Oregon's Burns Cty Standoff is a Western Issue

Here in Colorado, Oregon's Harney county is hundreds of miles away, "out of sight out of mind ". But as Oregon's Congressman Greg Walden so passionately explained from the Senate floor last week. This is not an Oregon issue, it's a Western Issue.

Greg Walden:

"Harney County is larger than Maryland there are 7000 people it is 72 percent federal land. In 2012 there was a fire of a couple of thousand acres, The Hamonds set a back fire , they probably didn't go about it properly. It burned 139 acres, they put it out. They are now serving 5 years mandatory minimum of a sentence whom the federal judge who sentenced them said would be unconscionable to levy. We need to change the federal law under which they were sentcanced we need to call on President Obama to not continue to declare monuments like he is threatening in the nearby county for 2.5 million acres. These issues are real! We have tried in the West to convey them to our colleges but unless you have been out there it's hard to do. These are people who care about America who send their sons' and daughters to fight our wars and die in higher proportion than the urban areas. These people just want to take care of the environment, they really do and it is the government all too often that ignores the law as it has in this county repeatedly, and I can document that. Somehow we have to find a peaceful resolution here and the takeaway has to be that there is a problem in the west across the great basin that that has to be dealt with reasonability but an armed take over is not the way to go about it."