Making the Case
We have all heard the phrase “Don’t make a Federal case out of it!” Have you ever thought about what this means?
It means, you can’t win against the feds – so don’t even think about it. It means you can’t fight the raw power, money and monopoly interests that the federal government has ruthlessly acquired. It means that none of us can ever raise enough money to battle the accumulated wealth (originating from our own pockets) that will be ushered against our cause.
Yet, the Hammonds and the Bundys are making headlines in Harney County, Oregon because they are doing just that. These families are the focal point of the media onslaught.
The problem in Harney County is not a new problem. It is a systemic problem that the Founders recognized and feared. At the heart of the issue is the probability that the central government would seek to, “annihilate and absorb the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the several states, and produce… an iron banded despotism.” **
The blame lies with successive Congressional administrations who have failed to secure the unalienable rights and individual liberties of American citizens. Our so-called representatives have abandoned their Constitutional obligations to a limited federal government and the rights and liberties of the people within their state governments. Instead, they have funded every federal overreach allowing the slow annihilation of state sovereignty and the despotic absorption of state lands.
Why is the West “Federally” Managed?
Federally controlled land is predominately concentrated in the West. Nationally, the United States government has direct control over almost 650 million acres of land — nearly 30% of its total territory. In Oregon, where I and the Hammond family live, the federal government controls 54% of all of the land. In Nevada, where the Bundy family lives, the federal government controls 84.5% of the land in the state.
Now, imagine if you owned a business and some bureaucrat decided it was in the public’s best interest for them to manage 54%, or 84% of your resources – this is what is happening throughout the West. The feds under the false color of law have essentially done this to the Western states. The feds also receive the benefit of those resources and they control the disposition of all of those assets.
This is why thousands and thousands of Americans are standing with and applauding these families who are fighting back against the abuses of these federal agencies.
Teddy and the Midnight Reserves (warning: not a bedtime story)
In Oregon, this tragedy started a hundred years ago with grossly unconstitutional actions by a Republican “progressive” living in the White House – Theodore Roosevelt.
Between 1902 and 1906, President Roosevelt, with his fountain pen and telegraph poles, went tearing through the maps of Oregon. He grabbed enormous swaths of Oregon’s pristine landscape and forested wilderness for federal control.
Oregon’s U.S. Senator Charles W. Fulton was outraged by these unprecedented actions. Fulton introduced legislation to eliminate the president’s authority to establish national forest reserves via executive orders in 1907.
The night before signing this law, Roosevelt issued another Executive Order snatching an additional 16 million acres from Oregon’s control. Honest journalists of the day deridingly labeled these new forests as the “Midnight Reserves.”
Then, in 1908, after the legislation prohibiting these blatant land grabs, Roosevelt engineered a new scheme to pluck more land from the states.
Roosevelt designated land surrounding Malhuer, Mud and Harney Lakes in Eastern Oregon as an “Indian reservation.” Roosevelt’s swindle avoided using the phrase “forest reserve,” which was now illegal after Fulton’s legislation. Instead, these new takings were identified, “as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds.”
This was nothing more than an unconstitutional land grab. Later this “Indian reservation,” which did not include the 13,700 acre Burns Paiute Reservation, became the Malhuer National Wildlife Refuge.
This refuge is the immediate source of the BLM conflict with the Hammond family in Oregon.
The Constitution
Federal fiddling in these areas is flatly unconstitutional. The only relevant authority for federal land ownership comes from the US Constitution. It is known as the Enclave Clause:
“To exercise exclusive Legislation… over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased… for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;”
– Article I, Section 8, Clause 17
While Washington, D.C. remains within the boundary limit of “ten Miles square,” the federal government has blown through all reasonable expectations for forts, ports, arsenals and other military installations. Those installations now exceed 44,500 square miles of land within the states.
The federal government’s rough-shod management of an additional 1 million square miles (650 million acres) of state land is wholly unconstitutional. The Department of the Interior administers 96% of these ill-gotten state lands with one non-elected office holder (Secretary of the Interior), who serves at the pleasure of the President, directing this unbridled Leviathan.
These are the reasons why large segments of the Western states support the Hammonds, Bundys and the myriads of other families that come under the gun of these federal marauders.
Last week, Oregon’s U.S. Rep. Greg Walden issued a warm-hearted plea which contained many great talking points. 
Unfortunately for Americans, it is another toothless gesture. During Walden’s 18 years as a House member he has done little to rein-in this voracious federal machine. Instead, Walden, along with his RINO cohorts and Democrat allies, has needlessly ladled a steady stream of trillion dollar, taxpayer funded budgets into the mouths of D.C.’s lobbyists and bureaucrats.
Congress has long ignored the beauty and strength of 1) limited government, and 2) fiscal accountability. They have promoted government growth at unprecedented levels while their constituents have been successfully bribed by promises for economic riches.
The power of the purse is key
These federal raids on our state sovereignty can only be stopped by using the Constitution rightly. First, this means state nullification of unconstitutional federal actions. Secondly, our Representatives need to exercise their Constitutional obligation to manage federal dollars prudently and begin to do the hard work of defunding these gigantic Federal Bureaucracies.
Thomas Jefferson, wrote, “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
Adherence to our U.S. Constitution is the Federal case that we must make. It is the ONLY Solution Big Enough!
** Bruce Frohnen, The American Republic: Primary Sources, ed. Bruce Frohnen (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002). 1/10/2016. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/669#Frohnen_0082_1989
Language is an important tool of political control. In our modern Twitter-pated world where sound bites rule, words or labels do not have to be accurate. They are easily thrown about and can be applied to anything. The Twitter-narrative does not have to be accurate to be seen by millions.
They recognize that today’s political class are no longer serving the Constitution – they no longer serve for limited periods; they have no fiscal integrity; they are waging war against the Bill of Rights; and they are no longer serving the general welfare. Today, the political elites work for Wall Street-financed crony-capitalists, self-interested public-sector unions, government-financed community service and public health agencies. Each of these entities employs scores pf lobbyists to ensure their access to America’s largess, the seed-corn of our future. The Machiavellian progressives are tearing at our Republic’s foundations.
Throughout human-history vast accumulations of power have created more problems than they’ve solved. The federal government does not have undifferentiated ‘governmental power.’ Instead, the constitution vests three different branches with three unique types of power – power for legislating, executing and adjudicating the fairness of any actions.
As eMails fly around the Web supporting the Hammond family, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) shows a striking resemblance to a bad case of acne. My suggestion is that the BLM needs a thorough scrubbing.
The Hammonds are being subjected to a minimum of 5 years imprisonment under the 
What about the millions of acres destroyed annually by the BLM and USFS? Are there any terrorist charges pending against these organizations or their employees? No, the cabal of error, vengeance and greed would never allow that.
Special interest lobbyists across America have essentially gutted our Republic. They have become so adept at picking through the bones of our public treasury that they behave more like ravenous wolves than Sons of Liberty.
Politicians, in both parties, act more like butchers than representatives as they wield their tools. They specialize in separating the tender morsels of meat stock from the remainder of the carcass. Their self-serving promotional pieces and basic handouts look like the sections of a butchered beef cow.
Apparently, the big boys in their white, lab-coats like having us run in our cages. They want to control every aspect of our lives:
Unfortunately for Rep. Walden, he can’t have it both ways. He can’t pretend to work for rural American values while flushing our property rights and precious fresh-water resources into the Salty Pacific.
The Biological Opinions used for determining water requirements for endangered or threatened species run contrary to scientific evidence. The complex eco-system for maintaining flows and lake levels can be better accomplished with dams left in place. Otherwise, we risk creating a fishy version of the Barred Owl against the Spotted Owl, or the Pacific salmon verses the Harbor Seal in the Northwest. Which of these identified species will win the crown: Lost River Suckers, Shortnose Suckers, Redband Trout, Steelhead, Chinook or Coho salmon? Destroying the dams can’t possibly resolve the conflicting priorities across competing species.
“The American farmer is in a situation today that can be solved. The solution is not one of governmental policies that create short-term “fixes” for the farmer. The best method to let the farmer prosper is the same solution that would let the other parts of the economy prosper. Government must remove the burdens placed upon the individual. The individual must be allowed to compete on an equal basis to become competitive with his peers.”
Notorious crime and violence are typically experienced in the midst of war. We are accustomed to seeing images of it in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Syria. Many Americans dealt with it in Vietnam, and Korea and our parents experienced it first-hand during World War II.
Worse, this is nothing more than an attempt to transfer the blame from his son to the firearm. President Obama, always being hungry for warped rhetoric, latched onto that idea like a pigeon gobbling French fries off the sidewalk.
arises. It means throwing Democrats out of office if they continually promote Socialism and the destruction of the American traditions – free-enterprise, individual liberty and personal responsibility.