If you were to park your car on federal public land and a federal agent came along and destroyed it with a sledgehammer, you would be able to file a felony criminal charge with the local sheriff against that agent or whoever instructed him to carry out the criminal act of damaging private property.
So Cliven Bundy should call up Sheriff Doug Gillespie or one of his Bunkerville area deputies, show him his destroyed water tank and demand an arrest warrant be issued. The 12,000-gallon water tank, torn apart by federal vandals, was undeniably Bundy’s private property as a part of his water rights, granted by the state of Nevada. The fact it lies within federally controlled land makes no difference.
He could throw in a charge over the cows and calves killed in the roundup and the two bulls shot to death, but the water tank destruction was a blatant criminal act without provocation or justification.
According to a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal opinion in the case against Ruby Valley rancher Cliff Gardner, the sheriff has every right to enforce Nevada criminal laws on federally controlled land:
“Indeed, a state may enforce its criminal and civil laws on federal land ‘so long as those laws do not conflict with federal law.’ … The state of Nevada, then, is not being unconstitutionally deprived of the ability to govern the land within its borders. The state may exercise its civil and criminal jurisdiction over federal lands within its borders as long as it exercises its power in a manner that does not conflict with federal law.”
I doubt there is a federal law giving BLM agents the right to destroy private property with impunity.
Dead cow and destroyed water tank.
4TH ST8 
With the fall election approaching I imagine politicians of all stripes want this issue to disappear. If the head of the BLM wasn’t Harry Reid’s man answers would be demanded of him but don’t anyone hold your breath for that eventuality. For all practical purposes the game is over, Harry Reid labeled them “domestic terrorists” and now Cliven Bundy has been labeled a racist. The folk hero, Bundy, is facing a hard ball pitcher, Reid, and he’s down two strikes in the ninth.
Clearly, the blood of that bull is on the hands of Barak Hussein Obama.
Will these hands ne’er be clean!
Convenient distraction from the Obamacare situation.
’tis true: the entire Bundy Ranch story is a false flag operation by the White House designed to distract people from the fact that millions and millions of Americans have finally been able to obtain high-quality, affordable health insurance for their families.
way to overreact, nyp…taking lessons from BLM “law enforcement” again?
I dislike responding to nyp’s smug smarmy inanities but I have to say his reference that “millions and millions of Americans have finally been able to obtain high-quality, affordable health insurance for their families” is the most inane of his many inane comments. Millions and millions of us had health insurance satisfactory and affordable to us and millions and millions of people that had no insurance received health care at mostly local government expense. Counties planned for it, even taxed for it but that wasn’t good enough for the bloodsuckers in Washington. Thw freaking program was never about actual health care, it’s about big government control and the massive amounts of money to be funneled to those bloodsuckers in Washington DC. There are endless reports about signups but none about the numbers of people actually paying premiums. There are reports of hideous expense and difficulty in signing up. Even worse, there is yet to be reports of health care delivered under this program, if there were it would be boasted to the heavens by the media propagandists.
How are you enjoying your Medicare?
I had good insurance from my employment that would have carried me through life but then along came LBJs great society and money was taken from my paycheck, money that was to be strictly for care when I reached 65. That didn’t last long, it went to general government budgeting/spending/profligacy. On top of that, a deduction for Medicare is taken from SS that I also paid into while working. It’s not free, I pay and so do most people of 65 and over. I’m guessing that you are one of those that was lulled under the impression that Obamacare was to be free care, Medicare isn’t free and neither is Obamacare. And why does anyone believe Obamacare will be any different than Medicare which is forever on the brink of failure? One more thing, up until a couple of years ago it was quick and easy to get an appointment, now it’s a five or six week wait and longer for a referral to a specialist, perhaps you think that has nothing to do with federal mandates relating to Obamacare laws/rules/regulations. I’m a veteran so I could go there but my primary care doctor is a mile away, not on the outskirts, plus there are veterans that need care much more than I do and I don’t want to take time from them.
A quote from Jon Stewart. Is he correct?
“The government is overreacting, which they tend to do when 20 years of attempts to collect money, including four separate court judgments are ignored, and the owner might have mentioned he has weapons and is vowing to “do whatever it takes,” with his wife adding that she has a loaded shotgun and is “ready to do what we have to do.”
So you are pretty happy with your government healthcare. Good.
More to the point
“The government is overreacting” when they erect unconstitutional “first amendment areas” and try to prevent people from taking pictures and video of their actions in carrying out the “peoples business” and trying to define the act of taking those pictures and video as some kind of “assault” on a law enforcement officer…and trying to call the operation of cameras and video recorders “obstruction of justice”.
Nah, Rincon, Jon Stewart is like many of you guys…intent on keeping this about the law breaking rancher and not about the unconstitutional, illegal acts by our benevolent government bureaucrats.
Trampling and shredding the Constitution in an attempt to “perform ones duty” is not lawful.
Several issues about the BLM…1999 was when they should have acted on that court order…blocking cameras and people away was what brought the hundreds of “militia” with guns.
The people still on that ranch in support are wrong,,,Bundy is wrong…he lost. Years ago…the BLM is wrong for allowing it to go on this long and the BLM is wrong for raising it to the level it has reached.
Bundy handled it wrong from the beginning, in not paying for his grazing rights and doing the silly feds don’t exist and have no rights over me routine, he allowed the feds to frame the issue as a tenant/landlord dispute over non payment of rent. The actual issue is the heavy handed actions of the BLM in working to drive the cattlemen off of the land and out of business. Bundy and other ranchers in Nevada have grazing rights and water rights that go back to the 19th century. This is the issue, Bundy blew it and took the pressure off of the BLM and put it on him.
When the grass is allowed to grow during the spring it dries up and burns in the summer in large range fires. Cattle keep this grass short reducing the fuel the fuels these range fires. The BLM and Forestry folks are not working with ranchers and other users to take care of the land, their attitude is we know best and we don’t care about your century of experience on the land and we don’t care about the law.
The repeated mention of Bundy not paying grazing fees is a bit off the mark. The BLM was created to help “manage” public lands and multiple uses of those lands. The BLM told Bundy when he could graze his cattle and when he could not. Under the BLM dictates, his cattle would have lost weight and he would have gone out of business. He refused to sign their permit. If he had written the BLM a check they would not have taken it.
Nice Catch-22: If you sign, you’ll go out of business; If you don’t sign, we’ll put you out of business.
War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength
Thank you, Capt. John Yossarian.
Rancher welfare is in full force here.
The entitlement mentality
Thanks for the summary Steve. Sounds like nobody was being an angel..
I am tired of all the reports about the law breaking (and now {surprise!} racist) rancher as opposed to the silence in reporting about our angelic government bureaucrats.
[…] Nevada, efforts to save desert tortoises by federal land bureaucrats has led to the near extinction of ranchers in Clark County, leaving […]
[…] rancher Cliven Bundy while hired wranglers rounded up his cattle from BLM land and agents destroyed water tanks and pipelines and shot his […]
[…] In fact the only violence was committed by federal agents who killed and buried two of Bundy’s bulls, threw his sister to the ground, Tazered one son twice and arrested another son for recording a video, holding him overnight with no charges ever filed, the motion says, though it fails to mention that federal agents also destroyed a 12,000-gallon water tank. […]