Free Republic

(KUTV) A protest was held Saturday on the steps of the State Capitol. A few dozen protestors, who say they gathered to honor the life of the late LaVoy Finicum, also vowed to carry on his legacy by taking a stand against the federal government. Stand By Me for LaVoy and Liberty was one of a number of similar rallies slated in states across the nation, including Texas, Florida and in Oregon. "This is a rally to show our support for Lavoy Finicum," a singer said to the crowd. Organizer Cherilyn Bacon Eager said from the stage, "We're here to...

U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown said Wednesday she will push to try the federal conspiracy case stemming from the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge as soon as practically possible. "My firm assertion is the case will be tried sooner than a year from now unless something makes that impossible,'' Brown said in court. As the hearing began, every spot in the 14th floor courtroom was filled, with 10 defendants in the case and their lawyers seated in the jury box. Ammon Bundy, the leader of the occupation, and co-defendant Ryan Payne sat between their lawyers at...

Excerpted KANAB — Most of the people who came to the funeral of LaVoy Finicum didn't know the Arizona rancher personally. They came anyway, in trucks and campers and caravans, drawn either by kinship with the Finicum family or by sympathy for the cause that took him to rural Oregon. The Arizona rancher was one of the most recognizable faces of the armed standoff in Oregon, where a group of protesters seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in early January to protest what they said was federal overreach into Western rangelands. Finicum was shot dead by police on Jan. 26...

BURNS-Law enforcement agencies are remaining mum about plans to end militiamen's occupation of the Malheur Natiomal Wildlife Refuge headquarters. A splinter group of militia in town to support a local ranching family took over the federal office Saturday afternoon in a development that stunned the community and visiting militia. Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward said in a statement late Saturday that " a collective effort from multiple agencies is currently working on a solution."........ Law enforcement response: During Saturday's rally, not a police officer was visible. And so far law enforcement agencies have not approached the refuge or blocked access...

Three of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's sons and what they claim are 150 militia members have occupied a federal building in eastern Oregon in order to keep two local ranchers out of prison, according to local reports. The group is believed to be heavily-armed. According to The Oregonian, the group seized the headquarters building at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge about 50 miles outside Burns, Ore. The remote facility was closed and unoccupied at the time. Bundy and his supporters were in Oregon after two men were scheduled to go to prison on Monday for setting fires on federal land, according...

Embattled Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy told OPB that approximately 150 militiamen have occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Building on Saturday evening. The militiamen are in Burns, Oregon to support Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven Hammond. They're ranchers convicted of arson, who are due to report to prison on Monday. The militiamen broke in to the federal building with supplies, including food and a generator. Cliven Bundy spoke to his son, Ammon Bundy, on the phone after they occupied the building. "He told me that they were there for the long run. I guess they figured they're going to be...

In any officer-involved shooting, it's among the first things that the community wants to know: the names of the officers involved. "We believe Brown's family, and the public at large, have the right to know the name of the man who killed their son," Gawker wrote in a piece called "Who Killed Michael Brown?" published four days after the unarmed 19-year-old was slain by Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo., last year. "For this reason, we're asking readers who know the identity of the officer to share it with us, either below this post or over email. If we can confirm...

An officer-involved shooting that left a longtime Adams County rancher dead Sunday has shocked the community and brought a tidal wave of recriminations for the county's small sheriff's department. The Adams County Sheriff's Office has been bombarded with angry calls and hate mail from people upset by the shooting, which left 62-year-old Jack Yantis dead on U.S. 95 in front of his home north of Council. Adams County Sheriff Ryan Zollman said people in the office are being called "murderers" and said the calls coming in forced one emergency dispatcher to leave her post Tuesday. "She was so upset," he...

Texas is larger than most countries in the United Nations, some not much bigger than the postage stamps they print for collectors, but each with a vote that can cancel ours out. Texas is about to a vote against the U.N.’s sovereignty-destroying Agenda 21, so named because it claims to be setting a “sustainable growth” agenda for the 21st century. Agenda 21 is in fact a global power grab similar to climate-change treaties like the Kyoto Protocol. It uses the imaginary threat of unsustainable growth which allegedly threatens to plunder the planet’s finite resources, like climate change allegedly threatens planetary...

RENO, Nev. (AP) — U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials say they agree with a Nevada sheriff's position that rancher Cliven Bundy must be held accountable for his role in an April standoff between his supporters and the federal agency. Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said Bundy crossed the line when he allowed states' rights supporters, including self-proclaimed militia members, onto his property to aim guns at police. "If you step over that line, there are consequences to those actions," Gillespie told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "And I believe they stepped over that line. No doubt about it. They need...

A Texas man who was just hoping to graze cattle on the land he recently acquired was surprised to discover $2 million worth of marijuana plants growing in a back-woods area.

Family members and other supporters took a Nevada rancher's grazing rights fight against the U.S. government to the sheriff in Las Vegas on Friday, filing reports alleging crimes by federal agents against people protesting a roundup of cattle from public land. Rancher Cliven Bundy wasn't among those who filed handwritten complaints with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department - the agency with jurisdiction over Bundy's ranch in the Bunkerville area and much of Clark County.

The Western Shoshone have been litigating the rights to their homeland since at least 1951 ... Raymond Yowell's land, from which BLM seized his cattle, is within the ancestral territories of the Western Shoshone Nation recognized in the 1863 Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed at Ruby Valley . The Western Shoshone have never ceded or relinquished their fundamental indigenous relationship to these territories. They continue to hunt, fish, gather, graze, and live on the lands in accordance with laws and instructions given to them by the Ah-Peh (Father). In 1995, Mr. Yowell was Chief of the Western Shoshone National...

One of the supporters serving as a bodyguard for Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy during his standoff with federal authorities -- and who also happens to be black -- said he would still "take a bullet for" Bundy after the rancher made racially inflammatory comments. CNN's Dan Simon noticed Jason Bullock, a six-year Army veteran who serves as one of Bundy's bodyguards, hanging around at the Nevada ranch. Simon asked Bullock whether he found Bundy's remarks about blacks and slavery offensive. "Mr. Bundy is not a racist," he told CNN. "Ever since I've been here, he's treated me with nothing but...

TX Deputy Shoots Farmer’s Dog in the Back of the Head After Farmer Called Police About Burglary April 24 2014 by Dan Cannon Share This Post Dallas News | myFOXdfw.com It seems like these stories are happening more and more each week. Stories of officers shooting dogs that simply did not need to be shot. In this case, a third generation Texas farmer, Cole Middleton, called police about a break-in on his property. When an officer finally arrived, Rains County Deputy Jerred Dooley, the farmer’s dog ran up to the officer (as dogs do, especially herding dogs), so the officer...

Senator Harry Reid told reporters the Bundy Ranch dispute is not over. “Something will happen.” ... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says “something is going to happen” to get Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy to stop letting his cattle graze on federal land. “It’s obvious that you can’t just walk away from this. And we can speculate all we want to speculate to what’s going to happen next,” Reid told KSNV-TV. “But I don’t think it’s going to be tomorrow that something is going to happen, but something will happen. We are a nation of laws, not of men and women.”...

landed in the Facebook gulag when I tried to post our daily Bible verse. ... Now before you call up the preacher had put me on the church prayer list – let me assure the posting was neither unseemly nor ungentlemanly. Nevertheless, it caused great consternation and angst among Facebook’s left-wing censors. Following is the egregious text: “Rancher Bundy should’ve told the feds that those were Mexican cows – who came across the border illegally to seek better grazing opportunities. It was an act of love.” Thousands of you posted comments and many more shared that message. It’s now gone...

Policing: The Dallas County Sheriff's Office gets an MRAP tactical military vehicle, used for counterinsurgency fighting in Iraq, as law enforcement becomes a collection of SWAT teams pursuing not-always-guilty Americans. In early August, a SWAT team broke through the gates of a 3.5-acre farm in Arlington, Texas, that promotes a sustainable lifestyle and did a 10-hour search of the property. Residents were handcuffed and held at gunpoint as police looked for nonexistent marijuana plants and various city code violations. As the owners watched, 10 tons of their private property was hauled off in trucks — dangerous items such as blackberry...

Security: In addition to stockpiling over a billion bullets and thousands of semiautomatic weapons the feds would deny U.S. citizens, the vehicle of choice for fighting the counterinsurgency war in Iraq is appearing on U.S. streets. The sequestration question du jour is why the Department of Homeland Security, busy releasing hundreds, if not thousands, of deportable and detained illegal aliens due to budget constraints, is buying several thousand Mine Resistant Armored Protection (MRAP) vehicles? And just who are they intended to be used against? This acquisition comes on top of the recent news of the stockpiling by DHS of more...

Federal Power: Homeland Security's procurement officer is grilled in Congress on why federal agents who rarely fire weapons need several times more bullets annually than an Army officer. Who or what are they shooting at? Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz on Thursday asked Nick Nayak, DHS' chief procurement officer, a question we and others have been asking: Why has the Department of Homeland Security been buying so much ammunition? Dismissed as a concern only of right-wing conspiracy theorists, the reported amounts as high as 2 billion rounds have varied and been explained not as a one-time purchase but a bulk buy...