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

It was a very roundabout answer, but I think you kinda-sorta answered it when you allowed that: I recognize that you didn't really want to get to the admission that "the chain of legal ownerships" derives from... the government. Property (most especially real property) ownership derives from the system of protections provided by the government. There are great theories about the creation of property, but the reality is that property rights exist solely through the creation of mechanisms of the government on behalf of "the people" as a whole - and those property rights always come with caveats. Easements, for example, are limitations on your property; property taxes are ubiquitous. In some jurisdictions, mineral and water rights have to be separately passed. So the "takings" arguments are not on the firmest of footings to begin with. They become even weaker when the theories are more novel. Not every limitation on an owner's use of property can be considered a compensable "taking." It becomes even more difficult when some of those uses become "nuisances" to neighbors (such as from pollution, runoff, damming or taking of water sources, depletion of wildlife stocks).

I do appreciate the discursion on property theory and history. Some of that history, however, is questionable. For example, the claim that "When you work your land, farm it or mine it, you establish ownership. In many ways that was the way the founding fathers claimed their ownership." No, not really, not at all. "Ownership," up until the revolution, was explicitly at the sufferance of the monarch. That was the "land theory" that prevailed at the time of the establishment of the Constitution, and it was carried forward in myriad ways in American legal jurisprudence. The concept of "working the land" to establish ownership succeeded that by decades, and really came into the fore in the mid-19th Century (beginning with the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 and the later, more robust, Homestead Acts). But those "land grants" came from - oh, yeah, the government.

The real theory of land ownership that has prevailed throughout American history is that of grants of title - beginning with the grants from the crown for the colonies. Even the usurpation of lands from indigenous peoples was conducted under the color of an "exchange" for value. So, while I find them interesting, they are not an accurate description of how we got here.

Similarly, the attempt to excuse the Bundy clan's behavior is not based on reality, but how you would prefer things to be, or have been. This thread was explicitly about the Bundys' behavior and claims, so when you assert "Now you bring his sons actions at Malheur pertaining to the Ammond farming situation to the debate. That is truly skewing the perspectives." - that is patent nonsense. That was the premise of the thread as demonstrated by the title.

Here is a point upon which we have complete agreement, however: (I'm not going to get into the legal morass the Ammonds got themselves into, because it is complicated, and the legal niceties of why they were re-incarcerated are a thread of their own. I have previously opined that it should not have happened, but I can as easily make the government case that not following the law would have given them "preferential treatment" - which would be accurate. The "factual background" you assert of their situation, however, is mostly wishful reinterpretation.)