Free Republic

Three people sued the National Park Service earlier this month for its policy not to accept cash payments at a growing number of locations.Esther van der Werf of Ojai, California, Toby Stover of High Falls, New York, and Elizabeth Dasburg of Darien, Georgia, filed their lawsuit on March 6 after being prevented from paying in cash at various national parks, monuments and historic sites around the country. Citing a U.S. code that states U.S. currency is legal tender for all public charges, the lawsuit alleges that the park service’s cashless policy is in violation of federal law.The park service instituted...

Joe Biden's National Park Service under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will remove the statue of William Penn from the park erected in 1982 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of his founding of the colony of Pennsylvania. The park is on the site of his original home in Philadelphia. The park, located in Philadelphia near the Delaware River at Sansom and Second Streets, will be "rehabilitated" and that proposal will include an "expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia." The plan was "developed in consultations with the representatives of the indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware...

Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem received a letter Thursday from the National Park Service rejecting her request for Independence Day fireworks at Mount Rushmore. The Daily Caller first obtained the letter, which was sent by Michell Wheatley to Wanda Goodman, who works for the Governor at the South Dakota Department of Tourism. In the letter, Wheatley mentions that local tribes view the fireworks as an “adverse effect” on their traditional cultural views. “Fireworks continue to be viewed by multiple Tribes as an adverse effect on the traditional cultural landscape,” Wheatley wrote in the letter. “This view was expressed by...

(SF GATE) — San Francisco’s top political leaders piled on Tuesday in opposition to a right-wing group’s planned rally next week at Crissy Field, with Mayor Ed Lee expressing outrage that the National Park Service granted a permit for the event and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi questioning whether it had been approved “under guidance from the White House.” An organizer of the Aug. 26 rally rejected suggestions that it would be a gathering of white supremacists. And the local managers of the Presidio, a national park site, said the group’s politics made no difference because it had a constitutional...

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service purposefully raised hell on its official government Twitter account last Friday during the Inauguration Ceremony when the NPS re-tweeted a tweet belittling the newly elected President. The original tweet, made by Binyamin Appelbaum, a New York Times correspondent, read, “Compare the crowds: 2009 inauguration at left, 2017 inauguration at right” and featured a biased split image of Obama’s 2009 Inauguration vs. Trump’s 2017 Inauguration. Compare the crowds: 2009 inauguration at left, 2017 inauguration at right.#Inauguration pic.twitter.com/y7RhIR2nfC — Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) January 20, 2017

The U.S. Secret Service plans to raise the height of the White House security fence by 5 feet and add a new concrete foundation to reduce the risk of fence-jumpers, according to a copy of an agency report obtained by the News4 I-Team. The agency, along with the National Park Service, said it intends to begin building a “taller, stronger” fence to protect the White House grounds by 2018. Details of the plan were included in an audio recording of a briefing made by federal officials, which was released to the I-Team Wednesday. The same briefing is expected to be...

<p>The chief of the National Park Service knew his book project would be squelched by agency ethics officers, so he went ahead and wrote it anyway without bothering to ask for permission, investigators said Thursday in a report detailing a striking level of negligence.</p>

The 20th anniversary of a government program to bring gray wolves to Yellowstone Park marks two decades of debate over the Federal government’s role in forcing wolves on individuals, communities and states that may, or may not, want them. Sixty Canadian wolves planted in Yellowstone Park in 1995 and 1996 have turned into thousands of wolves roaming the surrounding states. For those who idolize wolves as an icon of the wilderness, this week marks the historic success of a government program to bring a species back to an area it once roamed prior to the settlement of human populations. But...

Thirty-two years ago, Ronald Reagan gave his first Inaugural Address. His words still illuminate. "We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around," he said. "And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth." For the past nearly two weeks, some of the temporary custodians of our government -- President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to name two -- have impressed upon the nation their scorn for this same founding principle. That, of course, means their scorn for Us, the People. Above all, in trying to force House Republicans...

The Greatest Generation came through again. Faced with a weak, childish and irresponsible tyranny, with some of them in wheelchairs, the old soldiers went over Obama’s Barrycades with the easy nonchalance of people who have been there before. It was a group of Mississippi gulf-coast World War II veterans, outraged by administration contempt on closing the World War II monument, who were flown up via the Honor Flight Network, a private organization that they say was “created solely to honor America's veterans for all their sacrifices. We transport our heroes to Washington, D.C. to visit and reflect at their...

Come again? There are two elements in the title of this post that don’t compute. One is the phrase “Islam's contributions to women's rights.” We’ll return to this shortly. The second is the proposition “National Park Service produces videos praising Islam's contributions.” How exactly is it within the purview of the National Park Service to praise — or even condemn — a religion? At least you can rest easy in the knowledge that your tax dollars are paying for these videos

On Sunday, a stunned audience sat in silence as Doris Kearns Goodwin turned the keynote address at the opening ceremony for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg into a political lecture focusing on women's and gay rights. Missing from much of her keynote: Gettysburg.

National Park Service spokesman Bill Line has lashed out at conservative critics of the trashing of the National Mall by attendees of the leftist One Nation Working Together rally held at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.The Park Service is part of the Interior Department which is headed up by Obama appointee, former U.S. Senator Ken Salazar (Dem.-CO).Line spoke to the Daily Caller, in an unprecedented protest of coverage by the Caller and other conservative news sites and blogs that criticized the One Nation Rally for the large amounts of trash left at the Lincoln Memorial, the World...

On January 9, 2009, the National Park Service was tasked to live by the same rules that the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service and the rest of the nation use. On January 10, 2009, the earth rotated. The sun rose. The Constitution still worked. Law-abiding citizens were still, well, law-abiding. Apparently, we all survived. Starting in the 1980s, a significant number of states passed laws which allowed law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms. Most federal land agencies acknowledged these rights and respected the 2nd Amendment. But the National Park Service (NPS) failed to keep pace with...

(English-language translation) “Stowaway rats” that enter the Port of Old San Juan through cruise ships and other vessels will not have to fear the old city’s cats if Commonwealth Veterinarian Carlos Carazo accomplishes his plan to eliminate the sterilized-cat colonies the “Save A Gato [Cat]” group is trapping and sterilizing to control the population. However, the National Park Service (NPS), the federal agency having custody over [Fort] El Morro, has determined that “it is necessary to keep a cat colony in order to prevent diseases caused by rats.” According to a letter Carazo sent NPS last week, “the Department of...

Pressured by the gun lobby and 51 US senators, the Interior Department proposes enhancing everyone's national park experience by letting people pack heat with a picnic. That's just what the nation's millions of park visitors don't need.

April 07, 2008 © 2008 WorldNetDaily A group of concerned citizens has been raising alarms about the Islamic elements planned for the Flight 93 Memorial near Shanksville, Pa., for years. And a member of Congress has demanded the National Park Service make changes in its plans. But there's been no substantive response, and now the activists say it's time for the American people to let officials know whether they want to pay for and have installed in the memorial a crescent that points to Mecca to make up a "mihrab," the foundational point for every Islamic mosque, a tower that...

Fairfax, Va. - At the request of the Bush Administration and 51 members of the United States Senate led by Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID), the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service prohibition of firearms on agency land will be revised in the following weeks. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is leading the effort to amend the existing policy regarding the carrying and transportation of firearms in National Parks and wildlife refuges. “Law-abiding citizens should not be prohibited from protecting themselves and their families while enjoying America’s National Parks and wildlife refuges,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA chief...

The National Park Service, a branch of the federal government, has joined the Veterans Administration in establishing anti-Christian bigotry as public policy. The NPS has censored “God” from a key display of America's Christian heritage in Washington. The reference is an engraving of "Laus Deo," which is Latin for "Praise be to God," on the east side of the 100-ounce aluminum cap atop of the Washington Monument. Since the actual inscription on the cap is unviewable atop the 555-foot stone column, the NPS created a replica which is on display in the white-colored obelisk of marble, granite and sandstone. Now...

The National Park Service has banished God from a key display of America's Christian heritage in Washington, and a California pastor who regularly leads teams of visitors to see markers of the nation's religious history wants Him restored. The reference is an engraving of "LAUS DEO," which is Latin for "Praise be to God," and is on the east side of the 100-ounce aluminum cap of the Washington Monument. Since the actual inscription on the cap, which on the other three sides provides other information, is unviewable atop the 555-foot stone column, the National Park Service has created a replica,...