By SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press Writer

 RENO, Nev. - A judge awarded more than $4.2 million to a late Nevada rancher's estate after finding that the U.S. Forest Service engaged in an unconstitutional "taking" of water rights out of hostility to the rancher, a property rights activist.

The decision by U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Loren A. Smith involved the Fifth Amendment clause against private property being taken for public use without just compensation.

The rancher, Wayne Hage, bought the sprawling Pine Creek Ranch in central Nevada in 1978.

In the early 1980s, the Forest Service began to notify him he was in violation of his federal grazing permit. In 1983, the Forest Service sent him 40 letters and agency officials made 70 visits to his ranch.

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 By Howard Witt
Chicago Tribune (MCT)

HOUSTON -- The first time Eddie Griffin set out to fight for civil rights, back in 1972, he joined the Black Panthers, picked up a gun and robbed a bank in Ft. Worth. The crime landed him in federal prison for 12 years.

Today, Griffin’s weapon is an Internet blog. And his incisive commentary regularly lands him atop the rankings of the most influential African-American bloggers devoted to issues of racial justice and equality.

“As activists, we can be so much more effective now,” Griffin said. “We are not alienating a lot of people like we did back then. And we’ve learned some things over the years in the art of communication. One thing I learned in prison was to write persuasive arguments.”

Half a century after Little Rock, the Montgomery bus boycott and the tumultuous dawn of the modern civil rights era, the new face of the movement is Facebook, MySpace and some 150 black blogs united in an Internet alliance they call the AfroSpear.

Older, familiar leaders such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, are under challenge by a younger generation of bloggers known by such provocative screen names as Field Negro, thefreeslave and African American Political Pundit.

And many of the newest struggles are being waged online.

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