Wow. That's pretty cool and even a bit enlightened by the feds. We'll see if and how they follow through. Hopefully, even if they ultimately build the pipeline, it will set a precedent for how the U.S. and the Nations deal with each other.

One thing to note. Though there is no chance the Stranger's narrative is gonna change on this, videos of the dog attack are available and I've got to say if people were hitting me over the head with poles I'd attack them too. In the videos (shot by the protestors themselves) the dogs and their handlers are seen on a fence line. The dogs were snarling and barking (it's what they do) while the handlers restrained them. It's hard to say whether the handlers advanced first or the protestors did; the video is shot mostly from behind the protestors, so it's not really clear. Anyway, the protestors attacked the dogs with large sticks (probably from posts that held up signs, but it's hard to tell for sure) while they were restrained by their handlers, with one fine gentleman using a flag and its pole as spear in an attempt to skewer a dog (he failed). I recall an iconic photo of my youth during the busing race riots in Boston where one fine young American was photographed trying to impale another fine young American of a different race with an American flag tied to a pole/spear. The man in the white hat did something very like that to a dog on restraint, though for completely dissimilar reasons.

@2, At my age a thirty something lawyer is young. As for your first question, all I can say is I acknowledge that irony has been dead for sometime now and that Lazarus was nothing more than a mythical character. But hope springs eternal and it may yet rise from the grave.

I hope everyone realizes that DOJ, Interior and Army/DOD are all Executive Branch Departments, and that the person in charge of the Executive Branch is the President. I don't hear anyone in the White House tooting their own horn, but there is no way these three Departments did this without involvement by the Oval Office.

Obama is pretty cool sometimes.

Now, think about the idiot Trump, his profanely bloated ego, lack of attention span, and authoritarian leanings and take a guess as to how he'd have handled this.

@2 -- Really? You never caught the satirical nature of his comment? Really? You should watch old (or even new) versions of the Daily Show, or any of its offspring (Colbert, Nightly Show, Last Week Tonight, Full Frontal). When they say things like "He is a great guy", they often mean the opposite. Crazy, huh?

As for attacking a dog with a stick versus another human being, they are practically the same thing (see?).

@4 -- Yep, this shit happens all the time when a Democrat is in office (more often than some want to acknowledge). It rarely happens when a Republican is. Would Hillary Clinton do something like this? You bet your ass she would. Would Trump? I wouldn't bet your, or anyone else's ass on that.

I'm so thankful Obama did this, We've been tweeting his account for weeks, but since he was at G20, it's been scary.

That sorry excuse of a Judge must have been appointed by the Repugs, or bought by Big Oil, to have denied the injunction, especially after that company - who is being SUED AND CITED by more than 10 states and territories, INCLUDING TX AND OK, for dumping toxics illegally and poisoning groundwater and soil!! AND they've ALREADY DESTROYED tribal sacred archeological sites, AFTER the tribes turned in proofs of these sites to the Court as part of the lawsuit!

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ar…

Fucking wankers, I hope their drinking water get contaminated by whatever poisons they've been dumping into groundwater, rivers, streams and soils in all those states!

@5. Oh lookie. A parsehole!* Been a while since I ran across one of you.

I didn't draw any equivalence between dogs and people. You did. The man who tried to make a canine shishkabob did it in a way that looked very like the way a young racist Bostonian tried to skewer a "thirtysomething" black lawyer I'm that iconic photo. Watch the video and see that guy use the flag pole to try to spear the dog. It looks very like that photo in Boston; though the circumstances, target and flag are different, the action is very nearly the same, irrespective of the target.

Now this may be a difficult concept for you to grasp so I'll draw an analogy. I'll type slowly, that might help but do try to follow along.

Cyclists ride on their bicycles like jockeys ride on horses; bicycles are ridden while straddling them just as horse are ridden. There are differences - bicycles are machines, horses are meat and bones, bicycles saddles are smaller, horses run on hay, bicycles run on burritos, etc.. But they are ridden the same way. That's why cyclists sit on saddles, not seats. When I say cyclists ride bicycles like jockeys ride horses I'm not saying bicycles and horses are equivalent. I'm saying they are ridden in a similar way.

Got it?

*I have no idea if pareshole is a real word and haven't the spoons right now to look it up on Urban dictionary. Maybe I've heard it somewhere before. Don't know, don't care. ANYway... You are the kind of person who parses others words in such a way that it ignores, distorts or changes the meaning and then using that misrepresentation, tries to make the writer look foolish. You're a parsehole!

The pipeline as a whole will continue construction. It's just around the lake that a "hold" is somewhat in place.

20 miles from the lake work will continue. As it should. The Govt. had to give the Tribes something so they don't lose face. But in the end, we all know how it will end. This pipeline was not approved by the Obama Admin for nothing. They approved it because they want it built too. Remember that.

At least they can build the pipeline when they need to in the future. Right now we have such a glut of oil that our local drillers are practically going bankrupt left and right. We'll get back to it later. I wouldn't be surprised if the Indians rebel once again, but the court did rule against them.