Rancher in prison for 'trespassing cows'

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Friday, August 15, 2003 | By J. Zane Walley

[SLB]

FYI -

[CedarDave]

BUMP to my oil/gas/ranching/environmental PING list, and to add NM to topics.

[bedolido]

Cows With Guns

[CedarDave]

A fun cartoon, but the cartoonist has a serious misunderstanding of cow anatomy!

[CedarDave]

Whoops, not the cartoonist but the lyric writer. LOL

[Quix]

BLM has been growing into a socialist/commie monster for decades.

Get the UN out of the USA and the Feds out of the West!

Sigh.

[Varmint Al]

There are too many leftover appointees from the previous administration that should be removed.

President Bush: You can fix this.

This is the type of miscarriage of justice that the Presidential Pardon was meant to cure.

Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

[EBUCK]

It appears that Norton may be trying to change this, and enforce property rights, but it is very hard for an agency to back off once it has committed to an action.

Especially when backing off would mean loosing funding and power.

[hardhead]

The BLM DOES suck! A bunch of entrenched, taxpayer-funded, bureaucrats. Let the steaks dry up in the congressional dining rooms then that will give the bastards an excuse to expand trade more with Meheeco.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[Salman]

By background, I'm a city boy. I'm on the farm list mainly to learn something, not to pontificate. But I know WRONG when I see it.

[r9etb]

Something not quite right about this story. It's fine to disagree with the BLM, and no doubt they overreached in this case.

But I do not believe that this article is giving us an honest account.

For example, why would the BLM toss Wally Klump in jail, while at the same time continue to let his cows run around where they're not supposed to be?

Ahhh, yes. The reason Wally Klump is in jail is for contempt of court, not for grazing violations. And if you read past the reporter's obvious bias, you begin to wonder whether Wally's as innocent as he's made out to be. For example, the Klumps obviously have some idea of where their property lines are, as they apparently had to roll back their fences to let their cattle onto BLM land.

As for me, personally, I tend to distrust any reporter who uses Tom Clancy-style adjectives to describe people. Wally is "rawhide-tough." Wayne is "lean ropy," and drinks "tepid water." (How does the reporter know it's tepid, BTW?)

It would be interesting to get the real facts on this story. No doubt they'd still be sympathetic to the Klump's case. But they'd probably be a lot less cut-and-dried than Zane Wally's little novella would have us believe.

[Deadeye Division]

bttt

[Libertina]

This breaks my heart and inspires me all at the same time.

[marktwain]

I tend to agree with you. I am sure that he is in jail for "contempt of court" probably because he refuses to follow a court order to remove his cows from some areas that he believes are his by right.

We certainly get this type of reporting all the time from the left. My guess that he didn't get a court appointed lawyer because this is a civil rather than a criminal case.

I also believe that if he had a good lawyer, he would not be in his present predicament, and would have his rights intact. There is a fair amount of case law on the books about this type of situation, but you have to appeal to the correct precidents to win in court. Make a mistep, and *bam* you can lose it all.

[F-117A]

More info

[Iconoclast2]

It's simple. Law is dead in cases involving the Government. Science is dead in cases involving the Government. Virtually all constraints against the ever-growing power of the Federal Government (except concerning PC personal rights involving race and gender) are gone. Fact and law only constrain men committed to a higher duty than themselves, and such men are virtually absent from the bench. I have litigated against the government on issues such as this for a dozen years, and it is heartbreaking to learn the ugly truth.

[Iconoclast2]

No it's not. It's easy. It's the "stroke of the pen, law of the land". President Bush or Secretary Norton could issue an order effortlessly. Why do we let them get away with not issuing such orders and living the oppression? WHY ON EARTH SHOULD WE VOTE FOR PEOPLE WHO CONTINUE TO WAGE WAR ON US?

I know, I know. We are supposed to see the Bush Administration as the lesser of two evils. Outside the West, and oblivious to the War on the West, this calculus may make more sense, I suppose.

[Kay Ludlow]

Make a mistep, and *bam* you can lose it all

And isn't that all about making us fearful of opposing the bureaucracy? What did one of the founders say? Something about 'where government fears the people you have a republic, where the people fear the government you have tyranny'?

More people need to speak out to their elected representatives (the ones that actually have to fear losing their jobs based on peoples opinions) about reigning in the bureaucracy. Government agencies should be directed by elected officials, and kept under control by them. Too often, we have the paid staff in our agencies telling the elected officials what to do and how to do it, which defeats the purpose of electing representatives...