Would You Rather Have Armed Militias? Or Beef For Dinner?
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has, for a long time, been considered the “Ninth Circus”.
Continuing in that tradition is the recent reversal of a scathing, 105 page opinion by highly respected Federal District Judge Robert Clive Jones in the case of The United States of America vs. Wayne Hage from Nye County, Nevada.
Jones, threw the book at the government in the form of the BLM and it apparently greatly offended the jurists of the circus his opinion, that on the first day of the 21-day trial in 2012, the BLM came to the court “with the standard arrogant, arbitrary, capricious attitude that I recognize in many of these cases.”
Well, that’s certainly been the experience of virtually every resident of rural Nevada.
Jones held individuals within the government bureaucracy in contempt and that, too, was reversed.
Given the past performance of opinions from the circus this should be appealed to the Supremes.
After all, more cases come to the Supreme Court from the Ninth Circuit than any other court, and — not surprisingly — Ninth Circuit rulings make up a sizeable portion of the docket of argued and decided cases – 75 cases, or 25.7% for the last four terms including the current session. During that period, the Court has reversed or vacated and sent back 79.5% of the Ninth Circuit decisions it has reviewed.
So, there is a reasonable chance that the Supremes will display the good sense that the circus did not and reverse this case as well.
But Hage is dead and the case is being brought forward by his heirs. And defending Western land rights is not inexpensive. Nor as sexy as undoing executive orders.
So there is a chance this case will not be appealed.
That would be a travesty.
It happens that the original judge here is a well respected Nevada jurist who did NOT let his ideology get in the way of the facts of this case which, essentially, are that the BLM had pulled Hage’s grazing allotments despite the water rights the Tonopah based rancher had put together. Jones had ruled that the water rights gave Hage a defense to the BLM’s unilateral denial of his property rights.
Hage’s son, Wayne Jr. told the Las Vegas Review Journal “I don’t know what the future has in store for us,” he said. “We have been dealt a lot of ugly over the years. I’m not sure where it’s going to go.
“It looks to me like the 9th Circuit just swelled the ranks of the militias,” he added.
Given the standoff in Oregon at the moment, he may be right.
So far, the only real victory over the BLM has come in the unlikely form of armed militia members backing off the arrogant Federal agency in the 2014 Bunkerville, NV standoff over Cliven Bundy’s cattle.
Harry Reid called the folks who flocked to Bunkerville to defend Bundy “domestic terrorists” and promised action. But there was no action (largely because the Obamaites do not want a potentially lethal rerun) and the fact is that they won an unlikely victory.
If that’s the only way the folks who grow our food can win, maybe we’ll see more of it.
Maybe we should.
Or, maybe—just maybe—the United States Supreme Court will end this nonsense once and for all by doing what they often have done.
Reversing the Ninth Circus one more time.
Guest Opinion Fred Weinberg