Free Republic

Long before Cliven Bundy faced down federal agents in his dispute with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights, fellow Nevada rancher Raymond Yowell, an 84-year-old former Shoshone chief, watched as the BLM seized his herd. Adding to that, since 2008 they've taken his money as well -- in the form of a piece of his Social Security checks. Yowell's 132 head of cattle had grazed for decades on the South Fork Western Shoshone Indian Reservation in northeastern Nevada until 2002, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) -- the same agency at odds with Bundy -- seized them....

landed in the Facebook gulag when I tried to post our daily Bible verse. ... Now before you call up the preacher had put me on the church prayer list – let me assure the posting was neither unseemly nor ungentlemanly. Nevertheless, it caused great consternation and angst among Facebook’s left-wing censors. Following is the egregious text: “Rancher Bundy should’ve told the feds that those were Mexican cows – who came across the border illegally to seek better grazing opportunities. It was an act of love.” Thousands of you posted comments and many more shared that message. It’s now gone...

Senator Harry Reid told reporters the Bundy Ranch dispute is not over. “Something will happen.” ... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says “something is going to happen” to get Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy to stop letting his cattle graze on federal land. “It’s obvious that you can’t just walk away from this. And we can speculate all we want to speculate to what’s going to happen next,” Reid told KSNV-TV. “But I don’t think it’s going to be tomorrow that something is going to happen, but something will happen. We are a nation of laws, not of men and women.”...

The Arizona Senate has approved a bill that would allow cities and towns to enter restricted federal land without permission in emergencies. ... Republican bill sponsor Rep. Kelly Townsend of Mesa says she was inspired by the battle between the city of Tombstone and the federal government over access to repair its water supply system in the Coronado National Forest. She says local authorities should have the right to go in where needed without being granted approval first in cases of emergency.

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell announced Monday that the state will sue the Obama administration to allow construction of a 10-mile road to give residents of a remote fishing village access to emergency medical flights at an all-weather airport. Residents of King Cove, Alaska, were outraged in December when Interior Secretary Sally Jewell nixed a plan for a land swap that would have allowed the building of an unpaved road between the small town and the airport at Cold Bay. ... Since Ms. Jewell rejected the land swap, which would have given the refuge 43,093 acres of state land and 13,300...

The rural Nevada showdown between federal government officials and militia members protecting rancher Cliven Bundy has evolved into a battle of government “tyranny,” with many newly arriving militiamen rolling in to draw a line in the dirt about 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas. ... “This is a better education than being in school! I’m glad I brought you. I’m a good mom,” Ilona Ence, a 49-year-old mother from St. George and Bundy relative who brought her four teenage children to the ranch, told the Las Vegas Sun. “They’re learning about the Constitution.” Ence’s teenage sons posted up a sign...

By now you’re familiar with the standoff between the federal government, i.e. the Bureau of Land Management, and 67 year-old rancher Cliven Bundy. .. The BLM asserts their power through the expressed desire to protect the endangered desert tortoise, a tortoise so “endangered” that their population can no longer be contained by the refuge constructed for them so the government is closing it and euthanizing over a thousand tortoises. The tortoises, the excuse that BLM has given for violating claims to easements and running all but one lone rancher out of southern Nevada, is doing fine. In fact, the tortoise...

They’re almost like a hired gun’. Armed Rangers were brought in from out of state by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to assist in security surrounding the Bundy Ranch, according to the family. A heated confrontation on Wednesday resulted in Cliven Bundy’s son Ammon being tasered by BLM officials and a 57-year-old protester being shoved to the ground. Stetsy Bundy Cox, Cliven’s daughter, told the Washington Free Beacon that some of the rangers had Oregon and California license plates. “You know, some of these guys don’t even know why they’re here,” she said. “A few people have talked to...

WASHINGTON — Colorado officials warned a House committee Tuesday that a lack of transparency in the Obama administration’s efforts to protect the sage grouse as an endangered species threatens the scientific validity of the process. Rob Roy Ramey of Nederland, an independent biologist whose career has focused on species protection, told the House Natural Resources Committee that the process has been closed to the scientific community and that federal officials refuse to share certain data being used to make a final determination. “It can be like pulling teeth to try and obtain that data,” Ramey said. “The (information) is shared...

A decision pending with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could have huge ramifications for rural Kansans living in the western third of the state. In limbo is the question of whether the lesser prairie-chicken should be listed as a “threatened” species under provisions of the 1973 Endangered Species Act. The species inhabits land spanning Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. ... Kansas, in cooperation with the four other states affected by the issue — a coalition known as the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies — has attempted to stave-off such a decision with the development of...

Will Obama use two small birds to limit oil drilling in the West? Almost half the land west of the Mississippi belongs to the federal government, including 48% of California, 62% of Idaho and 81% of Nevada. No surprise that the Obama Administration wants to control more. But the result could be to suppress the country's booming oil and gas development. In partnership with green activists, the Department of Interior may attempt one of the largest federal land grabs in modern times, using a familiar vehicle—the Endangered Species Act (ESA). A record 757 new species could be added to the...

Wyoming has spent $7.9 million on sage grouse conservation since 2005. That was the finding of a new report by the Western Governors Association, which inventoried the efforts of 11 western states to protect the bird and its habitat. The report comes in advance of an expected 2015 ruling by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over whether to add the species to the endangered species list. The sage grouse's listing could curtail energy development throughout the West. ... Utah, by comparison, spent $8.8 million on improvements to sage grouse habitat in 2013 alone.

Federal designation of the Greater Sage-grouse as threatened or endangered could result in the withdrawal of over 17 million acres from mining ... Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service of making an unprecedented attempted to limit multiple use on public lands through use of “the Spotted Owl on Steroids”—the Greater Sage-Grouse. ... BLM and Forest Service’s real purpose “is NOT sage-grouse conservation.” “Rather, the so-called conservation measures are designed to: Find another way to implement the draconian land use restrictions in the aborted Wild Lands Policy and Secretarial Order 3310; Dramatically reduce and even prevent mining, energy...

The sage grouse's potential addition to the endangered species list is a problem of epic economic consequences to states in the West, with Herbert explaining that the impact in lost economic development in Utah tops $41 billion for the oil and gas industry alone. "The negative impacts are not acceptable to me and should not be acceptable to anyone here," Herbert told the crowd. The event at the Utah Department of Natural Resources' auditorium is actually a precursor to a national summit that will be held in Salt Lake City this fall. ... a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision...

Federal wildlife officials are setting aside nearly 1,200 square miles in the American Southwest as critical habitat for the jaguar... Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties in Arizona and Hidalgo County in New Mexico ... The critical designation means anyone developing federal land in the area needs to consult the service to ensure it will not hurt the jaguar’s habitat

Editorial cartoons often aren't pretty, to paraphrase Steve Martin's observation about the perils of comedy. But one found in the Opinion section of today's New York Times is downright ugly. The cartoon, alluding to this year's brutal winter, suggests U.S. Department of Commerce "Strategies for Dealing With the 2014 Icicle Surplus." Among them are using icicles as "locally sourced hydration devices," "temporary doorsteps," and "brainteasers for dogs." Then comes a suggestion that one immediately looks at again, in disgust and disbelief -- icicles can also be used as "self-destructing sabers for dispatching climate-change deniers." (Entire cartoon shown after the jump)...

I was perusing through the news and saw many articles on the horrific destruction the storm in the Philippines had wrought. As I reading through the stories at Google, yahoo News, the term 'Climate Negotiator' kept on appearing in article after article. Well, I had no idea what a Climate Negotiator is, does. I mean, trying to negotiate with the climate seems a sissyphean task if not the most mentally stable thing to attempt. I tried searching Google, Yahoo for some precise meaning, job description for a Climate Negotiator but information was far and few between. It seems it is...

Two Texans that police say were caught trying to free mink from a Sioux City mink farm will faces multiple charges at a court hearing this week, but attempted burglary is not currently one of them. Authorities say Kellie Rose Marshall, 21, and Victor Vanorden, 24, were arrested early Monday morning while trying to free mink from a mink ranch near Stone State Park. Marshall and Vanorden, both of Austin, were arrested on charges that included a felony count of attempted second-degree burglary. However, court documents state those charges were not approved "at this time" at an initial appearance on...

MOSCOW (AFP) -- Greenpeace said Wednesday that Russia had denied its ship access to Russian Arctic waters to hide the extent of its lucrative energy exploration work in the fragile ecosystem. The global environmental lobby group said its Arctic Sunrise icebreaker intended to enter the Northern Sea Route to protest at work being conducted jointly by Russia's Rosneft energy giant and its US partner ExxonMobil. Arctic Sunrise confronted the Rosneft-contracted Akademik Lazarev last week near the Barents Sea as the Russian vessel was performing powerful seismic sounding tests. The environmental watchdog said Russian authorities had refused it permission to enter...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An animal welfare group intent on sending a message in support of veganism hid until closing time then poured red paint over the Iowa State Fair's butter cow. But the damage was quickly scraped away and visitors never knew the iconic sculpture had been damaged. Iowans for Animal Liberation claimed responsibility for the attack in a news release emailed Sunday night, saying members hid in the cavernous Agriculture Building on Saturday night and emerged after the fair closed for the day. They then broke into a refrigerated room where the sculpted cow and other butter...