Free Republic

Veteran John Arnold said he received a letter on July 30 telling him Veterans Affairs representatives were planning to come pick up his guns. Dozens gathered in front of Arnold's home Thursday to support his right to keep those gun. "A couple days ago it was going to be me sitting here with john and today it's quite a few folks that so it's veterans veterans taking care of veterans," said Arnold's friend Ranger Rick. Arnold had a stroke one year ago. In January, paperwork filed with the VA stated that Arnold was financially incompetent and could not handle his own...

Gov. John Hickenlooper has pledged that Colorado will comply with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, but this effort to cut so-called “CO2 pollution” could come at a dear price to the state’s coal industry. ... Colorado is among the top states in coal production and consumption. In the year 2013, 64 percent of energy produced in Colorado came from coal, 20 percent from natural gas, and around 15 percent from various renewables including hydroelectric, biomass, solar and wind. The history of Colorado’s coal mining industry stretches over the past two centuries. Not to mention, coal jobs have a multiplier effect...

Why the next seven weeks? Because fiscal year 2015 ends on September 30th and the settlers in the US State Department and in their contracting agencies want to hit the Obama target of 70,000 for the year and they have (as of July 31), 18,470 more to go! Actually that 70,000 figure that Obama announced in his Presidential Determination Letter to Congress last September is meant to be a ceiling, not a goal that they necessarily have to hit. However, since the contractors are paid by the head and they have salaries and office overhead to pay, they always try...

Industry blasts suggestion as harmful to the country. A conservation group that has succeeded in dealing recent legal setbacks to western Colorado coal mines called Thursday for a phase-out of federal coal leasing to help combat climate change. “It’s time for the Interior Department to shut it down,” Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy Program director for WildEarth Guardians, said in a news release. The group outlined a plan for ending the federal coal program over 10 to 25 years through a moratorium on leasing publicly owned coal, retiring existing leases that aren’t producing, honestly reporting the climate impacts of the...

BOISE, Idaho (AP) -- A group of residents in northern Idaho lined up outside a U.S. Navy veteran's house on Thursday to protest claims that federal officials are planning on confiscating the man's weapons. Idaho Republican state Rep. Heather Scott of Blanchard said the Veteran Affairs office has sent a letter to John Arnold of Priest River warning him that he cannot possess or purchase firearms. The protest -spearheaded by Scott- attracted roughly 100 people. Among them were Bonner County Sheriff Daryl Wheeler, who promised to stand guard against any federal attempts to remove Arnold's guns, and Republican Washington state...

The sage grouse population has exploded in the last two years, growing by nearly two-thirds from more than 49,000 males in 2013 to more than 80,000 this year. ... This is encouraging news for the bird, and for the people whose lives would be turned upside down by the federal government if it still insists on listing the critter as an endangered species on the brink of extinction. The report considered the population across the bird’s 11-state habitat, with specific news on the growth in Colorado numbers ... The report falls on the heels of a gloom and doom forecast...

Boise, Idaho. Did the citizens of Boise “provoke” Fazliddin Kurbanov? Did they draw cartoons of Muhammad? Did they “poke Muslims in the eye”? “Informant: Terrorism suspect named Boise as possible attack target,” by Katie Terhune, KTVB, July 27, 2015: BOISE –A confidential FBI source testified Monday that Boise may have been among the intended targets of terrorism suspect Fazliddin Kurbanov. The informant met Kurbanov in January 2013 at a truck-driving school in Salt Lake City, Utah. The suspect had gone there in hopes of getting a job, while the informant had been planted in the class by the FBI. The...

This strategy isn’t entirely new. They started talking about targeting tea partiers in primaries in late 2013 and followed through in last year’s midterms... The difference last year was that they stuck to open seats rather than going after incumbents. Evidently they’ve decided now that “progress” towards the dream of renewing the Ex-Im bank and passing a gigantic amnesty ensuring all the cheap legal labor they could possibly want isn’t happening fast enough. It’s simply not sufficient to fill vacancies in the House with corporatist business-class Republicans. To move their agenda, they need to start replacing some of the people...

Though a relatively small organization with only 26 people on staff, WildEarth Guardians’ litigious nature has established the environmental advocacy group as a dominant voice in the national debate about environmental policy. From 2010 to present, Guardians have initiated a total of 152 cases in federal district courts and 55 in the Circuit Court of Appeals for a total of 207 cases. In 2010 alone they filed 61 claims — an average of about one per week. However, Guardians’ pervasiveness in the courts has not gone without criticism. In a 2012 analysis of WildEarth Guardians' legal activity, the conservative group...

Attorneys general from thirteen states filed a lawsuit Monday challenging EPA's new rule defining the waters of the U.S. (WOTUS), asserting that the rule expands the scope of clean water regulations to lands that are dry much of the year and increases the federal government's authority over land use. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota. South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley, who joined in the lawsuit, noted that 35 states have filed comments in opposition to the rule and several other attorneys general are considering filing challenges. The EPA is overstepping...

A long-standing refugee welcoming center in conservative Idaho has found itself at the center of a campaign by adversaries seeking to force it closed, citing fears that the immigrants it hosts could include Islamist extremists. The backlash comes amid an uptick in anti-Islamic protests and advertising campaigns in the United States, including a high profile May rally outside an Arizona mosque that saw more than 200 protesters, some armed, berate Islam and its Prophet Mohammad. The newly formed Idaho group, whose 100 members plan a door-to-door information drive in July to win support for closing the refugee center in Twin...

Coeur d‘Alene, Idaho, city officials have laid down the law to Christian pastors within their community, telling them bluntly via an ordinance that if they refuse to marry homosexuals, they will face jail time and fines. The dictate comes on the heels of a legal battle with Donald and Evelyn Knapp, ordained ministers who own the Hitching Post wedding chapel in the city, but who oppose gay marriage, The Daily Caller reported. A federal judge recently ruled that the state’s ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional, while the city of Coeur d‘Alene has an ordinance that prevents discrimination based on...

I just love it when someone slips up, and tells us country folk what’s really being planned for us. Rural cleansing is the purposeful removal of rural citizens from the countryside and the relocation of rural populations into urban areas. Many public officials and media pundits scoff at the mere suggestion that rural cleansing is taking place, but the problem, you see, is that there are people who have inadvertently left tell-tale clues we can use to piece together things for ourselves. One of the most startling clues I’ve run across lately comes from a July 1, 1998 newspaper article...

Economically speaking, all 237 GOP presidential candidates are selling the same Magic Beans. Everybody knows the script. Tax cuts for wealthy “job creators” bring widespread prosperity. Top off Scrooge McDuck’s bullion pool, and the benefits flow outward to everybody else. The economy surges, budget deficits melt away, and the song of the turtledove will be heard in the land. Almost needless to say, these “supply side” miracles have never actually happened in the visible world. State budget debacles in Kansas and Louisiana only signify the latest failures of right-wing dogma. Hardly anybody peddling Magic Beans actually believes in them anymore....

BOISE, Idaho (KBOI) -- 10-year-old Lily Hornish loves fishing. So her family took her on a trip to Ketchikan, Alaska, in the hope of catching a halibut. But the shy angler wasn't expecting to catch one so big. "It was the first bait down, then my pole was tugging," Lily said. "I started reeling it in and then my dad helped me. And then a big fish came out." A big fish that weighed 333 pounds, to be exact.

At Boise State University in Idaho, a campus organization — just one of many at the 22,000-student school — wanted to have its voice heard. At two events last year — one called “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust” and another called “What Has Roe Done for Us?” — the pro-life Abolitionists4Life sought to display imagery of abortions. This was in line with their mission: to end it. “We seek to raise awareness to our generation through equipping students to become abortion abolitionists who will courageously bring to light the suppressed issue of abortion in our society today,” the group’s Web...

Three federal judges have unanimously struck down an Idaho law that banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a previous ruling by the U.S. District Court for Idaho, which also found portions of the law unconstitutional. Jennie McCormack, the plaintiff in the case, was arrested in 2011 for taking a pack of five pills she had obtained through the Internet to end a pregnancy. Police in Pocatello had learned through a tip that she had taken the pills to induce an abortion. Surgical abortions were not available in southeast...

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down an Idaho law banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, ruling the law unconstitutional. The ruling comes a few weeks after the U.S. House passed legislation that would ban abortions after the same timespan, sending it to the Senate. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Idaho's law violates Supreme Court precedent protecting abortions up to the point of viability for a fetus, which has been considered to be around 24 weeks. Courts have struck down such bans before. In 2013, the 9th Circuit also ruled an Arizona ban on abortions after...

Last weekend was Memorial Weekend, honoring our fallen soldiers who lost their lives defending our country and our flag. Last weekend a US Forest Ranger came through our campground at Devils Elbow, which is Idaho Panhandle National Forest Land. He told our camp host, Butch & Sharon, they had to take down their US Flag. He refused. I don't know the outcome of his refusal, their is a chance he will loose his job. But he states he will not take down his flag. We also do not know if this ranger was acting on his own, or if this...

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down an Idaho law banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, ruling the law unconstitutional. The ruling comes a few weeks after the U.S. House passed legislation that would ban abortions after 20 weeks, sending it to the Senate.