An Unwanted Circus Descends, and an Oregon Town Strives to Stay Kind
By KIRK JOHNSON
JAN. 31, 2016
BURNS, Ore. — Remote Western towns, in midwinter’s grip, definitely have some romance to them. But this one has become a circus tent: A giddy but tense crush of humanity has descended here in rural eastern Oregon, benefiting businesses and swamping them, filling bars, and making motel rooms unattainable amid a bizarre tide of guns, police, reporters and ideologues quoting (at length) from the United States Constitution ...
The place is just crazily overrun. Every motel room within 70 miles is taken. Barstools are packed at the Central Pastime Tavern, with journalists and armed antigovernment protesters elbow to elbow, tucking down I.P.A.s and perhaps — for braver souls — the bull testicles on the bar menu. Hard to know, but there are probably also undercover F.B.I. agents now and then playing pool in the back, trying to appear like locals in boots and jeans under the mounted bighorn sheep and buffalo heads ...
Anxieties could ratchet up again this week, with a protest planned for Monday at the Harney County courthouse by self-styled patriot groups angry about Mr. Finicum’s death. The United States Marshals Office also said Sunday that one of the 11 people arrested in the standoff — Shawna Cox — had been released, though the authorities would not provide other details. A judge had previously said Ms. Cox could not leave custody until the occupation had ended ...
A similar thing happened at the Sage Country Inn, a farmhouse bed-and-breakfast built in 1907 just down the street. I have been happily holed up there in a camper out back, thanks to the take-in-a-stranger kindness of the inn’s owners, Mike and Corinne Huseby. The Husebys typically have one or two guests over the entire month of January and never, until now, imagined offering the camper — let alone anyone being thrilled about taking it. (On a personal note: The space heaters keep the camper toasty, but a midnight trip to the bathroom in Mr. Huseby’s workshop garage can make you wish you hadn’t had that I.P.A. at the Pastime.) ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/us/an-unwanted-circus-descends-and-an-oregon-town-strives-to-stay-kind.html?_r=0
= new reply since forum marked as read
Waste not! More of them are eaten by conservatives than liberals, go figure.
ESCONDIDO, CA—Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous transgressions, self-described American patriot Kyle Mortensen, 47, is a vehement defender of ideas he seems to think are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and principles that brave men have fought and died for solely in his head.
"Our very way of life is under siege," said Mortensen, whose understanding of the Constitution derives not from a close reading of the document but from talk-show pundits, books by television personalities, and the limitless expanse of his own colorful imagination. .... the onion ....
