A Representative for New Mexico, Republican Steve Pearce, says the oil industry is at risk of a shut down if forced to avoid killing a species of lizard.

Pearce has received over $1.2 million in campaign contributions from the industry he is trying to protect. He recently explained to a public gathering that protection of a nearly extinct lizard would interfere with the availability of funds for his next campaign, as well as possibly affect the economy of southeastern New Mexico and west Texas.

Pearce, focusing on the reptile this week in town meetings throughout his congressional district, said people would be put in peril if the federal government classifies the dunes sagebrush lizard as “endangered.”

“Most of the oil and gas jobs in southeast New Mexico are at risk,” he said. “In the ’70s, they listed the spotted owl as endangered and it killed the entire timber industry.”

I spot a problem. The spotted owl was not listed as an endangered species until 1990, as clearly stated in a US Fish and Wildlife Service record of review. Pearce is off by 20 years!

April 30, 1990. The status review team recommended that the northern spotted owl be listed as threatened throughout its range. This review resulted in the final listing on June 26, 1990.

Moreover, the timber industry actually saw profits boom in the 1990s, after the owl was listed as endangered.

Despite predictions of disaster for the industry after federal logging was reduced in Oregon to protect endangered species, profits of the 12 largest publicly traded forest products companies in the Northwest were up 43 percent in 1994 compared to 1993, the Oregonian reported.

So Pearce is spreading false information about the risks and the effects of regulation.

What he should explain is how his financial backers have enjoyed uncontrolled oil and gas drilling. They simply don’t like following the rules. Don’t make me bring up the BP disaster. Their disdain for the health of residents in Pearce’s districts, combined with herbicide spraying by the ranching industry, has forced a rare lizard to the brink of extinction.

Saying that an oil company is at risk in this scenario is like saying the coal industry is at risk of failure if it has to protect its canaries in the mines.

The oil industry is very hardy and resilient. It not only can survive the protections required to save a desert lizard but it actually can generate jobs when required to find solutions to prevent and detect environmental damage (reducing overall cost burdens by removing the need for high-cost cleanup). Protection of the lizard should be thought of in terms of overall risk reduction to residents and as a potential test for creation of long-term employment opportunities.

The Chicago Tribune reports that a plaintiff named Bonhomme alleges she has been the victim of an elaborate hoax run by a woman in the suburbs of Chicago who pretended to be a man.

James, his young son and about 20 other friends and family members Bonhomme had been communicating with for months were characters allegedly created by a woman in Chicago’s west suburbs.

The depth of the alleged deception stunned Bonhomme. Janna St. James, who lives in Batavia, had allegedly used a voice-altering device to pose as Jesse James on the phone, coordinated numerous storylines with her characters that advanced in emails and instant messages, and sent and received mail — including children’s drawings — from all over the world.

The attacker courted the victim online for years. The victim has filed suit for damages and apparently also hopes to force the attacker to explain her motivations for social engineering.

At first the suit was dismissed but an appeal has been successful; this could lead to precedent on those who falsely present their identity within the context of social engineering. The court ruled that the persistence of the attack helped them allow a claim used for businesses — fraudulent misrepresentation.

Hoping to find some answers, Bonhomme filed a lawsuit that was eventually moved to Kane County, where in December 2009 a judge dismissed her complaint. But last month, a divided Illinois appeals court reinstated the case, rejecting St. James’ argument that she was creating fiction and therefore wasn’t liable.

“The concepts of falsity and material fact do not apply in the context of fiction,” her attorney had written, “because fiction does not purport to represent reality.”

The court allowed Bonhomme’s fraudulent misrepresentation claim, which typically applies only in a business situation, to move forward, in part due to St. James’ “almost-two-year masquerade of false statements.”

Internal attacks on ATMs are more prevalent than external ones, according to a new product announcement from Alarm It. They provide the following list of threats to cash, presumably in order.

• Employees
• Third Party Service Providers
• Competitors with Keys to your ATM
• Skimmers

Their product can be added to an ATM to monitor for unauthorized access and send audible or silent alarms to the owner.