Thursday, October 27, 2016
Victory for Freedom
A jury has acquitted the leaders of the takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge of all but one charge, and that one resulted in a hung jury. I'm extremely pleased. As WaPo puts it, "[A]ll defendants were found not guilty of charges of conspiracy to impede federal officers and not guilty of possession of firearms in a federal facility. One of the occupiers, Kenneth Medenbach, was found not guilty of theft of a government-owned truck. The jury was hung on the charge of theft of government cameras against Ryan Bundy."
This is terribly important; in effect, jurors stood up to the supremacy of federal bureaucratic diktat. Criminalizing "possession of firearms in a federal facility" is unConstitutional, since the Constitution specifies that our rights "shall not be infringed. Similarly, federal bureaucrats (officers) have gone so far beyond any legitimate authority that impeding them is practically the duty of a citizen. And most importantly, this jury dispensed with the idea that the feds should tell us what to do, and we obey; they put it exactly where it belongs...in the trash.
I strongly suspect Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States. If so, then if we are to retain freedom, it will require us to tell the her and the federal government to go to hell, to do it repeatedly, and to be prepared to back this up. The jury's decision is a highly appropriate warning shot across our enemy's bow.
Incidentally, I should add that I think the occupation of the Malheur Refuge Center was a stupid and strategically unwise stunt. It might become necessary for citizens to use force to defend our rights, but this struck me as as unwarranted. Regardless, the feds have so far overstepped their bounds that, as Montana's former governor Brian Schweitzer (D) put it, "sometimes you have to tell the feds to 'go to hell.'"
That is exactly what the jury did. Good on them!
This is terribly important; in effect, jurors stood up to the supremacy of federal bureaucratic diktat. Criminalizing "possession of firearms in a federal facility" is unConstitutional, since the Constitution specifies that our rights "shall not be infringed. Similarly, federal bureaucrats (officers) have gone so far beyond any legitimate authority that impeding them is practically the duty of a citizen. And most importantly, this jury dispensed with the idea that the feds should tell us what to do, and we obey; they put it exactly where it belongs...in the trash.
I strongly suspect Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States. If so, then if we are to retain freedom, it will require us to tell the her and the federal government to go to hell, to do it repeatedly, and to be prepared to back this up. The jury's decision is a highly appropriate warning shot across our enemy's bow.
Incidentally, I should add that I think the occupation of the Malheur Refuge Center was a stupid and strategically unwise stunt. It might become necessary for citizens to use force to defend our rights, but this struck me as as unwarranted. Regardless, the feds have so far overstepped their bounds that, as Montana's former governor Brian Schweitzer (D) put it, "sometimes you have to tell the feds to 'go to hell.'"
That is exactly what the jury did. Good on them!
