Free Republic

Atlanta (CNN) -- A North Georgia chapter of the Ku Klux Klan has applied to "adopt" a stretch of highway in Union County, Georgia, according to paperwork obtained by CNN on Monday. The application, which would allow the white supremacy group to receive state recognition for cleaning up a one-mile portion of a highway, was filed by the International Keystone Knights of the KKK on May 21.

OCEANSIDE ---- A federal judge on Friday ordered the state Transportation Department to let a controversial group of anti-illegal immigration activists pick up litter near a Border Patrol checkpoint. In a 34-page order, Judge William Q. Hayes granted the San Diego Minutemen's request for a preliminary injunction that gives Caltrans 30 days to reinstate the group's Adopt-A-Highway permit for a 2-mile stretch of Interstate 5 near San Clemente. The state also must restore the courtesy sign bearing the Minutemen's name, the judge ruled. The judge's decision enables the North County group to once again pick up trash alongside the busy...

Caltrans has announced it will no longer accept applications for its Adopt-a-Highway volunteer cleanup program. The move comes after members of the San Diego Minutemen sued the state agency over the right to sponsor a stretch of I-5 south of San Clemente near a Border Patrol checkpoint. Caltrans routinely posts signs noting the individuals or groups who sponsor that particular stretch of highway, but removed the Minuteman group's sign in January. Caltrans officials said then that they feared vandalism or protesters along the freeway. Caltrans offered the group another stretch of San Diego County highway, but the Minutemen have sought...

OCEANSIDE ---- The state department of transportation has denied the latest request by the San Diego Minutemen to clean a stretch of Interstate 5 under the Adopt-A-Highway program. In a letter to Jeff Schwilk, founder of the controversial anti-illegal immigration group, Caltrans spokesman Steve Saville said Tuesday that another group had already adopted the requested stretch of road. Saville offered to put the Minutemen on a waiting list. Schwilk said he's sceptical about what's really going on. His group is embroiled in a federal lawsuit with the state agency over its decision in January to take away the Minutemen's last...

SAN DIEGO — The Minutemen anti-illegal immigration group is going from picketing to trash-picking on a strip of Southern California freeway. State transit officials granted the group's San Diego chapter an Adopt-A-Highway stretch of Interstate 5 that includes the Border Patrol's traffic checkpoint near San Clemente, about 70 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. The designation makes the chapter responsible for keeping the 2-mile strip of freeway clean. "We'll be out there in dorky-looking vests, hard hats and goggles, picking up trash," San Diego chapter founder Jeff Schwilk said Friday. Like other volunteer groups in the program around the country, the...

Campo Minutemen Adopt Buckman Springs Road in Campo, CA

As Illinois politicians wheedle for an income tax increase to help grow the government payroll, a reader of this column, Scott Broehl, wrote me a letter. His was a fascinating story about how government works, or doesn't. It involves the Illinois Adopt A Highway program, one of the million--or is that 10 million?--government programs. This involves a road in Arlington Heights and a group that should be barred from adopting anything, even a chunk of asphalt. "I couldn't believe it," Broehl, a retired homicide detective, told me Wednesday. "All these politicians are grandstanding. They grandstand on everything. But then this...

The American Nazi Party has been given permission to adopt a rural Marion County (Oregon) road as part of a volunteer litter clean-up program.The signs proclaiming the Nazis sponsored them were put up last week.County officials said they were legally advised that excluding the organization would violate a constitutional right to free speech. Their choices, they said, were: allow the group to join the program, remove all of the signs from the program or refuse the group and risk a lawsuit.So the hate group was allowed to have two signs which cost the county $250 apiece.Officials said as long as...

SALEM, Ore. - Two controversial road signs that were put up in Marion County have already been ripped down. The road signs read, "The American Nazi Party has adopted a two mile stretch of Sunnyview Road" and were put up by Marion County officials one week ago. The county says they have received a lot of complaints from residents claiming the county is condoning the organization. However, officials insist the American Nazi Party has a right to free speech, just like everybody else. Viewer Note: A sharp eyed KATU viewer noticed that the name of the group was spelled Amerian...

SALEM, Ore. - Two green Adopt-A-Highway signs reading "American Nazi Party" have popped up on a rural road a few miles from downtown Salem, and it's got people upset with the county for agreeing to put up the signs and worried about their neighborhood. "I know we live in a free world. But that's not part of freedom, anything to do with the Nazis," said Barbara Hamblin, a 64-year-old who lives in a mobile home park just down the road from one of the signs. "They had to have been off their rocker," she said. The two signs were erected...