Free Republic

A new plan to protect the sage grouse in eastern Oregon would disproportionately affect ranchers in certain designated areas. The proposal would cut grazing by about 118,000 acres in the region. Cattle grazing reductions likely in some areas under proposal. Some Oregon ranchers would be disproportionately harmed by grazing restrictions under a proposed plan to protect sage grouse, according to leaders of a state cattlemen’s group. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management recently offered a draft plan for managing the greater sage grouse, a candidate for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.

An example of the tension between Western Democrats and the Obama administration surfaced Monday when Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper told a rural audience that Washington bureaucrats are pushing a “slanted version” of the sage-grouse issue to political decision-makers. Mr. Hickenlooper, a Democrat who’s running for re-election in 2014, said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is receiving one-sided advice from staff at the Fish and Wildlife Service over the issue of whether to place the Gunnison sage grouse on the endangered-species list. “She has an open mind, right, she’s not well-versed in this issue, and she recognizes that,” said Mr. Hickenlooper in...

When conservatives appear on MSM shows, they regularly get raked over the coals. Frustratingly, the conservative guests rarely call their interviewers out for their obvious lefty bias. So it was refreshing to see Republican Congressman Chaffetz of Utah refuse to let Luke Russert's liberal slant slide. In the guise of a question, Russert, subbing for Andrea Mitchell on her MSNBC show today, confronted Chaffetz with a contentious bit of editorializing against the "Ted Cruz, Mike Lee rabbit hole." Chaffetz called Russert on it: "That was a loaded question there, Luke." View the video here.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, the... No, no, no. What's interesting about that is like Kay Hagan, Democrat senator from North Carolina. All these Democrat senators now want to be exempted from all the fallout of this. There are 13 of 'em, a baker's dozen. They knew when they voted for this. I don't think they deserve to be let off the hook. The Democrats that now want this all delayed -- they want the individual mandate delayed -- they want things delayed 'til after the 2014 election. They've trooped up to see Obama. Folks, they knew. Everybody knew that...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, the... No, no, no. What's interesting about that is like Kay Hagan, Democrat senator from North Carolina. All these Democrat senators now want to be exempted from all the fallout of this. There are 13 of 'em, a baker's dozen. They knew when they voted for this. I don't think they deserve to be let off the hook. The Democrats that now want this all delayed -- they want the individual mandate delayed -- they want things delayed 'til after the 2014 election. They've trooped up to see Obama. Folks, they knew. Everybody knew that...

There’s a new public enemy No. 1 in Senate GOP circles, and it’s not Ted Cruz. It’s the Senate Conservatives Fund, an organization that used to prop up underdog conservative candidates but now is training its fire mainly on Republican incumbents — rather than Democrats. The group has ginned up anger on the far-right towards Republican senators for refusing to use a government shutdown threat as leverage to defund Obamacare — a campaign that has been good for its bottom line. Since it started engaging in the defund Obamacare campaign, the group brought in the vast majority of the $3.5...

John McCain voted yea WASHINGTON, D.C., November 7, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – This afternoon the Senate approved a bill that could force business owners who adhere to traditional values to hire homosexuals, bisexuals, and those who do not dress in accordance with their biological sex or face litigation. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) passed following a bipartisan 64-32 vote. Supporters say it would forbid “workplace discrimination� against homosexuals and transgender employees and job-seekers. But critics say, like the HHS mandate, its religious exemption is unduly narrow and would force employers – including Christian schools and nurseries – to violate their consciences....

Nashville, TN – Today, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham introduced the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The legislation currently has 33 cosponsors – but Senator Alexander is not one of them. Conservative Senate candidate Joe Carr called on Senator Alexander to change his stance and add himself as a co-sponsor. “I’m strongly pro-life and believe it’s imperative the Senate pass this important piece of legislation. When Senator Graham announced his co-sponsors and Senator Alexander’s name was missing, I was disappointed. I am hoping Senator Alexander will change his stance and add himself as a co-sponsor. This legislation is too...

<p>PROVO, UTAH – A jury convicted a doctor of murder early Saturday in the death of his wife six years ago, bringing an end to a trial that became the nation's latest true-crime cable TV obsession with its tales of plastic surgery and philandering, betrayal and family feuding, jailhouse snitches and a courtroom prop: a jetted bathtub.</p>

SALT LAKE CITY — A coalition of conservation groups is hailing a federal judge's ruling Monday to strike down portions of the Richfield Bureau of Land Management plan they said gave deference to off-road vehicles at the expense of the environment. "This landmark decision is a resounding rejection of the BLM’s mismanagement of Utah’s stunning public lands,” said Stephen Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. ... The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance was among seven groups that filed a legal challenge to the Bush-era plans following their adoption in 2008, contending they imperiled pristine landscapes. The Richfield plan...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez would make a “great” 2016 Republican presidential ticket, longtime Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told reporters Wednesday. The endorsement of Martinez as a vice presidential nominee with Christie came after Martinez joined the New Jersey governor this week to help him campaign into the homestretch of his successful gubernatorial re-election bid. “Let’s face it: Susana Martinez has a lot of qualities that would help a lot of people to understand that the Republican Party is a broad base party,” Hatch said.

The Obama administration has found a way to give unions relief from an Obamacare tax nearly three weeks after Republicans rejected a Democratic push to include the labor carve-out in the latest budget deal.The Department of Health and Human Services quietly released a final rule last week that includes an intention to exempt some union insurance plans from a substantial new tax known as the reinsurance fee.As part of Obamacare, the tax was supposed to be levied against all insurance plans to share the risk for insurers taking on the sickest patients next year.But unions, which were among the strongest...

Iowa Republicans hold their annual dinner Friday commemorating the life and career of Ronald Reagan, with Texas Senator Ted Cruz as the featured speaker. Cruz is widely viewed as a presidential contender in 2016. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: As we just heard, Republican Party approval ratings are lower than ever, but that's not stopping Texas Senator Ted Cruz from taking a post-shutdown victory lap in Iowa tonight. Cruz is headlining the state Republican Party's annual Reagan dinner and he's often talked about as a potential presidential candidate. Iowa, of course, holds the first presidential caucus. NPR's Tamara Keith is in Des...

It took a tea party insurrection that disabled the federal government and wrecked the Republican brand, but after months of handwringing, establishment Republicans are preparing to attack ultra-conservative ideologues across red America. From Alabama to Alaska, the center-right, business-oriented wing of the Republican Party is gearing up for a series of skirmishes that it hopes can prevent the 2014 mid-term election from turning into another missed opportunity. But this will not be a coordinated operation. It will be messy, ugly, and prone to backfiring. And if the comeback succeeds, it will be in fits and starts, most likely culminating in...

Hands down, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been one of the most controversial pieces of national legislation ever passed by Congress.The nation was told that health care had become unaffordable. Too many Americans lacked access to affordable health care and, thus, either did without or went bankrupt when faced with significant medical expenses. Many Americans were also considered “uninsurable” due to pre-existing conditions. The solution, we were told, was to overhaul the way health care was paid for and to bring the entire operation under the wing of the all-knowing, all-seeing federal government.Between the Senate and the...

<p>Virtually every other show [aside from "Morning Joe"] belongs to hosts who unstintingly support Obama and the Democrats, with only minor points of disagreement. ([Host Chris] Hayes criticizes Obama for his drone killings and surveillance programs, and often conducts friendly interviews with Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who collaborated with Edward Snowden. Melissa Harris-Perry, who appears on weekends at 10 a.m., nearly always defends Obama, and called Glenn Greenwald a “jerk.”) Conservatives are far less visible on MSNBC than liberals are on Fox News, and the right-leaning guests who do appear are typically critics of the conservative movement: Steve Schmidt, the Republican strategist, who says the party is too tolerant of “nuts” and “kooks”; Josh Barro, an advocate for Republican reform who describes himself as “neoliberal”; Abby Huntsman, the daughter of failed presidential candidate Jon, who has described the G.O.P. as a party of “non-inclusion.” The over-all impression is that your average Republican or conservative is simply too fanatical to be part of polite discourse.</p>

<p>The daughters of struggling Republican candidate Jon Huntsman have become an Internet sensation with their irreverent Twitter campaign messages and a spoof video.</p> <p>Jon Huntsman may be limping along at the back of the pack in the Republican presidential race with a moderate message that has failed to ignite.</p>

Huntsman's a jerk, but any attack on MItt is welcome. Maybe they'll chew each other up.

Fresh off their spoof of a Herman Cain campaign video, GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman's daughters aren't finished yet. Appearing on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, three of Huntsman's daughters who participated in the parody said they might have a sequel in the works and joked that they were the campaign's "secret weapon." "We're always up to something," said Abby Huntsman, daughter of the former Utah governor. "Something might be coming. You'll have to tune in," her sister Liddy Huntsman added. Liddy also took credit for the concept. "I had been receiving e-mails and I had seen the Herman...

Last May, when Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was pondering a White House bid, Jason Sorens of the University of Buffalo wrote a commentary that went largely unnoticed. Wanting to "take a look at Jon Huntsman," who has been "widely viewed as a 'moderate' Republican, but whose" policies "stake out a position that may be more libertarian than Daniels'," Sorens concluded that after former Gov. Gary Johnson and Texas Congressman Ron Paul, Huntsman offered the most libertarian credentials — besting even Daniels. Sorens's views deserve recognition in New Hampshire, a generally conservative state with decisively libertarian leanings, as our first-in-the-nation presidential...

(snip) Jon Huntsman inexplicably chose to debut as the Republican for people who rather dislike Republicans, but his program is the most conservative. He endorses Paul Ryan’s budget and entitlement reforms. (Gingrich denounced Ryan’s Medicare reform as “right-wing social engineering.”) Huntsman would privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Gingrich’s benefactor). Huntsman would end double taxation on investment by eliminating taxes on capital gains and dividends. (Romney would eliminate them only for people earning less than $200,000, who currently pay just 9.3 percent of them.) Huntsman’s thorough opposition to corporate welfare includes farm subsidies. (Romney has justified them as national security...

“The best ideas are going to come out of the states,” said Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman, speaking to a group of bloggers, online journalists and digital strategists at the Heritage Foundation. Huntsman, who has seen an uptick in interest in his candidacy since the last two Republican debates that showcased his foreign policy strengths, used the event to draw on his experience as Utah’s governor as a way to reinforce his domestic bonafides. Huntsman served as Utah’s governor from 2004 until 2009, when he was appointed by President Barack Obama to be U.S. ambassador to China. In a wide-ranging...

One wonders, therefore, if a conservative case could be made for former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, as has been suggested by several conservative columnists recently, including George Will, Jim Pethokoukis, and Joe Scarborough. Indeed, it is interesting that Huntsman was so quickly dismissed as a RINO, when many of his positions actually appear to be to the right of both Romney and Gingrich. On health care, for example, Huntsman flirted with an individual mandate — unfortunately, a lot of conservatives did when the idea was being pushed by the Heritage Foundation — but, unlike Romneycare, the plan he ultimately developed...

Tuning in Morning Joe today, I half expected to discover on the set some professional mourners imported from North Korea, keening and crying over the political demise of Jon Huntsman. Huntsman had had the Morning Joe crowd from hello. The overwhelming winner of the bien-pensant MSM primary was amazingly popular—except with actual Republican voters, who didn't dig his moderate positioning and a tone that some found . . . well, how do you say "supercilious" in Mandarin? Taking today's cake was Joe Scarborough finding Huntsman's "moderate temperament" Reaganesque, and claiming that in rejecting Huntsman, Republicans have "turned their backs" on...

Former U.S. Ambassador to China and presidential candidate Jon Huntsman said on Friday that Mitt Romney’s response to the violent protests in the Middle East and North Africa posed a “problem” for the man he endorsed several months ago. Romney’s decision to criticize the Obama administration was ill-advised and was a lost opportunity, Huntsman said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “This was an opportunity to instruct, to elucidate, to educate, to talk about how you put the pieces back together again in North Africa and the Middle East,” he said. “Not to condemn, not to criticize, not to turn it into...

[RINO ALERT] Typically, when a politician says that a party is soulless, he's talking about the other guys.

Tuesday, 79-year old Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), now serving his seventh term in the Senate, signaled that he and other members of the Republican establishment are likely to encourage a primary challenge to first term Senator Mike Lee (R-UT). Lee upset former Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) in the 2010 Utah Republican primary convention in the Tea Party's first major primary win over a Republican establishment politician. Hatch told the Deseret News and KSL NewsRadio that "[i]t's time now... for Lee and other tea party Republicans to be 'rehabilitated' for refusing to pass a budget bill needed to keep the government...

A heavyweight rock crusher's disability claim is being slammed by critics as more mental than physical. Glenn Taylor — who infamously filmed his ability to knock over an ancient 2,000-pound sandstone with his bare hands — filed a lawsuit claiming "debilitating" physical injury weeks before the stunt's filming, it has been revealed. Taylor, seen destroying a 200 million-year-old goblin sandstone formation in Utah's Goblin Valley State Park last week, filed a personal injury lawsuit last month claiming to have been disabled after a car crash four years ago.

It is hard not to be cynical about the right-wingers’ racket. They promote confrontation in which there is no hope of victory, assail other Republicans when it fails and, along the way, raise a great deal of money and get a whole lot of media attention. There are two things going on here. First, the short-term incentives for Lee to engage in this stunt are obvious. He’s not ever going to be president of the United States and will forever be in the shadow of people like Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). (Lee...

After calling Obamacare a “dog bill” and insisting that some good did come out of the shutdown showdown, Hatch was blunt when asked about the influence of outside conservative groups and the Heritage Foundation in particular. “Heritage used to be the conservative organization helping Republicans and helping conservatives and helping us to be able to have the best intellectual conservative ideas,” Hatch said. “There’s some real question in the minds of many Republicans now … is Heritage going to go so political that it really doesn’t amount to anything anymore…. Right now I think it’s in danger of losing its...

A group of Boy Scouts leaders may face criminal charges after purposely knocking over an ancient Utah desert rock formation and posting a video of the incident online, authorities say The men were leading a group of 14 to 16-year-old Boy Scouts on a trip to Goblin Valley State Park when they said they noticed the top of the rock formation was loose and feared it was dangerous. "This is about saving lives," Dave Hall, who shot the video, told The Associated Press on Friday. "One rock at a time."

In Utah’s Goblin Valley State Park, three men toppled a giant rock formation that’s 170 million years old in just 14 seconds... ...caught on a cell phone camera, and a lot of people are wondering what they were thinking. nbc's miguel almaguer sat down with the men involved and has our report from utah .

To fully understand the state of play in the Republican party, look no further than Sens. Mike Enzi (WY) and Pat Roberts (KS). Both are reliable, mainstream conservatives, yet neither have a record of seeking a fight or standing on principle. Think Orrin Hatch, without the tab-collars. Both, however, stood with Ted Cruz in the fight over ObamaCare. Not coincidentally, both face serious primary challengers. Sen. Mike Enzi is being challenged by Liz Cheney, who criticizes his "go-along-to-get-along" approach to government. Sen. Pat Roberts, who helped guide HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius through the nomination process, is being challenged by doctor,...

Sen. John Cornyn has taken a lot of heat from the right for not supporting Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee when they filibustered a House-passed bill that would fund the federal government but defund Obamacare. It was a complicated mess, but anyone who has followed Cornyn’s career knows he has fought against Obamacare from day one. The difference here was a difference in strategy. Cornyn has been in the Senate for 11 years. Cruz has been in the Senate for less than a year. I think Cornyn knew that strategically this wouldn’t work, and he ended up being...

After last evening's vote to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling, groups on the right were already criticizing Republicans who voted for the bipartisan compromise as traitors and threatening to work against their re-election. But longtime GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch said on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown" Thursday that those groups -- particularly a surging and newly controversial Heritage Action -- were risking their credibility by attacking Republicans and fueling primary challengers. -snip- Hatch, who himself survived a primary challenge from the right in 2012, had both empathy and praise for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in leading the deal, possibly...

A group of hikers high-fived after one of them intentionally pushed over a large rock, which is part of the "goblins" or "hoodoos" formation, and is nearly 200 million years old.The men filmed one of their buddies referred to as "Glenn" pushing the giant rock from behind (video below).According to The Salt Lake Tribune YouTube page, "Three men, tagged as Dave Hall, Glenn Taylor and Dylan Taylor, push over large rock boulders in Goblin Valley, Utah in this video posted to Hall's Facebook page."After the rock comes tumbling down, the men celebrate their accomplishment in Goblin Valley State Park in...

Senate Republicans huddled Tuesday to discuss the latest on the fiscal crisis engulfing the Capitol, but two key members of their conference were missing from the lunch: Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah. Multiple senators confirmed the absence of the two senators, who have led the crusade in the Senate to shred the president’s health care law. “I don’t account for their schedules,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) quipped when asked about Cruz and Lee’s absence. Cruz and Lee could become an obstacle to moving quickly on a fiscal deal in the Senate, where consent from all 100...

Sens. Cruz, Lee say they won't block deal By Mike Lillis - 10/16/13 12:38 PM ET Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee said Wednesday that they won't try to block the bipartisan deal to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. "The timing of the vote will make no difference to the outcome," Cruz (R-Texas) said. "I have no intention of delaying the vote." Cruz and Lee (R-Utah) had spearheaded the campaign to attach ObamaCare language to any new budget bills, and had pushed their colleagues to take a hard-line stance. But the pair emerged from a meeting of...

<p>States across the country are being told to stop the supplemental nutrition assistance program for the month of November, pending further notice.</p> <p>That’s according to a letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Fox 13 obtained a copy from the Crossroads Urban Center in downtown Salt Lake City. Crossroads says if Utah families don’t get food stamps, they’ll turn to the local food pantries, which are already strapped due to the government shutdown. Homeless people Fox 13 talked to, some who use SNAP, say losing food stamps would mean going hungry.</p>

After Islamic gunmen attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, the collective reaction from the US media was to speculate whether such terror could happen here, as if a jihadist assault on a mall inside America had never before been tried. CNN was typical: “Can it happen here? Yes, say security experts, but it hasn’t.” News flash: it did. On the evening of Feb. 12, 2007, a young Muslim man walked into the Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City with a pistol-grip, 12-gauge shotgun and a 38-caliber revolver and opened fire on shoppers, killing five and wounding four others,...

Heads up, Freepers. Phony news organizations are pushing a brand new narrative, hot off the press from OFA no doubt. They are pushing bogus push polls conducted in Utah and Texas to give the impression that Cruz and Lee are losing support in their home states, and that Texans and Utahns want their senators to 'compromise more'. This is evidently BS, and is an attempt to give a leg up to Karl Rove and his lackeys who want Obamacare forever, and want to discourage Republicans from standing with Ted and Mike. I would encourage everyone, regardless of which state they...

SALT LAKE CITY — National Park Service workers were busy Friday preparing to open eight national recreations sites in Utah that were closed the past 11 days due to the federal government shutdown. Zion National Park opened Friday with limited services, according to a recorded message at the park's main telephone number. Trails that don't require permits and the Zion Mount Carmel Highway are open. Both visitor centers, the Kolob Caynon scenic drive, the south campground will open this afternoon, according to the recording. The park's shuttles will begin running Saturday morning.

700,000 people a day would have been visiting the parks and that the surrounding areas are losing $76 million in visitor spending per day. The park service said it is losing $450,000 per day in revenue from entrance fees and other in-park expenditures, such as campground fees and boat rentals.

Aggressive actions and double standards used by the National Park Service are vindictive and designed to inflict maximum inconvenience and fear among visitors, say Republican lawmakers whose efforts to reopen the parks are gridlocked by Senate Democrats. World War II veterans were blocked by barricades and armed guards from paying tribute at their memorial last week. However, the national mall where the memorial is located was opened Tuesday to allow hundreds of illegal immigrants to stage a protest demanding amnesty. ... the administration has closed the Mall and memorials to some groups and not others, giving preferential treatment under the...

Public lands continue to draw attention in San Juan County. A series of public meetings in October will allow local residents to learn about several issues and make their voices heard. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has released an environmental assessment and an economic analysis of the Gunnision sage grouse proposals. ... Public comment on the studies will be accepted until October 19. It is expected that the US Fish and Wildlife Service will make a decision on designation by March 31, 2014. The federal agency is considering the designation of the sage grouse as an endangered species and...

Kelly Ayotte was furious. One media account after another (as here) has the Republican and theoretically conservative New Hampshire senator angrily attacking Senator Ted Cruz in a recent closed-door Senate GOP Caucus. Behaving as follows, this much cited and notably un-refuted coming from the New York Times, bold print supplied here for emphasis: And on Wednesday at a private luncheon, several Senate Republicans — Dan Coats of Indiana, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Kelly Ayotte of... --snip-- NR was spot on here about Ayotte, and there’s one more thing to add about that Ayotte comment of seeking a “thoughtful, bipartisan...

...[W]e ran a story in March 2012 which exposed the NSA's unprecedented domestic espionage project, codenamed Stellar Wind, and specifically the $1.4+ billion data center spy facility located in Bluffdale, Utah, which spans more than one million square feet, uses 65 megawatts of energy (enough to power a city of more than 20,000), and can store exabytes or even zettabytes of data (a zettabyte is 100 million times larger than all the printed material in the Library of Congress), consisting of every single electronic communication in the world, whether captured with a warrant or not. Yet despite all signs to...

Initial implementation of the Affordable Care Act began last Tuesday with the debut of online insurance marketplaces, which provide a more simplified way to buy healthcare. Uninsured students must find a source of healthcare by March 2014 otherwise they could face fines on their tax return. Although some believe requiring citizens to buy insurance is unconstitutional, others say it’s the only way the 48 million uninsured Americans will ever have coverage. The bulk of students fall into the country’s most uninsured age group (18-34), primarily because most young adults are healthy and don’t see the need for coverage. “Yes it’s...

Senate Republicans furiously attacked Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Utah Sen. Mike Lee behind closed doors and leaked details of an off-record meeting to the media to harm the two senators, according to Lee. Lee divulged some of the details of a closed-door meeting on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Friday, since he said much of it had been leaked to the media by his own colleagues. “[N]ormally, I don’t comment at all on closed-door meetings between Republican senators,” Lee said. “It’s a pretty strict rule we follow. But one exception I’ll make is circumstances like this, where contents of...

In an interview on Salem Radio's Hugh Hewitt Show, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) revealed that in a conference meeting of Republican Senators earlier this week, a group of Republicans waged an "all-out attack" on himself and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): Hewitt: There was, allegedly, a Republican Senate conference earlier this week where your colleague Ted Cruz took a lot of slings and arrows. Were you there, Sen. Lee? Lee: Yes, Yes! I was there and normally I don't comment at all on closed door meetings among Republican Senators. It's a pretty strict rule we follow. The one exception I'll make...