Free Republic

The Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office today released data on the number of persons who changed their party affiliation on their voter registration in the weeks before or on the date of the 2018 Primary Election – August 21st. 12,509 persons in total changed their party affiliation between July 6th and September 20th: 6,057 Democrats changed and registered as Republicans; 4,355 Unaffiliated persons changed and registered as Republicans; 744 Unaffiliated persons changed and registered as Democrats; 477 members of the Constitution and Libertarian parties changed and registered as Republicans; 430 Republicans changed and registered as Democrats; and 296 persons of...

While it doesn’t get much play in the heat of the final days leading up to the midterms, U.S. energy policy is still in the news. Unfortunately, not all of the coverage is quite as honestly depicted as you might hope. We’re still riding a nearly unprecedented energy boom in the United States, but the New York Times found a way to cast a dark cloud over it this weekend. Eric Lipton et al. published a look at oil and gas drilling on federal lands in Wyoming designed to send chills down your spine just in time for Halloween. To...

CONVERSE COUNTY, Wyo. — The parade of trailer trucks rolling through Jay Butler’s dusty ranch is a precursor to a new fracking boom on the vast federal lands of Wyoming and across the West. Reversing a trend in the final years of the Obama presidency, the Trump administration is auctioning off millions of acres of drilling rights to oil and gas developers, a central component of the White House’s plan to work hand in glove with the industry to promote more domestic energy production. Seeing growth and profit opportunities at a time of rising oil prices and a pro-business administration,...

The Wyoming U.S. Attorney's Office has charged a Laramie man with vandalizing and burning the Albany County Republican Party headquarters last month, according to the statement supporting a criminal complaint filed in federal court on Tuesday. Kellen Michael Sorber is charged with one count of using fire to commit a felony, which is punishable by at least five years to 20 years imprisonment, according to the complaint written by an agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The agent's statement did not say if Sorber had been taken into custody, but the Wyoming U.S. Attorney's Office...

The Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office today released data on the number of persons who changed their party affiliation on their voter registration in the weeks before or on the date of the 2018 Primary Election – August 21st.12,509 persons in total changed their party affiliation between July 6th and September 20th: 6,057 Democrats changed and registered as Republicans;4,355 Unaffiliated persons changed and registered as Republicans;744 Unaffiliated persons changed and registered as Democrats;477 members of the Constitution and Libertarian parties changed and registered as Republicans;430 Republicans changed and registered as Democrats; and296 persons of various parties changed and registered as...

Opinion Flurry of Bear Attacks in Fall of 2018, Are You At Risk?Arizona -(Ammoland.com)- It is the season for bear attacks. Bears are very active in the fall, when they must accumulate enough calories to lard up for hibernation. At the same time, human hunters are out and about, hunting all game animals, putting human hunters in the same areas with heavy bear populations. In the last month, there have been several bear attacks in the news. On 9 September 2018, Dr. Brad Johnson was attacked and severely mauled. He had bear spray in his hand.  He was attacked...

In 2009, Barack Obama honored dead gay man Matthew Shepard by putting his name on some silly-ass federal hate crimes act. Now Shepard’s gay corpse will join other luminaries as Woodrow Wilson and Helen Keller by being interred at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. Ever since Shepard’s 1998 murder in Laramie, WY, his legacy has become sanctified to a nigh untouchable level. We are led to believe that two homophobic Wyoming rednecks met Shepard at a bar, then lured him to the outskirts of town, where they cracked his skull by pistol-whipping him and then tied him to a...

In late September, the typically docile Ear Spring geyser in Yellowstone National Park erupted with a forceful blast that shot up to 30 feet of water into the air. Amidst the debris that spewed out of the geyser during the eruption were not only rocks and dirt, but pieces of human-made trash—some of which dates back several decades. Park officials discovered items like a cement block, aluminum cans, cigarette butts, a rubber heel insert, an 8-inch-long drinking straw, almost 100 coins and a baby pacifier from the 1930s, as Brandon Specktor reports for LiveScience. “The water had just washed out...

Some of the confusion and fog surrounding the fatal bear attack and failure of bear spray in Wyoming has cleared. The investigators have done their job, and much was learned from the evidence on the ground. The attack occurred on Friday afternoon, the 14th of September, in the Teton Wilderness in Wyoming, near Terrace Mountain. The hunter, Corey Chubon, and Mark Uptain, the guide, had almost finished processing the 4×4 elk. Mark Uptain, the guide, was attacked first, as he was cutting off the elk's head.  The 250-pound sow grizzly gave no warning. She was first seen in an...

Early reports on the fatal grizzly bear attack on guide Mark Uptain and client Corey Chubon have been confused about many details. The attack on the bowhunter, Corey Chubon, and guide, Mark Uptain, occurred on 14 Septemberof 2018 in Wyoming. In the initial reporting, Chubon was said to have thrown a pistol to Uptain and run away. As facts come to light, the reality is more nuanced.Mark Uptain appears to have relied on a can of bear spray to deter the attack. A can of bear spray, with the safety off, was found at the site. The adult sow grizzly...

In a tragic story from Wyoming, Mark Uptain, a hunting guide, was killed by a grizzly bear on Friday.  His client fled the scene after throwing Mark a pistol. The two were retrieving an elk that had been wounded the previous day while they were bowhunting. The men were processing or packing out the elk when they were attacked by two large bears. It is difficult to categorize this as a defensive use of a firearm when no attempt was made to fire the handgun. The handgun was reported to be in a pack when the attack started. It...

A Wyoming hunting guide was fatally mauled and his client was injured when a pair of grizzly bears attacked them Friday, officials said.{snip} Uptain and Chubon were attacked by bears as they field dressed the elk they had shot Thursday but were only able to find Friday, officials said. The bears “aggressively charged” the men and didn’t touch the dead elk, Teton County officials said.{snip} Authorities later euthanized two grizzly bears, a mother and a cub, who wildlife managers believe killed guide Mark Uptain and wounded his client Corey Chubon near the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks border, according...

The double whammy is that Wyoming voting law allows people to register or change their party affiliation at the polling place on voting day and vote in whichever primary they choose. So RINOs are chosen in the Republican primary by Democrat voters pretending for a day to be Republicans. It makes a travesty of the two-party system and cheats Republicans of getting to select their own candidates. Their preferred candidate, Mark Gordon, beat the conservative frontrunner, Foster Friess, by approximately 6-9,000 votes (the official count isn't in yet), well within the margin provided by Democrat voters. Comparing this year's primary...

A Republican Party office in Laramie, Wyoming, caught fire early Thursday morning just days after it opened, The Daily Caller News Foundation learned.The fire appears to have been set intentionally, Laramie Police Department spokesman Steve Morgan told TheDCNF.The local police department is cooperating with the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) in the ongoing investigation, Morgan said, adding that authorities have not yet identified a suspect or a motive for the fire.The burnt office is shared by the Albany County Republican Party and the Wyoming College Republicans, who began moving in on Tuesday, less than 48 hours before the...

U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) sent a letter to Bank of the West President and Chief Executive Officer Nandita Bakhshi pushing back on the bank’s decision to no longer conduct business with companies engaged in the exploration and production of coal, oil and natural gas. Bank of the West, headquartered in San Francisco, CA, has 23 branches with dedicated employees who work hard to serve communities and families across Wyoming. In his letter, Barrasso condemned the San Francisco headquarter’s attack on Wyoming’s communities and businesses that depend on fossil fuels for energy security, jobs and economic growth. “This misguided and...

The commander of F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming has agreed to replace a Bible on a POW/MIA table with a generic “book of faith,” according to documents released by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The MRFF is a militant organization that has fought against Nativity scenes, Bible studies and any outward expressions of the Christian faith on U.S. military installations. The head of the foundation, Mikey Weinstein, wrote in the HuffPost that he is dedicated to fighting “virulent religious oppression” carried out by “incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their...

A 100-foot fissure has opened up in the Grand Teton National Park – not far from the potentially catastrophic Yellowstone volcano. The giant crack in the Wyoming–based national park has prompted officials to shut down areas from tourists in case of landslides. The Grand Teton National Park said in a statement: “The Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point areas are currently closed due to elevated potential for rockfall. [...snip...] If it was seismic activity beneath Grand Teton which caused the fissure, it could be a sign that Yellowstone is reawakening. If the Wyoming volcano were to erupt an estimated 87,000 people...

The Senate on Wednesday took a symbolic shot at President Trump’s trade policy amid anxiety on Capitol Hill over his tariff strategy. Senators voted 88-11 to instruct lawmakers hashing out a deal on a government funding bill to include language “providing a role for Congress” on tariffs implemented for national security reasons, known as Section 232 of the trade laws. The vote is nonbinding, meaning lawmakers don’t have to add trade language into the funding bill. But the vote margin, with more senators supporting it than the amount needed to override a veto, underscores the depth of concern on Capitol...

Professors at the University of Wyoming say the school’s new cowboy slogan promotes “white heterosexual” masculinity. Expanding upon the University of Wyoming’s Cowboy mascot, the school recently adopted a new slogan — “The World Needs More Cowboys.” But some professors are up in arms over the choice, claiming that it promotes “white heterosexual” masculinity. Christine Porter, associate professor of kinesiology and health at the university, is leading the charge against the new slogan. “The history of cowboys, of course, is much more diverse than that racially, and presumably also for sexual orientation,” Porter said in a comment. “But the image...

A Wyoming Republican Party delegate is challenging a University of Wyoming ban on the carry of firearms in its facilities. The ban is enforced through trespass law. The circuit court has issued a stay on the criminal trespass proceedings, to allow the issue of the legality of the ban to be determined before the trespass case goes forward. From kpvi.com: LARAMIE — A criminal case in Albany County Circuit Court involving the University of Wyoming’s campus gun ban has received a stay, pending a separate civil action against UW seeking to challenge the legality of that ban.During the Wyoming...