Free Republic

Federal wildlife officials have granted protection to the Gunnison sage grouse, a move that could to bring restrictions on oil and gas drilling and other land uses to preserve the bird's habitat in Colorado and Utah. ... They're related to the greater sage grouse, which is at the center of a separate and larger debate over federal protection across 11 Western states.

It seems incredible, but a single missing word could turn a water law into a government land grab so horrendous even a U.S. Supreme Court justice warned it would “put the property rights of every American entirely at the mercy of Environmental Protection Agency employees.” The missing word is “navigable.” The Obama administration is proposing a rule titled “Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’ Under the Clean Water Act,” which would strike “navigable” from American water law and redefine any piece of land that is wet at least part of the year, no matter how remote or isolated it...

Bowie Resource Partners says it has eliminated 150 jobs at the Bowie #2 coal mine near Paonia. ... Last year the shutdown of another mine in the region caused nearly 300 people to lose their jobs. That coal mine is in Somerset. In the release, Bowie says it will provide the 150 laid off workers with 60 days of wages and benefits.

Feds Retaliate against the Bundy Ranch and the Southern Nevada People On Friday October 10th, 2014 a Notice from the federal registry reveals that the federal government is mounting retaliations against the Bundy family and the Southern Nevada people. Federal Register / Vol. 79, No.197 Notice, outlines plans to make the Bundy ranch and most of the rest of Southern Nevada, Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs). 90 days from October 10th, 2014 these proposals will become federal law without consent from the Nevada State legislatures or the people of Southern Nevada. Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs) are human...

Montana wildlife officials are dropping a proposal to keep confidential the names of hunters and trappers who kill wildlife in Montana. ... That information is now available under the state's right-to-know laws. Some hunters and trappers had claimed they were being harassed by people who had obtained the information.

[snip]An official notice was recently released by the Federal Registry, proclaiming that upwards of 3 million acres of land in southern Nevada would be declared Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) and placed off limits to virtually all human activity.

Observers have long known that only a few options were available for the route of the privately funded high-speed train line between Houston and Dallas. Now a firmer picture of where the trains might run is emerging. (Photo courtesy of JR Central) (Photo courtesy of JR Central) As part of the federally required process to evaluate the line, the Federal Railroad Administration and Texas Department of Transportation released maps of the nine routes they are considering and the two chosen for deeper evaluation. The lines that didn’t make the final cut seem to be a bit longer, or else have...

Public Enemy No. 1 for rural Utah sheriffs just happens to be a fellow peace officer: Dan Love, the Bureau of Land Management’s special agent in charge. Elected law enforcement officers from Nephi to Blanding call him an arrogant and dishonest bully who has little regard for local authority and dodges accountability, derailing a collaborative approach to police work on the state’s federal lands. Love reportedly just laughed when Garfield County Sheriff James "Danny" Perkins relayed ranchers’ complaints about federal officers removing plastic feed tubs from the range and threatening the ranchers with litter citations. He drew early controversy during...

Message to Detroit: The UN’s got the money, the UN’s got the water No one, and most especially Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, should be surprised that two United Nations lawyers came to town to scold city officials for cutting off water to delinquent customers, sanctimoniously describing the water shut-offs as a “human rights” violation. The United Nations virtually owns cities and towns of North America like Detroit. They’re just not usually that open about it. The UN ownership of cities and towns is called Agenda 21.

UN Biodiversity Conference Pushes Global Redistribution, Restriction, Regimentation 20 October 2014 “Resource mobilization” and “capacity building” were two of the key terms that dominated the recently concluded United Nations “biodiversity” conference in Korea. “Resource mobilization,” as the reader may guess, refers to increasing government funding (i.e., increasing taxation) to support biodiversity programs and research. “Capacity building,” a favorite phrase at the UN, refers to foreign aid transfers from the developed to the lesser developed countries, which means either government-to-government or government-to-UN agency transfers of wealth.The 12th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP12) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity...

Ebola’s ebola czar called overpopulation the top leadership concern of the world, Gotnews.com has learned. Democratic operative Ron Klain and his wife, Monica Medina, spoke with a Georgetown interviewer in 2008. Ebola Czar Ron Klain Says "Overpopulation" Top Concern Video clip“I think the top leadership challenge issue in our world today is how to deal with the continuing, growing population in the world and all the resource demands it places on the world and burgeoning populations in Africa and Asia that lack the resources to have a healthy, happy life,” Klain said. “We’ve got to find a way to make...

In perhaps the most stunning documentation yet of abuses by Eric Holder’s Justice Department, two former Assistant United States Attorneys spoke to defense attorneys and revealed appalling deceit and corruption of justice. This latest litigation time bomb has exploded from multi-million dollar litigation originally brought by the Department of Justice against Sierra Pacific based on allegations that the lumber company and related defendants were responsible for a wildfire that destroyed 65,000 acres in California. In what was dubbed the “Moonlight Fire” case, the tables are now turned. The defendants have discovered new evidence and filed a stunning motion. The new...

Only a madman would gamble with our lives…our children’s lives…and the entire American economy. Why would President Obama play “Russian Roulette” with the future of our country? It’s a gamble no sane leader would take. The life and death issue is Ebola. The President is more concerned with political correctness (and golf) than taking common sense precautions to prevent a deadly pandemic. Why does this President not see his responsibility is to keep the odds as low as possible? There are three simple, common sense actions any President who cared about American citizens would take:

Most assume that Black Death quickly ravaged the fourteenth century western world was a bacterial bubonic plague epidemic caused by flea bites and spread by rats. But the Black Death killed a high proportion of Scandinavians -- and where they lived was too cold for fleas to survive. A modern work gives us a clue into this mystery. The “Biology of Plagues” published by Cambridge University Press analyzed 2,500 years of plagues and concluded that the Black Death was caused by a viral hemorrhagic fever pandemic similar to Ebola. If this view is correct, the future medical and economic impacts...

LPEA customers oppose upcharge for visiting homes.. La Plata Electric Association ... A frequent comment was the impression that the switch from analog to Advanced Metering Infrastructure – or so-called smart meters – that started in late 2013 was done without informing customers. Several people said they learned about smart meters from neighbors or only because they were at home when an LPEA technician arrived to switch out the analog meter. The alleged secrecy eroded public trust, they said. About 300 LPEA customers have chosen not to have the latest meter-reading technology installed. A number of speakers cited health problems,...

A group of horseback riders drew stares, honks and a few handshakes and high-fives along Redwood Road Thursday, hooves clattering on pavement in a protest ride of federal land management policies. The Utah trek of the Grass March Cowboy Express hit Salt Lake City and continued east up Parleys Canyon, with Tooele County Commission Chairman Bruce Clegg and Utah Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, riding in tandem. With them they carried a mail pouch sporting a letter demanding the resignation of a BLM field office manager who ordered grazing reductions in Battle Mountain, Nevada, and petitions from rural Utah counties...

So How Does an Ebola Outbreak Benefit the Leftists Running the Country? What are the benefits of letting something like this run unchecked with no quarantines at border? Who wins if this becomes a factor in daily life in Western civ? Can we follow the money here? What good is this to leftist totalitarian fascists who run this oligarchy? Is this good for the super-rich? What about the Moslims? How does it benefit them? Trying to understand the bizarre public health choices here that seems to have been in place since Aids hit our shores. Are we trying not to...

Two Utah congressmen say the public needs more time to weigh in on a "sweeping" proposal to designate more than a half-million acres as critical habitat for the Western yellow-billed cuckoo. Republican Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Chris Stewart are among 17 members of Congress who urged U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe to extend the comment period on the designation beyond Oct. 14. "While we oppose this listing proposal, we find it completely unacceptable that the (agency) has proposed only 60 days of public comment with no public hearings, effectively shutting out meaningful comment on a sweeping critical...

Ebola, MEnterovirus, and Chikungunyaarburg, - these diseases were not even on the radar of most people coming into 2014, but now each one of them is making headline news. So why is this happening? Why are so many deadly diseases breaking out all over the world right now? Is there some kind of connection, or is the fact that so many horrible diseases are arising all at once just a giant coincidence? And this could be just the beginning. For example, there are now more than a million cases of Chikungunya in Central and South America, and authorities are projecting...

Home-schoolers represent the only authentically radical social movement in the United States (Occupy Wall Street was a fashion statement) and so they must be suppressed, as a malevolent committee of leftist academics and union bosses under the direction of Governor Dannel Malloy is preparing to do in Connecticut, using the Sandy Hook massacre as a pretext. The ghouls invariably rush to the podium after every school massacre, issuing their insipid press releases before the bodies have even cooled, and normally they’re after your guns. But the Malloy gang is after your children. Malloy’s committee on the Newtown shootings is recommending...