'HE COULD STOP THIS'Sheriff faces pressure to buck feds in rancher feud

April 12, 2-014: Rancher Cliven Bundy (2nd L) greets Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie in Bunkerville, Nevada.Reuters

The family of the Nevada rancher in a simmering feud with the federal government over rangeland rights is refocusing attention on the local sheriff, claiming he could put the standoff to rest with a wave of his hand. 

"He could stop this right now, and he knows that," Bailey Logue, daughter of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, recently told Fox News' "On the Record." 

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Logue claimed all the sheriff has to do is say "no" to federal authorities who for years have gone after Bundy for unpaid grazing fees. "He has more power than all those feds do in this county. This is his county, he runs it. He has got full control over this county. If he says no, they have to back down," Logue said. 

Other supporters have made similar comments, suggesting Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie can tell the federal Bureau of Land Management to high-tail out of Nevada. 

Gillespie backed federal agents who seized close to 400 head of cattle from Bundy over his refusal to pay more than $1 million in grazing fees over the past two decades. 

The sheriff now appears to be caught in the middle of a broader battle between landowners and the federal government -- a battle not just over grazing rights, but the basic authority of federal officials. Despite the family's claims that the sheriff could kick out the feds in an instant, Gillespie has told media outlets he is simply following the law. 

The Nevada state Constitution would appear to underscore federal authority, as it allows the federal government to "employ armed force in compelling obedience to its Authority" if people try to secede or "forcibly resist the Execution of" federal laws. 

Gillespie, who was elected sheriff in 2007, has more than three decades under his belt with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. As Clark County's top law enforcement official, he oversees more than 4,700 sworn officers and civilian employees and is responsible for the safety of nearly 2 million Vegas residents as well as 40 million visitors to America's party capital each year. 

Gillespie's office has not made the sheriff available for an interview despite repeated requests by FoxNews.com. 

Before the ranch standoff, Gillespie's reputation was relatively unsullied. Earlier this year, Gillespie was named by the National Sheriff's Association as the winner of the Ferris E. Lucas Award as Sheriff of the Year for 2014. The award has only been given to 18 people since 1995 -- and there are 3,080 sheriffs in the country. 

Gillespie, though, surprised local residents when he announced late last year he would not seek a third term, instead saying he would finish out his second term through the end of 2014. 

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., also presented Gillespie with a Congressional Proclamation for being selected Sheriff of the Year. Gillespie's closeness with Reid has recently made him the target of vitriol-laced accusations by Bundy's supporters, who have called him a turncoat. 

Reid fanned the flames further Thursday when he referred to Bundy backers as "domestic terrorists" during an event sponsored by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Reid also indicated that Gillespie continues to play an active role with the feds -- Reid, according to the Review-Journal, said Gillespie is working with federal officials on putting together a task force to deal with the Bundy family. 

"Clive Bundy does not recognize the United States," Reid said. "The United States, he says, is a foreign government. He doesn't pay his taxes. He doesn't pay his fees. And he doesn't follow the law. He continues to thumb his nose at authority." 

Officials tell FoxNews.com that it's likely they'll renew their efforts soon, though they declined to say when a new push against Bundy would take place. 

For the Bundy family, it's a decades-old, legally complicated fight between the federal government and a family that has ranched the area since 1877. Last week's dustup ended Saturday with federal land managers backing down during a standoff with Bundy after hundreds of states' rights protesters and armed militia members showed up in support of Bundy and in protest of government officers seizing his cattle. 

But the feud dates back decades, and this isn't Bundy's first time at the rodeo. 

The dispute started in March 1993 when the Bureau of Land Management designated hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land for strict conservation efforts. 

That meant eliminating livestock grazing and imposing strict limits on off-road vehicle use in protected tortoise territory in Nevada. 

The BLM purchased grazing rights from cattle ranchers who had previously used BLM land. It was then when the Bundy family, who had a ranch in the area in 1877, accused the government of a "land grab," and said they wouldn't sell. 

The Bundy family has maintained they do not recognize federal authority on what they say is their land.

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Published on: 7:03 PM

Is Your Home a Pig Sty? It Could Be

Owners can walk their domesticated micro-pig like a pet dog, owners of My Pet Piggy say.

Justin McHugh/My Pet Piggy

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Check out man’s new best friend -- the micro pig.

The co-owners of My Pet Piggy, based in Hopkinton, R.I., have received a livestock license to breed micro-pigs, which have risen in popularity as domestic animals, much like a cat or dog.

“Selling the pigs -- it started as a hobby," My Pet Piggy co-owner Justin McHugh told ABC News. "We started small and people enjoyed these pigs so much they told their friends and now it’s become huge."

In what may be a sign of the times, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and the Division of Agriculture, which regulate domestic animals as well as livestock, recently gave My Pet Piggy a livestock license, the first issued to a company in Rhode Island that breeds micro-pigs intended solely as pets, according to Scott Marshall, Rhode Island's state veterinarian. And the state may go further.

Micro Pigs' Cuteness Will Make You Squeal

“We will recommend to have to amend current laws to address non-conventional pets in the state," Marshall said. “This is an emerging trend, and our laws have not caught up with the pet trade.”

The co-owners of My Pet Piggy began selling the micro pigs for around $600, at first, but demand has pushed the price to $1,000 or $1,500. Other websites sell the pigs for as much as $5,000.

“When I was first interested in going into the business, I started interacted with the animals and I had a quickly found out I had a passion for it,” My Pet Piggy co-owner Victor Kinoian said. "I started training animals and saw how intelligent they were."

However, veterinarians suggest doing your research before taking a micro-pig into your home.

“They may have the potential to make good pets,” said Dr. Christina Lorenson, president of Rhode Island Veterinary Medical Association. "Some of them get to be good size, but when they become a large weight, it could become an issue."

Dezmarie Doyle, of Ashaway, R.I., who bought her micro-pigs from My Pet Piggy, raved about them.

“Our pet pigs, Cleveland and Nutella, have bonded with each other and our cat, Ash,” pet owner Dezmarie Doyle told ABC News. “We love our pigs!”

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Published on: 8:09 AM

How the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet Could Have Been Hijacked

In the hours after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished, the notion that hijackers were responsible seemed far-fetched. Since the 9/11 attacks, commercial pilots have been trained to prevent the weaponization of their planes by never unlocking their cockpit doors for hijackers–even if the lives of passengers are being threatened. Even if the MH370 captain or first officer broke with official policy and opened the door, why wouldn’t one of them first use the jet’s transponder to squawk “7500,” the universal code for a hijacking in progress?

Another possibility was that a crew member was the culprit, much like the Ethiopian Airlines pilot who recently diverted his Boeing 767 to Geneva in search of political asylum. But assuming the motive in such a caper would be escape to a foreign land, the pilot-turned-hijacker would have no clear reason to shut down the plane’s communications systems; doing so would vastly complicate his journey. Early on, then, the smart money was on the disappearance being the result of a catastrophic mechanical failure had caused the plane to plummet from the sky, and that it was only a matter of time before bits of wreckage started to wash ashore.

In recent days, however, several telling snippets of information have emerged that make a hijacking harder to rule out. As the Wall Street Journal first reported, the Boeing 777-200ER’s Rolls-Royce engines appear to have kept transmitting maintenance data for five hours after the jet’s transponder went dead. Reuters later added that military radar had tracked the flight as it seemed to head for the Andaman Islands. Most intriguingly, there are indications the plane’s transponder and data-reporting system were switched off at different times, which, if true, provide solid evidence that a human hand was involved in silencing the aircraft.

With the hijacking theory growing more plausible by the hour, it’s time to wonder how such an epic crime might have occurred–and how it might have ended far more tragically than its perpetrator envisioned.

If MH370 was seized by passengers or a crew member, the hijacking would the third so far this year—in addition to the Ethiopian Airlines episode, there also was the bizarre Pegasus Airlines incident of early February, in which an apparently intoxicated Ukrainian man demanded passage to Sochi but was instead taken to Istanbul. This clustering of hijackings shouldn’t be surprising. The crime always has been highly viral in nature; each hijacking tends to be influenced by the last, in terms of modus operandi or other key details. A perfect example of this phenomenon is how “parajacking”–hijackings in which the criminal flees by jumping out of the plane–evolved in the early 1970s. Though most folks only remember the infamous D.B. Cooper hijacking of November 1971, there were numerous other incidents in the ensuing months in which the hijackers became increasingly more adept at getting away from the authorities–at least for a few days. (Cooper himself may have been a copycat, inspired by a farcical Air Canada hijacking.) Perhaps one of MH370’s pilots had been inspired by the Ethiopian Airlines hijacking, and thought he could fly his way to a better life on distant shores.

It also is important to remember that, unlike the highly organized 9/11 terrorists, most hijackers through history have been scatterbrained, sometimes to a comic degree. In the midst of manic episodes or afflicted by paranoia, they often can be quite good at planning minor details of their crimes, yet quite deluded about how the endgames will play out. This certainly was the case with Roger Holder, the principal hijacker of Western Airlines Flight 701 in June 1972. An Army veteran who had served four tours in Vietnam, Holder cooked up a clever ruse by which he convinced the crew that he was accompanied by four members of the Weathermen, at least one of whom was armed with a bomb. But he also hijacked a short-range Boeing 727 by accident, thereby making it impossible for him to reach his intended destination of Hanoi.

If MH370’s hijacker was in a mental state similar to Holder’s, he or she might have had the psychological wherewithal to figure out how to disable the plane’s communications systems, but not to realize that reaching, say, Western Europe was not a feasible goal. The hijacking could even have been an impulsive act, as many such crimes were during America’s “golden age” or air piracy. Ricardo Chavez Ortiz, for example, who commandeered a Frontier Airlines jet in order to get a radio crew to broadcast his rambling 34-minute speech, claimed to have decided to hijack the plane only after it reached cruising altitude.

Though data points may be accumulating in favor of the hijacking theory, it remains difficult to believe that MH370 is now in the possession of a global terror network that plans to use it in a future attack; landing and hiding a Boeing 777-200ER–a 209-foot-long aircraft with a 200-foot wingspan–in a lawless corner of the world would require immense resources, not to mention luck. In fact, there’s a good chance that any hijacker of the flight was not motivated by any sort of radical ideology, but rather by personal woes. In the history of air piracy, the vast majority of hijackers have been men or women who, though they may have claimed political affiliations, were most interested in fleeing from desperate circumstances: economic hardships, legal entanglements, love affairs gone wrong. In the era before everyone had to pass through metal detectors and have their carry-on luggage screened, hijacking a plane was an easy and spectacular way to try and alter one’s fortunes. One young American hijacker, who tried to flee to Cuba with her boyfriend in the late 1960s, neatly summed up that mindset when later asked why she had opted for such a risky crime: “Something had to be done–and I did something, for better or worse. It [was] better than eighteen years of therapy, or whatever. It just seemed like the answer.”

On one level, it’s comforting to think that a hijacker of MH370 was not bent on using the plane as a weapon of mass destruction, but rather wanted to start life anew somewhere else. But it’s also frightening to imagine a world where, as in the early 1970s, the desperate and deluded increasingly start to view hijacking as a reasonable solution to their problems.

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Published on: 12:39 AM