For your children/grandchildren's sake, you will not read a more important article this week than this one. | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    We often hear conservative complain about expansion of Federal power and it is usually contended that such encroachment on our individual rights is far beyond what our Founding Fathers envisioned when the U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights were ratified. If you want an example that this contention is indeed true we have it in the Obama Administration's attempt to control vast amounts of private property under the guise of "protecting the environment."

    First the background. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce. One of the earliest expansions of Federal power came in 1824 in the case of Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1. At issue in that case was whether individual states could license vessels that moved in waters connected to more than one state. The Supreme Court held, quite reasonably that if a vessel had to comply with different state regulations in every port it visited that it would be unreasonable. So the principle of law was established that Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce included the power to regulate navigable waters.

    So it seemed (at least to Leviathan bureaucrats) only reasonable when someone proposed a law to prohibit ships entering our ports from dumping their sewage overboard into our harbors. Certainly, the thinking went, Congress has the power to regulate polluting of our waterways. Navigable waterways.

    Fast forward to today. A man owns a farm on which he raises cattle. A stream runs through the pasture and he wants to build an 18 inch dam to allow for a half acre pond for his cattle to have access to water. He learns that he must travel 120 miles to Wilmington to get the permission of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to build his cow drinking hole. Why? Because the stream that runs through his cow pasture is a "blue line stream." Being a blue line stream means, to the Corps of Engineers that it is navigable waters, although the stream is only two feet wide and usually less than half a foot deep. But it gets worse. After weeks a Corps of Engineer bureaucrat visits the site. She not only denies the building of the watering hole but informs the property owner that he must change his pasture to make for a buffer on both sides of the stream so that the cows can't get within the buffer. The man sells his cows his pasture is no more. But on the farm next door (within a few hundred feet) is a hog farm. The hog waste is flushed into a holding pond and then sprayed onto an adjoining field. Adjoining? Yes. Adjoining the stream. Yes there is a buffer between the spray field and the stream but we'll leave it to you to determine what happens when there are heavy rains. Remember, all this because the blue line stream is on a map of "navigable waters." We've come a long way, indeed, from Gibbons v. Ogden.

    Well, it's about to get worse. Much worse.

    Click here and read about the Wildlands Secretarial Order (3310) and really pay attention to the map you see in this article. Click on it and look at the red and yellow areas and compare those to the green "normal use" areas. Note that much of the red is comprised on lines and you suddenly realize that these lines are streams. Back to navigable waters.

    So what started out as a question of whether a ship had to have a license from the state of each port it visited to "The Secretary's" designation of "wildlands" you can see how the Leviathan has grown.

    But there's yet another story here.

    That is how the Federal government is seizing control of millions of acres of private property. They are doing so not only without, but in contradiction of our elected representatives in Congress. They are doing it by Executive Order because Congress refused to do it.

    Now you realize why the N. C. Senate race in 2014 is so important. In order for Congress to overturn an Executive Order a majority of both houses of Congress must vote to do so. But the U. S. Senate, controlled by Democrats, has consistently refused to block hardly any of Obama's executive orders. If Republicans gain control of the Senate in 2014 there is little doubt that the Wildlands Secretarial Order (3310) would be abolished. And knowing this it is highly unlikely any bureaucrat will even propose such insanity in the foreseeable future.

    So are you going to vote in November of 2014?

    And when you read the article linked above, note the connection to the United Nations Agenda 21 (Convention on Biological Diversity).

    Bless us and save us.