Land Grab

The bureaucrats at the BLM would do well to pay attention to signs that appear along roadsides in Texas.  Don't Mess With Texas.

Fox News is reporting that BLM officials are talking about a land grab in Texas, along the Oklahoma border.  It seems that the border between Texas and Oklahoma is the Red River.  The Red River is one of those rivers that changes course, and over the years the river moves and shifts, Sometimes those shifts are quite fast and dramatic.  Overnight.  We've seen it here in Louisiana, where the Red River carves across the state.  One day your land is on the river, the next day it's under the river.  We consider it the Hand of God, but when that river defines a border, it's easy to become confused about where the original border might have been.

Breitbart has background on the matter.

In 1922, the U.S. Supreme Court attempted to settle the boundary dispute in Oklahoma v. Texas and declared the boundary to be defined by wooden stakes set on the river bank. That boundary apparently lasted no longer than anyone could expect wooden stakes to last in the shifting sands of a meandering river. In 2000, Texas and Oklahoma’s legislatures agreed to a “Red River Boundary Compact” which defined the border between the states as the southern vegetation line. However, Congress must ratify agreements of this kind between the states according to Article 1, Section 10 (Clause 3) of the U.S. Constitution. Congressman Thornberry introduced House Joint Resolution 72 during the 106th Congress to codify the compact into U.S. Law.
The matter became somewhat of a national question drawing the attention of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, “The U.S. Supreme Court has tried twice to settle this dispute, which at one point brought the governor of Oklahoma to the border in a tank…However, true to the slogan 'One Riot, One Ranger,' the good governor of Oklahoma and his tank was held off by a lone Texas Ranger on his horse."

The long-standing dispute over the T/O border is a matter of long-standing debate, based on the twin facts that the river moves and wood rots.  As ornery and curmudgeonly as a rancher in Nevada might be, the BLM ain't seen nothing yet when they try to get into the Texas/Oklahoma border dispute.  This dispute pre-dates even the BLM, and they've got no business sticking their noses in it.