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At Amazon, Today's Deals: Save on our top deals every day.

And especially, Save 50% on the Sun Joe SPX3001 Pressure Washer.

Also, Brita Large 10 Cup Water Filter Pitcher with 1 Standard Filter, BPA Free – Grand, Multiple Colors - 35939.

More, Wise Food 5-Day Survival Backpack.

And, Mountain House Essential Bucket.

Still more, BLACK AND DECKER WP900 6-Inch Random Orbit Waxer/Polisher.

Here, Horny Goat Weed Herbal Complex Extract for Men & Women | Ginseng, 100% Maca Root Tongkat Ali Powder | 60 1000mg Optimum Dosage Capsules.

BONUS: Norman Vincent Peele, The Power of Positive Thinking.

Women Smoking for National Weed Appreciation Day

At Drunken Stepfather, "GIRLS SMOKING WEED FOR HEMPER CUZ IT’S 420 WEEKEND OF THE DAY."

Rebuilding Notre Dame (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Notre Dame may take decades to fix. The first concerns are water and soot":

Two holes gape where Notre Dame’s vaulted stone ceiling has collapsed. The cathedral’s 19th century timber spire is gone, as is most of its roof. Portions of the interior walls were blackened by the intense heat of Paris’ most consequential fire in centuries.

As the world absorbs the magnitude of devastation wrought by Notre Dame’s inferno, architects and engineers anticipate a decades-long restoration process replete with unprecedented challenges. Designers will need to navigate complicated structural issues and delicate preservation debates to satisfy an array of stakeholders.

They will all be asking the same question: How do you revive an 850-year-old icon?

"The whole world is watching, and everybody has something to say about it,” said Marc Walton, director of Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts at Northwestern University. “It has to be built for the next 1,000 years. It’s going to be a different structure as a result, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

The first order of business is to dry the cathedral out, said John Fidler, who served as conservation director of English Heritage, a government agency that maintains England’s national monuments.

“There are millions of gallons of water poured into the structure that will seep down to the crypt, the basement,” Fidler said. Pumping out that water could take months, and years may pass before the entire building is completely dry.

“It’s easy to make the surface dry because there are large pores on the surface, but deeper in the stone, the pores grow narrower and it’s more difficult to suck that water out,” he said. “When the walls remain damp, you get mildew and mold and fungus and salt crystallization, which can rupture the pores in stone and cause it to deteriorate on the surface.”

Soot is also a particular concern because it’s so oily, said Rosa Lowinger, a conservator of buildings and sculpture based in Los Angeles.

“People’s first instinct is they want to wash it, but that’s the last thing you should do,” she said. The building’s limestone is porous, so soap and water would drive the soot into its pores. Instead, soot must be removed while dry. “The earliest decisions here — the protocols taken — will define how successful a project like this is.”

While conservators tackle those problems, other teams will get started on the greatest engineering challenge of the entire project: the assessment of the cathedral’s structural condition.

Most analysis methods are tailored toward modern buildings, not stone structures, so engineers may struggle to determine the stability of the damaged cathedral, said Matthew DeJong, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley who has worked on historic buildings in Europe.

But Notre Dame is surely damaged, said Frank Escher, an architect and preservationist with Escher GuneWardena Architecture in Los Angeles.

“A fire of this nature can weaken a stone structure. It’s too early to say whether it’s safe or not,” said Escher, who is currently restoring the century-old Church of the Epiphany, the oldest Episcopal church in L.A...

More.

Delilah Belle Hamlin Out Walking

At Taxi Driver:

Delilah Belle Hamlin Braless Pokies While Out Walking - https://t.co/E3X058V2W7 - pic.twitter.com/YCZFzyO4Kf

— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) April 17, 2019

Plus, "Delilah Belle Hamlin Goes Topless in Purple Vinyl Gloves for Racy Instagram Post."

Alissa Quart, Squeezed

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Alissa Quart, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America.

French Cuisine in the California Desert

I've been out to Yucca Valley over the past few weekends, as my mom took a turn for the worst and died last Thursday from lung cancer at the age of 82. It wasn't a surprise, but of course it's devastating to lose a parent. We're having an intimate service on April 26th and a celebration of my mom's life, with about a hundred people invited, sometime in June.

Meanwhile, my older sister mentioned this restaurant a couple of times when I've been out there visiting, and here's an interesting write-up at the New York Times, "An Oasis for Brunch Thrives in the California Desert":

YUCCA VALLEY, Calif. — The first time I drove east from Los Angeles to Flamingo Heights, I came to a stop behind a truck with a fairly blunt sticker on its sliding rear window: “Go Back to L.A.”

It was a reminder that this rural town, just north of Joshua Tree National Park, has an uneasy relationship with outsiders, who drop in by the hundreds to camp, or rent luxuriously renovated homes posted on Airbnb, take guided sound baths and hike with Nubian goats. After rainfall, when the pale desert dandelions and purple pincushions stagger into bloom, tourists come to geotag the flowers and take selfies in the shifting, mystifyingly beautiful desert light. And then? They’re gone.

Nikki Hill, a chef, and Claire Wadsworth, a musician, were married and living in Los Angeles in 2015 when they visited for the weekend and spotted a double rainbow. But instead of going back to the city, they bought an old diner on Highway 247 for about $30,000, turning it into an afternoon-only restaurant that adds a new dimension to the region’s culinary identity.

It’s a balancing act, but La Copine manages to serve the kind of seasonal, reassuringly confident food that appeals to both brunching families and retreat-seekers on a cleanse, in an inclusive dining room run with joy and exuberance. Though from a distance, the restaurant still looks like a diner on a dusty stretch of road — a little pit stop with a big lawless parking lot — the two women have turned it into a hub for the community and its flux of visitors.

There is no doubt when spring has come to the high desert. La Copine’s tables are piled with crisp haricots verts dressed in tahini, and creamy new potatoes tasting of rosemary and duck fat, dressed with aioli so that the softest parts of the potato become smushed and almost indistinguishable from the sauce.

All of the salads at La Copine, and there are usually two or three on the menu, are hunks — burly and satisfying, full of delicious secrets. You might find, under crisp, generously dressed leaves, a smattering of fried capers or a treasure of syrupy sherry-soaked dates.

The fried chicken thighs, dredged with potato flour, have a delicately crisp lace around the skin, which is sweet with hot honey. And the stack of layered eggplant, baked with a mellow tomato sauce until it’s meltingly soft and tender, doesn’t announce that it’s vegan. It is.

Though at first, Ms. Hill shopped at supermarkets and drove to the lower desert to find produce, she now gets her fruits and vegetables from farms in California, including ones in nearby Pipes Canyon, Bakersfield and Chino.

The menu is concise; even with the wine list and desserts, it fits on a single page. Seating is first-come, first-served, and regulars know to look for the scribbled list attached to a clipboard by the bar outside, so they can put their names down as they arrive.

Most dishes are composed with speed and efficiency, rather than prettiness in mind — no wasted movements in the kitchen, no superfluous components on the plate. Ms. Hill, who cooked at Scopa and Huckleberry in Los Angeles, takes a sincere, straightforward approach to cooking, building dishes that tend to underpromise and overdeliver.

Opening a restaurant in Los Angeles, or any major city, would have required bigger loans and a much larger investment, but after putting another $30,000 or so into furniture and repairs — fixing the leaky roof and replacing the walk-in compressor, repairing the appliances on the line and sanding the walls — the couple was ready for business...

Still more.

Far-Left 'Niche' Issues Define the Democrat 2020 Presidential Field

They're really not "niche" issues, but rather core issues designed to rig the system so Democrats win elections. Trump hatred has turned Democrats into the party of desperation and deceit. The front-page of the Los Angeles Times defined this as turn toward previously unmentioned specialty items for the party. Not anymore, sheesh.

From Mark Barabak, "It’s the electoral college, stupid. And the Supreme Court. And the filibuster ...":

How do you stand out in a crowd of nearly 20 Democratic presidential hopefuls? Talk about something different.https://t.co/ynCAtYsybh

— Mark Z. Barabak (@markzbarabak) April 15, 2019

In 1992, Bill Clinton won the White House focused on a message so elegantly simple the slogan became campaign legend: It’s the economy, stupid.

In this presidential race, it’s a lot of things.

Abolishing the electoral college. Ending the Senate filibuster. Refashioning the Supreme Court. Paying reparations for slavery.

A whole raft of issues that were little noted, if not wholly overlooked, in previous presidential campaigns have assumed a significant role in this early phase of the Democratic nominating contest, reflecting the party’s leftward shift, the power of social media and, perhaps above all, a field of contenders the size of a small platoon.

“The pressure on all the candidates to figure out how to differentiate themselves from the other candidates is intense,” said Anna Greenberg, a pollster working for former Colorado governor and presidential hopeful John Hickenlooper, one of more than 20 Democrats running or deciding whether to do so.

Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., launched his upstart campaign with a push to eliminate the electoral college and was one of the first to propose expanding the Supreme Court from nine to 15 justices. He suggests five members appointed by a Democratic president, five by a Republican president and the remainder coming from the appellate bench, subject to unanimous consent from the 10 other justices.

Other Democratic hopefuls, including Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, have said they are open to both ideas.

“Every vote matters, and the way we can make that happen is … get rid of the electoral college,” Warren said, amplifying the issue by pitching it during a recent CNN town hall.

Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker have discussed the issue of reparations, which has largely been consigned to academic and theoretical debate, in the context of their broader proposals to help the poor. Several rival candidates, including Buttigieg, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, have said they too support ways of compensating victims of systemic racism.

“It doesn’t have to be a direct pay for each person, but what we can do is invest in those communities, acknowledge what’s happened,” Klobuchar said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

To a great extent, the Democratic candidates are moving in the direction of left-leaning voters and activists, who have the power on social media to organize around issues and elevate concerns, rather than what has typically been the other way around.

Healthcare, education and the economy are still matters of great interest and routinely come up wherever White House contestants appear. But underlying those issues is a broader frustration — particularly among those on the left — with the political system and its institutions, which, in their view, have thwarted the political will of most Americans.

The Democratic nominee has won the popular vote in all but one of the last seven presidential elections, yet twice in the last two decades it was a Republican — George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 — who claimed the White House by receiving the most electoral college votes.

In the Senate, Republicans refused to even consider President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, waiting out the 2016 election in hopes of filling a vacant seat, and have wielded the filibuster in such a way it now requires a super-majority to pass any significant legislation.

The Supreme Court, meantime, has moved decidedly rightward under President Trump, who benefited from the Senate’s delaying tactics and filled two vacancies...

Emma Cline, The Girls

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Emma Cline, The Girls: A Novel.

'Beast of Burden'

From Tuesday morning's drive-time, at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles, the Rolling Stones, "Beast of Burden."

Dancing With Myself
Billy Idol
6:49am

Beast Of Burden
Rolling Stones
6:45am

By the way
Red Hot Chili Peppers
6:41am

Hungry Like The Wolf
Duran Duran
6:38am

Wanted Dead Or Alive
Bon Jovi
6:33am

What I Got
Sublime
6:23am

You Make Lovin' Fun
Fleetwood Mac
6:19am

It's The End of the World As We Know It
R.E.M.
6:15am

Feel Good Inc.
Gorillaz
6:12am

Crazy Train
Ozzy Osbourne
6:07am

Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Tears For Fears
6:03am

Better Man
Pearl Jam
5:53am

Anything Anything
Dramarama
5:50am

Somebody To Love
Queen
5:46am

Sara Jean Underwood Smoking Weed

That's a big blunt --- and that's not the only big thing there, dang!

See, "Sara Jean Underwood Topless and Smoking Weed."

Bernie Sanders Raised $18 Million in First 6 Weeks of His Campaign

At the Washington Examiner, at Memeorandum, "Let's face it: Bernie Sanders could be the next president."

I highly doubt it, but the dude is raising phenomenal amounts of cash.

At Politico, "Sanders raises $18 million in first quarter of presidential campaign":

The online fundraising powerhouse took in about 900,000 contributions from 525,000 individual donors, Sanders' campaign said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has raised more than $18 million since launching his second bid for the White House, his campaign announced Tuesday.

The fundraising haul, which surpasses the other two 2020 presidential candidates who have announced their cash totals so far, demonstrates how Sanders' enormous online following will power his campaign, while some of his rivals jockey for support from large donors who can give several thousand dollars at a time.

Aides said the Vermont senator’s average donation in February and March was $20, and 88 percent of the money raised came from people who gave $200 or less. Sanders’ team said he received almost 900,000 individual contributions after setting a goal of 1 million in the first quarter of the year.

The campaign has $28 million cash on hand after beginning with $14 million in the bank from Sanders' other federal campaign accounts, it said — another big advantage over Sanders' rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sanders has put about 100 people on his campaign staff so far, fueled by the high fundraising totals.

On Monday, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said she raised $12 million in her first quarter. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., said he brought in more than $7 million. Buttigieg tweeted Monday that he raised 64 percent of his haul from people who gave less than $200, while Harris did not specify the share of her total that came from small-dollar donors, as Democrats hone in on grassroots fundraising as a key metric of support in the campaign.

No other presidential candidates have disclosed how much money they’ve amassed, including former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, who proved to be a small-dollar fundraising sensation in his unsuccessful 2018 bid for Senate in Texas. On the first day of his presidential campaign, O'Rourke said he raised $6.1 million — slightly more than the $5.9 million reaped by Sanders in his first 24 hours.

Campaigns must file reports with the Federal Election Commission by April 15. In 2016, Sanders raised about $15 million in the first fundraising quarter of his campaign, while eventual Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton raised $46 million in primary funds in her first quarter in the race.

Sanders' senior staffers argued that his skill for raising money through small-dollar donations — while not holding fundraising events — make him the best Democratic candidate to run against President Donald Trump.

Trump has "put the ultra-rich in charge of the government," said Faiz Shakir, Sanders' campaign manager. "How are you going to take that on? Are you going to say that we're 55 percent different than him? Are you going to say you're 100 percent different than him?"

Sanders' aides also said the money he raised will enable him to compete in all states in the primary.

"While we had to in 2016 make choices about where we could compete, I'm certain that in this race some of our opponents will also have to make similar difficult choices," said Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to Sanders. "This campaign will have the resources and the volunteer grassroots strength to compete in every single state in the primary."

The Sanders team revealed other statistics about their donors: They said a majority of his contributors are younger than 39 years old, and that 99.6 percent of the money collected in the first quarter was raised online...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a 'Moron' (VIDEO)

It's Tucker Carlson, who's a regular laugh riot, heh.

AOC does have a point about the economy and income inequality, he points out. The problem is the 29-year-old wants us to give her all the power.



BONUS: At AoSHQ, "Tucker Carlson: Soyboy Beta Bottom Chris Hayes Is What Every "Man" Would Be if Feminists Could Impose Their Weird Asexual Political Agenda on the World."

Questions of Violence Linger After Murder of Rapper Nipsey Hustle

They nabbed a suspect, but questions of violence and the star's dream linger.

At the Los Angeles Times:

Authorities arrest man matching description of suspect in Nipsey Hussle killing https://t.co/a1QKBKShAT

— Hailey Branson-Potts (@haileybranson) April 2, 2019

The mourning transcended family and friends and became a citywide conversation. https://t.co/UHyFRsn2ET

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 2, 2019

The killing was like many others in this city — a young man gunned down on a street in South Los Angeles.

The questions were familiar too. Was it gang related? A personal dispute?

But because the victim was renowned rapper Nipsey Hussle, the mourning transcended family and friends and became a citywide conversation.

Hussle's coming of age as a member of the Rollin' 60s Crips who made it big in the music industry was on Angelenos' minds. The conversation included broader narratives about the persistent violence in South L.A. and Hussle's efforts to help young people harness their creativity through avenues such as the tech industry that have not traditionally been rooted in black and brown neighborhoods.

Hussle's choice to put his money in the community he came from as the owner of many small businesses, including the clothing store where he was fatally shot Sunday, is part of what many see as his legacy. He viewed entrepreneurship as a way to find success beyond the long-shot occupations of sports and music.

But the choice to stay close to home also put him in the line of fire as a wealthy and influential person in a place where disputes among acquaintances and rivals are sometimes settled violently.

"Being quick to the gun — the resolving of problems with a gun is going to always end up bad," said Ben "Taco" Owens, who works to prevent gang violence in South L.A.

The dichotomy was on display late Monday when several people were injured at a vigil for Hussle that turned violent when the crowd stampeded after reports of gunfire. Police said no shots were fired, but paramedics transported more than a dozen people, including two in critical condition, to the hospital. Most of the injuries were related to people being trampled.

On Monday, as radio DJs devoted their programs to Hussle and online tributes continued to pour in, LAPD sources said they had identified the suspect as Eric Holder, 29, of Los Angeles, and said they are searching for him.

Holder was last seen in a white, four-door 2016 Chevy Cruze, with the California license plate number 7RJD742. The vehicle was driven by an unidentified woman, according to the LAPD.

Authorities had previously said the shooter was someone in Hussle's orbit and they believed the motive was likely personal, not a gang feud.

According to initial reports, a young man opened fire on Hussle at close range before scrambling to a getaway car. The L.A. County coroner said Monday that Hussle, 33, whose legal name was Ermias Joseph Asghedom, died of gunshot wounds to the head and torso. He was pronounced dead at a hospital at 3:55 p.m. Two others were wounded in the shooting.

The investigation encompasses witness interviews, social media posts and security camera footage of the strip mall that houses The Marathon Clothing, the rapper's store at the corner of Slauson Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard, a source said.

The LAPD scheduled a press conference for Tuesday morning to provide updates.

"The saddest part of the story is that he represented a new path that gang members can create for themselves as entrepreneurs," said Alex Alonso, a gang expert and adjunct professor at Cal State Long Beach.

RELATED: Nipsey Hussle's dreams were bigger than hip-hop »

LAPD Chief Michel Moore put Hussle's killing in the context of a recent uptick in violence, noting that there have been 26 shootings and 10 homicides in the city since the previous Sunday.

"That's 36 families left picking up the pieces," Moore tweeted. "We will work aggressively with our community to quell this senseless loss of life."

Hussle was set to meet with Moore and Police Commission President Steve Soboroff on Monday to talk about solutions to gang violence.

"Throughout the years, as he fostered success in his music career, he chose ... to reinvest and try to address the various underpinnings that fostered this environment. It's just terrible," Moore said Monday.

As his music career took shape over the last decade and a half, Hussle carefully considered how he would use his platform to influence the violent culture he came from.

He sang about gang life because that was what he knew, he said in a 2009 interview on Alonso's website, streetgangs.com. But he predicted that as his life changed, so would his themes...

More.

Romee Strijd on the Beach

At Drunken Stepfather, "ROMEE STRIJD NAKED OF THE DAY."

And at Taxi Driver, "Romee Strijd Naked on the Beach Photo Shoot."

Second Woman Comes Forward with Allegations of Improper Touching by 'Gropin' Joe' Biden

Man, feminists are working feverishly to torpedo "Gropin' Joe's" campaign --- and the creepy uncle hasn't even made it official yet, lol.

Previously, "'Gropin' Joe' Biden Gets Dragged for His Decades of Perverted Sexual Harassment."

At the Hartford Courant, "Connecticut woman says then-Vice President Joe Biden touched her inappropriately at a Greenwich fundraiser in 2009":

A Connecticut woman says Joe Biden touched her inappropriately and rubbed noses with her during a 2009 political fundraiser in Greenwich when he was vice president, drawing further scrutiny to the Democrat and his history of unwanted contact with women as he ponders a presidential run

"It wasn't sexual, but he did grab me by the head," Amy Lappos told The Courant Monday. "He put his hand around my neck and pulled me in to rub noses with me. When he was pulling me in, I thought he was going to kiss me on the mouth."

Lappos posted about the alleged incident on the Facebook page of Connecticut Women in Politics Sunday in response to a similar account by former Nevada legislator Lucy Flores, which comes as Biden is considering a 2020 run for president. Flores accused Biden of kissing her on the back of her head in 2014, when she was a candidate for lieutenant governor.

Lappos, 43, who is now a freelance worker with nonprofit agencies, said she felt extremely uncomfortable when Biden approached her at the 2009 fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th, where she was volunteering. At the time, Lappos was a congressional aide to Himes, who she said was not in the room when the incident took place.

"I never filed a complaint, to be honest, because he was the vice president. I was a nobody," Lappos said. "There's absolutely a line of decency. There's a line of respect. Crossing that line is not grandfatherly. It's not cultural. It's not affection. It's sexism or misogyny."

A spokeswoman for Biden declined to respond to the allegations by Lappos and instead offered a statement that Biden issued Sunday about the Flores controversy...

More.

And at the front-page of the New York Times today, "Joe Biden Scrambles to Stem Crisis After Lucy Flores's Allegation."

And at Memeorandum, "Everyone Already Knows How They Feel About Joe Biden Touching Women."

DC McAllister Update

I don't even know this woman, and don't care about her one way or the other.

Mostly, it's just a thing on Twitter. She got fired. Okay. Life goes on.

Previously, "DC McAllister Fired."

And Bethany Mandel has been tweeting about this all day. Read the full thread:

Denise McAllister's public meltdown was indefensible and homophobic https://t.co/BtfvcsMrqx

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) April 1, 2019

A few thoughts on Denise and what happened this weekend: First of all, I am conservative and I was one of the many people who took issue with her original tweet (which did not applaud masculinity, but instead an incredibly subservience nobody should expect of a woman).

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) April 1, 2019

Her behavior in public and on the listserv for Federalist writers made it clear she was not mentally stable. She expressed some really not okay viewpoints that I was increasingly uncomfortable associating myself with. Her attack on my husband was a final straw.

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) April 1, 2019

Someone that unbalanced, that hateful, should not have a platform. To be clear, this is something everyone familiar with her work and her tweets have known for A LONG TIME. She attempted to doxx @beyondreasdoubt & her attacks on @BridgetPhetasy were the cruelest I have ever seen.

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) April 1, 2019

Just want to clarify myself a tiny bit: She should not have a platform among mainstream conservative websites. She can and should keep tweeting if that's what she wants. But nobody is entitled to publish whatever they want wherever they want. That's up to those sites and editors.

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) April 1, 2019

J.Lo Looks Phenomenal

Not sure about those tits (fake?), but those abs are da bomb, dang!

On Instagram, "I’m a hustler baby."

And at London's Daily Mail, "Jennifer Lopez, 49, looks phenomenal in a neon pink bikini on the set of her stripper film Hustlers... as her fiance Alex Rodriquez goes crazy for the snap."

Jennifer Lopez looks phenomenal in a neon pink bikini on the set of her stripper film Hustlers https://t.co/pAldQB41mb

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) March 31, 2019

Kendall Jenner See-Through

I haven't posted Ms. Kendall lately.

At Taxi Driver:

Kendall Jenner Braless in See-Through White T-Shirt - https://t.co/gkURcgyLPM - pic.twitter.com/txdUJbl1BC

— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) April 1, 2019

Alexis Ren Erotica

At Drunken Stepfather, "ALEXIS REN EROTICA OF THE DAY."

And on Twitter:

Sometimes I think I crave cities the way I crave the ocean and mountains. Each one has a different vibration, beating to its own drum. pic.twitter.com/uCdNvZBvvn

— Alexis Ren (@AlexisRenG) April 1, 2019

Battle Looms Over Gray Wolf Protection

This is interesting.

I don't support hunting wildlife simply for bragging rights and Instagram/ Twitter selfies. At one point there were millions of gray wolves covering every corner of the United States. Now, there's about 6,000. They're on the federal Endangered Species List. I don't have an opinion on whether federal protection is better or not, but it's worth considering. Conservatism is about conservation, and smart use of our natural resources is conservative.

In any case, at the Los Angles Times, "Plan to remove gray wolves from Endangered Species Act sparks battle":

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and environmentalists are at war over the agency’s latest plan to strip gray wolves of their federal protections and turn management of the often-reviled predators over to states and tribes. https://t.co/xgg8fQastb

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) March 28, 2019

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and environmentalists are at war over the agency’s latest plan to strip gray wolves of their federal protections and turn management of the often-reviled predators over to states and tribes.

“If the agency’s proposal gets finalized, we will see them in court,” Michael Robinson, a spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity said on Wednesday. “Delisting is simply out of the question.”

Surprisingly, however, in the latest chapter of a long-running battle to keep an estimated 6,000 gray wolves safe from trophy hunters and trappers, the center and the Humane Society of the United States are suggesting a compromise.

“We are proposing an alternate path forward — downlisting the gray wolf from federally endangered to threatened status,” said Brett Hartl, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. That action, he said, “would maintain federal protections the animal needs to survive in certain areas, while allowing states to share management oversight.”

His organization doesn’t oppose state management of wolves, but it does oppose hunting wolves for sport, he said. “Free-for-all hunting of wolves is not management, it’s slaughter.”

Similarly, Nick Arrivo, an attorney with the Humane Society of the United States, said, “We don’t oppose the idea of state management. The problem is that certain states like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan have shown that they are not inclined to maintain healthy populations of gray wolves.”

Federal wildlife authorities removed protections from gray wolves in the Great Lakes region in 2011, allowing thousands of gray wolves in those three states to be hunted or trapped. The protections were restored by federal court decisions in 2014.

The prospect of removing wolf protections aroused rage yet again earlier this month when the Fish and Wildlife Service touted the species' recovery as "one of the greatest comebacks for an animal in U.S. conservation history,” a characterization that some conservation groups called misguided and premature.

David Bernhardt, acting secretary of the Department of Interior, said the plan to delist the species “puts us one step closer to transitioning the extraordinary effort that we have invested in gray wolf recovery to other species who actually need the protections of the Endangered Species Act, leaving the states to carry on the legacy of wolf conservation.”

However, the Humane Society, in a statement, warned that the plan catered “to a narrow group of special interests: the trophy hunters and trappers who want to kill wolves for bragging rights, social media opportunities and to increase deer and elk populations.”

It pointed out, for instance, that in November, “Americans were heartbroken” by the killing of the famous Yellowstone black wolf, Spitfire, by a trophy hunter in Montana.

It also argued that gray wolves are worth millions of dollars to the economies of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, studies show, because of the visitors they attract to national parks in the northern Rocky Mountains...

Keep reading.