The Law in its Impartial Majesty

Way back in January of this year I wrote:

"I can think of no better response, no better description of the response that is needed and should be applied to the treasonous bastards than those of the man who flayed the last rebellious treason in this country:

"My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom."

I had a blissful moment imagining a modern Bill Sherman staring at the gaggle of dirty, hangdog prisoners standing under guard as the old stone building burns behind them, removing the cigar from his mouth to spit;

"Shoot them, major? Shoot them? I think not."

He would pause for a moment before jerking the stogie towards the big trees standing nearby, and growling;

"Rebels taken in arms aren't honorably shot. Rebels, major, are hung like the criminals they are."

"See to it."

It was a good idea at the time that looks even better now.

And I also said at the time:

"I will make two predictions now, and remember them;

These people will pay no price for their treason, and

We, the rest of us, will rue that we did not crush this seditious villainy when it was but small and could be crushed.

The law should have been pressed on the Bundys and was not. The law will not be brought to bear on these swine. Instead they will walk away, boasting, and the poison they bear will spread."

And so it will.

Sometimes I hate it when I'm fucking right.

Dare call it treason

I was genuinely surprised yesterday at the incandescence of my anger when I read about the rebel militia seizing the Malheur NWR headquarters building.

Partly, I suspect, because that lonely stone structure has many fond memories associated with it. It is a "desert oasis", disproportionately attractive to the passerine migrant through the deserts of Malheur County. The notion of a passel of gunlicking Tenther rebels lolling about the place where I whiled many happy hours birding was infuriating, to be sure.

But the most part is the degree to which none seem to dare call these treasonous bastards what they are.

Traitors.

Worse; traitors in arms. They fulfill perfectly the definition of the enemies I swore to defend the Constitution of my nation from, foreign and domestic; defying the laws and regulations of the duly-elected government of the United States and bearing arms against the officers of the same.

For a mad moment I wanted - wanted so badly that it made my throat tighten - to take up my old rifle and rise on my bad leg and hobble down to the federal courthouse in Portland city and volunteer to follow the colors out to the sagebrush wastes south of Burns to shoot down the traitorous enemies of my country. Suddenly I understood how so many other men stood up in 1861 to do the same. The hatred and loathing of these rebel traitors burns within me still, banked but glowing like a balefire in the night.

The news agencies, the current crop of candidates, Oregon politicians...they need to call this what it is. It is black, dirty treason; rebellion in arms against our nation, and I can think of no better response, no better description of the response that is needed and should be applied to the treasonous bastards than those of the man who flayed the last rebellious treason in this country:

"My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom."

I had a blissful moment imagining a modern Bill Sherman staring at the gaggle of dirty, hangdog prisoners standing under guard as the old stone building burns behind them, removing the cigar from his mouth to spit;

"Shoot them, major? Shoot them? I think not."

He would pause for a moment before jerking the stogie towards the big trees standing nearby, and growling;

"Rebels taken in arms aren't honorably shot. Rebels, major, are hung like the criminals they are."

"See to it."

Illegal Immigrants

...to the Northwest include an Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapilla) in the Laurelhurst neighborhood of Portland...

...and an even rarer Red-flanked Bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus) found in New Westminster, BC.

The Ovenbird would be a nice but unshocking Oregon rarity;

"one of the more frequent vagrant “eastern” warblers encountered in the West in both spring and fall (approaching 1,000 records in California and close to 40 in Oregon, where it is no longer on the state review list"

although I understand this bird is a first record for Multnomah County and Portland proper - most of these vagrants end up at the desert oases near Fields or Malheur.

But the bluetail is a genuine North American oddity, only the third North American record outside the western Aleutians for this Eurasian vagrant.

I regret that work holds me here, because while I am no longer a truly devoted birder I remain that lowest of birdwatching life forms, the hardcore "lister" (or "twitcher", the Brits would call me), and if I thought that this little rascal would hang around New West I'd sure as hell chase it.