Posted on 08/04/2008 4:13:34 PM PDT by average american student
Lynn Moses will be locked up in federal prison next Wednesday. His crime? Protecting the city of Driggs, Idaho from flooding.
When Mr. Moses began to develop a subdivision along Teton Creek in 1980, Teton County required him to implement an engineers plan to modify the Teton Creek stream bed to prevent the flooding of subdivision property, caused by the buildup of gravel bars and downed trees, during high water flows in the spring.
In fact, the county would not allow him even to record the plat for the subdivision until the modification work had been done, and only allowed the development after requiring the homeowners association to maintain the flood control channel year after year.
Teton Creek used to be a flowing stream, but irrigation diversion over 100 years ago dewatered the Creek and left the stream bed dry for all but two months a year at the most. Water only fills the stream bed when irrigators have more water than they can use. (Note: this means there is no aquatic environment here, nor any wetland.)
Officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were invited to a planning meeting with the county and Mr. Moses in 1980, but they soon left the meeting after informing county officials that they had classified the stream as intermittent and therefore outside their jurisdiction.
So working on plans developed by an engineer and approved in fact, required by the county, Mr. Moses got to work and cleared the channel of gravel bars and downed cottonwood trees to ensure that the channel would serve as a flood control structure.
For years he has walked the entire length of the creek to evaluate conditions and then remove gravel bars, sand, logs ...
(Excerpt) Read more at stiffrightjab.com ...
True story: My next door neighbor is a lawyer. He invited me over to a card game about a year ago. I asked who was coming. He said some lawyer friends of his. I kindly said: "No, but thanks for the address so I can call in an airstike." He has not spoken to me since.
Of course, the jury doesn't have to tolerate any such judicial nonsense either. Guess who trumps when the verdict is rendered?!
The judge.
It’s called contempt of court.
>The jury was the problem, they were there to check the Government and instead the did not do their duty in a serious manner.<
99.9999999% of all juries do not have any inkling of their authority or power.

Grow up.
The beauriocrats and judge who did this should themselves be in jail, after a good, stiff, flogging, IMHO.
They are petty tyrants who willfully ignored the history of this case and the earlier rulings to purposely send this man to prison.
It should not stand.
Idaho representatives at the local, state, and national level should move this forward, and in the worst case appeal to Bush to turn this over.
Yep. And, in many jurisdictions, it is illegal to tell them.
As is often the case, the jury only acted on what information they had.
The screening (and exclusion) of all exculpatory evidence, including decisions by Federal Agencies, ensured that he did not receive a fair trial.
The Judge is to blame and should be removed from the bench.
In case you haven't, read the whole article at the link. Except for Spring runoff, the wetlands were not even wet.
Like Kelo?
When you voted in 2000 you only replaced the President and a handful of folks.
Clinton Communists continue to infest the government, and Bush did absolutely nothing to get rid of them.
Federal judge Lynn Winmill appointed 1995 by then President Bill Clinton.
I don't think President Bush can remove him.
But we have discovered that five current members of SCOTUS don't agree with that premise.
They needed some fish to fill the pot ;o)
How can the judge know what criteria you used to render your verdict?
To my knowledge, a juror can be held in contempt of court for failing to appear for duty when summoned, for not answering questions during selection, etc. but not for rendering a verdict based on the facts of the case as they see them.
Thank you - I knew you’d be interested!
Kelo is one of the reasons we need at least one more Supreme Court Justice with a little common sense! I have more hope that McCain would appoint someone like that than that Obama would.
Something I've been wondering about - after all the constant questioning by the media on whether it was time for Rehnquist to retire... why isn't there any for Stevens to retire now that he's 88? Or for Ginsberg, with her health issues, to retire? Oh... nevermind.
“At this point, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), emboldened by newly granted bureaucratic authority, jumped in and went right after Mr. Moses”
Stupid hippies. What addlepated twit gave them new authority? They need to be stripped of all authority and funding.
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