Quasi-religious sovereignty beliefs remain even in the face of mistrial over federal prosecutorial misconduct. Regardless of the armed hoo-hah, Bundy broke some very fundamental land contracts. Darned snack commandos seem to get some kind of…. privilege so easily ‘splained in the history of western expansion.
Wacos and Wackos… the Feds seem not be able to run a proper prosecution when BLM agents are so unreliable (see lazy BLM agent losing his carry firearm in SF, recidivist migrant drug user gets hold of it, killing bystander, giving Lord Dampnut a campaign meme).
At the heart of the case against the Bundys is a conspiracy charge alleging that the Bundys and other defendants lied about their situation when they sent out urgent national requests for militia members and other armed protesters to come to Bunkerville to face off against the BLM. The indictment alleges that the family used “deceit and deception” to recruit followers and gunmen, falsely claiming that the BLM had surrounded the Bundy ranch with snipers and that federal officers had used excessive force against Cliven’s son Dave Bundy, who was arrested a few days before the armed standoff while taking photos and protesting along a state highway.
But those claims, dismissed by the government as fiction by paranoid anti-government activists, have largely turned out to be true. And it’s taken the government nearly two years, and three trials, to admit as much in court.
It goes back to the inability of the Feds to negotiate a settlement in 1998.
Twenty-one years ago, rancher Cliven Bundy stopped paying his grazing fees.
Bundy does not recognize federal authority over land where his ancestors first settled in the 1880s, which he claims belongs to the state of Nevada. The Bureau of Land Management disagreed and took him to federal court, which first ruled in favor of the BLM in 1998. After years of attempts at a negotiated settlement over the $1.2 million Bundy owes in fees failed, federal land agents began seizing hundreds of his cattle illegally grazing on public land last week.
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Bundy's claim that the land belongs to Nevada or Clark County didn't hold up in court, nor did his claim of inheriting an ancestral right to use the land that pre-empts the BLM's role. "We definitely don't recognize [the BLM director's] jurisdiction or authority, his arresting power or policing power in any way," Bundy told his supporters, according to The Guardian.
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His personal grievance with federal authority doesn't stop with the BLM, though. "I believe this is a sovereign state of Nevada," Bundy said in a radio interview last Thursday. "I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing." Ironically, this position directly contradicts Article 1, Section 2 of the Nevada Constitution
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Two decades after Nevada's founders proclaimed unswerving obedience to federal authority, Cliven Bundy's family first settled the land where he and his supporters now make their heavily armed stand against federal power. It's doubtful even the Nevada Constitution will change their minds—if legal and constitutional arguments could persuade the militia movement, there might not be a militia movement.
www.theatlantic.com/...