Welcome to WYO National Park

I don't want to unnecessarily pick on a Democratic U.S. senator during this sensitive time. We all have to pull together, Democrats large and democrats small.

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein on California said something yesterday that needs a response. It was during a debate about homeland security funding to the states. Under current law, each state gets 0.75 percent of homeland security funds. A new bill aims to reduce that to 0.45 percent, and senators from The Big Three -- California, Texas, and New York -- want to reduce that further, meanwhile lobbying to get more money for their ports, border crossings, bridges, skyscrapers, etc.

Then Feinstein said this: "Wyoming -- I don't want to pick on Wyoming. Love it. But as a state, it is like a national park."

I haven't yet looked up the original quote, but I will. The way the AP reported it, the esteemed senator sounds a bit like a Valley Girl. Like, Wyoming, you know, it's just one big park with bunnies and deer and wolves and stuff running around.

We do have two nice national parks and several fine national monuments. But interspersed among them are places where people live. Try to live, anyway, as we fend off attacks by rampaging wolves (four-legged variety) and assaults from Mother Nature. Just last week near Cheyenne, a mother of five was hanging out laundry during another blizzard-of-the-century (the third one this winter) and a pack of wolves snatched her and dragged her 400 miles through the snow back to Yellowstone, where she currently is running a daycare center for wolf pups and getting paid in elk haunches.

It's dangerous out here in National Park Land.

Talk about homeland insecurity.