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.
Press slandering of Militia movements after the OKC bombing silenced that movement under Clinton.
Wasn’t Jeff Head at Klamath?
I’m afraid you’re right. But when we had Ruby Ridge/Waco, there wasn’t this nationwide powder keg of hostilities, waiting for the wrong spark to set it off. I’m afraid we may be seeing a flashpoint in progress.
Some on here like to quote the constitution, but forget the 17th enumerated power under art 1 sec 8. Laughable.
“My dad did pay his grazing fees for years to the BLM until they were no longer using his fees to help him and to improve.”
Uhhh....no. He was paying “grazing fees”, not “doing what I want you to do” fees. If he thought the BLM wasn’t doing their job, he should have pulled his cows off the land and quit paying the fees. Or he should have lobbied the government to reign in the BLM. He can’t just decide he isn’t getting a good deal from the government and quit paying. Hell, we’d all be doing that.
This is similar to people refusing to pay income taxes because the money goes to the military.
However, the feds should just round up the cattle, sell them, take their fees and give him whatever is left. There’s no need to turn this into Occupy SW
Most likely he wants to stand in a pool of blood while he buys thousands of acres for the price of back taxes. He has done similar things before.
Bingo! No one should be siding with this person who mooches off of the public good. He stopped paying for grazing rights BEFORE it was declared off-limits for grazing. He’s been freeloading off the gov’t by grazing his cattle for free and pocketing the difference. He is a trespasser and taker.
It’s isn’t fair to law-biding ranchers who have to pay for lawful grazing rights.
Ok, be right back!!!
Yes he was. I met him there.
Would like to see home addresses of these agents and their bosses posted.
I got chills up my spine reading that.
God, protect them and give them wisdom.
So let the Feds kill him for it. Maybe a Gov.sniper can get him between the eyes. You approve?
Maybe he used the wrong justification - Mormon - as his defense. How about if he said “Muslim” instead of Mormon? Do you think it would make a difference?
Eric Holder called Americans cowards. Do you think anything short of a confrontation would make the feds back down?
As much as I dislike and despise FedZilla, I believe you are correct in this situation.
Just like our Founding Fathers when they wrote and executed on the Declaration in Independence, they wanted to make sure what they were doing was right and as legal as possible, and not based on emotional response. For the same reasons our Founding Fathers took the time to make sure what they were doing were righteous in all ways possible, I believe it is important for us to do the same and examine each situation appropriately.
You know the British also had the right to tax the colonies to pay for all of the protection they provided to them against the French, Spanish and Indians, allowing them to make huge freeloading fortunes without having to pay for the upkeep of being subjects of the crown.
But I can only assume that the 4th of July is still something you consider to be a holiday too?
That’s a good way to end up in jail.
I don’t doubt you. I certainly don’t want this situation to end in violence, but the rancher and his family really don’t have a legal leg to stand on. And bringing in like minded ‘militia’ is not going to help ease the situation. Hopefully the government will finish rounding up the cattle, haul them off and sell them, then call the whole matter over and done with and let him stew on what’s left of his ranch with his militia buddies.
“The family had cattle grazing on the land before the BLM took it.”
I don’t see where my statement conflicts with any of the facts in post #55. I didn’t say the rancher owned the land, but that their cattle grazed on it until the BLM took it over. First they were charging fees “to help the ranchers” and then it became ‘to get rid of the ranchers’.
Notice how the FEDERAL government takes over states’ rights.
This will not end peacefully. The current corrupt administration hates the normal people. If it orders their jackbooted thugs to open fire, the media will all in unison say that they did the right thing.
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