DeChristopher Released From Jail

Tim DeChristopher, who has been jailed for the past 18 months at Herlong Federal Prison in California for disrupting federal oil and gas exploration auctions, will be released prison on October 24th. That's good news to a lot of people's ears. He'll spend the rest of his two year term (six months if my math is correct) at a Salt Lake City halfway house, employed at a Unitarian Church under a work-release program. Peaceful Uprising, the activisit group that Dechristopher founded, has this to say about the whole situation:

Obviously his friends, his family, his community is excited to have him back here in a halfway home, but we are going to respect whatever time he needs. We will honor that he is still serving time until April 2013.

For those of you who don't know who DeChristopher is and why he matters, well, I'll give you the short of it. In 2008 DeChristopher, a climate control activist, entered a federal oil and gas exploration lease auction. The BLM was selling 116 parcels of land in Utah red-rock country and DeChristopher bid on 14 of them (22,500 acres) for 1.8 million. He won, and at the time, had no money to pay, so the feds picked him up for misrepresenting himself. Months later, the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, deemed the auction illegal. In addition to the auction being deemed illegal, DeChristopher had raised the funds for the land and the BLM refused to accept the money. The Jury wasn't allowed to know either of those little fun facts during the trail and he was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison.Be happy about this one. It'll be a good thing when he's done with church work.MP3: Bill Evans Trio - My Man's Gone Now

DamNation

by Bryce CowellDams serve three primary purposes that are vital to us humans: water supply, agricultural irrigation, and electricity. However, not all dams are created equal. Some no longer serve their original purpose and their environmental impacts are well-documented. So do we really need all of these dams? And which ones are appropriate for Hayduke, Seldom, Doc and Abbzug to take out?The Patagonia-sponsored documentary film DamNation attempts to answer these questions from both sides of the debate. Slated to be released in early 2013, this film is the cornerstone of a campaign to restore US waterways to their former untamed glory while taking into consideration the socioeconomic consequences.Each dam in this country needs to be objectively analyzed on a case-by-case basis to determine if removal is beneficial to the majority. And of course, there are potent political and financial goliaths that are going to try to prevent that from happening, even if the costs outweigh the benefits.One such controversial dam, the O'Shaughnessy Dam (pictured above) is located within Yosemite National Park. This fall, San Franciscans will vote on whether to keep the damn thing in place or restore Hetch Hetchy, which John Muir referred to as "one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples," and devise a modern water plan.**So the question is, which dams do you think should be removed or improved?