Free Republic

A Wyoming judge ordered the state Friday to return nearly $92,000 seized from a musician during a traffic stop that resulted in no criminal charges or even an arrest, according to the man's attorney. *snip* Parhamovich said the officers implied that carrying that much cash was illegal. He lied and said it was a friend's. Parhamovich said officers then told him that he could leave if he signed a form saying he was giving the $91,800 to the investigative agency for "narcotics law enforcement purposes."

Senate Republicans have approved the repeal of ObamaCare’s individual mandate as part of their tax-cut bill, a major step forward toward ending an unpopular part of the healthcare law. “Families ought to be able to make decisions about what they want to buy and what works for them –not the government,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said, hailing the accomplishment.

An off duty Wyoming Game Warden, Chris Queen, was hunting elk in the Little Sunlight Basin north of Cody, Wyoming, not far from the Wyoming border. He was returning to his horses late in the day, about 6:30 in the evening. The sun had set 15 minutes earlier, but there was still considerable light.  A grizzly sow bluff charged Chris, then charged him full out. From ktvh.com:Queen told investigators he slowly backed away believing the sow would return to her cubs and move on. But, after returning to her cubs, the sow exhibited even more aggressive behavior.Suddenly, the animal...

Sam Krop’s characterization of catastrophic wildfire on public and privately owned forest lands (guest viewpoint, Oct. 4) doesn’t match the reality of what Oregon experienced this summer. But I can see why Cascadia Wildlands and other special interest groups oppose solutions such as the Resilient Federal Forests Act. These bills untie the hands of our federal land managers, and provide them with more tools and resources to restore the health of our public forests, before and after a fire. Has “hands-off” forest management reduced the size and severity of forest fires? Are we choking on less wildfire smoke every summer?...

Wyoming is one of the safest red states we've got. Since becoming a state in 1890, they've only gone Democrat once - in 1952. In 2016, Trump won by 46%, his largest margin of victory in any state. Imagine, then, the surprise of parents when their high schoolers were given a quiz on the book Animal Farm with a strange multiple-choice option. The question asked why a particular character fired a gun, and one of the multiple choice options for the answer was "he was shooting at Trump."  Parents at the Jackson Hole high school complained to officials at the Teton School District...

A new study of ancient ash suggests that the dormant giant could develop the conditions needed to blow in a span of mere decades. ===================================================================================== Steam rises off the Grand Prismatic Spring, one of the most stunning hydrothermal features in Yellowstone National Park. Photograph by Tom Murphy, National Geographic Creative ========================================================================================= If the supervolcano underneath Yellowstone erupts again, we may have far less advance warning time than we thought. After analyzing minerals in fossilized ash from the most recent mega-eruption, researchers at Arizona State University think the supervolcano last woke up after two influxes of fresh magma flowed into the...

Bannon will back primary challenges against EVERY Republican running for Senate re-election next year except Cruz - as Trump's former strategist hatches plan to boot McConnell from majority leader job Ex-White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon is planning a political assault on six Republican Senate incumbents, running for re-election next year Previously, Bannon had looked to oust Sens. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Roger Wicker, R-Miss Now he's expanded that list to take on every Republican running in 2018, except Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas With Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., retiring, Bannon is already looking at Tea Party favorite,...

Longtime Republican donor Foster S. Friess said Monday that he is exploring a 2018 bid for U.S. Senate in Wyoming, making him the latest conservative figure to consider challenging Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), a low-key member of the leadership. “Normally, over the years, I’ve dismissed these urgings,” Friess said in an email to The Washington Post. “But due to the stature of the people requesting, I sense a responsibility to prayerfully explore the possibility.” Friess added that he is partly motivated by his concerns about the nation’s health-care system and his desire to see health-care providers “publish prices.” Those concerns,...

Erik Prince, the founder and former head of the controversial private security firm Blackwater, is mulling over a run for a U.S. Senate seat in Wyoming. The potential move has been encouraged by former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who has sought to wage war on the Republican establishment. Prince, 48, is now the head of the China-based private aviation and logistics firm, Frontier Services Group, and would challenge Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., who is an establishment favorite. Throughout the weekend Prince has looked for ways he could establish residency in the state, the New York Times reported. Barrasso...

In 2001, Colorado electricity consumers enjoyed some of the lowest electric rates in the country. The 15 years since haven’t been so kind to ratepayers. For more than a decade, elected officials, PUC commissioners, industry and advocates have told Colorado ratepayers that they could transform the state’s electricity generation away from coal and toward industrial wind, solar and natural gas with little cost to ratepayers. However, the actual numbers tell a much different story. Colorado electricity rates have risen sharply – 62.1 percent – across residential, commercial and industrial sectors, despite a slight decrease in recent years. Colorado electricity rates...

37 quakes -one was 5.3 on the Richter scale- NE of Soda Springs, Idaho (southwest of Yellowstone) in the past 7 hours. Close enough to be of possible concern?) Suspicious action from a fairly quiet area.

“Does a state violate the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause or Free Speech Clause when it punishes a judge who has discretionary authority to solemnize marriages because she states that her religious beliefs preclude her from performing a same-sex wedding?” That’s the question Judge Ruth Neely from Pinedale, Wyoming, wants the Supreme Court to answer. On August 4, she filed a petition with the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), asking them to review a March 7, 2017 ruling from the Wyoming Supreme Court. That ruling handed down a public censure and effectively removed her from a circuit court...

The Trump administration is removing Endangered Species Act protections for Yellowstone grizzly bears, after they spent more than four decades on the threatened list. The Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service announced the delisting decision Thursday, which immediately drew rebukes from conservationists and Democrats. Officials said that conservation efforts for the bear, a more than fourfold increase in its population and state policies designed to protect the bears show that the delisting is warranted. The Yellowstone grizzly bear lives in and around Yellowstone National Park in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. “This achievement stands as one of America’s great conservation successes;...

YELLOWSTONE REGION (INTELLIHUB) — U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) seismology reports conclude that a massive swarm of earthquakes swept through the park triggering more than 60 separate events in which seismographs spiked to magnitudes of up to 5.0. Friday. Experts fear that the supervolcano is long overdue for an eruption capable of wiping out a vast amount of human, animal, and plant life in the Continental United States. Scientists currently believe that there’s a 10% chance that a “supervolcanic Category 7 eruption” could take place this century, as pointed out by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku who appeared on a segment for...

The folks who run the Town Hall in Jackson, Wyoming proudly displayed a portrait of President Obama during his terms in office. But they won’t be extending the same respect to President Trump. Mayor Pete Muldoon removed portraits of President Trump and Vice President Pence – replacing them with a portrait of Chief Washakie, a renowned Native American warrior. The mayor told me in a lengthy email that he stands by his decision – even though he acknowledged Trump “won the election under the rules we have in place.” “Dictators like Joseph Stalin required their portraits to be displayed...

The resurrected feeling of American possibility came not from pontificating TV pundits or a radio host in a studio miles away. Optimism arrived here in Gillette, Wyo., because of what people were seeing: the unemployment lines getting shorter and their daily commutes getting longer. Tom Gorton, 41, drove through those increasingly congested streets in his Arnold Machinery truck late on a spring afternoon, under the watch of mountains covered in white from a spring snowstorm. As Gorton settled behind his desk, he was heartened to see how messy it was with orders, one year after hundreds of layoffs at two...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - Wyoming officials considering a permit for a new coal mine heard testimony about how the mine could lower groundwater and cause the ground to settle. The testimony wrapped up Thursday. The Wyoming Environmental Quality Council now will take written comments from proponents and opponents before deciding on a permit in August. Lexington, Kentucky-based Ramaco wants to mine coal from the Brook Mine near Sheridan for industrial purposes. That could include making carbon fiber, a material used in car and airplane parts. It would be Wyoming's first major new coal mine in decades.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday that Greg Gianforte, the GOP House candidate charged with assaulting a reporter, should apologize but added that it is now up to voters in Montana to choose whether they want him as their representative in Congress. "There's never a call for physical altercations," Ryan told reporters during his weekly press conference. "That is wrong and it should not have happened." "I think he should apologize," Ryan added.

In a letter dated April 21 and addressed to the Armenian National Committee of America Western Region (ANCA-WR), Wyoming Governor Matthew H. Mead has recognized the Armenian Genocide and praised the work of Armenian American grassroots. “The atrocities of both the Armenian and Jewish Holocausts were unimaginable,” reads Governor Mead’s letter, “but it is important for all to remember—history must not repeat itself.” ... “I congratulate the Governor for his courageous stance on this moral issue amid lavish anti-Armenian lobbying in Wyoming, which has included all-inclusive junkets to the dictatorship of Azerbaijan by legislators across our nation, who should know...

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — Grizzly bears continue to expand their range amid an ongoing effort to turn over management of the bears from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, a federal official said. “We’ve seen an 11 percent change in increasing range in just a couple of years,” Frank van Manen, head scientist of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, said last week at a meeting in Jackson. Since coming under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, grizzlies have steadily expanded their habitat outward from the population’s core in Yellowstone National...