Of Nevada, Cattle and Tinpot Bureaucracies

Gomezz Adddams Fri Apr 18, 2014 10:47 am

A few observations about the Bunkerville Folderol since the hasty retreat by the BLM's tinpot SWAT team.

1) Endangered desert tortoises actually thrive with cattle because they eat their manure not only for nutrients but for the water content.

2) While it has been said a man who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client, rancher Clive Bundy did bring up a good point in claiming that the US really is not the true owner of most of the public land (83%) as is reported by the MSM.

A careful reading of Nevada and it's Statehood reveals that essentially the US Government has violated not only it’s own rules, statutes, Supreme Court rulings and the Constitution, but also the 1848 Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo that ended the war with Mexico and provided the land for numerous southwestern states including Nevada.

To start with, in violation of its own rules, Congress admitted Nevada as a state even though it didn’t have a large enough population in order to help secure the re-election of Lincoln who at the time was in a tight 3 way race and to insure the passage of the 13th Amendment which was very much in doubt in 1864..

As Clive Bundy has claimed (although he does make a horrible hash of the facts in his argument), the Constitution only gives the power of municipal sovereignty, jurisdiction, or right of soil in the District of Columbia as put forth in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 and “… over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.”

In addition, the Property Clause (Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2) limits Congressional “… power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States;”

What is most interesting however is when a territory becomes a State, the Doctrine of Equal Footing, which has appeared in every State Enabling Act since Tennessee’s in 1796 and is based on Article 4, Section 3, Clause 1, is invoked. From the Nevada's own Enabling Act: "That the inhabitants of that portion of the territory of Nevada included in the boundaries hereinafter designated be, and they are hereby, authorized to form for themselves, out of said territory, a state government, with the name aforesaid, which said state, when formed, shall be admitted into the Union upon an equal footing with the original states, in all respects whatsoever.”

And while within the Nevada Enabling Act there is a clause that states Nevada citizens will “… agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within said territory, and that the same shall be and remain at the sole and entire disposition of the United States”, the Supreme Court ruled in Coyle v Smith (1911) that Congress cannot include unique mandates and if included are not enforceable.

From an earlier case from 1845 concerning Alabama's Enabling Act, the Supreme Court held in Pollard v Hagan, that clauses with essentially the same conditions and wording as Nevada’s were in violation of the Constitution and were held void. Said the Court: "We think the proper examination of this subject will show that the United States never held any municipal sovereignty, jurisdiction, or right of soil in and to the territory of which Alabama or any of the new states were formed; except for temporary purposes…”

Thus the limitation placed on the citizens of Nevada to forfeit all title to public lands of the United States is void. The Supreme Court also held in Pollard that the limitation "..would have been void and inoperative, because the United States have no constitutional capacity to exercise municipal jurisdiction, sovereignty, or eminent domain, within the limits of a state, or elsewhere, except in cases in which it is expressly granted…” such as the District of Columbia, land purchased by the federal government from a State with its consent, and Territorial lands before Statehood.

And finally in the 1848 Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican War, the US Government agreed that the territory ceded by Mexico "shall be formed into free, sovereign, and independent states and incorporated into the Union of the United States as soon as possible, and the citizens thereof shall be accorded the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages and immunities as citizens of the original states.” .

And yet how does a State exercise it’s sovereignty when it possesses only 17% of it’s land within it’s border? How is a State on “equal footing” with existing States when it possesses not even a 1/5th of its land? And again just who is breaking the Rule of Law?

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