Federal Judge: Cliven Bundy Must Remain in Jail â€“ He is â€œLawless and Violent

It's interesting, isn't it? Not one shot was fired by Cliven Bundy, his family or peaceful protestors, some of whom were armed during the 2014 Bundy Ranch siege by the Bureau of Land Management. Not one shot was fired by the Bundys or any of the people who took over the Oregon Wildlife Refuge either. The only people that we know of who have acted unlawfully and violent have been the DC government and those tied to it. It was those who work for the state that fired on an unarmed LaVoy Finicum, murdering him in cold blood, and then sought to kill the other passengers in his vehicle who never fired a shot. Yet, a federal judge has said following Cliven Bundy's arrest in Oregon last week, the Mr. Bundy must remain behind bars because he is "lawless and violent."

U.S. Magistrate Judge Janice Stewart claims that Bundy is a danger to the community there.

"If he is released and he goes back to his ranch, that is likely the last the government will see of him," Stewart said.

Bundy's sons, Ammon and Ryan, remain in jail over three weeks after their arrest, and so do several others, including Pete Santilli, who did several live reports to keep the public informed of exactly what was going on minute by minute.

Bundy's attorney, Noel Grefenson, said his client could not be a danger if authorities waited to charge him for 22 months. The judge dismissed that argument and set his next hearing for Friday.

A family member said the patriarch isn't dangerous or a criminal and should be released to live at home.

"Cliven believes in the proper role of government and proper jurisdiction. Where's the jurisdiction?" daughter-in-law Briana Bundy told The Associated Press by telephone from Bunkerville, Nevada.

"He's not a flight risk. This is his home. This is where his livelihood is," she said.

As with everything the DC government does, Bundy's arrest was calculated. He was arrested at the Portland airport where authorities knew he would be unarmed and there would not be a scene. They were just as calculated in both the ambush and the video footage of the shooting of LaVoy Finicum.

However, Bundy, unlike the others who have been arrested, did not received charges related to the standoff in Oregon, but rather is charged with unlawfully directing more than 200 followers to stop federal agents and contract cowboys who were attempting to enforce a court order to round up nearly 400 of his cattle at the Bundy Ranch siege in 2014.

The aftermath of that was just as telling concerning the lawless and criminal behavior of federal agents.

Prosecutors also allege the Bundy and those who stood with him set up traffic checkpoints on public roads and attempted to follow and intimidate federal agents trying to conduct plant surveys.

"Witnesses have described the level of threatened violence as so intense that something as innocent as the backfire of (a) vehicle, or someone lighting a firecracker, would have set off a firefight," according to a 34-page document filed by prosecutors Tuesday.

Prosecutors claimed that neither the Constitution nor any other law "gives anyone the right to use or carry, let alone brandish, raise or point, a firearm" at federal law enforcers performing official duties, "whether one thinks the officer is acting constitutionally or not."

Au contraire mon frere! Federal agents are not spelled even listed in the Constitution, but a citizen militia and their duties are.

The Congress shall have Power To ...provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.... - ARTICLE I, SECTION 8, CLAUSE 16

As we have pointed out before, the laws of the union, contained in the Constitution regarding land were being dealt with peacefully and according to law. I will grant that Congress had not called up the militia, but I would also point out the that same section of the Constitution also states that Congress is to provide for the organizing, arming and disciplining of that militia, which they don't do because they do not want it to exist, but rather funnel unconstitutional spending to other interests. So, I ask, who really are the lawless and violent ones in this matter? Is it really Mr. Bundy and his sons, or is it a criminal DC government?

And folks are worried about a lady who turned down $1.8 million, and owed $25,000 in back taxes on her pig sty.

Whatever you think of her decorator, it is her property, to retain or dispose of as she pleases.

If it is such a pig sty, how did she run up $25,000 in back taxes?

What does that have to do with the Bundy's and the increasing Federal Encroachment/land grab in the West? To a great extent, either affects basic private property rights, but the Western issues take in the acquisition and accumulation of property by the Federal Government and others who benefit from government action to distress the properties in question, (action which may be taken as a result of court rulings in cases instigated by the party which benefits).

In the west, that means land which has been productive will be removed from being productive, more often than not.

In the Kelo decision based eminent domain cases in the East, the land is allegedly going to be taken so it can become more productive (for the local tax rolls, anyway), even though the projects which will allegedly produce that extra tax money often do not come to fruition.

More Scenic rivers, more endangered species, higher levels of protection to the lands, more wilderness, to name a few.

These very things threaten traditional uses of land, often land that has been in the same hands for centuries. We're talking deeded property, not lease land. You didn't mention the buffer zone concept, which has expanded the rules for federal land well beyond the land itself onto private property. As for 'endangered species', those, too are a tool used to strip property owners of their rights and use unnecessarily (Do you think for a second those species would still exist had it not been for good stewardship and often the protection by property owners while they used the land?)

"Scenic River" designation is just that: pretty to look at. The river (tidewater estuary, actually) I grew up on was killed by the one-two punch of eliminating the aquatic vegetation and declaring it "Scenic". Once the aquatic vegetation was eliminated, the nearshore spawning areas, the places where crabs could shed, small fry could take refuge were gone. Schools of Cow-nosed ray made an incursion, and in two subsequent years eliminated a brackish water clam species from the estuary, along with devastating fisheries.

Increased wave energy delivered to the shores of the estuary (because that energy was no longer dampened by aquatic vegetation) changed beach profiles and increased bank erosion. Without the nearshore aquatic vegetation to act as a filter, sedimentation rates offshore increased, and oyster bars were silted in. Landowners were prohibited from putting up traditional seawalls to mitigate erosion, and instead were told their only option was to install riprap as laid out in a Corps of Engineers specifications--something which had NEVER been done in the area, and was cost-prohibitive because the rock to do so would have to be trucked in from hundreds of miles away. Fish species which had been present in the estuary disappeared, many of which were popular for sport fishing and were of commercial value as well.

A thriving fisheries industry was destroyed.

People's land was literally washing away.

Buffer zones established areas where permits were required for so much as cutting down trees, including 20 acres of second growth Red Oak planted in the 1850-s by one of my relatives, now worth millions of dollars but doomed to rot in place.

You roll off that list like those are good things, but they commonly are anything but. You have someone who just got a degree in wildlife biology trying to tell people who have lived it for their entire lives, whose ancestors lived on and ranched that land, fished that river, farmed continuously for 300+ years how to run the show and what to do and not to do without knowing their collective ass from a hole in the ground.

TO many people who did not grow up in a rural environment a parcel of land is just a square on a map, shoehorned into one of however many climate and terrain and drainage and fauna and flora types. None of those statistics are a substitute for KNOWING that land with the sort of knowledge that can have you walk to a certain spot without GPS or a map, because you know every tree, rock and swale in its surface. You can see when a tree is sick or infested and cut it down to protect the rest, you can see when there are new weeds taking hold and eliminate them. You know if the deer are healthy or starving, and often take action to keep those animals and the vegetation healthy by adjusting your activities to compensate for natural variation in weather, including leaving a little of a crop out for browse. Nor can that college degree substitute for the sort of supervision someone who has skin in the game will give an ecosystem when their continued well being is tied to that land and how healthy it is.

That is why the wild animals leave BLM land for private land, because it is more productive in terms of food and water sources have been conserved to provide for the dry months.

But typical of the 'more knowledgeable than thou' attitude found in academia, and spread to the Halls of Government, rather than admit that those who are doing things right just might know what they are doing after a hundred or more years, the answer is to eliminate those who are doing it better and making the Government look bad.

Most of those laws you list are just the tools for eliminating those private property owners, and they are used as such.

I am doing what needs to be done.

Trying to peacefully make people aware of the problem.

The majority of landowners are not seeking to take anything from anyone else, only to retain what they have, and use it to make a living as they have in the past. Deeded property and water rights are property, too, is owned, not by the government, but by individuals.

Until the ability to make such rules as those which encroach on that property is gone, until the use of such rules to punish people who have only used the same effective means of making a living they always have has been stopped, until our Federal Government stops using a host of excuses to take more land, the problem will not be resolved.

Some field agent getting killed or killing someone else won't make one bit of difference where the decisions are made that perpetrate the ongoing injustice of taking life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Either this is fought peacefully or it will eventually be fought in a bloodbath. The latter should be avoided if at all possible, and any who advocate it should think long and hard about just what they propose.

If this was some corporation or a 'robber baron' people in the media would present the case, howling at the injustice, appealing to the Government for redress and justice.

What do you do when the bureaucrats of our Government and their agencies are the robber barons? When those who make and enforce rules and regulations act in an arbitrary and capricious manner when making the rules and when enforcing them, and when just fighting a rule costs a fortune for those who fight it, but nothing to those who craft it.

It is difficult to make people realize that the land in question is more than an heirloom, more than a square on a piece of paper or a dollar value. It is, for those of us who have make our living there, the means of production, of sustenance, the future for our progeny, the past for our ancestors, and those ties run deep. Far deeper than any attachment to a tract house someone will flip in 5 years, hopefully for a profit when they move again.

This isn't the shallow infatuation of do-gooders, this is people fighting for their way of life.

Of course, many people won't care unless and until it directly affects them.

They have been taught from the cradle to look at people in any of the extractive industries as the unwashed masses who do what they do because they are lesser beings who get their hands dirty.

The concept that screwing over the person you regard as inferior is okay (if not your duty!), has been hammered into the heads of the urbane for decades.

s >And even more, why should those hicks have all that nice land with such a beautiful view? Take it from them so the city people can come visit (and stuff used diapers behind the trees and throw their trash all over before they go back to the hive).

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.