 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil. The assessment also identified 1.85...

Crews looking for oil deposits last year in North Dakota. Now an area in the region is estimated to hold vast oil resources.An area of shale and other rock in North Dakota and Montana is estimated to hold the largest potential oil resources in the 48 contiguous states, according to an assessment released Thursday by the United States Geological Survey. The area, known as the Bakken Formation, might contain 3 billion to 4.3 billion barrels of oil that could be extracted using current technology, the survey said. The United States had an estimated 21 billion barrels of proven oil reserves...

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated mean undiscovered volumes of 3.65 billion barrels of oil, 1.85 trillion cubic feet of associated/dissolved natural gas, and 148 million barrels of natural gas liquids in the Bakken Formation of the Williston Basin Province, Montana and North Dakota.

North Dakota Shuts Ballpark Over Studies Linking Mineral in Gravel to Cancer Saturday, April 05, 2008 Killdeer Mayor Dan Dolechek KILLDEER, N.D. — The sounds of children playing baseball has been silenced at one ball field... Officials fear the ground itself is...unsafe. The ballpark...is covered with crushed gravel containing erionite... The rock, used for decades on everything from gravel roads to flower beds, contains fibers that can collect in the lungs of people who breathe it, health officials say. ....Environmental Protection Agency coordinator, said studies have shown that erionite causes cancer in lab rats... ...Killdeer [pop. 700] Mayor Dan Dolechek...

Barack Obama’s campaign distanced itself Saturday from a liberal talk show host who called John McCain a “warmonger” while introducing the Illinois senator at a North Dakota campaign stop the night before, after the McCain campaign called on Obama to denounce the comment. Local talk show host Ed Schultz used the term to describe the Arizona senator while warming up the crowd in Grand Forks, N.D., before Obama’s arrival at the state’s Democratic convention. .... On Friday, however, Obama thanked Schultz and called him the “voice of progressive radio.”

BISMARCK – Sen. Hillary Clinton’s decision to speak in Grand Forks Friday, within hours of rival Sen. Barack Obama’s address to North Dakota Democrats, may lie with the party’s nonbinding Feb. 5 caucus results, some Democrats say. Or it could just be that she’s pleasing supporters who have been asking her to come here “for weeks and weeks and weeks,” another said. Or maybe it has more to do with Obama and Clinton both realizing they will reach thousands of Democrats in three states in a little more than 24 hours in a swing through the Dakotas and its western...

Associated Press Thousands of pounds of venison donated to food pantries this year has become a contentious gift in three states. Officials in North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa warn that the meat could be contaminated by lead from bullets. Hunting groups are calling it an overreaction. "It's alarmist and not supported by any science," said Lawrence Keane, a vice president and lawyer for the Newton, Conn.-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms and ammunition industry. "High quality protein is now taken out of the mouths of needy, hungry people." North Dakota health officials on Wednesday told...

BISMARCK, N.D. - The drilling frenzy in North Dakota's oil patch has now reached beneath the state's biggest lake. Oil companies have begun tapping crude oil and gas underneath Lake Sakakawea, using advanced horizontal drill techniques. Lynn Helms, the director of the state Department of Mineral Resources, said it was a logical extension to the formation known as the Middle Bakken, which lies two miles under the surface in western North Dakota and holds millions of barrels of oil. Wells aiming for the Middle Bakken are drilled vertically to about 10,000 feet, and then "kick out" for as many feet...

The Gamma Phi Beta sorority at University of North Dakota has been put on temporary social probation while the university investigates complaints stemming from a November party during which sorority members and their guests donned mock Indian garb and red face and body paint. The temporary probation was issued by both the UND Dean of Student’s Office, which will investigate the complaints, and by the Gamma Phi Beta International office in Centennial, Colo. The probation means Gamma Phi won’t be allowed to host or participate in social activities with other sororities and fraternities or other student groups, either on...

FARGO — North Dakota State University officials are investigating after complaints about a skit in which a black-faced white student portrayed Barack Obama receiving a lap dance. Presidents of the NDSU Saddle and Sirloin Club and sorority Alpha Gamma Delta publicly apologized for the skit at an NDSU town hall meeting this week. The skit was performed March 18, for 500 people at the Mr. NDSU Pageant, which raises money for diabetes research. People who attended said a pageant contestant from Saddle and Sirloin dressed as a woman from the Internet video "I Got a Crush on Obama" and performed...

FARGO, N.D. (AP) - North Dakota State University is investigating complaints about a campus skit in which a white student in blackface portrayed Barack Obama receiving a lap dance. The same skit, part of a charity fundraiser held at a campus theater, also featured a depiction of cowboys having sex with each other, witnesses told The Forum newspaper, which first reported the backlash Friday. "We're trying to find out the right approaches for accountability, but at the same time try to heal wounds that have occurred and allow the campus to move ahead," Janna Stoskopf, NDSU's dean of students, told...

A skit with a black-faced white student portraying Barack Obama receiving a lap dance has sparked claims of racial insensitivity and an investigation at North Dakota State University. The NDSU Saddle and Sirloin Club and sorority Alpha Gamma Delta are at the center of the controversy for a lip-sync act performed for 500 people at the Mr. NDSU Pageant. People who attended the performance described what happened: A pageant contestant from Saddle and Sirloin dressed as the woman from the popular Internet video “I Got a Crush on Obama” and performed for another student who was wearing dark makeup and...

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant. In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota...

GRAND FORKS, N.D.—A lesbian priest says she wants to start a dialogue with church leaders after the Episcopal bishop of North Dakota refused her request for a license to minister in the state. The Rev. Gayle Baldwin, 62, an associate professor of religion at the University of North Dakota, was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1980. She came out as a lesbian a decade ago in Wyoming, where she has a license to preach and administer the sacraments. She came to UND in 2000.

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant. In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota...

Oil drillers have their eye on a vast oil field in and around North Dakota, which promises a steady flow of domestic crude for years. A new black gold rush is under way, this time in North Dakota. The potential payoff is huge -- up to 100 billion barrels of oil. That’s twice the size of Alaska’s reserves and potentially enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for two decades. Until now, the obstacles to production seemed overwhelming. The crude oil is locked away in rocks that are buried miles underground in the Bakken Play, a field that stretches into...

Using tiny brushes and chisels, workers picking at a big greenish-black rock in the basement of North Dakota's state museum are meticulously uncovering something amazing: a nearly complete dinosaur, skin and all. Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota, a duckbilled dinosaur unearthed in southwestern North Dakota in 2004, is covered by fossilized skin that is hard as iron. It's among just a few mummified dinosaurs in the world, say the researchers who are slowly freeing it from a 65-million-year-old rock tomb. "This is the closest many people will ever get to seeing what large...