"Yes, he'd been out there in July when you could step across the brooks. And people have been out there in winter in hard-packed snow. But with these spring conditions, it was soft snow, it was deep snow," said Fish and Game Maj. Tim Acerno.

Mason, 17, of Halifax, Mass., had planned to spend one day hiking 17 miles in the New Hampshire mountains but ended up lost after he hurt his ankle and decided to take a shortcut. The shortcut led him into rising water and deep snow caused by unseasonably warm weather.

Mason was negligent in continuing up the mountain with an injury and veering off the marked path, Acerno said. Negligence, he said, is based on judging what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

"When I twist my ankle, I turn around and come down. He kept going up," Acerno said.

"It was his negligence that led to him getting into that predicament," he said. "Once he was in that predicament, yes, that's what we praise him for - he used his Boy Scout skills, and that's why he's still alive."

Several states, including neighboring Maine and Vermont, have rescue repayment laws similar to New Hampshire, though others tend to be more lenient. In Washington state, a bill that would have created a reimbursement system with fines capped at $500 never even made it out of committee this year. In New Hampshire, however, lawmakers made it even easier to charge for rescues last year when they changed the law to allow fines for those who acted negligently instead of the harder to prove standard of recklessness.

New Hampshire officials have estimated that they could seek reimbursement in about 40 of the 140 or so rescues it typically handles each year. The money goes to the Fish and Game department's rescue fund. In most cases, hikers pay a few hundred dollars.

For the fiscal year that ended June 30, there were 131 missions that cost $175,320, Acerno said. He did not know how many of them resulted in fines.

Continuing O/T...

I am not sure what the answer is and don't pretend to know. But today I observed 2 boys about 12-14 years of age riding ATM vehicles through a residential neighborhood, loaded with tots playing in the streets. The speed limit is 25 mph. They were in excess of the speed limit. It is a common occurrence. A catastrophe waiting to happen. No license plates, It seems to me their parents are responsible. What happens if their ATM vehicle hits a toddler?

I suspect their parents think they are in the woodlands.

'rbionaz', in his two posts, Sunday, July 19, 2009 05:11 AM, and Sunday, July 19, 2009 05:28 AM, inadvertently provide more facts supporting my position regarding Saddam and WMD.

What most left-wing loonies ignore is the fact that Iraq did have and did use WMD. Iraq used them against in its 1980-1988 war against Iran. Ask Iran. Iraq used them against the Kurds. Ask the Kurds. Anyone denying this fact has political motives.

(I find it hilarious that lefties say Iraq never had any WMD and yet insist that Reagan DID sell WMD to Iraq! Let's see proof that war-ready WMD were sold.)

In 1998, the United Nation inspectors were kicked out of Iraq. But even then, the U.N. said that many tons of war chemical and nerve agents were not accounted for. Many hundreds of weapons that contained WMD could not be accounted for. In the five years from 1998 to 2003, no one know what was happening inside Iraq. It was Iraq's responsibility to prove its innocence; they agreed to this in the 1991 armistice!!

We need to remember that in 2003, the following nations said Iraq had WMD: Russia, France, Jordan, Egypt, Great Britain, Turkey, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc. Some of these countries sold much material to Iraq.

That was the main problem with Iraq in 2003. No one KNEW what Iraq was doing or planning. We DID know Iraq attacked Iran, and attacked Kuwait, and fired many missiles at the end of the 1991 war into Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Quatar, etc. We DID know about the missing WMD. We knew the same people were in charge. We knew they violated the 1991 armistice, and supported terrorism. Saddam continued to kill many hundreds of thousands of his citizens.

Here is a quote from rbionaz: =="Further, it has been revealed that the CIA received information from Naji Sabri, Saddam Hussein’s last foreign minister who was paid by French intelligence to provide information about Iraq’s weapon programs. Sabri indicated that Hussein had nuclear ambitions but no active nuclear program. Sabri also reported that Hussein had a biological weapons research program, and some stocks of chemical weapons not under military control."== Ah ha!

Another rbionaz qutoe: ==": “After UNSCOM inspectors left Iraq in December 1998, U.S.-led forces bombed many sites believed to be chemical weapon plants. After the bombing, reports emerged that Iraq had REBUILT many of those sites, and that the sites APPEARED to be operating. It was inferred that Iraq had resumed its production of chemical weapons, and was adding new elements to the portion of its previous stockpile that had never been accounted for. No evidence confirming these inferences has emerged to date.”

The problem here is that Iraq DID REBUILD those plants. Iraq refused to be inspected. After all that Iraq had done, how could Iraq be trusted? After the 2003 war, we DID find artillery shells loaded with WMD; shells that Iraq said DID NOT exist! Iraq did have over 500 TONS of yellow cake uranium.

It is too bad that Bush hating lefties do not have Saddam to worship.

As Frank Rich put it so well, in the fall of 2002 GWB was warning about "how Saddam needed only a softball-size helping of uranium to wreak Armageddon on America." The mushroom cloud. How did the administration arrive at this conclusion? With very dubious evidence.

What most left-wing loonies ignore is the fact that Iraq did have and did use WMD. Iraq used them against in its 1980-1988 war against Iran. Ask Iran. Iraq used them against the Kurds. Ask the Kurds. Anyone denying this fact has political motives.

(I find it hilarious that lefties say Iraq never had any WMD and yet insist that Reagan DID sell WMD to Iraq! Let's see proof that war-ready WMD were sold.)

You're making shit up and having a conversation with an imaginary foe, asshole.