<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><div>Courtesy of today's (January 7, 2016) Spokesman-Review.</div><div><br></div><div>---------------------------------</div><div><h1 style="font-size: 28px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; clear: both; line-height: 1.2; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Idaho Rep. Labrador calls armed Burns protest ‘peaceful’ and ‘civil disobedience’</h1><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Betsy Z. Russell, Spokesman-Review</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador raised eyebrows in Washington, D.C. Wednesday for defending the armed protesters who took over an eastern Oregon wildlife refuge as “peaceful” practitioners of “civil disobedience.” </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Idaho GOP congressman was asked about the standoff at a “Conversations with Conservatives” event on Capitol Hill hosted by the Heritage Foundation. The Hill, a Washington, D.C. newspaper that covers Congress, reported that Labrador’s response “stood in contrast to those of many Republicans who have condemned the protests that began Saturday night at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge” near Burns, Ore.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Among those: Oregon GOP Rep. Greg Walden, whose district includes the refuge, told Congress he believed the takeover was “not appropriate” and called on the protesters to “go home,” The Hill reported. The newspaper also quoted GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, all of whom condemned the protests. “We don’t have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence on others,” Cruz said.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Labrador said, “The issue in the West that people here in the East don’t understand is that we have, in Idaho it’s over 65 percent of our lands are owned by the federal government. It’s the same thing in most of the states in the West. And what we have is frustration, where you have the BLM, we have other federal agencies that keep taking over the lands.”</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He decried the five-year prison sentences for arson handed down to two Burns area ranchers, prompting the protests, and noted that though a federal judge found that long of a sentence inappropriate, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned him, ruling that that was what federal sentencing laws required. “It’s one of the reasons that I actually have embarked into sentencing reform,” Labrador said. “This is the prototypical case where a judge would have been able to make a decision that was just and fair, as opposed to having the sentencing guidelines say that you must go to prison for five years for a particular crime. And so you have all the frustration happening with the takeover of the lands by the federal government, with an unjust sentence, and you have just a frustration that they feel the federal government is not listening to them.”</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“And that’s what leads to what so far has been a peaceful takeover of an abandoned building, by the way,” Labrador said. “And I think the media is quick to sort of cast aspersions on that group of people, but you’ll have a person in the middle of a crowded field yell ‘Allahu Akbar’ and actually shoot at people, and the media says, ‘Wait a second, we should not make any judgments here.’ But these people, what they have done so far, and hopefully they will continue to do it in a peaceful way, they are trying to express their frustrations. And I think civil disobedience has been something that for the most part the liberal media used to stand up for, but apparently there’s some exceptions to that, and that’s when conservatives and pro-Second Amendment people are trying to exercise that same right of civil disobedience.”</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Rep. Steve Pearce, R-New Mexico, noted a distinction between the Bundy brothers who are leading the armed takeover, and Dwight and Steven Hammond, the two ranchers now serving the prison term on arson charges for burning public land. “I’m not taking a side on the Bundys - I think that’s a side show,” Pearce said. “I think the Hammonds are the ones in the West that have been badly treated.”</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, said he agrees with Labrador on sentencing reform, but noted, “We have the power to fix it in Congress. … We can blame the court, but this is a law that we have caused. We can fix this. … I hope we do fix it. We could fix this next week, the Senate could fix it probably a week later, and the president could sign it.”</span></p></div><div>---------------------------------<br><br><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</span></div><div><a href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">http://www.MoscowCares.com</font></a></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Hansen</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moscow, Idaho</span></div></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"There's room at the top they are telling you still.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you want to be like the folks on the hill."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- John Lennon</span></div></div></div></div></body></html>