Thank you, Tim DeChristopher!

Leave it to a University of Utah student to come up with an incredibly creative way to stymie the Bush Administration's efforts to open up land around national parks to oil and gas drilling. Tim DeChristopher successfully bid on 22,500 acres of land around Arches and Canyonlands parks and now owes $1.7 million on all of his leases.

What this does is invalidate the auction! It will delay what hopefully isn't inevitable, but the court case will be heard January 19, a day before the inauguration. Rachel Maddow (who incorrectly calls this civil disobedience - it's active nonviolent intervention) has a nice video on the subject. Enjoy.

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One Sherrif Takes a Nonviolent Stand

CNN's Campbell Brown's wrote:

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has announced that for the foreseeable future he is not going to evict anyone else from a home banks have foreclosed on.

How come? He's fed up.

The Chicago Sun Times reported that renters were being evicted because there landlords were in default on their mortgages. The owners had been notified, but they had not, in turn, notified the renters. He took a very tough, principled stand and faces repercussions himself.

Here's a video from CNN:


And an eloquent shout out from Rachel Maddow: