Free Republic

A Wyoming Republican Party delegate is challenging a University of Wyoming ban on the carry of firearms in its facilities. The ban is enforced through trespass law. The circuit court has issued a stay on the criminal trespass proceedings, to allow the issue of the legality of the ban to be determined before the trespass case goes forward. From kpvi.com: LARAMIE — A criminal case in Albany County Circuit Court involving the University of Wyoming’s campus gun ban has received a stay, pending a separate civil action against UW seeking to challenge the legality of that ban.During the Wyoming...

Dave Smith has studied bear behavior and bear attacks extensively. He has written books on how to survive bear encounters and animal attacks.  I have corresponded with Dave Smith. I find Dave to be the most knowledgeable, well read, and capable critic of the current literature.  Dave has worked prodigiously to understand the studies about the effectiveness of bear spray and firearms in stopping bear attacks. In November of 2017, Dave put a great deal of thought into an exchange of comments at a Wyoming public media site. I contacted Dave, and he agreed to allow me to edit and...

...Dustin Roberts, 36, of McKinleyville, Calif., tried to disarm the trooper after being stopped for a speeding violation. Troopers found 74 pounds of marijuana and some cocaine in his vehicle, officials said.

In online discussions of bear attacks, it is not unusual for people to claim that a person is more likely to be killed by lightning than to be killed by a bear. That is true, in a gross sense. You are also more likely to die of a heart attack or to be murdered than to be killed by a bear when you use the entire United States population as a measure.This comparison is disingenuous. It is easy to avoid being killed by a bear, simply by staying out of areas where there are bears. Lightning strikes occur all...

Reggie Barnett Jr punched brick walls to train for the first sanctioned fist fight in 130 years. The contest takes place in Wyoming on Saturday.

MORAN, Wyo. — At around 10 p.m. Thursday at the Diamond Cross Ranch here, Chris Rock stepped up on a small platform, looked out over a few hundred people huddled around a wildly flickering bonfire, and leaned in to his convocation. “I touched a moose!” he exclaimed, “and the moose said to me, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of …’” — well, let’s just say people who don’t ordinarily gather on a ranch in Wyoming. He nodded toward the fire. “Tomorrow night that will be a cross,” he deadpanned. Hip-hop, he said, is “the first art form created by free black...

An illegal immigrant is heading to prison today after being found guilty of abusing his two granddaughters in late 2016. Thirty-six-year-old Hugo Mendoza-Cota is to spend three to seven years at the Wyoming State Penitentiary after he used his Alford Plea to plead guilty to sexually abusing his two granddaughters in late 2016. His sentenced will run concurrent and after his time is served, he will be deported back to Mexico.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — The Wyoming school district where U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos suggested that teachers might need to be armed to protect children from grizzly bears voted Tuesday on doing just that, though concerns about school shootings worry parents more than the possibility of big bruins on the prowl. The 4-2 vote by the Park County School District No. 6 board in the town of Cody near Yellowstone National Park came after more than six months of discussion and debate. Under the proposed policy...

An on-again, off-again effort to restrict harmful methane emissions on federal lands is off — again. A federal judge in Wyoming has halted the clean-air rule indefinitely. Judge Scott Skavdahl says it "makes little sense" to force oil and gas companies to comply with the Obama-era rule when the Trump administration has moved to roll back the 2016 regulation. Skavdahl says enforcing the rule "provides minimal public benefit" while imposing potentially significant costs on industry. Wednesday's ruling is the latest in a back-and-forth series of court decisions and administrative actions as the Trump administration tries to weaken or delay a...

A growing number of Americans understand that the reckless creation of fiat currency by the Federal Reserve System is causing many of our economic problems. They want to abolish the Fed and return to the gold-backed currency that brought America and the world unprecedented prosperity throughout the 19th century. But that will not happen overnight. Big banks and other special interests reap enormous profits from the present system, while many Americans are accustomed to paper money and do not grasp the deep connection between sound money and lasting prosperity.

More than two dozen Senate Republicans are urging President Trump to re-engage in Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. The 25 GOP lawmakers sent a letter to Trump on Friday saying they support his recent comments that he may consider U.S. participation if the 11-nation Asia-Pacific pact is improved.

Many people in the gun culture have asked why gun manufacturers would stay in states that are consistently attacking Second Amendment rights. States such as New York and California.Weatherby, Inc. is making the move. The announcement was made at the Shot Show. From the press release email: Firearms manufacturer Weatherby, Inc., is relocating its manufacturing operations and corporate headquarters from California to Sheridan, Wyoming, company officials announced today from SHOT Show in Las Vegas, the world’s largest annual shooting, hunting and firearms industry trade show. The move is expected to create 70 to 90 jobs and more than $5...

In early 2016, Chauncy G. Goodrich and his family started having problems with a young bull moose on their property near Pinedale, Wyoming.They were repeatedly chased by the moose. They tried various non lethal methods to haze the moose away. They worked for a short period, but the bull continued to hang around the area. By July of 2017, the non-lethal methods were exhausted and/or were no longer effective. Chauncy took a 7 mm Magnum with him as a precaution when he attempted to chase the moose off his property and away from his wife and young children.The bull...

Since Donald Trump's election, environmental zealots have mostly had a very rough two weeks — and Donald Trump has had nothing to do with any of it. Two developments they consider really bad (meaning good for the rest of us) far outweigh the single item they're celebrating. First, in Wyoming, just two days after the election, their "fracking is bad" Exhibit A in Pavillion, Wyoming was completely discredited. Second, in Texas this week, a huge oil discovery was reported — so big and unprecedented that the only commenter at the Associated Press's coverage of the story at the Washington Post...

Republican establishment-types in the House, as well as congressional Democrats, say they are close to finalizing a bipartisan amnesty plan for as many as 3.5 million illegal aliens. In a comment to the Hill, Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) said a group of House Republicans and Democrats were swiftly crafting an amnesty to push for passage either this week or at the beginning of the new year. “We’ve had very good meetings here with the Problem Solvers Caucus — [Rep.] Will Hurd [R-Texas] has been working on a potential compromise with some Democrats as well, so we could see something as...

Wyoming Secretary of State Ed Murray is denying claims he sexual assaulted a former co-worker. In a Facebook post, Tatiana Maxwell alleges the incident happened 35 years ago when she and Murray worked together at a Cheyenne law firm. She says she “told close friends about the incident at the time and my then husband some years later.” Maxwell goes on to say “As this issue of sexual harassment and assault has grown, my daughters have asked about my experience. As I described it, they asked what I did about it and the answer is, nothing. I did not know...

A conservative campus group at the University of Wyoming has had its ability to receive funding from its school coffers yanked just weeks after hosting conservative pundit Dennis Prager. The group, Turning Point USA, was accused by the student government’s finance committee of not following campus policy in hosting the Nov. 9 event and has since been suspended from requesting funding until 2019, the Branding Iron campus newspaper reports. The pro-capitalism student group was accused largely of minor procedural infractions: not properly labeling its posters, not using an approved ticketing method for the event, and “providing food unauthorized by UW...

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...