Free Republic

The plan to void 60 western Colorado energy leases.. is a looming BLM-caused disaster. Hundreds of citizens from Mesa County and other affected areas gathered May 1 in De Beque to protest a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plan to void existing contracts the government made with private individuals and companies. The meeting in De Beque, a little town dependent almost entirely on gas, oil, coal and cows, was not originally planned by the BLM. Since half of the imperiled leases are in Mesa County, the Mesa County Board of Commissioners joined with various associations and individuals to demand that...

Date: May 10, 2014 Time: 9:00 AM (possible meeting the night before, TBA) Place: Blanding, Utah – 255 North Hwy 191. Purpose: Assert local jurisdiction and challenge the overreach of federal agencies. Who is invited: This is not being formally sponsored or organized. It was deemed necessary at a town hall meeting in Blanding on February 27, 2014, and we welcome ALL supporters... On the 10th We will have some introductions, some instructions, and I will explain the topography including what trails have been “closed” by the BLM and which ones remain open. We will also have a flag ceremony...

The American coal industry is accusing the Obama administration of using the Environmental Protection Agency to end the use of coal despite the president's claim of having an "all of the above" energy policy. ... the EPA's MATS rules, which go into effect in January 2016, will devastate coal production in America and .. about 60 gigawatts of coal-fired generation coming off-line .. One of Monseu’s issues is the way she said the administration is targeting coal, which currently fuels around 40 percent of the electricity produced in the U.S. "Increasingly we face a situation where policy is dictated not...

A small airplane heading back to South Dakota after a Texas cattle sale crashed into a wind farm in foggy weather, killing the pilot and three passengers. ... Similar conditions contributed to a 2008 crash in southeast Minnesota. Federal investigators concluded the pilot of a 1948 Cessna 140 lacked proper instrument training for the day's foul weather. The National Transportation Safety Board's probable cause report also noted the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane while maneuvering around a wind farm.

It all started with the sucker fish. The con, that is. I can see it all now. A group of robber barons and their flunkies sitting down at a table and deciding just what ruse they will use to grab all of the water and land in the country, and for Oregon, it’s the sucker. Yes, the infamous Klamath Basin Sucker Fish. The fish that evidently, needs both high and low water levels, murky and clear water, and an overdose of federal government interference to survive, even though attempts to eradicate it have failed time and time again. It has...

What was initially conceived as a ride involving a handful of Blanding residents in Recapture Canyon could grow into a massive statement against the federal government. San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman has called for the May 10 ATV ride on public land in the canyon, located just east of Blanding city limits. Lyman said he has lost patience with the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which “temporarily” closed the area to vehicular traffic in 2007 and has yet to reopen it. Lyman said the ride is to make a statement regarding local jurisdiction. However, because of the timing...

The Western Shoshone have been litigating the rights to their homeland since at least 1951 ... Raymond Yowell's land, from which BLM seized his cattle, is within the ancestral territories of the Western Shoshone Nation recognized in the 1863 Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed at Ruby Valley . The Western Shoshone have never ceded or relinquished their fundamental indigenous relationship to these territories. They continue to hunt, fish, gather, graze, and live on the lands in accordance with laws and instructions given to them by the Ah-Peh (Father). In 1995, Mr. Yowell was Chief of the Western Shoshone National...

When too much of a good thing can be too much. ... the swollen agency spends $2.6 billion a year. President Obama wants to spend still more money on parks, asking Congress to approve a scheme to spend an additional $1.2 billion over the next three years. The cash would be earmarked to celebrate the National Park Service’s centennial anniversary in 2016. It would fund, among other projects, an expensive youth work program and provide more muscle for the federales to wrestle land from individual property owners. ... Few national parks are financially self-sufficient. The rest are on the dole,...

A recent fire in Tombstone's historical district has brought back the battle between the city and the feds over the town's water supply. Tombstone gets its water from a highly protected wilderness area in the Huachuca Mountains. The pipeline that transports water 30 miles across Cochise County has had problems since the Monument Fire in 2011. According to the City they still haven't been able to get the proper equipment into the area to permanently fix the issues. The structures in Tombstone's historic district are like a tinderbox. In the past few years alone the site of what is currently...

Gov. Jan Brewer will not give ranchers and their employees permission to kill endangered Mexican gray wolves on federal lands. The measure vetoed Tuesday was crafted by Sen. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford. She has been a vocal foe of the program by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reintroduce the wolves into sections of Arizona and New Mexico, saying they are endangering not only cattle but also pets and children. SB1211 would have spelled out that ranchers could “take” a wolf — legalese for killing — that was killing, wounding or biting livestock. It also would have legalized a guard...

One of the supporters serving as a bodyguard for Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy during his standoff with federal authorities -- and who also happens to be black -- said he would still "take a bullet for" Bundy after the rancher made racially inflammatory comments. CNN's Dan Simon noticed Jason Bullock, a six-year Army veteran who serves as one of Bundy's bodyguards, hanging around at the Nevada ranch. Simon asked Bullock whether he found Bundy's remarks about blacks and slavery offensive. "Mr. Bundy is not a racist," he told CNN. "Ever since I've been here, he's treated me with nothing but...

Senator Harry Reid told reporters the Bundy Ranch dispute is not over. “Something will happen.” ... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says “something is going to happen” to get Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy to stop letting his cattle graze on federal land. “It’s obvious that you can’t just walk away from this. And we can speculate all we want to speculate to what’s going to happen next,” Reid told KSNV-TV. “But I don’t think it’s going to be tomorrow that something is going to happen, but something will happen. We are a nation of laws, not of men and women.”...

landed in the Facebook gulag when I tried to post our daily Bible verse. ... Now before you call up the preacher had put me on the church prayer list – let me assure the posting was neither unseemly nor ungentlemanly. Nevertheless, it caused great consternation and angst among Facebook’s left-wing censors. Following is the egregious text: “Rancher Bundy should’ve told the feds that those were Mexican cows – who came across the border illegally to seek better grazing opportunities. It was an act of love.” Thousands of you posted comments and many more shared that message. It’s now gone...

Long before Cliven Bundy faced down federal agents in his dispute with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights, fellow Nevada rancher Raymond Yowell, an 84-year-old former Shoshone chief, watched as the BLM seized his herd. Adding to that, since 2008 they've taken his money as well -- in the form of a piece of his Social Security checks. Yowell's 132 head of cattle had grazed for decades on the South Fork Western Shoshone Indian Reservation in northeastern Nevada until 2002, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) -- the same agency at odds with Bundy -- seized them....

The Arizona Senate has approved a bill that would allow cities and towns to enter restricted federal land without permission in emergencies. ... Republican bill sponsor Rep. Kelly Townsend of Mesa says she was inspired by the battle between the city of Tombstone and the federal government over access to repair its water supply system in the Coronado National Forest. She says local authorities should have the right to go in where needed without being granted approval first in cases of emergency.

The Arizona House of Representatives has approved a Senate bill allowing ranchers to kill endangered wolves in self-defense. Senate Bill 1211 would allow livestock owners to kill a Mexican gray wolf if one was caught attacking livestock or a person. Wildlife activists say the bill violates the federal Endangered Species Act. But a staff attorney says the bill has been watered down and now meets constitutional requirements.

The average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity hit a March record of 13.5 cents, according data released yesterday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was up about 5.5 percent from 12.8 cents per KWH in March 2013. ... The BLS’s seasonally adjusted electricity price index rose to 209.341 this March, the highest it has ever been, up 10.537 points—or 5.3 percent--from 198.804 in March 2013. ... per capita electricity production peaked in the United States in 2007.

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell announced Monday that the state will sue the Obama administration to allow construction of a 10-mile road to give residents of a remote fishing village access to emergency medical flights at an all-weather airport. Residents of King Cove, Alaska, were outraged in December when Interior Secretary Sally Jewell nixed a plan for a land swap that would have allowed the building of an unpaved road between the small town and the airport at Cold Bay. ... Since Ms. Jewell rejected the land swap, which would have given the refuge 43,093 acres of state land and 13,300...

The rural Nevada showdown between federal government officials and militia members protecting rancher Cliven Bundy has evolved into a battle of government “tyranny,” with many newly arriving militiamen rolling in to draw a line in the dirt about 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas. ... “This is a better education than being in school! I’m glad I brought you. I’m a good mom,” Ilona Ence, a 49-year-old mother from St. George and Bundy relative who brought her four teenage children to the ranch, told the Las Vegas Sun. “They’re learning about the Constitution.” Ence’s teenage sons posted up a sign...

Will Obama use two small birds to limit oil drilling in the West? Almost half the land west of the Mississippi belongs to the federal government, including 48% of California, 62% of Idaho and 81% of Nevada. No surprise that the Obama Administration wants to control more. But the result could be to suppress the country's booming oil and gas development. In partnership with green activists, the Department of Interior may attempt one of the largest federal land grabs in modern times, using a familiar vehicle—the Endangered Species Act (ESA). A record 757 new species could be added to the...