Posted on 04/10/2014 10:35:30 AM PDT by bimboeruption
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that two militia members from Montana and one from Utah have arrived at Cliven Bundy’s ranch.
“We need to be the barrier between the oppressed and the tyrants,” Ryan Payne of the West Mountain Rangers told the Review-Journal. “Expect to see a band of soldiers.”
Payne said that militias from New Hampshire, Texas and Florida are likely to join and stand with Bundy and stay at his ranch.
“They all tell me they are in the process of mobilizing as we speak,” Payne told the Review-Journal, adding that hundreds of militia members are expected.
The Review-Journal also reports that Bundy’s son, Ammon Bundy, was shot with a stun gun by law enforcement officers Wednesday and that the rancher’s sister, Margaret Houston, was pushed to the ground.
“I pulled the tasers out of him,” Cheryl Teerlink told the Review-Journal.
Lawmakers are adding their voices into the fray, criticizing the federal cattle roundup fought by Cliven Bundy who claims longstanding grazing rights on remote public rangeland about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.
Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada said he told new U.S. Bureau of Land Management chief Neil Kornze in Washington, D.C., that law-abiding Nevadans shouldn’t be penalized by an “overreaching” agency.
Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval pointed earlier to what he called “an atmosphere of intimidation,” resulting from the roundup and said he believed constitutional rights were being trampled.
Heller said he heard from local officials, residents and the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association and remained “extremely concerned about the size of this closure and disruptions with access to roads, water and electrical infrastructure.”
The federal government has shut down a scenic but windswept area about half the size of the state of Delaware to round up about 900 cattle it says are trespassing.
BLM and National Park Service officials didn’t immediately respond Wednesday to criticisms of the roundup that started Saturday and prompted the closure of the 1,200-square-mile area through May 12.
It’s seen by some as the latest battle over state and federal land rights in a state with deep roots in those disputes, including the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and ’80s. Nevada, where various federal agencies manage or control more than 80 percent of the land, is among several Western states where ranchers have challenged federal land ownership.
The current showdown pits Bundy’s claims of ancestral rights to graze his cows on open range against federal claims that the cattle are trespassing on arid and fragile habitat of the endangered desert tortoise. Bundy has said he owns about 500 branded cattle on the range and claims the other 400 targeted for roundup are his, too.
BLM and Park Service officials see threats in Bundy’s promise to “do whatever it takes” to protect his property and in his characterization that the dispute constitutes a “range war.”
U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, noted that BLM officials were enforcing federal court orders that Bundy remove his animals. The legal battle has been waged for decades.
Kornze, the new BLM chief, is familiar with the area. He’s a natural resource manager who grew up in Elko, Nev., and served previously as a senior adviser to Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Reid aide Kristen Orthman said her boss “hopes the trespassing cattle are rounded up safely so the issue can be resolved.”
Sandoval, a former state attorney general and federal district court judge, weighed in late Tuesday after several days of media coverage about blocked roads and armed federal agents fanning out around Bundy’s ranch while contractors using helicopters and vehicles herd cows into portable pens in rugged and remote areas.
“No cow justifies the atmosphere of intimidation which currently exists nor the limitation of constitutional rights that are sacred to all Nevadans,” the governor said in a statement.
Sandoval said he was most offended that armed federal officials have tried to corral people protesting the roundup into a fenced-in “First Amendment area” south of the resort city of Mesquite.
The site “tramples upon Nevadans’ fundamental rights under the U.S. Constitution” and should be dismantled, Sandoval said.
BLM spokeswoman Kirsten Cannon and Park Service spokeswoman Christie Vanover have told reporters during daily conference calls that free-speech areas were established so agents could ensure the safety of contractors, protesters, the rancher and his supporters.
The dispute between Bundy and the federal government dates to 1993, when land managers cited concern for the federally protected tortoise and capped his herd at 150 animals on a 250-square-mile rangeland allotment. Officials later revoked Bundy’s grazing rights completely.
Cannon said Bundy racked up more than $1.1 million in unpaid grazing fees over the years while disregarding several court orders to remove his animals.
Bundy estimates the unpaid fees total about $300,000. He notes that his Mormon family’s 19th century melon farm and ranch operation in surrounding areas predates creation of the BLM in 1946.
Since the cattle roundup began Saturday, there has been one arrest.
Bundy’s son, Dave Bundy, 37, was taken into custody Sunday as he watched the roundup from State Route 170. He was released Monday with bruises on his face and a citation accusing him of refusing to disperse and resisting arrest.
A court date has not been set.
His mother, Carol Bundy, alleged that her son was roughed up by BLM police.
Meanwhile, federal officials say 277 cows have been collected. Cannon said state veterinarian and brand identification officials will determine what becomes of the impounded cattle.
The problem is that the only peaceful "resolution" is the complete surrender of any opposition to the Federal jackboots and thugs.
I know how we got here, but I don't know how we get out.
Article IV, Section 3: "The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular state."
That establishes that the federal government can own land and other properties. The land became the property of the U.S. when it was taken from Mexico. Nothing required that ownership be transferred to Nevada when it became a state.
The family had cattle grazing on the land before the BLM took it.
I thought “squatters rights” was your talking points for yesterday? Couldn’t come up with a new one today?
I meant Adam Kokesh. Not “Koresh”.
Let’s hope they know the names and home addresses of the feds. A note at their home address may remind them that they’re scaring the crap out of others. You know... tasing innocent residents and such? They haven’t shot any dogs or people yet....
They have to know that they’re accountable. What happens to these ranchers should happen to the families of the agents.
It should.
And we were all watching Connecticut...
Didn’t he pay the grazing fees for a while, then stopped?
In late 1974, AIM leaders discovered that Douglas Durham, a prominent member who was by then head of security, was an FBI informant. They confronted him and expelled him from AIM at a press conference in March 1975. With some members in fugitive status after the Pine Ridge shootout, suspicions about FBI infiltration remained high. For various reasons, Anna Mae Aquash, the “highest-ranking” woman in AIM, was mistakenly suspected of being an informant. According to testimony at trials in 2004 and 2010 of men convicted of her murder, she was interrogated in the fall of 1975. In mid-December she was taken from Denver, Colorado, to Rapid City, South Dakota, and interrogated again, then taken to Rosebud Reservation and finally to a far corner of Pine Ridge Reservation, where she was killed by a gunshot wound to the back of the head. Her body was not found until February 1976. Low-level AIM members Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham were convicted of her murder, but many people believed that “higher-ranking” leaders had ordered it. Dissension over this issue contributed to the 1993 split in the AIM organization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Movement#1973_Wounded_Knee_Incident
Just where does Nevada's federal and state Congress critters stand on this? Are there any real reporters, not journalists, asking them about this situation?
One of those critters is Harry Reid. Where do you think he stands?
277 head of cattle.. Well, a hell of a feud was fought over a hog, so..
The worst thing these guys are doing is organizing this whole thing over the internet.
I like Ann but I can’t help but wonder if her opinion would change if the family were Catholic instead of Mormon?
I posted the following on another thread. This is ultimately about property rights versus squatters’ rights and not states’ rights.
It’s not his land. His cattle are grazing on federal land.
At the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, Mexico and the U.S. signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which granted title to that land to the U.S., for which the U.S. paid Mexico $15 million.
Sixteen years later in 1864, Nevada became a state. A provision of the Nevada Statehood Act of 1864 promised that Nevada would disclaim all rights to the unappropriated public lands lying within its boundaries, and that such land would remain at the sole disposition of the United States.
Cliven Bundy has no legal right to graze his cattle on federal land without permission. When he stopped paying grazing fees, the federal government sold his grazing rights to the Clark County Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan.
In short, the U.S. bought and paid for that land. It owns it. It makes the rules on it.
(Note: I made no assertions about the rightness of armed BLM officers or the 1st Amendment area and none should be inferred.)
This isn’t going to end well
In addition to reading about freedom of speech, I seem to vaguely recall something about "peaceably assembling".
Was that just a fantasy, a dream or is there such a right?
Video at source is pretty intense.
This will escalate
Certainly food for thought.
History doesn’t always work that way though. The Feds have gotten so bad that the rebellious explosion could be sparked by anything with a little or a lot of justification.
Popeye: “That’s all I can stands I can’t stands no more”
But I guarantee if/when serious resistance starts, regardless of the so called justification, the Feds are going to make this over reaching incursion look like a Sunday brunch.
Can’t see that we are much better off then Ukraine. Obummer administration = Putin administration. Things can get nasty just as in the Ukraine.
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