Free Republic

A Kentucky college student has hired a lawyer after she was escorted out of a mall by security on Sunday because her dress was deemed too short, MyFOXBoston reports. Kymberly Clem, a 20-year-old student at Eastern Kentucky University, wore the dress Sunday after purchasing it from the mall in Richmond the previous day, the Richmond Register reported Tuesday. After just a few minutes inside of the mall, a security guard approached her and expressed concerns over the length of the garment. According to MyFOXBoston, the guard informed her that several female patrons had complained that she was disrupting their shopping...

The staff of Congressman Steve Cohen called police to his home today after an argument with an Armenian-American activist in town from California ended with Cohen physically pushing him out the side door. Peter Musurlian, a documentary producer for Globalist Films in Glendale, Calif., followed a reporter from The Commercial Appeal into Cohen’s Overton Park home, where the Congressman had invited local media to respond to a commercial from Nikki Tinker, his 9th Congressional District opponent in Thursday’s Democratic Primary, that Cohen called “more mudslinging.” When members of Cohen’s staff realized who the cameraman was – Cohen said Musurlian followed...

Peter Tubic ignored a $50 parking fine in 2004, and on Monday, it cost him his $245,000 house. In what city officials believe is the first case of its kind, the city foreclosed on Tubic's house on W. Verona Court after repeated attempts to collect the fine - which over the years had escalated to $2,600 - had failed. "Our goal isn't to acquire parcels," said Jim Klajbor, special deputy city treasurer. "Our goal is to just collect taxes. . . . It is only as a last resort that we would pursue . . . foreclosure." Milwaukee County Circuit...

THE SAD ROAD TO SOCLIALISM What happens When Private Property is No Longer a Right by John Loeffler Contributor, Steel on Steel Radio Program Co-host, Financial Sense Newshour July 18, 2008 “But if the government undertakes to control and to raise wages, and cannot do it; if the government undertakes to care for all who may be in want, and cannot do it; if the government undertakes to support all unemployed workers, and cannot do it; if the government undertakes to lend interest-free money to all borrowers, and cannot do it; if .... ‘The state considers that its purpose is...

Cuban President Raul Castro is giving over more state-owned land to private owners. http://youtube.com/watch?v=4xLR4g7wcN8

Court Nixes Private Club Smoking 06/05/2008 06:19:25 COLUMBUS, Ohio -- No smoking is still the rule for Ohio's private clubs. The vote was 4-3 in the State Supreme Court. That means there will be no reversal of an Appeals Court decision that blocks new rules that would exempt private clubs from the state's indoor smoking ban. Anti-smoking groups are pleased and so is the Ohio Licensed Beverage Association, which was afraid such an exemption would give private clubs an unfair advantage over public bars and restaurants.

Greenwich, CT (AHN) - A controversial plan for a 54,000-square-foot mansion proposed by Russian mogul Valery Kogan was rejected by officials after receiving a flurry of complaints from neighbors saying the house would be too large. The permit was denied Tuesday by the Greenwich Planning and Zoning Commission, halting construction of what would have been the largest single-family residence since the city began reviews back in 2001. Reports revealed that in order to construct the mansion, Kogan and his wife Olga were planning on tearing down a 20,000-square-foot home currently erected on the area they purchased in 2005. Commissioners reportedly...

Propositions that are on the June 3, 2008 Statewide Direct Primary Election Ballot Initiative Constitutional AmendmentProposition 98 1248. Government Acquisition, Regulation of Private Property. Constitutional Amendment. Proponents: Doug Mosebar, Jon Coupal and Jim Nielsen Bars state and local governments from condemning or damaging private property for private uses. Prohibits rent control and similar measures. Prohibits deference to government in property rights cases. Defines “just compensation.” Requires an award of attorneys fees and costs if a property owner obtains a judgment for more than the amount offered by the government. Requires government to offer to original owner of condemned property...

Says use of response team appropriate because of father's confrontational history GLENWOOD SPRINGS - Use of the Garfield County All Hazards Response Team (AHRT) was appropriate to seize Tom Shiflett's son for medical care because of Shiflett's confrontational history and repeated lack of cooperation, according to Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario. "I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think we would have been able to accomplish it with just the deputies we had on duty," Vallario said. "The end result of what happened was based on (Shiflett's) decisions, not mine." The team used force to break into Shiflett's home...

A businessman cited for displaying a gospel message on his own property is suing the town of Gouverneur, New York, accusing it of violating the U.S. Constitution's protection of free speech and private property rights.

PRAY - For rancher Randy Petrich, the removal of gray wolves from the endangered-species list - a move that would open up the animals to hunting in the Northern Rockies for the first time in decades - couldn't come soon enough. Petrich has seen fresh wolf tracks almost every morning this fall - close enough to threaten his cattle. "I believe that any wolf on any given night, if there happens to be a calf there, they will kill it," ... Just 12 years since the wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park ... federal officials say the sharp rise...

"[T]he right of acquiring and possessing property and having it protected, is one of the natural inherent and unalienable rights of man."[1] A few years ago, one noted political reformer applauded the "demise of property as a formal constitutional limit." A new view of the right to property had, in this author's opinion, begun to replace the old constitutional formalism of the inviolable and sacred right to property. Indeed, this new conception of property "requires incursions on traditional property rights. What once defined the limits to governmental power becomes the prime subject of affirmative governmental action."[2] The object or purpose...

This past week, Congress had an opportunity to permanently repeal the death tax by amending the Tax Collection Responsibility Act of 2007 to include language that ends the estate tax forever. This would have been a good provision in an overall bad bill. 212 Democrats were enough to keep this spectre looming on the horizon if the Bush tax cuts are not renewed in 2011. The bill passed without this silver lining and now we face big in increases taxes and penalties in the next five years. The underlying attitude behind this bill, and the estate tax, is what I...

The decision today is the latest in the lengthy case. The American Civil Liberties Union originally filed a lawsuit in 2001 on behalf of a man who said its location on federal land violated the U.S. Constitution. The original cross was erected in 1934 by a prospector to honor World War I veterans. The latest version was installed in the mid-1990s. President Bill Clinton authorized the Mojave National Preserve in 1996, including the land where the cross sits. The cross has been covered, first by a tarp and now by a box, as the case makes its way through the...

Man gets jail time for home improvement projects New, 5:30 p.m.: Rolling Hills Estates resident is sentenced to six months in jail for building a patio, fence and more without permits. By Megan Bagdonas STAFF WRITER He built a fence, a retaining wall, a patio and a few cement columns to decorate his driveway and now Francisco Linares is going to jail for it. Linares had been given six months to get final permits for the offending structures or remove them as part of a plea agreement reached in January, when he pleaded no contest to five misdemeanor counts of...

Anguished tales of property taken by state Tom Chorneau, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau Monday, July 2, 2007 (07-02) 04:00 PDT Sacramento -- Years ago, Carla Ruff stored her grandmother's jewelry and a file of personal documents in a safe-deposit box at her bank in San Francisco's Noe Valley, thinking they would always be there when she wanted them. Not so. Without giving her notice or acting on evidence that she'd forgotten about her cache, the bank's staff, under the auspice of the state, determined the contents of her box to be unclaimed property. In July 1997, bank records show, the pearl...

DMV probe keeps bikers off road Orange County kit bike owners aren't sure when they'll be able to ride or sell hand-built vehicles. Friday, June 22, 2007 BRIAN JOSEPH SACRAMENTO -- Dain Gingerelli says he locked up a sure sale of his motorcycle in April – about $10,000 for a kit bike he built himself. But two months later, the bike is gathering dust in his garage and the cash is in someone else's pocket. What happened? The state Department of Motor Vehicles, Gingerelli said, blocked the sale. It turns out Gingerelli used a kit made by Custom Chrome Inc....

Gov. Rick Perry’s veto this week of an eminent domain bill designed to protect landowners left a lot of Texans scratching their heads, and you can lump us in with those feeling dumbfounded. Perry — who was among those making political hay when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that cities can seize homes under eminent domain for use by private developers and made the issue an emergency item in a special session that same year — had a chance to back his tough talk and posturing on property rights with action. But when push came to powerful shove...

LUBBOCK, Texas — One Central Texas farmer said Monday he was "dumbfounded" by Gov. Rick Perry's veto of an eminent domain bill designed to protect landowners when the state wants to take their property. Robert Fleming is not alone in an area worried about the massive Trans Texas Corridor proposal. The planned route cuts through Fleming's Bell County farms. He's bewildered by Perry's veto. "We were so close to getting something done," Fleming said. "We've worked hard trying to get private property rights." Perry vetoed the bill, and 48 others, Friday. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kelo...

A Chinese appeals court has upheld a ban on a company from selling land on the moon, ruling that "celestial bodies" could not be anyone's property, state media said. Lunar Embassy to China, a Beijing-based company that sold plots of lunar land to individuals, sued the Beijing Administration of Industry and Commerce which revoked its business licence and fined it 50,000 yuan ($NZ9,200) in October 2005. Haidian District People's Court ruled against the company in November 2005. On Friday, the Beijing First Intermediate People's Court upheld that decision, Xinhua news agency said. The court cited an international treaty that China...

We're Not Taking It ANYMORE! As of today, February 21st.......just 8 months after the ban went into effect, we are smoking again! For those who have been to the Senate Committee meetings in Denver, and outraged over the lack of respect & concern for your business, we NEED you to join the protest. Enough is Enough! We have started to smoke again, and invite you to put those ashtrays out in your bars. We have tried everything else, and these legislators do not give a damn about your loss of business, or you having to close your doors. For those...

HARRISBURG - For 10 years, Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf has fought for legislation to make Pennsylvania smoke-free. Yesterday, just two weeks into a new session, his smoking-ban bill vaulted out of committee, carried by a tide of antismoking sentiment. "Public opinion," Greenleaf (R., Montgomery) said when asked what had cleared the way. "Support for it has increased." Add the fact that the Pennsylvania Restaurant Association - which had long objected to smoking bans - signed on last year, saying it was mindful rising health concerns for customers and employees. Greenleaf said support for smoking bans was running between 65 percent...

By Vin Suprynowicz For years, Garry Watson, 49, of little Bunker, Mo., (population 390) had been squabbling with town officials over the sewage line easement which ran across his property to the adjoining, town-operated sewage lagoon. Residents say officials grew dissatisfied with their existing easement, and announced they were going to excavate a new sewer line across the landowner's property. Capt. Chris Ricks of the Missouri Highway Patrol reports Watson's wife, Linda, was served with "easement right-of-way papers" on Sept. 6. She gave the papers to Watson when he got home at 5 a.m. the next morning from his job...

If there's a heaven, it will have a smoking section. And if there's a God, it will be located at Club Habana in Charleston, S.C. Reclining in an overstuffed chair, a Padron Anniversario Maduro in one hand, a perfectly blended martini in the other, a view of Meeting and Market on a summer's evening below ... who would want to disturb such an idyllic scene? Politicians, of course. You had to ask? The same Charleston City Councilmembers who banned "inappropriate language" from their public meetings (after a black activist dropped the "N-bomb") has now voted to strip private property owners...

GOVERNMENT BANS The New York Post recently compiled a list of the things that the New York City Council tried to ban — not all successfully — just in 2006 alone. The list: pit bulls; trans fats; aluminum baseball bats; the purchase of tobacco by 18- to 20-year-olds; foie gras; pedicabs in parks; new fast-food restaurants (but only in poor neighborhoods); lobbyists from the floor of council chambers; lobbying city agencies after working at the same agency; vehicles in Central and Prospect parks; cell phones in upscale restaurants; the sale of pork products made in a processing plant in Tar...

Next big test of power to seize property? The US Supreme Court will examine whether a private company can demand payment in exchange for not seizing private property. By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor Bart Didden wanted to put a CVS pharmacy on his property in Port Chester, N.Y. He even obtained approvals from the local planning board. But because a portion of the CVS site was in a blighted redevelopment zone, Mr. Didden was told that planning board approval wasn't enough. He'd have to reach an understanding with a private company that had been...

The 15-story towers and crackling cables that are planned to cut across the Northern Virginia countryside are just red lines on a map, a paper illustration of what could come. But for Cameron Eaton, who learned shortly after Thanksgiving that one of the proposed routes for a new high-voltage power line slices across her Fauquier County property, they have already brought the specter of financial ruin. She bought her 100-acre Delaplane farm last year, when it was an overgrown slice of land anchored by a rundown old farmhouse just off Interstate 66. She plowed all her savings into it. To...

NORTH VANCOUVER - A North Vancouver couple has complained to District of North Vancouver council and said they will sue the North Vancouver RCMP after officers responded to their hang-up 911 call by breaking down their door, making a forceful arrest and jailing them overnight when the couple refused to allow a house-search. The RCMP said, however, that in this case, federal policy commands a home-check, designed to ensure public safety. North Vancouver resident Marget Lieder said that in the early evening of Oct. 25 she was having wine with her partner and a guest when she misdialed the emergency...

When the Pilgrims landed in 1620, they established a system of communal property. Within three years they had scrapped it, instituting private property instead. Hoover media fellow Tom Bethell tells the story. There are three configurations of property rights: state, communal, and private property. Within a family, many goods are in effect communally owned. But when the number of communal members exceeds normal family size, as happens in tribes and communes, serious and intractable problems arise.[...]Thirty years old when he arrived in the New World, Bradford became the second governor of Plymouth ... and the most important figure in the...

Days ago, in a proposal unnoticed by the media, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced the largest land grab since President Clinton designated massive national monuments across the West. When Clinton decreed 1.9 million acres of federal land in Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to kill a vast underground coal mine that would have employed 1,000 locals in the most economically depressed region of southern Utah, generated $20 million in annual revenue, and produced environmentally - compliant coal for generating electricity, there were protests across the West. When the Bush Administration published its plans, there was...

Over the past decade, the expression public-private partnership has crept into our publiclexicon. What is a public-private partnership? What purposes were they supposedlycreated to serve? What, on the other hand, is free enterprise? Are the two compatible?In answering these questions we shall see that although advocates of public-privatepartnerships frequently speak of economic development, public-private partnershipsreally amount to economic control—they are just one of the key components of thecollectivist edifice being built up around the idea of sustainable development. Within theeconomic arena of sustainable development is the emergence of what we might call softfascism: a system that fits the dictionary definitions...

Richard Beardall is getting exactly what he wanted: a trespassing ticket from federal land managers for ignoring the rules and riding his ATV on a closed road in the San Rafael Swell. Beardall, three other ATV riders and a Jeep, moved a 10-foot barricade near an old uranium mine and made a half-mile roundtrip along the access road to the Muddy River on Saturday. The Bureau of Land Management closed the area to recreational vehicles in 1993 due to riparian damage, said Price, Utah-based BLM manager Roger Bankert. Beardall, president of the Americans with Disabilities Access Alliance knows that, but...

California's landlords, who face a possible return of two-month notices to move out long-term tenants, have launched a postcard campaign urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to veto the idea. Landlords across Sacramento and the state say a one-month notice is enough when asking tenants to leave for no cause. It's used to evict problem renters and to move out tenants for condo conversions and new ownership. "The 30-days notice is one of the few remaining tools that owners and managers have to remove problem residents such as drug dealers and gang members," said Cory Koehler, deputy director of the Rental Housing...

PHOENIX — A judge refused Friday to block Arizonans from voting on a measure designed to restrict the ability of government to take private property. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Paul McMurdie conceded that a portion of Proposition 207 may be constitutionally flawed. That's because it does not provide funds for the state to use if any new land-use regulations diminish the value of someone's property. McMurdie said the rest of the measure appears, at least on its face, to be legal. He said voters should not be precluded from approving those provisions because one part of the initiative could...

SALMON, Idaho — In a state where pine and fir outnumber residents, the loss of several privately owned spruces should hardly excite attention, let alone spark a crusade emblematic of a new trend to protect trees on private land. But in the ski community of Ketchum, Idaho, a seasonal home for the rich and famous and the last resting place of writer Ernest Hemingway, a developer's plan to cut down three towering conifers on his property spurred the city to issue an emergency order last month outlawing the felling of mature trees. Resident Lara Babalis wanted additional assurances. She spent...

In this article, the author makes "possibly desperate, and most definitely futile" attempt to save Internet gambling. He calls Internet gaming an "inalienable freedom" protected by the US Constitution. He also claims that regulation is the best way to keep tabs on minors, money launderers and compulsive gamblers. A good little read.

In this article, the ITSSD examines whether the Western Governors' Clean Energy Plan, which is intended to terminate the phantom menace known as global warming, is actually another back-door’ environmental regulatory ‘takings’ regime that will benefit some at the expense of others.

NEW LONDONA YEAR AGO last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that my home can be taken by the government and handed over to another private party for its private use. The only requirements are that the city must have some plan in place that says another owner can create more jobs and pay more taxes than I do.There went my property rights -- and yours, too.Hardly a day goes by as I work in my garden or have a cup of coffee in my kitchen, both of which overlook the Thames River and Long Island Sound, that I don't...

Executive Order: Protecting the Property Rights of the American People By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to strengthen the rights of the American people against the taking of their private property, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to protect the rights of Americans to their private property, including by limiting the taking of private property by the Federal Government to situations in which the taking is for public use, with just compensation, and for...

TVC ASKS PATAKI TO STOP HARASSMENT June 21, 2006 - Washington, DC – The Traditional Values Coalition asked New York Governor George Pataki to rein in a state agency which is threatening legal action against an Accord, New York skating rink because it plays Christian music during a “Christian Music Skate” party. The New York Division of Human Rights threatened Len and Terry Bernardo, owners of the Skate Time 209 rink in Accord, with an investigation because the rink plays Christian music during certain hours. The agency also threatened to charge a local newspaper which advertised the event for “aiding...

... There are said to be 11 million illegals in the country. .... Why are they here at all? Most of them come across the Mexican border. Now the truth is that the great majority of people, Mexicans included, would rather live and work in their native country. It is preferable to trekking across deserts, risking death by exposure and thirst, climbing fences and fording rivers in exchange for part-time labor in fields and sculleries in a land where they don't even speak the language. So why don't they stay in Mexico and work there? Because they can't find jobs,...

A Chevy Chase couple has been ordered by the county to demolish their partially renovated home — or to move it 1.7 feet back from the property line. Marc and Marianne Duffy believe they are victims of a backlash against oversized homes being squeezed into small lots in older neighborhoods. They say they are being punished for a county agency’s mistakes. Neighbors who opposed the construction believe the Duffy’s problems are their own creation. Marc Duffy, an attorney, and Marianne Duffy, a stay-at-home mom and former attorney, served as their own general contractors on the project. ‘‘Three times my husband...

I heard today as I was getting ready to leave work that as of today, it is illegal in the state of Arkansas to smoke in a private vehicle with a minor or on the premises of any business establishment frequented by minors. Does anybody have any more detailed information on this? If true, this is an outrage! Not unexpected, but an outrage nevertheless. Before we know it, we will have to have prior government approval to use a public restroom.

<p>SYDNEY, Australia - Brothel owners in the southern state of Victoria have called for an exemption to a new ban on smoking in the workplace, saying customers like to light up after sex.</p> <p>The Australian Adult Entertainment Industry has written to Victoria's health minister arguing that new laws banning smoking in bars and brothels could push prostitution back into the streets, according to a report in the Sunday Herald Sun newspaper.</p>

Managers at a downtown Cleveland mall told a local band yesterday to tone down their wardrobes or turn off their music. Members of the Afro-beat band Mifun wore T-shirts critical of President Bush during a performance at Tower City Center. Twenty minutes into their set, the sound system was cut off, and managers told the band members to lose the shirts or abandon the stage. Band members refused to change the shirts, which had pictures of the president with a line through his face. Bandleader Jacob Fader said giving in to the demand would have betrayed the band's commitment to...

FOREST CITY, Fla. -- A $60 million lottery winner was shot by two Seminole County deputies. Robert Swofford, Jr. is in the hospital with four gunshot wounds. Swofford, 54, may have thought the deputies on his private property were intruders, but the officers who were looking for a burglar. Instead, they ran into the armed man. The Seminole County Sheriff's Office released video taken by their helicopter just moments after deputies shot Swofford at his home off 436 near Forest City. They said he had an semi-automatic weapon and refused to drop it. Swofford's close friend told Channel 9 on...

The buzz began in the chow line. "Did you hear?" asked one relic hunter. "Yeah. A Mississippi plate," said another. "Absolutely perfect." The proud new owner of the Confederate belt plate embossed with an eagle held out his treasure on his dirt-caked palm.

Part of the problem is that the people who decide national policy are headquartered in Washington, D.C., where large plots of private property are rare. Those of us who live in urban or suburban areas imagine endangered species protection to be as simple as being kind to blue whales, grizzly bears and bald eagles. We don’t stop to consider the dilemmas facing people thousands of miles away from us. Bill Snape, Chairman of the Endangered Species Coalition, is an example of one who lives in either ignorance or denial. “There just aren’t private landowners that I can identify where the...

When Animal Liberation Front activists destroy private property in ill-advised attempts to save animals, local authorities drag them to jail and the media dismisses the eco-terrorists as being part of a “fringe” group. But when federal regulators destroy the value of private property while trying to save endangered species, national authorities turn their backs. Why the double-standard? Part of the problem is that the people who decide national policy are headquartered in Washington, D.C., where large plots of private property are rare. Those of us who live in urban or suburban areas imagine endangered species protection to be as simple...

DELRAY BEACH, Florida (AP) -- Livia Landry likes life the way it is in this quaint tree-lined neighborhood few blocks from downtown -- front porches with wind chimes and potted plants jutting out into sunshine-filled, groomed green yards. Young mothers push three-wheeled strollers up sidewalks past century-old homes, chatting with neighbors about day's events. Talk has turned to history as this seaside city confronts a growing national trend, the "tear-down phenomenon," with wealthy buyers replacing turn-of-the-century bungalows on tiny lots with so-called McMansions. Plainly put, it's out with old and in with new. Communities across the country are grappling with...