Utah Sheriffs Threaten to Arrest Rangers if They Try to Close Public Lands

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Utah Sheriffs Threaten to Arrest Rangers if They Try to Close Public Lands

Kirk Siegler - NPR Morning Edition

By Randall Gross

Wingnuts • May 2016 • Views: 2,510

Even with Cliven Bundy and many of his militia supporters in jail, anger toward the federal government is still running high in some parts of the West.

Clashes between ranchers and federal land managers over grazing rights are continuing. In southern Utah, things have gotten so bad lately that some local sheriffs have threatened to arrest federal rangers who try to close forest roads and cut off access to ranchers and other users.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether Garfield County Sheriff James “Danny” Perkins is serious or pulling your leg.

More: Utah Sheriffs Threaten To Arrest Rangers If They Try To Close Public Lands : NPR

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7 comments

Romantic Heretic May 31, 2016 • 6:38:38pm

Looking at that bumper sticker I can’t help but think, “At what point does cognitive dissonance become so severe that it becomes psychosis?”

The person owning that truck must be dreadfully close to that line.

mroop May 31, 2016 • 7:29:22pm

The ranchers are first but brother next it may be me.

40 days and 40 nights . Freedom marches forward.

LoonRadio May 31, 2016 • 8:44:42pm

I try to avoid ad hominem attacks, but in my opinion Lavoy Finicum, the Bundys and the people who support them are traitors, not patriots.

CriticalDragon1177 May 31, 2016 • 11:15:44pm

Thanos,

Someone needs to show these people the constitution and demand that they point to where it says their authority supersedes that of the federal government.

kg7u Jun 1, 2016 • 10:28:35am

re: #4 CriticalDragon1177

Show them Article VI, third paragraph—

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

mroop Jun 1, 2016 • 8:05:39pm

re: #5 kg7u

Show them Article VI, third paragraph—

Logic and reason don’t work with sovereign citizens. As with most “alternative” movements, at the top of the food chain are mostly con artists, not true believers. Take a look at naturalnews.com sometime. I read somewhere that it’s the most popular alternative health web site on the net. The owner Mike Adams is a flat out con artist.

slate.com

healthwyze.org

Lots of con artists trying to make a buck in the sovereign citizen movement, also lots of not very intelligent people who have been left behind in this economy and they’re scared and looking for something they can latch onto that will save them. It’s sad when normal people get sucked into a sovereign citizen scam and end up in jail for committing fraud when they were trying to save their house and didn’t have the brains to realize they were committing mortgage fraud.

There’s a good history of Pete Santilli I was reading the other day. He’s the popular “embedded reporter” that was in Bunkerville and Oregon. He’s been a con artist his entire life, long before he was a sovereign citizen. Finally he’s going to be doing some some serious time. The Bundy clan are true believers but also inveterate liars and now they’re trying to throw their followers under the bus to save themselves. Ha!

Forbes has a good definition of sovereign citizens:

So what’s the definition?

The short answer: a sovereign citizen is someone who believes that he or she is above all laws.

The long answer is a bit more complex.

Think about a law you don’t like. Any law, at any level of government. It can be a big law, like paying income taxes, or a tiny one, like licensing your pet Chihuahua with the county.

If you’re a member of the Tea Party movement, the solution to this bad law is to protest your opinion in DC and in other metropolitan areas, write angry letters to your Congressmen, and vote for politicians who agree with you that such a law should be scrapped as soon as possible.

If you’re a member of the sovereign citizen movement, your approach is a bit different. You start by looking for a combination of quotes, definitions, court cases, the Bible, Internet websites, and so on that justify how you can ignore the disliked law without any legal consequences. Be imaginative. Pull a line from the 1215 version of the Magna Carta, a definition from a 1913 legal dictionary, a quote from a founding father or two, and put it in the blender with some official-sounding Supreme Court case excerpts you found on like-minded websites. Better yet, find someone else online who disliked that same law and pay them $150 for a three-ring binder filled with their word salad research.

Et voilà, not only have you proven that you don’t have to obey the law you dislike, heck, it’s your patriotic duty to disobey it, and anyone who tells you otherwise is just plain un-American and is probably part of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy to ensure that Chihuahuas are slaves to the US government.

When you can pick and choose which laws to put through your special blender, you are effectively putting yourself above all laws.

So why are they a problem for state and local police?

Sovereign citizens are true believers. They generally entered the movement by buying into a scam or conspiracy theory that not only promised them a quick fix to their problems, but wrapped such solutions in a heavy layer of revolutionary rhetoric. Once a sovereign feels the flush of excitement and self-importance that comes from acting as the David to the U.S. government’s Goliath, they know, with all of their hearts and souls, that their research is correct, that their cause is just, and that anyone who disagrees with them is a criminal who deserves to be punished.

These sovereign citizens are also doomed to failure; the tax collector, prosecutor, and judge have all heard these same legal theories dozens of times already and understand that they are bogus.

When a person believes his cause is just, yet he meets failure over and over and over again, there comes a point where he has to make a decision: he can admit his theory is wrong and walk away, or he can fight dirty.

forbes.com

mroop Jun 1, 2016 • 8:33:41pm