Photo Credit: Fox News
By Fox News.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he believes the supporters who rallied around Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy in his fight against the federal government are “domestic terrorists” and Bundy does not respect his country.
The Las Vegas Journal-Review reported that Reid, D-Nev., made the comments at an event Thursday hosted by the paper called “Hashtags & Headlines.”
Federal land managers backed down in a weekend standoff with Bundy after hundreds of states’ rights protesters, including armed militia members, showed up to protest federal officials seizing his cattle. Some protesters had their guns drawn and pointed toward law enforcement, some of whom were also armed. But ultimately, no shots were fired and the Bureau of Land Management reported that officials left over safety concerns.
Reid had harsh words for these supporters, saying the government cannot stop pursuing the issue.
“They’re nothing more than domestic terrorists,” Reid said, according to the paper. “I repeat: what happened there was domestic terrorism.”
Read more from this story HERE.
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The Bundy Ranch Saga Should Prompt Discussion on the Sale of Federal Land
By Jen Kuznicki.
Cliven Bundy and his family have owned a ranch in Nevada for 140 years. The land he grazes his cattle on has changed from being owned by the federal government, to being restrictively managed by the federal government, to being micromanaged by the federal government, and if environmentalists get their way, he will have no means of survival.
Upon statehood in 1864, Nevada was admitted to the union on equal footing with the original states, however, somewhere between 84% and 86% of the State’s land mass was forever “disclaimed” by the people of the state. It belongs to the federal government.
I’ve read countless articles and references, and as I understand it, Mr. Bundy’s grandfather acquired his family land in the 1880′s and paid for the rights to work additional federal land. Nowhere can I find any outside reference to the ownership by the Bundy’s of more than Mr. Bundy’s own private land except that after decades of working and improving federal land, the Bundy’s might claim a sweat equity stake in the land they have always had their cattle graze upon, along with the fact that public land should be for public use. In addition to deals made with the federal government throughout the 140 year time frame, Mr. Bundy has a very plausible argument in his righteous indignation of the federal micro-managers who are trying to end his livelihood.
It is interesting to note that the American rancher has been pushed around consistently by the federal government under mostly Democrat Presidents. Under FDR, the Taylor Grazing Act was enacted to lessen the stress on federal lands due to over-grazing. I think you and I can figure out that there used to be many more ranchers out doing their thing back in 1934, and more than likely many more cattle. Twelve years later, under Harry Truman, the Bureau of Land Management was born, and BLM went about supposedly charging grazing fees in order to keep the land managed. In 1976, under the feckless Ford administration, environmental law offered more and more restrictions toward the use of the public lands for grazing. During the Clinton administration, the Bundy family stopped paying its money to the federal government because, as I understand it, they felt the feds were not improving the land for the money they sent them. Since then, after over $300,000 in missed grazing fees and something like twice that in trespass fees, the Bundy’s were ordered to remove the cattle or the federal government would remove them for him.
Why?
Read more from this story HERE.
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Photo Credit: REUTERS / JIM URQUHART
By Jonathon Allen.
Flat on his belly in a sniper position, wearing a baseball cap and a flak jacket, a protester aimed his semi-automatic rifle from the edge of an overpass and waited as a crowd below stood its ground against U.S. federal agents in the Nevada desert.
He was part of a 1,000-strong coalition of armed militia-men, cowboys on horseback, gun rights activists and others who rallied to Cliven Bundy’s Bunkerville ranch, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, in a stand-off with about a dozen agents from the federal Bureau of Land Management.
The rangers had rounded up hundreds of Bundy’s cattle, which had been grazing illegally on federal lands for two decades. Bundy had refused to pay grazing fees, saying he did not recognize the government’s authority over the land, a view that attracted vocal support from some right-wing groups.
Citing public safety, the BLM retreated, suspending its operation and even handing back cattle it had already seized.
No shots were fired during the stand-off, which Bundy’s triumphant supporters swiftly dubbed the “Battle of Bunkerville,” but the government’s decision to withdraw in the face of armed resistance has alarmed some who worry that it has set a dangerous precedent and emboldened militia groups.
Read more from this story HERE.
