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Knock, Knock. Who’s There? Heavily Armed Agents Here to Seize Your Car. Who Are You With? The EPA.

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The Environmental Protection Agency is getting tired of the boring dregs of ‘protecting endangered darter snails’ and is finally spreading its wings.

The “new-look” EPA is complete with a heavily armed SWAT team that conducts commando-style raids on Alaskan spas and even has a DHS task force that seizes unauthorized land rovers for violating emissions standards. Umm, awesome?

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Al Gore’s Climate-Changers at EPA Hearings Foiled by Cool Temperatures (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Climate Reality Project brought its “I’m Too Hot” trucks and offers of free ice cream to this week’s Environmental Protection Agency hearings on power-plant emissions, but the climate wasn’t cooperating.

The plan was to tout the EPA’s emissions proposal as a solution for hot weather brought on by global warming, but when the hearings began at 9 a.m. Wednesday in Denver, the temperature was a chilly 58 degrees. Plus, it was raining.

The other cities hosting the hearings Wednesday were also hit by cooler-than-usual temperatures. The high in Atlanta was forecast at 82 degrees, while it was a pleasant 70 degrees in Washington, D.C., when the hearings began at 9 a.m.

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Fight Heats Up Over EPA Sabotage of Alaska Gold Mine

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Photo credit: NPCA Photos

Photo credit: NPCA Photos

The Environmental Protection Agency is under fire for a preemptive strike against a massive copper and gold mine in Alaska, where hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are at stake.

The controversy centers on Pebble Mine, located 200 miles southeast of Anchorage. It is the largest deposit of copper and gold in North America.

But environmental groups and fishermen, worried about the impact to the world’s most abundant salmon run in Bristol Bay, fought the mine from the beginning.

“It was people from Alaska that requested the EPA come in and take action,” said Tim Bristol, of Trout Unlimited in Anchorage. “We just don’t feel like we’re getting our concerns heard by the state of Alaska.”

The EPA did act, using the 1972 Clean Water Act for the first time ever to stop a mine before the owners even came out with a detailed plan.

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BUSTED: This EPA Employee Tried Covering Up Their Mistake, But Now It’s Spreading Like Wildfire

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Just months after an Environmental Protection Agency staffer was caught looking at pornography for hours at a time on his company computer, another glaring example of wasted time has surfaced in the federal department.

As evidenced by a subsequently deleted Twitter post by an official EPA account, at least some employees are more interested in playing social media games – specifically one endorsed by ubiquitous reality star Kim Kardashian – than in regulating the lives of American citizens.

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For opponents of the agency’s intrusive policies, such frivolous misuse of time might be more favorable than the pursuit of even more EPA restrictions.

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EPA Proposes Limits on Alaska Mine Project

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Photo Credit: AP / Al Grillo

Photo Credit: AP / Al Grillo

The Environmental Protection Agency Friday proposed restrictions on a large copper-and-gold mine slated for a watershed in southwest Alaska that has pitted environmental groups against business regarding the EPA’s authority to veto such projects.

At issue for the Pebble Mine near Bristol Bay’s watershed is whether the EPA can veto a needed Clean Water Act permit. The proposal comes with a comment period that ends Sept. 19. If finalized, it could invite legal action from the mine’s backers on an issue that has attracted the attention of congressional Republicans.

Republicans and industry say the EPA can’t veto the project because the developer, Pebble LP, has not filed a formal blueprint. The House has held hearings on the project, and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee has subpoenaed the EPA for documents. Some Democrats, commercial fishermen, native tribes and environmental groups say it can because the EPA has an outline of the mine’s parameters based on Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

“This is not a pre-emptive veto,” Dennis McLerran, regional administrator for EPA Region 10, said in a media call in response to criticisms from industry and Republicans that the EPA was planning to reject the Clean Water Act permit even though Pebble LP hadn’t yet submitted an application.

McLerran, speaking of the years-long delay by developers to file an application, said, “the amount of uncertainly that has hung over the Bristol Bay watershed is a consideration” in the step the agency outlined Friday.

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‘Coal Rollers’ Protesting EPA Regulations or Just Blowing Smoke?

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Photo Credit: Fox News By Fox News Insider.

Some truck owners are steaming mad over President Barack Obama and EPA regulations.

Some of these so-called “coal rollers” are making a political statement, thumbing their noses at the Obama administration’s effort to lower carbon emissions. Others are generally flipping off environmentalists.

These drivers are modifying their diesel trucks by installing a smoke stack to create bursts of black smoke.

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Photo Credit: Chris ButlerEPA regs likely to kill 68-year-old Louisiana peach orchard

By Chris Butler.

The peach orchards at Mitcham Farms, near the north Louisiana city of Ruston, have survived winter freezes, droughts and dangerous hail storms, but they evidently will not survive the Environmental Protection Agency and its regulations.

The family-owned business, established in 1946 and featured in tourism magazines, is Louisiana’s largest peach orchard, according to its website, but owner Joe Mitcham expects he’ll close up shop in only a few years.

The federal government’s banning of a chemical in 2005 known as methyl bromide, used to treat diseased peach trees, has really given him no choice, as most of his trees won’t survive without it.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: REUTERSEPA claims it has the power to garnish wages without court approval

By Fox News.

The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly claimed that it has the authority to unilaterally garnish the wages of individuals who have been accused of violating its rules.

According to The Washington Times, the agency announced the plan to enhance its purview last week in a notice in the Federal Register. The notice claimed that federal law allows the EPA to “garnish non-Federal wages to collect delinquent non-tax debts owed the United States without first obtaining a court order.”

The push remains up in the air, however, as the agency says any “adverse comments” would prevent the EPA from moving forward — and some criticism has emerged in recent days.

Absent that, the rule could take effect Sept. 2. The EPA said the rule was not subject to review because it was not a “significant regulatory action.”

The EPA has claimed this new authority by citing the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996, which gives all federal agencies the power to conduct administrative wage garnishment, provided that the agency allows for hearings at which debtors can challenge the amount or the terms of a repayment schedule.

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Panning in Protest: Activists Mine for Gold in Defiance of EPA Regs

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Photo Credit: ReutersThe American West was settled in part by gold miners exploring a new frontier, and now modern-day prospectors are fighting to keep that tradition alive.

A group of miners began illegally dredging for gold this week in Idaho’s Salmon River to challenge what they call federal government overreach into the waterway, Reuters reported. They are protesting regulations by the EPA that forbid suction dredging and other mining in the river in order to protect the habitat of endangered fish.

“This is the United States of America, not the ‘United State’ of America. The feds can’t come in here like storm troopers and start running our lands and rivers,” organizer John Crossman, the head of the Southwest Idaho Mining Association in Boise, told Reuters.

The EPA last year ruled that suction dredgers need permits to operate in the state. Permit regulations forbid suction dredges in streams with threatened or endangered species such as salmon, steelhead and bull trout.

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EPA Rule Could Ruin Fourth Of July

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller While Americans get ready for the thousands of fireworks shows that will be occurring across the country this weekend, Republicans are warning that pending federal water regulations could ruin fireworks displays next year.

The Environmental Protection Agency is trying to expand its authority under the Clean Water Act. Republicans warn that the agency’s proposal to expand the definition of “waters of the United States” could allow the EPA to regulate bodies of water on private property.

Republicans are now warning that EPA water rules could threaten fireworks by allowing environmental activists to sue and shut down shows across the country.

“If the proposed ‘waters of the United States’ rule becomes final and serves as the eventual basis for future citizen suits against those who organize fireworks shows, we fear fewer homeowners, communities, or local organizations will be able to conduct fireworks displays as they have for decades or longer,” wrote Republican Senators, including David Vitter of Louisiana and John Barrasso of Wyoming, in a letter to the EPA.

Environmentalists have already been using litigation to stop fireworks shows from happening near or over federally protected waters. In Lake Tahoe, California environmentalists sued the city, alleging their fireworks show violated the Clean Water Act.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s War On American Coal Reveals Our Manchurian President

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Photo Credit: PHOTOS.COM
President Barack Obama is with one hand kneecapping domestic coal production and with the other hand forming an alliance with Iran, America’s most dangerous adversary in the Mideast and a country that covets nuclear weapons and Mideast domination. Yet Obama and Iran’s Ayatollah are working together in partnership to stabilize the Shiite government of Iraq, which, if they are successful, will secure crude oil from that region and re-establish Tehran’s dominance.

Presidents have been making deals with Mideast dictators for decades, so in itself there may be nothing wrong with Obama’s actions. It seems so clearly wrong that as Obama orders military advisers back into Iraq and prepares airstrikes, his Administration is issuing proclamations against domestic coal producers, which harvest America’s richest energy resource and provide tens of thousands of jobs that are desperately needed.

If one didn’t know better, one might think this is all part of our President’s plan to cripple U.S. energy independence, a plan to leave America in critical need of Mideast influence and crude.

King Coal Cut Down By Obama

Coal provides America with 70 percent of its electricity. You might think that coal would be valued by Obama because it provides so many well-paying jobs and that it would be the natural energy source for electricity to charge electric cars. (What never seems to compute to so many of the idiot Greens is that there has to be a basis for the charge for the electric car and that electricity, like everything else, isn’t free.)

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New EPA Regs Issued Under Obama Are 38 Times as Long as Bible

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Photo Credit: CNS News Since President Barack Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued 2,827 new final regulations, equaling 24,915 pages in the Federal Register, totaling approximately 24,915,000 words.

The Gutenberg Bible is only 1,282 pages and 646,128 words. Thus, the new EPA regulations issued by the Obama Administration contain 19 times as many pages as the Bible and 38 times as many words.

The Obama EPA regulations have 22 times as many words as the entire Harry Potter series, which includes seven books with 1,084,170 words. They have 5,484 times as many words as the U.S. Constitution, which has 4,543 words, including the signatures; and 17,088 times as many words as the Declaration of Independence, which has 1,458 words including signatures.

Using the Regulations.gov website and the Federal Register itself, CNSNews.com found 2,827 distinct rules published by the EPA since January 2009 covering, among other things, greenhouse gases, air quality, emissions and hazardous substances.

The Federal Register publishes documents, including proposed rules, notices, interim rules, corrections, drafts of final rules and final rules. The CNSNews.com tabulation included only final rules from the EPA.

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