Rand and Ron Paul ride to the rescue for Bundy in Nevada standoff with feds

Defiant Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy received some key but qualified support in his still-unresolved standoff with the Obama administration. Libertarian icons ex-Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and his son, Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, both came out with critical comments on the federal government’s handling of the land dispute, while the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association broke its silence on the dispute Wednesday with harsh words of its own for the feds. The senior Mr. Paul also criticized what he said was overkill in the armed confrontation that nearly led to violence before the BLM stood down over the weekend. “They may come back with a lot more force, like they did at Waco with the Davidians,” the senior Mr. Paul said on Fox News, referencing the 1993 Branch Davidian standoff in Texas that left nearly 100 people dead. His son, Rand Paul, became one of the first of the 2016 contenders to weigh in on the dispute, criticizing the heavy federal enforcement array in the confrontation. “The federal government shouldn’t violate the law, nor should we have 48 federal agencies carrying weapons and having SWAT teams,” Mr. Paul said on a Kentucky radio station. The younger Mr. Paul also appealed for the Bundy family, which does not recognize the federal government’s jurisdiction over the disputed lands, to seek redress nonviolently. “I hope it’ll go through a court,” he said “But if it were in a court, I would be siding and wanting to say that, look, the states and the individuals in the state should own these lands.”...more

Let's see what the feds did to their own land in the span of a week. 



Friends of the Bundy family said they found damage to Mr. Bundy’s property and livestock once federal personnel withdrew. “They had total control of this land for one week, and look at the destruction they did in one week,” Corey Houston, a friend of the rancher, told Fox News. Mr. Houston charged that the federal government left the territory in disarray, including destroyed water lines, holes in fences, and several dead cattle. “So why would you trust somebody like that?” he said. “And how does that show that they’re a better steward?”