Category Archives: Law

The Feds Are Not Through Tormenting Poor Amerindians

America, History, Justice, Law, Private Property, Regulation

Before Cliven Bundy there were the Dunns, whose ordeal with the “BLM Brownshirts” began decades back, and should break even a heart made of flint, such is the destruction to the lives, land and livestock of this family of Amerindians.

As wonderful William N. Grigg tells it, “the Dann family spent two decades fighting in federal courts to defend their property against the depredations of the federal government. As members of the Western Shoshone nation, the Dann family had inherited land that was protected by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley and the U.S. Constitution – parchment barricades against aggression that were quickly reduced to ashes by the flame of elite ambitions.”

Below is the culmination of one of the Bureau of Land Grabs’ roundups:

A previous roundup nearly resulted in tragedy when a member of the family doused himself in gasoline and threatened to set himself on fire. The 59-year-old man, who had no previous criminal record, was tackled, beaten by law enforcement officers, arrested, and prosecuted on terrorism-related charges.
After spending several years in prison, that supposed terrorist, Clifford Dann, was allowed to return to the tiny, ramshackle homestead he shares with his 82-year-old sister, Carrie, who is the same age their elder sister Mary was when she died in an accident while repairing a fence in 2005. …

… In 1974, the US Government sued the Dann family, claiming that they had committed “trespassing” by grazing their horses and cattle on land that legally belonged to them. Successive rulings by federal judges upheld the Government’s claims.
The Supreme Court declined to hear the Dann family’s appeal, insisting that the matter was closed when the federal government paid itself $26 million to consummate the theft of the Shoshone lands. The Feds would eventually claim that the impoverished Indian family owed nearly $5 million in grazing fees and interest.
The BLM staged its first cattle rustling raid against the Danns in April 1992. At about 4:30 in the morning, the ranch lands were invaded by a column of vehicles that decanted a platoon of BLM Brownshirts. Not intimidated by the bullying display, Carrie plowed through the picket line and cast herself into a cattle chute to prevent hireling cowboys from loading her stolen cattle onto a truck.
“My land has never been for sale,” Carrie told Eureka County Sheriff Ken Jones, who rather than defending his constituent’s rights was aligned with the invaders. “It’s not for sale now, it’s not for sale tomorrow, either. And that’s the way it is, Mr. Jones.” …

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Legal: The Not-So-Wise Latina Lets Loose

Affirmative Action, Law, Race, Racism, The Courts

What happens when the highest court in the land admits to the bench an individual who emotes rather than reasons, and is without the intellectual wherewithal to tell reason from emotion? You get the not-so-wise Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who delivered an unhinged disquisition in favor of institutionalizing affirmative action forever-after.

On Monday, reports John Fund, “the Supreme Court voted six to two to uphold the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), which was passed with support from 58 percent of that state’s voters in 2006. It simply enshrines in Michigan’s constitution that the state should not engage in race discrimination.” (Read “BUSH’S AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AMBUSH” as a refresher.)

But from where Sotomayor is perched, as a confessed recipient of affirmative action (“Sonia SotoSetAsides once admitted that her test scores ‘were not comparable to her colleagues at Princeton and Yale’”), the choice should not be up to Michigan voters.

At 58 pages, her dissent was longer than the opinions of all the other justices combined — and she took the relatively unusual step of reading it passionately from the bench.
“The stark reality is that race still matters,” Sotomayor said. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.” She went on to chastise the majority’s opinion: “My colleagues misunderstand the nature of the injustice worked by” the Michigan amendment.

At least that excuse for a Chief Justice, John Roberts (the man whose clever casuistry gave us Obamacare’s individual mandate), offered a firm rejoinder to this surly woman:

Roberts directly confronted Sotomayor in his own concurring opinion: “It is not ‘out of touch with reality’ to conclude that racial preferences may themselves have the debilitating effect . . . that the preferences do more harm than good. To disagree with the dissent’s views on the costs and benefits of racial preferences is not to ‘wish away, rather than confront’ racial inequality. People can disagree in good faith on this issue, but it similarly does more harm than good to question the openness and candor of those on either side of the debate.”

More about the career of SotoSetAsides.

State Theft Of Private Property Sets Legal Precedent For More Of The Same

America, Law, Private Property, South-Africa, Taxation, The State

With its monopoly over both law enforcement and “justice,” the state has seen to it that systematic theft serves as legal precedent.

“Long before Cliven Bundy faced down federal agents,” reports Fox News (who else?), “in his dispute with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights, fellow Nevada rancher Raymond Yowell, an 84-year-old former Shoshone chief, watched as the BLM seized his herd.”

Adding to that, since 2008 they’ve taken his money as well — in the form of a piece of his Social Security checks.

Yowell’s 132 head of cattle had grazed for decades on the South Fork Western Shoshone Indian Reservation in northeastern Nevada until 2002, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) — the same agency at odds with Bundy — seized them. The federal agency sold the cattle at auction and used the proceeds to pay off the portion of back grazing fees it claimed Yowell owed. Once the cattle was sold, the agency sent Yowell a bill for the outstanding balance, some $180,000. They’ve been garnishing his monthly Social Security checks since 2008 to satisfy the debt Yowell says he does not owe.

Tommy Henderson is another victim of state plunder of private property:

The Bureau of Land Management [BLM] took 140 acres of his property and didn’t pay him one cent.
Now, they want to use his case as precedent to seize land along a 116-mile stretch of the river …

In “Into the Cannibal’s Pot,” the issue of land grabs by the ANC, in South Africa, was addressed extensively, down to the heart-breaking mutilation of livestock by state-supported squatters, in the effort to hasten the ethnic cleansing of the Afrikaner farmer. The parallels to what is underway in the USA are greater than even I had foreseen.

Origination-Clause Argument Against Zero-Care

Constitution, Healthcare, Law

If—or rather when—a new constitutional challenge to Obamacare fails, this won’t be because Sissel v. United States Department of Health & Human Services lacks merit, but because we are governed by a tripartite tyranny of colluding quislings and their armies of extra-constitutional commissions and agencies, in whose legislation The People have no say.

Indeed, on May 8, 2014, an interesting and rather original oral argument is scheduled to be heard by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in the case launched against United States Department of Health & Human Services. The Plaintiff is the Pacific Legal Foundation. Here is a Summary of the PLF’s case:

Pacific Legal Foundation has launched a new constitutional cause of action against the federal Affordable Care Act. The ACA imposes a charge on Americans who fail to buy health insurance — a charge that the U.S. Supreme Court recently characterized as a federal tax. PLF’s amended complaint alleges that this purported tax is illegal because it was introduced in the Senate rather than the House, as required by the Constitution’s Origination Clause for new revenue-raising bills (Article I, Section 7).

The Origination Clause argument is part of an amended complaint filed in PLF’s existing lawsuit against the ACA, Sissel v. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, pending before Judge Beryl A. Howell, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

PLF’s Sissel lawsuit was on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court considered the challenge to the ACA from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and 26 states, in NFIB v. Sebelius. As initially filed, PLF’s Sissel lawsuit targeted the ACA’s individual mandate to buy health insurance as a violation of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8).

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