Wampum

Prior to taking up the black mantle of the U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit, a nominee should have:

1. been in a court room in a professional capacity, whether bailiff, clerk, counsel, or judge, or
   
2. been in a court room in a professional capacity, whether bailiff, clerk, counsel, or judge, or
   
3. been in a court room in a professional capacity, whether bailiff, clerk, counsel, or judge.
   

William Myers actually has less real-life court-time than Raymond Burr, who did more than 256 fictional cases, and who now is only slightly less qualified than William Myers for a lifetime appointment to the court second only to the Supreme Court due to the modest impediment of being dead.

But that wasn't what caught my attention, and William Myers does present a myrid of distractions.

No. It was religion. The 49 known sites eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, items subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and religious sites, and those not known. Mere waste, overburden to an open-pit cyanide heap-leach gold mine. Or so says the Solicitor of the Department of the Interior of the Bush Regime.

Update: I've found a large hi-res photo of Kw'st'an at the Nationaltrust's 2002 catalog of the 11 most important endangered religious sites in the United States.

Things to keep in mind: your modernity. What looks like "desert" is the cross roads of the lower Colorado. Denied to Spain by the Kw'st'an, limiting the attack and subsequent occupation of Alta California by overland forces and the root cause for the structural frailty of the Mexican states proximal to the Yuma Crossing -- the "why" of the overland American successes in California and Arizona, and until the dams of the mid-20th century quieted the Colorado -- created by Kumastamxo by tracing a course through the desert with the tip of his lance -- part of an economy defined by annual flooding and and agriculture, the center of trade in abalone shell to the east and turquoise to the west.

Wearing my TL hat I'll contact Mike Jackson, Sr., the current President of the Quechan Tribal Council, and Quechan Tribe attorney Courtney Ann Coyle. Updates.