Free Republic

Judge stalls approved Montana coal mine expansion in 2nd successful suit citing climate change. The U.S. Interior Department should not have approved the expansion of a southeastern Montana coal mine without taking a closer look at its effect on the environment, a federal judge said about a lawsuit arguing the government ignored coal's contributions to climate change. Environmental groups sued the Interior Department after it approved an expansion of the Spring Creek Coal mine in 2012. The case marks the second time conservationists have used worries over climate change to successfully challenge approval of a coal mine after it had...

A U.S. judge on Friday approved a deal between conservationists and Montana officials to restrict road-building and logging in roughly 22,000 acres of state forest lands that make up core habitat for federally protected grizzlies. The agreement resolves a lawsuit brought by conservationists after the state had sought to open 37,000 acres , mostly in the Stillwater State Forest, to timber harvesting despite what environmentalists said would be the destruction of prime grizzly bear territory. ... U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy in a decision last year found the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by...

The greatest revolutions come out of the most unlikely places. Consider the brave administration at Jackson Hole High School in Wyoming. Proving that there is a razor-thin line between nonsense and cataclysmic brilliance, the administrators there have decided to cancel “America Day” on behalf of a suffering student body. America Day is a longstanding tradition at the high school, celebrating homecoming in a way that doubles as a celebration of patriotism. Students wear red, white, and blue colors to class, wave American flags around, and generally take pride in their country. Awful, right? “Many different students could have felt singled...

Every year, Jackson Hole High School has celebrated “America Day” around homecoming time — and it’s become quite the spectacle. The tradition includes students wrapping American flags around their shoulders, wearing American flag attire and driving a diesel truck around the parking lot with the stars and stripes waving in the wind. But this year turned out to be different for the students in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Jackson Hole High principal Scott Crisp blamed the results of a student survey and his concerns that some students may feel excluded if they see an American flag for the administration’s decision to cancel “America Pride Day.”

Bowie Resource Partners plans to lay off nearly 100 people at its Bowie #2 Mine near Paonia in the latest setback to coal employment in the North Fork Valley. The company said Tuesday that it anticipates laying off 78 workers and 19 contractors from the mine, where 181 full-time employees and 19 contractors work now. ... it is continuing to evaluate the market for the mine’s coal after losing a contract to sell to the Tennessee Valley Authority a year ago. The loss of that contract caused Bowie to eliminate about 150 jobs at that time. Bowie operates three underground...

--snip-- In a January 2014 violation notice, the agency said Mr. Johnson had violated the Clean Water Act by digging out Six Mile Creek and dumping in tons of river rocks without getting necessary federal permits. The agency ordered him to take steps to restore the creek under the supervision of environmental officials, or face accumulating fines of as much as $37,500 a day. Mr. Johnson refused. He argued that he had gotten full approvals from Wyoming officials, and said the federal government had no business using national water laws to make decisions about the creek that meanders through the...

A second northwestern Colorado coal mine will undergo a review of the mine's environmental impact following an agreement reached by the federal government, the mine's owners and WildEarth Guardians.. The agreement between the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM), Trapper Mining Inc. and WildEarth Guardians was filed Thursday with the U.S. District Court in Denver. The agreement gives the federal government until the end of April to complete a new review of the mine’s operations. ... Our miners must be allowed to keep working to supply Craig Station with the coal that’s needed to supply the grid...

The very same crew which recently dumped three million gallons of toxic sludge out of an abandoned mine and turned the Animas River in Colorado the color of a yellow banded poison dart frog for roughly a week has just issued a whole new set of rules to “protect” small pools of water. They would also like you to know that these rules are going into effect even though a federal judge put them on hold in 13 states, too. This new batch of regulations is going to “protect” bodies of water which may include the ditch in front...

BISMARCK, N.D. — A federal judge in North Dakota on Thursday blocked a new Obama administration rule that would give the federal government jurisdiction over some state waterways. U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson of North Dakota issued a temporary injunction against a the rule, which gives the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers authority to protect some streams, tributaries and wetlands under the Clean Water Act. The rule was scheduled to take effect Friday. “The risk of irreparable harm to the states is both imminent and likely,” Judge Erickson said in blocking the rule from taking effect....

A Florence man charged with setting a series of fires nine years ago in Ravalli and Missoula counties that cost millions of dollars to fight was back in a Ravalli County court Wednesday. Jonah Mica Warr, 28, was recently released on probation after serving seven years of a 10-year federal prison sentence for setting the fires in 2006. Warr’s court troubles in Ravalli County date back to 2004 when he pleaded guilty before District Judge Jeffery Langton to a number of felony charges for possession of explosives and criminal mischief for blowing up mailboxes in the Florence and Stevensville areas....

A supervolcano in the heart of America's northwest has the potential to blanket the US in a 'nuclear winter'. If it were to erupt, the Yellowstone supervolcano would be one thousand times as powerful as the 1980 Mount St Helens eruption, experts claim. While it has lain dormant for more than 70,000 years, scientists say that we can't rule out the possibility eruption this may some day take place - although they say the chances are extremely slim. The eruption, the scientists say, could kill as many as 90,000 people almost instantly and release a 10 ft (3-meter) layer of...

DENVER (CBS4) – An alert has been issued by the FBI to all law enforcement agencies in Colorado and Wyoming involving U.S. military families and concerns about who may be watching them. The alert says Middle Eastern men are approaching families of U.S. military members at their homes in Colorado and Wyoming. It mentions Greeley and Cheyenne, Wyoming as the specific areas. In one case last May the wife of a military member was approached in front of her home by two Middle Eastern males. The men stated that she was the wife of a U.S. interrogator. When she denied...

WASHINGTON — An 18-year old Mexican national who admitted to killing a Montana couple and seriously injuring their 24-year old daughter last week may have entered the United States illegally years before he was given legal residency in May of 2013, sources tell The Daily Caller. According to The Billings Gazette, Jesus Deniz admitted to fatally shooting Jason Shane, 51, and his wife Tana Shane, 47, on an Indian reservation last Wednesday in the town of Pryor, Montana. The couple and their 24-year-old daughter Jorah Shane pulled their car over to help Deniz, when it appeared he had run out...

CHEYENNE, WY - Republican Presidential hopeful, Senator Ted Cruz, is coming to Cheyenne.The senator will be the keynote speaker at the Wyoming Republican Party's Inaugural Chairman's Reception. It's being held August 20 at the Hereford Ranch just outside of Cheyenne.Tickets are $50 for the general reception at 2pm and $500 for the VIP photo reception at 3pm. Senator Cruz is the junior U.S senator from Texas and was the first Republican to announce he is running for president.For more info check out: https://secure.piryx.com/donate/mrqIot1U/Wyoming-Republican-Party/chairmans-reception

Craig community leaders hosted a meeting Thursday at Moffat County High School to provide a brief update on the situation at Colowyo Coal Mine, answer questions and facilitate public comment on the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement’s environmental assessment. Ray Beck, Craig mayor, opened the gathering by telling the audience about the economic significance of Colowyo mine’s 220 jobs to Craig and Northwest Colorado. “This is not the time to slow down,” Beck said, emphasizing the importance of community feedback on the development of the mine’s new environmental assessment. When the OMSRE’s recommendation to approve mining plans for...

GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz is speaking in Cheyenne on Aug. 20 at a Wyoming Republican Party event.Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, will be the keynote speaker at the First Annual Chairman’s Reception at the Wyoming Hereford Ranch in Cheyenne.The event is a ceremony in which party Chairman Matt Micheli will name the GOP volunteer of the year.“It’s a fundraiser for the party, not for him,” Micheli said of Cruz. “He’s supporting the party in that.”At 2 p.m., there will be a reception with Cruz and anyone who wants to pay $500 to meet him and get their photo...

A man who was stopped along a road on Montana's Crow Indian Reservation gunned down a family who tried to help him Wednesday, killing the couple and wounding their daughter. Tana Shane, 50, and her husband Jason, 52, who have seven children, were killed, and daughter, Jora, 24, was shot in the head and back, after they assisted 18-year-old suspect Jesus Deniz Mendoza in Pyror, Montana. Jorah survived and managed to run to a local school to get help before returning to the scene. She was then taken to hospital and is said to be 'incoherent'. Mrs Shane drove past...

After two shocking videos caught Planned Parenthood doctors discussing and arranging the sale of body parts of aborted babies, a third video has been released today catching a Planned Parenthood vice president negotiating the sale of aborted babies and attempting to get as much money as possible from the deal.As LifeNews reported, the first video of undercover footage shows Planned Parenthood Federation of AmericaÂ’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describing how Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted unborn children and admitting she uses partial-birth abortions to supply intact body parts.In the second video, Planned Parenthood...

Eight years ago Barack Obama bound his own party to what proved to be a successful class warfare platform–for him, at least. Unfortunately, and largely due to him, that binding turned out to be more of a hamstringing: there isn’t much of the party he brought along with him left in Washington. Obama’s constant narrative of division by wealth, sex, race and geography (urban vs. suburban/rural, coasts vs. heartland), is wholly dependent upon grooming and molding enough elected talent within the party to keep it growing. And yet all that’s left of the vibrant, rising, seemingly invincible party that Obama...