Posted on 10/12/2011 4:45:15 PM PDT by WilliamIII
Washington, D.C. - A Priest Lake couple is headed for the U.S. Supreme Court over a land use dispute with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that should have never occurred, according to Members of the Idaho Congressional Delegation. Mike and Chantell Sackett were in Washington, D.C., today as part of a forum convened by Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and attended by Idaho Senator Mike Crapo, Idaho Senator Jim Risch and Idaho Representative Raúl Labrador.
(Excerpt) Read more at cdapress.com ...
I share your opinion. I’m surprised as well.
Over zealous control freaks have for several decades been plotting and agitating to exploit the federal Clean Waters Act and the powers of the Corps of Engineers to extend bureaucratic control over land use decisions affecting every acre of land in America. The definition of navigable waters has been expanded beyond the bounds of rationality by administrative rulings and opinions of compliant federal judges.
This could, if all goes well, go well beyond wetlands designations, though the SCOTUS is a distressingly weak reed to grasp when it comes to the project of restoring liberty to our republic.
What happens now is that the EPA, indeed governments at all levels deal very cavalierly with property rights, using “administrative” rule-making regulations pertaining to land use, which regulations have the force of law. The holy grail of some property rights folks has been to have the courts regard some of the most restrictive regulations as a “taking” under the fifth amendment. Doubtful that would happen in this case, but moving in that direction would be a huge step in the direction of liberty.
Which is why the usual suspects have their knickers in a knot over this case.
""Listening to the Sackett family tell their story today to Members of Congress was eye-opening," said Labrador. "Hearing their firsthand experience with a bullying federal agency that seems to be above the law is frustrating. I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will stand with them, and with the concept of due process enshrined in the Constitution to remind an overreaching bureaucracy that no agency, no matter how big, can run roughshod over the principles of law and order. I am optimistic that the Supreme Court will find that the EPA does not have the power to victimize private citizens as they have with the Sacketts."
EPA to property owner: ‘Your land is our land’ ($40 million in fines pending)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2783174/posts
The Sackett land.
Calling all Sackets: Galloway, Jubal, Logan, etc.
Go to the Pacific Legal Foundation site. They fight this crapola in the courts all the time.
We should have a law that forbids ANY regulatory agency of the federal or state government from creating new regulations, and only allow them to submit proposed regulations to Congress. Congress would then debate, and vote on each regulation. This would serve 2 purposes: 1)It would make elected Representatives responsible for each regulation. 2)It would keep them busy so they wouldn’t have time to do their usual skullduggery !
“Long on emotion and short of facts.”
Very typical of CDA press journalism.
“We should have a law that forbids ANY regulatory agency of the federal or state government from creating new regulations, and only allow them to submit proposed regulations to Congress. Congress would then debate, and vote on each regulation. This would serve 2 purposes: 1)It would make elected Representatives responsible for each regulation. 2)It would keep them busy so they wouldnt have time to do their usual skullduggery !”
Keep the State and Federal Government separate. The Federal Government has no right to tell our state Government what to do.
PS: if you want to deal with regulations your going to have to repeal existing law.
All a “regulation” is legally is the exclusive branch implementing the “broad discretionary powers” granted to it by an incompetent legislator, which can’t be bothered with all the nitty gritty details of governing in all the vast areas of life they have usurped power over.
If the feds could they would overthrow every state goverment and instead institute themselves as the absolute goverment over everyone and everything.
Instead they are simply focused on enslaving our States as administrative vessels of themselves.
The Constitution of 1787 would never have been ratified if the States then existing thought this is what would happen.
Bump!
You got that right. Can you imagine The Founders hearing about this or reading the Obamacare Bill and saying, "What the hell is this all about? Are you kidding?"
“”The Constitution of 1787 would never have been ratified if the States then existing thought this is what would happen.”
You got that right. Can you imagine The Founders hearing about this or reading the Obamacare Bill and saying, “What the hell is this all about? Are you kidding?””
That would be only one of thousands of complains. By far the most persuasive that would have had them running away would have been the 600 thousand dead in Lincoln’s war to force union.
No State would have joined a union they couldn’t get out of, it would have defeated the whole underlining point of the American Revolution.
Never-mind the numerous legal inventions sense that have effectually rendered the written Constitution but a piece of paper, and the Federal Government boundless in its power.
The shear number of abuses by the same Federal makes King George looks like a saint.
If it is a civil case, then the 7th Amendment stands (I assume the land is worth more than twenty dollars), if criminal than the 6th, and both of these amendments guarantee a trial.
Furthermore, the 5th Amendment prohibits the taking of property for public use without compensation; if they try to declare the land wetlands and kick the people off their own land, how is it not taking the land for the government’s (which is public) own use (which is to keep it fallow and undeveloped).
The reason it looks dry and rocky is that the Sacketts dumped tons of dirt and gravel on the site.
Which shows the weakness of some arguments I'm seeing posted here, i.e. that this site is not a wetland. People don't usually fill a site like that ... unless it's wet.
Btw I have no dog in this fight. It's just that there aren't enough facts in these articles to make a fair judgment about what's going on here.
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