Free Republic

**SNIP** Dan Rogers, a voter in Boise, told KTVB he went to his 18th district polling location right as the polls opened and wanted to vote as a Republican. Rogers says he is currently unaffiliated and wanted to affiliate the day of the election. "So [the poll worker] sent me over to the voter registration table, and when I was there, a couple of the workers consulted, and I was informed that I was unable to vote in the primary for the Republicans unless I had been a declared member of the party since March 20," Rogers said. Rogers says...

A Hailey man charged with second-degree murder in the death of a man who has been missing since January told police he killed 47-year-old Steven Romanchuk in self-defense, according to court records. Keith Eric Blankenship, 49, was arrested Wednesday after voluntarily going to the Blaine County Sheriff’s Office. Police reported finding human remains in Blankenship’s backyard Thursday. Deputies’ report gives this account: Romanchuk’s wife, Lauraine Phillips, reported her husband missing Jan. 15. In the report, she said her husband lent $40 to a neighbor whom he later confronted over the principle of the money. The next day, police spoke to...

(Reuters) - An Idaho man was charged with kidnapping and rape tied to a woman's claims that he forced her to be a sex slave after imprisoning her in a house equipped with chains and locks on walls, floors and doors, authorities said on Thursday. Oscar Ayala-Arismendiz, in his thirties, is accused of repeatedly drugging and raping the woman and leading her around a house in southern Idaho by a rope tied to her neck, Twin Falls County prosecutors said. A 27-year-old woman told county sheriff's detectives that Arismendiz imprisoned her for 18 months in two separate houses in a...

A U.S. federal judge struck down Idaho's ban on gay marriage on Tuesday, saying it relegated same-sex couples to a second-class status in violation of constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the law. The ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale was the latest in a string of decisions by federal judges against state bans on same-sex matrimony that, if upheld by higher courts, would sharply broaden access to marriage for U.S. gay couples. Dale said her decision would go into effect on Friday at 9 a.m. local time, unless put on hold by a higher court. Marriage rights have...

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A federal magistrate judge has ruled that Idaho's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. U.S. District Magistrate Judge Candy Dale wrote in the ruling Tuesday evening that Idaho's laws banning same-sex marriage unconstitutionally deny gay and lesbian citizens of their fundamental right to marry.

The prevalence of Western Stemmed Tradition artifacts in the Northwest, known locally as Windust, also suggests that its members may represent a separate wave of human migration to this part of North America, she said, with migrants having come from the north not by ice-free corridors near the middle of the continent, as some models maintain, but by way of the Pacific coast. “This is supported by the archaeological record in the Clearwater River region, where the earliest material found is associated with Windust,” Longstaff said. “Kelly Forks is another of the sites added to the record which potentially contains...

Excited to announce that @Labrador4Idaho has endorsed my candidacy for governor! http://tinyurl.com/lyw7gab #idpol

THIS IS FOR THE MOUNTAIN WEST (Rest of the country is in separate threads and Pacific Coast coming later, see links below) There are numerous important House Primary Races! And places where we can WIN! PLEASE contribute! And if you can't contribute money ... the least we can do is go to their pages and give them a "like" or a tweet. All of these candidates are involved in primaries that are close (or could be close) against generally more moderate or liberal Republicans. All of these districts are winnable in November. Nevada: NIGER INNIS, NEVADA-4, June 10th .... winner...

BOISE – With just three weeks left before Idaho’s primary election, GOP gubernatorial challenger Russ Fulcher has launched his first statewide campaign commercial and posted billboards around the state. Incumbent Gov. Butch Otter hasn’t, but plans to hit the airwaves between now and the primary, said Jayson Ronk, Otter’s campaign manager. Otter has been running a low-key race as he seeks a third term, leaving Fulcher, the Idaho Senate’s GOP majority caucus chairman, to face off with fringe candidates Harley Brown and Walter Bayes at candidate forums. Otter agreed to one debate with Fulcher and the other two candidates, which...

Updated 6:37 p.m. | Sen. Ted Cruz gathered a group of House conservatives in his office Tuesday night, talking about immigration and House GOP leadership elections slated for after the midterm elections. As CQ Roll Call first reported last October, Cruz held a secret meeting with members at Tortilla Coast during the height of the government shutdown drama. Many of these same Republicans are the agitators who aren’t happy with Speaker John A. Boehner. The Texas Republican gathered roughly 10 members of the GOP Conference at 8 p.m. Tuesday for a 90-minute session that included candy bars, crackers and soda....

Frustrated with President Barack Obama’s reaction to Russian action in Ukraine, a group of Republican senators said Wednesday they will introduce legislation outlining a more muscular response. “What we’ve seen from the administration is a lot of rhetoric,” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. The White House has been dealing “with the situation after something bad has already occurred,” he said. Earlier this week, violence flared up in another area of Ukraine that hugs the Russian border, as the new government in Kiev criticized local police...

Governor Brewer has been considered a friend of second amendment supporters.   When she was under threat of reelection, she signed constitutional carry into law.  Under her watch, Arizona has taken the lead as the most advanced state in the union when scored on restoring second amendment rights. Other states are striving to catch up.  Kansas passed a bill to make sure that public buildings would only ban people carrying guns if they effectively did so for legally armed citizens and criminals alike.  Indiana passed a law ending their "roaming school zones", where legally armed citizens could be turned into...

A new report analyzing the financial ramifications of a takeover of some of Nevada’s millions of acres of federal lands suggests the state would benefit from such a transfer. A transfer of 4 million acres of U.S. Bureau Land Management land could bring in anywhere from $31 million to $114 million a year, based on a review of four Western states that have significant amounts of trust lands under their control, the report says.

MOSCOW, Idaho--One local man said he dedicates his free time to collecting copies of the movie Speed. Ryan Beitz, of Moscow, wants to be the sole owner of every VHS copy of the 1994 thriller starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. “One time I bought 30 copies from a store,” said Beitz. What started as a joke, when Beitz bought six copies from a pawnshop seven years ago, turned into a campaign. “We're running a Kick-Starter to get the van fixed up and painted like the bus from the movie Speed. It's so we can travel the country, come to...

The 60 Plus Association today released TV and radio advertisements in seven states targeting Senate Banking Committee Members who are sponsoring recently introduced legislation that will allow the government to take over the mortgage industry in an action 'disturbingly similar' to Obamacare. 60 Plus targeted three Democrat and four Republican U.S. Senators supporting this government take-over, including Joe Manchin (D-WV), Mark Warner (D-VA), Kay Hagan (D-NC), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Dean Heller (R-NV), Mark Kirk (R-IL), and Jerry Moran (R-KS).

Hundreds of low-level and medium-sized earthquakes have struck central Idaho since last month, puzzling geologists who wonder whether the ruptures portend a much larger temblor to come or are merely the rumblings of a seismic fault previously thought to be dormant. The recent earthquake swarm, beginning on March 24 and climaxed by a 4.9 magnitude tremor on Saturday, has produced no reports of injuries or severe damage but has rattled nerves in a region where Idaho’s most powerful known quake, measured at 6.9, killed two children in 1983. Saturday’s earthquake was the strongest recorded in the state since 2005 and...

ST. GEORGE – Gov. Brian Sandoval signed Assembly Bill 227 into Nevada law Tuesday, approving the creation of the Nevada Land Management Task Force. The signing of AB 227 makes Nevada the fifth state to look into the movement initiated by Utah lawmakers that urges the federal government to transfer management of public lands over to state control. In a press release issued by the American Lands Council, Nevada Assemblyman John Ellison, the primary sponsor of AB 227, said, “Gov. Sandoval and our state legislature have taken the first step in fulfilling our responsibility to our children and for the...

Controversial housing finance reform legislation making its way through the Senate Banking Committee was co-written by a former mortgage trader for Countrywide Financial and Wachovia, two of the subprime mortgage behemoths at the center of the housing market crash in 2007.Michael Bright, the senior financial adviser to Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), worked as a trader and member of the loan-pricing desk at Countrywide Financial from 2002 to 2006, and as a senior trader for Wachovia from 2006 to 2008.Bright joined Corker’s office in 2010, and has been a key figure in crafting the Corker-Warner housing reform bill and the...

Even worse, the U.S. Senate is poised give us Fannie–Freddie 2.0 in the new housing reform bill that Senators Tim Johnson (D., S.D.) and Mike Crapo (R., Idaho) have released. The Johnson-Crapo bill would wind down the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but would also replace them with a new government agency that expands the federal government’s grip on the housing market. If the Johnson-Crapo housing bill is adopted, the federal government will have effectively taken over the U.S. mortgage market.

John Kerry Defends His Diplomatic Efforts: ‘I May Fail – I Don’t Care’ By Ali Weinberg Apr 8, 2014 4:03pm Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State John Kerry defiantly defended his diplomatic efforts, saying that while ambitious, they were better than doing nothing. While the purpose of Tuesday’s hearing was to pick through the State Department’s budget, it was Kerry’s record that came under scrutiny as his old colleagues on the committee accused him of taking on too many responsibilities with too few results. “I think you’re about to hit the trifecta,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,...