It's on the front page everywhere, lots of people have got something to say about it. The problem I have is that I haven't been able to find out just how this blew up. What I did find was that a couple of ranchers were convicted of setting fires on federal land, for which they served moderate prison terms. The news reports I have seen call it arson, but what did they actually burn? A thousand acres of primeval forest? Or a couple of acres of sagebrush? Given the location, I tend toward the later. Fires burn out in the wilds all the time.
How is it that these two cases ended up in Federal court? I smell something fishy. Perhaps we have a rancher who is chafing under rules of the Federal Bureaucracy and sets about to tweak their collective noses. Or maybe we have a prosecutor who is trying to make a name for himself. And if the new prison terms are so egregious, where is the ACLU?
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