LAW VS. LAW -- MAY 31, 2016


I know I’m getting old when I start saying that the country is going to hell in a handbasket, but these NPR and follow-up articles are adding another straw onto the camel’s back. Please contact your US and State legislators to fight this kind of perverse vision of “the Constitution” and “just laws,” because they not only threaten public safety, they threaten our societal structure, justice system, ideas of what good citizenship is, etc.

It isn’t that I’m not aware that this is coming from the Rightwing Fringe groups, it’s because there are too many of those folks out there since 9/11 and the resulting panic among some, the election of a black man to the presidency, and the rise of David Koch’s Tea Party Movement. Persistently and increasingly they are spreading their intellectual and emotional poison. Worse still, they are forming an ARMY of true believers to their causes, taken from our poorly educated and borderline psychotic elements in this country.

It’s the same old ball of tangled threads – RACE, Class, States’ Rights, Religious Fundamentalism of a very aggressive kind, untreated poor physical and mental health found in a widespread way among the poor, economic deprivation, crime at the hands of our law enforcers as well as against them, and a damaging level of poverty among all races in rural and city areas. Those things are causing our population to become desperate and literally unhinged. We are turning against each other like animals in rut. Vote for liberal candidates and, please, not for Donald Trump!

See the articles below. This excerpt is from the Washington Post:

“I asked a local sheriff if he wanted to take the survey, but he declined. I asked the National Sheriffs Association, with 20,000 members, for their thoughts on the CSPOA, and they also declined. The deputy executive director, John Thompson, told the CPI that his association doesn’t take a position on how individual sheriffs carry out their duties. There are 3,080 sheriffs in 47 states, according to the association, though not all oversee full law enforcement agencies, with some primarily handling county jail oversight.”

“It’s terrifying to me,” said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Louisville who specializes in police legitimacy and procedural fairness. “It’s not up to the police to decide what the law is going to be. They’re sworn to uphold the law. It’s not up to them to pick and choose.” Nix pointed out that officers use discretion all the time in deciding whether to charge someone with a crime. “But to be on the record, that you don’t want officers enforcing laws, that is pretty bold.”



http://www.npr.org/2016/05/31/480100279/utah-sheriff-threatens-to-arrest-rangers-if-they-try-to-close-public-lands

Utah Sheriffs Threaten To Arrest Rangers If They Try To Close Public Lands
KIRK SIEGLER
May 31, 20165:10 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition

Photograph -- A truck displaying a bumper sticker at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters on Jan. 5 near Burns, Ore. Armed anti-federalists took over the wildlife refuge in Oregon for 41 days. The occupation ended on Feb. 11. Rick Bowmer/AP
Related -- Rancher Cliven Bundy Refuses To Enter Plea In Federal Court
Related -- Oregon Authorities Justify Shooting Of Militant At Wildlife Refuge
Related: Even With Bundy Behind Bars, 'Range War' Lives On For Some Ranchers


Even with Cliven Bundy and many of his militia supporters in jail, anger toward the federal government is still running high in some parts of the West.

Clashes between ranchers and federal land managers over grazing rights are continuing. In southern Utah, things have gotten so bad lately that some local sheriffs have threatened to arrest federal rangers who try to close forest roads and cut off access to ranchers and other users.

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether Garfield County Sheriff James "Danny" Perkins is serious or pulling your leg.

Many Western ranchers don't own much land themselves and rely on vast tracts of federal land for grazing.

U.S.

"Now you are in a police vehicle, you understand that right?" he asks, while gesturing toward the center console in his pickup truck. "There is a gun in here, if you happen to ever need a gun, I don't think you will."

Garfield County is roughly the size of Connecticut, and it's up to Perkins and a half dozen deputies to patrol all of it.

"The country's big and it's vast," Perkins says. "I mean it's like this for miles and miles and miles."

Federal land makes up 94 percent of this county, so you'd think that Perkins would welcome the help of federal authorities. Think again. In the sage brush hills outside the one-stoplight town of Panguitch, he pulls off the highway and points to a dirt track.

"This is a conflict, and you're gonna see just a little bit of it. Here's a road right here, that was put here with teams and wagons," Perkins says.

"We're talking pioneer wagons here. Boulders lie in front of it and a bulldozer chewed it up so pickups or ATVs can't drive up it anymore. Federal rangers did this recently," he says. Locals have had access here for generations.

"There is an agenda — and don't kid yourself — there's an agenda to get rid of the grazing, there's an agenda to shut down our roads," Perkins says.

Tensions over federal land — who gets to do what on it, and who is in charge of it — are as high as they've been out here since at least the 1990s. Perkins and many others in his position will give you an earful about how they believe federal agencies have been taken over by environmental extremists. But this is more than just a turf battle. Perkins, too, has an agenda. He proudly refers to himself as a constitutional sheriff.

"Because I raised my arm to the square and I swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," he says.

A few miles away, in his office, he swivels back in his chair and starts digging through a file cabinet. He keeps copies of the papers and the Constitution on hand. Nowhere in them, he says, does it say anything about Bureau of Land Management or Forest Service law enforcement officers, let alone whether they have authority to pull people over for driving off-road or arrest people for illegal campfires. He says, as sheriff, he answers to the state of Utah.

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined," he says. "I can even understand that!"

There are a few dozen or so sheriffs mostly in rural Western states who refer to themselves as "Constitutionalists." It's not really a movement, but they are outspoken and rarely do they hesitate to get in very public fights with the Obama administration — over everything from gun control to whether the BLM should have law enforcement powers.

It's clear that Sheriff Perkins, who's also a rancher, wants to push some boundaries. He talks openly about detaining, or as he says "Mirandizing," federal rangers. He recalls one case recently.

"I told the Forest Service ranger that if he went out and closed a road that Garfield County has jurisdiction on, I would arrest him," he says.

And then there was the time that his deputies did arrest a BLM ranger they said was illegally issuing citations to campers.

"Wasn't me that pulled the trigger on that deal. Do I think he needed to come to jail? I do, the guy's a fruitcake," Perkins says.

For federal land managers, this was the latest instance of threats and intimidation directed at their field staff in the West. There's been an increase in reported confrontations lately.

But the BLM's second in charge in Washington, D.C., Steve Ellis, downplays the tensions, saying they're actually not that common.

"The key thing is working cooperatively with local law enforcement, with these sheriffs, that's our desire," Ellis says.

Ellis also says that the BLM's mission is inherently controversial.

"This is the national system of public lands, so we manage these lands for all Americans," he says.

Still the BLM is worried, especially after the armed standoffs in Nevada and Oregon. And there are sheriffs in the West who sympathize with the now jailed Cliven Bundy and his militia followers. A lot of the principles these "Constitutional" sheriffs espouse are some of the same things you hear from the Bundys.

Sheriff Perkins told me he was invited, and in some instances pressured, by local ranchers to join the Bundys. But he would have none of it.

"I said it at the time, and I'll stand by it, that is nothing but domestic terrorism," he says. "Yes, there's been a story, a lot of these guys have been bullied around by the BLM, but you don't handle it that way."

So despite all his tough talk, Perkins is being careful, still working within the system. He and other sheriffs have been going to Washington, D.C., a lot lately, lobbying. And in the past few weeks, he says, after Utah Republicans introduced a bill to strip law enforcement powers from the BLM, relations out here are getting better.



http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/constitutional-sheriffs-cops-who-think-government-our-greatest-threat-n557381

Constitutional Sheriffs: The Cops Who Think the Government Is Our 'Greatest Threat'
by JULIA HARTE and R. JEFFREY SMITH
APR 18 2016, 12:19 PM ET

Play' -- Domestic terrorists' in custody for Vegas plot 1:11
Photograph -- Suspended Liberty County Sheriff Nick Finch talks with reporters on the courthouse steps in Bristol, Fla., on Oct. 31, 2013 after his acquittal on charges of official misconduct and falsifying official records. Finch admitted freeing a concealed weapons suspect who had been frisked in a traffic stop, but said he did so because he believes the Second Amendment gives citizens a legal right to bear arms. Bill Cotterell / AP
Photograph -- Richard Mack, the former sheriff of Graham County, Ariz., speaks at the 10th annual Second Amendment Action Day rally on the steps of the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., on May 12, 2015, AP
Photograph -- Heavily armed civilians with a group known as the Oath Keepers arrive in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 11, 2015. Jeff Roberson / AP


The full version of this story was originally published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.

Sheriff Nick Finch let a pistol-packing man out of the Liberty County, Florida, jail, a decision that led state authorities to charge Finch with a crime — but also made him a hero to a radical and growing movement among sheriffs across the country.

It's a movement that doesn't just reject gun control — it encourages law enforcement officers to defy laws they decide are illegal. And it sometimes puts police on the same side as "sovereign citizens," a fringe group that the FBI considers one of the most serious domestic terrorism threats.

On March 8, 2013, one of Sheriff Finch's deputies pulled over a driver and found a loaded pistol in his pocket, according to the deputy's sworn statement. Carrying a concealed firearm without a license is a felony in Florida, so the deputy arrested the driver.

Finch, however, ordered the driver released, and someone whited out his booking record. Finch later said he decided that "I know what law rules the day, and it's the U.S. Constitution."

Gov. Rick Scott ordered Finch's suspension. But then a former Arizona sheriff named Richard Mack called, and a group that Mack heads — the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association — became engaged.

Mack has referred to the federal government as "the greatest threat we face today," and describes his association — which states on its website it is supported by the John Birch Society and Gun Owners of America, as well as annual dues payments of $50 — as "the army to set our nation free." He said in an interview with CPI that he has grown the army by training more than 400 sheriffs in how to interpret the Constitution and how to resist authorities and laws that violate it.

Mack claims the dues-paying support of several hundred of the nation's more than 3,000 sheriffs and the sympathies of hundreds more, but it's hard to assess how many endorse his denunciation of the federal government as the corrupt and illegitimate enforcer of laws that trample on states' rights.

On occasion, however, his group's sheriffs have found themselves expressing views that resemble those of the sovereign citizens' movement, which was also founded on claimed rights of legal defiance.

Dozens of sheriffs around the country — including John Hanlin, the sheriff of Douglas County, Ore., the site of last October's mass shooting of eight students and a professor at Umpqua Community College — joined Mack in an aggressive letter-writing campaign to the White House after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, in which they vowed not to enforce any federal laws that tightened gun restrictions.

After the armed standoff at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge earlier this year, Mack traveled repeatedly to Oregon, appearing at high schools and fairgrounds, and giving interviews in which he criticized federal authorities. He's also promised to help elect new sheriffs in the region who share his views. Gun laws are a focus of his ire, but federal lands restrictions and tax laws have also been in his sights.

After Sheriff Finch's suspension, Mack organized a fundraiser in nearby Panama City and brought in Stewart Rhodes, head of the citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers, the same group that made headlines last August for patrolling the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, with guns. (Mack is on the Oath Keepers board of directors.) Sympathizers created a Facebook support page for Finch, and online commentators expressed outrage at what they called an unconstitutional attempt by the state to interfere with his support for gun rights.

During Finch's boisterous trial in October 2013, he was joined in the Liberty County courtroom by Mack, several other Florida sheriffs, and dozens of new supporters. The judge had to admonish the crowd not to laugh as the state presented its case against Finch, and in the end, the jury acquitted him of misconduct and falsification of records. He was reinstated as sheriff, and later granted back pay as well as attorney's fees of more than $160,000. Finch, 53, remains the sheriff of Liberty County.

Winning over law enforcement officials

On a chilly morning last October, roughly 60 people — mostly older white men — sat at long plastic tables beneath the fluorescent lights of an auditorium in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to attend a "Tribute to Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers."

At the meeting, four or five political groups — the local chapters of the Tea Party, Freedom Works, United Conservatives Fund — laid out their literature, candy, and swag on folding tables at the back of the room. The speakers included two local police officers, the president of Mississippi's Gulf Coast Rangers citizen militia, a veteran who tracks gun laws in Mississippi, an investigator for the state's attorney general, and finally, the star attraction: Sheriff Richard Mack. But only one Mississippi county sheriff showed up: Billy McGee, from the surrounding Forrest County.

Mack, who is over six feet tall and bears a passing resemblance to Ronald Reagan, stood before the crowd in a casual, desert-hued suit. Audience members queued to have him sign their copies of a booklet summarizing his case against the Brady Act, called "The Victory for State Sovereignty." In America, he said as audience members nodded, "gun control is against the law. And we don't get to violate the law just because we have a shooting in Oregon or Sandy Hook or anyplace else."

"What we want now is for many of you to come to our certification training," he said. "You come to a two-day seminar, get certified, and then you get back here to your state and you start providing this training, bam, bam, bam, go to every sheriff's office, go to chiefs of police, go to county commissioners and show them this training." Details about how to get the certification training, Mack assured the audience, would be forthcoming.

A local named Paul Boudreaux, 53, raised his hand from the third row. "What do you do about the sheriffs that are complicit with the federal government?" he asked.

'TELL THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, 'YOU'RE NOT GOING TO ABUSE CITIZENS ANYMORE.'"

"Ignore them," Mack replied. He reminded the audience that there are nearly 3,100 sheriffs in the country and that the association is aiming to get approximately one fourth of them to support its mission: "If we get that 600 or 700, there's going to be no stopping. And then everybody in this country has at least two or three places in each state where they can go for refuge, find a true constitutional sheriff who'll tell the federal government, 'You're not going to abuse citizens anymore.'"

Asked later what the worst abuses were that the federal government had committed in his community, Boudreaux brought up the gopher frog: an endangered species native to the Gulf region. To protect it, Boudreaux said, some of his neighbors have had hundreds of acres of land condemned as habitat where the frog can live. "Fortunately, because of our Second Amendment, we've still got the freest country on Earth," Boudreaux added, crossing his arms.

"But the sheriff needs to know," Boudreaux said, expressing a view that most legal scholars vigorously dispute, "that he can forbid federal agents from coming into his county and trying to enforce laws that are unconstitutional."

Roots of the movement

Mack first made it to the national stage in 1996 as a sheriff from Arizona, when he and a sheriff from Montana challenged a provision of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act before the U.S. Supreme Court. Using attorneys paid by the National Rifle Association, they argued it was unconstitutional for the federal government to require local chief law enforcement officers to run background checks on prospective gun buyers — and won, in a 5-4 ruling that struck down that provision of the act.

But Mack was defeated in the Democratic primary that year, and has since lost three more elections in two states for different offices. He nonetheless became a popular speaker, initially at John Birch Society and National Rifle Association banquets, and later at Tea Party events. In May 2011, he registered the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association with the state of Texas, but is just now filing for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service. As a result, the group's financing is largely opaque.

According to Mack, more than 100 sheriffs have shown up at the annual conventions his group has organized, including many in 2014 when Finch received the group's top honor: Constitutional Sheriff of the Year. Finch and 40 other sheriffs signed a resolution there declaring they would not tolerate any federal agent who attempted to register firearms, arrest someone, or seize property in their counties without their consent.

Mack says he envisions the sheriffs' "take back" of the United States as a peaceful event. But he uses apocalyptic language to depict social conditions in America, describing sheriffs as a bulwark to forestall the violence for which armed, angry citizens around the country are preparing. Finch, too, said he sees sheriffs as a safeguard against all-out civil war. "If all the sheriffs would get on board and stand in the gap, then maybe we can avoid the violence that I believe probably is going to come at some point," Finch said.

The constitutional sheriff movement, according to the teachings of Mack and his supporters, is rooted in the historical definition of sheriffs as the most powerful law-enforcement officers within their counties. The idea harkens to medieval England, when Anglo-Saxon kings tasked sheriffs with enforcing their edicts. English colonists brought the tradition to the Americas, and began electing their own sheriffs in the mid-1600s, entrusting them with overseeing the judicial process, carrying out legal decisions, and keeping the peace. Under the latter authority, they could organize citizen brigades to catch outlaws or defend against attackers, an arrangement known as "posse comitatus."

In the 1970s, a minister in the white supremacist Christian Identity movement, William Potter Gale, wrote a series of articles that would come to be known as the handbook of the Posse Comitatus movement. Gale described sheriffs as the only "legal" law enforcement officers in the country and urged citizens to form their own militias to resist encroachments on their rights if sheriffs did not. The constitutional abuses he cited included the federal income tax system, gun control, federal education, and civil rights laws. He advised citizens to form their own "common law" courts to try officials who violated the constitution, and prescribed archaic punishments, such as hangings.

Contemporary "sovereign citizens," who generally reject federal authorities, are inspired partly by Gale's rhetoric and partly by past bloody clashes between federal officials and citizens charged with illegal gun sales and ownership. Terry Nichols, who is now in prison for planning the Oklahoma City federal center bombing that killed 168 people 21 years ago this week, is a member of the sovereign citizen movement, according to the FBI.

That April 19 bombing deliberately coincided with the date of three iconic events in the radical right's historical pantheon — the "hot heard round the world" at the Battle of Lexington & Concord in 1775; a violent FBI battle in 1985 with members of an extremist Christian group in Arkansas known as the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord; and the FBI's climactic confrontation in 1993 with religious extremists belonging to the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, starting a fire that killed 76 people.

Nowadays, sovereign citizens number in the hundreds of thousands, and U.S. law enforcement agencies consider them the top terrorist threat in the country, according to a July 2014 survey by a University of Maryland-led terrorism study consortium. At least 14 police officers have been killed and another 14 injured in 62 incidents involving sovereign citizens since 9-11, according to J.J. MacNab, a frequent writer on anti-government extremism who consults for government agencies. Most of their attacks are "unplanned, reactive violence targeting law enforcement officers during active enforcement efforts," the Department of Homeland Security said in a Feb. 5, 2015, report.

In one such incident, West Memphis police officer Brandon Paudert and another officer pulled over a sovereign citizen named Jerry Kane and his 16-year-old son in a van with out-of-state plates in May 2010. The duo had been traveling around the country peddling debt-avoidance seminars based on sovereign citizen beliefs. Kane had been threatening anti-government violence for years on his Internet radio show, and the traffic stop escalated rapidly into a tussle in which the younger Kane shot both cops dead with an AK-47. Police officers caught up with both Kanes hours later in a Walmart parking lot, where they were killed.

Mack and his supporters dismiss the idea that they are supportive of the violent measures taken by sovereign citizens. But some of his association's members have found common cause with the group. In March 2011, for example, New Hampshire sheriff Christopher Conley — who was listed as a member of the council of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association from November 2012 until 2015 - expressed support for claims made against the Internal Revenue Service by a sovereign citizen named Charles Gregory Melick. A deputy federal marshal had served a summons on Melick at Conley's office, requiring him to appear in court about unpaid taxes, but Conley decided to write to a judge on Melick's behalf, arguing that the service was not legally valid. "I have a duty to protect people's Constitutional rights and protections," Conley said in his note.

Conley was never directly punished for his choice not to detain Melick, but lost the 2012 election.

In 2014, at least three sheriffs showed up with constitutionalist citizen militia groups and members of the Oath Keepers to support Cliven Bundy's standoff against the federal Bureau of Land Management at his ranch in southern Nevada. In a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. a few months after the Bundy Ranch standoff, Oath Keepers President Steward Rhodes gave those sheriffs a special shoutout. "You had Brad Rogers [of Indiana] there, he came on our behalf, you had Sheriff Peyman from Kentucky, you also had Jeff Christopher from Delaware," he told the audience.

"So if we're a bunch of radical anti-government crazy cop killers, why were there police officers standing right there with us?" Rhodes asked. "It's cause we're all in this together."

Bob Paudert, Brandon's father and the chief of the West Memphis police at the time of the deadly traffic stop, said he is troubled by the number of sheriffs and police officers who adopt the ideology of armed resistance embraced by sovereign citizens, but he can understand why they do. "Even I agree with a lot of what they say," he told the Center for Public Integrity, such as the principles of standing up for states' rights and reining in the federal government. "But law enforcement is not the enemy."

Executive editor Gordon Witkin contributed to this article.

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2016/04/28/national-group-of-sheriffs-opposed-to-federal-government-overreach-gains-size-momentum/

National sheriffs’ group, opposed to federal laws on guns and taxes, calls for defiance
True Crime
By Tom Jackman April 28

Photograph -- Richard Mack, former sheriff of Graham County, Ariz., and founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, in Phoenix, January 2011. (Gage Skidmore)

“… sheriffs typically swear to enforce the laws of their state. But a group called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association is intent on strictly enforcing their view of the U.S. Constitution and, according to a long new piece by the Center for Public Integrity, “its ambition is to encourage law enforcement officers to defy laws they decide themselves are illegal.” In essence, they are troubled by the overreach of the federal government in matters concerning guns, taxes and land management, and founder Richard Mack has described the federals as “the greatest threat we face today,” and his association as “the army to set our nation free.”

In an interview with Julia Harte and former Post reporter R. Jeffrey Smith, Mack said he had enlisted “several hundred” of the more than 3,000 sheriffs around the country as members of the CSPOA, and that hundreds more are sympathetic. At the association’s 2014 convention, dozens of sheriffs signed a declaration that they would not tolerate any federal agent who attempted to register firearms, arrest someone or seize property in their counties without their consent.

Mack struck a blow for states’ rights in the 1990s as a sheriff from Graham County, Arizona, when he and a sheriff from Montana challenged the Brady Bill’s interim requirement that local law enforcement agencies perform background checks on gun buyers. The Supreme Court ruled in Mack’s favor, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing the opinion affirming the states’ sovereignty under the 10th Amendment and that the federal government could not enlist the local police in 50 states to do its bidding. The decision did not have lasting impact because a national database was put in place to enable gun dealers to run the checks themselves, removing local law enforcement from the process.

But Mack became popular in conservative circles and he launched the CSPOA in 2011. At a recent training for local police, the CPI reported, Mack declared that “gun control is against the law” and that his goal was to sign up about one-fourth of the nation’s sheriffs to join the association. “And then everybody in this country has at least two or three places in each state where they can go for refuge,” Mack said, “find a true constitutional sheriff who’ll tell the federal government, ‘You’re not going to abuse citizens anymore.'”

What bothers some people about statements like that is the appearance that a local law enforcement official is substituting his or her legal judgment for that of a state or federal legislature. So I called Mack to ask him about his views and he willingly expounded on them, though he was not happy with the CPI article and even though The Post is not highly regarded in some conservative circles.

Mack’s philosophy is largely reinforced by his successful challenge to the Brady Bill, in which “we went through a lawful process to show the government is out of control, to force sheriffs to comply.” He said U.S. District Judge John Roll, who was killed in the attack on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in 2011, neatly summed up every sheriff’s dilemma: “He said I was forced to choose between obeying the law or keeping my oath of office. He described my problem in one sentence.”

Certain that any gun regulation violates the Second Amendment, Mack said “the government was forcing me to participate in a gun control scheme that I knew was unconstitutional. When all law enforcement is forced into that position by state or federal legislators, which one do we side with? And I believe there is a proper way to conduct oneself in knowing the difference between enforcing stupid laws and enforcing the principles of the Constitution.”

He compared the situation to that of officers in Alabama who enforced segregation laws against Rosa Parks, or military officers of Nazi Germany who committed genocide. “The cop who arrested Rosa Parks said,” according to Mack, “‘The law is the law.’ The officers at Nuremberg said the same thing, ‘We were just following orders.’ Well the court determined that following orders when you’re committing a crime, or genocide, doesn’t cut it. We say the same thing. Do not say, ‘I’m just following orders.’ Do what’s right. We stand for people being abused. I don’t care if it’s gun rights, land rights, Amish rights, the federal government should not get a free pass and we should stand against their abuses.”

Mack was adamant that “I have never advocated violence. I spent 20 years in law enforcement without ever beating up anybody.” But “when you have no place else to go, when all the courts are against you, all the legislators are against you, where else do you go? I believe to the local county sheriff…and if that means standing against the federal government, then so damn be it.”

Some like-minded sheriffs have turned up at the two recent standoffs between the federal government and local ranchers, at the Bundy ranch in Nevada and then on behalf of the Hammond family ranch at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, both times after the federal government tried to exercise control over public land adjacent to the two ranches. “Most Americans think that federal authority is ever most powerful and can usurp any governing entity below it,” Mack writes on the CSPOA website. “Though somewhat logical, that is simply a fallacy when one would consult the constitution. It is not the job of the federal government to interpose between you and the local law, it is your local government that will interpose.” Dozens of sheriffs, mostly from western states, sent letters to the White House in 2013 saying they would not enforce federal gun laws, including Douglas County, Ore., Sheriff John Hamlin. Hamlin’s view were later scrutinized after a mass killing in his county last October at Umpqua Community College.

In February, Mack’s group launched a campaign called “Vet Your Sheriff,” with a “Sheriff Survey” to be given to local sheriffs to see where they stand on the freedom spectrum. “Should the Federal Government,” asks Question 4, “come into your county and serve warrants and make arrests without informing you first of their intentions?” Question 9 asks, “According to the principles of our Constitutional Republic, who is responsible for keeping the Federal Government in check?”

I asked a local sheriff if he wanted to take the survey, but he declined. I asked the National Sheriffs Association, with 20,000 members, for their thoughts on the CSPOA, and they also declined. The deputy executive director, John Thompson, told the CPI that his association doesn’t take a position on how individual sheriffs carry out their duties. There are 3,080 sheriffs in 47 states, according to the association, though not all oversee full law enforcement agencies, with some primarily handling county jail oversight.

“It’s terrifying to me,” said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Louisville who specializes in police legitimacy and procedural fairness. “It’s not up to the police to decide what the law is going to be. They’re sworn to uphold the law. It’s not up to them to pick and choose.” Nix pointed out that officers use discretion all the time in deciding whether to charge someone with a crime. “But to be on the record, that you don’t want officers enforcing laws, that is pretty bold.”

Mack spoke in southwest Virginia earlier this month at a citizens meeting where he shared the bill with Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. Van Cleave joked, “What a horrible thing it is, asking the sheriff to honor the Constitution.” He said that both state and federal laws have been passed which violate the Constitution, and “if we ignore them, then the government can do whatever they want. It’s chaos out there, without somebody putting boundaries in and honoring that those boundaries mean something.”

Tom Jackman has been covering criminal justice for The Post since 1998, and now anchors the new "True Crime" blog. Follow @TomJackmanWP



NPR EXCERPTS -- “In southern Utah, things have gotten so bad lately that some local sheriffs have threatened to arrest federal rangers who try to close forest roads and cut off access to ranchers and other users. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether Garfield County Sheriff James "Danny" Perkins is serious or pulling your leg. Many Western ranchers don't own much land themselves and rely on vast tracts of federal land for grazing. …. Federal land makes up 94 percent of this county, so you'd think that Perkins would welcome the help of federal authorities. Think again. In the sage brush hills outside the one-stoplight town of Panguitch, he pulls off the highway and points to a dirt track. "This is a conflict, and you're gonna see just a little bit of it. Here's a road right here, that was put here with teams and wagons," Perkins says. "We're talking pioneer wagons here. Boulders lie in front of it and a bulldozer chewed it up so pickups or ATVs can't drive up it anymore. Federal rangers did this recently," he says. Locals have had access here for generations. …. There are a few dozen or so sheriffs mostly in rural Western states who refer to themselves as "Constitutionalists." It's not really a movement, but they are outspoken and rarely do they hesitate to get in very public fights with the Obama administration — over everything from gun control to whether the BLM should have law enforcement powers. It's clear that Sheriff Perkins, who's also a rancher, wants to push some boundaries. He talks openly about detaining, or as he says "Mirandizing," federal rangers. He recalls one case recently. "I told the Forest Service ranger that if he went out and closed a road that Garfield County has jurisdiction on, I would arrest him," he says. And then there was the time that his deputies did arrest a BLM ranger they said was illegally issuing citations to campers. …. For federal land managers, this was the latest instance of threats and intimidation directed at their field staff in the West. There's been an increase in reported confrontations lately. But the BLM's second in charge in Washington, D.C., Steve Ellis, downplays the tensions, saying they're actually not that common. "The key thing is working cooperatively with local law enforcement, with these sheriffs, that's our desire," Ellis says. Ellis also says that the BLM's mission is inherently controversial.” …. And in the past few weeks, he says, after Utah Republicans introduced a bill to strip law enforcement powers from the BLM, relations out here are getting better.”



See above for an authoritative article on the spurious and ignorant idea that LAW ENFORCEMENT is not under FEDERAL CONTROL. They share that view with the Sovereign Citizens group in that they respect no controls on their behavior, and rationalize it as being their “right as a citizen.” That is called, by a growing group of anarchic and fascist law officers called the “Constitutional Sheriffs Movement.” In other words, if a law enforcement officer thinks that a law is “unconstitutional” according to Former Sheriff Richard Mack, of Graham County, Ariz., and founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, in Phoenix’s views of the Constitution, he not only doesn’t have to enforce it, he SHOULDN’T enforce it! This sheriff is actively recruiting other sheriffs and law officers to follow his dangerous and bizarre views, and he is teaching them HIS interpretation of the US Constitution via a training course. It is my opinion that this constitutes “advocating the overthrow of the US government,” and should be punishable by a prison term of at least fifteen years. Let him out on parole if he’s behaves himself “in the pen.” While he’s in there give him psychotropic drugs and a talk therapist. See if that turns him around.

Obviously this looks like the seedling of an ad hoc police state which isn’t even ruled by a Hitler figure from above, but by a general insurrection against due process and legitimate societal order. This kind of thing is horrifying and ugly. It reminds me of the TV show that I do love to hate – “Zombie Apocalypse,” or “The Walking Dead.” All those good old boys and their handful of compatriots are walking around with shotguns, patrolling their very poor dwelling and protecting themselves against the Zombies. Sick and sad, but it has its’ appeal in this country these days. I’m hoping that something intelligent is going to come out of this group insanity.

As for what actually is in the Constitution about the ownership of land by government, businesses, or private citizens, I don’t know what it is. I took a quick look through Google on the matter. See the following choices, if you want to pursue them further on your own. I’m taking snippets from several, especially those that sound the least like wild-eyed right or left wing rants and most like a true account of what lawyers and Supreme Court justices actually think.

Wikipedia speaks on the free cattle grazing issue clearly, giving the US Supreme Court rulings as the controlling interpretation: “The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly held that this section empowers Congress to retain federal lands, to regulate federal lands such as by limiting cattle grazing, and to sell such lands. …. The United States Supreme Court has upheld the broad powers of the federal government to deal with federal lands, for example having unanimously held in Kleppe v. New Mexico[4] that "the complete power that Congress has over federal lands under this clause necessarily includes the power to regulate and protect wildlife living there, state law notwithstanding."[1]



WIKIPEDIA -- Federal lands
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Federal lands are lands in the United States for which ownership is claimed by the U.S. federal government, pursuant to Article Four, section 3, clause 2 of the United States Constitution.[1] The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly held that this section empowers Congress to retain federal lands, to regulate federal lands such as by limiting cattle grazing, and to sell such lands.[2] As of March 2012, out of the 2.27 billion acres in the country, about 28% of the total was owned by the Federal government according to the Interior Department.[3] The United States Supreme Court has upheld the broad powers of the federal government to deal with federal lands, for example having unanimously held in Kleppe v. New Mexico[4] that "the complete power that Congress has over federal lands under this clause necessarily includes the power to regulate and protect wildlife living there, state law notwithstanding."[1]
MAP -- Ownership of Federal lands in the 50 states, including subsurface rights.”



http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/4/essays/126/property-clause
Property Clause

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.... ARTICLE IV, SECTION 3, CLAUSE 2

The federal government owns or controls about thirty percent of the land in the United States. These holdings include national parks, national forests, recreation areas, wildlife refuges, vast tracts of range and wasteland managed by the Bureau of Land Management, reservations held in trust for Native American tribes, military bases, and ordinary federal buildings and installations. Although federal property can be found in every state, the largest concentrations are in the west, where, for example, the federal government owns over eighty percent of the land within Nevada.

The primary constitutional authority for the management and control of this vast real-estate empire is the Property Clause. The exact scope of this clause has long been a matter of debate. Broadly speaking, three different theories have been advanced.

The federal government owns or controls about thirty percent of the land in the United States. These holdings include national parks, national forests, recreation areas, wildlife refuges, vast tracts of range and wasteland managed by the Bureau of Land Management, reservations held in trust for Native American tribes, military bases, and ordinary federal buildings and installations. Although federal property can be found in every state, the largest concentrations are in the west, where, for example, the federal government owns over eighty percent of the land within Nevada.

The primary constitutional authority for the management and control of this vast real-estate empire is the Property Clause. The exact scope of this clause has long been a matter of debate. Broadly speaking, three different theories have been advanced.

The narrowest conception, which can be called the proprietary theory, maintains that the Property Clause simply allows Congress to act as an ordinary owner of land. It can set policy regarding whether such lands will be sold or retained and, if they are retained, who may enter these lands and for what purposes. Under this conception, the clause confers no political sovereignty over federal landholdings. Unless one of the enumerated powers of Article I applies, such as the power to raise armies or establish a post office, political sovereignty over federal lands remains with the several states in which the land is located.

The broadest conception, which can be called the police-power theory, regards the clause as conferring not only the powers of ownership but also general sovereign authority to regulate private conduct that occurs on federal land or that affects federal land. In default of any federal rule, state law applies. But if Congress determines that a federal rule "respecting" federal land is "needful," it may adopt federal legislation that supersedes state law. Thus, the Property Clause gives Congress the authority to adopt any type of legislation for federal lands, including codes of criminal law, family law, and exemptions from state taxation for persons residing on federal lands.

Although most commentators have polarized around the proprietary and police-power theories, there is also an intermediate conception of the Property Clause, which can be labeled the protective theory. This conception would go beyond the proprietary theory in regarding the clause as a partial source of sovereign authority. But it would stop short of the police-power theory by limiting that authority to legislation designed to protect the proprietary interests of the United States. Under this intermediate conception, for example, the clause would permit Congress to pass federal legislation regulating the sale of federal land, protecting federal land from trespasses and nuisances, or exempting federal land from state taxation. On the other hand, the clause would not permit Congress to enact a general code of criminal law or family law, nor would it permit Congress to exempt persons residing on federal land from general rules of state taxation.


FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE SUBJECT GO TO THESE SITES:

**What Does the Constitution Say About Federal Land Ownership ...
tenthamendmentcenter.com › Constitution › Enclave Clause
Feb 10, 2016 - The “Bundy stand-off” in Oregon at a federal wildlife refuge has triggered (or, rather, re-triggered) questions about the constitutionality of federal land ownership. Westerners in particular question why the federal government should own nearly 30% of the country. In the West, the issue is particularly important.

**Property Clause in the US Constitution - Heritage Foundation
www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/4/...
The Heritage Foundation
Property Clause. The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.... The federal government owns or controls about thirty percent of the land in the United States.

**Federal lands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands
Wikipedia
Federal lands are lands in the United States for which ownership is claimed by the U.S. federal government, pursuant to Article Four, section 3, clause 2 of the United States Constitution.
‎Primary federal land holders - ‎Laws regarding federal lands - ‎See also - ‎References

**Napolitano: Washington lacks constitutional right to own land in ...
www.politifact.com/.../napolitano-washington-lacks-constit...
PolitiFact.com
Apr 28, 2014 - "The Constitution simply does not authorize the federal government to .... "The constitutional basis of federal land ownership is not subject to ...

**federal land ownership – Independence Institute
https://www.i2i.org/tag/federal-land-ownership/
Independence Institute
... Founders' Night 2016 · Video, Watch&Listen; May 20, 2016. Most Read; Commented. What Does the Constitution Say About Federal Land Ownership? 3585 ...

**The U.S. Constitution and Federal Lands
https://www.nccs.net/2002-07-the-u-s-constitution-and-federal-lands.php
"It is obvious that if there were no such thing as 'ownership' in property, which means legally protected exclusiveness, there would be no subduing or extensive ...

**Inside The Backwards Ideology Driving The Right-Wing Militiamen ...
thinkprogress.org/.../inside-the-backwards-ideology-drivin...
ThinkProgress
Jan 4, 2016 - The U.S. Constitution limits United States government. ... The federal government may own land, it may enact regulations governing that land, ...

**The Constitution of the United States on Federal Land Ownership
bundyranch.blogspot.com/2015/.../the-constitution-of-united-states-on.ht...
Dec 7, 2015 - Where in the Constitution have we given Congress, (i.e. the Federal Government) the right to control or administer land, and under what ...

**Does the US Constitution prohibit the federal government from owning ...
https://www.quora.com/Does-the-US-Constitution-prohibit-the-federa...Quora
Jan 6, 2016 - Congressional Research Service: Federal Land Ownership: Constitutional Authority and the History of Acquisition, Disposal, and Retention.

** Key things to know about federal land ownership in the West | US News
www.usnews.com/.../key-things-to-know-abo...
U.S. News & World Report
Jan 4, 2016 - Key things to know about federal land ownership in the West and ... The group calls itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and ….