So, the Bundy clan is claiming they “won” because they made it too dangerous for civilian contractors who were there to enforce a court order that their cattle be removed from Federal lands due to non-payment of grazing fees and resulting loss of their grazing allotment, and thus the BLM ended the cattle roundup.
There’s one problem with such a claim: It’s not true. The court order that the Bundy cattle be removed from Federal lands still stands. All that Cliven Bundy accomplished was to reset the clock once again since now the BLM gets to go back to court asking for Bundy to be cited for contempt of court for interfering with the BLM’s execution of the court’s order. It will be a civil contempt charge, meaning that Bundy will get to see the BLM’s evidence that he interfered with the cattle roundup, but will have limited opportunity to refute it. Due process rights for civil contempt charges are limited because it is held that due process took place at the time that Bundy was found guilty of illegally running cattle on Federal land without a grazing allotment. All that is necessary is that the BLM provides sufficient evidence that Bundy interfered with the cattle roundup to prove contempt of the court’s order — and there’s clearly been sufficient evidence of that in the mainstream media alone.
At this point the judge will have a choice of two penalties. He can either fine Bundy — but there are already over a million dollars of outstanding fines against Bundy which Bundy is refusing to pay. OR, he can imprison Bundy until such time as his family removes all cattle illegally being grazed on Federal lands. Again, limited due process is needed for this imprisonment because the due process already took place when the judge found Bundy guilty of trespass and ordered him to remove his cattle from Federal lands. Bundy will be held to “hold the keys to his own prison” — all he has to do is order his son and employees to remove the cattle from Federal lands — and thus due process is not needed to imprison him until such time as he complies with the court’s order to remove all of his cattle from Federal land or until he dies of old age. Note that the latter is a distinct possibility if Bundy refuses to comply with the judge’s order — the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that there is no time limit on how long a person can be held for civil contempt.
Two guesses as to which one the Federal judge is likely to impose.
And note that once the arrest warrant is issued, it will be executed *swiftly*. If Bundy is actually in court at the time, he will be arrested on the spot. If he refused to show up in court, a US Marshals Service SOG team backed by FBI, BATF, and BLM resources will show up at his residence within an hour of the warrant being written. They will perform a high risk extraction operation, the kind they execute on drug kingpins and other high risk arrestees, the end result of which will be either a dead Bundy or a very disoriented Bundy being hauled out to an armored paddy wagon and hauled away to Federal prison in a heavily armed caravan. Or if they feel that’s too dangerous, they’ll put him into a helicopter and fly him out.
This is the “victory” that the Bundy clan is claiming. You cannot win when you defy a Federal court order. Period. It does not happen. Just ask Orval Faubus, who attempted to do so, and ended up with the 101st Airborne enforcing the court ordered desegregation of Little Rock High School. Just sayin’.
— Badtux the Law Penguin
We’ll see. Faubus was defying a very different federal govt. As the grazing fees are neither immoral nor unethical it would be nice to see them enforced. I, however, suspect that an additional fine will be levied with full knowledge that it will never be paid. I hope you are right in your prediction and I am wrong.
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Rule of law requires that once courts issue an order in a civil suit, which this was, that the order be complied with. I cannot see any court allowing its orders to be blatantly flouted. To do so would render the court toothless and useless. President Eisenhower wasn’t a supporter of desegregation, but when the courts asked for assistance in enforcing its order, he recognized that if he did not proffer said assistance, it was basically the end of rule of law in the United States. And given that the alternative to rule of law is rule of gun, that scared the crap out of him enough to deploy the 101st Airborne.
In this case we don’t have a governor calling out the National Guard to resist a Federal court order, we just have a cranky old coot and a bunch of “patriot” legends in their own mind. We aren’t going to see the 101st Airborne called out, we’re just going to see what happens to ordinary folks who try to defy court orders. I think the longest time that anybody’s been in prison for refusing to comply with a court order is fourteen years. My guess is that this old coot isn’t going to last that long.
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*strokes gov’t use of force lovingly*
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I’m not against government use of force. I’m against government use of force without due process of law. In this particular case, there’s twenty years of due fucking process out the yazoo, in more courts than the Boston Celtics see in a year. If ever there was a case where the Constitutional i’s were dotted and t’s were crossed, this is one of’em — the BLM was paranoid as hell and went beyond the call of duty to make sure that Bundy got his day in court and that everything was done aboveboard and with every opportunity for Bundy to prove his case in court. Instead Bundy pulls this shit of claiming Federal lands aren’t Federal lands yada yada, despite George fucking Washington, the first President of the United States of America and one of the authors of the Constitution, having signed a bill into law in 1796 that says Bundy’s more full of shit than a goddamn sewage lift station, and yeah, annoying as hell. Idiots like Bundy make it hard for those of us who are *really* fighting for the Constitution (the real one, not the fake one that Bundy imagines in his wet dreams) to do our thing, because it makes us look like goddamn flakes. GRRRR!!!!
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My Crazy Uncle Liberty, who litters Facebook with all sorts of right wing screeds, was all over this. Among his claims: Bundy is fighting for our freedom; anyone who supports the government also supported the Nazis; the government is a tyrannical thug state; when the government backed off, they were chicken hearted pussies. I would try to refute him, by why engage the crazy?
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It’s like all the rest of the nonsense. I don’t see a good ending here. many of those Leo brings up above want a confrontation. But it’s not a correct one as BT points out.
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Every time I see a story like this all I can think of is Ronald effing Reagan and 40 years of the knuckle-draggers telling people that government is evil and illegitimate. We’ve already seen hundreds die because of this stupidity (Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, etc, etc) and I think we could easily see more people die in this standoff.
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One reason to hope that Bundy shows up for the contempt hearing. I think even these “patriots” might not be so eager to besiege a Federal courthouse with all the baggage (Oklahoma City) that implies.
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I just don’t see it going far. He will exchange letters or some such shit. Probably letters stuffed with money, and he will just fade away. They haven’t got Ms. Paylin and/or some other mouth/suit involved yet (as far as I know) and I just don’t see that “justice”tm is a going to ever happen here. He’s a white dude after all.
w3ski
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The BLM doesn’t have any choice in the matter. The CBD, a bunch of very vicious environmental lawsuit trolls that makes their living by suing the government, is threatening to sue them if they don’t do something about getting Mr. Bundy’s cattle off that land. If there’s anything that the BLM hates more than Cliven Bundy, it’s the Center for Bio-Diversity. CBD lawsuits will wipe out a BLM unit’s budget faster than you can say “easy profit for lawyers!”.
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I just love how all the militia idiots are hailing this moron for trying to profit off government land while claiming he doesn’t need to pay for it, and quoting his obedience to his state’s laws as if his state is not part of the union.
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[…] federal lands without paying the paltry grazing fee, who screams he has a right to do this? He is about to get his come-uppance. He isn’t fighting for “our freedom” as the militia morons are trumpeting, […]
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Bundy is a Plutocratic Cattle Baron his destiny is not to be interfered with by the Tyrannical Federal Government. The Power of Government is only constitutionally used to crush the poor and working class. A Man of Destiny is not to be constrained by laws and regulations.
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It’s OK to be a parasitic moocher on the government teat if you’re a right-winger and a landowner.
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Comrade,
Not exactly. Right-Wingers and Landowners believe the Government exists for them. Anything other than transferring wealth to them while quelling domestic dissent from poor people is unconstitutional.
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How ’bout they just let the Bundy’s and their minions round up the cattle, take ’em to market and then seize ’em, sell ’em and keep the money ??
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[…] has been covering the the Bundy case in Nevada [post 2 and post 2], so that’s where to look for the background on this rip-off of US taxpayers. Basically Bundy […]
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