Free Republic

A federal agent who had been scrutinized for his handling of rare evidence and his behavior at the counterculture Burning Man festival is no longer an employee of the Bureau of Land Management, authorities said Friday. Daniel Love, who played a command role in federal agents' 2014 standoff with Nevada rancher and states' rights figure Cliven Bundy, no longer works for the agency. .... Love still worked for the agency on Aug. 24, when a federal investigative report was released saying he handed out valuable stones known as moqui marbles to colleagues and a contractor "like candy,". The rocks are...

When most people hear the Little Red Book they think of communist book Quotations from Chairman Mao, required reading in China during the cultural revolution. It looked like this: Considering this book has many negative events associated with it (police reportedly beat any citizen found not carrying it) it is surprising that an environmental group would choose to embrace this theme for a publication dedicated to preventing deforestation. In December 2008, the Global Canopy Programme released a book called The Little REDD Book, intended as a guide to UN negotiations on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). Here is...

Three US governors join forces with Indonesia and Brazil to keep carbon locked up in endangered tropical forests Though it didn't seems to make an enormous splash in the press, the deal reached this week between three US states, Indonesia and Brazil seems like a fairly big deal in terms of rainforest protection. The agreement was brokered at the climate summit convened by California's ecosavvy governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Along with fellow governors from Illinois and Wisconsin, Schwarzenegger signed an agreement that could see carbon credits earned from forest protection in Indonesia or Brazil incorporated into US emissions trading schemes. Partly,...

Al Qaeda has an active plot to hit the West. The United States knows about it but doesn’t have enough tactical detail to issue a precise warning or raise the threat level, says Vice Admiral (ret.) John Scott Redd, who heads the government’s National Counterterrorism Center. In an interview at his headquarters near Washington, D.C., Redd told Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball and Jeffrey Bartholet that the country is better prepared than ever to counter such threats. But he also believes another successful terror attack on the U.S. homeland is inevitable. Excerpts: NEWSWEEK: People in various agencies have said that since Tora...

President Bush on Friday selected a retired vice admiral of the Navy, who recently held an operations post in Iraq, to direct the nation's new counterterrorism center charged with pooling and analyzing information about terrorist threats. Retired Vice Adm. John Scott Redd is Bush's choice to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, White House spokesman Scott McClellan announced. Redd formerly was executive director of the Silberman-Robb presidential commission on intelligence. If confirmed by the Senate, Redd, 60, would replace John O. Brennan, the center's interim chief, who said last month that he would step down after a replacement was announced. "He...