I must've posted a few pages back.
I've been entertained by the various cartoons emerging from this fiasco, such as David Horsey's in the LA Times.
Let me explain my biases, if you can call them that. I have a come-lately aversion to cowboy hats, rodeos, boots that look like mother's shoes. And the reason for that derives from what I'd only found out about my Texas family at the age of ~60 through a family member's genealogical research. When a gang of little cornpone assholes in 1925 beat up my father's siblings in the new public school-yard (3 generations behind them from my great-great-grandfather's 1850 immigration at Corpus Christi) -- shouting "dumb Pollacks and Catholics" -- I forged my current stereotypical bias.
I've looked into this matter of the "Hammonds and the Bundys."
The Hammonds had over the last decade set fires on their own land which grew out of control and burned some 140 acres of federal land -- among thousands of acres. So they were charged eventually with arson, and there had been a sentencing recommendation by the local judge that accorded probation with the leveling of any federal sentencing minimum. The BLM appealed the decision, hoping to get the terrorist statutory revisions since 1999 applied to the sentence for a 5-year-minimum. Lawyers on behalf of the Hammonds -- and the judge who presided over their initial plea-bargain -- argue that 5 years under these recent statutes violated the 8th Amendment pertaining to "cruel and unusual punishment."
These were not fires that threatened structures or people in the meaning of the statutory revisions, which addressed terrorist acts in more urban contexts.
Enter the Bundys, who simply wanted to graze for free on federal land, and owed a considerable pile of change they failed to pay over the years like other ranchers. Before that point, the BLM's acquisition of land according to imperatives of fish and wildlife wasn't the issue. In fact, it had been determined that the "controlled burn" which got out of control actually increased the value of government land that was burned.
BLM had continued to pursue their draconian sentencing preferences for the Hammonds in court of appeals despite the original plea agreement. THAT was the issue.
The Bundys' involvement, and the way this little band of rancher-activists articulated their gripes, has turned the affair into a symbolic cause against the federal agency and the federal role in land management generally. So you even hear denouncement of EPA in their rants. They have, parallel to the plot of a Carlos Castaneda novel, turned a housefly issue into a Godzilla Fly.
I suppose as cartoonists continue to belittle the cowboys, I will also continue to snicker about it. No less because I like to replay "No Country for Old Men" or "The Last Picture Show" so I can snicker at the cornpone script.
This makes me wonder about BLM and its own culture, since the spouse of one of their officials -- Sharon Angle -- had run for US Senator in Nevada with her own cornpone, halfwit rants. I've always held NPS and the Forest Service in the highest regard, but often wondered just who BLM serves. I could almost guess that, among their ranks, there's an insurgency bent on destroying their own agency or its public image.
That's all just speculation. The Bundys? A bunch of cornpone cuckoo free-grazers and freeloaders. The Hammonds? Their cause has been hijacked and blown out of proportion.
Hijacked by Hicks.
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