More Bundy trial.

Federal prosecutors took two weeks to present their case, finishing with a display of more than 30 guns seized after the standoff. An FBI agent testified that 16,636 live rounds and nearly 1,700 spent casings were found.

During trial, Bundy testified that the plan was to take ownership of the refuge by occupying it for a period of time and then turn it over to local officials to use as they saw fit.

Bundy also testified that the occupiers carried guns because they would have been arrested immediately otherwise and to protect themselves against possible government attack.

Quite. Just what I said. They would have been arrested immediately otherwise because they had broken into a closed … Read the rest

The Washington Post has more on the Bundy gang verdict.

While a jury acquitted the Bundy brothers, most of the people charged with the Oregon takeover already pleaded guilty or still have to stand trial on federal charges — a group that includes both Bundys, who are still in custody because they are facing another federal trial in Nevada stemming from a different standoff between the family and the government.

…

During the trial, prosecutors described the takeover as a long-plotted occupation, while attorneys for the occupiers — who did not deny they were there — insisted they were not trying to prevent people from doing their jobs, but were instead protesting government actions.

More than two dozen

Nicholas Kristof:

I’m staggered that a bunch of armed men can take over federal property, maintain their siege–and then get off scott free. Does anybody think the outcome would be the same if armed Muslims, black men, or Native Americans tried this? And I fear it may encourage others to try similar stunts. Thoughts?

My thoughts: yes, no, yes. I too am staggered and horrified that they got off. I don’t for a second think the outcome would be the same if armed Muslims, African Americans, or Native Americans tried this. I fear that it’s overwhelmingly likely that this idiotic verdict will encourage others to try similar and worse violent crimes against our national parks and refuges. The assault … Read the rest

Peter Walker posted this yesterday evening. He later said in a comment that he’d love the photo to be on the front page of every newspaper in the country, so share it widely if you’re so inclined.

To all my Harney County friends, and friends of Harney County: I feel gut-punched, like you probably do. Here’s a photo I took at the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on January 12. A USFWS vehicle is blocking the entrance and a man with an assault rifle is on guard. I had to ask for permission to enter. How can this not have impeded FWS employees from doing their job???? Here’s my promise to Harney County: regardless of the Bundys

This day really has been a package of horrors.

The Bundys and their friends have all been acquitted.

Ammon and Ryan Bundy and five of their followers, charged in the armed takeover of a federally owned Oregon wildlife sanctuary in January, were acquitted Thursday of federal conspiracy and weapons charges.

The verdict brings to a close a case that gripped the nation earlier this year with its public debate about government powers, public lands and constitutional rights.

And sends a message to all white right-wing fanatics that they can probably grab a national park or wildlife refuge and get away with it, if they go in heavily armed enough. It sends a message to all non-white people that we … Read the rest

So it really is all about dressing up and let’s pretend and how awesome do I look in these cowboy boots and never mind what I did, how’s my image?

Ammon Bundy’s lawyer asked a judge to rule on a very important request Wednesday: that his client be able to wear cowboy boots to the trial for several Oregon standoff defendants, according to The Oregonian.

Bundy’s lawyer, J. Morgan Philpot, told the judge that because his client is a “cowboy” and has not yet been convicted of any charges, he should be able to dress however he pleases, which includes cowboy boots, neckties and belts.

“These men are cowboys, and given that the jury will be assessing their authenticity

Peter Walker on Facebook:

Editorial opinion: Judge Steve Grasty is a hero. At the peak of the siege of Burns, when the Bundys invaded the town hall meeting (Jan. 19), Judge Grasty looked Ammon Bundy straight in eye and told him he’d personally drive Bundy to safety outside the county. But Grasty insisted that Bundy leave. Bundy’s men were armed and had taken up tactical positions in each corner of the high school gym (Ritzheimer was right behind me). It was one of the most courageous things I’ve ever seen. Even those who don’t agree with Judge Grasty ought to acknowledge he has served his county with exemplary courage, and allow him the rest of his term in peace.

The remaining criminals at Malheur are issuing new threats, which will no doubt be added to the charges once they’re arrested.

As law enforcement surrounded the remaining protesters at an Oregon wildlife refuge Wednesday, an armed occupier urged supporters to join them and to kill any law enforcement officer who tried prevent their entry, according to a livestream that has been broadcasting from the site.

“There are no laws in this United States now! This is a free-for-all Armageddon!” a heavyset man holding a rifle yelled into a camera that was broadcasting a livestream from the refuge Wednesday morning, adding that if “they stop you from getting here, kill them!”

A second man cooed to the camera in a

The Washington Post on the news from Harney County, Oregon:

Federal agents moved early Wednesday morning to seal off a remote wildlife refuge in Oregon, hours after authorities arrested several leaders of the armed activists who had seized the land in a shootout that killed one of the group’s most prominent members.

In the weeks since the group began its occupation, local and federal law enforcement officials had called for the occupation to end peacefully. On Tuesday, after these calls and attempts at negotiations went nowhere, authorities moved to arrest several group members while they were away from the compound. A total of eight people were arrested, at the shootout and other locations.

Finally.

After the exchange of gunfire

The Bundyite fascists have big plans, The Oregonian reports.

Leaders of the armed protesters holding the national bird sanctuary on Tuesday plan to push their anti-government agenda in Grant County, whose sheriff recommends the government give in to two of their key demands.

Sheriff Glenn Palmer said in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive that “the government is going to have to concede something” to end the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

That’s a horrifying thing for a law enforcement official to say. The “occupation” of Malheur is illegal. The government doesn’t “have to” concede anything to the Bundyite fascists.

He said freeing a father-son ranching team from prison “would be a start. Sending the FBI home would

Oregon Live reports:

Occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for three weeks have made sweeping demands that local and federal authorities say are both brazen and unrealistic.

They want immediate freedom for imprisoned local ranchers. They want federal deeds voided and private owners to take over the property. They want the county to control the refuge. They want federal grazing permits vacated, leaving ranchers free to graze as they choose. And they say they won’t go until they get their way.

They mean they won’t go voluntarily. They can be made to go, and they should be. They’ve seized a wildlife refuge that belongs to all of us, and it’s not theirs to seize. They need to be … Read the rest

Oregon Public Broadcasting reports there are children at Malheur.

The two young girls now staying at the occupied refuge are sisters, ages 8 and 9.

OPB is not naming the kids, nor their parents, to protect the identity of the children, but the mother and father are active and vocal militants in the armed occupation. Both parents have been involved in the incident since its start Jan. 2.

Well, that’s good responsible loving parenthood – taking young children to an active crime scene and keeping them there.

The children were visible inside one of the buildings Thursday evening. One of the little girls asked to come outside by a campfire but was not allowed. The kids were also seen

Amanda Peacher at Oregon Public Broadcasting on some of what the Bundy gang accomplished this week:

The armed occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge continue to use government equipment inside the complex.

One militant, who refused to give his name, again plowed dirt with a refuge bulldozer Wednesday. He wouldn’t say why he was operating the machinery, but in several places, sagebrush and vegetation had been newly removed, leaving wide patches of bare mud within the complex.

He said the road was already there, and the Bundy gang had just been removing snow from it. That was a big fat lie.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed Thursday that not only is the road built last week

There was a community meeting in the Burns High School gym on Tuesday.

In sometimes highly personal remarks, speaker after speaker vented anger – at public officials, at the federal government and at the man in the brown cowboy hat sitting high in the bleachers to take it all in – Ammon Bundy.

So Ammon Bundy left Malheur and went to Bundy and sat in on a meeting, and wasn’t arrested. Why is that exactly? He’s committed multiple crimes and is continuing to commit them on an ongoing basis – why is he allowed to keep doing that, using guns, with impunity?

He sat on the second row from the top as County Judge Steve Grasty, microphone in hand, strode

So this Oregon group Getting Occupiers of the Historic Oregon Malheur Evicted (see what they did there? Initials=G.O.H.O.M.E.) have a good wheeze.

Brothers Zach and Jake Klonoski launched the group’s fundraising efforts on Sunday morning.

By 5:45 p.m. Monday, the group received $30,000 in pledges.

“We thought, let’s create this vehicle so Oregonians can step up with one collective voice and say that we don’t support this, we want them to leave,” Zach Klonoski told KOIN 6 News.

The Klonoski brothers say they’re frustrated by what’s going on at the refuge, and figure there are thousands of Oregonians who would also like to express their opposition in a “peaceful, meaningful way”.

G.O.H.O.M.E. will continue to raise money in protest

What about what local people think about the criminals who have stolen Malheur National Wildlife Refuge? What about what birders think? What about the local economy?

The Portland Tribune reports on that:

According to a 2008 Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife report, wildlife-viewing tourism accounts for about $8 million of travel spending per year in Harney County.

Ah. That sounds small, but reporting has been saying that Harney County is not rich. The people who depend on that $8 million probably don’t consider it too small to notice.

The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt to protect the vast populations of waterbirds that were being decimated.

“The occupation of Malheur by armed,

Weirdly sympathetic reporting in the Chicago Tribune on the armed criminals at Malheur.

Several dozen armed men and women now control this federal facility in remote southeastern Oregon, a growing siege staged to protest the imprisonment of two local ranchers and a federal government that they say is out of control. They spend their days concocting strategies, meeting with reporters and well-wishers, and organizing mundane chore charts, all while remaining on hair-trigger alert to any effort to infiltrate their ranks or forcibly end the occupation.

On stolen property, using stolen equipment, with the use of lethal weapons. The Trib almost sounds as if the government has no right to evict the armed criminals who are trying to steal the Refuge.… Read the rest