Whether you think the defendants in the Bunkerville standoff are a bunch of lunatic, dangerous gun-nuts who should be locked up and the key is thrown away or upstanding Patriots defending property and constitutional rights in the face of belligerent bureaucrats, it matters not what you think. What matters is what jurors think. So far jurors seem less than enthusiastic … [Read more...]
Judge Orders More Studies for Water Grab
It is not too often a judge’s ruling is greeted by all sides as a victory, but that is what happened after federal Judge Andrew Gordon issued a 39-page opinion in the fight over the Clark County water agency’s bid to tap groundwater beneath White Pine, Lincoln and Nye counties. Judge Gordon said the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) could grant the right-of-way for a 300-mile … [Read more...]
Interior’s New Sage Grouse Protection Efforts Welcomed
Earlier this month Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke ordered the implementation of recommendations from a team that reviewed the previous administration’s draconian land use restrictions under the guise of protecting greater sage grouse. The team — which included officials from Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Forest … [Read more...]
Heller-Sponsored Bill Gives Veterans Health Care Choice
With a deadline rapidly approaching, two weeks ago President Trump signed a bill sponsored by Nevada Sen. Dean Heller that appropriates $2.1 billion to extend a program that provides veterans with an opportunity to seek health care outside the backlogged, and too often distant, Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals. Senate Bill 114, VA Choice and Quality Employment Act of … [Read more...]
Court Ruling Puts State Water Rights in Jeopardy
Nevada is taking the lead in challenging a recent 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion that has the potential to obliterate more than a century of state water rights law. The office of Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt this past week filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, in conjunction with nine other states, asking the court to hear the case on … [Read more...]
Congress Needs to Delay or Repeal Health Insurance Tax
You might not have said anything when they announced that ObamaCare-compliant health insurance premiums are going up nearly 40 percent next year, because you get your insurance elsewhere. You might not have said anything when they announced there will be no ObamaCare-compliant health insurance policies available in 14 Nevada counties, because you get your insurance … [Read more...]
Rural groundwater grab gets federal court hearing
If whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting, this fight has gone on for 28 years and the combatants are still flailing madly. In 1989 the agency that is now the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) filed paperwork with the state engineer to lay claim to 589,000 acre-feet of groundwater in central Nevada — primarily White Pine, Lincoln and Nye counties — that would … [Read more...]
Here’s another chance to repeal the Commerce Tax
In 2014 Nevada voters rejected by 79 percent to 21 percent a proposed margins tax, effectively an income tax on state businesses. Despite this unequivocal rejection at the ballot box, lawmakers a few short months later passed a similar, though currently somewhat smaller, tax called the Commerce Tax. The Commerce Tax passed with a two-thirds majority in the … [Read more...]