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The good news is that Joe Donnelly was one of the eight D senators voting YEA. It appears he may actually be the middle-of-the-roader that he promised to be.

No way to know for sure, but my guess is that Dick Lugar would have voted NAY. He seemed very fond of disarmament and treaties with little chance of enforcement.

We may have actually gained a YEA vote to keep the 2A by replacing him with a moderate Democrat!

There are usually checks and balances in any situation.....alternatives that can come into play if a system is abused.

The alternative to the ultimate power of the tycoons in the earlier years of industrialization, when the twelve hour day and six day week were the norm and people in company towns were almost at slave level, was the union. The companies often had the aid of government in enforcing their domination, and some politicians were generously rewarded.

A century later, the unions were exercising nearly unlimited power over the companies in negotiations, often with government help through politicians who found votes by aiding the more populous workers.

The alternative to paying the price for domestic union-made goods was to buy stuff made where labor was cheaper. The unions were weakened, companies were forced to become more competitive, and balance is being regained.

In the last century, the trend toward requiring formal education and licensing for an increasing number of professions and positions grew until it may have surpassed the balance between the benefit of the movement, and it's cost. It does give the educational establishment almost totalitarian power over the economic future of the public, when nearly all the really good paying careers require four years or more of formal education. The day of starting with the local widget manufacturer by sweeping the floor, and proceeding through job performance, work habits, and attention to opportunities, to a job running a machine making the widgets, then one as department supervisor or a junior engineering, and on up the line as far as your knowledge and intellect could propel you, with only self education or some night courses, seems to be long gone.

The companies have not resisted that trend, and have probably been instrumental in helping it along. Let the hopeful applicants spend their own dime on their own time learning the skills and disciplines of the trade, rather than hire them and train them at company expense.

The alternative to the power of the educational establishment has not yet become evident, but there appears to be a growing resentment to that power. The trend to put people into some positions without the blessings of the monsigniors of the established educational heirarchy may be an indicator of that alternative.

With the advent of the computer and the internet. the potential for effective home-schooling has increased. That has already placed the educational establishment under some competitive pressure, which has probably incentivised at least some part of the rapid improvement described by metamorahunter, I would guess.

Such trends tend to proceed in cycles that vary like waveforms, from overcorrection back to undercorrection, until a happy medium is settled on or the conditions change in a way that makes the whole discussion moot. Time will tell, but I see the current trend as a welcome check on the overwhelming educational establishment power that has prevailed for several decades.

I have had very serious myopia (nearsightedness) since I was a small child, probably since birth. Dad had the same, and we could exchange glasses after I started wearing them when I was eight years old.

The law now "requires" that I need a prescription from a licensed, formally educated optician to purchase eyewear, and that the prescription is only good for two years.

Now I would agree that an initial exam from a professional in the field is probably a VERY good idea, and that an occasional one through the years might also be, particularly if there's been any change in vision.

But a two-year prescription life? ....Sounds like a "Full employment for Opticians Act" provision.

I now wear $7 glasses that come directly from China through an importer in CA, rather than the $140 ones that looked and performed exactly the same from my local licensed dispenser, who I'm reasonably sure bought them from the same or a very similar source.

Alternatives will be found to combat excesses in any system. If they have to found and used while circumventing governmental efforts to make the public conform to the establishment procedures, they will be.

My valuables aren't all that valuable. I have considered a safe, but the good ones would be like building a thousand dollar corral to keep a fifty dollar horse.

I have been much more tempted to put another upright freezer in the garage, unplugged, minus racks, and outfitted with some homemade gun racks and a few shelves. Most freezers have locking doors for safety and a spare key or two in remote locations would be a good idea.

The freezer walls and lock would not give the same level of safety to the contents that a real safe would provide, but would give more safety, room, and fire resistance than the cheap safes. It would also have the advantage of camouflage. If a burglar didn't know that was where you kept your valuables, he probably wouldn't waste his time breaking in to steal your watermelon and beer. Especially if you could resist the temptation to decorate it man-cave style with gun decals and camo paint.

And I suspect that with a little more work, one could be made with easily removable interior furnishings so that it could be plugged in and set at 34 degrees to serves as a hanging locker to age a carcass or two, with the guns and stuff surviving under the bed or in a closet for time needed.

If I ever find the walls in my garage again, I may try to empty that much space along one of them 8^).

Agree on the cover being part of good habitat. A friend used to host rabbit bowhunts on his place and there were reliably enough rabbits to provied at least some entertainment, and occasionally some meat.

The place had a nice mix of open areas and cover, with a good many briar patches and brushy draws, surrounding the food plots and open fields left to provide cover growth. He supplemented that natural cover with lengths of PVC pipe left in selected locations around the edges of openings where the emergency cover might do the most good.

But he still noticed an increase in rabbit population when they permitted a local trapper to ply his trade on the property, in addition to the owners policy of letting no predators escape when seen, when it was legal to stop them. The trapper reduced the population of coyotes and other destructive predators of rabbit nests and those of ground-nesting birds.

Another effect of the coyote population that has an indirect effect on the rabbit population is that the coyotes devastate the groundhog population, and groundhog burrows serve as emergency cover for rabbits when they are to be found, either from predators or from extreme weather.

I hunted a ranch in ND for about fifteen years, almost every year, and usually enjoyed the rabbit hunting there as well as chasing deer and antelope. There were several factors that caused the rabbit populations there to vary from year to year. The rancher was also a hunter and had noted the variations due to weather and drought, but he said the greatest difference he saw was in the years when a foreman living on the ranch trapped the coyotes as a sideline. They still had hawks and there were still some coyotes, but controlling the population made a very noticeable difference.

Agreed, timex.

Land earmarked as primarily hunting land with any other public uses being secondary would be great!

Paying a bounty on coyotes would be more effective, but we'll never see that.

I know the hawks and owls take a lot of them. Hard to say which takes more. We tend to see the hawks in action more because the owls are doing most of their work at night when we can't see them even if we are still in the field.

We used to have a tree at the edge of an outdoor archery range where I was a member that was home to large owl. During the winter I was there a few times when snow was on doing some course maintenance, and the owl pellets were plentiful and easy to find. I'd say at that time of year the owl was living almost exclusively on rabbit from the evidence it was leaving, as nearly every pellet appeared to be comprised of mostly rabbit fur.

Briar patches and brush piles may be the most effective cover, as it deters most everything. A friend also lived near some sort of huge overgrown bushes that had planted along the interstate as noise barriers and those things were alive with rabbits. Never did find out what variety of bushes they were, but they were pretty much impenetrable all the way to ground level.

I know they have become very scarce around here. My B-I-L and I used to go rabbit hunting often, and sometimes didn't bother with his dog. Since the coyotes came, the populations seemed to dwindle more and more.

He's got several brushpiles on his acreage now, and I salted them a few years ago. That seemed to help a little. They're still not thick by any means, but now we're less surprised to see one while we're out there, and there are some rabbit tracks in the snow. Need to get out there and do that again pretty soon now. Supposed to very helpful to survival of the young.

A friend in the southern part of the state put out lengths of PVC pipe about three feet long at the edges of open areas. Can't recall the diameter he used but I think it was 4". I remember thinking it seemed mighty small, but he said they would use it for emergency cover and it seemed to increase his population noticeably.

Try double-clicking quickly, like you would to capitalize a letter without proceeding without repeating the character.

Those are the tires I've been looking at for my Cherokee.

I checked with my local tire shop and it will cost me $60 to have them mounted. Discounting for no warranty, I'm willing to go $200, if you're not too far away.

If that sounds OK with you, you can either PM me or call 765-346-3493.