"Occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge question whether the federal government has unequivocal legal rights to own and manage that land, without regard to the wishes of local property owners and ranchers. Improbably, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on exactly that question, specifically regarding the lands of the original Malheur national refuge -- twice. Those rulings by the nation's highest court, in 1902 and in 1935, found that the federal government has an incontrovertible claim to the refuge's wetlands and lakebeds, dating back to the 1840s, when Oregon was still a territory. "Before Oregon was admitted to statehood, the United States is shown to have acquired title which it has never in terms conveyed away," Justice Harlan Stone wrote in 1935."
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The bonehead terrorist squatters claim they have "teams" looking into who owns the land, so they can give it back to them. But the land has been in federal ownership since the 1840s. The only people with any legitimate claim to that land, other than the federal government, would be Native Americans--if I'm reading the maps right, the Northern Paiute. But there appear to be no scruffy, ignorant, white guys in the chain of title to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. These clowns are squatters. Cliven Bundy and his sons are squatters and deadbeats. They have been grazing their cows on federal land without paying for it. People who use federal land for grazing, logging, mineral extraction get a much better deal than they would if the land were transferred to private ownership. They'd be paying some corporate landowner through the nose. But these bums won't even pay the low rates the feds charge. Instead, the Bundy family has fabricated a bunch of tall tales that give them imaginary title to federal land. But the Paiutes? They may have a real claim. Native people in Alaska, Canada, and elsewhere have actually settled such claims with national governments.
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