Free Republic

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that two militia members from Montana and one from Utah have arrived at Cliven Bundy’s ranch. “We need to be the barrier between the oppressed and the tyrants,” Ryan Payne of the West Mountain Rangers told the Review-Journal. “Expect to see a band of soldiers.” Payne said that militias from New Hampshire, Texas and Florida are likely to join and stand with Bundy and stay at his ranch. “They all tell me they are in the process of mobilizing as we speak,” Payne told the Review-Journal, adding that hundreds of militia members are expected. The...

VICTOR, Mont. - ATF officials and the Ravalli County Sheriff’s Office are asking for the public’s help in locating recently stolen explosives. Investigators say the stolen materials include roughly 285 pounds of high explosives in the form of ANFO (Ammonium nitrate fuel oil), explosive boosters and dynamite. The materials were stolen around March 15 to April 1, from a storage facility operated by Ajax Contracting Inc. west of Victor. “These are dangerous items,” said ATF Agent Ken Bray. “That's why they're stored under very stringent regulations. They're used by trained professionals, and any time these are stolen and out in...

KALISPELL, MT, April 3, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- In January, the owner of the only abortion clinic in Flathead County, Montana was told that she had 90 days to move her business off of the premises. Little did she know the new owners of the building where her clinic was located were Michelle Reimer, Executive Director of pro-life pregnancy center Hope Pregnancy Ministries, and her husband.

The final nail in the coffin for a bipartisan Senate Finance Committee bill? According to the Huffington Post, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) -- the ranking member on the panel who's working with Committee chairman Max Baucus (D) -- appeared to endorse the untrue "death panel" argument on health care. "There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life. And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn't have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have counseling 20 years before you're going to die. You ought to plan these things...

(Reuters) - Yellowstone National Park, which sits atop one of the world's largest super-volcanoes, was struck on Sunday by a magnitude 4.8 earthquake, the biggest recorded there since February 1980, but no damage or injuries were immediately reported. The tremor, a relatively light event by seismic standards, struck the northwest corner of the park and capped a flurry of smaller quakes at Yellowstone since Thursday, geologists at the University of Utah Seismograph Stations said in a statement. The latest earthquake struck at 6:34 a.m. near the Norris Geyser Basin and was felt about 23 miles away in two small Montana...

Will Obama use two small birds to limit oil drilling in the West? Almost half the land west of the Mississippi belongs to the federal government, including 48% of California, 62% of Idaho and 81% of Nevada. No surprise that the Obama Administration wants to control more. But the result could be to suppress the country's booming oil and gas development. In partnership with green activists, the Department of Interior may attempt one of the largest federal land grabs in modern times, using a familiar vehicle—the Endangered Species Act (ESA). A record 757 new species could be added to the...

<p>Graham said she decided to confront her husband about her marriage doubts, but she did not know how he would take it. She said the couple climbed down a treacherous slope below a popular spot in the park called The Loop and spoke on a narrow ledge, hundreds of feet above a ravine.</p>

CORVALLIS – Ravalli County Sheriff Chris Hoffman has released the name of the Missoula man killed Monday morning during an apparent burglary at a private residence between Corvallis and Victor. Tobias Ian Bishop, 39, was shot by the homeowner about 4 a.m. after entering the residence through a window that he had broken. Bishop had a long criminal history and was wanted on a warrant in Flathead County, Hoffman said. Bishop had apparently burglarized at least one other home in the vicinity prior to being shot, and had already gathered several chainsaws and other items near his van. According to...

Coffee stand hit three times. Krystal Cogswell wears a holstered pistol on her hip while pulling espresso at Jitterz Java in Northwest Spokane. “I figure if they can see it, maybe it will be a deterrent, apparently being a girl isn’t enough,” the 24-year-old said. Robbers have struck Jitterz Java twice in February. On Sunday, a man who appeared to be armed ran off after a barista grabbed her gun and called police. The recent string of violence has owner Sara Chapel fed up. “The way I’ve been scheduling the girls is that at least one girl who carries a...

Republican Congressman Steve Daines is well ahead of interim Senator John Walsh and fellow Democrat John Bohlinger in Rasmussen Reports’ first look at the 2014 U.S. Senate race in Montana. A new statewide telephone survey of Likely Montana Voters finds that Daines leads Walsh by 14 points – 51% to 37%. Four percent (4%) like some other candidate in the race, and nine percent (9%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) (Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook. The...

A ballot measure in Montana that would require an equal number of men and women to serve in the state Legislature is a step closer to getting on the November ballot.

<p>A ballot measure in Montana that would require an equal number of men and women to serve in the state Legislature is a step closer to getting on the November ballot.</p> <p>A petition for the measure was approved last Tuesday by the Montana secretary of state's office. The measure would force the Montana Legislature to reconstruct its gender makeup in a 50/50 split. Currently, women now hold 41 of the 150 seats in the Legislature.</p>

A Montana couple has been charged after allegedly letting a 2-year-old boy smoke marijuana. Lucas Keith Wilson and Camilla Rose Samuels have been charged with felony and misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a child. Wilson was brought to the Gallatin County Detention Center on Friday and is being held on a $50,000 bond, but Samuels is still at large.

The sage grouse's potential addition to the endangered species list is a problem of epic economic consequences to states in the West, with Herbert explaining that the impact in lost economic development in Utah tops $41 billion for the oil and gas industry alone. "The negative impacts are not acceptable to me and should not be acceptable to anyone here," Herbert told the crowd. The event at the Utah Department of Natural Resources' auditorium is actually a precursor to a national summit that will be held in Salt Lake City this fall. ... a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision...

"Remember when this sort of thing was ipso facto evidence that someone was a lunatic, a conspiracy theorist, a hate-monger, and unfit for public discourse?" The Montana Democratic Party today called on Congressman Steve Daines, who claims in his latest TV ad to be a “fifth-generation Montanan,” to clear up confusion about his roots by releasing his birth certificate.Daines’ latest ad asserts he “grew up in Bozeman, a fifth-generation Montanan,” which directly contradicts earlier versions of his biography when he claimed: “I’m a third-generation Montanan, kind of that classic Montana kid.” "So the dispute is really whether Daines’s great-grandfather and...

Some worrying developments are taking place at the Super Volcano located beneath Yellowstone National Park; the kind of developments that were seen shortly before other volcanoes erupted. Not only was there a sudden rise in the elevation of the ground, and development of new cracks, but a gas called Helium-4, a very rare type of Helium, has begun coming out of the surface. It is the presence of this gas that has scientists quite concerned. If the Yellowstone Super Volcano were to erupt, it would be 2,000 times bigger than the eruption of Mount St. Helens in the 1980′s. Everything...

Federal designation of the Greater Sage-grouse as threatened or endangered could result in the withdrawal of over 17 million acres from mining ... Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service of making an unprecedented attempted to limit multiple use on public lands through use of “the Spotted Owl on Steroids”—the Greater Sage-Grouse. ... BLM and Forest Service’s real purpose “is NOT sage-grouse conservation.” “Rather, the so-called conservation measures are designed to: Find another way to implement the draconian land use restrictions in the aborted Wild Lands Policy and Secretarial Order 3310; Dramatically reduce and even prevent mining, energy...

The GOP’s probability of taking over the United States Senate increased dramatically Wednesday with the entry of Rep. Cory Gardner into the race against incumbent Obamacare enthusiast Senator Mark Udall in Colorado. 1. West Virginia: Rep. Shelley Moore Capito v. no one. Jay Rockefeller quit after Capito got into the race. She will win, going away. 2. South Dakota: Former Governor Mike Rounds in South Dakota v. no one in South Dakota This is a mortal lock for the popular Rounds. 3. Arkansas: Rep. Tom Cotton v. the hapless legacy senator Mark Pryor in Ark Pryor won his seat because...

**SNIP** Midterm elections are often a reflection of the approval rating of the incumbent president and now President Obama stands at 42.8%. And elections in the 6th year of a PresidentÂ’s term are usually not good for the incumbentÂ’s party. To make things even worse for Democrats, the issues of a weak economy and Obamacare make November look bleak for Harry Reid and his Senate Democratic cohorts. â—¾Alaska, Mark Begich â—¾Arkansas, Mark Pryor â—¾Louisiana, Mary Landrieu â—¾Michigan, Open Seat (liberal Democrat Carl Levin retiring) â—¾Montana, John Walsh â—¾North Carolina, Kay Hagan â—¾South Dakota, being vacated by retiring Democrat Tim Johnson...

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz supports reducing the amount of crude oil shipped by rail in favor of pipelines that are safer, cheaper and cleaner, Capital New York reported on Wednesday. "What we probably need is more of a pipeline infrastructure and to diminish the need for rail transport over time," he said in an interview published on the Capital New York website. He said the infrastructure is "not there" to handle the surge in North Dakota Bakken oil production from near zero to 1 million barrels per day (bpd). "Frankly, I think pipeline transport overall probably has overall a...