Internal squabbles, budget worries and a failure to prioritize the wildfire threat have held Sacramento back in addressing the state's blazes, columnist George Skelton writes.
Firefighters and numerous studies credit intensive forest thinning projects with helping save communities like those recently threatened near Lake Tahoe in California and Nevada, but dissent from some environmental advocacy groups is roiling the scientific community. States in the U.S. West and the federal government each year thin thousands of…