Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues The Legal Forum Let's check in on the cattle abusers, deadbeat grazers, wildlife squatter Bundys

Even a federal law may be wrong. Thus it must be possible to challenge federal laws. Sometimes citizens do that and it's called civil disobedience, for which there is sometimes administered punishment and sometimes not.

The Bundys challenged the concept of the Federal government reserving the rights to decide over the state of Nevada over it's land use. On the path to decision making it came to a temporary decisive moment when the feds where asked the question, "do you really want to initiate violence over this at this point?" Wisely the feds answered no and stepped down.
The matter is now handled more peacefully in courts. Everybody should rejoice.

I'm done. It''s like trying to discuss something with a parrot.

why do folks arguing positions like yours always define stuff after the fact?

The reason I made the statement was because of one of the most critical distinctions one can make. Bundys thoughts and ideas are protected by the Constitution. Bundys actions are subject to the law.

The federal government did not file charges for what he thought (or for that matter what you think), but for what he did. I will defend his right (and yours) to think whatever he wants. I will defend his right to Constitutional protections should he put his thoughts into action and break the law. That you want to combine thoughts and actions obliterates the essential characteristic of the argument by injecting something not true nor valid. No one charged him with thought crimes; he was charged for the actions he took.

I guess you are calling what Bundy did civil disobedience. So please lets see your definition. Here is what wiki says
So in your mind the Bundy Gang, armed and threatening, federal officials is non-violent? or maybe you are saying it was armed and threatening and therefore a terrorist act. Either way you appear to have supported a ridiculous position.

It's isn't Nevada's land. It is federal land.

You would have a point if the federal government would tell Nevada what to do on Nevada public lands, but that is not the case here.

The Bundys, "sovereign citizens," and their apologists approach this issue bass-ackwards. Since the creation of the Union, there is a process for new States to join the Union. (We're now repeating arguments from earlier in the thread.) Let me reiterate: States are created by the United States from territory that is under the jurisdiction of the federal government. So the primary government of that property is the United States, and ceding some of that territory to the State government. There's no "land grab" involved - since the federal government already owned the property. All the rest is deception.

And this is rather important: There is no dispute between Nevada and the federal government about ownership of the land in question. Nevada agrees that it is federal land and anyone who wants to use it has to pay the federal government rent. Bundy claimed it "should be" state land, but he didn't want to pay the state for using it either! He wanted free use of the land, no matter who owned it. We have a name for that: We call it "stealing".

So Bundy is not some sort of Sovereign Citizen civil-disobediance hero, just some jerk who takes things that don't belong to him. That's the definition of "thief".

How about when the USA colonised the Rocky Mountain states? They were never founded by local settlers who asked permission to join the federation.
The land belonged natives not considered US citizens. So the land is stolen from it's rightful owners. Is the federal government fencing stolen property when it gives minor parts of the land to the states?
Since the same principles and processes for becoming a state in the USA were not applied for example to the NE states, the midwest and in particular the Rockies, was the forming of the USA discriminatory against the later joiners? Is it still discriminatory?
Where and what is the deception here?

Wrong, right from the start: The natives that lived in the area never considered the land "theirs". That was a concept that was not part of their culture. They thought land belonged to everybody, so they never made any claim to a particular piece of land. When the federal government created reservations, that was the first time ever in history that the native people could be said to own a particular piece of land.

But the only way that could happen is if the US claimed sovereignty over that land, and then granted it to the tribes. Exactly the same as granting property titles to states, homesteaders, purchasers, etc. All titles go back to that federal ownership.

Just because the natives did not think of land as property the immigrants from Europe did, it did not give right for the USA to claim it as federal land. You can call it stealing or colonisation or what ever, but it was not free for the taking.
If this view is not correct, why did we have indian wars and phony treaties?
This is what the Bundys recognises. They settled in the area in good neighbourly spirit with natives, but the federal government has shown it respects none of them.

Calling the reservations their first owned land is like calling prison their home.

In Nevada the federal government claims to own more land than in any other state of the union, 84.5%! On a map the Rockies states stand out; Utah 57.4%, Oregon 53.1%, Idaho 50.2%, Arizona 48.1%, California 45.3%, Wyoming 42.3%, New Mexico 41.8%, Colorado 36.6%, Washington 30.3% and Montana 29.9%.

Compare that to New York 0.8 % Maine 1.1% Massachusetts 1.9%, Connecticut 0.4%, New Jersey 3.1%, Pennsylvania 2.5%, Delaware 2.0% and even Texas 1.9%!
All according to the Federal Real Property Profile of 2004.

Do you see any imbalance in the respective states physical ability to rule over their own territory?

So much to respond to and no desire to counter it all...

Why did we have Indian Wars? The white man wanted the Indian land and out west the white man wanted the mineral wealth in the land and the land.

Reservations are prisons; open air places to be kept but prisons nonetheless.

All those eastern states were born in land grants from the English Crown, and because the English Crown said these white people owned the land the local inhabitants had to go. Additionally, all these eastern states were founded and claimed prior to there being a federal government and the rules for statehood changed cover time. The western states? Learn about Manifest Destiny, you should have been taught about this in grade school.