Protester arrested in Burns, driving stolen refuge vehicle

[tencats]

54. This is not Kenneth Medenbach’s first tangle with the law

He is currently out on bail, according to court documents, awaiting trial for a seven-month residential occupation of government land between May and November 2015.

Medenbach was tried and convicted of the same crime in 1996. According to a forest service officer who testified at that trial, Medenbach was living in “an eight-by-ten-foot tent with a metal flue and wood-burning stove, a nearby campfire, and various cooking and sleeping equipment”.

According to a court memorandum, the magistrate said that Medenbach posed a risk to public safety and said that he had referenced Ruby Ridge and Waco, two sieges that ended in violence. At a detention hearing, the government said that Medenbach had tried to protect his campsite with “50 to 100 pounds of the explosive ammonium sulfate, a pellet gun, and what appeared to be a hand grenade with trip wires.”

Convicted and given a six-month suspended sentence, Medenbach appealed the case to the federal ninth circuit court, where he argued that federal ownership of unappropriated public lands was unconstitutional. He also filed a civil suit to demand that federal judges no longer swear an oath of affirmation under the constitution, a position he defended in this blog post from January 2015.

He was extensively profiled in the 1999 book Terrorists Among Us: The Militia Threat, by retired Indiana police captain Robert L Snow. At the time, Snow wrote, Medenbach was building his own home on five acres of land in Crescent, Oregon, out of “discarded refrigerators, water heaters, and other such material.” Medenbach, according to Snow, subscribed to the legal theory that state bar associations are unconstitutional, and so courts have no authority over him.

“I’m willing to pay the price for my convictions,” Medenbach told Snow. “Someday, when the laws become too stringent, people will start waking up.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/15/oregon-militia-standoff-arrest-stolen-government-vehicle-burns-oregon-police-kenneth-medenbach