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.
Article I Section 8: To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;
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."
See post #55.
Well said.
It did indeed own it, But the BLM took over managing the grazing with the ranchers at a later date.
I'm a bit more concerned with the tens of millions of criminal illegal alien squatters who are aided and abetted the same corrupt US Government...All at tax payer expense to the tune of hundreds of billions in social services, health care, choking off our hospitals etc., every year?
And you suggest this guy is a squatter over some cows eating some weeds?
Ya think it's a bit odd the government comes down on some American like he's a foreign invading enemy, with snipers etc, all while government makes American citizenship and our sovereignty all but pointless? All while forcing us all to pay for our own incremental demise?
Ya see something wrong with this picture?
There are some interesting parallels to Harper’s Ferry here. Although, I see a hot CWII as a drawn out guerrilla affair until/unless enough progress is realized to capture the interest of foreign backing. The reality is, what foreign power has any interest in supporting the forces of liberty?
If the U.S. owns the land, they get to make the rules about who uses it and how it is used.
It seems to me that you feel very strongly about the Federal gov’t rights and I am your enemy for not agreeing with you, so let’s just agree to disagree.
Yes, and all of these were presumed to be necessary. Is cattle land in Nevada necessary? Read the Federalist were it explicitly discusses the need to keep the geographic size of the federal government to a minimum.
Koresh was a nut. Not sure how he was able to get folks to follow him, but this is all beside the point. The feds wouldn't stop until they got their way.
What happened next? Innocent people who just wanted to be left alone were slaughtered. I wouldn't have wanted to be one of those agents having to live with the thought that I had a hand in the murder of a bunch of children.
Doesn’t seem to bother Janet Reno or Eric Holder ... dead souls have selective conscience.
ping
No one is arguing jurisdiction where it is appropriate. And copying and pasting doesn’t prove scholarship. The Feds have no NEED for cattle land, so they should have relinquished it long ago.
[ Sadly, I believe this is going to degrade into a hybrid Waco/Ruby Ridge situation. The Federal government is not going to stand down, and the state government of Nevada isn’t going to provide protection for the landowner lest they run afoul of Obama and his cronies. ]
Sounds more like it could turn into this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Massacre
Only in Nevada...
We haven’t hit Lexington and Concorde ... yet...
funny aint it?
You list the reasons that the Constitution gives the fed gov the right to own particular land, forts, etc... of which this particular piece of land is not any one of those things. Then, in Art 4, Sec 3, paste in where the Constitution gives the fed gov authority to manage those particular purposed lands, which this area under contest is not, and claim that gives the fed gov legal right to that land, which it doesn’t.
Would Jeb Bush call this man’s cow herd in Nevada an “Act of Love”.....
No he wouldn’t....
So screw Jeb Bush!
Fix the issue with federal lands along the border with Mexico FIRST then we can talk about the rancher in Nevada...
How come the Federal government is only concerned with rules and law when it pertains to legitimate Americans, yet aid and abet those who routinely violate federal law when they enter US land illegally?
No, I despise the overreaching federal gov’t. We don’t disagree about them. I simply believe Bundy is legally and morally wrong in his assertions. I absolutely support States’ Rights and have defended them on FR since I came here. If Nevada owned the land, I’d support its right to manage the land as it sees fit, but it doesn’t.
FRegards.
>>Doesn’t seem to bother Janet Reno or Eric Holder ... dead souls have selective conscience.<<
Oh my...sooooo well put. Couldn’t have articulated any better.
“If the U.S. owns the land, they get to make the rules about who uses it and how it is used.”
The Constitution lays out very specific purposes for the land that the fed gov is allowed to own. This area under contest does not qualify in any way, shape or form with any one of those specific purposes.
I’m starting to wonder about you.
Semper Fi, Mac.
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