L.A. Times Story on McNamee Case
The Los Angeles Times's Susannah Rosenblatt has a story in today's paper about the McNamee's fight against the Commission, entitled "Orange County couple wonder: Whose beach is it, anyway?" The title really does get to the heart of the matter. In the story, a Sierra Club representative succinctly sta ...
Missouri Should Put A Stop to “Drive-By Blight”
by Timothy Sandefur This week, the Pacific Legal Foundation joined forces with the Show-Me Institute and the Missouri Ombudsman for Property Rights to argue that the Missouri Supreme Court should reject the use of so-called “windshield surveys” to decide when to take people’s property through eminent domain. “Windshield surv ...
Millionaire Texas Developer Tries to Bulldoze Free Speech
by Timothy Sandefur Y'all remember the Freeport, Texas, eminent domain case? It was the subject of Carla Main's excellent book Bulldozed, which I reviewed here. It's a case in which the City of Freeport decided to condemn a family-owned business called Western Seafood, and give the land to a private developer to construct a shopping &# ...
Coastal Commission To Have New Chair Soon
Capitol Weekly's John Howard reports that the Commission soon will have a new chairperson. The main contenders for the top spot to replace Chairman Kruer are Commissioners Burke and Neely. Of course, regardless of who becomes chairman, it is the career staff–headed by Executive Director Peter Douglas–that drives ...
OC Register Reports on PLF Case Against Coastal Commission
Jeff Overley of the Orange County Register has an excellent exposé of the years-long battle that continues to be fought against the California Coastal Commission by one brave couple–George and Sharlee McNamee–as they attempt to assert their right to keep certain beach amenities on their private property. PLF is honor ...
Schweitzer on Endangered Species Act Section 7 regs
Today the Huffington Post's Jeff Schweitzer has a post entitled "Not Home Yet: The Terrible Carnage of Bush's Final Days." Part of this carnage are the proposed Endangered Species Act Section 7 consultation regs, which, according to Schweitzer, demonstrate that President Bush "is silencing the scientists hired specifically to ...
polar bear litigation update
The various lawsuits concerning the polar bear listing have been consolidated and will now be before District of Columbia Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. The Endangered Species & Wetlands Report has the transfer order here. … ...
District of Maine Canada lynx litigation
U.S. District Judge Woodcock issued an interesting decision last week in the Canada lynx litigation. The decision is available here. Among other things, Maine claimed that it should not be required to impose further restrictions on wild animal trapping because, according to Maine, under "the tort concept of proximate cause ...
Positive 90-day finding on Prairie Dog Petition
Announced by the Service yesterday (federal register finding not yet available). See the Rocky Mountain News article here. … ...
new Sacramento-San Joaquin delta lawsuit
Readers of this blog may be aware of some of the Endangered Species Act issues revolving around management of the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta. See, for instance, PLF on ESA's post last month on the delta smelt litigation. Now comes word, via LA Times' Greenspace, that even more litigation will further threaten the ability of farmers ...