One More For The Road

[{"type":"text","text":"Escape from Springfield, Ohio....."}]

One more for 9 13 24

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>One More For The Road: Friday, September 13, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Escape from Springfield, Ohio.....

One More For The Road: Friday, September 13, 2024

Fred harrison 4 23 26

Fred Harrison

Opinion

CSD Columnists

Every summer, our community confronts the front lines of the modern culture wars.

This month, as Cheyenne Pride Week kicks off, 

vibrant banners fill the state’s capital city.

underneath the festivities lies a quiet, undeniable anxiety 

: the foundational fabric of our society is fraying.

We see it in the historic decline of our local marriage rates and the heartbreaking rise of fatherless homes.

If we want to protect the next generation, we must have the courage to diagnose this crisis honestly.

Regardless of your personal position on contraception, abortion, or same-sex relationships, the foundational question here is not theological—it is constitutional.

In a self-governing society, profound moral and social choices are meant to be hammered out through the democratic process.

imposed its will, systematically upon the population.

History proves that when judges abandon written text to invent social policy, the consequences are catastrophic. Consider 

 (1896). There, an activist Supreme Court bypassed the clear equity of the Reconstruction Amendments to manufacture the doctrine of "separate but equal."

That single piece of judicial engineering legally authorized more than half a century of state-sanctioned discrimination against Black Americans in education and public life. It took decades for the law to finally crawl back to the truth of Justice John Marshall Harlan’s famous 

 dissent: that our Constitution must be color-blind.

As the French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville observed, the law serves as a powerful teacher in the United States, shaping the morals, habits, and expectations of the citizenry. But the law can be a teacher for good or for bad.

When modern courts chose judicial decree over democratic consensus, they began teaching the public a series of sociologically destructive lessons.

This modern trajectory began by severing sex from procreation in 

majority of citizens at the time heavily disfavored things like abortion and contraception

, the courts altered the legal landscape by fiat. 

internalized the lesson. Millions of Americans grew up accepting these judicial precedents as a given, adapting their lives to a philosophy that legally uncoupled the marital act from its natural, biological purpose.

Once procreation was severed from sex, the next legal domino fell: the separation of child-rearing from marriage itself, culminating in the 2015 

In his scorching dissent, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia exposed the raw power at play, calling the decision a "judicial Putsch" that effectively erased biological complementarity—the fundamental truth that children have a natural right to both a mother and a father.

By rewriting marriage from a child-centric institution into an adult-centric certificate of emotional attachment, the courts taught the public that marriage is merely an optional lifestyle choice. The data reflects this total loss of institutional purpose.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the marriage rate has plummeted to the lowest levels in American history, resulting in an atomized society—a culture broken down into isolated, self-centered individuals who put personal gratification ahead of communal and familial duties.

We are now reaping the grim, tangible results of this 50-year judicial curriculum.

Our population is no longer replacing itself; the domestic birth rate has dropped well below replacement level.

To keep our economy from stalling due to this 

massive, destabilizing population shifts driven by historic waves of illegal immigration.

We have lost the patriotic, generational will to put the continuity of our country first; because our laws have spent decades teaching us to put ourselves first.

Lest we think Wyoming is immune to this judicial classroom, the Wyoming Supreme Court’s 

 (2026) is a textbook symptom of the exact same disease.

In that case, the court took Article 1, Section 38—a 2012 

constitutional amendment explicitly passed by Wyoming citizens to protect patient choice against “

—and twisted it to strike down the legislature’s 

Worse, to achieve this preferred social outcome, the court’s majority imported "strict scrutiny"—a foreign legal standard federal courts 

By superimposing this artificial standard onto the amendment, the court completely overrode and neutralized Subsection (c) of that very same provision, which explicitly preserves the legislature's authority to place "reasonable and necessary restrictions" on health care decisions.

Our state judiciary chose to silence the voice of Wyoming voters by erasing plain text.

This ongoing overreach forces us to confront a foundational question about our system of government. If courts are deciding what constitutes a fundamental right and entirely restructuring our society, is this country still a Republic?

Bernie Sanders frequently warns that America has transformed into an oligarchy. Sanders is right about the diagnosis, but he has misidentified the oligarchs.

[{"type":"text","text":"The true oligarchy in modern America is the judiciary."}]

We cannot build a stable society on a broken constitutional foundation. We are reaping the cultural whirlwind of a judicially imposed education: a historic flight from the altar, a declining domestic population, and millions of children growing up in the wreckage of what wa

Fred Harrison is an attorney in Cheyenne and served in the Wyoming Legislature from 1982 - 1992. He can be reached at: 

<title>Fred Harrison: Triad of Overreach — How Judicial Activism Dismantled The American Family | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Columnist Fred Harrison writes, "This month, as Cheyenne Pride Week kicks off, vibrant banners fill the state's capital city. But underneath the festivities lies a quiet anxiety citizens across Wyoming share: the foundational fabric of our society is fraying."

Fred Harrison: Triad of Overreach — How Judicial Activism Dismantled The American Family

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Energy

A federal judge in Montana has thrown out more than 1.5 million acres of Wyoming oil and gas leases sold under the Trump administration, a sweeping ruling that Wyoming attorneys said will force the state to return $50 million in payments and imperil $180 million in future revenue for schools and other public services. 

The ruling also affects an additional 185,000 acres of oil and gas leases in Montana and the Dakotas.

The decision, issued by Chief Judge Brian Morris out of the U.S. District Court of Montana on June 12, is sparking outrage in the oil and gas community. It’s the third time Morris, an Obama appointee, has ruled against the U.S. Department of the Interior over the protection of sage-grouse habitat.

“The environmental group found a sympathetic venue in Montana to file their case and ultimately hurt Wyoming,” oil and gas landman Steve Degenfelder told Cowboy State Daily. “I am hopeful the State of Wyoming will appeal this decision with everything they have. Other than a successful appeal, it’s my understanding we would need an act of Congress to overturn this injustice. I wonder how Montana would feel if a Wyoming judge hurt their state to this magnitude?”

Ryan McConnaughey, with the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, said it’s just the latest example of how activists are misusing the judicial system to attack industries they dislike.

“Anti-oil and natural gas activists have a sympathetic ear in Montana, which is why they continuously file cases there,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “The hard truth is that until Congress steps in to restore the original intent of laws like NEPA and the Endangered Species Act, every land management decision will be decided out of public view by the courts. It’s further proof that permitting reform is absolutely necessary if the United States wants to be a country that harvests energy and builds things again.”

Wyoming’s Bureau of Land Management office referred Cowboy State Daily for comment about the case to Montana’s office, which did not respond. 

It was not known Tuesday afternoon whether BLM will appeal the case, or what its next step will be for the leases.

The Wyoming Attorney General’s Office was also consulted, but had not responded at the time this story was posted.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Sage-Grouse Protection At Issue"}]

At the heart of the case brought by the Montana Wildlife Federation, The Wilderness Society, National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation and Montana Audubon is how the BLM applied its 2015 sage-grouse conservation plans in Wyoming. 

The groups argued that leasing should have been steered first to areas outside of key habitat so the bird would stay off the federal endangered species list. 

The 2015 sage-grouse plan required the agency to “prioritize” oil and gas leasing and development outside of sensitive habitat, particularly in designated priority areas.

But, in 2018, the BLM issued a new instruction memorandum that effectively told staff to disregard those prioritization requirements when offering new “fluid mineral” leases in sage-grouse country.

Wyoming has a voluntary sage-grouse protection plan, one that guides development away from those areas without any prioritization on BLM’s part, Wyoming attorneys argued.

However, the judge ruled that the prioritization error “infected everything” that followed, making it infeasible for BLM to keep the current leases in place.

BLM offered about 1.25 million acres of oil and gas leases in Wyoming in 2019 alone, roughly 785,000 acres in its February 2019 sale and more than 493,000 acres combined in the September and December 2019 sales. 

Altogether the June 12 order affects about 1.5 million acres of Wyoming leases sold between December 2017 and December 2019. December 2020 sales were excluded because the judge found that no final agency action yet exists to vacate or remand those sales. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Wyoming Warns Of Deep Revenue Losses"}]

In court filings, Wyoming attorneys laid out what the revenue losses will mean to local and state governments providing public services. 

Federal defendants estimated that vacating Phase Three leases will require the return of more than $50 million in revenue that has already been allocated and spent. The state would also lose future severance, ad valorem, and conservation taxes on the leases, totaling at least $180 million over the life of the wells. 

Funding cuts due to losing these revenues will affect a range of public services in Wyoming, from employment, roads, IT, fire personnel, hospitals and other daily operations, Wyoming’s lawyers argued, and should prompt the court to remand without vacating the leases. 

In Campbell County, for example, oil and gas revenues help fund the senior center, homeless shelter and soup kitchen, domestic violence shelter, youth crisis and treatment home, and the Boys and Girls Club.

In Converse County, half the annual budget relies on oil and gas revenue, which helps fund senior services, the Humane Society, a youth crisis center, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Douglas and Glenrock, a domestic violence and sexual assault survivors crisis center and shelter, a mental health crisis and intervention center, and more.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"State Already Protects Sage-Grouse"}]

Wyoming attorneys also argued that the state is already protecting sage-grouse habitat — so well that it was praised by the Obama administration at the time.

Since 2008, federal oil and gas leases in core sage-grouse habitat have declined 63%, Wyoming’s attorneys wrote, and reduced production in those areas by 48%. 

The state’s plan has also reshaped development, Wyoming contended. 

“From 2006 to 2012, vertically drilled well permits declined 65%, while directionally and horizontally drilled wells from outside core areas increased by 66% and 1,337%,” the attorneys wrote. “The trend continues with 95% of wells drilled in Wyoming from 2020 to 2024 being directional or horizontal, reducing sage-grouse disturbance.”

Horizontal wells disturb up to 3.5 acres, compared with 19 acres for vertical wells. 

“Thus, deferrals are not needed to guide development away from sage-grouse habitat,” the attorneys wrote. “In sum, the state’s strategy — adopted by BLM — has shifted development away from sage-grouse habitat and changed development patterns to meaningfully reduce impacts.”

Drilling in lower conflict areas is already preferred through the state’s sage-grouse mitigation plan, which protects habitat while allowing economic opportunities, they said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Economic Harm Vs. Legal Violations"}]

The judge in the case acknowledged disruptive economic impacts caused by vacating the lease sales, but concluded that BLM’s legal violations outweighed those considerations except in cases where a lease was already producing oil and gas.

Wyoming, Jonah Energy, and Continental Resources, which intervened in the case, argued that the judge should carve out an exception for leases for wells that have already been drilled and completed.

Jonah Energy told the court it had already spent $68 million developing its leases. Continental said it had spent more than $97.6 million for nine producing wells. 

“The considerations of equity require that the court not vacate the nine already producing leases stemming from the challenged Phase Three lease sales,” Morris agreed, likening the situation to a scrambled egg that can’t be put back into its shell. “Vacatur as to the producing leases could not restore the leases to the pre-leasing condition without further disruption.”

Wyoming oil and gas drilling 2 1 24

<title>Montana Judge Tosses 1.5M Acres Of Wyoming Oil And Gas Leases, Costs State $50M | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A federal judge in Montana has thrown out more than 1.5 million acres of Wyoming oil and gas leases sold under the Trump administration, forcing the state to return $50 million in payments. “The environmental group found a sympathetic venue in Montana,” said a Wyoming landman.

Montana Judge Tosses 1.5M Acres Of Wyoming Oil And Gas Leases, Costs State $50M

Kerry Drake

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Cheyenne’s new vehicle noise ordinance was unanimously passed by the City Council to stop obnoxious motorists who drive their loud cars, trucks and motorcycles late at night, disrupting people’s sleep.

 soon after it went on the books in late September was auto mechanic Geno Stecks, who was driving a fairly unassuming 2006 Subaru with a modified muffler. 

It also wasn’t in the middle of the night or in a residential section of the capital city. Stecks said it was on a main thoroughfare at the intersection of East Lincolnway and Hugur Avenue at 2:45 in the afternoon.

“Communists. Control freaks!” is how Stecks responded when asked what he thought about the City Council members who approved the ordinance after many people opposed it during public testimony at three council meetings.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"He Wasn’t Speeding"}]

Stecks was on the job when he got busted, transporting auto parts for FM Automotive when he heard the police siren.

He told the officer that he didn’t think he’d been speeding, but was informed the stop was made because of excessive noise.

This how the encounter went, according to Stecks:

“I couldn’t hear my radio for your exhaust,” the officer told him.

“I said, ‘Turn your volume knob up,’” Stecks said he replied. "I couldn’t hear my exhaust because of my radio, because I’ve got a kick-ass stereo in it.”

In hindsight, Stecks said he’s since thought of some other creative responses.

“I wish I had told him, ‘What are you going to tell the Hells Angels if they come roaring through town? Are you going to pull them over and cite them for having too loud exhaust? You probably wouldn’t live through it,’” said the bearded Stecks, wearing a T-shirt that depicted a full mug with the word “Beer – It’s What’s for Dinner.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Few Tickets"}]

A spokesperson for the Cheyenne Police Department said that after Stecks broke the ice as the first to be ticketed for driving too loudly, 43 other motorists were given noise violation citations in 2025, and 33 more so far this year.

Even those are way too few, said a council member who supported the noise ordinance.

“They should be writing 300 or 400,” said City Council Vice President Pete Laybourn. “The problem is immense, and I’m very disappointed with how it’s being handled. The ordinance hasn’t been effective at all.”

Laybourn said residents are purposely modifying their mufflers and making noise in all parts of the city, at all hours day and night, and also deliberately speeding.

“They tried to disrupt Friday Night at the Plaza last week, driving up Capitol (Avenue) and backfiring,” he said. “It was really, really bad.”

City Council President Tom Segrave was one of several councilmen who brought up the issue last summer because ​he was getting so many complaints from Cheyenne residents about excessive noise from motorists.

“I live off Yellowstone Road, and I can tell you it’s quite a sight to see a pack of people riding these loud little motorcycles down Yellowstone at night, often up until 1 a.m., popping wheelies,” Segrave said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Early To Tell"}]

He said it’s too early to know if the ordinance is making a difference. 

Segrave said he hasn’t been receiving complaints, but figures that will change during the summer when more people have their windows open.

The main difference between the new ordinance and a previous one is that it allows a police officer to use his or her judgment about whether a vehicle is too loud. 

The former regulation required a meter to be used at least 25 feet away, which Segrave said made it unenforceable.

Stecks said he paid the $100 fine, which would be increased to $200 if he breaks the ordinance again within a year. 

Possible jail time is on the books for a third offense, plus a $500 fine, but City Attorney John Brodie told Cowboy State Daily when the ordinance was passed last year that it’s 

“If anything, jail is maybe an imposed part of the sentence that would then be suspended,” he said.

“People told me, ‘You could have fought this,’” Steck said. “I said I’d be in worse trouble because I would have ended up in jail after I told the judge and the court how crooked they are. 

"There would have been F-bombs involved. When you’re a mechanic, F-bombs are the terminology of the trade.”

The ordinance requires all vehicles driven within city limits to be equipped with a muffler. It prohibits vehicles that bypass or cut out their mufflers to be louder and those that create “excessive smoke.”

Stecks said he agrees with the idea that people who drive small motorcycles known as “crotch rockets” up and down the street after 10 p.m. need to be ticketed. 

But he emphasized, “Not drivers who are just doing their job in the middle of the day.”

He said it would have made more sense if he’d received a ticket for a machine that he knows is really noisy: a fast 1931 Model A rat rod named “Clyde” that he built several years ago. 

Several of Stecks’ co-workers smiled and nodded their heads as he said this, because they know exactly how loud Clyde can be cranked it up.

Stecks said his main problem with the ordinance is that it relies on a police officer to make a judgment call about how loud the noise is.

“They need to measure it,” he said. “That’s the only way they should ever do this.”

Geno breaks the sound barrier 6 15 26

<title>Meet The First Driver To Get A Ticket Under Cheyenne’s New Noise Ordinance | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Mechanic Geno Stecks got the first ticket under Cheyenne’s new noise ordinance while delivering a car part in the middle of the day. When the officer told him he couldn't hear his radio because of the exhaust, Stecks said, "Turn your volume knob up."

Meet The First Driver To Get A Ticket Under Cheyenne’s New Noise Ordinance

You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"If your kid is filming you garden, something ain't right...."}]

Gardening 6 16 26

<title>Today In Gardening: Tuesday, June 16, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

If your kid is filming you garden, something ain't right....

Today In Gardening: Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Hunting

A Wyoming man is apologizing for tossing, kicking and stabbing a coyote in a controversial video that went viral last week.

Aron Snyder posted a video statement on social media over the weekend in which he says the coyote video was taken in Texas in 2019 or 2020.

He said that he finished off the wounded coyote with a knife because he didn’t have a firearm with him at the time. He also admits that the video is "a very bad optic."

Snyder also confirmed that because of the video, his employment has been terminated, and that he accepts that decision.

 to Cowboy State Daily last week, saying that Snyder is from Riverton. The video and accompanying information were also sent to wildlife agencies and animal welfare groups in Wyoming and several other states.

There was no response to messages to cellphone numbers registered to Snyder.

Cowboy State Daily reached out to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), asking if the department is investigating the incident depicted in the coyote-killing video, and if any reaction might result.

TPWD law enforcement spokeswoman Maggie Berger promptly responded with an email saying she would check into it, but was swamped early Monday.

“We are currently responding to service calls due to flooding and severe weather in multiple areas of the state as well as much time being dedicated to the new world screwworm response,” she stated.

There is concern in Texas that an emerging screwworm infestation in cattle will 

. There’s also worry that it could eventually hit big game herds in other states, including Wyoming.

Response to the coyote video has been overwhelmingly negative. Some hunters and animal welfare advocates have condemned the depicted actions as unethical and cruel.

However, some social media commenters have supported Snyder, saying the video shows him doing what he had to do to kill the coyote with the means he had at hand at the time.

In the video, Snyder is seen stabbing the coyote once in the shoulder area. Supporters have commented that indicates he was trying to puncture the coyote’s lungs and/or heart, which would have resulted in a quick death.

In his statement, Snyder said the video was taken during a coyote hunt “after an ice storm” in Texas.

“The coyotes were wreaking havoc on my buddy’s cattle, horses (and) dogs, as they do,” he said.

He said he drove an ATV to the location where the coyote in question was, but had left his gun behind in a pickup.

“When I got to it (the coyote), um, it wasn’t dead, it was still alive,” he said. "Pulled it out of a brush pile, um, kicked its legs out from under it, stabbed it, you know, it was growling at me, I kicked it again."

He also said he performed a “dead check” on the animal. That’s a term hunters use for checking to make sure an animal is dead.

Snyder said he recalled that he might have stabbed the coyote once more, although the video clip shows him stabbing it only once.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Bad Optic’"}]

Regarding the video, Snyder admits that “it’s a very bad optic, I understand that, for the hunting community. That wasn’t my intention but even when I watched it, it looked bad."

He said that if one watches predators “tear apart” wildlife, dogs and livestock “you do lose value and respect for them (predators)."

“That’s not an excuse that’s just a fact of life, and my actions that day showed that,” Snyder said.

Snyder also said the fallout from the video could be a “blessing in disguise” because it gives him a reason to get off social media and simply enjoy being outdoors.

Paul Ulrich, president of the Wyoming Sportsmanship group, previously condemned what he saw in the video.

After seeing Snyder’s video on Monday, Ulrich told Cowboy State Daily that “it’s encouraging to see somebody admit they made a mistake.”

“He certainly notes that it’s ‘bad optics,’ and it is. But at its heart (what’s in the coyote video) is just bad behavior. It’s cruel and the antithesis of a clean kill,” Ulich said.

Wyoming Sportsmanship was instrumental in getting the so-called “Clean Kill Bill” passed by the state Legislature and signed into law.

It makes it illegal to deliberately prolong the suffering of predatory animals, such as coyotes, in Wyoming.

Ulrich noted that according to Snyder’s account of events, Snyder apparently wasn’t properly prepared “to make a clean kill,” because he left his firearm behind in a pickup.

Hunters should keep their rifles or shotguns, or a sidearm, at all times to quickly end wounded animals’ suffering, Ulrich said.

Although Snyder apparently killed the coyote in the video in Texas, Ulrich said that the incident can carry a universal message for hunters.

Ulrich said he appreciates Snyder acknowledging losing a value and respect for predators.

“Hopefully he finds that value and respect for all wildlife again someday,” Ulrich said.

“I hope this gives us all the opportunity to take a deep breath and realize our responsibility to respect all wildlife, including predators,” he added.

Snyder could also use his prominent position in the outdoor world to spread the message, Ulrich said.

“He has an opportunity, and I hope in some small way he takes advantage of an opportunity to do the right thing,” he said. “And perhaps the message for today is that we pass those values of respect for all wildlife on to the next generation."

Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy announced Monday that it was offering a $3,000 reward for information leading to a conviction for a felony cruelty to animals charge in connection with the events shown in the coyote-killing video.

After being sent a link to Snyder’s apology by Cowboy State Daily on Monday, the group’s president, Wayne Pacelle, said the reward offer still stands.

Although the alleged location and time frame of the Coyote killing were revealed by Snyder, Pacelle said new information might expand upon Snyder’s account or contradict elements of it.

“I’m not accusing him of that (falsifying details of the coyote incident). I just don’t want to make assumptions that these claims are true," Pacelle said.

If the coyote was killed in Texas as far back as 2019, that state’s statute of limitations for cruelty to animals charges might have run out, he said.

In that case, “he (Snyder) could escape prosecution for his malicious cruelty,” Pacelle said.

A Wyoming man named Aron Snyder confirms he’s the person seen tossing, kicking and stabbing a coyote in a video. The video is “a very bad optic,” he says while apologizing in a weekend social media post.

One More For The Road: Friday, September 13, 2024

In case you missed it

More in One More For The Road

One More For The Road: Wednesday, June 17, 2026

One More For The Road: Tuesday, June 16, 2026

One More For The Road: Monday, June 15, 2026

One More For The Road: Sunday, June 14, 2026

Most read