A political advertisement has been running on TV in Montana for several weeks.  It has been effective. Effective because some people I know have been upset about H.R.1505.  They asked why Denny Rheberg would do such a thing.

 The ad portrays several Montanans who seem to enjoy the outdoors.  One actor mentions hunting.  He looks just like hundreds of hunters I have met in Montana and in other states.  He looks like my kind of people.  But the message was confusing.

It was asking Montana voters to call Congressman Denny Rheberg to demand that he withdraw his Bill placing our hunting lands under federal control.  It also mentioned that regular Montana citizens could be locked out of our hunting grounds.

That did not sound like anything Denny Rheberg would be doing.   I made some enquiries and learned that H. R. 1505 has absolutely nothing to do with placing our land under Federal control.  

I became curious about the people in the ad.  Research revealed that Montana Hunters and Anglers (MHA), the group that produced the ad, is run by members of President Obama’s Campaign Leadership Team in Montana.  That sheds an entirely different light on things.

The president of MHA is Land Tawney, a member of Senator Tester’s Sportsman’s Advisory Panel.  MHA Secretary, Kendall Van Dyke, is a Democratic State Senator from Billings.  He is also a member of the Montana Sportsmen for Obama.

Treasurer Barrett Kaiser is a former staff member of Max Baucus and a consultant to Senator Tester’s campaign in 2006.  There are a few others in this organization.  Every one of them is clearly a Democratic Party operative or supporter.

There is no need to call Denny Rheberg and challenge him on anything.  These political opponents of Congressman Rheberg will say anything to prevent him from taking the Senate seat held by Jon Tester.

The most sinister and simultaneously preposterous thing about this challenge to 1505 is that the land in question is already federal land.  The sole purpose of H.R.1505 is to give access to our Border patrol to police our borders and remove the obstructions to the performance of their duties placed by environmentalists. 

Land controlled by the Interior Department as well as other land management agencies with environmental or conservationist policies that impede the ability of the border patrol to effectively perform their duties.

H.R. 1505 limits what can be done with access to Federal land to the following:

“A. Construction and maintenance of roads B. Construction and maintenance of fences C. Use of vehicles to patrol D. Installation, maintenance and operation of surveillance equipment and sensors and E. Use of aircraft  F. Deployment of temporary tactical infrastructure, including forward operating bases.“ AND only for a limited and specific goal “to achieve operational control (as defined in section 2(b) of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 (8 U.S.C. 1701 note; Public Law 109-367) over the international land borders of the United States.

H.R. 1505 includes specific protections for public access, including grazing, recreation (hunting, fishing, etc) and economic use (mining, timber)   

H.R. 1505 alleviates the threat of the Border Patrol using eminent domain on private property.  Currently, Border Patrol has eminent domain authority on private property, but no similar authority on federal lands. Thus if they need to build a road or an operations base, they are more likely to look first at private property.  This is backwards, and should be corrected.  By giving them access to federal lands, they can start there and respect private property rights.

It should be noted that a bureaucratic turf war between federal employees is putting national security and private property at risk.  H.R. 1505 ends that war by giving Border Patrol agents access to the border on federal lands in order to do their job.  But radical environmentalists, who don’t support private property or secure borders, are up in arms because this law prioritizes national security over their pet environmental laws.

These groups will stop at nothing to misrepresent this law as something it is not.  They have already spent a quarter of a million dollars in Montana to distort the truth about H.R.1505.  The advertisement playing in Montana now is absolutely, deliberately false.  It shows how threatened they are by the candidacy of Denny Rheberg.  They will say anything to defend Senator Tester.  Incidentally, Jon Tester won his seat after waging a smear campaign that accused Conrad Burns of criminal behavior.  He was successful.  After the election Senator Burns was exonerated of the charges. 

Montana Hunters and Anglers is a fraud, a front group.  It demonstrates that the Democrats have abandoned truth and integrity in order to remain in power.  Sending Jon Tester back to his ranch will be good not only for Montana but for America as well.  

Gene Williams

Editor

The First Edition