How, pray tell, do you define a militia?  And is labelling any group you don’t like as a militia intended as a pejorative?  Late yesterday a small group of ranchers and associates seized a building at a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon.  As a young reporter I visited one of these government refuges and watched then Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt do some tricks with a raptor perched on his left arm.  The building behind him wasn’t much larger than a typical bungalow house.

This isn’t anything akin to John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry.  Brown intended to snatch arms and then lead a revolt against slavery.  The occupation in Oregon has a much more placid goal.  The occupiers (not to be confused with media darlings who some years ago fouled parks in major cities across the land) are calling attention to an increasingly tyrannical government!

Two ranchers from Burns, Oregon have been convicted of terrorism because twice over the last decade-and-a-half they did what ranchers have been doing since arriving in the west.  The father and son performed controlled burns.  Fire has been a common agricultural and hunting tool in the west since even before the first European descendants arrived.  When the men were initially sentenced a judge balked at the ridiculously harsh guidelines and was lenient.  What followed was a textbook example of a federal government looking to flex its muscles to pummel the people it serves.  Washington, D.C. appealed and a liberal court in San Francisco ordered the ranchers back to prison.  The ranchers also bowed to a government demand that if they sell land some concoction known as the Bureau of Land Management gets right of first refusal.  The BLM currently has a chokehold in some western states of anywhere from two-thirds to three-quarters of the land.  As the Hammond Ranch falters with its operators behind bars the federal beast can devour even more ground.  This is why there are men occupying a federally “owned” building in Oregon, to stop a land grab and clearance of citizens from the sagebrush.  Parallels would be the English practice of rack-renting in Ireland or perhaps a previous clearance in the American west prior to the arrival of cattle and ranchers.

It's not for the timid.
It's not for the timid. Courtesy, Getty Images
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The BLM allows non-indigenous wild horses to roam across many of these lands, gouging the millennia old ground held together by the roots of plants evolved to survive the harsh conditions.  Meanwhile cattle grazing across the region better approximate conditions of the original bison.  This is what happens when community organizers from Chicago make decisions about people and places of which they little understand.

News media is going to protect the feds.  It didn’t care when the community organizer’s government used the Internal Revenue Service to run roughshod over political opponents.  News media bought the initial lies about Benghazi and downplays the truth today.  News media ignores the numerous instances of domestic spying during the Obama years and including when news media was the target.  Talk about Stockholm Syndrome!

The sycophants yesterday were reporting there were no government agents at a peaceful protest in support of the Hammond family.  As if government agents would approach reporters and say, “Hey, guess who I am!”  Agents blended into the crowd.  They were smiling as they took pictures and captured faces and license plate numbers.  Many of the demonstrators involved yesterday took part in two recent (and separate from this issue) protests in Idaho.  I attended both as a matter of curiosity and captured sound for my radio program.  During one protest a woman in blue jeans and a tight leather coat was taking photographs and engaging people in banter.  Then someone recognized her from a government hearing some months before.  Her cover blown she slithered away.

Nevada rancher Ammon Bundy is among those involved in the Oregon takeover.  You may remember his family had a similar run-in with federal agents.  Conservative media abandoned the Bundy cause when it was claimed the elder Cliven Bundy once said he believed black people were lazy.  As if his comments some 25-years-ago changed the nature of his battle with the government.  I grew up in rural America and Bundy’s views from long ago were quite common.  Now we know the truth is a great many Americans are lazy and it cuts across all ethnic lines.  Many are timid and turn away from conflict and controversy and news media will now feed the fears.

Parched and in need of constant vigilance.
Parched and in need of constant vigilance.
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I’ve lived in this part of the country just over a year.  Last summer I was driving in the desert and stopped to photograph scenery.  A truck pulled up and the driver asked if everything was fine.  We started to speak, he recognized me, and we stood in the middle of the quiet road for half-an-hour.  His family owns nearly 35-hundred-acres.  I commented back home a 400-acre-farm is considered large.  “Because it’s a productive 400-acres,” he explained.  “Here you need the space just to squeak by!”  You see, the federal government is interfering with livelihoods and a way-of-life.  People aren’t pleased.

The former Sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, Richard Mack, was in Oregon this weekend.  When questioned by a reporter he replied with a question.  He asked just who did the Hammonds terrorize?  An even better question:  Can you find the real terrorist in the sagebrush?

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Update:  Just saw a Facebook post.  It explains the building occupied was empty, unlocked and there wasn't one "No Trespassing" sign.  It appears no laws have been broken as no hours of operation have been posted.  Will CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, MSDNC and the NY Times make that clear?

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Update:  Lefty would have you shot for sleeping in a vacant government building!

I’ve been reading some of Lefty’s online comments about Oregon and the nature center.  One prominent talk show host known for holding hands with his guests wants the younger Bundy family members and their associates executed.  Some Hollywood liberal types are demanding the federal government also go in with guns blazing.  These same Hollywood leftists would wet themselves in the presence of firearms.  One liberal suggested it won’t happen because the younger Bundy’s are white.

You know, they’ve not looted the CVS, burned down any cities, or fired into crowds and at police in Ferguson.  They haven’t talked about frying pigs in blankets.

One liberal claims ranchers despoil the land.  Hell, the Snake River Valley was a wasteland until ranching terraformed the place and made it productive.  You’ve got limousine liberals living in 20-thousand square foot houses and they’re salivating at government taking over the land in flyover country.

I’ve got a better idea.  Why doesn’t government seize the Hollywood and Hampton mansions of the left and turn the buildings into homeless shelters.  While it would ruin the cocaine business in those neighborhoods you can wager Lefty could finally do something worthwhile.

The best part of any liberal was the placenta.  Now it’s time to get some value from their useless remaining protoplasm.

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