Americans: YOU pay for the national forests. YOU have the right to take videos!

The US Constitution isn’t all but dead – it’s dead and gone.

TPNN: When You See This New Rule From the Obama U.S. Forest Service, You’ll Realize the First Amendment is All But Dead

Further evidence that the Obama Regime is busy crafting ways to take away your constitutional rights comes in the form of another United States bureaucracy that has been politically weaponized.

The U.S. Forest Service is requiring reporters to pay permits costing up to $1,500 to take pictures or video in federally designated wilderness areas, with costly fines of course, for disobeying the new tyrannical shredding of the First Amendments.

Virtually every federal government bureaucracy has been politically weaponized, including the IRS and EPA, but now the U.S. Forest Service?

Fees, penalties, permits to take pictures of trees or a lake?

Welcome to Obama’s America, or shall we call it “fundamental transformation” or “hope and change?”

The Oregonian  reports that these new rules are being finalized in November:

The U.S. Forest Service has tightened restrictions on media coverage in vast swaths of the country’s wild lands, requiring reporters to pay for a permit and get permission before shooting a photo or video in federally designated wilderness areas.

Under rules being finalized in November, a reporter who met a biologist, wildlife advocate or whistleblower alleging neglect in any of the nation’s 100 million acres of wilderness would first need special approval to shoot photos or videos even on an iPhone.

Permits cost up to $1,500, says Forest Service spokesman Larry Chambers, and reporters who don’t get a permit could face fines up to $1,000.

First Amendment advocates say the rules ignore press freedoms and are so vague they’d allow the Forest Service to grant permits only to favored reporters shooting videos for positive stories.

Gregg Leslie, the legal defense director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said, “It’s pretty clearly unconstitutional. They would have to show an important need to justify these limits, and they just can’t.”

More here.