Friday, April 11, 2014

BLM Gets Spanked For Free Speech Zones

Looks like their heavy handed attempt to restrict the First Amendment didn't sit so well with some folks with a little more pull.

I hope this little smack down has very large ripples and that certain power tripping political asswipes take notice of the amount of very quiet back pedaling going on here so that the next time some government thug wants to try and pull this crap they might think twice.

It's the First Amendment to The Constitution for a damn good reason.

BLM takes down ‘First Amendment areas’ set up for cattle roundup



By HENRY BREAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

The Bureau of Land Management quietly dismantled its so-called “First Amendment areas” in northeastern Clark County on Thursday, as the fight over Cliven Bundy’s cattle widened into a national debate about states’ rights and federal land-use policy.

State lawmakers from Arizona to Washington are headed for Nevada to rally alongside the Bundy family and its supporters. Most of them are Tea Party Republicans or Libertarians associated with a patriot group known as the Oath Keepers.

Several of the elected officials said they were drawn into the issue by video footage of Wednesday’s clash between angry protesters and BLM rangers that shows Bundy’s sister being tackled to the ground and one of Bundy’s seven sons being shot with a stun gun.

“Watching that video last night created a visceral reaction in me,” said Arizona Rep. Kelly Townsend, a Tea Party Republican who is driving up from Phoenix to take part in a rally with lawmakers and Oath Keepers near the Bundy ranch Monday. “It sounds dramatic, but it reminded me of Tiananmen Square. I don’t recognize my country at this point.”

Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, R-Las Vegas, called the footage “horrifying.” The pro-gun lawmaker has made two trips to the Bunkerville area in the past two days so she could meet with protesters, “protect our Nevadans and keep the peace.”

“I’m highly offended by the feds coming in as aggressively as they have,” Fiore said.

Federal officials have said the large law enforcement presence and high level of security come in response to direct and indirect threats of violence made by Bundy family members and others.

Before the federal roundup of Bundy’s livestock began, the BLM set up two orange plastic pens as rallying points for demonstrators wanting to protest the ongoing operation on federal land 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The move drew criticism from elected leaders and others. In a statement Tuesday, Gov. Brian Sandoval said the First Amendment areas were “offensive” and called on the agency to remove them.

During a conference call with reporters Thursday afternoon, Amy Lueders, state director for the BLM in Nevada, said the agency heard the governor’s concerns and “made some adjustments” to address them.

“We are allowing people to congregate on public land as long as they don’t inhibit the operation,” she said.

Bunkerville resident Jim Olson lives across the street from where one of the First Amendment areas was set up. He said it reminded him of East Berlin during the Cold War, and he was glad to see a crew of BLM firefighters take it down Thursday morning.

“It took five minutes. They hooked a truck onto it, and bing, bang, boom the fence was gone,” Olson said. “Of course the publicity has just been horrid, and they (BLM officials) are not handling it very well.”

My emphasis.

Made some adjustments huh?

Sounds like someone got some new orders from the Top Brass.


I would imagine the amount of backlash they have had coming their way probably caused one or more of these government thugs to piss down their leg and they couldn't get a hold of someone to yank that fence down fast enough.

Shit rolls down hill and gains momentum quickly.

Someone got their ass chewed and now there will be a scapegoat, you can take that to the bank.



The last bit of intelligence I have seen is suggesting that there will be a rather large contingent of individuals that are going to be in the area for some serious up close and personal government oversight.

It appears that more and more citizens have had about enough of Government Gone Wild and have decided that a message needs to be sent back to the idiots in D.C. via the fastest method available.

A Government flunky with a scalded ass and a cell phone seems to be just the ticket.





My thanks to Bridget for the link.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Man, I'm glad to see this situation in Nevada is getting some play, the America we grew up in many ways looks like some 'Banana Republic' dictatorship gone awry. That picture of 'Free Zone' in orange construction fence really said it all - YOU CAN HAVE YOUR SAY AS LONG AS YOU HAVE A TALKING STICK. Jeez!

Robert Fowler said...

"“We are allowing people to congregate on public land"

Allowing? Here's a hint bitch. That land belongs to "we the people". How about if a bunch of armed patriots show up and "allow" you to keep breathing?

BadTux said...

Oh come on now. This is every fucking day anybody protests the people who are REALLY fucking us, the bankers. Just look to what they did to those Occupy Wall Street protesters who protested the bankers stealing *TRILLIONS* from pension funds by selling them "good as Treasuries" mortgage-backed securities that in fact were backed by liar loans guaranteed to go bad, and furthermore the cops stomped on these protesters with hob-nailed boots WITHOUT EVEN A COURT ORDER. Meanwhile the BLM is trying to enforce not one, not two, but THREE court orders against a deadbeat who is running his cattle on MY land for HIS profit without paying a dime in grazing fees for the past twenty years, and THEY are the bad guy? When they're trying to deal with a THIEF?! FUCK THAT SHIT!

Bundy got his day in court. Fuck, over the past twenty years he got his day in more fucking courts than the goddamned LA Lakers, and lost in all of them. I have no patience with the kind of people who insist that the Constitution granting the judging power (judicial power) to the courts is meaningless. Either we have rule of law under the Constitution, or we have anarchy.

As for the "Protest Zones", most of these "Patriots" were just fine with them when it was Dirty Fucking Hippies protesting Dear Dubya's Idiotic War To Make Iraq Safe For Iran. Where were they then? Oh right, they were busy at home stroking their goddamned guns and dreaming of killing Dirty Fucking Hippies and Random Brown People. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. If they were so goddamned supportive of the Constitution, why weren't they out there protesting not one, but *TWO* wars that were illegally conducted without a declaration of war as required by the Constitution? Oh right, it's not about the Constitution for them, it's about the right to be goddamned DEADBEATS on *MY* land for free....

Fuck that shit. 'Nuff said.

Phil said...

I'll stand by my record .
You of all people should know that I have been railing about these subjects since 2006.

BadTux said...

I was referring to the "patriots" who are showing up to "defend the Constitution" by standing up for this man's right to steal national resources without paying for them (which apparently means, spitting on the courts set up by said Constitution, which is defending the Constitution, how?). You know who I'm talking about. While all the dirty fucking hippies were getting the shit beat out of them by the coppers *without* a court order, they were at home stroking their guns and dreaming of race wars. Because, dirty fucking hippies, yo. Now that it's some old white gun stroker getting some loving attention *after* twenty years of court action and *after* appearing in more courts than the LA Lakers to exercise his due process rights, which were duly exercised thank you very much, they're coming like flies out of the woodwork. To defend a deadbeat. Because apparently the right to steal national resources is all that's important.

So yeah, I'm glad they're taking down these "free speech areas", though I might point out that law enforcement is responsible for the safety of protesters and with all these big trucks and such rolling through, these areas had a useful purpose, which was to keep the protesters from getting their asses run over by cattle trucks rolling through with 40 tons of beef on the hoof. Still, just calling them "protest zones" has connotations that I don't like. But the vast majority of the people complaining about this situation only care that white gun strokers are getting herded into these areas rather than dirty fucking hippies protesting illegal wars and war criminals. When it was the DFH's getting herded like cattle, they were fucking *applauding*, and you know that just as well as I do.

- BT

Mike Reagan said...

The scary part is that they had those signs ready to go.

Anonymous said...

Here's a clue.

It's state land.

Bundy's happy to pay the grazing fees as long as they go to the state/county vs. the feds.

BTW, your bud Dingy Harry Reid appears to have gotten a "variance" on the boundary of his land deal vicinity the "desert tortoise" (and after the feds gassed about 1k of them), so that he made a cool million and became one of your hated 1 percenters.

Yep, guess some critters are "more equal" than others.

Anonymous said...

Oh ya, it gets better Tennessee!

Turns out this "guy" who greased the skids on Dingy Harry's land deal is a friend.

Turns out this "guy" is also a fellow Nevadan.

Turns out this "guy" is also ... the Director of BLM.

Ya smell that? There's no other smell like that in the world. I love that smell in the morning.

Smells like ...Chicago.

BadTux said...

No, it's not state land. The Federal government paid Mexico cold hard cash ($15M worth, roughly $1.5T in today's dollars) for that land. This bullshit about how the Federal government can't buy land from other nations because it's unconstitutional was settled in 1804, when Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Purchase from France. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and most of the Bill of Rights. He for damn sure knew what was constitutional and not constutitional, he helped write the goddamn thing!

And besides, under the Constitution Bundy doesn't get to decide whether it's state land or not. The Constitution grants that judging power to the COURTS. And Bundy tried out his novel "state land" theory in more courts than the goddamned LA Lakers, and all of them laughed him out of the court room and told him the was full of shit. If you want to say that the mechanisms laid out by the Constitution ain't Constitutional, you're full of more shit than Harry fucking Reid and John fucking Boehner combined. Just sayin'.

BadTux said...

Probably borrowed the signs from the Secret Service, who had them made up in order to protect Dear Leader George W. Shrubbery from having to view dirty fucking hippies protesting his unconstitutional wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (no declaration of war, which the Constitution mandates, and no a goddamned resolution is *NOT* a declaration of war!).

tweell said...

As I understand it, the US acquired the area in question (Nevada) in the war with Mexico after annexing Texas into the Union. The republic of Texas had claimed part of that, but since boundaries weren't ever stated and Mexico had not agreed that their break-away province of Texas should exist, it's a gray area. The US 'paid' Mexico, but money never changed hands, it was just taken off their (bad) debt.

Bundy's claim is that his family had their ranch since the 1870's, long before the Feds came and declared it theirs in the 1930's. If so, he has a valid point. Lord knows FDR's kleptocracy stole quite a bit in the Southwest. My family was run out of Mexico by Pancho Villa for having gringo members. Mexico took our land, eventually paying the FDR government for it. We never saw a dime. GGrandma went to sue, and got a visitor that told her that the money was gone and if she raised a stink she would lose her US citizenship and everything else.

BadTux said...

It's been established law since the Land Act of 1796 that merely squatting on Federal land did not give you property rights. You had to file purchase papers on the land or, later, under the Homestead Act of 1862, homestead papers. Until then, you were merely squatting on the land. Note the date 1796. That's during the Presidency of George Washington, who signed the Land Act of 1796. WTF, these people think they know the Constitution better than George fucking Washington?!!!! WOW!

BadTux said...

In case you're wondering, the Land Act in place at the time that Nevada was bought from Mexico was the Preemption Act of 1843, which grants only a small part of Federal lands to the states formed out of Federal acquisitions. And which further solidified the concept that squatters do not own the Federal land that they're squatting upon until they buy it by explicitly calling out squatters as not owning said land until they pay for it (homesteading came later, in 1862). The Preemption Act was also the Federal land law in power at the time that Nevada was admitted to the Union in 1864, and thus would have been the controlling law of said admission (i.e. would have transferred only 500,000 acres of Federal land to the government of the new state, as called for by the law).

_ Badtux the Legal History Penguin

Anonymous said...

Well Tennesse, looks like we were both bamboozeled.

Seems Dingy Harry smelled more like Chinese takeout than Chicago:

http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/harry-reid-chinese-company-behind-nevada-ranch-standoff/?cat_orig=politics

http://www.infowars.com/feds-back-down-from-bundy-siege-after-infowars-expose-of-chinese-land-grab/

Guess BLM decided them cattle were a whole lot more 'sustainable' than another bankrupt solar panel company.

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