Could I Be Next?
By Trent Loos
As citizens of this great nation, are we to accept whatever the government says and does without questioning it? Can the United States Government not allow itself to be criticized by the very people it is supposed to protect? In my opinion, the sole purpose of the government is protecting it’s citizens. Recently I received a very critical letter from a reader who accused me of Government bashing simply to pander to my readers. He even indicated that I was just doing it to make a profit. Let me assure you, I don’t write anything that I don’t whole-heartedly believe.In the past week the government has again encroached on the rights of it’s citizens. Nothing they advocate for the wolf parallels this act by a prosecutor in New Mexico at Kit Laney’s arraignment on Tuesday Aug 3, 2004. Kit Laney was arrested on March 14, 2004 and charged with 5 counts of assault. At the arraignment, the prosecutor upgraded the charges to assault with a deadly weapon. No Kit Laney did not threaten government officials with a gun. The deadly weapons on his person at the time of the arrest were his horse, his spurs and his reins.
To give you a quick refresher course on the Kit Laney’s situation, the Laneys’ have been ranching this land since 1883. The Gila Wilderness Area was established in 1924. In 1985 Laney’s purchased adjacent property called the Diamond Bar. In 1996, Kit Laney refused to purchase a permit after the Forest Service said he had to reduce his herd size. Laney said he couldn’t make a living with fewer cattle.
In 1998, the Laneys’ argued to the Tenth Circuit Court that they should be declared the legal owners of the 145,580-acre Diamond Bar allotment under Territorial law since their predecessors obtained the vested right to water and grazing in the 1880’s. In 1999, the Tenth Circuit denied their argument and prohibited the Laneys’ from grazing the allotments because their grazing permits had expired.
On March 14, 2004, Laney went to the grazing site after hearing that his cattle were being mistreated. He was aware that the Forest Service had hired independent contractors to impound his cattle. Laney ended up in jail and was held without bond for fear that he would return to the grazing site to interrupt the government’s seizure of his cattle.
Initially I thought I would try to point out that based on these charges, anything could be considered a deadly weapon. Your cell phone, if thrown, could be considered a deadly weapon. In fact, a guy was recently charged with assault with deadly weapon when he threw his cell phone at a baseball player on the field. However, there is a glaring difference in these two situations. That gentleman threw the cell phone with intent to harm. Kit Laney rode up on his horse to check on his cattle. He did not remove his spurs and throw them. He may have been mad enough to throw his 1000 lb horse, but he didn’t do that either. Nor did he whip them with his leather reins.
What kind of a government does these things? Not the representative form of Government that I thought we had. This reminds me a situation in Nevada recently where a group of cattlemen went to Washington D.C. to visit with their Senator. When they returned home, they were expressed concern about some to the Senators views. The executive described some of those concerns in her monthly column. The Senator responded with a derogatory letter about the cattlemen’s concerns including the comment that it was a privilege for them to have had the opportunity to meet with the Senator and they should not be critical of him. A PRIVILEGE! I would quickly inform that Senator that he works for me.
It is his privilege that a group his constituents traveled to D.C. to see him and saved him the trip home. Ironically, a guy named Thomas Jefferson spoke of this situation nearly 200 years ago: The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.
Kit Laney is no criminal. He is a citizen of this country simply trying to get his country to live up to the promises it made years ago. He is a citizen, like so many in this country, that simply wants to work hard doing what he loves doing most. He was singled out by the Government because he wasn’t willing to accept whatever was handed to him. The question is, are we, as fellow citizens, going to sit back and say, “That is terrible. What are they trying to do him?” Or are we going to call our own elected official and say, “Could I be next?” Every freedom loving American in this country needs to mount up and send a posse to Washington to let them know that we aren’t going to settle for anything but a government that is “of, by and for the people” as it was originally intended to be. Regulators mount up!
