Stronger action needed against anti-government militias
By Raúl M. Grijalva and Bennie Thompson
... Some of the men and women involved in the Nevada and Oregon standoffs have openly called for the death of federal land management officials, and they continue to harass themlargely without punishmentsimply for doing their jobs.
These extremists encourage each other by publicizing pictures of the faces of federal officials, along with their vehicles' license plates. At our congressional forum, Tim Blount, the executive director of Friends of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, described how he needed a police escort just to move safely around his home community in Oregon ...
... some Republican lawmakers employ the same anti-government rhetoric that fuels these radicals. Chairman Rob Bishop, R-Utah, has co-sponsored a bill by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, to remove federal law enforcement authority from the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, turning those functions over to local police and county sheriffs who lack the relevant training.
Anti-government extremists didn't always direct their ire at public-lands agencies. That changed, in part, because a group of Western congressmen, state legislators and county sheriffs built their careers by advocating the transfer of millions of acres of federal land to states or counties, even though no state or county had ever owned the land in question or could afford to manage it now ...
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