Free Republic

Border Patrol agents trying to keep up with the pace of illegal immigration along the southwest border have gotten stuck in a kind of bureaucratic limbo, with a new government report showing federal regulations have stalled projects for months. In one case, it took the Bureau of Land Management almost eight months to issue a permit allowing Border Patrol to move an underground sensor in New Mexico. In another, Border Patrol officials were denied permission to improve maintenance on roads and surveillance in California, forcing the patrol routes north. In another, it took more than four months for the agency...

Environmental activist Wendy Van Asselt was at the World Resources Institute in 2003 when officials from the Wilderness Society made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. They wanted her to lead a huge project to remove 26 million acres of federal land in the National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) from oil and gas production, grazing, timber harvesting, mining for strategic minerals, off-road recreation, and providing rural jobs.

But just as mysteriously, the chairman of the subcommittee, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva (who just happens to get most of his campaign contributions from large labor unions), canceled the hearing when it appeared the room was going to be filled only with him and some union organizers — a dog-and-pony show missing the pony.

Scott Tipton may have to get himself a good hunting dog if he’s going to track down John Salazar for many debates. Earlier in the week, Salazar’s camp wasn’t too sure if the congressman was going to be able to make the regular forum and debate at Club 20 here in Grand Junction, which is totally understandable since the gathering involves 20 counties in western Colorado and has only been scheduled for something like a year.... A leaked memorandum by the Bureau of Land Management indicates consideration to use the 1906 Antiquities Act to authorize executive action creating national monuments...

The video above, prominently featuring Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH), comes from a longer documentary made by filmmaker Noel Burch extolling the virtues of the American radical left. It’s interesting especially because the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are denying their connections to Kilroy altogether. A spokesman for DSA told Battle ‘10 that “This happens every election cycle…there isn’t any truth to [the accusations that Kilroy was a member].”

Evidence has emerged that in the early 1990s, Mary Jo Kilroy, then an Ohio lawyer and activist, was a member of the U.S.’s largest Marxist-based organization, Democratic Socialists of America (D.S.A.). Furthermore, while running as a Democrat, Mary Jo Kilroy was backed by her D.S.A. comrades in her both unsuccessful (2006) and successful (2008) races for U.S. congress.

A western Colorado land swap sought by U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., would eliminate what National Park Service officials termed a development threat to the Curecanti National Recreation Area. Salazar’s biggest individual campaign contributor, meanwhile, would get land that would allow him to complete assembly of his ranch in Gunnison County.

In February 2005, as his troubled son was facing felony robbery charges in Virginia, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) wrote a letter to a Fairfax County judge on congressional stationery, imploring him to show mercy on the then-27-year-old Nick Joe Rahall III. Nick Joe Rahall, the congressman’s only son, was given a four-year suspended sentence, avoiding prison time in this instance despite being incarcerated twice in the previous four years. Rahall acknowledged to POLITICO that he should not have used congressional stationery for the Feb. 14, 2005, letter but said it was not the same type that he uses for official...

"Of the 264 million acres under BLM management, some 130- to 140-million acres are worthy of consideration as treasured lands. These areas [are] roughly equivalent in size to Colorado and Wyoming combined." -BLM's Treasured Lanscapes paper

Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) has no plans to give up the $3,000 in donations he took from embattled Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) even though he sits on the jury considering evidence that the former Ways and Means Committee chairman broke ethics rules. Butterfield is one of a bipartisan group of eight members on the ethics committee who will weigh the allegations against Rangel.

The Doña Ana County wilderness bill that New Mexico’s U.S. senators and local activists are trying to push through Congress before the end of the year puts U.S. Rep. Harry Teague in a very tough political spot. The Democratic is in a difficult re-election battle against former GOP U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce. It’s a Republican-leaning district in a Republican leaning year, and Pearce already has an advantage.

The all-too-familiar idea “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” has reared its head in Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D–NV) Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Company Accountability Act of 2010. In addition to proposing hurdles high enough to trip efforts to develop energy resources in the Gulf of Mexico, the proposal would gift to the greens one of their long sought desires: a full pot of money in the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LCWF). It would be a big pot of cash that can be spent “without further appropriation” to, among other things, gobble up more private property.

In her response letter, Napolitano enclosed a report from a congressional inquiry which confirmed, “Overall, the removal of cross-border violators from public lands is a value to the environment as well as to the mission of the land managers.” The New Mexico border has also suffered pollution because of illegal immigration, but not as much as Arizona border. “We undoubtedly have experienced a lot of litter, but not the extent of Arizona,” Eddie Guerrero, international border coordinator for the New Mexico BLM, told TheDC. “Arizona has large cities in proximity to the border, which makes passage logistically easier. In New...

Those already outraged by the president's health care legislation now have a new bone of contention -- a scarcely noticed tack-on provision to the law that puts gold coin buyers and sellers under closer government scrutiny.

If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would. But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn’t what you’d do at all. In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed...

By the way, why do White House officials talk so candidly to Politico? Probably because they write lines like this: “Obama is perceived as failing to win over the public, even though by most conventional measures he is clearly succeeding.” Silly readers. You only think you don’t like what he’s doing!

It will mark the first time armed deputies will travel with New Mexico Department of Agriculture inspectors, who certify the scales used to weigh livestock, Luna County Sheriff Raymond Cobos said. "These scales that the ranchers use to ship their cattle are in isolated areas," Cobos told FoxNews.com. "And the administration decided since those inspectors and personnel are not armed, they wanted to be able to concentrate on their work without worrying about their security."

With some concern and disbelief, I have been astounded at the lack of understanding of the severity of the situation in Mexico and the possibility that it has crossed the border. Last week, Dana Milbank of The Washington Post severely ridiculed reports from Arizona of decapitated heads found in the desert. This comment was made within a day or two of the discovery of two decapitated bodies in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, just south of El Paso, Texas.

Concerns about a host of species for decades have prompted standoffs between border and environmental officials. Border officers have limited access to federal lands in some of the most heavily trafficked areas because of the harm the patrols could do to the environment. But pronghorn preservation is popping up more and more as a barrier to Border Patrol and catching the attention of some on Capitol Hill.

As the threat of violence stemming from illegal immigration hangs over federal lands in southern Arizona, an internal memo from 2007 reveals that refuge officers have been spending most of their time struggling to deal with border-related activities instead of protecting wildlife habitat.