Free Republic

WAYNESVILLE, Mo. (April 28, 2011) — During a Tuesday evening review by members of the Waynesville Planning and Zoning Commission of their recent actions, City Administrator Bruce Harrill explained the details of why the commission’s prior objections to a church renting space in a special tax district were set aside based on legal advice. “I’d asked Bruce to brief us on that,” commission member Tim Bartlett said. “When things like that happen, it’s probably better that we hear it this way than driving by a restaurant and seeing a cross on top. That’s how I found out about that one.”...

WAYNESVILLE, Mo. (April 28, 2011) — During a Tuesday evening review by members of the Waynesville Planning and Zoning Commission of their recent actions, City Administrator Bruce Harrill explained the details of why the commission’s prior objections to a church renting space in a special tax district were set aside based on legal advice. “I’d asked Bruce to brief us on that,” commission member Tim Bartlett said. “When things like that happen, it’s probably better that we hear it this way than driving by a restaurant and seeing a cross on top. That’s how I found out about that one.”...

The right to own private property unfettered by excessive government control is under attack in Virginia. Private property is a fundamental right that distinguishes us as a free people, The framers of the constitution understood the importance of protecting private property rights. The Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights states, “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” (Related: Agenda 21 Resource Page and also The Path To Agenda 21 Sustainable Development) Despite constitutional protection against property confiscation, state...

WAYNESVILLE, Mo. (March 2, 2011) — Efforts by Waynesville city officials to keep a church from renting the former Ashley Mae restaurant building behind the Bank of Crocker in a special tax district have hit a snag. “I don’t want this to sound negative at all — the city is not negative at all toward anybody, businesses, churches, whatever,” Councilwoman Luge Hardman said at Tuesday evening’s meeting of the Waynesville Economic Development Committee. The city’s planning and zoning commission earlier denied a conditional use permit to New Life Ministries and Foundation, whose leaders have said they like the option of...

WAYNESVILLE, Mo. (March 2, 2011) — Efforts by Waynesville city officials to keep a church from renting the former Ashley Mae restaurant building behind the Bank of Crocker in a special tax district have hit a snag. “I don’t want this to sound negative at all — the city is not negative at all toward anybody, businesses, churches, whatever,” Councilwoman Luge Hardman said at Tuesday evening’s meeting of the Waynesville Economic Development Committee. The city’s planning and zoning commission earlier denied a conditional use permit to New Life Ministries and Foundation, whose leaders have said they like the option of...

Americans can do whatever they decide to do. Witness the politiscape littered with the careers of Democrats deposed by determined Americans who have had enough big-government socialism forced upon them. The next challenge for the tea party – and other organizations – is local and state governments that are systematically implementing freedom-robbing policies in the name of comprehensive planning, smart growth, sustainable development and environmental protection. If the word “freedom” is to have any meaning at all, it must mean that people are free to live wherever they choose, and free to use their property as they choose. For nearly...

Comments on articles about these horse shootings have been pro and con against the Twiss family. While no one thinks shooting horses is an answer, some have expressed their dislike of the Twiss family and their horse stable. Concerns of manure disposal and diseases were brought up. And yes, zoning issues too. The $5,000 reward for the horse shootings may bring some needed information to light. Meanwhile, you can't help wondering where the escalation of events will end. Nor can you help from wondering who wants the Twiss land or what's really behind the harassment and the change of ruling...

Obama’s Ocean Policy Initiative: Washington’s latest power grab As if the sputtering U.S. economy weren’t in enough trouble already, the Obama administration is cooking up a new scheme that will extend the heavy hand of Washington to somewhere it has never gone before. Unveiled with precious little fanfare on July 19 in the form of an Executive Order, the White House’s Ocean Policy Initiative will subject America’s waterways — oceans, rivers, bays, estuaries, and the Great Lakes — to federal zoning. Under the scheme, these areas would be managed according to the Orwellian-sounding notion of “coastal and marine spatial planning.”...

DeKalb County is suing a man for growing too many vegetables on his own land, Channel 2 Action News reported. Steve Miller of Clarkston said he plans to fight the county and has gotten his 2-acre property rezoned so that he can have his garden. But he still faces nearly $5,000 in fines, Miller told Channel 2. Miller has been growing a variety of vegetables for 15 years, and his neighbors support him. He sells what he grows at local markets and gives some away, he said. "It's a way of life, like it's something in my blood,” Miller told...

Quintanilla, 58, broke down in tears when I visited her last week. She fears for her livelihood after the county Code Enforcement Division gave her a warning notice on April 29. "Cease and desist,'' the official document screamed. They gave her seven days, then extended it to 30 so she could appeal. Never mind the other forms posted on the wall of her enclosed kitchen — the state license and the Pasco County tax receipt. Never mind that she has been doing business for five years, or that some form of lunch stand has stood in the same place for...

A small Protestant church in Leon Valley, an enclave within the city of San Antonio, is challenging a zoning code that prohibits the church from holding Sunday worship services. The city code excludes religious assemblies from some zoning areas because they decrease the city’s tax revenue and interfere with commercial activity. In 2007, revisions to the city code excluded churches from most of the city to maximize tax revenues, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty reports. Auditoriums, convention centers, private clubs and schools are free to locate in the city’s retail zones, but churches are not. The Elijah Group, an...

Despite a federal government assessment that South Haven has “excellent” potential for generating wind power, the Lake Michigan resort community has no rules in place to regulate wind turbines that could alter its skyline. “We know that there is a potential big push for alternative forms of energy like solar and wind,” said City Manager Brian Dissette. “We know that the wind is very good here so we want to have something in place that will balance quality of life with these new technologies.” The city’s Planning Commission in August began to consider a zoning amendment that would regulate wind...

Gun store posters take flak By Geoffrey Cooper - Rocky Mount Telegram Tuesday, October 20, 2009 NASHVILLE — For more than a week, a local gun shop owner has been under scrutiny regarding certain advertisements outside his front door. Nashville Guns owner Dennis Nielsen has been met with the watchful eyes of a few county officials and town residents for the storefront posters of women holding guns. Facing two documented complaints, Nielsen maintains that he has done nothing wrong and runs a clean business. Facing the Washington Street sidewalks are two posters inside of Nielsen’s gun shop windows. The first...

CANTON, Ohio — After taking a class that covered global warming last year, Jill Saylor decided to save energy by drying her laundry on a clothesline at her mobile home. "I figured trailer parks were the one place left where hanging your laundry was actually still allowed," she said, standing in front of her tidy, yellow mobile home on an impeccably manicured lawn. But she was wrong. Like the majority of the 60 million people who live in the nation's roughly 300,000 private communities, Saylor was forbidden to dry her laundry outside because many people viewed it as an eyesore,...

Consider nature...as Tennyson saw it, "red in tooth and claw." To glimpse a state of nature as Hobbes imagined it, where human life is "nasty, brutish and short," visit the Whole Foods store on River Road in Bethesda...you will see proof of this social equation: Four Priuses + three parking spaces = angry anarchy. Anger is one of the seven deadly sins. Therefore advanced thinkers are agreed that conservatives are especially susceptible to it. As everyone knows, all liberals are advanced thinkers and all advanced thinkers are liberals. And yet... Recently Paul Schwartzman, a war correspondent for The Post, ventured...

They praised the Lord by singing their hearts out and chanting prayers at packed services. But members of a congregation in north London have abandoned their church - because of a council noise ban. The Immanuel International Christian Centre was ordered to keep its amplified music and sermons quieter after a neighbour complained. But the church's pastor Dunni Odetoyinbo claimed Waltham Forest council had only told them to keep quiet so as not to offend the Muslim community. The church also argued the council had 'taken away its ability to praise God', and that congregation numbers had dwindled from 100...

Montclair might be one of New Jersey's more progressive communities, but even in a town known for its tolerance, a working fetish "dungeon" -- complete with a spanking bench, "interrogation cell" and stocks -- doesn't belong on the busy downtown strip. So says the township attorney in a decision that has bitterly disappointed Ed and Karen Dougherty, aka "Master Ed" and "slave Duchess," the owners of Dressing for Pleasure, a Bloomfield Avenue shop that sells fetish clothing and tools of the bondage-and-discipline trade, from flogs and paddles to masks and spiked collars. For years, the couple hosted discreet "play parties"...

Written by Jason Bellows on 29 July 2009 Marvin Heemeyer of Granby, Colorado was a profoundly frustrated muffler repair man. In the late 1990s–after years of protests, petitions, and town meetings–it became obvious to the 52-year-old that he was entwined in a gross miscarriage of justice. His business was ruined by some shady zoning changes, and Heemeyer contended that mayor and city council were corrupt. Even as he was forced to give up his legal fight and sell his land, he hatched one last plan to secretly retool his muffler shop to serve a single malevolent purpose: to construct a...

A Saudi-funded academy was granted a zoning exemption Monday that allows it to expand at its 34-acre Popes Head Road campus in Fairfax County, culminating a years-long campaign to enlarge the school at that location...The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, whose permission was required for the expansion, stressed Monday that the 6 to 4 decision was based on zoning questions, not on what happens in the school's classrooms. "The community will get an awful lot of development," said Penelope A. Gross (D-Mason). "I think [it] will improve the community." The academy, founded in 1984, has about 1,000 students in pre-kindergarten...

VIRGINIA BEACH Councilman Bill DeSteph has applied to the city for a permit to sell guns out of a Great Neck home he will be moving into later this summer. DeSteph, a gun collector, said he wants to expand his hobby into a business. If the City Council approves the permit, DeSteph said he will apply to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for a permit to be a licensed dealer. “Once you’re clear with city zoning, the federal requirements for dealers are the same out of your house or a storefront,” ATF inspector Michael Adkins said....