From Breitbart.com:
Exclusive–Texas AG Abbott to BLM: ‘Come and Take It’
After Breitbart Texas reported on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) intent to seize 90,000 acres belonging to Texas landholders along the Texas/Oklahoma line, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott questioned the BLM’s authority to take such action.
“I am about ready,” General Abbott told Breitbart Texas, “to go to the Red River and raise a ‘Come and Take It’ flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas.”
[ That would be Molon Labe.– BZ ]
Gen. Abbott sent a strongly-worded letter to BLM Director Neil Kornze, asking for answers to a series of questions related to the potential land grab.
“I am deeply concerned about the notion that the Bureau of Land Management believes the federal government has the authority to swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations,” General Abbott wrote. “The BLM’s newly asserted claims to land along the Red River threaten to upset long-settled private property rights and undermine fundamental principles—including the rule of law—that form the foundation of our democracy. Yet, the BLM has failed to disclose either its full intentions or the legal justification for its proposed actions. Decisions of this magnitude must not be made inside a bureaucratic black box.”
The great state of Tejas seems to draw a line in the sand and make a stand.
As to what kind of standoff might Texas might be facing with the BLM on this matter, Abbott said, “I think that we should be able to resolve this from a legal standpoint because, I believe, what the BLM is doing clearly violates the law. They don’t have any legal standing whatsoever to do this and that’s why I have issued this letter today.”
In the letter, Gen. Abbott details five issues for the BLM to address:
- Please delineate with specificity each of the steps for the RMP/EIS process for property along the Red River.
- Please describe the procedural due process the BLM will afford to Texans whose property may be claimed by the federal government.
- Please confirm whether the BLM agrees that, from 1923 until the ratification of the Red River Boundary Compact, the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma was the gradient line of the south bank of the Red River. To the extent the BLM does not agree, please provide legal analysis supporting the BLM’s position.
- Please confirm whether the BLM still considers Congress’ ratification of the Red River Boundary Compact as determinative of its interest in land along the Red River? To the extent the BLM does not agree, please provide legal analysis supporting the BLM’s new position.
- Please delineate with specificity the amount of Texas territory that would be impacted by the BLM’s decision to claim this private land as the property of the federal government.
This is perhaps Rawhide Down.
Or is it not?
BZ
