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Jackson Hole gets drop of defense

Allen Best

TETON COUNTY, Wyo. – While $44 million in federal money is being distributed to Wyoming for homeland defense, Teton County is getting only $91,000.County Commissioner Bill Paddelford said the county made the mistake of putting together a carefully calculated and itemized proposal, instead of a more expansive wish list, reports the Jackson Hole News & Guide.Perhaps Teton County needs to grease the political process. After all, it’s second-most-famous second-home owner is Dick Cheney, who is one heart beat away from being president. It’s most famous part-timer? That would be actor Harrison Ford, who played the role of a president.Drug-stop ruse legalTELLURIDE, Colo. – During the Telluride Bluegrass Festival three years ago, a drug task force for several adjoining counties set up signs that read “Narcotics Checkpoint One Mile Ahead.” The signs were a ruse.In fact, drug taskforce agents were hiding in the bushes, and if people threw things out of their cars after seeing the signs, the lawmen radioed other cops in vehicles, who stopped the littering cars and searched for drugs and paraphernalia.Littering is against the law in Colorado, as are improper U-turns, and hence triggered probable cause searches of those cars once they had been stopped.Unfair? Not so, rules the Colorado Court of Appeals. But while attorneys and lawmen continue to disagree over constitutional rights, San Miguel Sheriff Bill Masters defines a bigger picture. A Libertarian, Masters strongly disagrees with the War on Drugs.”When you look at the overall impact on stopping the use of drugs in our country, I don’t think it’s had any impact,” he told The Telluride Watch (Sept. 5).”Personally, I’m not going to authorize the use of (fictitious drug checkpoints) in my department,” he said. “Even though it’s maybe legal methods, I don’t particularly care for them.”Seabiscuit model turns to TellurideTELLURIDE, Colo.-The primary horse used in the filming of “Seabiscuit” is now semi-retired to a dude ranch near Telluride.The family that owns the Skyline Guest Ranch are friends of the movie’s producers. Ranch patriarch Dave Farny, a former ski-area developer from Aspen, says the horse, Ferrari, is well trained. But as a track horse, he’s never been on a trail and remains afraid of streams.Altogether, 10 horses were used in the movie, but Ferrari was the primary one, and the one that Toby Maguire rides. The Telluride Watch (Sept. 5) calls it arguably the most lovable non-human movie character since E.T.


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