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In 2011, the Department of Justice conducted raids on the Tennessee facilities of the famed Gibson Guitar company and confiscated large quantities of tonewood that had been imported from India and Madagascar. The action included armed SWAT teams, with automatic weapons, who apparently feared being garroted with a guitar string by an enraged Gibson employee. These raids were conducted due to the Lacey Act, which bans the importing of certain woods. The issue at hand was not that the wood was endangered or illegally harvested, but that it was not of the proper thickness that would have meant that some...

U.S. law enforcement agencies are conducting thousands of investigations using a law that makes violating state wildlife statutes a federal crime, often ensnaring hunters and fishermen for seemingly minor infractions. Some even suffer stiff federal prison sentences. Special agents and wildlife inspectors for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conduct about 2,500 investigative cases a year of violations of the Lacey Act, a 1900 law meant to combat illegal trafficking of wildlife. ... Rock star Ted Nugent, an avid hunter and fisherman .. "Good, decent families' lives are being turned upside down and ruined by out-of-control jackboot game agencies, particularly...

Federal investigators raided the offices of Lumber Liquidators on Thursday, the company and authorities said. Stocks of the hardwood flooring retailer fell sharply on Friday as the news emerged, dropping just over 10% at midday. No arrests were made and the search warrants remain sealed, said Brandon Montgomery, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. He said the search involved special agents from the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Justice. Lumber Liquidators (LL) suggested the investigation involved its importation of wood products, which come from "approximately 110 domestic and international mills...

Although details were initially sketchy, Lumber Liquidators' (LL) stock price plunged as much as 10% early Friday after a reported raid by federal investigators on its headquarters related to a probe of illegal imports. In a statement, the top flooring retailer with more than 300 stores nationwide, said it would provide to investigators information and documents related to the import of certain products. The Department of Homeland Security, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Department of Justice conducted the raid, acting under a sealed court-issued warrant.

[HASC] - The Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations received testimony in a classified briefing from three key figures involved in the response to the attack on Americans in Benghazi. General Carter Ham (ret), former Commander, AFRICOM; Lieutenant Colonel S.E. Gibson, former commander of the site security team at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli; and Rear Admiral Brian Losey, former commander, Special Operations Command Africa, all offered accounts of U.S. force posture and planning ahead of the attack, and actions taken during and after the attack. While the subcommittee will continue to carry out appropriate oversight, today’s witnesses did...

General Carter Ham is scheduled to testify to the House Armed Services Committee on June 26 at a classified briefing about his knowledge of events that took place when the attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya happened last September, reports Fox News' Greta Van Susteren: Below is from my FNC colleague Justin Fishel: Subject: Fox First: General Carter Ham to testify on Benghazi for first time next week Fox News has learned that the House Armed Services Committee will hold a classified briefing next Weds June 26 at 9:00 on Benghazi. Briefers will include: Gen....

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog President Obama had armed SWAT agents raid a law-abiding guitar factory because it was owned by a Republican donor President Obama had armed SWAT agents raid the Gibson guitar factory, ordered the employees to leave, and seized guitars and other property from the factory – and all of this happened without any charges being filed.It was later reported that Gibson had not broken any U.S. laws.Obama’s so-called justification for the raid was that Gibson had broken environmental laws from India regarding the imported wood that Gibson had been using.Gibson claimed that it had not broken any...

The persecution and prosecution of Gibson Guitar stands out as a prime example of government overreach, similar to IRS Tea Party targeting. This video explains the insanity of the raid and ultimate charges — very technical and disputed interpretations of Indian law as to the importation of wood used in the guitars. This had nothing to do with conservation or protection of forests, it had to do with India keeping jobs in India, and insane paperwork requirements in the U.S. The trees would have been cut and the wood used regardless of how Gibson....Civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate wrote about...

Remember Obama and Eric Holder’s attack on Gibson Guitars? Back in 2009 the Obama regime raided Gibson Guitars and demanded that its woodwork labor be done overseas. The original excuse by the Obama regime for their raid on Gibson Guitars was ‘environmental concerns.’ Court documents however, revealed that the raid and legal hassles were from a non-environmental question — which country is working on the wood? That’s right, the Obama regime wanted the ‘fingerboards’ produced outside the U.S. In something that was overlooked at the time but makes a lot more sense now, the Gibson Guitars CEO Henry E. Juszkiewicz...

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., issued a sharp and unusual challenge to the truthfulness of the nation’s top uniformed military commander on Thursday, demanding that U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, return to Capitol Hill to provide fresh testimony on the Benghazi attacks. The point of contention involved whether any military officers issued an order to U.S. armed forces personnel on the night of Sept. 11, when the U.S. consulate and a nearby annex came under terrorist attack, to “stand down” from providing assistance. “I asked [Gen. Dempsey] directly,” Graham said in an exclusive interview...

The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has told congressional investigators that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa. The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized. Hicks gave private testimony to congressional investigators last month in advance of his upcoming appearance at a congressional hearing Wednesday. According to excerpts released Monday,...

The Righthaven LLC copyright lawsuit saga will continue indefinitely after a judge on Wednesday blocked efforts to have Righthaven's CEO fired and its appeals canceled. Righthaven is known for filing 275 no-warning lawsuits in 2010 and 2011 in partnership with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post. As a company, as opposed to being a law firm, Righthaven had acquired copyrights from the newspapers for lawsuit purposes. It sued individuals, companies and nonprofits it claimed infringed on the copyrights by posting content from the newspapers online without authorization. The company essentially shut down last year after judges in three...

Right-wing rocker Ted Nugent made a rambunctious stop on his “Great White Buffalo Tour” at Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth on Saturday night. “Uncle Ted,” as he lovingly calls himself, took plenty of shots at President Barack Obama while his “hunting buddies” (the audience) rocked out to his raging glam metal. Nugent is notorious for running his mouth about topics like hunting laws, gun rights, and the current state of the government, and this Stockyards crowd was ready and waiting. Here are the top five jaw-dropping statements from Nugent on Saturday night:

On Thursday, the iconic Gibson Guitar Corporation issued a press release stating that government officials raided their Tennessee manufacturing facility over warrants concerning the legality of the importation of wood purchased from India that they use in their world famous guitars. The wood–which is certified and regulated by the Forest Stewardship Council–is not illegal, but rather subject to a domestic law in India frowns upon the processing of this wood by non-Indians. (Gibson uses American labor for the processing.) Gibson’s press release claims that, while this incident marks the second raid of their facility in around two years, this is...

Gibson Guitar Corp. agreed to settle charges that it illegally purchased and imported ebony wood from Madagascar and rosewood and ebony from India, the Justice Department said today. The company will pay a $300,000 fine under a criminal enforcement agreement that defers prosecution for criminal violations of the Lacey Act. Another $50,000 fine will go to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation “to be used to promote the conservation, identification and propagation of protected tree species used in the musical instrument industry and the forests where those species are found.” Since May 2008, it has been illegal under the Lacey...

Lawmakers are scrambling to save the summer concert season from federal agents poised to seize the instruments of rock and country stars because the wood used to make them may have been illegally harvested--and without their knowledge. “I don’t want the musicians from Nashville who are flying to Canada to perform this summer to worry about the government seizing their guitars,” said Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander. Alexander, whose state is home to famed Gibson Guitars used by bands and stars like Van Halen, the Allman Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Ted Nugent and Paul McCartney, said Friday that he and Oregon...

t was seven months ago that federal agents with guns drawn raided the Gibson guitar factories in Nashville and Memphis. A half million dollars worth of Indian rosewood and ebony was seized under the premise that it had been imported illegally. The feds also took a number of guitars and computer hard drives. The factory was shut down for the day and employees told to go home. Yet after all this time, the Department of Justice has shown no sign that it will file criminal charges against Gibson. What’s more – it has been almost 3 years since federal agents...

Waukesha - Ten 10-foot tall guitars, modeled after the Les Paul Gibson, arrived on a flatbed trailer - guarded by a mammoth fiberglass bulldog - Tuesday morning, a sure sign that the GuitarTown Project is for real. The Gibson Foundation and Mayor Jeff Scrima announced earlier this month that Waukesha had been selected for the project, following on the heels of cities such as Los Angeles, Nashville and London. In other GuitarTown Project cities, the guitars typically were decorated by artists, often signed by celebrities and auctioned off to raise money for charity. Later Tuesday, a Waukesha steering committee planned...

Over the last few years, guitars and a sort of obscure law against illegal logging have come into conflict. Environmental activists are in Anaheim today, at the National Association of Music Merchants trade show, to do a raising awareness song-and-dance about this. Literally: they've got a musician with them. The guitars are Gibsons, and the law is the Lacey Act. An NPR colleague reported on this issue from Tennessee last year. Gibson is just a flash point: federal law enforcement officials have investigated the company on the suspicion that it broke laws in India and Madagascar. The Lacey Act makes...

Peter Frampton and his favorite guitar are together again following a 31-year estrangement, the New York Times reports. The singer, who played the Gibson Electric Guitar on his 1976 album Frampton Comes Alive!, assumed the instrument had been wrecked in 1980 when a cargo plane crashed in Caracas, Venezuela, en route to Frampton's concert in Panama. As it happened, the guitar was recovered -- and sold to a musician on the Caribbean island of Curacao. “For 30 years, it didn’t exist – it went up in a puff of smoke as far as I was concerned,” Frampton told The Times...