Free Republic

MADISON – Aaron Rodgers has faced some of the most ferocious defensive linemen the National Football League has ever unleashed on professional football fields. The Green Bay Packers quarterback has passed his way to the top of his game, becoming among the most accurate, respected and highest paid players in NFL history. Now, Rodgers is taking on a much more brutal enemy: The murderous warlords of the Democratic Republic of Congo in command of a civil conflict that has claimed more than 3 million lives. Green Bay’s QB has signed up as a celebrity front man for Raise Hope for...

A proposed gold and copper mine that nearly got buried by the Obama administration moved closer to reality when its developers filed new permits with the federal government. The company behind Pebble Mine, in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, were poised Friday to file a wetlands-fill permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The permit application by the Pebble Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of Northern Dynasty Minerals, marks a milestone for the project that has seen renewed interest since President Trump appointed former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. “At the outset of 2017, we established three ambitious...

Republicans are investigating what they call "improper influence" from a national green group on the Obama administration's signature Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) climate change regulation. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as well as Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, are demanding the EPA and the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) hand over documents on the organization's involvement in drafting the proposed carbon pollution rules. The investigation is based on a New York Times ' report that said the NRDC provided the blueprint used for the rules, and "heavily influenced the president's proposal." While...

<p>President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he's removing more than 52,000 square miles of waters off Alaska's coast from consideration for oil and gas exploration or drilling.</p> <p>The president said in a video announcement that Bristol Bay and nearby waters, covering an area roughly the size of Florida, would be withdrawn from consideration for petroleum leases. He called Bristol Bay one of the country's great natural resources and a massive economic engine.</p>

On-again, off-again plans for the world's largest gold and copper mine could be back on again, after a federal judge in Alaska issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from its ongoing efforts to bury the project. Pebble Partnership, the Canadian company behind the project, which would take place near Anchorage, claims the regulatory agency has conspired illegally with opponents of the mine to devise scientific and environmental justifications for blocking it. Salmon fishermen in Washington state and Alaska, Native American groups and environmental organizations have opposed the massive project for several years, and had appeared to have...

Apparently this wasn’t just an isolated innocent: a second federal agency is also having trouble finding emails that a congressional committee is demanding in order to fulfill its oversight responsibilities: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the IRS share a problem: officials say they cannot provide the emails a congressional committee has requested because an employee’s hard drive crashed. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy confirmed to the House Oversight Committee Wednesday that her staff is unable to provide lawmakers all of the documents they have requested on the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, because of a 2010 computer crash. “We’re having...

A former EPA official tied to a controversy over allegations of federal overreach at an Alaska mine project has mysteriously gone off the grid, sources tell FoxNews.com, complicating lawmakers' efforts to question him. Emails from Phillip North, a now-retired Environmental Protection Agency employee, recently surfaced that seem to show the Alaska-based biologist tried to get the Pebble Mine project killed as far back as 2008. Those emails -- and memos indicating government officials worked early on with tribal leaders and environmental groups to oppose the venture -- raised questions about the agency's claims that when it ultimately vetoed the gold-and-copper...

Energy: As the administration loosens restrictions on domestic energy development and offshore drilling, a reviled company develops technology to unlock America's vast shale resources. Drill, baby, drill. We have been among President Obama's harshest critics when it comes to the administration's overly restrictive energy policy, so we were pleasantly surprised to see him announce on Wednesday some light at the end of the pipeline. Some light, for many restrictions will remain in an energy policy best termed schizophrenic. Speaking at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., Obama announced the welcome news that his administration will let lease sales go...

ANCHORAGE – Southwestern Alaska's Bristol Bay, site of the world's biggest sockeye salmon runs, was long considered too valuable to risk to oil rigs. Like the California and Florida coasts, this part of Alaska has been under a national leasing moratorium to spare it from the threat of spilled crude. But now, eight years after a federal move to buy back oil leases in the vast Bay, residents and state officials are doing what would have seemed unthinkable not long ago: inviting oil firms back. The reversal reflects the fallen fortunes of Alaska's once-powerful salmon industry, and the economic challenges...