Bogus bidder loses shot at global-warming defense  Published
November 16, 2009 8:12 pm  Courts » Judge rules Tim
DeChristopher's civil disobedience was a weak-hearted effort.  A
federal judge said Monday that Tim DeChristopher won't be
allowed to argue that global warming posed an imminent threat
that justified placing bogus bids to derail a Bureau of Land
Management oil and gas lease auction last year.  "The court
finds that DeChristopher's necessity defense fails because there
were reasonable, legal alternatives open to DeChristopher other
than his alleged criminal acts," U.S. District Judge Dee Benson
wrote in his nine-page ruling.  DeChristopher has not disputed
that he placed the bids, but had hoped to argue his actions were
justified to stave off climate change -- a line of argument that
prosecutors successfully sought to have excluded from the trial.
"The point of civil disobedience is it gives a society as
represented by 12 random jurors the opportunity to decide if the
way the law is functioning is