Feds suing Boy Scouts and Mormon Church for wildfires

[rainbow4321]

Somehow, I have a hard time believing that if the church was Baptist/Methodist that it would be getting sued by the feds. Makes you wonder what kind of precedent this could set for other church sponsored groups.


http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BOY_SCOUTS_SUED?SITE=WIMIL&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-06-24-20-48-38

The Justice Department and the state of Utah on Friday added the Mormon church as a defendant in a nearly $14 million lawsuit seeking to recover the costs of fighting a forest fire that began at a Boy Scout camp.

The government claims boys from the church-sponsored Boy Scout troop carelessly started the fire that burned 14,000 acres of federal and state land in the Uinta mountains three years ago.

Boy Scout officials have not admitted responsibility for the fire and have said it was possible all-terrain vehicle riders were to blame. The initial complaints were filed a year ago against the Boy Scouts of America and the organization's Great Salt Lake Council.

The lawsuit alleges that the scouts, ages 11 to 14, had been left without adult supervision for a night and built fires that were left to smolder and spread. The flames forced evacuation of the scout camp, nearby campgrounds and summer homes.

[Mist]

1. If I had to guess, I'd say that "federal" land was actually earmarked

for private timber businesses, and they want to recover the value of the timber. Not likely they're being sued because they're Mormons; Mormons are very conservative and a big political bloc in the West.

[ToeBot]

2. Sorry, but you wont find a group more ardently Republican than...

the Mormons; and as such, good luck getting so much as a dime out of them.

[rainbow4321]

4. Repuke, yes, but...

IMHO, I just think the larger majority of the base that chimp tries catering/pandering/sucking up to as being the Southern Baptists, Baptists, Methodists, etc...*I* just was having a difficult time imagining chimp's feds going after them/their $$ while maintaining the pandering. All it would take, again IMHO, would be a loud obnoxious neocon badmouthing the lawsuit and rallying their people from any of those religious organizations against the lawsuit for the shrub regime to back down from holding anyone responsible---all under the media/national radar, as usual.

Sorry if my more-cynical-than-most opinion made it seem like I was not aware that Mormans are repukes.

[roguevalley]

3. Boy scouts have been co-opted by the Mormons. If they burned

the damned forest down, they need to pay for it. That is the law. You start the fire, you pay for it. That is what the rules have been for some time now. I have NO problems with this.