THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The Keystone XL pipeline struggle can be boiled down to those two simple points in the headline. And if one looks carefully, it is not hard to see that the "All-'Murican" Republican Party has fallen on the side of Canadian profits, a portion of which will flow to some of said Republicans. On the other hand those farmers in the affected ares are banding together to do what they can to save their family farms.

The pipeline project has become a cause célèbre, and not just among conservatives, who cite its potential to create jobs, or among environmentalists, who lament the risks they say it poses to groundwater. Several farmers like the Harringtons are also in a personal battle to protect land that in many cases has been passed down through generations.

This week TransCanada, the company proposing the pipeline, began eminent domain proceedings in Nebraska county courts, seeking to gain access to almost 90 properties where the owners have not agreed to terms. Many of those landowners have said they have no intention of allowing construction.

“Imagining all those big earthmovers coming in and digging this big scar down our heritage just feels wrong,” said Terri Harrington, the sister who owns a plot where the pipeline would run. She worries that a leak — like one that sent 50,000 gallons of oil into the Yellowstone River in Montana last week, contaminating drinking water — could endanger the land she loves.

The Harrington farm, divided among the sisters years ago but still in many ways managed as a single unit, sits amid the quiet, flat farmland of southeast Nebraska, miles from the nearest town. Corn and soybeans are the main crops here, and they grow in abundance largely because of the Ogallala Aquifer, the underground water source farmers depend on for irrigation.

As children, the Harringtons rose early to do their chores, and as teens, some of them caught a tan while driving the tractor wearing a swimsuit. Terri Harrington moved to Denver after college and became a lawyer, but the other sisters stayed in Nebraska and made their careers in agriculture...

Jenni Harrington said she had not been a political activist before the Keystone XL proposal, but after watching a video of oil sands extraction in Alberta, where the 1,179-mile Keystone XL route would start, she began speaking out.

“Having to be forced to have that run through our property just seemed like a really wrong thing, and we couldn’t stay quiet,” said Ms. Harrington, who has testified about the issue at local government meetings and has written postcards to President Obama expressing her opposition.

Though the vast majority of Nebraska landowners along the route have agreed to terms with TransCanada, the well-organized 12 percent who have not signed on make this state the emotional heart of anti-pipeline activism.

And now they are facing new state laws that make it easier for a foreign company to take American farms by eminent domain for their private profit. A gross misuse of a legal principle supposed to support the common good. And about what you can expect any time you elect Republicans.