Southwest New Mexico – The Diamond Bar Ranch was acquired by the Laney family in 1986, and its adjacent Laney Cattle Company was allowed to utilize grazing lands since 1883.
According to the US Forest Service, however, they are no longer entitled to do so, and the USFS has posted notices along the fence line of their property advising people not to attempt to enter the ranch. Lands are being seized, and the cattle removed, “one way or the other.”

Now they say that the cattle may be redeemed if the Laney’s pay for the costs of rounding up the 80 head of cattle – a hefty $40,950.
Reductions in the herds, loss of appeals, a hard life, all because of a fish. (more…)

Back in 2011 the Obama administration and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner were furious that S&P downgraded the U.S. bond rating based on debt and inability to confront through budgetary reforms. A few months after the downgrading announcement the DOJ announced a $5 Billion lawsuit against S&P.
Last week a federal judge, David Carter, ordered the Justice Department to provide documents relevant to S&P’s contention of retaliation.   Not surprisingly this inconvenient legal matter skipped the nightly news cycle.
[Judge] Carter ruled that S&P was entitled to find out whether the administration’s angry reaction to the downgrade contributed to the decision to sue only S&P. The judge cited an August 2011 phone call allegedly placed by then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Harold McGraw III, the chairman and chief executive officer of McGraw-Hill, S&P’s parent company.
In a sworn affidavit, McGraw said that Geithner deplored the downgrade as wrongheaded and unpatriotic. Carter said S&P deserved access to documents that might shed light on whether Geithner’s pique, as McGraw has described it, had any connection to the subsequent decision to sue S&P. (more…)

Some folks are looking at this as the feds investigating Wendy Davis because she is a corruptocrat. Not me.

I look at this as the FBI pulling in the Davis file to protect her history “within the investigation” from FOIA requests. In essence the FBI probe provides a reason for the Travis County DA’s office to deny releasing a previously “closed” investigation file.

Folks need to adjust the focus on the binoculars.  It’s the new normal – ie. how the highly charged political Eric Holder DOJ roll.

AUSTIN — Documents related to Sen. Wendy Davis’ work as a lawyer for the North Texas Tollway Authority are part of an FBI inquiry of the agency, Travis County officials say.
It’s not clear whether Davis’ work for the tollway authority is a focus of the FBI or only part of the material collected in connection with its look into tollway agency operations.
The Travis County district attorney’s office said last month that details from its review of a 2012 complaint that a rival filed about Davis’ legal and political activities were “the subject of an open investigation” by the FBI. The district attorney’s office closed its review last year without taking any action. (more…)

You walk into Obama’s Produce Store and you are met with a paradigm shift.

In ObamaMart no-one is allowed to use their individual determinations of value to afford their selections.

Prior to today you would browse the selections of fruits and vegetables picking them up, feeling them, looking closely and using all of your senses to determine what you would select.
You need some tomatoes for tonight’s salad, and you also need a few for making the sandwiches over the next three days.    Consequently you select two ripe tomatoes for today and two less ripe to use in the upcoming week.  They will ripen on your kitchen counter and present a differing value tomorrow and the next day.
Despite their equality in presentation, perhaps not all tomatoes are created equal; or at the very least today they do not present themselves of equal value to you.   There are other determinants, hence you evaluate each independently based on your need.
You selected bananas, apples, pears, peaches, plums and stone fruit in much the same way.
(more…)

Harry Reid did more than double down today, he went “all in” with his attacks against the Bundy family and anyone who would support them.    Reid now claims the Bundy family, and all those who support them, in addition to being “domestic terrorists”, “don’t pay their taxes”:

Harry REID: Bundy doesn’t believe that the American government is valid, he believes that the United States is a foreign government.

He doesn’t pay his taxes. He doesn’t follow the law. He doesn’t pay his fees.

And if anyone thinks by any figment of their imagination what happened up there last week was just people rallying to somebody that was oppressed — 600 people came in, armed. They had practiced, they had maneuvered, they knew what they were doing. They set up snipers in strategic locations with sniper rifles. They had assault weapons. They had automatic weapons. And they boasted about the fact that they put women in children — in fact one retired sheriff from Arizona boasted that he put women and children so that they would get hit first. (more…)

“Disparate Impact” is a legal term used by progressive lawyers hell bent on social engineering.   The origin of the term actually comes from the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), and despite it’s application the interpretation of law makes no sense.
The intent of “Disparate Impact” is to engineer outcomes, not opportunity as one would think.
The term applies to consequences not origination or intent.
It was first thought up within a progressive think-tank as a way to force civil rights outcomes.  The concept was then delivered to the EEOC as a tool to leverage their social justice goal, force employers to hire illegal aliens.     It has been an open secret for well over a decade.
Example:   Under the legal definition of “Disparate Impact” you cannot use employment eligibility (work authorization) as a qualification for employment – Why?  Because more Hispanics, compared to other applicants, will be impacted as ineligible by the employment screening.   Ergo the employment eligibility screen itself, checking lawful residency, creates a “disparate impact” against Hispanics and is therefore illegal.
However, it was not the absurd nature of the legal application which upset the Federal Judge in this EEOC case;  it was the fact the EEOC itself uses the EXACT SAME pre-employment screening (credit check) it was suing a company for using. (more…)

Earlier in the day today the State Department was questioned about sending U.S. support to Ukraine.    In response State Dept. Spokewoman said:  “we are not going to get into a proxy war with Russia” [ergo we are not going to send arms or weaponry to the Ukraine government]  Yet Russia is acting specifically and intentionally with a proxy war mentality toward us.
When CBS’s Major Garrett questions President Obama about the rising tensions yet again Obama reflects a limp-wristed and disconnected response:

Nothing the Obama administration has done in his entire presidency reflects an actual accomplishment, ever.
As an example -and to give you context for what Putin references- here’s just a brief un-updated rundown of prior Obama statements on Iran. You decide for yourself: (more…)

NEVADA – U.S. Sen. Harry Reid on Thursday called supporters of Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy “domestic terrorists” because they defended him against a Bureau of Land Management cattle roundup with guns and put their children in harm’s way.

“They’re nothing more than domestic terrorists,” Reid said during an appearance at a Las Vegas Review-Journal “Hashtags & Headlines” event at the Paris. “I repeat: what happened there was domestic terrorism.”
The BLM shut down its weeklong roundup of Bundy’s cattle Saturday after an armed confrontation with militia members who had traveled to Southern Nevada.
[…]   Reid, the Senate majority leader who is in Las Vegas during Congress’ Easter recess, said he understands there’s a federal task force being set up in order to deal with Bundy, and Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie is involved as well. (more…)

REMEMBER THE BIGGER BROTHER? – If we had unlimited resources I would love to put a research team together to research all of the information data-mining that’s currently going on.   After some research on my own I was astounded to read the “business models” of quasi-private businesses who are currently engaged in analysis for the legality of various information sharing concepts with governmental agencies.
It looks like THIS
APLR collections and various registration/information hubs are evolving rapidly and there is no currently proposed legislation to allow people to “opt out”.   I’m not even sure if there ever will be a technological way to opt out.
WASHINGTON DC – As if many Americans needed another reason to dislike the post office, word now comes that it wants to begin mining and selling private data gathered from the personal mail of Americans.
USPS chief marketing and sales officer Nagisa Manabe recently told the PostalVision 2020 conference that the post office is “actively looking for ways to build new business lines around what not long ago might have been considered science fiction.”
(more…)