Free Republic

The sage grouse population has exploded in the last two years, growing by nearly two-thirds from more than 49,000 males in 2013 to more than 80,000 this year. ... This is encouraging news for the bird, and for the people whose lives would be turned upside down by the federal government if it still insists on listing the critter as an endangered species on the brink of extinction. The report considered the population across the bird’s 11-state habitat, with specific news on the growth in Colorado numbers ... The report falls on the heels of a gloom and doom forecast...

Property owners and investors in Joburg's inner city say the increase in the hijacking of buildings by illegal occupants is costing them millions.

Joseph Rivers, an aspiring artist from Michigan, had his dreams shattered by federal agents. On a train to California, where he was going to start a video production business, he had his $16,000 in life savings seized by the Drug Enforcement Agency under the mere claimed suspicion that it was going to be used as drug money. A hunch or suspicion is enough for some law enforcement agents to seize someone's property and hold it until they prove themselves innocent. As the Albuquerque Journal, which first reported Rivers' case, quoted the DEA agent in charge: "We don't have to prove...

Once our homes were our castles. Now they are the government’s. Not even the most trivial details of how we make use of our own property escapes bureaucratic regulation in the name of the environment. For example: Cobb County [Georgia] is telling a Kennesaw family to apply for permission to park their kids’ cars in their own driveway. The Oviedo family got a notice of violation for having four cars in the driveway. The family has relatives visiting and two kids home from college. … They got a visit Friday from code enforcement, acting on an anonymous complaint. The neighborhood...

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...

“This is my property. There’s a couple of people making up stories of things happening here that are not happening,” de Leon told KTLA as she sat in a vehicle, small dog on her lap. “They made up stories that people are somehow having sex in a public place. First thing, it’s not public, it’s a private place. And second, that’s completely false.” ... They are particularly upset over a listing on Airbnb.com for a “Hollywood Hills Camping Retreat.” The listing, taken down following news coverage earlier this week, described the rental of a “tent” that could accommodate 10 people...

NCBA will engage EPA in lawsuit alleging overreach in Waters of the U.S. rule, group says. Concerns of cattlemen regarding the U.S. EPA and Army Corps of Engineers Waters of the U.S. rule released last month are coming true, National Cattlemen's Beef Association Vice President of Government Affairs Colin Woodall said Tuesday, but that's actually generating more support for repeal efforts. We just got some more feedback this last weekend that it's the determination of the EPA that any stock tank or pond that runs around in a flooding type event would be considered a 'water of the United States,'"...

The Supreme Court handed a major victory to the Obama administration and civil rights groups on Thursday when it upheld a key tool used for more than four decades to fight housing discrimination. The justices ruled 5-4 that federal housing laws prohibit seemingly neutral practices that harm minorities, even without proof of intentional discrimination. The case involved an appeal from Texas officials accused of violating the Fair Housing Act by awarding federal tax credits in a way that kept low-income housing out of white neighborhoods. Justice Anthony Kennedy, often a swing vote, joined the court’s four liberal members in upholding...

Ten years ago, on June 23, 2005, the United States Supreme Court dropped a judicial thunderbolt in Kelo v. City of New London. By a narrow five-to-four margin it rejected a spirited challenge that Susette Kelo and her neighboring landowners had raised against the ambitious land-use development plan put forward by the City of New London, Ct. The formulaic account of the holding is that a local government does not violate the “public use” component of the Constitution’s takings clause — “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation” — when it condemns property that will...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court says a program that lets the government take raisins away from farmers to help reduce supply and boost market prices is unconstitutional. The justice said Monday that forcing raisin growers to give up part of their annual crop without full payment is an illegal confiscation of private property.

Nine graffiti artists who spray painted creations across the world-renowned 5Pointz building filed a lawsuit Friday in Brooklyn federal court, seeking unspecified damages from the owner who whitewashed away their artwork. [Snip] The aerosol artists say they are owed substantial cash damages because Wolkoff painted over their al fresco works. [Snip] The iconic buildings had more than 350 works of visual art on the walls — inside and out — when Wolkoff destroyed them, the lawsuit said. The colorful, eye-catching creations were torn down for good last summer.

(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), part of the Interior Department, will decide by September 30 whether to list the greater sage-grouse as an endangered or threatened species under the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA).The stakes are huge: Greater sage-grouse (or prairie chicken) habitat covers 165 million acres across 11 western states, but that is only half of what it used to be, the federal government says. At one time, the greater sage-grouse population likely numbered in the millions, but it is now estimated to be in the 200,000 to 500,000 range.The enormous sage grouse habitat also is home to...

A Senate committee voted along party lines Wednesday to overturn the Obama administration’s new regulation asserting control over small waterways like streams and wetlands. The bill, sponsored by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), would repeal the waters of the United States rule, also known as the clean water rule, and give the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) specific guidelines to re-write it in a way that Republicans find more acceptable. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed the bill by a vote of 11-9, with only Republicans supporting it. Republicans complained that the rule released late last month by the EPA...

The U.S. constitution has remained in place with occasional substantive amendments over more than 220 years. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in a foreword to the book Dollarocracy wrote that, “we cannot govern our own affairs when our national, state, and local debates are bought and sold by billionaires, who use thirty-second commercials to shout down anyone who disagrees…The money and media election complex, producing a slurry of negative ads, spin, and obstruction, is not what the founders intended.” [1] Sanders was right to suggest that the United States’ revered “founding fathers” would be scandalized by the plutocratic madness of the...

A Muslim mob in Deder, Ethiopia, attacked a Christian man and forced him out of his home on pain of death in an effort to appropriate his land and build a mosque on it—despite recent court rulings confirming the Christian man’s property rights.“Their first plan was to kill my husband,” said Fikere Mengistu’s wife. “Now, he has escaped from the area. We are fasting and praying for God to rescue us from this forceful action.”She remains with her five children, aged mother-in-law, and 30 other Christians praying on the property.According to International Christian Concern, Fikere Mengistu’s family has owned their...

The Obama administration is expected to announce final details of “Waters of the United States” rule this week that could impact any property owner with water or a ditch that occasionally fills with water on their land. Moreover, the regulation could even conflict with two Supreme Court rulings. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers have sought to provide more clarity to what bodies of water are protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act, which has previously affected rivers, lakes and the streams that flow directly to them.

A plan that will close nearly 2,000 miles of public roads that have previously been open for use by the people of Mesa County is creating a public backlash against the Grand Junction field office of the federal Bureau of Land Management. The BLM’s resource management plans (RMP) regulate the access and types of traffic allowed on roads on public lands. Road maintenance and seasonal closures are also detailed in such plans. But the most recent RMP in Mesa County indicates the BLM’s intent to limit access to public roads which have traditionally been open to motorized, horse, and foot...

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...

EFF is fighting for vehicle owners’ rights to inspect the code that runs their vehicles and to repair and modify their vehicles, or have a mechanic of their choice do the work. At the moment, the anti-circumvention prohibition in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act arguably restricts vehicle inspection, repair, and modification. If EFF is successful then vehicle owners will be free to inspect and tinker, as long as they don’t run afoul of other regulations, such as those governing vehicle emissions, safety, or copyright law. Most of the automakers operating in the US filed opposition comments through trade associations, along...

Jazz Shaw referenced a case this week we’ve been watching at HotAir since it was argued the first time, on more narrow grounds, at the Supreme Court a couple years ago. The question at the heart of this round of oral arguments on an archaic raisin regulatory regime: Can the government confiscate substantial parts of a farmer’s crops in a bid to keep the prices of that crop stable as part of a long-ago established regulatory structure, without paying the farmer. The Hornes of California disobeyed the government’s orders to give over the literal fruits of their labors and...