This water belongs to you, except when we need it...

From The Payson Roundup: The U.S. Forest service took water from Fred Conway's privately owned ranch to fight forest fires. They never compensated him, even after he sent them a bill. When they came back, he fired a shotgun at the collection bucket.

[Jinx Pyle said,] "The Forest Service basically closed their permit and told them to take their cattle off, so they've got all their cattle on private land now and they use that water to irrigate as well as for drinking water. There's only so much water, so when the Forest Service comes along and starts dipping water it hurts their carrying capacity.

"When they did that last year, Freddy sent them a bill and they didn't pay it. So he told them, ‘No more,' and I guess he meant it."

Link via: Improved Clinch

Dangerous Lobster Ranchers

The Sierra Times provides this story about Bob Eddy, an entrepreneur who raised Australian lobsters to sell to people traveling between Las Vegas and Reno. He ran afoul of the law, since he sold this prohibited species live to people who didn't have permits, i.e. people with a boiling pot of water and a bowl of butter waiting.

The Nevada Division of Wildlife boys roared in this Thursday -- 10 armed game wardens, two of the plainclothes guys in black shoes and black sunglasses from the "Nevada Division of Investigation," assigned to take care of any troublesome neighbors, and two state biologists assigned to kill, seize and destroy all of Bob Eddy's crayfish.

Why?

For violation of his state lobster ranching permit, duh.

Link via: American Liberty.

Weekly Criminal

I strip away the old debris
That hides a shining car.
A brilliant red Barchetta
From a better, vanished time.
I fire up the willing engine,
Responding with a roar.
Tires spitting gravel,
I commit my weekly crime.

   —Rush, Red Barchetta

The song Red Barchetta is set in the future, when internal combustion engines have been outlawed. The narrator sneaks away each week to drive his uncle's beautiful sportscar through the countryside. He is doing what you probably do all the time: driving a car. And yet, he is a criminal. Every Sunday he commits his weekly crime. As governments increasingly control our lives with new laws and regulations, more and more decent people are made criminal just for trying to live their lives.

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. … —Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged