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ISIS — the al-Qaida splinter group that has captured city after city in Iraq — is proving itself to be a bold, in-your-face terrorist group that poses a major threat to the U.S. and all of Western civilization, Sen. John Barrasso says. "Our homeland [is] in direct threat. We are the target and my concern is the safety and security of the people of the United States,'' the Wyoming Republican told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV Thursday. "The area that they have taken in Syria and Iraq is larger than the state of Indiana and when you see...

George Gill hands over the never-published photos of the infant he calls Chiquita. Her fine blond hair arches over her wrinkled, leathery skin. Her arms are wrapped around her, a tiny mouth frozen in an “O.” If she once had another name, Gill wouldn’t know it. After all, Chiquita has been dead for hundreds of years. She is one of only a handful of known infant mummies in existence with a particular birth defect. Two such mummies, Chiquita and one known as the Pedro Mountain mummy, were found in Wyoming. They both hold tantalizing clues about those who inhabited Wyoming’s...

A phenomenal shot of a massive cloud Sunday near Clareton, Wyo., has been making the rounds on social media. The photo was taken by the Basehunters storm chasers group, who are "committed to capturing the most unique and close-up tornado footage on the market," according to their Facebook page. It shows the rotating updraft of a supercell thunderstorm over eastern Wyoming, according to Weather Channel meteorologist Jon Erdman. Supercells are the largest, strongest and longest-lasting thunderstorms. They are most common on the Great Plains. Known as a "low-precipitation" supercell, these types of storms seldom produce heavy rain or tornadoes, though...

When Andy and Katie Johnson built a pond on their property in 2011 to provide water for their cattle, they never dreamed it would result in threats of $75,000 a day in fines from the Environmental Protection Agency. The Johnsons believed they had done everything necessary to get permission for the pond, where the tiny Six Mile Creek runs through their property south of Fort Bridger, Wyo. The Wyoming State Engineer's Office provided the permit and even stated in an April 4, 2013 letter to the Johnsons: "All of the legal requirements of the State Engineer's Office, that were your...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Sitting in the headquarters of the Wyoming Liberty Group, Susan Gore, founder of the conservative think tank, said new national science standards for schools were a form of “coercion,” adding, “I don’t think government should have anything to do with education.” Ms. Gore, a daughter of the founder of the company that makes Gore-Tex waterproof fabric, was speaking here weeks after the Republican-controlled Legislature made Wyoming, where coal and oil are king, the first state to reject the standards, which include lessons on human impact on global warming. The pushback came despite a unanimous vote by a...

...About 83 percent of the land identified for the project is privately owned, the companies' proposal said. The federal government owns the mineral rights under about 65 percent of the land, the plan said. The other owners of mineral rights are described only as non-federal entities. The project could hurt the struggling sage grouse population in the area, Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist with WildEarth Guardians, said in a press release.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has a modest, tongue-in-cheek suggestion for people in New York City who support his agenda: move to North Dakota. "I said, 'Move to North Dakota!" "If I could just get about a million surplus votes in Brooklyn out to Nebraska, Wyoming," he said, drawing laughs from the crowd of about 50 people.

Wyoming is the first state to reject adopting new K-12 science standards proposed by national education groups. The Wyoming Board of Education decided recently that the Next Generation Science Standards need more review after questions were raised about how the standards address man-made global warming. Wyoming is the nation’s leading coal producing state. …

The American coal industry is accusing the Obama administration of using the Environmental Protection Agency to end the use of coal despite the president's claim of having an "all of the above" energy policy. ... the EPA's MATS rules, which go into effect in January 2016, will devastate coal production in America and .. about 60 gigawatts of coal-fired generation coming off-line .. One of Monseu’s issues is the way she said the administration is targeting coal, which currently fuels around 40 percent of the electricity produced in the U.S. "Increasingly we face a situation where policy is dictated not...

Updated 6:37 p.m. | Sen. Ted Cruz gathered a group of House conservatives in his office Tuesday night, talking about immigration and House GOP leadership elections slated for after the midterm elections. As CQ Roll Call first reported last October, Cruz held a secret meeting with members at Tortilla Coast during the height of the government shutdown drama. Many of these same Republicans are the agitators who aren’t happy with Speaker John A. Boehner. The Texas Republican gathered roughly 10 members of the GOP Conference at 8 p.m. Tuesday for a 90-minute session that included candy bars, crackers and soda....

Frustrated with President Barack Obama’s reaction to Russian action in Ukraine, a group of Republican senators said Wednesday they will introduce legislation outlining a more muscular response. “What we’ve seen from the administration is a lot of rhetoric,” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. The White House has been dealing “with the situation after something bad has already occurred,” he said. Earlier this week, violence flared up in another area of Ukraine that hugs the Russian border, as the new government in Kiev criticized local police...

A new report analyzing the financial ramifications of a takeover of some of Nevada’s millions of acres of federal lands suggests the state would benefit from such a transfer. A transfer of 4 million acres of U.S. Bureau Land Management land could bring in anywhere from $31 million to $114 million a year, based on a review of four Western states that have significant amounts of trust lands under their control, the report says.

Some of the opinions on the Internet about refugee resettlement in Wyoming are inaccurate and racist, Gov. Matt Mead said. Wyoming is the only state without a formal refugee resettlement program, but there are likely refugees living in the Cowboy State, Mead said in an interview Wednesday with the Star-Tribune. At this point, Mead is working with volunteers to gain more information about establishing a refugee program in the state. Wyomingites will get to comment on a program as it’s developed, he said.

JACKSON, Wyo. -- What's happening in this Wyoming resort town might be better described as a land creep than a landslide, but the lack of speed has not hindered the sheer power of the moving earth. Over the past two weeks, a piece of East Gros Ventre Butte has slowly collapsed toward the west side of Jackson — shearing one hillside home in half, threatening to devour several others and looming ever more ominously over a cluster of businesses below. :snip: By Saturday morning, the shifting earth had caused bulges in a road and a parking lot at the foot...

The Bureau of Land Management is clearly having an image problem. As the outrage over its intimidating show of force during last week’s showdown at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada proved, the federal agency is now caught up in a controversy originating in Wyoming. According to recent reports, agents herded a large group of wild horses in the state before ceding control of the majestic animals to state authorities. At that point, Wyoming officials sold them off to a slaughterhouse in Canada. Obviously, this development outraged countless advocates already incensed by accusations that BLM officers gunned down multiple cows at...

The Wisconsin congressional district represented by Rep. Tom Petri (R) stands to lose nearly 2,000 jobs because of the Obama Administration’s “War on Coal,” but Petri has twice voted to let some of those more controversial – and burdensome – regulations stand. A nationwide analysis by the Heritage Foundation concludes that Wisconsin will lose an estimated 11,702 jobs thanks to Obama environmental regulations. The sixth district alone will lose more jobs than any other congressional district in the country the study concludes. ... Petri was the only Republican from Wisconsin to vote against suspending the rule. Voting with Petri was...

The resulting launch-ready total of 400 Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles would be the lowest deployed ICBM total since the early 1960s. The decisions come after a strong push by members of Congress from the states that host missile bases - North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana - to not eliminate any of the silos from which the missiles would be launched. Fifty silos will be kept in “warm” status - empty of missiles but capable of returning to active use. Sen. John Tester, a Montana Democrat, called the Pentagon’s announcement “a big win for our nation’s security and for Malmstrom...

Former Sen. Alan Simpson, a Republican, is making the case for a “live and let live” approach to same-sex marriage in a new television ad buy targeting Western states, just as a federal appeals court in Denver prepares to take up the issue later this week. “Whether you’re gay or lesbian or straight, if you love someone and you want to marry them, marry them,” Simpson, of Wyoming, says in the spot. The six-figure buy, sponsored by the pro-gay marriage group Freedom to Marry, is slated to start airing on Tuesday on national cable channels, as well as locally in...

April 6th, 2014 11:10 AM ET 39 minutes ago Pelosi: Cheney is ‘proud’ of Bush-era CIA that misled public Posted by CNN's Dana Davidsen (CNN) – House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said former Vice President Dick Cheney "set a tone and attitude for the CIA" that allowed for the controversial techniques used by the agency in the Bush-era detention and interrogation program. Her comments follow a Senate Intelligence Committee vote last week to release key parts of a report that concludes the CIA misled the government and public about aspects of the agency’s practices in the post-9/11 program. The California...

An exchange student fell to his death after ingesting marijuana in Colorado - the first death linked to the drug since it was legalised in the US state. Levy Thamba, 19, plummeted from the balcony of a Denver hotel on 11 March after eating a cannabis-laced cookie. A post-mortem examination found marijuana intoxication was a factor in the Wyoming student's death. Colorado became the first US state to legalise recreational use of the drug in January. Mr Thamba, a native of the Republic of Congo, had reportedly begun taking classes at Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming, the same month.