Random News And Notes
The first piece in today’s RNN comes to us out of South Dakota. Back in 2024, the USDA and the Forest Service went after a ranching couple over a fence line dispute and 25 acres of grazing lands. The Maude family had been ranching on their lands and a forest service lease outside of rural Caputa SD since at least 1910. For more background this is a good start.
The DOJ indicted Charles and Heather Maude for “theft” of federal lands. The indictment stated the couple “did knowingly steal, purloin, and convert to their own use […] approximately 25 acres of National Grasslands for cultivation and approximately 25 acres of National Grasslands for grazing. . .”. They were also charges with racketeering and aiding and abetting.
Recently it was announced that all charges against the Maudes have been dropped. Moreover, the Department of the Interior has set up a hotline/website for anyone who believes they were unfairly targeted by any of the agencies under the Interior umbrella.
The entire thing smacked of overreach and overreaction. It took less than three months from when the line dispute began until the USFS and DOJ indicted the Maudes. The USFS first contacted the Maudes at the end of March, by 24 June that had been indicated in federal court. Some of the reporting I’ve read about this egregious situation seems to indicate that one of the Forest Service personnel involved got their fee-fees hurt because the Maudes stood up to him. With any luck he gets fired and sued. I’ll keep a weather eye out for any news on that front and report it here.
Big news dropped yesterday concerning former President Biden. His personal office announced yesterday that he had stage 4 prostate cancer. The announcement included the nugget that the cancer had metastasized to the bones. The Gleason score was a 9.
It seems to me that this diagnosis was covered up. Prostate cancer is one of the slower progressing cancers out there. That means he likely had it for several years given the advanced stage and spread.
As you can see, I am not the only one with that opinion.
There were two stabbing attacks in Germany in the last 24 hours. One was in the city of Bielefeld, located in north-east Germany, the other was in the city of Halle in the central part of the country.
The attacker in Bielefeld is a Syrian man. He stabbed 5 people outside a bar. He was apparently armed with a knife and a cane with a hidden blade. He was briefly detained by patrons and employees of the bar before escaping, leaving his weapons and identification.
The Halle knifer is an asylum seeker from Kosovo. He stabbed 3 including a 12 year old girl. Seems to me that there is some common denominator between these attacks, I just can’t put my finger on it. . .
I can think of far worse ways to get woken up while camping.
I found this site recently and it tickled my fancy so I thought I’d share. It’s called heyjackass.com and it tracks shootings in Chicago. Well, it does a lot more than just track them, it does a deep dive and breaks them down into a set of interesting and trackable metrics.
Among other metrics, the site tracks where people were shot, where on their body they were shot, method of death and many others. If you have a couple of minutes to waste and you have as morbid a sense of humor as I do, go check it out.
A Bucks county PA judge joined a growing chorus of courts saying climate related cases are the exclusive provenance of the federal judiciary. Judge Stephen Corr of the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas on May 16 ruled that the case against several oil companies was in the wrong jurisdiction for that type of suit. Cases in Hawaii and Boulder, Colo., have been permitted to proceed past the companies’ initial arguments, but judges in New York, Maryland, New Jersey and Delaware have dismissed the cases as improper attempts to have them impact federally controlled emissions standards.
Let’s be clear, these types of suits are primarily about two things. First, they are cash grabs. The plaintiffs are looking for a payday, and state courts are the easiest venue. Second, they are backdoor attempts to influence the policy of the federal government. The EPA is the sole legal arbiter or emissions levels in the US, and the enviro-loons are trying to take at least some of that authority away. If you’re interested you can read more here.
