Free Republic

The Kane County Board appeared to swing to the right Tuesday as three conservatives who align themselves with former President Donald Trump were on the verge of sweeping out their more moderate colleagues. If the early unofficial results as of 9 p.m. Tuesday night stood, the formation of Kane County’s version of a Freedom Caucus may have begun with Trump-friendly conservatives unseating at least two fellow Republicans, each with more than a decade of experience. Half of the 24-member county board was up for election. Eight of the 12 county seats on primary ballots are represented by Democrats. But few...

Bernie Sanders is throwing his weight behind Kim Foxx, the Cook County state’s attorney who is facing several primary challengers after a first term that has been simultaneously celebrated by progressives and come under fire nationally for her handling of actor Jussie Smollett’s case. Sanders’ campaign told POLITICO he is also endorsing Kane County, Ill. state’s attorney candidate Junaid Afeef, Travis County, Texas, district attorney candidate Jose Garza, and Harris County, Texas, district attorney candidate Audia Jones. The endorsements are in keeping with the Vermont senator’s attempts to position himself as the most progressive presidential candidate on criminal justice policy,...

The shrinking in size of two national monuments in Utah by President Trump through executive order was a long overdue rebuke to federal land grabs that have given federal control to vast swaths of American land, particularly in the West. As the New York Times noted in 2016: The United States government owns 47 percent of all land in the West. In some states, including Oregon, Utah and Nevada, the majority of land is owned by the federal government. Of course, it used to own nearly all of it... East of the Mississippi…the federal government owns only 4 percent of...

The Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s lasted less than a decade as a potent political force. But the sentiment that sparked the backlash over the management of federally owned lands in the West has never really gone away. And nowhere does the movement's heart beat more loudly today than in southern Utah. Specifically, in Kane County.But such actions are, he adds, "as much a political statement as a legal matter. It reflects federal-local tensions that have been part of the system from the beginning in the parts of the West where there is a heavy federal presence." Anti-government feelings in...

Visitors to Zion National Park in Utah will want to adjust their arrival and departure times to avoid the closure of Utah Highway 9 this summer from the park’s east entrance to its junction with the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive. The reconstruction of a 9½-mile section will close the road and tunnel through the Checkerboard Mesa and some other areas from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. Controlled traffic will be allowed before 9 a.m. and after 4 p.m. and on Saturdays and Sundays, the park said

A southern Utah county has taken its fight to manage roads in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to a federal appeals court, claiming that federal officials improperly closed routes to traffic. Lawyers for Kane County argued Wednesday before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver that the county managed the roads for years before the nearly 2-million-acre monument was designated in 1996.

For Kiley Miller and John Rzeczycki, owners of 160 acres of wild desert outside Moab, Utah, Easter brings jeeps. Hummers, too, and modified pickups, and stripped-down rock crawlers—by the tens of thousands they descend on Moab for the annual Easter Jeep Safari, one of the nation's largest off-road-vehicle events. The jeeps whine through gears on a windswept uplift named Black Ridge near the couple's property, leaving a spoor of beer cans and brake fluid. Once, a group of jeepers left a message on one of the Private Property signs Miller and Rzeczyckihad put up—a noose, as carefully knotted as a...

Tentative accord: The county will take signs off federal land but plans to 'assert its right of way' The long, sometimes nasty standoff between Kane County and the Bureau of Land Management over the county's unauthorized placement of road signs on federal land is on the verge of being settled. County and Interior Department officials on Tuesday reached a tentative agreement to end the dispute, which dates back over two years and intensified in February when the county began placing off-highway vehicle route signs in and around the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in defiance of BLM rules. Under the framework...

A little while ago, I asked Carpentersville Trustee Paul Humpfer if he would answer some questions for me to post here on the site. He graciously accepted. These were questions that you would never see the local papers dare ask, for fear of ruffling the feathers of the pro-illegal alien lobby. These have been cut and pasted, as I told Paul I would not alter, or truncate his answers in any way so they could not be misconstrued by anyone.1. What prompted the ordinance?Increasingly, Carpentersville residents have complained about overcrowded houses in the Village, many times caused by people who...