Free Republic

California crime is on the rise and many residents of the Golden State are now regretting the passage of a significant law implemented a few years ago that essentially emboldened criminals despite its good intentions. In November 2014, California voted in favor of Prop 47, a law aimed at reducing charges from felonies to misdemeanors for drug and property crimes, including theft. The intention was to reduce the state’s prison population and emphasize rehabilitation, helping drug addicts keep a felony off their record for what lawmakers view as minor crimes.

PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) - A Washington man who recently closed on a home in Northeast Portland was shocked to find a family had recently moved in and changed the locks. Rod Nylund said he learned about the occupants, who he assumes are squatters, last week when a contractor he sent to do work at the home called to tell him it was occupied. Nylund called police and confronted the occupants, but said the officer was unable to do anything about it.

MAGNOLIA, WI — John Adams can’t see the nearly 3,000 cows on the dairy farm two miles from his Wisconsin home, but when the wind blows he can smell them. The stench gives him and his wife headaches. They blame the big farm for contaminating their air and polluting the groundwater well they use for drinking, bathing and watering their garden. They no longer feel safe eating the vegetables they grow. Adams also blames the state, which requires local governments to grant permits to large farms that meet certain limited criteria, even if there are additional environmental concerns. The rural...

...So YOU thought KELO was abusive...??? KLEPTOCRACY 201 - Today's Lesson Today, class, we will learn how to exercise 'eminent domain' without that pesky need to pay the owner ANYTHING for the property... ...and using this new method, you can not only strong-arm the property away from its rightful owner, but you STILL get to keep shaking down the "property owner" for all those great  PROPERTY TAXES on the parcel, AS WELL! ...WHAT could be BETTER than THAT???!!! ...It's a Kleptocrat's DREAM!!!

The California Republican Party is offering a $500 reward for any information on a woman who stole a McCain/Palin campaign sign near Sacramento. Video of the woman in action is posted on youtube. The video shows the woman jump out of the van, yank the sign out of the ground then take off and head back to the van. The homeowner set up cameras to catch neighborhood dogs who were using his yard as a bathroom.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 --...

In extraordinary coordination, the judiciary committees of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in the same week approved a bill, which, if it becomes law, will spell the end of America's world leadership in innovation. Called the Patent Reform Act, it is a direct attack on the unique and successful patent system created by the U.S. Constitution. Before 1999, the U.S. Patent Office was required to keep secret the contents of a patent application until a patent was granted, and to return the application in secret to the inventor if a patent was denied. That protected the legal...

Accused Leader of Counterfeit Motion Picture Network Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Traffic in Counterfeit Goods Guilty Plea Stems From First Joint IPR Investigation by ICE and Chinese Authorities GULFPORT, MS.- Michael A. Holt, Special Agent-in-Charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New Orleans, and Dunn Lampton,United States Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, today announced that a man arrested on charges resulting from the first joint Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) investigation by U.S. and Chinese authorities has been convicted in federal court in Mississippi. Earlier today, Randolph Hobson Guthrie III, a U.S. citizen, entered a plea...

RATHDRUM, Idaho (AP) -- A developer has threatened to make a big stink after the Kootenai County Commission denied his request to rezone property he owns at the edge of town for a professional building. Specifically, Steve Nagel plans to park a pig farm on the site, with hundreds of squealing porkers greeting visitors to the northern Idaho town. (snip) Nagel doesn't want to be in the city because he would have to pay an estimated $300,000 to extend a sewer line a half-mile and a water line a mile under railroad tracks to the property. (snip)Nagel, a Rathdrum native,...