As I type these words the immunity decision on a certain former president has just been handed down by the Supreme Court. So apparently a president has some immunity for official acts but not for unofficial. So, I guess he can, say, take a bribe to appoint someone an ambassador but he can’t, I dunno, try to overthrow a legitimate election, as the former is an “official” act while the latter is not. We’ll see.

The most immediate implication is the next criminal Trump trial will be delayed until after the election, which was apparently SCOTUS’s goal all along, given the Supremes are now a fully partisan branch of government. Ironically, the same MAGA fools that have demanded immunity for Trump may well soon see their nonsensical efforts to go after President Joe Biden for “criminal acts” also shut down by this ruling.

The idea any court could rule a president is above the law in any situation was, for the first 237 years or so years of our nation, completely unthinkable. Welcome to a brave new world, brought to us by a radical activist Supreme Court, wherein a president can declare an act to be official, be it the arrest of a political opponent or altering the outcome of an election, and it will be “official” and above the law.

But I’m not going to talk about that…

Instead, I’d again like to draw your attention to the recent Out West Roundup on Colorado Politics. I really do enjoy learning about things going on out here in the western U.S. that might not otherwise make the front page.

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First, we learn the FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for the person or persons that started a massive New Mexico wildfire that killed two people and burned down more than 1,400 structures. Given this news comes almost exactly 12 years after my wife and I had to flee our own home due to the Waldo Canyon wildfire cresting the hill next door, the story really hit home. Though investigators were able to essentially locate where that fire started, no one was ever brought to justice for arson. Our fire, so to speak, took down hundreds of homes and killed two also. I hope those responsible in New Mexico are caught and properly punished.

Another interesting story reported in Out West deals with a recent court decision regarding the placement of new power lines in Arizona. Back when I was teaching political science at the Air Force Academy, I often reminded the cadets the key issues in politics almost always involve the challenge of rights in conflict. There are no court cases, say, about a person deciding he will attend a Methodist church, or that she will read a particular newspaper (for the young ones out there, a “newspaper” is a paper document that was printed daily and contained a summary of the day’s news). Those fundamental rights are not in question.

No, the issue comes when one person’s right is in conflict with a different right held by other people. Such is the case in Arizona, where a group of Native American tribes and other environmentalists tried to prevent the construction of a power line across some areas of a reservation deemed to be of significance to the native people who live nearby.

There is a certain irony in this case, in that the power line being debated was to bring wind-generated clean power from New Mexico to California. Normally, I would guess most environmentalists, myself included, would support the infrastructure needed to support wind power and other renewable energy sources.

This “clean” energy effort does show things are not always as black and white as the situation might suggest. Wind farms in New Mexico are a good idea, but you must find a way to get that power to where it is needed. Essentially, the same type of transmission lines needed to take the power from, say, a coal-powered site are still needed for wind farms.

Certainly, there can be discussions between reasonable people about where such transmission lines should be placed, and it is not unreasonable to consider cultural effects of any such construction, but ultimately, some type of transmission line will be needed and it will almost inevitably run across the land of someone who objects.

In this particular case, the ruling went against the native tribes for a technical reason, in that they filed their lawsuit against the transmission line years too late. Most laws have statutes of limitation that restrict filing legal claims after a certain period of time has passed, and that is usually a good thing. But here, it ties the hands of the native people involved.

The energy project is a big one, with $10 billion being invested. And given that the investment is in wind power, it has my support. But it is also not unreasonable to consider cultural impacts as well. Was there another less “offensive” route the power line could take? Perhaps, the article doesn’t mention that alternative. But though I have genuine sympathy for the native peoples involved and their sacred lands, we also need electrical power and will need it, in increasing quantities, for decades to come.

Wind and solar are, I believe, the “bridger” technologies that will help us get to a fully sustainable energy grid, but that future is still quite a way off. Until then, I’m afraid we must deal with issues such as power lines through tribal lands with open ears and hearts dedicated to finding the “least bad” way to work toward our national goals of energy independence and sustainable development.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.