Rounds, Daugaard administrations routinely broke federal law; Swiftboater expected to attack Sen. Johnson

A failed former South Dakota governor has announced a long-shot run for the US Senate seat held by solid civil servant, Tim Johnson. Meanwhile, it has come to light that the Rounds and Daugaard administrations repeatedly broke federal law.

A new report says South Dakota has violated federal law by removing too many American Indian children from their homes and placing them in foster care with non-Indian families. The report is in response to a National Public Radio series last year that said the state routinely broke the Indian Child Welfare Act. Federal law requires that Native American children removed from homes be placed with relatives or put in foster care with other Native American families except in unusual circumstances. [KSOO Radio]

Talking Points Memo:

Freedom Fund North America spent $990,000 on advertisements opposing Democrats Sen. Jon Tester in Montana and Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota as well as an ad in support of Heitkamp’s opponent, Rep. Rick Berg (R). Both Tester and Heitkamp won their races.

Whatever it takes, right, earth haters?

Sedaris elicits hysterics at Lensic

KANW is New Mexico Public Radio: they hosted author David Sedaris at The Lensic for some readings from his collections of stories and essays.

Lorena Bobbit and Monica Lewinsky were enjoying lunch together at an outdoor cafe' when a man walked up to them and exposed the most enormous schlong either had ever seen.

Lewinsky whispered to Lorena, "do you have your knife with you?"

Bobbit nodded.

"Quick," Monica said, pointing to the corners of her perfect mouth, "cut me here and here."

A set from The Nutcracker served as a backdrop on that luscious stage. No one left the packed theater with dry trousers...or panty hose.

MO River dams starving Gulf delta

Some sections of the Missouri River have already been labeled, "The Living Dead" because the main stem dams are limiting the sediment reaching the Gulf of Mexico to only 10 to 20 percent of what it would be historically from the Missouri today.

David Rookhuyzen writes in the second of a series in the Capital Journal:

Sediment plays an integral part in the ecosystem of the river. But the erection of dams, levies and bank stabilizations have disrupted the nature movement of that sediment, and is changing the nature of the river itself and causing ecological disruptions that reach as far as the Gulf of Mexico. Tim Cowman, Director of the Missouri River Institute at the University of South Dakota, said one of the clear effects of this deepening is the free-flowing sections of the river have become isolated from its flood plain and unable to carry out a vital exchange of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon. The National Research Council study says more than half of the materials that formed the multi-lobed delta of the Mississippi River in the past 6,000 to 7,000 years were ultimately from the Missouri River Basin.

US Army Corps of Engineers has cut flows as it stores even more silt and causing consternation downstream.

President Obama:

Tourism is the number one service we export. Every year, tens of millions of tourists come from all over the world to visit America. They stay in our hotels, eat at our restaurants, and see all the sights America has to offer. That’s good for local businesses. That’s good for local economies. And the more folks who visit America, the more Americans we get back to work. It’s that simple.

Tear out the Missouri River dams, Mr. President: rewild the West.

Giago loathes South Dakota...too

South Dakota has failed its people: now ex-pat, Tim Giago tells readers that he hates what his former home has become:

If the majority of Indian voters would become registered as Independents neither the Democrats nor the Republicans would take their votes for granted. For too long the Indian vote was presumed to be in the pocket of the Democrats. As a result the Republican Party never made a real effort to court that vote. --Tim Giago, Huffington Post.

Author Sherman Alexie appeared with host Kerri Miller on Minnesota Public Radio. Alexie is considered a pariah by most in Indian Country, as is Giago.

Statehood for the tribes and Mexico. Rewild the West.

South Dakota's decline inward, self-imposed

It came as a shock that State Senator Stan Adelstein appeared with hate-monger, Gordon Howie on his fake teevee show the other day. So much so that it compelled some further study.

Richard Boyden's birthday is on the same day as political prisoner, Leonard Peltier. He links early Jewish settlement in western South Dakota to the subjugation of American Indians at the time of statehood and the massacre at Wounded Knee. Boyden writes:

And on Indian Reservations here in South Dakota, H. R. Block (Bloch), a Jewish owned tax service, is engaged in racist "predatory lending" and making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of unsuspecting Indians by offering "quick high interest loans" in the name of "getting your refund sooner". Block was sued for doing the same among poor Blacks but has a "green light" from the government to exploit American Indians. The highest prices for food and groceries are found in two Jewish owned stores on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations…20-30 % higher as compared to off reservation stores. Single Indian mothers needing pampers and wipes for their babies have to pay $2 to $4 more per package.

Jack Abramoff is linked to the bilking of tribal casinos.

Sen. Adelstein's ancestors owned a store in Kadoka, adjacent to the Pine Ridge Reservation: he is vested in many mining interests from gold to gravel on disputed treaty lands.

Senator Dan Lederman is a bail bondsman allied with catholics in a state where The New Jim Crow has been applied to American Indians and disproportionate mass incarceration rates.

Co-inkydink?