Greetings, Roni!

I wanted to touch base with you after our fun chat at the Stock Growers' conference in Casper a couple weeks back. I'm the cantankerous attorney from the Wyoming Liberty Group with a few creative ideas on how to scale back federal intervention in the western states in an aggressive and bold fashion. I'm also the fellow with a son who was fighting PETA at the local school level out near DC (where we live).

Click here for a copy of my "Muddy Waters" Clean Water Act study I wrote a while ago for the Goldwater Institute. It details the horrors of the Clean Water Act, the constitutional issues in question, and some of my cheeky nature in addressing such issues. Enjoy!

I mentioned that the Wyoming Liberty Group is sponsoring a new federalism project under my leadership - Winning Sovereignty Solutions - and it has a bare website started found here: wyomingwss.org. You can also see a copy of my speech at the Commonsense Sovereignty event here (jump forward to about the two minute mark to skip past initial blips): http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7767637 . It is better with my silly powerpoint presentation, but this gives you an idea of our approach. In fact the idea is simple: conservatives, free marketers, and libertarians have not been aggressive or creative enough in fighting the sovereignty war. My aim is to take the approaches of the best trial lawyers (Gerry Spence or John Edwards, for example), the tactics of ACLU types, and combine them with my own knowledge and understanding of constitutional litigation to produce a far superior approach. In that sense, think of going after the feds like trial lawyers went after McDonalds, or like they will and are going after BP. The feds are the largest landowners in Wyoming (and in many western states), and they introduce real harms they are otherwise held unaccountable for. Where limited government types have failed before is in only making the argument of "you're not allowed to do that!" But I want to go a step further - fine, you're doing these acts beyond your constitutional limits, but like any other neighbor, we expect to hold you legally liable for the harms you produce (wolf predation, economic damages, and so forth). By combining the approaches I mention above, I think we can get there.

I took a rather unusual position in the Citizens United litigation and we won before the Supreme Court even when most mainstream Court watchers told us we wouldn't. I think I can bring the same longterm result for sovereignty efforts, but we're just blossoming now.

Please also find my son Noah's analysis of Obama's State of the Union (promising too much - the tragedy of utopian ideals).

If some of the sovereignty elements sound up your alley, be in touch and we can discuss further!

Forward,

Ben