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petuity is one of the very reasons they would do it.
• That's the right of today's landowner, if he or she chooses, to put land into conservation forever or for however many years are chosen. When that land is sold or passed down to heirs, there is full disclosure that the acres are in a conservation easement. No one is cheated out of understanding that up front.
• Legislation to restrict easements has been introduced, considered and defeated in the past. Bringing the issue up again seems to be tinkering with something that isn't broken.
• We favor leaving the laws on easements alone so that if landowners want to put their acres into conservation easements forever, they have that option. It's a flawed effort to try to restrict that right.
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AP News in Brief
Analysis: House Republicans look for political advantage despite poor poll ratings
• WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) -- Celebration doesn't seem to be high on the agenda as House Republicans, their majority renewed by the voters last fall, lay the groundwork for another challenge to President Barack Obama over federal spending.
• And no wonder.
• Their annual retreat had scarcely begun this past week when they were told that disapproval ratings for Republicans in Congress had risen to 64 percent in a poll completed a few days earlier. Only 24 percent of the public viewed them favorably in the survey, taken by David Winston, a respected Republican pollster.
• A previous sounding by the same pollster at the very end of 2012 wasn't much better.
• At the height of the controversy over the so-called fiscal cliff -- the most recent clash with Obama -- 49 percent of those surveyed said negotiations on the issue were difficult because the tea party-heavy GOP opposed the president out of political motives. While the public strongly favors reductions in spending, only 42 percent said Republicans were acting out of a desire to implement cuts and deal with a debt crisis -- the reason party officials and lawmakers themselves repeated tirelessly.
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