Free Republic

VALENTINE, Neb. – “Land: see Snatch.” On first look, the Biden Administration’s “30 x 30” plan looks like a scheme cooked up by Hedley Lamarr, the main villain from Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles.” However, far from the comedic genius of the late Harvey Korman, the new Federal land grab is a serious threat to private property owners in the United States. And it’s moving fast.. Just a few days into office, President Joe Biden released a flurry of executive orders, among them being through Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad” (86 Fed. Reg. 7,619), which...

Myrick, 37, had worked with Roxy for four years, inspecting commercial and residential properties, before he was laid off from the company in March. Although the dog had been provided by M&M, which covered her food and veterinary bills, she’s lived with Myrick and his wife, ­Joana, since he fetched Roxy from a dog-training facility in Florida. (M&M paid for her training.) But things turned ruff when, not long after the pandemic started, he chose to be laid off rather than pivot and work for M&M as a COVID cleaner without Roxy. He returned his company vehicle, credit cards and...

Private property rights and personal responsibility saved the Plymouth colony from the edge of extinction and laid the economic foundation for a free and prosperous nation. It is widely known that the early Pilgrims came to the New World to escape religious persecution. What is lesser known is that their spiritual adventure was also a commercial enterprise. Today’s self-identified democratic socialists like to claim real socialism has never been tried in America, but they need to brush up on their history. The Pilgrims did try it — and it failed. In the early 17th century, King James I chartered a...

Portland’s descent into blue-haired, gender-confused madness is something new in America. The city’s criminal justice system tolerates vandalism and assaults by communist thugs, while punishing normal Americans who dare to protect themselves. Street commie antics in Washington, D.C. last weekend suggest this political rot is spreading. If we give anti-American Portlandesque district attorneys a bit more time, the scoundrels may turn a blind eye to more violent crimes as well. The arsonists are practicing. Chile provides an example of how this could go. In the early 1970s, under the Marxist president Salvador Allende, Chile’s criminal justice system began ignoring crimes...

many of today’s young people neither understand nor respect the importance of property rights in a free society.. ... Philadelphia .. at least 30 police officers have been injured in the violent unrest, while dozens of people have been arrested for rioting or vandalism. Mobs have descended on Walmart and rushed out carrying TVs, while other agitators ransacked Footlocker for new sneakers. The full number of businesses ravaged by the destruction is increasing and still being tallied. ... This latest outbreak simply adds to the thousands of businesses, from Chicago to Minneapolis and beyond, that have been rioted, ransacked, burned...

While a decision in Google v. Oracle isn’t expected for a few months, the justices’ pointed questioning at the Big Tech giant indicates Google broke the law to get ahead. Michael J. PappasBy Michael J. Pappas OCTOBER 14, 2020 The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Google v. Oracle on Oct. 7. The case involves several legal issues, all of which boil down to one principal question: Did Google cheat and steal its way to the top? 

While a decision on the case isn’t expected for a few months, the justices’ pointed questioning at the Big Tech giant points to...

Officials from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) knocked down giant white letters spelling “TRUMP” on the hillside of someone’s private property on Tuesday, citing it as a “life and safety issue.” “This was a life and safety issue because there were concerns about distracted driving,” Chief Public Information Officer for Caltrans Lauren Wonder said.

Bill Clinton’s land management rules and other liberal policies paved the way for future debilitating wildfires ... Zybach warned of potential disastrous wildfires shortly after Clinton signed a slate of rules in the mid-1990s that drastically reduced logging and road creation on federal lands. ... Shortly before leaving office in 2001, Clinton limited the ability of the United States Forest Service to thin out a dense thicket of foliage and downed trees on federal land... created a ticking time bomb ... “If you don’t start managing these forests, then they are going to start burning up. Thirty years later, they...

On the fifth anniversary of the notorious spill of 3 million gallons of heavily contaminated acid mine water from the Gold King Mine in southwestern Colorado, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the State of Utah announced an agreement that ends the state’s lawsuit. Neither the EPA nor the contractors involved at the Gold King spill site are entirely off the hook for their alleged missteps that resulted in downstream damages. Lawsuits filed by the Navajo Nation, the State of New Mexico, and a group of Navajo farmers and ranchers have been consolidated, and discovery is proceeding, with a projected...

The government does a lot that is absurd, foolish, and wrong, but the last thing we should cut is the state’s role in protecting our lives and property. The government does a lot that is absurd, foolish, and wrong, but the last thing we should cut is the state’s role in protecting our lives and property.

A Virginia sheriff has apologized to a black pastor who was arrested for pulling a gun on a group of white neighbors as they allegedly assaulted and threatened to kill him.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Thursday that no one in the state can be evicted for not paying rent due to the coronavirus until August 20. "New York State will extend the moratorium on evictions for those facing COVID-related hardship for an additional 60 days - until August 20," he tweeted. "The No. 1 issue that people talk to me about probably is rent, and fear about being able to pay their rent, and this just takes that issue off the table until August 20," he said at his daily coronavirus briefing. Cuomo also said officials will ban any...

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has filed a lawsuit against Walton County in Florida, and their Sheriff’s Office, for threatening to arrest him and his neighbors if they use their private beaches. Huckabee teamed up with several other residents to file a federal complaint over a county ordinance that closed all beaches, including the ones on private property, which they contend stops them from “being able to use or even set foot in their own backyards.” The lawsuit was filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida and argues that their constitutional rights are...

Two New Jersey homeowners are being fined by their condominium association for placing an 18-inch-tall figurine of the Virgin Mary on their porch. Thomas More Society Special Counsel Christopher Ferrara is representing Mary Jeanne Vassallo and her co-owner in what he describes as a “clear cut case of religious discrimination in housing.” On March 7, 2020, the not-for-profit, national public interest law firm sent a demand letter to the managing agent of the condominium association and the association’s board members seeking appropriate resolution on the owners’ behalf. “I am confident that we can prevail on the claims in this...

Are we about to see an expansion of the authority or impact of the Endangered Species Act? If so, how will this occur? First let’s take a look at how we got where we are today. In the early history of our country, the states were sovereign over wildlife within their borders. As late as 1896 the Supreme Court held that states have the, “undoubted authority to control the taking and use of that which belonged to no one in particular but was common to all.” (Geer v. Connecticut). Since then we have witnessed the steady passing of this...

On Tuesday, the Internet Accountability Project (IAP) will file an amicus brief in the Oracle v. Google Supreme Court copyright case. In a nutshell, the brief explains why IAP believes it is time for the Supreme Court to course correct on Google’s outrageous interpretation of the “fair use” doctrine under U.S. copyright law. But the case is bigger than one single legal doctrine and goes to the very heart of why Google is anathema to conservatives and everything we stand for. In fact, the case is the poster child for what we at IAP call “the Great 21st Century Internet...

The Disney Corporation isn't making any friends at a California elementary school this week. After the Emerson Elementary PTA showed the remake of Disney's Lion King, the school received a bill for $250 from the studio. The Berkely area school showed the film as part of a "Parents' Night Out" event, with a suggested donation of $15 from movie-goers. When Disney took notice of the unlicensed screening, the studio's licensing agent, Movie Licensing USA, sent a letter to PTA President...Organizations are required to pay a single-use licensing fee of $250 or an annual fee of $536.. The situation has caused...

Affordable-housing shortages are an abiding challenge for cities around the nation. But often policies meant to alleviate the problem aggravate it instead. That’s certainly the case in Seattle, where the City Council imposed a pair of ordinances aimed at restricting property owners’ right to choose their tenants. These misguided laws, recently upheld by the Washington Supreme Court, attempt to solve problems caused by the housing shortage by destroying property rights. Property owners in other cities should take note: Such reforms have a tendency to spread once they take root. The two ordinances in question strip landlords of the right to...

I live in a historic neighborhood in the heart of Washington, D.C. It’s not historic in the sense that anything especially important happened here — certainly not in the modest rowhouses that make up the bulk of the neighborhood. What “historic” means, here and in cities across the country, is that this is a neighborhood where buildings are not supposed to change. The law says window frames on Capitol Hill must be wooden, or something that looks very much like wood. If a front door has two parts and opens down the middle, it cannot be replaced by a single...

Funny how the environmental objectives of the "Save the Planet from the Flying Global Warming Monster" squad and that of Marxism line up so neatly. Of course you shouldn't have personal autonomy or private property. It's bad for the 'planet'. And by the planet, we mean the red planet. So it's no surprise that The Nation, where the synergy of the red and the green meet, should roll out a story like this, "If we want to keep cities safe in the face of climate change, we need to seriously question the ideal of private homeownership." ... And give up...