What is necessary is nothing less than a near-total reinvention of the environmental movement—not in what we stand for but in how we work.
Read Moreproperty clause
A Monumental Battle, Part 2: National Monuments in the Congress
There is no question that an Act of Congress can eliminate, shrink, or weaken a national monument proclaimed by a president pursuant to authority granted by Congress. What Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away. The property clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2) ensures that. Yet in fifty-five Congresses over the past 110 years, Congress has rarely acted to eliminate, reduce, or weaken a national monument proclamation by a president.
Read MoreThe Constitutionality of Federal Public Lands
Ammon Bundy has recently testified that they expected to be charged with trespass, from which they could then mount a defense that what they did was not illegal because the federal government owning the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (and almost all other public lands) was unconstitutional.
Based on the settled case law surrounding public lands and the facts surrounding their occupation, insanity—temporary or otherwise—may be a better defense.
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