Liberty Minute April 22 2014

The family of Cliven Bundy achieved world-wide publicity when they and their supporters forced the BLM to relinquish several hundred head of cattle that had been confiscated after Bundy had refused to pay grazing fees to the federal government.

Bundy doesn?t object to paying fees, but he insists that the federal government has no constitutional authority to own those lands ? and under a strict application of both the Constitution and Nevada?s statehood enabling act, Bundy is unassailably correct.

The seizure of the Bundy family?s cattle was not the first act of government-licensed rustling carried out by the BLM. In 2001, BLM hired contractors to steal the cattle of fellow Nevada ranchers Ben Colvin and Jack Vogt under very similar circumstances. The BLM and Forest Service likewise pilfered cows belonging to Wayne Hage. Last year, a federal judge ruled that those agencies had conducted a criminal conspiracy against Hage and recommended that their administrators face criminal prosecution.

In one of the most heartless cases of this kind, the BLM rustled livestock belonging to two elderly Shoshone sisters who were on land their ancestors had worked for centuries.

The Bundys were not the first to confront federally licensed cattle rustlers. They are, however, the first to fight back.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.