Free Republic

Many news stories stress that our ecosystems are under assault by Burmese pythons and Asian carp. This leads people to conclude that it is the less charismatic fauna such as reptiles and fish that are the most threatening of invasive species. Proposed amendments to the Lacey Act that the U.S. House passed Feb. 4 seem to perpetuate this narrative, with a proposed ban on all exotic animal species moving across state lines. (The 122-year-old Lacey Act bans trafficking in illegally taken fish, wildlife, and plants.) But one animal that the International Union for Conservation of Nature considers among the world’s...

PLEASE VIEW THE VIDEO Senator Marco Rubio Washington, D.C. 284 Russell Senate Office Building Washington DC, 20510 Phone: (202) 224-3041 Toll free in Florida: (866) 630-7106 Florida Senator Marco Rubio wrote amendments to the Lacey Act, approved by the House and now before the Senate, that creates a White List of approved species. 1500 species of all animals and wild collected plants will be legal to ship. All the rest are banned. This ends the collection and protection of rare and endangered species and guarantees their destruction. Politics just bit us on the nose. What are we going to do...

My letter to Senator Marco Rubio, Florida: An amendment to House Resolution 5421, passed on party lines, and Senate bill S626 will amend the Lacy act to prohibit the transportation into or within the US of all live animals of all types. Exceptions are: 1 - farm animals 2 - cats and dogs 3 - any animal that was traded in very large numbers during the calendar year 2021. It should be noted that the pandemic greatly reduced animal shipments during 2021. Senator Rubio, you wrote this legislation and submitted it to the Committee on Environment and Public Works on...

Rock n' Roll. The soundtrack to rebellion. Across the decades, the motif has held, and the mythology of the rebellious rocker striding into the political arena to shatter the establishment with some deftly played power chords still stirs the imagination. Sadly, the new world might not be ready for the revolution, because this week, after 116 years in business, and following years of attacks, fines, and losses incurred by federal bureaucrats, Gibson, the legendary manufacturer of electric guitars, revealed that it could face bankruptcy in July. .......the feds claimed was a violation of the Teddy Roosevelt-era “Lacey Act”, which was...

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...

Did you get here Googling "exotic wood raids?" Is this not what you expected? I'm sorry. Settle in for some hot public policy.Last we checked in with Gibson, the famed Tennessee guitar maker had been raided twice by armed federal agents, who seized almost $500,000 in exotic wood imported from India and Madagascar and shut down production. The ebony and rosewood in question have been used for decades to make the instrument's fingerboards and are integral to their style and sound, the company said. (Great video background from Reason, here.)This week, Gibson settled with the government in a "criminal enforcement...

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...

...Another out of control regulation is the little known Lacey Act, originally passed in 1900 to regulate the trade of wildlife and expanded in 2008 to curb illegal logging. Under the Act, if the U.S. government interprets that a foreign law, concerning the exportation of wood or wildlife, has been broken it is up to the U.S. government to conduct raids and confiscate said products. The Heritage Foundation recently wrote about overly broad criminal prosecution under the Lacey Act. Heritage cites an example where a small business owner spent six and a half years in confinement because he used plastic...

It's as sweet a sound as you can imagine. A $10,000 guitar expertly crafted by the hands of Dave Berkowitz, a master luthier in Washington, D.C. But Berkowitz's guitars include fretboards and bridges made from Indian rosewood and ebony, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service declared to be illegal to import in its actions against Gibson Guitar back in August. Now, every time Berkowitz uses that wood to build his immaculate instruments, he is potentially breaking the law. "I use the exact same ebony and rosewood fingerboards that were confiscated in August from Gibson," Berkowitz told Fox News. Does...

Federal authorities are pressuring Nashville-based Gibson Guitar to hand over an additional 25 bundles of Indian wood that the company allegedly planned to use in its famous guitars. The complaint was filed today in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and mirrors a 2010 action that sought official forfeiture of wood obtained in a 2009 raid of Gibson facilities. The latter of those cases has been stayed, pending the outcome of the most recent suit. As has been the case in previous allegations, at issue is the classification of certain wood imported to the United States from...

Federal officials have shed a little light on last month’s raid of Gibson Guitar Corp. facilities in Memphis and Nashville – without really revealing much at all. In a letter dated Monday, Sept. 19, Christopher Mansour, the director of congressional and legislative affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior, and Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, wrote to congressional leaders in broad terms about the federal Lacey Act. That’s the legislation that provided the backdrop of the Gibson raids. Their letter was in response to a letter sent by congressional leaders, including U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.,...

On the mantle above my fireplace there sits an old picture of my grandfather, Joe Dee Adams, Sr. The picture was taken some time during the Great Depression when he was a professional musician. It was actually his promo picture for the radio show he hosted on WSGN in Birmingham, Alabama. In it, he is holding an old Gibson acoustic guitar. No one in our family has any idea what happened to that old guitar. It was lost along with his purple heart from World War I some time before he passed away in the fall of 1978. His death...

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declares that "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial," and must be "informed of the nature and cause of the accusation." Based on their conduct in raiding the Gibson Guitar Company, agents from the FBI and the Fish and Wildlife Service could stand a refresher course in the law of the land. In November 2009, Fish and Wildlife agents, accompanied by a heavily armed FBI SWAT team, stormed Gibson's Nashville plant and confiscated ebony fingerboards that had been imported from Madagascar. On August 24, 2011 the Feds gave...

Gibson CEO: Obama Administration Told Us Our Problems Would Go Away If We Used Madagascar Labor (Audio).......KMJ Radio host Chris Daniel interviewed Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz on Wednesday. Juszkiewicz told Chris that the Obama Administration told them, “Your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of our labor.”

Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle. It isn't the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife...

Henry Juszkiewicz, Chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar Corp., has responded to the August 24 raid of Gibson facilities in Nashville and Memphis by the Federal Government. In a press release, Juszkiewicz said: “Gibson is innocent and will fight to protect its rights. Gibson has complied with foreign laws and believes it is innocent of ANY wrong doing. We will fight aggressively to prove our innocence.” The raids forced Gibson to cease manufacturing operations and send workers home for the day while armed agents executed the search warrants. “Agents seized wood that was Forest Stewardship Council controlled,” Juszkiewicz said. “Gibson has a...

Federal agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and local police today seized wood, guitars, computers and boxes of files from Gibson Guitar's Massman Road manufacturing facility. Sources say the Nashville-based guitar manufacturer is being investigated for violating the Lacey Act, a key piece of environmental law, for importing endangered species of rosewood from Madagascar. Rosewood is widely used in the construction of guitars and sells for $5,000 per cubic meter, more than double the price of mahogany. The island nation off Africa's east coast is a key producer of the hardwood, the export of which has links to...