When a group of armed militiamen took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge last weekend, there were no federal employees in the vicinity for them to clash with. As a new report in the Washington Post chronicles, that was apparently on purpose.
Discussions to close down federal facilities near and around Burns began weeks before the standoff.
The U.S. Postal Services ceased mail delivery last week, according to the Post. The Fish and Wildlife Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Farm Service Agency and the U.S. Forest Service also closed their doors and employees were asked to telecommute or fill out their duties in other neighboring filed offices. Some are on paid leave.
Federal officials were monitoring and growing increasingly worried about the tone and tenor of outsiders who were threatening locals, many of them federal employees. According to the Post, federal employees in Eastern Oregon were dealing with “stalking” and “threatening messages on office phones” before an unknown number of militiamen took over the refuge.
“A lot of the rhetoric was aimed at the federal government, and we just didn’t know what might happen,” Randall Eardley, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management, told the Post.
“Some employees reported cars they did not recognize parking on the street outside their homes at night,” the Post story said.
As the federal government has faced pressure to take action to clear the refuge of the militants, the Post report’ reveals that not only are federal government officials taking a non-confrontational approach to dealing with the takeover, they took that approach in how they prepared for a potential confrontation.
The Post Office has stopped delivering mail??
What do these guys have to do to get arrested? Smoke pot?
Well, at least this gives some context and makes the “kid gloves” approach they’ve been taking make more sense. They’re afraid that dong what they should or would have wanted to do to remove these idiots will result in violence not at the site of the media circus, but against innocent people around town who happen to be federal employees.
Turn black.
So the Feds are even more cowed and craven than I thought. That’s impressive.
Stick a fork in the Federal government’s authority across the American west—when a lawfully-constituted government is literally afraid to enforce its own laws in large swaths of its own territory, the only conclusion is that the rebel insurgents—which is exactly what the Bundyites are—have already won.
Which means, in turn, it’s open season on National Parks, National Forests, National Monuments, and every other square inch of U.S. government land across the country, and the brave men and women who work at those places. The Bundyites can threaten violence against whoever they want without repercussion or consequences. That was proven first in Nevada, and now in Oregon, with nary a peep out of the Feds, whose only response has been to jump into bed and pull the covers over their heads while they lie there quivering in fear of offending armed white people.
Given that ultimately the President of the United States is charged with seeing to it that laws are enforced, this buck stops on Obama’s desk.
Let’s see how this plays out in the long term. My guess is that these guys “declare victory” after a week or so and go home, only to have the doorbell ring with a team of FBI agents ready to cart them off without much fanfare.
As an aside, imagine if there were reports of Muslim or black men parking overnight outside outside federal employees homes? I wonder what would happen then?
Mike, with all due respect, this is exactly what dozens of commenters here, at DK, at WM, and other progressive blogs were confidently asserting was going to happen in the wake of Nevada. “Just wait, once tempers cool, the Feds will swoop in and grab Bundy, his family, and all those clowns aiming assault weapons at BLM employees.”
As of today, exactly squat has been done to Cliven Bundy or any of the armed thugs who supported him, either to recover the money he owes the taxpayers, or to punish those who directly threatened federal employees with firearms.
There isn’t a single particle of evidence you can point to to justify your or anybody else’s optimism that the Feds have the will or the intent to do squat in Oregon. To the contrary, everything points to the Federal government being completely intimidated and thoroughly neutered.
The only hope we can hang onto is that the Feds have been monitoring the rebel groups across the west for many months, and have a grand plan for a multi-state coordinated sweep of insurgents. That’s a damn forlorn hope at this point.