BLM Confrontation With Nevada Rancher Boils Over

[Draggingtree]

Obama Sends Hundreds of Armed Feds to Nevada – Wouldn’t Send 1 Soldier to Defend Benghazi – Why?

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Michael Anthony Peroutka

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Continue reading →

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2014/04/17/obama-sends-hundreds-armed-feds-nevada-wouldnt-send-1-soldier-defend-benghazi/#more-28446

[Draggingtree]

The Rule of Law?

No Caesar ·April 17, 2014 at 7:50 am ( 5 hours ago )

 

Most Americans claim to support the rule of law, especially over the rule of man. There is a good reason for this position: it is a foundational part of the ethos of our nation, one that is voiced (or at least given lip service) by most Americans. There is a long history of its practical benefits for society. While the nation has not always lived up to this precept, it has, by a long shot, been the norm more often than not. Those of us who believe in “playing by the rules” and supporting the rule of law do so under the belief and expectation that:

• All laws are made by us and/or our representatives. And, if the latter, those representatives are directly accountable to us;
• The rights of the minority will be respected and protected in the establishment and execution of laws;
• Laws will not be drawn up singling out certain individuals for attack (i.e. no Bills of Attainder);
• The laws will be impartially enforced on all, the powerful and the weak (i.e. justice is blind), with this responsibility falling both on the Executive and the Judiciary;
• There are different levels of law, with all falling underneath the supreme national law of the Constitution. The higher the grade of law, the more immutable and more precious it is;
• The fundamental purpose of laws is to restrain those who would do harm to others;
• The defendant always gets the benefit of the doubt against the state.

In the aftermath of the Battle at Bundy Ranch there seem to be two primary concurrent positions on the Right: 1) Bundy is legally in the wrong (i.e. by the letter of the law); and 2) the BLM (the government) is morally in the wrong (i.e. by the spirit of the law). As I began to learn of the Bundy standoff over the weekend, that was my initial reaction too. As more information has come out about the matter itself and how it fits into Obama’s America, however, it is no longer so neat and tidy. Let me take you on a progression.

On Sunday, I began to comprehend the breadth and depth of the rage when I spoke with a retired naval officer who was preparing to drive west to add his arms to the revolt. This individual is a serious and sober man of consequence who has had responsibility for thousands of souls and hundreds of millions of dollars of war-fighting equipment under his command. He is not given to rash hyperbole or impulsiveness. He has worn the uniform of our nation for decades and put himself in harm’s way defending her. While the BLM’s decision to stand down caused him to shelve his plans, our exchange caused me to look at this situation more closely. http://ricochet.com/the-rule-of-law/

[SrWoodchuck]

@Draggingtree! From a link at the above post....

 

Fight federal abuse of property rights by making the government obey its own rules http://washingtonexaminer.com/fight-federal-abuse-of-property-rights-by-making-the-government-obey-its-own-rules/article/2547278?custom_click=rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 

Cliven Bundy marched into my life one Friday morning in January 1992 in a protest bound for a federal courthouse in Las Vegas. He held up one side of a street-width banner that asked, “Has the West been won or has the fight just begun?”

 

To my great relief, just as Bundy promised, nearly 200 ranchers from all over the state marched behind him, yelling “Property rights!” Nearly a mile later, the marchers fell silent and filed into the courtroom where Wayne Hage of Pine Creek Ranch faced arraignment for the felony of cleaning brush out of his ditches without a U.S. Forest Service permit.

 

The Forest Service had already confiscated Hage's cattle and left him bankrupt, just as the Bureau of Land Management would try with Bundy 22 years later.

 

Hage had already filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service in the U.S. Court of Claims, just as Bundy now has cause to do against the BLM – last week, during their failed attempt to confiscate Bundy’s cattle, agents wantonly bulldozed his water supply into oblivion without court authority.

 

Wayne Hage did not stand in that courtroom alone because I was honor bound to prevent it – I had published his 1989 book, Storm Over Rangelands: Private Rights in Federal Lands, which unleashed the federal fury.

 

The message terrified abusive bureaucrats: There are private rights in federal lands – vested rights, not privileges.

Private rights in federal lands were recognized in an 1866 water law. It says, "… whenever, by priority of possession, rights to the use of water have vested and accrued, and the same are recognized and acknowledged by the local customs, laws, and the decisions of courts, the possessors and owners of such vested rights shall be maintained and protected in the same."

 

That Act was passed a long time ago, but every federal land law since then contains a clause with language similar to, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to impair any vested right in existence on the effective date of this Act."

 

Most ranchers don’t know that and federal agencies exploit their ignorance with harassment that runs them off the land. Actually, understanding vested rights is not too hard – they’re absolute rights not subject to cancellation – but proving up those rights by assembling your chain of title and other technicalities and then making the government protect them is very hard.

 

The agencies know they don’t own the water rights, so their lawyers fight viciously with misdirection to save their empire from the owners. Ranchers lose in court because they don’t know how to prove up their vested rights and they don’t get lawyers who know the precision required to plead a vested rights case. Very few lawyers know.

 

[Draggingtree]

Oath Keepers from Across the Country Pour into Nevada

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Kimberly Paxton

Despite the fact that Senator Harry Reid has called these Patriots “domestic terrorists”, the militia members and Oath Keepers there to support Cliven Bundy have peacefully assembled in Bunkerville, Nevada for more than a week to protect the rancher from armed federal land grabbers. Although the BLM has allegedly backed off citing “safety concerns,” the surly Senator Reid (who has incidentally been busted with his hand in the $5 million solar power cookie jar) commented, “Well, it’s not over. We can’t have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it’s not over.”

 

 

Because of statements like Reid’s, a request was made by Oath Keeper’s founder Stewart Rhodes for reinforcements.

 

Interestingly, shortly after the request for support was made, the Oath Keepers website suffered a mysterious malfunction. Members of the alternative media quickly picked up the reins and made certain that the request was publicized

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2014/04/19/oath-keepers-across-country-pour-nevada/#more-28545

 

[Draggingtree]

Harry Reid is just one of many orchestrating this government tyranny against us who deserves to greet eternity kicking at the end of a rope…

 

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Chad Miller

I think it’s a foregone conclusion that whatever historical significance might once have been attributable to the abstruse 2008 election of Barack Hussein Obama’s being elevated from his previous status as an ungifted, unskilled, and unaccomplished Illinois Senator to our nations first black President has become pretty much dust on the wind in the turbulent backwash to the disturbingly chronic reality of his disastrous Presidency so far to date. A Presidency of such profound and purposeful centrolineal adversities, scandals, debacles, and profound political debauchery and consecutive slaps to the faces of the American people, I’m somewhat surprised the extraordinary events that surrounded the height of the Bundy ranch standoff didn’t end in gun smoke and bloodshed instead. And in the turbulent days following the wake of that ordeal, Obama has had no shortage of Democratic confederates helping fan the flames to this orchestrated malaise of civil dissension as evidenced by Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s declaring those supporters who stood by Cliven Bundy against 200 armed government marauders as “domestic terrorists”. Continue reading →

 

[Draggingtree]

Related: March 2009: Obama's "Civilian National Security Force" resurfaces

[SrWoodchuck]

 

Via iOTW

[Draggingtree]

The Bundy Paradigm: Will You Be a Rebel, Revolutionary or a Slave?

Posted on April 22, 2014 by John W Whitehead

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

—

John F. Kennedy

Those tempted to write off the standoff at the Bundy Ranch as little more than a show of force by militia-minded citizens would do well to reconsider their easy dismissal of this brewing rebellion. This goes far beyond concerns about grazing rights or the tension between the state and the federal government. Continue reading →

[Draggingtree]

Raiding and Trading in the American West

 

Cliven Bundy's battle was born out of a broken system that encourages conflict, not negotiation.

 

By SHAWN REGAN • May 23, 2014

Ed / cc

In 1994, economists Terry Anderson and Fred McChesney proposed a simple theory of violence on the American frontier. Their paper, published in the Journal of Law and Economics, modeled an important choice that white settlers and Indians faced when conflicts arose over land claims: Would the two groups fight or negotiate to resolve disputes? Or to put it another way, would they raid or trade?

The answer, they said, depended on the relative costs of raiding and trading. If the costs of fighting decreased, perhaps because one side developed superior weaponry, then disputes were more likely to turn violent. If the costs of negotiation fell, perhaps because a tribe’s land rights were clear and recognized by other tribes, then groups were more likely to bargain to get what they wanted. After all, trade is profitable. Fighting is costly.

 

Looking back through the historical record, Anderson and McChesney found that this straightforward economic logic explained much about Indian-white relations. But their theory extends beyond just the old western frontier. It sheds light on why we often fight the way we do—especially in the West today.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/raiding-and-trading-in-the-american-west/

[Valin]

@Draggingtree

 

History...History...History

 

I tell you, as times goes on I am more and more convinced that a knowledge of history, and being able to look at the world through the lens of history, and think historically (decades...centuries) is vital. If you don't you are doomed to be perpetually confused and ticked off.

[Cyber_Liberty]

It doesn't help when there are people who benefit when they can get others to fight amongst themselves, @Valin. All they have to do is keep everybody ignorant of history, and failing to teach something comes as naturally as falling off a log.

 

Explains a lot when it comes to the state of K-12 education in America?

[Draggingtree]

Was Cliven Bundy in charge of the militia?

 

The Bundy Affair - Answering the Most Common Question

 

By Gary Hunt September 6, 2014

One question that is often asked of me, when the discussion involves the Bundy Affair is, “Was Cliven Bundy in charge of the militia?” Though it has been addressed, to some degree, in my previous writings on the incident in Nevada, many still have not grasped it.

So, let’s look at what happened when the entire matter went public. Cliven Bundy, the patriarch of the family, went public with a request for help and support from anyone who saw that the federal government was being unfair. This wasn’t new, since back in 1993, large numbers of people had gone to the ranch in support of the Bundys, in opposition to the aims of the federal government.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/65831