Free Republic

<p>Land Grab: The Bureau of Land Management plans a Bundy-like seizure of New Mexico land for a national monument that will restrict Border Patrol access and provide an open corridor for drug and human traffickers.</p> <p>In August 2002, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument Ranger Kris Eggle was killed in the line of duty. Allegedly the killers were drug smugglers crossing through the Arizona park, which shares a border with Mexico. Since Eggle's death, Organ Pipe has been called the most dangerous park in America.</p>

Texas is larger than most countries in the United Nations, some not much bigger than the postage stamps they print for collectors, but each with a vote that can cancel ours out. Texas is about to a vote against the U.N.’s sovereignty-destroying Agenda 21, so named because it claims to be setting a “sustainable growth” agenda for the 21st century. Agenda 21 is in fact a global power grab similar to climate-change treaties like the Kyoto Protocol. It uses the imaginary threat of unsustainable growth which allegedly threatens to plunder the planet’s finite resources, like climate change allegedly threatens planetary...

One day in January, Charlie Shennett, a 60-year-old disabled mechanic, went to Passaic City Hall to find out why he hadn't received a tax bill for the vacant lot he owned on Summer Street. Shennett, who has lived in an apartment on Dayton Avenue in Passaic for decades, had dutifully paid taxes on the site of his childhood home since it burned down in 1987. At the tax collector's office, Shennett was surprised to learn that he no longer owned the property. Without his knowledge, the city had taken it several months earlier as part of a redevelopment effort. Later,...

Should university-bred legislators, government bureaucrats and environmentalists have their way, America, and much of the world by default, will go hungry Apparatus to attack public land use and private ownership is fully operational as the effort to create new national monuments rolls forward. Among recently proposed plans in California, U.S. representatives and environmentalists have carved out 360,000 acres of beautiful countryside, much of it productive, to stash away as natural “landscape.” Reviewing the map of the projected Berryessa Snow Mountain area to be cordoned off for limited, if not prohibited public use in sections, it’s easy to locate private tracts...

Commentary #3 - RCMP High River Report -- Do you want a repeat of what the RCMP did in High River for your town? The RCMP Public Complaint’s Commission published their long-awaited report on the High River Gun Grab on February 12, 2015. Their 122-page report included fifty-two findings and ten recommendations. RCMP PUBLIC COMPLAINTS COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION NO. 5 reads: “The RCMP should review its emergency management policies at the national and divisional level to ensure that they provide clear and comprehensive direction with respect to the legal authorities and duties of its members in emergency situations, taking into consideration...

Mesa County commissioners have thrown their first jab in a growing fight against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the department’s decision last November to list the Gunnison sage-grouse as a threatened species. Commissioners on Monday approved and signed a notice of intent to sue the federal government for listing the Gunnison sage-grouse as threatened and for designating a critical habitat for the bird in western Colorado and eastern Utah. The notice of intent to sue claims the listings are improper because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service noted the Gunnison sage-grouse population in the Gunnison Basin is “stable...

Using Agitprop and elements of the Delphi propaganda method (3), lethal Home Owners Associations (HOAs) are moving north out of huge Miami-Fort Lauderdale territories up along Florida’s I-95 corridor to take over more and more personal property rights of unsuspecting homeowners in gated, HOA communities. And the effects are not pretty! “Resetting the default position. . .exploits the structure of the choice to encourage a more desirable option,” says Cass R. Sunstein, author of the book NUDGE. (1) Employed by the Obama Administration as a regulatory czar, it was Sunstein’s job to have the American people do what the government...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republican Gov. Scott Walker's budget would prohibit the state Department of Natural Resources from purchasing any land through its stewardship program until at least 2028 — if the program still exists then. The budget the governor released Tuesday would place a moratorium on stewardship land acquisitions. It would last until the DNR's debt service on purchases that already have been made drops to $1 for every $8 spent since the program's inception in 1989. The program won't reach that ratio until 2028. The moratorium is expected to save the state $13 million in debt by then,...

The Adirondack Park in upstate New York, with its 3,000 lakes and ponds and 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, is nothing short of nirvana for paddlers. But often, rivers that start out on state forest land eventually flow onto private property, given that the six-million-acre park is a patchwork quilt of private and public land. A result is no-trespassing signs that force paddlers to turn around or make frustrating portages — detours on dry land with their canoes or kayaks overhead. Late last week, a state appellate court ruled in favor of a journalist who set out in 2009...

Expert says western yellow-billed cuckoo may be more prevalent than first thought. Paonia ornithologist Jason Beason likes to say that there are a lot of cuckoos out there. The line is good for laughs at presentations like the talks he gave in the Roaring Fork Valley last week, and it accurately reflects the fact that dozens of species of cuckoos populate the Earth in both the Old and New Worlds. These include birds people might not immediately think of as being cuckoos, such as the greater roadrunner in the southwestern United States. But in the case of the cuckoo of...

Washington, DC – Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell today issued a Secretarial Order calling for a comprehensive science-based strategy to address the more frequent and intense wildfires that are damaging vital sagebrush landscapes and productive rangelands, particularly in the Great Basin region of Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and California. The strategy will begin to be implemented during the 2015 fire season. Goals include reducing the size, severity and cost of rangeland fires, addressing the spread of cheatgrass and other invasive species, and positioning wildland fire management resources for more effective rangeland fire response. “Targeted action is urgently needed to...

Demonstrators chanting, "Black lives matter," converged in the Mall of America rotunda Saturday as part of a protest of police brutality that caused at least part of the mall to shut down on a busy day for holiday shoppers. The group Black Lives Matter Minneapolis had more than 3,000 people confirm on Facebook that they would attend. Official attendance figures weren't immediately available, but organizer Mica Grimm says she believes about 3,000 took part. Bloomington police said 25 people were arrested. The Mall of America increased security, and police in riot gear were present. Stores were closed for a short...

Montana wildlife officials are dropping a proposal to keep confidential the names of hunters and trappers who kill wildlife in Montana. ... That information is now available under the state's right-to-know laws. Some hunters and trappers had claimed they were being harassed by people who had obtained the information.

Federal regulators slapped a six-month ban on most cod fishing off New England this week and are threatening to cut next year’s catch by up to 75 percent, in a move some say will destroy the livelihoods of fishermen across the region. ... NOAA announced several measures, including the ban which expands no-fishing zones, on Monday. But fishermen whose livelihoods rely on catching cod, as well as the coastal communities that depend on money coming in from that industry, worry the new regulations will devastate them.

Federal wildlife officials have granted protection to the Gunnison sage grouse, a move that could to bring restrictions on oil and gas drilling and other land uses to preserve the bird's habitat in Colorado and Utah. ... They're related to the greater sage grouse, which is at the center of a separate and larger debate over federal protection across 11 Western states.

Bowie Resource Partners says it has eliminated 150 jobs at the Bowie #2 coal mine near Paonia. ... Last year the shutdown of another mine in the region caused nearly 300 people to lose their jobs. That coal mine is in Somerset. In the release, Bowie says it will provide the 150 laid off workers with 60 days of wages and benefits.

Sales of leases on 8.1 million acres of federal oil and gas parcels — an area larger than Massachusetts and Rhode Island combined — are on hold because of worries that drilling could harm greater sage grouse... the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s delay on the parcels underscores just how much is at stake for an industry that finds its future inextricably intertwined with a bird once known primarily for its elaborate mating display. The grouse’s huge range, covering portions of 11 states and an area more than four times as big as New England, includes vast oil, gas and...

It seems incredible, but a single missing word could turn a water law into a government land grab so horrendous even a U.S. Supreme Court justice warned it would “put the property rights of every American entirely at the mercy of Environmental Protection Agency employees.” The missing word is “navigable.” The Obama administration is proposing a rule titled “Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’ Under the Clean Water Act,” which would strike “navigable” from American water law and redefine any piece of land that is wet at least part of the year, no matter how remote or isolated it...

The public's rights to someone's private property, Eminent Domain and California beaches Before surfers and friends celebrate their victory over venture capitalist Vinod Khosla regarding access to Martin’s Beach through his land, they would do well to consider the following: now that the Governor has chimed in, threatening the use of eminent domain, what we have is the State controlling and/or taking someone’s private property. Recall that the function of our government is to protect our freedom, lives and property. So the government should have stood firmly behind Vinod Khosla and his right to use and control his own property...

Public Enemy No. 1 for rural Utah sheriffs just happens to be a fellow peace officer: Dan Love, the Bureau of Land Management’s special agent in charge. Elected law enforcement officers from Nephi to Blanding call him an arrogant and dishonest bully who has little regard for local authority and dodges accountability, derailing a collaborative approach to police work on the state’s federal lands. Love reportedly just laughed when Garfield County Sheriff James "Danny" Perkins relayed ranchers’ complaints about federal officers removing plastic feed tubs from the range and threatening the ranchers with litter citations. He drew early controversy during...