Free Republic

Neighborhoods built around single-family housing are ecologically unsustainable in a world increasingly challenged by climate change.

U.S. Forest Service ranger told Montezuma County commissioners this week that local officials continue to overstep their authority in regard to the Dolores-Norwood Road. ... Earlier this year, Montezuma County officials installed a dozen “Share the Road” signs accommodating off-highway vehicle use on county roads, including the Dolores-Norwood Road. To clarify any confusion, Montezuma County attorney John Baxter told commissioners on Monday that people were allowed to operate off-highway vehicles on the roadway. “Not according to our travel management rules,” Padilla interrupted. “Your travel management rule is incorrect,” Baxter replied. Baxter continued, stating that federal officials had yet to provide...

Lawyers for a San Juan County commissioner convicted of his role in a protest ride in Recapture Canyon are asking a judge to disqualify himself, citing his ties to an environmental group. ... Judge Shelby is “close friends” with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance’s legal director, Stephen Bloch, who has advocated for a stiff sentence for Lyman. Judge Shelby disclosed the relationship ... Steve Bloch, on behalf of SUWA, Steve Bloch and his wife Kara are friends of mine and have been for a long, long time. I practiced with Kara at Snow Christensen starting in 1999. My wife and...

Liquor stores and restaurants across Craig are pulling Colorado craft beers off their shelves due to the beer companies’ financial support to WildEarth Guardians, the environmental group that put Colowyo Coal Mine at risk of being shut down. Stockmen’s Liquor pulled 12 brands of beer — including New Belgium Brewery — because they are listed as WildEarth Guardians supporters. “We pulled those beers because their support of WildEarth Guardians... who said their ultimate goal is to shut down coal mines,” said Lori Gillam, owner of Stockmen's. “Craig is a coal mine town.” WildEarth Guardians has a list of business supporters...

Though a relatively small organization with only 26 people on staff, WildEarth Guardians’ litigious nature has established the environmental advocacy group as a dominant voice in the national debate about environmental policy. From 2010 to present, Guardians have initiated a total of 152 cases in federal district courts and 55 in the Circuit Court of Appeals for a total of 207 cases. In 2010 alone they filed 61 claims — an average of about one per week. However, Guardians’ pervasiveness in the courts has not gone without criticism. In a 2012 analysis of WildEarth Guardians' legal activity, the conservative group...

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, late as usual, arrived in Rome Tuesday morning to pontificate at the Vatican about the dangers of climate change. Delayed by fog that forced his plane to land in Milan, de Blasio arrived 80 minutes after his allotted time to speak at the gathering of mayors invited by the Vatican. Once he was given time to speak, though, he waxed eloquent about “powerful corporate interests,” adding, “Is it not the definition of insanity to propagate corporate policies and consumer habits that hasten the destruction of the earth?”

DENVER (AP) - A man who was convicted of vandalism for tearing down a barricade on federal land in Montrose County has been sentenced to one month in prison. The Denver Post reports David Justice, a radio talk show host in Gunnison, was sentenced Tuesday for leading a group in vandalizing the Bureau of Land Management's Cushman Creek Trail on July 21, 2013. The group tore out barricades, signs, posts, fencing and cut back vegetation to protest the agency limiting the trail to two-wheel vehicles, horseback riding and hiking.

For years, the cities have been robbing the suburbs but they now have a scheme that will quickly end in a takeover of the suburbs by a leftist federal government. HUD announced enforcement of its new 377-page rule called the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule which will allow them to move people from poor crime-ridden areas into “wealthy” suburbs. It was announced by leftist Julian Castro Monday. The rule has force behind it. Federal monies will be withheld and lawsuits accusing residents of racism will be filed. Any town that takes federal funds will be transformed. It is not only...

A key part of President Obama’s legacy will be the fed’s unprecedented collection of sensitive data on Americans by race. The government is prying into our most personal information at the most local levels, all for the purpose of “racial and economic justice.” Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites. This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already...

Conservation Easements in Ohio and in Montana 17 Years Ago United Nations agencies working against the economic needs and wishes of U.S. citizens compiled a blueprint for achieving Sustainable Development called U.N. Agenda 21. This 40-chapter document (about 300 pages) addresses every facet of human life and how Sustainable Development should be implemented through local, state, and federal government. With its grant-making power (‘visioning grants’ and ‘challenge grants’) and conservation easements, the federal government promoted the Sustainable Development idea and policies to the state and local levels with the creation of an army of new community of Sustainable Development NGOs...

Gov. Brown Talks To KCAL9 About Bill That Would Mandate Reduction In Gas Usage LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — As Gov. Jerry Brown prepares to travel to Rome next week for an international climate conference, the debate over a bill aimed at reducing gas usage in California is heating up. Brown fully supports SB-350, which would mandate a 50-percent cutback in California’s gas usage in the next 15 years, arguing that it’s a prime factor in global warming. “We’ve got a serious problem here,” he told KCAL9 Political Reporter Dave Bryan via satellite. “Burning oil and gas and coal and diesel...

United Nations agencies working against the economic needs and wishes of U.S. citizens compiled a blueprint for achieving Sustainable Development called U.N. Agenda 21. This 40-chapter document (about 300 pages) addresses every facet of human life and how Sustainable Development should be implemented through local, state, and federal government. With its grant-making power (‘visioning grants’ and ‘challenge grants’) and conservation easements, the federal government promoted the Sustainable Development idea and policies to the state and local levels with the creation of an army of new community of Sustainable Development NGOs (non-government organizations) such as the American Planning Association, the Sustainable...

<p>DENVER — A spokesperson for the radical Santa Fe-based anti-coal group WildEarth Guardians showed no regard and no respect for the families and communities in Colorado who have everything to lose if the Colowyo mine is shut down.</p>

Hundreds of municipal councils, mayors worldwide are in league with the United Nations pushing the all-inclusive Agenda 21. Catholics: Don’t let your priest away with excusing Pope Francis. Pope Francis is now the UN's biggest useful idiot The Vatican (Lord help us!) has become the main working branch of the Agenda 21-pushing United Nations. Gathering mayors from around the globe to combat human trafficking and climate change, the cardinals may as well trade in their scarlet birettas for blue helmets. As the Christian world was reeling in shock yesterday over video proof that Planned Parenthood is making money selling aborted...

Most of the 1.5 million electricity consumers served by the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association probably don’t think about it. But when they wake up and flip on their light switches each morning, they can thank in significant part Tri-State’s Craig Station power plant in Moffat County, the second largest in Colorado. And that power plant can operate only thanks to hundreds of local workers digging in, not just figuratively at the plant itself, but literally at the two area surface mines — Colowyo and Trapper — that provide the plant’s coal. ... With 220 people working at Colowyo, some...

To my Catholic friends, while I am loathe to criticize that which they hold dear, there comes a time when silence is the wrong answer. When Pope Francis first surfaced, I thought he had the potential to be a great Pope. But with the potential of greatness, also comes the opportunity of infamy. Pope Francis is a Marxist and embodies many, many principles that I stand against, not only as a Constitutional Conservative, but as a Christian. This last week just solidified my uneasiness concerning this Pope. The Bolivian President, Evo Morales (who Trevor Loudon and I have long contended...

President Obama announced on Friday that he was designating new national monuments covering more than a million acres in California, Texas and Nevada, his latest use of executive power to preserve public land. The designations, made under the Antiquities Act of 1906, bring to 19 the number of national monuments that Mr. Obama has established or expanded. They cover more than 260 million acres of public lands and waters. Republicans have criticized Mr. Obama, who has turned to that law more than any other president, for his expansive use of his authority to preserve sites of ecological, historical or cultural...

President Obama announced on Friday that he was designating new national monuments covering more than a million acres in California, Texas and Nevada, his latest use of executive power to preserve public land. Mr. Obama designated Berryessa Snow Mountain in California; a paleontological site in Texas known as Waco Mammoth; and the Basin and Range in Nevada, which includes rock art dating back 4,000 years, theWhite House said in a statement. The designations, made under the Antiquities Act of 1906, bring to 19 the number of national monuments that Mr. Obama has established or expanded. They cover more than 260...

If adopted, ideas being considered by a Seattle housing committee would be devastating to the city’s appeal, KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson said. Get rid of single-family zoning in Seattle. That’s the big message in a draft report being worked on by Mayor Ed Murray’s housing committee, obtained by The Seattle Times. According to a draft letter, the city needs to move away from the idea that all families can live in their own home on a piece of land, the Times reports. “Today, as Seattle expands rapidly and experiences massive economic and population growth, we are held back by policies...

Attorneys general from thirteen states filed a lawsuit Monday challenging EPA's new rule defining the waters of the U.S. (WOTUS), asserting that the rule expands the scope of clean water regulations to lands that are dry much of the year and increases the federal government's authority over land use. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota. South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley, who joined in the lawsuit, noted that 35 states have filed comments in opposition to the rule and several other attorneys general are considering filing challenges. The EPA is overstepping...