Free Republic

Authorities in Louisiana say a man who starred in the reality television show "Swamp People" died from natural causes. Ascension Parish Sheriff Jeff Wiley says the parish coroner, Dr. John Fraiche, made that determination after a preliminary autopsy on Mitchell Guist. Guist, who appeared in segments of the "Swamp People" with his brother, Glenn, died after collapsing Monday while working on a houseboat he was building on Belle River. Authorities tell The Advocate of Baton Rouge, La., Guist had just launched the houseboat and was pushing it when he collapsed. Funeral services are scheduled for Saturday in Gonzales. "Swamp People,"...

US protesters 'occupy' lawmakers' Washington officesAFP – 25 minutes ago Around 1,000 demonstrators assembled at US lawmakers' offices on Thursday as part of a "Take Back the Capitol," action targeting corporate America's influence in Washington's corridors of power. Protesters -- many of them labor-union activists who support the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in New York in September -- aimed to highlight that 13.3 million people are unemployed in the United States, and urge lawmakers to shun cuts to unemployment benefits and focus on job creation. "You have the moral imperative to support those who are slipping," rabbi Erica...

WASHINGTON — It could prove an awkward encounter for Gov. Rick Perry as he heads to Washington on Wednesday to appear at a presidential candidate forum and meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill — lawmakers whose work hours and salaries he has proposed slashing. Perry's campaign will hit the city he vows to shake up this week, and it remains unclear just how warm the reception will be from the lawmakers who have borne the brunt of his campaign rhetoric. His trip will include at least one Capitol Hill appearance. At the invitation of U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, Perry...

Marsh Fires And Smoke Push New Orleans Into A State Of Emergency Robert Johnson Aug. 31, 2011, 8:52 AM Image: AP A second swamp fire outside New Orleans has filled the city with smoke, prompting Mayor Mitch Landrieu to declare an emergency and call in the National Guard. According to The Washington Post, the smoke that's been hazing downtown for days is getting worse and to contain the blaze, the four helicopters dropping water will be joined by five more Wednesday. The National Weather Service reports haze from the fire is reported as far west as Baton Rouge and its...

Morning all, didn't see a thread for today so I created one.

The Army Corps. opened the Morganza spillway on the Mississippi River in Louisiana on Saturday forcing tons of water and covering more than 100 acres of dry land with a foot of water within 30 minutes. The flood gates were opened to shift the flow of the swollen river away from the numerous oil refineries and chemical plants in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. While the flood waters will move away from the more densely populated area, the opening of the gates could affect 25,000 people, 11,000 structures, and acres of farmland. This is the first time the Morganza spillway...

Nancy's SwampLast Updated: 10:50 PM, October 9, 2010 Charlie dodges another bullet. The House Ethics Committee trial of Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem — originally scheduled for September — now won’t occur until after Election Day Goodness gracious, what a surprise. Ethics Committee Chairman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) announced last week that Rangel will face his peers on Nov. 15. We’re not so naive as to believe that Charlie’s going to get anything other than a wrist slap — if that. But it’s pretty clear that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t going to let this particular pile of dirty laundry be...

Congressional investigators are questioning a half-dozen lawmakers for possibly misspending government funds meant to pay for overseas travel, according to people familiar with the matter. The investigation follows a Wall Street Journal article in March that said lawmakers had used daily cash stipends, meant to cover certain costs of official government travel overseas, to cover expenses that appeared to be unauthorized by House rules. An independent ethics board has referred the matter to the House ethics committee. Congressional rules say the daily travel funds, called a per diem, must be spent on meals, cabs and other travel expenses. But when...

As if Democrats didn’t have enough troubles on the ethics front with two trials coming up in the House. Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters have company after the Dallas Morning News reported that Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson gave scholarships from a charitable fund to four relatives and the two children of her aide. The scholarships violated an anti-nepotism rule that keeps Congressional Black Caucus members from using such charitable funds as payoffs and featherbedding accounts:

Visualize a huge (7-12 foot) alligator coming to the top of the water thrashing and rolling. A man has a hold on the line that the hook and alligator are on. These alligators are ranging from 500- 1,000+ pounds. The fight between man and alligator is breathtaking to me.

Feds Clear DeLay. He Calls Pelosi “The Swamp”Chad Pergram | August 16, 2010 It's been a long time since former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) got the chance to come out swinging in public. But that's exactly what the feisty former GOP leader did Monday when the Justice Department told his attorneys it closed its inquiry of DeLay after a six year probe. DeLay was his vintage himself during a telephone conference call with reporters. "They didn't have anything," DeLay boasted. "The case was so weak I never did meet with anyone from the Justice Department and never appeared...

Dan Rostenkowski (?-Ill), 1928-2010. Reporting the passing of Dan Rostenkowski, the ABC and NBC anchors on Wednesday night managed to gently note his ignominious departure from public life while also including a humanizing anecdote about his life (NBC: He “went back to live in the same house he grew up in in Chicago's north side,” ABC: “In 1985, he famously asked Americans fed up with the tax system to write him”), but neither identified him as a Democrat. Nor did any on-screen graphic mark his party. In contrast, filling in as anchor of the CBS Evening News, Erica Hill managed...

The House ethics committee today released three charges of ethical wrongdoing against Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California. The charges relate to whether Waters gave inappropriate assistance to a bank to which she had personal connections in getting federal bailout money. The committee says Waters organized a meeting in 2008 between Treasury officials and executives from OneUnited Bank, where her husband was once a board member and had large investments. The bank received $12 million from the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program. The first charge against Waters states she violated a House rule that members must "behave at all...

WASHINGTON – Democratic leaders say they've emptied the swamp of congressional corruption. Never mind the ethics trials to come for two longtime party members. "Drain the swamp we did, because this was a terrible place," Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week of the Republican rule in the House that ended in January 2007. Pelosi's statement might seem odd, but it's an emerging strategy: Separate Democratic-initiated ethics reforms from the cases of Reps. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif.

WASHINGTON (AP) - California Democrat Maxine Waters faces a House trial this fall on three charges of ethical wrongdoing, setting the stage for a second election-season public airing of ethics problems for a longtime Democratic lawmaker. The charges focus on whether Waters broke the rules in requesting federal help for a bank where her husband owned stock and had served on the board of directors. She denied the charges Monday. Persons familiar with the case said Waters is accused of violating: _A rule that House members may not exert improper influence that results in a personal benefit.

WASHINGTON — By defiantly pushing for full-fledged ethics trials, Representatives Charles B. Rangel and Maxine Waters are raising the prospect of a spectacle focusing on Congressional corruption this fall, just as Democrats are fighting to hold on to their majority in an election already defined by distrust of Washington. Neither lawmaker, both Democrats, faces electoral jeopardy. Mr. Rangel, who was charged on Thursday by the House ethics committee with 13 violations, including failing to pay taxes on rental income from his Dominican villa, represents a safe district in Harlem. Ms. Waters, who is accused of using her office to help...

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Tuesday noted that it was Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), not him, who promised to “drain the swamp” of corruption in Washington. Pelosi famously vowed in 2006 to “drain the swamp” that ensnared Republican members and their leaders during the George W. Bush administration. During his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Hoyer clarified that he has never used that phrase. "I didn’t use that term," Hoyer said when asked if he thinks Democrats have "drained the swamp." "What I believed and continue to believe is that we have made the ethics process work, and...

With all the deadly panthers, pythons and gators roaming the Everglades, most people might not think of making a career out of splashing through the swamp. Ed Woods is not most people. Woods and his crew are the stars of a new National Geographic show called "Swamp Men," which premieres on Nat Geo Wild tonight at 10 p.m. The Swamp Men lead their Billie Swamp Safari tours through Big Cypress Swamp, deep in the Everglades on Seminole Indian tribe ground. Their mission: "patrol the land, relocate animals from dangerous situations and rescue animals in need." The animals, about 1,600 in...

Nadia Bloom, missing since Friday, may have been inspired by a book about an adventurous girl who decides to go camping in her backyard. Searchers found a missing 11-year-old girl alive Tuesday after she disappeared from her home near Orlando on Friday.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) wants to force the ethics committee to reveal information on its investigation into the PMA Group. Flake on Thursday filed a privileged resolution giving the ethics committee seven days to come clean on the amount of investigative work it conducted in its review of lawmakers with ties to PMA Group, a lobbying firm know for showering members with campaign cash in return for receiving multimillion-dollar earmarks for its clients. Flake, as well as outside watchdog groups, has voiced deep frustration over the brevity of the ethics panel’s report exonerating seven lawmakers with ties to PMA Group....

This is not a wimpy cottontail, this is a Swamp Rabbit, Sylvilagus aquaticus, the breed now famous for attacking Jimmy Carter. They swim like a fish, run like a deer, and don't put up with any liberal baloney! They can drive a pack of rabbit hounds crazy. This one is pregnant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD1yJBZzK4M

I'll start with frogs, and a turtle. Swamp Archives, 2006, with the little Olympus C2100UZ, 9 years old now, still shooting, only 2MP but they are great MPs! JimRob may want us to limit this archive thing, it's his den. I reckon I could post pics for several years if I start digging. These have degraded slightly, moving jpg files around isn't a good plan. FLORIDA BRONZE FROG SOUTHERN LEOPARD FROG RED EARED SLIDER GREEN TREEFROG

From my rambles this week.

New Orleans, La. — When I won $70 playing craps in Shreveport on Saturday night, I was not gambling. I was gaming. The distinction is critical, or at least it was when legislators here saw games of chance as the next great hope for the state’s economy. Louisiana’s constitution requires the state legislature to “define and suppress gambling,” a crime that carries a $500 fine and up to six years in prison. So in 1991, the criminal code and the English language were altered in Baton Rouge so that “[t]he intentional conducting or assisting in the conducting of gaming activities...

This is Mocassin Branch, a feeder creek for the St. John's River, in St. John's County, Florida. It is a great place to sit with a camera, and watch for birds and critters. http://www.pbase.com/tsiya/root http://photobucket.com/albums/v244/tsiya/

A small band of searchers rousts itself each morning from a secret camp deep in the woods of a forgotten northwest Florida swamp. They have endured freezing nights, foul drinking water, long stints without showers and an outhouse with only one wall, all in a search for a ghostly creature that may not even exist. They are on a quest to find and photograph an ivory-billed woodpecker to show the world the bird is not extinct. They have invited me along for a two-day glimpse into a mission that is as inspiring as it is mundane. In the past few...

According to an email received by McCabe from the office of U.S. Congressman Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), the Marion monument project has already received the blessings of U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), as well as Congressmen Henry Brown (R–S.C.), Gresham Barrett (R–S.C.), Bob Inglis (R–S.C.), John Spratt (D–S.C.), James Clyburn (D–S.C.), and Wilson. The next step is the actual bill, which McCabe believes, will be introduced in Congress over the coming weeks.

Juan Cole has, don seatbelts please, written the phrase "positive development" (ya gotta scroll to the bottom to spot this rarest of birds). Matthew Yglesias is wondering why, er, conservatives aren't more excited about Egypt. There's always something to complain about with regard to those dastardly Bushies, isn't there? They're not, you know, happy enough about what Bush has wrought in Egypt (though doubtless John 'palsy walsy with Hosni' Kerry must be duly gratified, eh?) That said Matt, to his real credit, is calling developments underway in Egypt a real positive and at least a partial, if mid-stream, vindication of...

Bellevue, WA – An internal e-mail adds to the evidence that the King County elections department knew about No Signature On File (NSOF) ballots well before it claimed to have discovered its “mistake.” King County rejected more than 700 ballots because it didn’t have signatures on file to match the signatures on the ballots. On Nov. 3, 2004, an e-mail sent to King County Elections Superintendent Bill Huennekens included a list of NSOF voters. A copy of the e-mail is attached. But in December, when news of the NSOF ballots became public, King County Elections Director Dean Logan, Huennekens’ boss,...

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- An effort to recall Secretary of State Sam Reed will not move forward, after a Thurston County Superior Court judge ruled Monday that allegations Reed mishandled the contested governor's race did not meet the legal threshold to put a recall before state voters. Martin Ringhofer, a Boeing Co. employee, and Seattle resident Linda Jordan argued that mistakes made by Reed led to Democrat Christine Gregoire ultimately winning a third count and the election by 129 votes. But Judge Chris Wickham ruled that each of the nine charges brought by Ringhofer and Jordan were either legally or factually...

AUDREY, MEET HARVEY by Timothy Rollins, Editor and Publisher April 2, 2004 Audrey Seiler (right) wasn't kidnapped at all it seems, but the whole story was a hoax - or rather - a pile of crap concocted by pathetic Audrey from the beginning. We see Audrey is but yet another sickening young twenty-something screaming for attention in perhaps the most insidious and yet odious way imaginable. With the news coming out of Madison that the University of Wisconsin coed did indeed lie about being kidnapped and that police have dropped their manhunt for a suspect that in fact never existed,...

<p>On March 2, Californians will vote on a $15 billion bond measure put on the ballot in a deal cut between Gov. Schwarzenegger and the Legislature. Even if the bond measure passes, we'll still need to find billions and billions in spending cuts or new taxes to paper over California's massive deficit.</p>

Mass Immigration Said 'Swamping' U.S. CitiesJon E. DoughertyTuesday, Jan. 13, 2004Mass immigration, most of it coming from south of the border, is "swamping" the United States, with six large U.S. cities now consisting mostly of foreign-born inhabitants, a new report warns. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a Washington, D.C.-based group advocating tighter immigration restrictions, says 1.1 million immigrants will enter the U.S. this year alone. In its new report, FAIR says the immigrant population nearly doubled from 19.8 million in 1990 to 31.1 million a decade later. "America's immigration policies have launched us into a risky experiment never...

Melting ice 'will swamp capitals' By Geoffrey Lean Environment Editor 07 December 2003 Measures to fight global warming will have to be at least four times stronger than the Kyoto Protocol if they are to avoid the melting of the polar ice caps, inundating central London and many of the world's biggest cities, concludes a new official report. The report, by a German government body, says that even if it is fully implemented, the protocol will only have a "marginal attenuating effect" on the climate change. But last week even this was thrown into doubt amid contradictory signals from the...

WASHINGTON — On the road to change, the quarters are halfway there. The U.S. Mint's 50-state quarter program, which began with Delaware and will end with Hawaii, reached the halfway mark last week with the debut of the Arkansas 25-cent piece. Quarters are produced in the order that the states ratified the U.S. Constitution and joined the Union. The states come up with the design, which features images or themes honoring the state.An employee of the U.S. Mint inPhiladelphia loads a cart with freshly minted Arkansasquarters, Monday, Nov. 3, 2003. On the road to change,the quarters are halfway there. The...

Charlie Daniels: "You know I got some flack for writing this song. Some people called me some names. I don't care" Simple Man I ain't nothin' but a simple man They call me a redneck I reckon that I am But there's things going on That make me mad down to the core. I have to work like a dog to make ends meet There's crooked politicians and crime in the street And I'm madder'n hell and I ain't gonna take it no more. We tell our kids to just say no Then some panty waist judge lets a drug...

<p>Former first lady and current United State senator from New York Hillary Clinton made a brief appearance in downtown San Francisco Tuesday, signing nearly a thousand copies of her best-selling memoirs.</p> <p>A throng of fans eager to see Clinton stretched all the way around A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books bookstore at the Opera Plaza on Van Ness Avenue starting early Tuesday morning.</p>

In 1998, Jim Starr purchased eleven acres of beautiful agricultural property on the Long Beach peninsula, located in Pacific County, Washington. It was here where he would settle with his family and pursue his passion of farming. The conditions on the peninsula were perfect for cultivating certain types of mushrooms. Full of entrepreneurial spirit, Jim planned to grow and harvest a diverse variety of mushrooms for sale in multiple markets. He spent $100,000 of his own money to renovate an old barn, thereby creating an office, laboratory and shop. Jim would have gourmet mushrooms for restaurants and mushrooms that produce...

The old lignite skull ANOTHER MYSTERY SKULL... THIS TIME AN ANCIENT EUROPEAN WHICH, SAY FRANCOIS DE SARRE AND MICHEL GRANGER, COULD CHALLENGE THE OFFICIAL VIEW OF HUMAN ORIGINS. 0fficially, the origin of the first true Humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) dates back 2.5 million years. Before this time lived other hominids whose bones cannot be confused with those of Homo's lineage. Against this background, we have the 2oo-year old enigma of an 'impossibly' ancient humanoid skull from the mining town of Freiberg, in Saxony, Germany, which, if verified, could be more than 10 million years old - far older than...

Wed Jul 24, 5:43 PM ET Former President Bill Clinton talks to reporters at the construction site of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park Wednesday, July 24, 2002, near downtown Little Rock, Ark. Clinton said the library complex will be a landmark for Little Rock. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)