Tis the season to be jolly that is unless you’re Dwight and Steven Hammond who face jail time after this holiday season for terrorism. Yes this home grown father and son pair have been convicted under “terrorist statutes” and will spend 5 years behind bars for their dastardly deeds. What so heinous a crime you say could a father and son family ranching outfit inflict to rise to the level of terrorism? Has this ranching family gone off the deep end and sworn allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood picking off passersby with AK-47’s? Could they be the 20th & 21st hijackers that inadvertently missed the plane check-in for the World Trade Tower attack? Do they hold sympathies for the husband/wife team of San Bernardino? No, just ranchers in rural Harney County, Oregon doing what ranchers do. The Hammond’s set a backfire on their ranch lands to prevent an oncoming wildfire. The fire they set spread beyond Hammond’s boundary and burned a half acre of BLM grasslands. Those villainous masterminds of mass destruction!
Such is the penalty today for such terrorist activities; ranchers beware. Or, were these terrorist charges a more sinister operational tactic in play so the BLM and other government agencies could acquire additional critical habitat in the Steen’s Mountain Special Management Area and the Malheur Wildlife Refuge where Hammond’s ranch adjoins? Hum…..?
This case is another out-of-control centralized government “taking” through deceptive and unconstitutional means designed to deprive the Hammond’s of their property and now their civil rights. The tactics advanced, much the same as against Clive Bundy in Nevada include intimidation, the overt use of force and the covert actions of an inept unconstitutional 9th Circuit Court. Government, this American government of supposed Constitutional limits, is so out of control that the absurd now passes for the ordinary and is focused on destroying those few who work the lands adjacent to the feds for a living. The BLM agenda as with all federal and some state agencies are bringing the historical context of “multiple use” to an explosive and unprecedented end. Unelected agency chiefs acting under cover of the green global preservation movement, unfettered by legislative or state scrutiny, are moving this nations resource providers adjacent to federal lands to federal prisons.
The infectious host of watermelon conspirators, (green on the outside, red in the middle), are many and impossible to fight. Federal prosecutors are rarely proven wrong in a court system designed to fulfill the wants and desires of those who dangle their strings. The Hammonds have gone broke fighting an impossible uphill battle to protect what we all have to lose, a nation with liberty and justice for all. Their financial demise will be the least of the burden they face. Dwight, 74 will likely never step free from prison. His son will be left with nothing to inherit when he emerges from behind bars a “free man” in five years as a special condition to their sheep dip ordeal looms. The Hammond’s signed under duress a first right of refusal for the sale of their ranch to none other than the BLM. With a million dollars spent fighting their case and a four hundred thousand dollars fine to pay there is little hope they can keep their ranch. What you and I lose will never be reacquired either without a revolutionary return to the simple, yet pure reverence to limited, well defined government our founder’s gifted to a hopeful future of free individuals pursuing their happiness in a tyrant free nation.
Time is short for these “terrorists of the 21st century”. They will report to federal prison soon after the New Year. Another year of woe and sorrow for those who cling to a tattered document of old and highly unfashionable wisdom.
