BLM controversy in Southern Utah

[Scott P]

Interesting, though I don't know if it changes anything:

LAS VEGAS -- It has been widely reported that Cliven Bundy’s family claims to have ranched in the Bunkerville area since the 1870s even though a federal judge held a different view of Bundy’s history.Bundy repeated a similar claim Thursday when he told TheBlaze website: “My family has preemptive, adjudicated livestock water rights filed with the state of Nevada. They were established in 1877 when the first pioneers entered the valley. Among those first pioneers were my grandparents from my mother’s side. My father either bought or inherited his Nevada state livestock water rights and I, in turn, have done the same.”

Contrast that with the 1998 opinion from U.S. District Judge Johnnie Rawlinson in a case where it was determined Bundy wouldn’t be allowed to use federal land for his cattle because of failure to pay grazing fees to the Bureau of Land Management. Rawlinson wrote that it wasn’t until roughly 1954 that “Bundy or his father or both have grazed livestock on public lands owned by the United States and administered by the BLM.”

Clark County Recorder documents show the 160-acre Bunkerville ranch Bundy calls home was purchased by his parents, David and Bodel Bundy, from Raoul and Ruth Leavitt on Jan. 5, 1948. The purchase included the transfer to the Bundys of certain water rights, including water from the nearby Virgin River. Cliven Bundy was born in 1946.

Although no Bundys lived in Bunkerville in 1930 or 1940, according to Census records for those years, Cliven Bundy’s mother Bodel and her parents, John and Christena Jensen, lived in neighboring Mesquite in the early 20th Century.

Census records from 1930 indicate that John was a Mesquite farmer originally from Utah whose parents were from Denmark. Those records state the farm was near Main Street and a bridge over the Virgin River.

Separate records from the website FamilySearch, which is sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, indicate that Christena Jensen was born in Nevada in 1901 and that Bodel Jensen was born in Nevada in 1924. Christena Jensen’s parents originally were from Utah. This is the side of the family where Cliven Bundy claims long-standing livestock water rights.

Federal grazing districts were established with passage by Congress of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. The Las Vegas area grazing district was established Nov. 3, 1936. The Bureau of Land Management was formed in 1946, the year Cliven Bundy was born.

County records show the earliest construction on Bundy’s ranch was in 1951. The land is zoned rural open land. Since 1994 the ranch has been jointly owned by the David A. and Bodel Bundy Trust and the Bundy Revocable Trust.

Census records show that Cliven Bundy’s paternal great-grandfather, Illinois native Abraham Bundy, lived in Littlefield Village in Mohave County, Ariz., as early as 1900. Abraham Bundy was credited in 1916 with establishment in Mohave County of Bundyville, otherwise known as Mt. Trumbull, according to a history of the Arizona Strip on the Northern Arizona University website.

Abraham Bundy’s children included Cliven Bundy’s paternal grandfather, Roy Bundy, who was born in Nebraska. Two of Roy Bundy’s children were born in Nevada around World War I but Roy Bundy and his family returned to Mt. Trumbull and lived there for many years.

One of Roy Bundy’s sons was David A. Bundy, Cliven Bundy’s father. David Bundy, who was born in Arizona, lived in Mt. Trumbull until at least 1940, according to Census records.

http://www.8newsnow.com/story/253021...family-history

This is the same family that settled Mount Trumbull/Bundyville in Arizona. It's kind of an interesting ghost town if you are ever out that way (on the way to Toroweap).

[ratagonia]

No reason to let facts get in the way of a convenient story.

T

[Iceaxe]

Bundy's family history is irrelevant. The day he stopped paying his grazing fees he lost all claims and rights.

And if you don't believe that try not paying the property taxes on the house you inherit from your grandparents. Same type deal.


Tap'n on my Galaxy G3

[oldno7]

No reason to let facts get in the way of a convenient story.

T

News stations report facts?

hmmm--following certain groups too closely in Pine Cr. I see....

[Glenn]

Thanks for posting that article, Scott. The actual linked article is better because it also has links to census and deed documents. I'm impressed. I've never given much credence to Bundy's ancestral claims and this just reinforces it.

However, I'm still baffled at the thought process - if any - on the part of the BLM in executing this seizure. They now state that six cattle died during the failed roundup (http://www.8newsnow.com/story/253105...-bundy-roundup) although only two were Bundy-branded cattle. I've seen pro-Bundy video showing dead cattle also, but don't know if they are in addition or part of the same count. I feel badly that cattle died needlessly, regardless of ownership.

It seems that a roundup redux will be in order, but I certainly hope it's better organized. Any ideas? Maybe send smaller teams to go after the unbranded cattle first? And stay the heck away from the actual Bundy property.

[ratagonia]

Thanks for posting that article, Scott. The actual linked article is better because it also has links to census and deed documents. I'm impressed. I've never given much credence to Bundy's ancestral claims and this just reinforces it.

However, I'm still baffled at the thought process - if any - on the part of the BLM in executing this seizure. They now state that six cattle died during the failed roundup (http://www.8newsnow.com/story/253105...-bundy-roundup) although only two were Bundy-branded cattle. I've seen pro-Bundy video showing dead cattle also, but don't know if they are in addition or part of the same count. I feel badly that cattle died needlessly, regardless of ownership.

It seems that a roundup redux will be in order, but I certainly hope it's better organized. Any ideas? Maybe send smaller teams to go after the unbranded cattle first? And stay the heck away from the actual Bundy property.

Awwww. Six cows died - cry me a river!


People seem to do a good job of ignoring the obvious for the scofflaw named Bundy. So let me lay it out for you:

The BLM is not mainly a law-enforcement agency. They are mainly a land-management agency. So this was a land-management activity - rounding up a bunch of trespass cattle, actually, quite a few trespass cattle. Since the former owner of those cattle had dodged paying his bills and removing his cows for 20 years, ignoring several court orders, and since he was spewing self-serving, delusional BS, they brought along what seemed like a reasonable number of LE types to discourage the Bundy Brigade from causing trouble. Following the Powell Doctrine, they brought along what they thought was going to be "overwhelming force", which tends to discourage trouble.

But, no one ever lost money by underestimating the stupidity of the American people. Beforehand, it would have seemed looney tunes to declare that 100 armed insurrectionists would show up that bought into Bundy's delusional, self-serving BS. But there you are.

Next steps? Hard to say. Quietly arresting Bundy might be a good first step. And his clan, and anyone who was part of the insurrection. But because they are right-wing insurrectionists, they pretty much get a pass. Ye Olde Double Standard. Bundy has gotten a pass for 20 years - why change things now?

The rule of law is why - call me old-fashioned.

By the by, it is not clear to me that any events took place within proximity of the land that Bundy actually owns. Land that is likely to be liened or seized in the near future.

By the by, the cattle are trespass cattle, and no longer belong to Bundy. He had the chance to remove his cattle and retain them, and he did not take it.

Tom

[oldno7]

By the by, the cattle are trespass cattle, and no longer belong to Bundy. He had the chance to remove his cattle and retain them, and he did not take it.

Tom

Hmmm, I may not be quite the self anointed attorney as you, BUT

Wouldn't converting ownership of property(cattle),requiring a court ordered lein?

You see, part of the problem the blm faced when they took possession of Bundy's cows,

was they had no legal means of transporting or selling cattle they did not lawfully possess.(research "brand inspection)

While it may certainly be true that bundy has lost 2 federal appeals, I was not aware of any of those

cases that ordered the blm to claim possession, legally and lawfully.

Being the un-confirmed attorney I am, I would study the rules involving "conversion"

But of course, why let the rules of law get in the way of a good story.

[oldno7]

If bundy would shut his mouth and hire Scott Card, he could win this thing....

[Scott P]

It was only a matter of time before God and Jesus would be brought into this and that people would proclaim that the will of God is with one side or the other:

http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/04/americ...wwq0tGRDd6y.15

Cliven Bundy doesn’t normally do interviews on Sundays. But this Easter Sunday, the 67-year-old Nevada cattle rancher stepped out of his church, leaned up against the side wall and talked to America about what really matters to him deep down, revealing a side to him not normally seen in media interviews.
The first order of business, of course, was the Nevada standoff that has mesmerized the nation, and his response to Sen. Harry Reid’s incendiary accusation that the Bundy side are a bunch of “domestic terrorists.”

“The thing about what Harry Reid’s saying,” the rancher told radio talker Dianne Linderman on Talk Radio Network’s nationally syndicated “Everything That Matters” show, is that “he seems to be a warmonger, saying let’s have civil war!”

In fact, Bundy said, “We people are not gonna put up with that no more. We’re not gonna have them guns pointin’ at us anymore. Not when we’re talking about an army of ‘We the People’ against ‘We the People.’ We can’t allow that to happen in America. That’s civil war!”

Bundy confirmed that he and the ranchers and others standing with him, tired of being abused by a government with unlimited power, are ultimately willing to die for their stance. But, he added, “I do respect the United States government. I pledge allegiance to that flag and honor it very much. But [the government] has its place. It doesn’t have its place in the state of Nevada and … Clark County, and that’s where my ranch is. The federal government has no power and no ownership of this land, and they don’t want to accept that.”

Then, maybe because it was Easter Sunday, the interview went in a very different direction.

Asked by Linderman what makes him so unafraid in his current situation, Bundy replied:

“I don’t stand alone. I have all of the prayers from lots of people around the world, and I feel those prayers. And those prayers take the tremble out of my legs. And I can stand strong and straight. And you know the spirit from our heavenly Father, I seek that every morning on my knees. And he gives me some guidance, and I go forth and I actually feel good. My health is good, my spirit is good and I feel strength. I do, I feel strength, I feel even happiness. And I have no idea where I’m going with this. It’s a day-by-day spiritual thing for me.”



Toward the end of the interview, Linderman asked, “One more question: Is there anything you’d like to say to the American people? Because I truly believe you’re a patriot.”

“You know,” replied Bundy, “I woke up, I got out of my house, went down to my trail and watched the sun come up over the hills and the mountains here. And, of course, I thought of Jesus. And then the thought that I thought was that we the people of America, not only of America but of the whole world, what Jesus would want us to do, was forgive. Forgive our enemies, and He’ll take care of all the rest. So my message to the world today is: Forgive your neighbors, forgive your wives, forgive your husbands and children, and feel the love of Jesus. That’s what He suffered for.

“I thank the people for their prayers and, again, I put my faith in my heavenly father and … we’re OK.”

Bundy’s wife, Carol, expressed the same faith to this writer when booking the radio interview: “This is the Lord’s battle,” she said. “He is calling the shots, and we are just standing here.”

Read more at http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/04/americ...exEdkHheZO1.99

Would Jesus really side with Cliven Bundy? Why do people think they know He would? Maybe I shouldn't even ask that.

[ratagonia]

If bundy would shut his mouth and hire Scott Card, he could win this thing....

except that he has already lost, and the question is what to do with him.

Tom

[ratagonia]

Good piece on Bundy on RadioWest today:

http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/cliven-bundys-range-war

Tom

[oldno7]

except that he has already lost, and the question is what to do with him.

Tom

Dang--I misss a lot of things that you don't.

I completely missed his Supreme Court Appearance, I must not be paying attention.

So in toms world, if you lose 2 hearings, you're out of options and of course, guilty.

Scott Card is a cowboy, he could win this, haven't you ever seen his picture in his avatar---that guy--he don't accept defeat!!

[Iceaxe]

I completely missed his Supreme Court Appearance, I must not be paying attention.

To date Bundy has lost every case in court. The minute Bundy stopped paying his fee's he lost all rights, this case will NEVER see the Supreme Court as there is nothing for them to rule on.

[ratagonia]

I completely missed his Supreme Court Appearance, I must not be paying attention.

Call me a shade-tree lawyer, but in order to appeal, you need something that is appealable.

Perhaps Solicitor Card could check in here, but as I understand it, his two claims are:

1. I don't wanna, you can't make me! and

2. I don't recognize the existence of the Federal Gov'mint.

I've briefly looked through the Supreme Court Archives, and have not found any reason to think the Supremes would consider either of these points appealable. There is relevant case-law --- good news for Bundy is that if he ends up killing someone, they might not be able to fry him since he is clearly delusional.

Et tu, Kurte?

[Scott Card]

I really didn't want to wade into this cow pie conversation but now that you requested my presence in the mire ....I'm not sure Mr. Bundy would like me too much since my first rule with a client is for the client to exercise his/her 5th Amendment right to shut up and let me do the talking. I'm pretty good at pulling people out of a hole but the first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging it deeper. "Let go of the shovel and let me help," I tell them. Most do just that. Again, Mr. Bundy and I may butt heads because from the little I have read, he seems to want to keep digging, by word and by action. Also, the media attention tends to mess with people a lot by way of clouding their better judgment because of the attention.

I can also tell you that in 20 years of practicing law, not once has the argument "I don't recognize the Federal Government" EVER gone well for the defendant. My favorite anti-government client was the dude from Oregon who was pulled over for various driving offenses and was searched. Turns out his 1960's van was loaded with all kinds of paraphernalia and marijuana. He claimed that he did not recognize the government, that he was a sovereign citizen, and to top it all off that the marijuana was his sacrament. Therefore, his case should be dismissed. I believe the church he claimed he belonged to was "The Church of the Most High Hemp Goddess." I found he knew nothing about the doctrine of his church but that he was well versed in the "sacrament". Anyway, he was looking at some serious jail time for his charges and wasn't getting anywhere having ticked-off the judge and prosecutor with his silly arguments. So when he finally shut up (at my strong request) I was able to help him get the charge behind him with no jail time, and get on his way back to friendlier environments other than Utah County. John Wayne aside, I plea bargained a "get out of Dodge" plea deal to save him jail time and the tax payers the cost of it. He was happy to hop in his van, don the hemp robes and drive off into the sunset in pursuit of double rainbows. But I digress.

This Bundy case is one big mess. The way everyone has reacted so far will make it very difficult to resolve in any peaceful way unless someone steps in and throws a little ice water on the situation. I am glad that cooler heads prevailed on the federal government's side of things.

[ststephen]

I believe the church he claimed he belonged to was "The Church of the Most High Hemp Goddess."

I think I heard that they have a cathedral in Pine Creek.

[Scott Card]

I think I heard that they have a cathedral in Pine Creek.

[Scott P]

Apparently race is now an issue:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5204821.html

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a tense standoff with federal rangers in a dispute over grazing rights, didn't hide his racism in an interview with the New York Times published Wednesday.

The Bureau of Land Management claims Bundy has let his cattle graze on federal land without paying since 1993, saying he now owes more than $1 million in grazing fees. When federal agents came to confront Bundy about the fees, they were met by an armed militia, a move that has fired up conservatives.

Bundy is attempting to use his newfound fame to spread more than just his views on grazing rights, telling the Times he planned to hold a daily news conference. During Saturday's conference, Bunday shared his views on "the Negro":

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Bundy's comments, published Wednesday, led Republican lawmakers who had previously shown their support for his cause to back down. A spokesman for Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who had previously hailed Bundy and his supporters as "patriots," rebuked the rancher's racist remarks, saying the senator “completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who said he supported Bundy in an interview with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren earlier this week, denounced Bundy's racist remarks Thursday, Business Insider reports.

"His remarks on race are offensive and I wholeheartedly disagree with him," Paul said, according to a spokesman.

[cchoc]

Well, there goes all his black supporters.

[ratagonia]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...stitution.html

from one of my friends at SLANT...

Before Bundy Ranch
By Jared A. Goldstein

What happens when constitutional vigilantes go mainstream.

Constitutional vigilantism of the type on display at Bundy Ranch last week has been a recurrent feature on the margins of American political life. What is new—and dangerous—is that it has suddenly moved from the margins to the mainstream. And it comes with guns.



Last week a mob of more than 1,000 armed protesters forced the Bureau of Land Management to back down from enforcing federal grazing fees. The protesters came out in support of local rancher Cliven Bundy, who’s been letting his cattle graze on federal land in Nevada for more than 20 years without a permit. “We’re standing up for the Constitution,” declared Bundy, to the delight of the television cameras. Bundy and his supporters have a simple constitutional worldview: They do not recognize the federal government’s constitutional authority to manage public lands within a state, and they believe the move against Bundy results from a corrupt political system determined to deprive the people of their rights. But instead of trying to convince a court to adopt their constitutional views or work through the political system, Bundy and his supporters have shown that they can enforce their interpretation of the Constitution by waving guns at federal officials.



On the surface, the dispute at Bundy Ranch focuses on a fairly esoteric constitutional question: whether the Property Clause of Article IV, which grants Congress “power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States,” authorizes the federal government to own and manage the public lands within a state. The problem for Bundy and his supporters is that the Supreme Court answered that question in 1897, ruling inCanfield v. United States that the admission of a state does not deprive the federal government of power over public lands. Bundy’s supporters also challenge the federal government’s authority to restrict grazing to protect wildlife, but the court also rejected that argument in 1976, ruling in Kleppe v. New Mexico, that the BLM indeed may regulate grazing on the public lands to protect wild horses and burros. Armed with these and many other legal precedents, the BLM obtained a court order to stop Bundy from letting his cattle graze and ordering him to pay his unpaid bill or face seizure of his cattle.



Who decides what the Constitution means? The Supreme Court is often said to have exclusive authority to interpret the Constitution, but that position has never been universally accepted. President Lincoln, responding to the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857, declared that “If the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”


Over the last decade, some liberal law professors, led by Stanford’s Larry Kramer and Harvard’s Mark Tushnet, have challenged the notion of judicial supremacy. In its place they advance a theory known as “popular constitutionalism,” in which “We the People,” not the courts, should be understood as the final arbiters of constitutional meaning. Critics of this theory ask how it could be put into practice, and what mechanisms the American people may use to interpret and enforce their Constitution. And along come the protesters at Bundy Ranch to offer the obvious answer. Through force. The protesters are popular constitutionalists with guns, seeking to advance their constitutional interpretations by threatening to shoot any BLM agents attempting to enforce the law as interpreted by the courts.



The Bundy Ranch protest certainly fits within a long constitutional history in which radical groups have sought to effectuate their dissident views of the Constitution through violence. The Ku Klux Klan is the prototypical constitutional vigilante group. Operating outside formal legal structures, the Klan always asserted it was acting to restore the true meaning of the Constitution, which, in the words of a 1925 Klan publication, “put into written form the immortal principles of liberty, popular government, and equal justice, which were the fruitage of Anglo-Saxon character.” The Klan understood itself to be the vigilant protector of white Protestant values embodied in the Constitution, when local law enforcement was unwilling to step up.


The closer historic precedent for the Bundy Ranch protesters is the Posse Comitatus movement, however, launched around 1970 by Christian Identity pastor William Gale, which turned the Klan philosophy of enforcing the Constitution through armed citizen groups against a new enemy: the federal government. Gale warned federal officials: “You’re either going to get back to the Constitution of the United States or officials are gonna hang by the neck until they’re dead.” Like many on the radical right, then and now, the Posse movement asserted that much of what the federal government does is tyrannical and unconstitutional—most especially income tax laws, gun control, the Federal Reserve system, and federal management of public lands. Like many on the radical right of today, the Posse movement advocated a local philosophy of government, in which the county is the authentic unit of government. In Posse philosophy, the county sheriff was seen as the nation’s highest law enforcement officer, and he owed a duty to protect the people from federal tyranny. If the sheriff refuses to do his duty, the movement proclaimed, the people themselves should form armed posses to arrest and hang any official who violates the Constitution.



The distinctive feature of the Posse movement was the call for armed groups of citizens to take the Constitution into their own hands and enforce it through force. Murder and violence were the inevitable result. Posse groups kidnapped federal officials, put them on trial through the Posse’s own “common law” courts, and imposed brutal punishments. In 1983 former Posse member Gordon Kahl shot and killed two U.S. marshals and injured two others attempting to serve him papers for tax evasion.

By the early 1990s, the Posse Comitatus movement had largely faded away in response to strong state and federal law enforcement, but the militia movement soon replaced it and offered a similar philosophy. Like the Posse movement, militia leaders argued that the nation must return to the true (in their view) meaning of the Constitution. Like the Posse movement, militia leaders pointed to a series of perceived federal abuses—gun restrictions, income taxes, the Federal Reserve, and public lands regulation—and called for the formation of armed citizen groups to restore the true meaning of the Constitution through armed resistance. The militia movement justified the threatened use of force by asserting the “insurrectionary theory” of the Second Amendment, which claims that the amendment enshrines the right to bear arms to empower the people to protect themselves against government tyranny, should it ever arise. Militia leaders declared that tyranny was here and the time for armed resistance had come.



The immense dangers posed by the militia philosophy became obvious with the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Although Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were only loosely connected to the militia movement, the bombing demonstrated the catastrophic results of declaring the federal government to be the people’s enemy and calling on the people to rise up to enforce their own constitutional interpretations.



The militia movement, like the Posse movement before it, has largely faded from view, but the philosophy of armed resistance now finds a welcoming home in the Tea Party movement. Militia members form a significant constituency within the Tea Party. For instance, Oath Keepers claims to have enlisted 30,000 military and law enforcement personnel who have taken an oath to disobey a list of orders deemed unconstitutional. Oath Keepers members were out in force at Bundy Ranch. So were members of Richard Mack’s Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, an organization that advocates the old Posse philosophy that the county sheriff has a duty to repel federal officials whenever they encroach on county territory. Mack has said that he “prayed for the day that a sheriff in this country will arrest an IRS agent” for enforcing tax law. Cliven Bundy himself echoed the Posse in demanding that the local sheriff disarm the BLM and called on the protesters to rise up when the sheriff failed to do so.


The protesters at Bundy Ranch voice the same rhetoric of constitutional vigilantism honed by the Klan, the Posse, and the militias. What has changed is that this philosophy is no longer limited to the radical fringe but has become a respectable position offered up by mainstream political figures like Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, who called the protesters “patriots,” and by a stream of Fox News commentators likeSean Hannity and Andrew Napolitano, who called Bundy a hero for standing up to federal abuse.



Emboldened by their apparent victory at Bundy Ranch, the new constitutional vigilantes are asking where they can take the fight next. Cliven Bundy declared it a victory for “We the People.” But that can only be true if we want the Constitution to mean whatever an armed mob says it means.






Jared A. Goldstein teaches constitutional law and environmental law at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, R.I.