So there is a rancher in Nevada who has, for decades, used government land to raise cattle. He has refused to pay any grazing fees to the Federal Government and has stated that he abides by "almost zero" Federal laws.

Well of course he now owes over $1m and a state court authorized the government to take his animals. To which he has responded by rounding up a bunch of ******s with guns, in an apparent willingness to engage in a Waco style firefight if he doesn't get to keep using government land for free. The feds are understandably concerned that this jackass will indeed start firing, so they don't really seem to have a plan.

http://www.vox.com/cards/nevada-ranc...the-government

But there is, predictably, one man who absolutely has a plan - a plan to play on the insecurities of idiots to raise money and score cheap political points with so-called libertarians. That would be, of course, PRINCIPLED LIBERTARIAN Rand Paul!

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...vada-standoff/

This quote is of course complete nonsense as the government is explicitly enforcing a state court (loool) judgment.

Bonus ass-covering nonsense:

Rand is either unaware that this has been 'in court' for 20+ years or straight up lying. Both seem plausible.

Another solid summary here.

When I first heard about the feds and bundy ranch, I thought some whores were going to jail. oh well

Fox news is loving this story tho. I think they were disappointed there wasn't bloodshed.

The outcome will only embolden the militia people into latching on to any future problems. They have seen they can solve their disputes with guns and not the rule of law. I see BLM putting a lien on the Bundy ranch.

Thanks Obama

The summary on, I think, Maddow a few days ago was good. TDS would have made hay if they were around as Fox were egging on the criminals hoping for another Waco. It was both hilarious and super disgusting.

I thought his case had been through federal court, not state court.

What's TDS?

The Daily Show

The most hilarious people, other than the people who trucked themselves out to Nevada with their guns and grandiose visions of finally kicking off the Patriot Revolution against the Socialist Kenyan Usurper-in-Chief, Harry Reid and his cadre of enforcers, are the people cheering this from the social-media sand box and saying that this is exactly why we have the Second Amendment. This is like a perfect example of why the 2A should not be construed as an individual right, rather than the right of the states to maintain well regulated militias.

Obama admin backs down yet again is part of the message here. From what I understand the rancher doesn't have a leg to stand on legally but I'm not that familiar with the case.

Appears to be Federal courts.


My favorite quote:

If they were "eco-terrorists" (the "biggest domestic terror threat in USA#1 according to 2005 FBI sources) chaining themselves to trees to prevent History Channel's Ax Men from strip mining a forest somewhere, we'd be seeing exactly the opposite sort of bleating from Fox and Fiends.

I'm sure TDS could or will come up with some hilarious comparisons betwen Fox's coverage of this event and the Occupy protests.

Yeah but that's not really a fair comparison given the millions upon millions of rapes during the OWS protests.

not to mention all the violent stonings

Would you approve it more if they didn't show some restraint and started a shooting fight with these idiots instead?

There are some cases where Federal regulatory bodies overstep and there isn't due process to appeal, which is terrible and needs to be fixed, but this isn't one of them (from my understanding) and threatening armed insurrection isn't an acceptable response.

I was going to start a thread about this a few days ago but I'm phenomenally lazy. This situation is so goddamn absurd.

1. Steal the use of federal land for your own cattle grazing purposes.

2. Do so for 20 years.

3. Rack up millions in rent and fines for doing so.

4. Claim that the land actually belongs to the state of Nevada instead of the federal government, as it somehow it would be less wrong to do what he's doing, even if it would be in fact less illegal. Nevermind that the title to the land clearly states US government and both the US government and the state of Nevada have come out and said, look bro, this is federal land.

5. Government is finally like, OK BRO, enough is enough, we've been battling you for two decades and you clearly don't give a ****. We're going to start rounding up your cattle that you're letting freely roam on LAND THAT ISN'T YOURS.

6. Claim government tyranny, get a right-wing militia shows up to fight this horrible government injustice against an innocent upstanding citizen.

The political support that this criminal has gotten has been absurd. We've got Rand Paul saying "this is cray cray bros why does the government have to show up with armed police and swat teams" ...never mind that the government backed off when they saw the bat**** insane right-wing militia that had gathered there undoubtedly ready for a legitimate firefight. Then there's Joe Walsh, being an opportunistic douchebag knowing that there's a faction out there who will totally appreciate him standing up for a federal criminal





You know that this is right-wing/libertarian crazy land when you see that this has gotten a lot of attention in Nebraska and super-conservative Nebraskans pretty much unanimously side with the federal government.

IM ABOUT TO JOIN HUNDREDS OF TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOTS

Nice to see that Joe Walsh took a break from the Eagles tour to get involved in a political cause.

just call in a flight of A-10s from Nellis already, Christ.

Which is one of many hilarious aspects of this. The federal government showing an amazing amount of restraint by not rolling over this deadbeat thief and his band of armed revolutionaries flies in the face of the Federal Government = tyrannical monster narrative that all the people cheering this on ascribe to. In a world with no federal government, and strong private property rights, this situation would almost certainly have ended in some kind of bloody conflict.

He's gotta sell the cattle at some point. Just get a court order to seize the proceeds?

Sort of assume they decided to do something like that instead, either seize that or his bank account or put a lien on the ranch.

They've been trying to resolve this in court and out of court for 20 years, he clearly has no intention of paying anything to anyone or removing his cattle. He's been given ample opportunity to do so

The conspiratorial Harry Reid is using the Endangered Species Act to sell out the American West to Red China narrative is also hilarious.

Ikes gonna come back to deliver his voice of non-condemnation even though he "doesn't really care" this time?

Fascinating story IMO. I came back to 2p2 to see if anyone was playing Titanfall on 360 (nope!) but was hoping there would be a thread on this story as well. There's been one in Unchained but it devolved relatively quickly into an argument with one of the trolls who hangs out there.

What intrigues/impresses me most about this story is how little this guy has to stand on yet people are rising up to defend him like it's the second coming of the American Revolution(granted it's a relatively small yet highly armed group). I have, like, no clue as to what they think they are defending. I'm sure the fact that this is about an older white guy who wears a cowboy hat and talks in generalizations about being a patriot helps, but he has neither a legal nor logical claim to the use of the land. All he needed to do was pay some nominal fees and this whole situation would have been avoided, but now somehow it's about individual and state rights. To me this all just stems from the neo-Republican ideal that any taxation is somehow unjust and that the federal government has "no right to do anything without permission of the American people" (except you know fund a gigantic military). I guess it's asking too much of them to comprehend that the government is acting on their behalf by collecting fees on public land that a private individual is profiting from.