The Sept/Oct 2004 issue of Sierra continues the green attack on the General Mining Law of 1872, as part of the Kedwards attack on the Bush environmental record. Under the headline "The Bush administration resurrects laws from the 1800s," the article complains that the Administration has complied with the Mining Law's provisions and turned over land claimed under it. Together with coauthors, I critique the "giveaway" claim in Homesteading Rock: A Defense of Free Access Under the General Mining Law of 1872, available here. The Sierra critique makes even less sense than the usual green attacks on privatization of federal lands - the Bush Administration has no choice but to privatize land when applicants comply with the the law's requirements. There is no "resurrection" of a law going on here, simply compliance with a law that has resisted concerted attacks, most recently former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's questionable use of "midnight" regulations to make an end run around Congress at the end of the Clinton-Gore administration (see my critique (with the same coauthors) of that in the summer 2003 issue of the Administrative Law Review.)