Free Republic

They’re almost like a hired gun’. Armed Rangers were brought in from out of state by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to assist in security surrounding the Bundy Ranch, according to the family. A heated confrontation on Wednesday resulted in Cliven Bundy’s son Ammon being tasered by BLM officials and a 57-year-old protester being shoved to the ground. Stetsy Bundy Cox, Cliven’s daughter, told the Washington Free Beacon that some of the rangers had Oregon and California license plates. “You know, some of these guys don’t even know why they’re here,” she said. “A few people have talked to...

WASHINGTON — Colorado officials warned a House committee Tuesday that a lack of transparency in the Obama administration’s efforts to protect the sage grouse as an endangered species threatens the scientific validity of the process. Rob Roy Ramey of Nederland, an independent biologist whose career has focused on species protection, told the House Natural Resources Committee that the process has been closed to the scientific community and that federal officials refuse to share certain data being used to make a final determination. “It can be like pulling teeth to try and obtain that data,” Ramey said. “The (information) is shared...

A decision pending with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could have huge ramifications for rural Kansans living in the western third of the state. In limbo is the question of whether the lesser prairie-chicken should be listed as a “threatened” species under provisions of the 1973 Endangered Species Act. The species inhabits land spanning Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. ... Kansas, in cooperation with the four other states affected by the issue — a coalition known as the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies — has attempted to stave-off such a decision with the development of...

France's historically unpopular President, François Hollande was handed another embarrassment this week when the top constitutional authority partially struck down another one of his laws. That strike-out left Hollande as the holder of a record he won't be proud of. France’s Constitutional Council ruled on Thursday that a reform that would have allowed the government to fine companies that shut down profitable factories was unconstitutional. The reform was deemed by the council - France's highest constitutional authority - to be a violation of “a freedom of undertaking and private property rights.” ... The council's ruling is the 13th law to...

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...

The Environmental Protection Agency today unveiled its proposed rule to bring natural and man-made bodies of water big and tiny under the purview of the Clean Water Act, sparking accusations that the administration has embarked on an unprecedented breach of private property rights without scientific basis. This launches a “robust outreach effort” to gather input in shaping a final rule over the next 90 days, the EPA said, maintaining that the rulemaking isn’t groundbreaking but a clarification effort needed to clearly define streams and wetlands protection after Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006. […] Senate Environment and Public Works...

Wyoming has spent $7.9 million on sage grouse conservation since 2005. That was the finding of a new report by the Western Governors Association, which inventoried the efforts of 11 western states to protect the bird and its habitat. The report comes in advance of an expected 2015 ruling by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over whether to add the species to the endangered species list. The sage grouse's listing could curtail energy development throughout the West. ... Utah, by comparison, spent $8.8 million on improvements to sage grouse habitat in 2013 alone.

...... they decided to rewrite the rules to more clearly define exactly what bodies of water are within their regulatory power — and a bunch of lawmakers, lobbies, businesses, and private citizens are worried that the end result is going to be yet another massive EPA power grab that will make big government an even more pervasive and retarding for in commercial activity and on private property.

Federal wildlife officials are setting aside nearly 1,200 square miles in the American Southwest as critical habitat for the jaguar... Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties in Arizona and Hidalgo County in New Mexico ... The critical designation means anyone developing federal land in the area needs to consult the service to ensure it will not hurt the jaguar’s habitat

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 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...

Time out. This time around, I don't want to talk about airlines, airports or airplanes. I want to talk about trees. That's right, trees. Specifically, I want to talk about the decision made by a Somerville neighbor of mine to fell an old, beautiful, and perfectly healthy tree because it was "in the way" of his backyard improvement project -- in the process adversely affecting the quality of life for me and several of my neighbors. Is it crazy or un-American to suggest that, at a certain point, a tree is no longer one person's private property per se, and...

As if you needed another reason not to wear your dumb Google Glass in public—or ever, actually—an Ohio man claims he was yanked out of a movie theater and interrogated by federal agents, who believed he was illegally filming the movie with his face computer. The man’s full account is posted on The Gadgeteer, but we’ll summarize it here so you can get the gist of it before you’re engulfed forever in this ghastly winter storm. Last Saturday, our Glass-wearing protagonist and his wife went to a showing of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit at an AMC in Columbus, Ohio. About...

Lucas St. Clair pulled up to an overlook in Maine’s North Woods to a stunning vista of Mount Katahdin, the state’s highest peak and the endpoint of the Appalachian Trail. Stretched out below was a vast green carpet of pine and spruce flecked with golden aspens and blazing red maples; Millinocket Lake glistened in the distance.“I think it’s national-park worthy,” he said.This was not an idle observation. Mr. St. Clair and his mother, Roxanne Quimby, who owns the land, have been trying for years to turn these woods into a national park. But ferocious opposition has stalled their plan, partly...

The Bureau of Land Management held a public meeting surrounding its draft environmental impact statement surrounding greater sage grouse habitat and possible measures to protect sage grouse habitat. The EIS listed six alternatives, with alternative D listed as the preferred alternative. It’s aimed at balancing competing human interests, land uses and the conservation of natural and cultural resource values, while sustaining and enhancing ecological integrity across the landscape, including plant, wildlife and fish habitat. BLM Branch Chief for Renewable Resources and Planning Joe Tague, who traveled across parts of northern California and Nevada to discuss the DEIS and inform the...

Elko County Commissioner Grant Gerber suggested the BLM and U.S. Forest Service are seeking comment on a regional sage-grouse conservation plan only to placate critics of the push to protect the greater sage grouse, which is found in 11 Western states, including Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Oregon. Ranchers, miners, energy developers and state officials fear restrictions on the use of public lands in sage grouse habitat would have deep economic consequences in the rural West. Former Republican Assemblyman John Carpenter said he believes the government is determined to list the chicken-sized game bird as part of a bigger strategy to...

The genius of capitalism is that there is a link between effort and reward. In a genuine market economy (as opposed to cronyism), people can only make themselves rich by working harder and smarter to satisfy the needs and wants of others. The blunder of statism is that the link between effort and reward is damaged. Punitive tax rates, for instance, punish people for producing. Redistribution programs, meanwhile, create incentives for dependency. And regulation throws lots of sand in the gears of the economy, while also creating big opportunities for corrupt cronyism. I sometimes try to make this clear by...

Happy holidays from the Obama administration. Federal agencies are currently working on rolling out hundreds of environmental regulations, including major regulations that would limit emissions from power plants and expand the agency’s authority to bodies of water on private property. On Tuesday, the White House released its regulatory agenda for the fall of 2013. It lists hundreds of pending energy and environmental regulations being crafting by executive branch agencies, including 134 regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency alone. The EPA is currently crafting 134 major and minor regulations, according to the White House’s regulatory agenda. Seventy-six of the EPA’s pending...

Had today's politicians and opinion-makers been in power four centuries ago, Americans might celebrate "Starvation Day" this week, not Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims started out with communal property rules. When they first settled at Plymouth, they were told: "Share everything, share the work, and we'll share the harvest." The colony's contract said their new settlement was to be a "common." Everyone was to receive necessities out of the common stock. There was to be little individual property. That wasn't the only thing about the Plymouth Colony that sounds like it was from Karl Marx: Its labor was to be organized...

Imagine that you run a grocery store with your daughter, a store you have owned for thirty years. Imagine that just last year the IRS found no violations in an audit of your store. Now imagine that, despite continuing your sound business practices, you awake one day to find the IRS has seized your entire bank account. The IRS has used a technique called civil forfeiture against you and you find your Constitutional guarantee of innocence until proven guilty has been completely reversed. That is the nightmare that Terry Dehko and his daughter Sandy Thomas found themselves in on January...