There’s a scofflaw rancher out in Nevada who’s concluded that the Feds have no jurisdiction over land in the state of Nevada (apparently Mr. Bundy has never heard of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the US – Mexican War and included the ceding of ownership of California and a large area comprising New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado to the United States). I’ve seen it suggested elsewhere and it makes sense to me: follow Molly Ivins’ suggestion about what to do with the Branch Davidians in their compound in Waco back in 1993. Molly wrote in a column on March 13 as that standoff continued

build a large fence around the Branch Davidian compound, declare it a prison and have everyone walk away.

What’s to prevent the BLM from blockading all routes in and out of Mr. Bundy’s ranch, with the National Guard in some MRAPs or Bradley Fighting Vehicles if necessary? Then just let Mr. Bundy stew in his own juices until he gets tired of being unable to move his cattle to market.

I’m with Charlie Pierce, too: One of the days the right-wing talkers on the radio and the TV are going to get somebody or somebodies killed.

Bear in mind that Bundy’s entire position is that he can not pay his bills, and that he can ignore a federal judge, because he feels the federal government is illegitimate. (Poor Fred Hampton should have thought of this.) This is conservatism — and, therefore, Republicanism — playing footsie with sedition. This is not the first time, either.

[snip]

The difference between the present moment, and the days when Helen Chenoweth was riding the range, of course, is the fact that there is a powerful and loud right-wing media infrastructure at the disposal of the people peddling this constitutional poison. Americans For Prosperity jumped right on the Bundy case. Of course, AFP — and the Koch brothers who fund it — isn’t in this for airy philosophical debates on the role of government. They’re in it to break the control of the federal government over the lands that they want to exploit for their own profit, and they are willing to help engage the single most destructive political theory in the country’s history to help them do it. It is reckless and dangerous, and anybody who gets used by these people is a sap. And useful idiots, like Sean Hannity and all the someones like him, are going to get somebody killed behind this stuff.

The Hannitys and O’Reillys and the rest will all squeal like stuck pigs if accused of this, of course, but they have little deniability left.