Free Republic

What gives here? Conservative talk show host, Mark Levin, makes an excellent observation as well as ask an excellent question. First the Obaminator: "...and the Department of the Interior has announced that they will be sending Swat teamns to the Gulf to inspect all platforms and rigs." Mark Levin: "Swat teams from the Department of the Interior? When I was Deputy Secretary of the Interior Department (during the Reagan administration), I don't remember any Swat teams. Now you heard hims say that the Department of the Interior was going to send Swat teams, I didn't know that they had Swat...

The Interior Department on Friday announced another round of oil and gas lease sales on public lands as well as an increase in royalty rates. The administration initially froze new leasing on public lands shortly after President Biden took office, but a federal district court that summer issued an injunction against the order. The department cited that injunction in announcing the lease sales. In the announcement, the department said the Interior Department will issue final sales notices for the upcoming sales Monday. The Interior Department also announced a royalty hike, increasing rates from 12.5 to 18.75 percent. “How we manage...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Protesters held a sit-in Thursday at the Interior Department building in downtown Washington and clashed with police as they challenged fossil fuel projects and called for the declaration of a climate emergency. Multiple arrests were reported. An Interior Department spokeswoman said a group of protesters rushed the lobby, injuring at least one security officer who was taken to a nearby hospital. Police and protesters clashed outside the building, and officers used Tasers against several unarmed protesters,...

Judicial Watch Asks for Full Court Review on Clinton Testimony Voter Registration in 353 Counties in 29 States Exceeds 100% Judicial Watch is Joining The ObamaGate Movie as Executive Producers Ballot Update: We Clean Up Dirty Voter Rolls Federal Agency Under Fire for Promoting ‘White Lives Matter Ideology’ You’ll Want to Get the New Judicial Watch Book: A Republic Under Assault Judicial Watch Asks for Full Court Review on Clinton Testimony We still intend to interview Hillary Clinton. We have filed a petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc in the United States Court of Appeals for the...

Acting Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt ordered Thursday that federal land managers consider public access when selling or trading public land. “This order will help ensure that the Bureau of Land Management considers public access to public lands,” Bernhardt said in a statement. “It requires that before the BLM exchanges or disposes of any land, they must first consider what impact the disposal or exchange of land will have on public access. The Trump Administration will continue to prioritize access so that people can hunt, fish, camp, and recreate on our public lands," he said. This order will address...

A Senate panel has approved five of President Trump’s nominees for senior roles in the Interior and Energy departments after a delayed vote. The approval from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee occurred during a brief meeting in the Capitol between votes in the upper chamber. The committee had planned to vote on the nominees last week. But Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) postponed the vote , the same day that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called her reportedly to threaten not to make numerous pro-Alaska decisions she wants because of her votes against repealing Obamacare. Both Murkowski and Zinke later...

Science centers that were supposed to be the “cornerstone” of the Department of the Interior’s “climate change response strategy” don’t have the proper controls in place to prevent wasteful spending, according to an internal audit. The inspector general’s office found Interior Department’s climate science centers (CSC) and landscape conservation cooperatives (LCC) could be wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on duplicative research grants. “We found that CSCs and LCCs had no formal process to coordinate the prevention of duplication in research grants, which could limit accessibility of information by Federal, State, local, and private-sector decisionmakers and place DOI at increased risk...

New Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed an order Thursday overturning a ban on using lead ammunition on wildlife refuges. Zinke signed the order on his first day in office, overturning a policy implemented by former Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Director Dan Ashe on Jan. 19, the Obama administration’s last full day in office. Ashe’s policy would have banned the use of lead ammunition and fishing tackle on all FWS wildlife refuges that allow hunting or fishing, as well as in all other hunting or fishing regulated by the agency elsewhere. It was meant to reduce the harm to animals...

Interior secretary nominee Ryan Zinke served his country honorably as a Navy SEAL, but in affirming that he would refuse to loosen the federal government’s chokehold on America’s land, he did the U.S. a great disservice. Reasonable people can disagree about how much territory the government should own. As an avid outdoorsman, I’m sympathetic to the conservation ideal. Zinke should know, however, that federal land ownership is often at war with that ideal. There is no reasonable excuse for the federal bureaucracy to control a whopping half of the American West, nearly 30 percent of the nation, and over 60...

<p>WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump has offered the position of interior secretary to Representative Ryan Zinke, Republican of Montana and a former Navy SEAL commander, according to two officials familiar with Mr. Trump’s decision.</p> <p>As head of the agency that oversees energy exploration on the nation’s public lands and waters, Mr. Zinke would be charged with carrying out the aggressive pro-drilling agenda championed by Mr. Trump on the campaign trail.</p>

(CNSNews.com) – Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said on Tuesday at an event focused on Hispanic-American Entrepreneurship that the national monuments in the nation’s capital need to be more diverse. “If you drive around Washington, D.C., in every circle and every square you generally see a bronze white guy – sometimes on a horse, sometimes not - you have to work really hard – like in front of the Indian embassy you’ll find Mahatma Gandhi,” Jewell said.“A handful of women – maybe – if you look really hard – sprinkled around the city, but there are very few places and memorials...

The National Park Service announced Friday that it will launch a study to identify places of historical significance to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. Secretary Sally Jewell made the announcement at The Stonewall Inn, which was the site of the 1969 riots that helped launch the modern gay rights movement. It is currently the only site in the country designated a national landmark.

President Barack Obama’s administration has quietly suggested it is willing to create a two-tier race-based legal system in Hawaii, where one set of taxes, spending and law enforcement will govern one race, and the second set of laws will govern every other race. The diversity proposal is portrayed as an effort to create a separate in-state government for people who are “native Hawaiians.” If Obama succeeds, “what’s to prevent creating similar [self-governing racial] groups out of say, Cajuns, or Orthodox Jews or Amish?” said Gail Heriot, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “If you can do that...

President Barack Obama’s administration has quietly suggested it is willing to create a two-tier race-based legal system in Hawaii, where one set of taxes, spending and law enforcement will govern one race, and the second set of laws will govern every other race.

The Obama administration’s testy relationship with the press is nothing new for Washington, but it’s now extended to Colorado and has touched off a firestorm after Interior Department officials booted local reporters from a public meeting earlier this week. Journalists with Colorado's Craig Daily Press and at least two other media outlets were barred from a Tuesday question-and-answer session with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, despite the fact that members of the public were allowed to attend. “What happened would be in complete alignment with the administration’s policies. We were promised the most transparent administration ever and instead we’ve gotten the...

Buried in a lengthy Washington Post article about President Obama’s environmental policy is an illuminating anecdote about just how debatable the administration views climate change — namely, not at all: In an agency-wide address to employees Aug. 1, (Interior Secretary Sally) Jewell took the unusual step of suggesting that no one working for her should challenge the idea that human activity is driving recent warming. “I hope there are no climate-change deniers in the Department of Interior,” she said. The address does not appear to be posted on the department’s website, so the Washington Examiner can only go by the...

National Park Service A grizzly bear sow and three cubs roam inside Yellowstone National Park. CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has informed Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead that he shares the governor's desire to end federal protections for Yellowstone grizzly bears. Salazar wrote to Mead late last week, saying he expects the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies will finish their analysis of the effect of the decline of the whitebark pine tree on bear populations by early 2014. Scientists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies have been addressing the whitebark pine...

Complete title: Judicial Watch, Human Events Sue Obama Administration for Records Detailing Bailout Loan to California Solar Manufacturer Heavily in Debt$1.2 Billion in Loan Guarantees to SunPower from Department of Energy Followed Successful Lobbying Campaign by Firm Connected to California Congressman’s Son (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch, the organization that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on February 1, 2012, against the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of the Treasury for records regarding a controversial $1.2 billion government loan guarantee from the Obama Department of...

Immigration: The president tells a border state U.S. senator that if we beef up border protection Democrats will lose the bargaining chip for comprehensive immigration reform. Forget national sovereignty — sue Arizona! As the Obama administration prepares to sue the state of Arizona to block its copycat enforcement of federal immigration law, Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl reveals that in a private meeting President Obama put his party's agenda above the nation's sovereignty. Last Friday, Kyl told the audience at a North Tempe Tea Party town hall meeting: "I met with the president in the Oval Office (regarding securing the...

Energy Policy: The advisory board on offshore drilling says it never endorsed a moratorium, which was added later by the interior secretary. The only thing transparent about this administration is its lies. Experts brought together by the Obama administration to review offshore drilling safety were asked to review recommendations in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They did not give their blessing to the six-month drilling moratorium announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and have accused him of deliberately appending their report to make it seem like they did. According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Salazar's May 27...