Although the reach of the environazis has routinely exceeded their grasp, it has not stopped or even slowed them down in their efforts to achieve their draconian goals and objectives.

Kimberly Strassel hit the nail right on the head in the Wall Street Journal when she focused on "Rural Cleansing." The Klamath Basin controversy is but one of myriad examples of the green cancer.

The grossly abused Endangered Species Act is used both as a scalpel and a bludgeon in furthering the green jihad. Strassel clearly fingers the real goal of environmental extremists -- depopulating the countryside.

The Klamath Basin conflict is no more about some allegedly threatened fish than the Israel-Palestinian conflict is about Arafat's political status. Klamath Basin, and scores of lesser-known government land-grab attempts is about power and control. The envirowackos are convenient (and myopic) pawns being used as co-conspirators to take land.

You don't have to believe the would-be controllers want to reduce world population by 50 percent. It is true, but you don't have to accept it. You don't have to believe government wants populations herded into high population-density areas. It's true, but you don't have to accept it. You don't have to believe "government" efforts to deny access to land is planned, coordinated and routine. It's true, but you don't have to accept it.

However, you do have to recognize abuse of power under the color of authority was not, is not, and shall not be just a Clinton-era or Democratic Party franchise.

Strassel wrote, "last month, those environmentalists revealed another motive when they submitted a polished proposal for the government to buy out the farmers and move them off their land." She crystallized the reality check by noting, "This is what's really happening in Klamath -- call it rural cleansing -- and it's repeating itself in environmental battles across the country. Indeed, the goal of many environmental groups -- from the Sierra Club to the Oregon Natural Resources Council -- is no longer to protect nature. It's to expunge humans from the countryside."

In a classic "too little, too late" plan intended to relieve Klamath Basin farmers and ranchers whose fields are fried in the summer heat, the government belatedly, and disingenuously agreed to release a small amount of water into an irrigation canal that had been shut off to protect endangered fish.

The water release was announced by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who said the decision was made in part (arguably in large part) to defuse tensions among farmers who four times have illegally pried open the head gates to let water flow into irrigation canals.

The real objectives are seen in "The Wildlands Project" which would set up to one-half of America into core wilderness reserves. This isn't right-wing radical fiction; this is fact. Have a look at the Wildlands Project map with its interconnecting corridors (red), surrounded by interconnecting buffer zones (yellow). There would be no human activity allowed in the red, and only highly regulated activity would be permitted in the yellow areas.

The U.N. documentation that proved the Wildlands Project concept became the basis for the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity. The information and the map was produced by Dr. Michael Coffman, editor of Discerning the Times Digest and CEO of Sovereignty International, to stop the ratification of the treaty an hour before its scheduled cloture and ratification vote. (See Congressional Record S13790).

Here is just one example of the gross, egregious, disingenuous, duplicitous and sleazy games being played out in the government's war against its people:

During World War I, Charley Mantle served his country in the U.S. Cavalry. After the war, encouraged by the government they served, veterans were asked to help settle the country's vast western frontier. As an incentive the government offered each veteran a 160-acre "homestead" in rugged wilderness. Since 160 acres was not nearly sufficient to raise cattle, the government gave veterans the right to lease additional land to graze their livestock. Those grazing rights were guaranteed to veterans and their heirs forever.

When Mantle got out of the Army in 1919, he decided to homestead a nice quiet spot in Hell's Canyon in northwestern Colorado, far from the maddening crowd. There, he thought, he and his heirs could live peacefully without ever being bothered by anybody, until 1960, when Congress expanded the Dinosaur National Monument. Originally consisting of 80 acres near Jensen, Utah, the monument's boundaries now spread into Colorado and encompassed the entire Mantle Ranch. But remember, those grazing rights were guaranteed to veterans and their heirs forever.

Charley's son, Tim, said the family was assured that their property's inclusion in the monument would cause them no problems. Apparently that was contingent on the contemporary definition of the words "no problems." Even their U.S. senator promised them the grazing rights wouldn't be a problem.

A letter to Charley Mantle from the DNM superintendent in April of 1961 reinforced the senator's promise. It said the law "assures the status of grazing privileges. ... We assure you the grazing of domestic stock within the Monument will be administered in a fair and unbiased manner."

However, a few years later, a new park superintendent/bureaucrat offered to buy the Mantles' land for about half of what the family thought it was worth.

When the family recently obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act, they were surprised to learn how determined the government had been; for almost 40 years the feds had been trying to get their hands on the Mantle Ranch.

A 1964 intra-office National Park Service memo states, "in the event that the owner [Mantle] refuses to sell the lands to the government at the offering price, it is recommended that the property be acquired by condemnation with a declaration of taking."

That's when the Park Service began "aggressive and relentless effort" to force the Mantles to become "willing sellers."

The 1960 legislation that expanded DNM said the government could not withdraw the Mantles' grazing privileges on federally owned leased land "except for [now pay attention as the devil in the details jumps up] failure to comply with the regulations applicable."

That is when and how the Park Service specifically commenced a program of "regulatory whittling" (a judge's term not mine).

Based on a decision that grazing cattle is an "incompatible use" inside the monument's boundaries, the service created regulations with which the Mantles could not possibly comply.

You really need to read the entire Pat Taylor piece on the story. It will make you angry.

The 1979 Land Acquisition Plan is used as a Machiavellian hatchet to declare that "incompatible uses" included virtually everything a cattle ranch needs to survive. We're talking basic stuff here, things like stock ponds, barns, storage buildings, roads, the cultivation or irrigation of a meadow or pasture, even building additions.

Again, through the FOIA, the Mantles discovered that the Park Service intentionally released antelope on their land in order to build a land-condemnation court case against them.

In an intra-agency memo dated Oct. 15, 1982 -- apparently in response to a suggestion from a park employee about how to reduce the number of cattle the Mantles were allowed to graze -- the park superintendent stated, "Recommend we get antelope on first. Then build case for court" by conducting a "survey" to "show an overgrazing problem."

These bastard bureaucrats even maintained a hand-written hour-by-hour log to record any and all activity on the law-abiding Mantle family ranch -- a classic and probably illegal fishing expedition to find any reason to revoke the family's grazing permit. Which again, I remind you, were guaranteed to veterans and their heirs forever.

The family finally sued the Park Service in 1994 and was forced to spend about $400,000 to establish the rights the government had previously guaranteed.

The judge decided that the government would have to come up with a necessary and appropriate justification, "rather than taking the property rights by a process of regulatory whittling."

In a classic case of not wanting to be confused with facts that contradict his preconceived opinion, DNM Park Superintendent Dennis Ditmanson, insists the Park Service is not trying to force the Mantles to become "willing sellers."

Bullfeathers!

This chairborne slug trail admits one of the Park Service's goals is to do away with cattle grazing on national park land but still claims "I have seen no indication of efforts to force the family off their ranch." Any reasonable person reviewing the facts would conclude he is either lying or is incompetent. And, oh yeah, those grazing rights were guaranteed to veterans and their heirs forever.

The Mantle family is not an isolated anecdotal case. The Bureau of Land Management is at war with property owners in the King Range National Conservation Area. And others with less means or tenacity than the Mantles are routinely and consistently being victimized by their own government. Check out the DeWeese Report.

Thomas Jefferson once observed, "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."