The War on Domestic Energy waged by President Obama and his top officials is both well-known and well-documented. It began with cancellation of oil and gas leases in Utah, continued with a bar to drilling in Pennsylvania, reached devastating effect with a federal moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico, and culminated with the killing of a $4 billion off-shore project in Alaska.

That is only a part of the Obama Administration’s record on oil and gas; its attack on coal is another huge and potentially tragic story. Federal judges have ruled against the Administration and its lawyers and even held them in contempt of court; but they press on nonetheless!

As well-known and well-documented is the Obama Administration’s War on Business. The Illinois farmer, who told President Obama that he would rather begin his day farming instead of “filling out forms,” spoke for all business owners. Said Obama, “(D)on’t always believe what you hear.” Call the “USDA,” he said, “it will turn out some of your fears are unfounded.”

Not so. Business owners’ fears are fact-based: from the impact of ObamaCare, through the regulatory maze created by an agency alphabet soup (OSHA, MSHA, USDA) to the biggest job-killer, the EPA (its latest rule will cost 7.3 million jobs). Obama’s Chief of Staff calls all this, “indefensible.”

The last part of the Obama Administration’s “trifecta,” which has gone unnoticed by everyone except MSLF, is its War on Private Property Rights. It is not just the EPA’s new “wetland” rules, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s use of the Endangered Species Act, or federal officials’ belief that they have the right to bar the use of private property that adjoins federal land.

Extending federal power over land that is miles from navigable waters, designating protected species that range over millions of acres, and attacking use of private property that “impacts” federal land all affect land owners on a massive scale, which is shocking enough. MSLF fights all of this, of course.

What is even worse is when individuals and families are targeted by federal bureaucrats and their scores of lawyers and investigators, in one-sided legal battles in which, for the federal government, cost is no object!

Fortunately, MSLF stands with them and allows them to fight back!

In rural New Jersey, the Hull family owns land along the inner border of a unit of the National Park System. The Hulls thought the National Park Service (NPS) was a good neighbor, but when the Hulls gated the road that accesses their property to protect their children, the NPS used SWAT-garbed Marshals to serve a federal lawsuit charging the Hulls with trespass.

In federal court, the NPS argues that it owns the road—even though for years it ignored, refused to maintain, and said the road was owned by its neighbors. Worst yet, the NPS argues that its refusal to accept the road from the local township two decades earlier—after which it passed to neighbors—is null and void; the NPS may assert its right to the road at any time!

In rural Wyoming, the Forest Service says it may condemn property for a high-altitude bicycle trail because, when the United States relinquished rights to property conveyed to a railroad—which rights were to go to private landowners if the railroad ended service—it did not really give up its rights. Decades later, the Forest Service now says it wants that land back.

In the same case, the Forest Service argued that, when it abandoned land, by ripping up a road, erecting a fence, and planting trees, it did not really abandon the property and wants it back. When the landowner sued for “just compensation,” federal lawyers tried to get his case thrown out.

In Pennsylvania, owners of oil and gas rights were barred from using their property under federal lands when Attorney General Eric Holder settled a “sweetheart lawsuit” with environmental groups. MSLF got Holder’s deal thrown out, but federal lawyers appealed and the Forest Service refuses to comply with a federal court order to allow landowners to use their property.

In New Mexico, a woman who put an unlocked gate on her property to protect her horse was cited criminally by the Forest Service. When she sued, the agency argued successfully that an obscure regulation published decades ago in the Federal Register had put her on notice and time barred her case.

In Alaska, a family with valuable mining claims sent in the required forms to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which the BLM “lost.” The family found out and, as federal law allows, sought to “cure” the deficiency. The BLM ignored the family, federal law, and federal court rulings, declared the claims “null and void,” and said, essentially, “sue us.” MSLF did!

In California, landowners within a national forest sought to use their private property, but the Forest Service barred them from doing so because their property is within a wilderness area. In a similar case in Montana, the Forest Service barred a landowner from improving a road to reach his land.

… and on and on it goes with MSLF in David v. Goliath battles on behalf of American citizens who must defend their constitutional and legal rights against their own government. Thank you for making all this possible!