Liberty
Matters News Service
December 7, 2005
Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Rapanos Case
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of John Rapanos, the Michigan man who has been persecuted by the federal government for twenty years for dumping sand onto his property without the government's permission. The government claimed Rapanos' 176 acres was a wetland and that the fill could harm "waters of the U. S. even though the property is located twenty miles from the nearest navigable water, Saginaw Bay. The government successfully prosecuted Rapanos who was sentenced to 200 hours of community service, three years probation and fined $185,000. The feds then accused Rapanos of violating the Clean Water Act using the "migratory molecule" rule, which says that even isolated wetlands fall under federal jurisdiction because there is a theoretical chance that a water molecule from any location may reach a navigable waterway. Rapanos lost again, with the government demanding a fine of $13 million, forfeiture of 80 acres and federal prison time. Rapanos appealed to the Supreme Court, but was turned down. The Court has since had a change of heart and will hear the case early next year. "The [Rapanos] case," says a Grand Rapids Press story, "should turn on the language of the Constitution, the limits on federal powers provided there and the founders' efforts to respect private property."
Land for Them and No One Else
Utah State Representative Mike Noel (R-Kanab) is an outspoken critic of environmental groups that are buying up grazing allotments with the sole purpose of extinguishing the public use of federal lands. Mr. Noel takes issue with the Grand Canyon Trust's claims that retiring the grazing rights of ranchers is a win-win situation for embattled ranchers and a boon to the "fragile" landscape. Mr. Noel is a former Bureau of Land Management official who left the agency in disgust following the infamous 1996 Clinton Six million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante land grab. Noel refutes the Trust's executive director, Bill Hedden's claims that the Trust is buying grazing rights only from "willing sellers," who are facing bankruptcy and removing cattle from marginally economical land that is at risk environmentally. Not so, says Noel. The lands in question are some of the very best of the allotments and further; it is the increasingly restrictive policies of the federal agencies that are causing economic hardship among area ranchers. Mr. Noel says "food and fiber raised on public lands must be for the benefit of all Americans; not locked up for the recreational pleasure of the elite." The goal of the elitists, says Noel, is to remove the people who have settled these lands and exclude public use of the land because they covet it for their own private use.
Plan to Restore West Grasslands Meets
With Resistance in Utah
Forget Global Warming, Prepare for an Ice Age
Despite the howls of environmentalists that we are about to be destroyed by the global warming that caused Katrina, Rita and the rest of the twenty-six hurricanes this year, the Earth is headed for another deep freeze, according to the conclusions of Robert W. Felix in his new book "Not by Fire, But by Ice." Felix believes there is evidence that vast, underwater volcanic warming of the earth's oceans will bring about the next ice age because as the oceans warm, evaporation increases leading to more precipitation. As the rain increasingly falls as snow, a new ice age will begin. Other scientists believe the current cycle of ice ages was triggered when the tectonic plate carrying the India subcontinent crashed into Asia. Or, other climatologists believe, there is a relationship between sunspot activity and climate change. There is no such thing as "normal" weather. The Medieval Optimum lasted from A.D. 900 to A. D. 1300; a period in which agriculture flourished and human populations increased. That period was followed in 1350 by the Little Ice Age that lasted until the middle of the Nineteenth Century. It used to be that people blamed seemingly unusual weather "on devils or demons; now we blame Big Oil and the family mini-van," Felix stated.
Fire or Ice?
Global Warming is Real, So Get Over It
Merry Christmas From Uncle Santa
The U. S. Department of Agriculture has checked its list of who has been nice this year and is handing out hefty bags of taxpayer dollars to willing accomplices to fund a variety of conservation programs. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns recently announced eight grants, totaling $2.4 million, will go to researchers to "examine the social, economic, technological and demographic factors that affect quality of life for rural Americans." For example, the University of Arkansas will receive $252,000 [to determine the] "Assistance That Older Persons Received from Adult Children: Longitudinal Differences Across the Rural Continuum." (whatever that means!) The other seven grants are equally ridiculous. That figure pales beside the sum set aside for "voluntary conservation programs," however. $2.7 Billion tax dollars have been doled out for farmers and ranchers in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the Pacific Basin as an early Christmas present so they can make "sound decisions regarding their conservation practices [much earlier than in the past]." The programs include: The Conservation Security Program; Environmental Quality Incentives Program; Ground and Surface Water Conservation; Farm and Ranchlands Protection Program and so on. That giant sucking sound is the private property being vacuumed up by the federal government.
Johanns Announces Nearly $2.7
Billion for Voluntary Conservation Programs on Working Lands
USDA Awards $2.4 Million For Rural Development
Research