Oregon "militia" standoff.

[Nebe]

I'm curious to see how this situation is resolved.

All I know is that if 150 armed Muslim men took over a fed building there would be a MOAB dropped on it within the hour.

[buckman]

Originally Posted by Nebe

I'm curious to see how this situation is resolved.

All I know is that if 150 armed Muslim men took over a fed building there would be a MOAB dropped on it within the hour.

I don't believe this government considers Muslim's or Islam to be related to any armed problem . Not now or in the future
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[PaulS]

Originally Posted by Nebe

I'm curious to see how this situation is resolved.

All I know is that if 150 armed Muslim men took over a fed building there would be a MOAB dropped on it within the hour.

And if it wasn't people would be calling the govern. weak on terrorists.
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[buckman]

In comparison to a mid size Black Lives Matter protest this doesn't appear to be news worthy
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[nightfighter]

Something stinks there..... Father and son being told to report back to prison because their sentence was too short???? Due process would seem to come into play one would think.
I need more info to formulate opinion on armed militia occupying a government property. But my initial thought is that it should not have gotten this far.

[Nebe]

I see a David Koresh type situation in the making here. They even brought children with them.
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[nightfighter]

Two different situations, and one is piggybacking on the other for effect. They are claiming Constitutional rights, but I haven't read where they get their argument for that. They have mobilized from all around the region, but are going about it all wrong, IMO...... If they want to play stoopid with their guns, they are just asking for a visit from a Blackhawk gunship

[Nebe]

While I think a gunship is unlikely, don't forget the tear gas followed by flare gun trick.
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[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by PaulS

And if it wasn't people would be calling the govern. weak on terrorists.
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I don't think the stated goal of these whackos in Oregon is to kill as many innocent people as they can.

They are creating a very combustible situation.

It also seems troubling that an judge would retroactively decide that a sentence was too light and order someone back to jail after they had been released. But this isn't the answer.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by buckman

In comparison to a mid size Black Lives Matter protest this doesn't appear to be news worthy
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I would think the Oregon militia is better armed than a typical Black Lives Matter protest, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Krazies on both sides, that's for sure.

[Slipknot]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

It also seems troubling that an judge would retroactively decide that a sentence was too light and order someone back to jail after they had been released. But this isn't the answer.

maybe he saw a video like Goodell did in Ray Rices case

[Nebe]

Yes. The issue about the judge is very troubling.
Im on the fence on this one because there are times when the government needs to be held accountable when something goes wrong but I am not so sure this is the way to go about it.
The people calling these guys Ya'll Qaeda crack me up though!
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[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by Nebe

Yes. The issue about the judge is very troubling.
Im on the fence on this one because there are times when the government needs to be held accountable when something goes wrong but I am not so sure this is the way to go about it.
The people calling these guys Ya'll Qaeda crack me up though!
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"there are times when the government needs to be held accountable when something goes wrong "

Correct, and those times are called "elections".

Protest is fine. Not armed protests where you are warning the feds not to try and enforce the law. That's begging for trouble.

"Ya'll Qaeda "

Funny, agreed. But WAY off the mark. No comparison.

[Notfishinenuf]

Here's the backstory of this whole mess:

http://theconservativetreehouse.com/...n/#more-110497

Seems like a big mess with no easy way out.

Vic

[Raven]

ya gotta LOVE his Hat
Like Sherriff Longmire Man

[spence]

Originally Posted by Notfishinenuf

Here's the backstory of this whole mess:

http://theconservativetreehouse.com/...n/#more-110497

Seems like a big mess with no easy way out.

Vic

Also might want to read this...


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...ained-20160103
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[Notfishinenuf]

Originally Posted by spence

Also might want to read this...


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...ained-20160103
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Already read it. The Hammonds really want no part of this. The Bundys are pretty much organizing it. The Hammonds are getting screwed in more ways than one. Follow some of the links in the rolling stone piece.

Vic

[wdmso]

Seems Hiding behind the Constitution is Becoming the new Norm For the Right

its become the new Get out of Jail free card.. Make up an interpretation and tell your friends and post it on the Internet and Bam its the Truth

[scottw]

[QUOTE=wdmso;1090007]

Seems Hiding behind the Constitution is Becoming the new Norm For the Right

/QUOTE]

think about that...

[scottw]

The Case for Civil Disobedience in Oregon
By David French — January 4, 2016

Watching the news yesterday, a person could be forgiven for thinking that a small group of Americans had literally lost their minds. Militias are marching through Oregon on behalf of convicted arsonists? A small band of armed men has taken over a federal building? The story practically writes itself.

Or does it? Deranged militiamen spoiling for a fight against the federal government make for good copy, but what if they’re right? What if the government viciously and unjustly prosecuted a rancher family so as to drive them from their land? Then protest, including civil disobedience, would be not just understandable but moral, and maybe even necessary.

Ignore for a moment the #OregonUnderAttack hashtag — a rallying cry for leftists accusing the protesters of terrorism — and the liberal media’s self-satisfied cackling. Read the court documents in the case that triggered the protest, and the accounts of sympathetic ranchers. What emerges is a picture of a federal agency that will use any means necessary, including abusing federal anti-terrorism statutes, to increase government landholdings.

The story as told by the protesters begins not with the federal criminal case against Steven and Dwight Hammond but many years earlier, with the creation and expansion of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a tract of federal land set aside by President Theodore Roosevelt as “a preserve and breeding-ground for native birds.” The federal government has since expanded the preserve in part by buying adjacent private land.

Protesters allege that when private landowners refused to sell, the federal government got aggressive, diverting water during the 1980s into the “rising Malheur lakes.” Eventually, the lakes flooded “homes, corrals, barns, and graze-land.” Ranchers who were “broke and destroyed” then “begged” the government to buy their “useless ranches.”

By the 1990s, the Hammonds were among the few private landowners who remained adjacent to the Refuge. The protesters allege that the government then began a campaign of harassment designed to force the family to sell its land, a beginning with barricaded roads and arbitrarily revoked grazing permits and culminating in an absurd anti-terrorism prosecution based largely on two “arsons” that began on private land but spread to the Refuge.

While “arsons” might sound suspicious to urban ears, anyone familiar with land management in the West (and to a lesser degree, in the rural South and Midwest) knows that land must sometime be burned to stop the spread of invasive species and prevent or fight destructive wildfires. Indeed, the federal government frequently starts its own fires, and protesters allege (with video evidence) that these “burns” often spread to private land, killing and injuring cattle and damaging private property. Needless to say, no federal officers are ever prosecuted.

The prosecution of the Hammonds revolved mainly around two burns, one in 2001 and another in 2006. The government alleged that the first was ignited to cover up evidence of poaching and placed a teenager in danger. The Hammonds claimed that they started it to clear an invasive species, as is their legal right. Whatever its intent, the fire spread from the Hammonds’ property and ultimately ignited 139 acres of public land. But the trial judge found that the teenager’s testimony was tainted by age and bias and that the fire had merely damaged “juniper trees and sagebrush” — damage that “might” total $100 in value.

The other burn was trifling. Here’s how the Ninth Circuit described it:

In August 2006, a lightning storm kindled several fires near where the Hammonds grew their winter feed. Steven responded by attempting back burns near the boundary of his land. Although a burn ban was in effect, Steven did not seek a waiver. His fires burned about an acre of public land.

In 2010 — almost nine years after the 2001 burn — the government filed a 19-count indictment against the Hammonds that included charges under the Federal Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which mandates a five-year prison term for anyone who “maliciously damages or destroys, or attempts to damage or destroy, by means of fire or an explosive, any building, vehicle, or other personal or real property in whole or in part owned or possessed by, or leased to, the United States.”

RELATED: Public Land Colonialism: Of Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management

At trial, the jury found the Hammonds guilty of maliciously setting fire to public property worth less than $1,000, acquitted them of other charges, and deadlocked on the government’s conspiracy claims. While the jury continued to deliberate, the Hammonds and the prosecution reached a plea agreement in which the Hammonds agreed to waive their appeal rights and accept the jury’s verdict. It was their understanding that the plea agreement would end the case.

At sentencing, the trial court refused to apply the mandatory-minimum sentence, holding that five years in prison would be “grossly disproportionate to the severity of the offenses” and that the Hammonds’ fires “could not have been conduct intended [to be covered] under” the Anti-terrorism act:

When you say, you know, what if you burn sagebrush in the suburbs of Los Angeles where there are houses up those ravines? Might apply. Out in the wilderness here, I don’t think that’s what the Congress intended. And in addition, it just would not be — would not meet any idea I have of justice, proportionality. . . . It would be a sentence which would shock the conscience to me.

Thus, he found that the mandatory-minimum sentence would — under the facts of this case — violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment.” He sentenced Steven Hammond to two concurrent prison terms of twelve months and one day and Dwight Hammond to one prison term of three months. The Hammonds served their sentences without incident or controversy.

The federal government, however, was not content to let the matter rest. Despite the absence of any meaningful damage to federal land, the U.S. Attorney appealed the trial judge’s sentencing decision, demanding that the Hammonds return to prison to serve a full five-year sentence.

The case went to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the court ruled against the Hammonds, rejecting their argument that the prosecutor violated the plea agreement by filing an appeal and dismissing the trial court’s Eighth Amendment concerns. The Hammonds were ordered back to prison. At the same time, they were struggling to pay a $400,000 civil settlement with the federal government, the terms of which gave the government right of first refusal to purchase their property if they couldn’t scrape together the money.

There’s a clear argument that the government engaged in an overzealous, vindictive prosecution here. By no stretch of the imagination were the Hammonds terrorists, yet they were prosecuted under an anti-terrorism statute. The government could have let the case end once the men had served their sentences, yet it pressed for more jail time. And the whole time, it held in its back pocket potential rights to the family’s property. To the outside observer, it appears the government has attempted to crush private homeowners and destroy their livelihood in a quest for even more land.

If that’s the case, civil disobedience is a valuable course of action. By occupying a vacant federal building, protesters can bring national attention to an injustice that would otherwise go unnoticed and unremedied. Moreover, they can bring attention once again to the federal government’s more systemic persecution of private landowners.

RELATED: The Case for a Little Sedition

With vast segments of the American West in government hands, private landowners often find themselves at the mercy of the federal government — a government that often seems to delight in expanding its power and holdings at the expense of ranchers and farmers, one in the habit of placing turtles before people. Ranchers and farmers fighting the federal government are a tiny minority up against the world’s most powerful body. “David versus Goliath” simply doesn’t do the conflict justice.

While civil disobedience is justified, violence is not. So far, no one has been hurt, the “occupation” is occurring in a vacant federal building in the middle of nowhere, and there is no reported threat to innocent bystanders. It would be absurd for the federal government to treat the protesters like it treated the men and women at Waco or Ruby Ridge, and it would be absurd for the protesters to shoot police officers who are ordered to reasonably and properly enforce the law. The occupation is far less intrusive and disruptive than the Occupy Movement’s dirty and violent seizure of urban public parks, and authorities permitted that to go on for weeks. Now is the time for calm, not escalation.

RELATED: The Problem with Cliven Bundy

I sympathize with the ranchers’ fury, and I’m moved by the Hammonds’ plight. According to multiple accounts, they are good American citizens. Even the prosecutor noted that they “have done wonderful things for their community.” The district court noted that the character letters submitted on the Hammonds’ behalf were “tremendous” and that “these are people who have been a salt in their community.” Yet now they’re off to prison once again — not because they had to go or because they harmed any other person but because the federal government has pursued them like a pack of wolves.

They are victims of an all-too-common injustice. Ranchers and other landowners across the country find themselves chafing under the thumb of an indifferent and even oppressive federal government. Now is the time for peaceful protest. If it gets the public to pay attention, it won’t have been in vain.

[RIROCKHOUND]

A few thoughts from a liberal sand mechanic...

1. The mandatory sentence at the 'core' of this issuehere seems excessive, but then again this seems to more about the Bundy's than the Hammonds

2. I 100% support their right to have a peaceful protest, although this seems like an odd place for the bundy's to take their stand

3. I heard a talking head discuss this re: the Wisconsin state house "occupation", however the optics of the situation are different when the occupiers are openly packing.

3. If they fire a shot at the LEO's doing their job, then all bets or off and I won't feel sorry for the occupiers.

[Nebe]

Scott. The first fire was to destroy evidence of a poaching incident. What would your reaction be if a land owner next to sachuest point shot a few deer on the point and then burned a huge area to destroy the evidence ?
My guess is you would be shocked and demand legal action.
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[scottw]

Originally Posted by Nebe

Scott. The first fire was to destroy evidence of a poaching incident. What would your reaction be if a land owner next to sachuest point shot a few deer on the point and then burned a huge area to destroy the evidence ?
My guess is you would be shocked and demand legal action.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

there was legal action

The government alleged that the first was ignited to cover up evidence of poaching and placed a teenager in danger. The Hammonds claimed that they started it to clear an invasive species, as is their legal right. Whatever its intent, the fire spread from the Hammonds’ property and ultimately ignited 139 acres of public land. But the trial judge found that the teenager’s testimony was tainted by age and bias and that the fire had merely damaged “juniper trees and sagebrush” — damage that “might” total $100 in value.

In 2010 — almost nine years after the 2001 burn — the government filed a 19-count indictment against the Hammonds that included charges under the Federal Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which mandates a five-year prison term for anyone who “maliciously damages or destroys, or attempts to damage or destroy, by means of fire or an explosive, any building, vehicle, or other personal or real property in whole or in part owned or possessed by, or leased to, the United States.”

[scottw]

Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND

A few thoughts from a liberal sand mechanic...

1. The mandatory sentence at the 'core' of this issuehere seems excessive, but then again this seems to more about the B"undy's than the Hammonds

2. I 100% support their right to have a peaceful protest, although this seems like an odd place for the bundy's to take their stand

3. I heard a talking head discuss this re: the Wisconsin state house "occupation", however the optics of the situation are different when the occupiers are openly packing.

3. If they fire a shot at the LEO's doing their job, then all bets or off and I won't feel sorry for the occupiers.

agree with all of that....I'd remind you that the Occupy protesters took over Zuccotti pary for two months and disrupted many lives and businesses and became a place where crime was common all supported by the president, pelosi and many others....

so far these guys have taken over an empty building, have hurt no one nor disrupted any lives that I'm aware of

[spence]

Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND

however the optics of the situation are different when the occupiers are openly packing.

If they didn't have guns they'd just be liberals looking for a government handout. The fact that they're armed means they're defenders of the Constitution.

[buckman]

Originally Posted by spence

If they didn't have guns they'd just be liberals looking for a government handout. The fact that they're armed means they're defenders of the Constitution.

We all know that liberals are outstanding citizens when they dissent.
When somebody from a conservative viewpoint does it , they are wacko and dangerous .
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[ecduzitgood]

Originally Posted by spence

If they didn't have guns they'd just be liberals looking for a government handout. The fact that they're armed means they're defenders of the Constitution.

That is one of the most logical post I have seen from you. Very refreshing to see you finally get it.
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[scottw]

Originally Posted by spence

If they didn't have guns they'd just be liberals looking for a government handout. The fact that they're armed means they're defenders of the Constitution.

Oregon is an open carry state......I've yet to hear them march around calling for dead cops....like we heard from some other "peaceful protesters"

[JohnR]

Vanilla ISIS

I am mixed on the basis or the appropriateness for the Standoff - I would need to see more and just haven't had the time but I LOVE the dichotomy how it compares to the Occupy movements and BLM.

150 lightly armed people Domestic Terrorists protesting peacefully at a "federal building" (really, a rarely occupied shack) versus 10,000 people protesting peacefully with the appropriate peaceful deployment of Molotov cocktails, and artisinal hymns like "Pigs in a Blanket, eat em like Bacon"

[detbuch]

[QUOTE=scottw;1090018]

Originally Posted by wdmso

Seems Hiding behind the Constitution is Becoming the new Norm For the Right

/QUOTE]

think about that...

It does seems strange that he would say that, especially after serving 22 years in the infantry where he would have sworn to support and defend the Constitution. Seems that he would, as a member of the armed forces, defend the right's constitutional protections rather than accusing it of "hiding" behind them.

But I think what he actually means, by "hiding," is the misuse of the Constitution. He said "its become the new Get out of Jail free card. Make up an interpretation and tell your friends and post it on the Internet and Bam its the Truth."

The irony of that view is that conservatives insisting on the original interpretation of the Constitution is a new norm. Maybe he's right. Making the original interpretation a "new" one actually is an attempt to correct the current "norm" built up over years which has confiscated most of the People's rights and powers under the Constitution and transferred them over to the Federal Government. The current progressive norm holds that the Federal Government truly does have the right and power, through its own destructive interpretations of the Constitution, to redefine the bill of rights, as well as the rest of the Constitution, so can say what the People can actually do within those rights. It actually gives itself the power and right to be the owner and giver of those rights as it defines them, rather than they being, under the original "norm," unalienable.

wdmso, apparently, adheres to the progressive "interpretation" of the Constitution, so would view "conservatives" original view as worthy of jail time. And, therefor, seeing the original view as a phony attempt to create a "get out of jail free card."