Free Republic

An article yesterday, 'Lost Sovereignity, Oil-rich Fund Eyeing Foreclosed US Homes', talked about how foreign money is now moving to scoop up tens of thousands of discounted foreclosed homes across the country. I caught Letterman the other night when Donald Trump was on. He was saying since our dollar is devalued and everything we have is now a world wide bargain, foreigners are buying up all the choice real estate. He admitted he’s inflating prices to get his best deal, and they’re happy to pay it. Today Mike Cutler brought another related story to our attention. We have done several...

Land reform in South Africa is a key ANC policy but it is going badly wrong. Rosie Goldsmith, Reporter for Radio 4 Crossing Continents, met black claimants and white farmers who are caught in the struggle over land. Bernhard Mojapelo is university educated, with a good job in the city. But his main passion in life is for a vast stretch of barren rural scrubland. Thanks to South Africa's land reform, he and his tribe have been able to lodge a claim for it. "Land is a source of life," Bernhard says. "When we were dispossessed and driven away from...

Exactly as some legal experts predicted, Boulder's courts saw a spike in claims of "adverse possession" filed by people apparently trying to beat the clock on changes to the controversial land law. Of the 25 active adverse-possession lawsuits in Boulder County -- where a person or company claims someone else's land after trespassing on it for at least 18 years -- 15 of those cases were filed in June Some of those cases were filed just hours before changes to the law went into effect last Tuesday, court records show. The changes, drafted by a bipartisan group of state legislators...

The compensatory ruling from the Court of Claims in the Fifth Amendment Takings case of grazer Wayne Hage was finaly handed down after 17 years. Hage's heirs were awarded $4,220,431.20 plus interest from time of Takings plus attorney costs. Property takings on so called federal land included: improvements of springs and wells; water use rights; roads; fences; irrigation ditches. Takings for cattle impoundment and taking of the "entire ranch" were denied. The 18 page ruling should be posted on the Stewards of the Range website soon. https://www.stewards.us/

A land rush may soon be on in Colorado, and the prospectors could be home-rule cities seeking property outside their boundaries. At least that's how we read one possible outcome of Monday's state Supreme Court decision letting Telluride use eminent domain to seize 600 acres of private property sitting outside the town limits. The opinion distorts the straightforward language in the state constitution regarding the relationship between home-rule cities and the state. And in the process, the court has enabled those cities to condemn land in nearby counties or non-home-rule towns, with state lawmakers powerless to stop them. Using this...

Proponents of Prop. 98 Respond to Election Outcome Vow to Work on Legislative Solution to End Eminent Domain Abuse Sacramento, CA - Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, issued the following statement on the outcome of the Election. "Since the U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo v. New London decision in 2005 more than 40 states have passed reforms that would prohibit government from profiting by seizing private property and giving it to politically connected developers. Prop. 98 was the only measure on the ballot that addressed the Kelo decision by providing comprehensive protections to all private property and...

The 50 U.S. states are holding more than $32 billion worth of unclaimed property that they're supposed to safeguard for their citizens. But a "Good Morning America" investigation found some states aggressively seize property that isn't really unclaimed and then use the money -- your money -- to balance their budgets. Unclaimed property consists of things like forgotten apartment security deposits, uncashed dividend checks and safe-deposit boxes abandoned when an elderly relative dies. Banks and other businesses are required to turn that property over to the state for safekeeping. The problem is that the states return less than a quarter...

Richard McLean and Edith Stevens did not fabricate evidence or lie to win their controversial land case against neighbors Don and Susie Kirlin, District Judge James C. Klein ruled today. Klein’s order essentially upholds his decision last fall to award about 34 percent of one of the Kirlins’ vacant lots to McLean and Stevens after they sued for it using the squatter’s-rights law of “adverse possession.” The Kirlins had filed paperwork earlier this year alleging that McLean, a former district court judge, and Stevens, an attorney, faked evidence of a dirt path across the Kirlins’ property and lied about using...

A Boulder County District Court judge charged with revisiting a controversial land dispute should not consider "outrageous" claims that Richard McLean and Edith Stevens lied to win their case, according to the couple's attorney. In court documents submitted Tuesday, Boulder attorney Kim Hult responded pointedly to accusations made by Don and Susie Kirlin that their neighbors fabricated a path across their Hardscrabble Drive vacant lot. The thin dirt trail, which has come to be known as "Edie's Path," was a critical piece of evidence that in part led Judge James C. Klein last fall to award about a third of...

Adverse possession law set to change. Beginning July 1, people hoping to use "adverse possession" to take control of another person's land had better be prepared to pay for it... The bill, which garnered wide bipartisan support among state lawmakers, requires that an adverse possessor believe in "good faith" that the land is actually his or her own. It also raises the burden of proof in an adverse-possession case and gives judges the power to make plaintiffs payfor any land they are awarded. Witwer on Friday said the bill is a victory for property owners. "This will make it harder...

Beijing (AFP) April 14, 2008 Chinese authorities uncovered 31,700 cases of illegal land grabs in four months in a crackdown on one of the major factors behind rising social unrest across the country, state media reported on Monday. The unlawful land grabs were discovered between September 15 last year and January 15, and led to 2,864 people being punished, Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang Pu of the Ministry of Land and Resources as saying. Land illegally seized amounted to 224,000 hectares (553,000 acres) in total, according to Xinhua, nearly 60 percent of which was used before getting government approval. The...

A Colorado district court judge who awarded part of a million-dollar residential land parcel to a retired judge and his wife under the state's little-used "adverse possession" law will have an opportunity to review his original decision. The Colorado Court of Appeals has agreed to send the controversial case that benefited retired judge Richard McLean and his wife, Edith Stevens, back to Boulder County District Judge James Klein, who made the original decision, according to a report in the Boulder Daily Camera. The couple who lost the property, Don and Susie Kirlin, had asked the appellate court to return the...

A war of words continues in a high-profile Boulder land case, with each side accusing the other of lying. In January, Don and Susie Kirlin appealed an October ruling by Boulder County District Court Judge James C. Klein that awarded a third of their million-dollar lot to neighbors Richard McLean and Edith Stevens, based on the squatter's-rights law of "adverse possession." The Kirlins at the same time filed a request with the Colorado Court of Appeals to send the case back to the district court level to hear additional evidence, alleging their neighbors fabricated evidence to win their case. After...

LUFKIN — Mae Smith, the 64-year-old mayor of the teeny Central Texas town of Holland, seized the civic center lectern like a dragon-slayer ascending the throne. In a fiery red pantsuit and a voice that echoed without the help of a malfunctioning microphone, she and her cohorts revealed to a crowd of about 50 souls clad in denim and plaid a little-known weapon against the foe of all in the room: Gov. Rick Perry's Trans-Texas Corridor. The weapon, Smith said, doesn't involve marching on the Texas Capitol, like more than 1,000 did last year, some on tractors and horses. It...

Congress is considering permanent protection for 26 million acres of beautiful and historic landscapes in the American West, but has quietly excluded millions of acres of California desert. In a system that would rival the national parks and forests, the National Landscape Conservation Act would unify the management and funding for areas such as the original Pony Express National Historic Trail, Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, a million acres of Alaskan caribou calving grounds, 38 wild rivers, Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and a tiny ghost town near the Mexican border. But more than half of the 10.6 million-acre...

The perfect storm for social upheaval is now brewing in Mexico— and in particular Mexico's northern states along the U.S. border. The first storm front is to the east at a place called Cantarell. Long a blessing, Cantarell is Mexico's largest oil field— and largest source of government funds. Output from Cantarell is down more than 15 percent from last year and many believe the field is now in irreversible decline. Thus, government budgets are being strained. The second front is to the north. As the U.S. economy has slowed so have remittances from the United States to Mexico. The...

n what may have been the first hint of victory for opponents of the Trans Texas Corridor, a high-ranking Texas Department of Transportation official said Thursday he regretted his agency's communication failures and said one proposed version of the corridor, a 10-lane super highway with rail and utility pathways, will "probably not" be built in East Texas, based on the overwhelming resistance to the idea expressed at public hearings on the project this month. Phillip Russell, assistant executive director for innovative project development at TxDOT, was the keynote speaker at the Lone Star Legislative Summit at SFA Thursday, where he...

TYLER - Heated debates are cropping up in rural East Texas communities as the Texas Department of Transportation hold hearings on the proposed the Trans-Texas Corridor. It's the first construction project of it's kind in the country. The Texas Department of Transportation says they want it to make room for a growing state. "A thousand people a day move to texas," says spokesman Larry Krantz,"where are these people going to drive? The population in Texas is going to explode by 60% in the year 2030." Their plans involve moving commercial trucks off existing interstate highways and onto one of two...

PRISTINA, Kosovo -- Kosovo's parliament declared the territory a nation on Sunday, mounting a historic bid to become an "independent and democratic state" backed by the U.S. and European allies but bitterly contested by Serbia and Russia.....

A witness has surfaced in the Boulder, Colo., case in which a former judge and his wife used a little-known state law concerning "adverse possession" to gain ownership of a significant portion of their neighbor's valuable building lot in a pricy subdivision. It seems one of the neighbors now reports seeing a woman who looked like Edie Stevens, the judge's wife, "tromping, stomping and kicking the ground, causing vegetation and dirt to rise from the ground in the area where the dirt path … later appeared." That statement comes from neighbor Josephine Touchton, whose affidavit, along with other photographic and...

My newest column from the Greater Niagara Newspapers addresses Congress's newest land grab... CONGRESS WANTS YOUR WATER By Bob Confer The United States of America was founded on the premise of natural rights with this underlying emphasis succinctly dictated as the unalienable rights of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” During the era in which the Declaration of Independence was framed the Pursuit of Happiness applied to property rights. Our founding fathers knew that Man has the right to attain property, keep property, and engage in the use of property to make his life better, all in manners that...

McLean, Stevens ‘Insulted’. A Boulder couple who lost part of their million-dollar lot in a land dispute has filed a motion accusing their neighbors of fabricating crucial evidence. "These people have committed fraud on the court," said Don Kirlin. Don and Susie Kirlin said they have new evidence their neighbors, Dick McLean and Edie Stevens, deceptively created a path on the vacant lot next door after they sued for it. McLean and Stevens have said they've used "Edie's path" for the last 25 years to access their back yard with no objection from the Kirlins, a crucial part of their...

Trucks hauling everything from cars to produce use Southeast Texas roads to deliver their goods, and when a proposed Interstate 69/Trans Texas Corridor is completed, local drivers could see even more of them, local transportation officials said. The proposed I-69 corridor stretches from Michigan down to Texas. Once in Texas, the corridor goes about 650 miles from Texarkana to Brownsville and Laredo and includes separate lanes for cars and semis and areas for trains and utilities. It doesn't cut through Beaumont, but local arteries like U.S. 69 and Interstate 10 would connect to it. Travelers and truckers just need to...

Lawmakers Want To Make Adverse Possession More Difficult. A proposal seeking to change a controversial "land grab" law ... A little more than half of the representatives in the State House have signed on as sponsors of a bill that would make adverse possession of property more difficult. “Clearly the time has come to change the law of adverse possession in Colorado,”... The proposal is in response to a ‘land grab’ situation in South Boulder where former mayor and district judge Richard McLean and Edie Stevens, an attorney, sued their neighbors Don and Susie Kirlin for their land. The couple...

McALLEN — In other parts of the state, transportation officials try to allay property owners' fears that a superhighway from Laredo north to Texarkana will result in a massive land grab. But in the lower Rio Grande Valley, the state's road builders spend more time assuring local leaders that they have a shot at being included. People in the fast-growing border area between Brownsville and McAllen have developed something of an inferiority complex about being the state's largest metropolitan area without an interstate highway. One after another, Valley leaders stepped to a microphone at public meetings last week and made...

Sometimes the truth just has a way of coming to light. A public information officer with the Texas Department of Transportation this week wrote a column in the Herald-Press describing the financial woes facing TxDOT and how because of those problems the state’s transportation department doesn’t have the money to deal with many of the state’s transportation issues. Apparently, several of the state’s senators do not feel that is the case at all. David Dewhurst called out the state’s interim chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, Hope Andrade, on this very issue, according to a story from the Associated Press....

Some Texans are afraid of losing their land to the Trans-Texas Corridor while others loathe the thought of a quarter-mile-wide swath of toll roads and railway lines transforming the countryside into a superhighway. People continue to turn out in droves at public meetings concerning the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor proposal, specifically the portion known as the TTC-69 proposed from Brownsville to Texarkana. A meeting Monday, Jan. 28, at the fairgrounds in Austin County was no exception, drawing more than 1,000 people. Opposition to the proposed corridor has come from people in all walks of life, said Chris Steinbach, chief of staff...

The city council considered a plan today to buy 80 acres in south Houston for an amateur sports complex, but delayed the vote for one week. The complex, a long-awaited home for youth and adult soccer teams, will probably include 18 playing fields, Mayor Bill White said. The council will need to approve the land purchase for $6.42 million. Councilwomen Anne Clutterbuck and Melissa Noriega placed a one-week hold on the item, a parliamentary move known as a "tag." Clutterbuck said the administration did not give council members enough time before today's vote to review the documents and details of...

TEXARKANA, Texas — The biggest construction project ever attempted in Texas comes under public debate beginning Tuesday in the first of a series of town hall meetings about a proposed 4,000-mile network of superhighway toll roads. The Trans-Texas Corridor, or TTC, as it's become known, was initiated six years ago by Gov. Rick Perry. It's rankled opponents who characterize it as the largest government grab of private property in the state's history and an unneeded and improper expansion of toll roads. Texas Department of Transportation officials, and Perry, have defended the project as necessary to address future traffic concerns in...

McDonnell: “As a matter of federal constitutional law, the Episcopal Church is simply wrong.” BB NOTE: The Motion is here and the Brief is here. FAIRFAX, Va. (January 11, 2008) – Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell has filed a motion to intervene and a brief in the ongoing church property litigation that is being heard by Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Randy Bellows involving eleven congregations that separated from the Episcopal Church in 2006 and 2007 and joined the Anglican District of Virginia (ADV). In his brief, Attorney General McDonnell defended the constitutionality of the Virginia Division Statute (Virginia...

Kirlins file appeal in south Boulder property case Case could take a year to be heard by appellate court By Heath Urie Originally published 03:04 p.m., January 10, 2008Updated 03:04 p.m., January 10, 2008 A Boulder couple who last year lost a portion of their vacant lot on Hardscrabble Drive to their neighbors in what has become a highly publicized property dispute appealed that ruling today. Don and Susie Kirlin filed their appeal this afternoon with the Colorado Court of Appeals, asking the appellate court to review a Boulder District Court judge’s October decision to award Edith Stevens and...

As negotiations on a proposed soccer stadium drag into the new year, the city of Houston and the Dynamo can now at least agree on where such a venue would be built. Earlier this week, city officials signed letters of intent to buy parcels of land just east of U.S. 59 and the downtown business district, a move Mayor Bill White described Wednesday as a major step toward acquiring property for a possible home for the back-to-back Major League Soccer champions. City officials declined to identify the location, but a person with knowledge of the situation confirmed reports that the...

The Boulder couple who successfully sued for part of their neighbors' land mailed a letter this week to "those who have supported us," saying they hoped to restore peace in their neighborhood. Richard McLean and Edith Stevens, plaintiffs in the controversial adverse-possession case against Don and Susie Kirlin, spelled out their side of the story in the four-page letter -- obtained by the Camera from a recipient who wished to remain anonymous. "We still hope that we can reconcile our differences with the Kirlins and restore peace in our neighborhood and community," McLean and Stevens wrote. Contacted at her home...

A judiciary oversight committee has rejected a Boulder couple's request to investigate a neighboring couple who used an arcane legal loophole to take over their property. The Colorado Supreme Court's Attorney Regulation Counsel rejected Don and Susie Kirlin's request to investigate ex-judge and former Boulder mayor Richard McLean and his lawyer wife Edith Stevens, who won a strip of their property on Hardscrabble Drive. In a letter to the Kirlins, assistant regulation counsel Louise Culberson-Smith said that the McLean and Stevens' use of an "adverse possession claim" to win the land does not constitute a violation of the Rules of...

The land-dispute case on Hardscrabble Drive isn't the first time a former Boulder judge has used the legal concept of "adverse possession" to win land from a neighbor. Earlier this year, the secretary of the Indian Peaks chapter of the Sierra Club and his wife lost about 100 square feet of their property to Marsha Yeager, a former judge, and her husband, John Yeager. The issue of adverse possession hit the spotlight earlier this month when Don and Susie Kirlin lost about a third of their property to their neighbors — former judge Richard McLean and his wife, Edith Stevens...

Howard Hawks' "Red River" isn't just any Western. It was the last movie playing in the small-town Texas theater in the Peter Bogdanovich/Cybill Shepherd film (from the Larry McMurtry novel) "The Last Picture Show." It was Montgomery Clift's first -- and many say John Wayne's best -- film. And how does novelist Borden Chase's quintessential American tale of the first great post-Civil War cattle drive begin? Wayne's Tom Dunson and Clift's Matt Garth start one of the great Texas cattle herds with one bull and one cow and all the land between the Red River and the Rio Grande --...

Galen Foster's home and business of 23 years is supposed to make way for parking for the Wadsworth Boulevard light-rail station in Lakewood. But what chaps Foster's hide is that there already are conceptual plans showing his property being used not for transit parking, but for a five-story commercial office building. While government's right of condemnation, more politely called eminent domain, has been recognized for centuries, the Regional Transportation District is entering an untested area that includes economic development in its efforts to build the FasTracks West Corridor line. While there is little room to challenge RTD's acquisition of land...

A judge who granted a couple part of their neighbors' property in an adverse-possession lawsuit has denied their request to add on a strip of land 9 inches wide. Richard McLean and Edith Stevens, of Boulder, had asked for the full width of a disputed path on land purchased by their neighbors Don and Susie Kirlin. In October, McLean and Stevens were awarded about a third of the Kirlins' lot, or more than 1,400 square feet... A judge said last week he could only consider evidence presented at trial ...

Don and Susie Kirlin of Boulder, Colordao. How many times have we heard about government abuses of the right to own property going on in neighborhoods across America, in the form of the invoking of the right of ‘eminent domain’, and the corruption of other legal concepts? Kelo vs. New London is probably the most publicized of such unconstitutional atrocities, but similar atrocities occur daily across this country. How many of us have attempted to help the victims of such abuses of power? I myself have done so no more than once or twice. I ask any FReeper who...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Every region of the country has its own piece of Americana that locals brag about to visitors. Increasingly, they are asking Congress to help spread the word through a little-known federal program that designates National Heritage Areas. After approving just two dozen such areas since the early 1980s, Congress adopted 10 last year. The House signed off on six more last month, and the wait list is growing. Illinois wants recognition for Abraham Lincoln's early stomping grounds; New York is bidding for the area around Niagara Falls. Alabama is pushing a region along the Tennessee River where...

With all the disappointment experienced during years seven of Republican control in Washington, it is easy to understand why people are again looking to Democrats to set the nation on the right course. What is the right course? According to many Democrats and Republicans alike, the "right" course is anything other than what President Bush and the congressional Republicans want. But is it? Some Washington watchers remember the Clinton era, which ended another 12 years of Republican rule from the White House. The Clinton administration was filled with lobbyists and executives from environmental and social justice organizations. Leaders of the...

<p>The Democratic-controlled Congress, stepping up a push that gained little ground when Republicans were in the majority, is on the verge of walling off as many as three millions more acres of the nation's wilderness from commercial and recreational development.</p>

Hilton becomes socialist, but prices stay same By Jeremy McDermott, Latin America Correspondent Last Updated: 1:21am BST 03/09/2007 It has been a landmark for the last 38 years, a point of navigation for taxi drivers and tourists alike, but now the Hilton Hotel in Caracas has been taken over by the state to become a "socialist tourism business". "We want to put this hotel at the service of the people," said Eustacio Aguilera, the president of the Simon Bolivar Centre, the government cultural institution that owns the hotel. "Now everyone will have access to a great hotel and be able...

<p>Yesterday morning I found out that my home, along with more than 157 others in on the chopping block to make way for a major road. Imagine my dismay, when I found that the city in charge of the project has stated that the public comment time is over. I was never notified that there was any contemplation of such a project, and thus had no opportunity to voice my strenuous objection. Just wait, it gets much better...</p>

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- An expedition aimed at strengthening Russia's claim to much of the oil and gas wealth beneath the Arctic Ocean reached the North Pole on Wednesday, and preparations immediately began for two mini-submarines to drop a capsule containing a Russian flag to the sea floor.

Zimbabwe farmers wait out Robert Mugabe By Stephen Bevan, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:52am BST 29/07/2007 For Rod Swales and many of Zimbabwe's 4,000 white farmers forced off their land by President Robert Mugabe's chaotic and violent land reforms, the chance to start afresh somewhere else was too good to pass up. Resilient: Rod Swales hopes to return his farm in Zimbabwe to profitable production Neighbouring countries welcomed them with open arms and furnished them with land, while the agricultural companies provided them with cash incentives. But five years later, 52-year-old Mr Swales is back in Zimbabwe at the forefront...

As of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a scandal as the occupation itself. The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border just produced by the International Lebanese Committee for U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, an American NGO that has consultative status with the U.N. Because of the sensitivity of the subject, the authors have requested anonymity and have circulated the report only among select government officials and journalists. But its findings cannot be ignored.

Yuma, Ariz., farmers should exhale a small but short-lived sigh of relief over the news from Union Pacific that the railroad has backed off its initial plans to jointly bid with the Hutchinson Port Authority on a proposed port and rail line at Punta Colonet, Baja Calif., Mexico. The proposed gargantuan-sized port would, in part, import foreign-made goods for distribution by rail to stores across the United States. While Union Pacific had originally planned to bid on the railroad puzzle piece, the railroad focused, in part, on potential routes from Mexico into the U.S. through Yuma, Ariz. Unfortunately, among the...

......Incumbent county commissioners Lori Mitrick and Doug Kilgore have been fighting nearly four years to establish a park in Lower Windsor Township. On Tuesday, it appeared that they paid for that campaign with their jobs. The unofficial vote totals showed incumbent commissioner and park opponent Steve Chronister leading with 13,533 votes, followed by a former commissioner, Chris Reilly, with 11,350, for the two slots available. Mitrick ws in third among the Republicans with 10,915 votes..... Kilgore, the sole Democratic commissioner, trailed his two Democratic opponents, with 7,746 votes. His challengers, Doug Hoke and Ned Grove, had respective vote counts of...

Lori Mitrick is the wife of a doctor and a practicing Catholic. Back in the 1980's her involvement in a crisis pregnancy service of her church was known in the community. She was the kind of person you might consider to be a candidate in an election. But what launched her political career was not the pro-life issue, but opposition to a shopping mall near her wooded and seculuded neighborhood in the suburbs of York, Pennsylvania. Around 20 years ago the York Galleria Mall was constructed amid her persistent and vocal opposition to the plan. Her leadership in opposing the...