Is Bundy's Protest Tarnishing the Tea Party? (Weekly Standard jumping the shark?)

The Weekly Standard ^ | April 22, 2013 | Michael Warren

[goat granny]

thank you :O)

[ponygirl]

“Clark County property records show Cliven Bundy’s parents bought the 160 acre ranch in 1948 from Raoul and Ruth Leavitt. Water rights were transferred too, but only to the ranch, not the federally managed land surrounding it. Court records show Bundy family cattle didn’t start grazing on that land until 1954.”

YT Video of Ryan Bundy press conference 4/25/14

Transcript Excerpt, response to question regarding the ancestral claims to the grazing rights:
Ryan Bundy: Sure I can. Okay, if you are following the Bundy family, we originally came from Nebraska, and my great-great-grandmother joined the Mormon church, the LDS church…the missionaries back then were from Bunkerville, the missionary was...and my g-g grandmother joined the Mormon church in Nebraska. Now she wanted to come west, and my g-g-grandfather did not. He did join the church…. until… there was an incident… people were mean to my grandmother, and so he said, ‘All right, let’s go west,” and on the trail he decided also to join the church and he was baptized in Logan, Utah. They came to Bunkerville because of the missionary that was from Bunkerville. His name was actually Bunker, Elder Bunker. And so they came to Bunkerville originally.

Now they didn’t settle down right away. They bought some land down in Beaver Dam, Arizona, which is just across the border. But then they moved to Mexico, to the Mormon colonies in Mexico. And then they came… uh, well… then there was the Mexican-American War. And the United States government said to the people coming out of there… they sent them to anywhere they wanted to [go]. So they had some friends or something, and they went clear up to Oregon. They went to Oregon and things didn’t work out there for them, so they came back here to Beaver Dam. And I don’t know why they didn’t stay in Beaver Dam again, but then they went down to St. Thomas and [Kaylin?], which… those are two towns that are now under Lake Mead. So they’re ghost towns now. But it was awful hot, awful dry, so they were looking for a little cool weather, and they went back over to Arizona, to the Arizona strip, to Mount Trumbull, and they finally settled down there on Mount Trumbull. And so the Bundy family did come from that area.

Now what everybody is not considering is the other side of my family. All right? My grandmother, who was a Jensen, who had family ties to the names of Abbott and to Levitt and to Adams, she grew up here in Mesquite. Now our range rights here on this Bunkerville mountain here, actually started with my grandmother’s side. Now when my grandfather met my grandmother and married her, he moved back over to here, which again, we had old ties… kinda moving around… but we still had some old ties here and he married my grandmother, and they inherited some of the old range rights from my grandmother’s side. So when people are saying that the Bundy’s weren’t here until such and such a date, and they didn’t have the range rights here until such… You know what? They’re right. But they’re not considering the range rights that were here from my grandmother, all right? And so our rights do trace back to 1877. Not all the way in the Bundy family name, but through some of these other names.

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I know from my own family research that moving around this many times was not unusual once the new lands were opened. I have a family that started in Ohio, then to Cook County, Illinois, to Wisconsin, then to Missouri, then to Kansas, and then finally back to Wisconsin. The only way I was able to find them was due to the discovery of a journal the wife kept during those times. But these Mormon families know their family histories... it's a requirement in the LDS church.