In the Lewiston Tribune this morning, Opinion Editor Marty Trillhaase comments:

Nearly two years ago, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy outmaneuvered federal land managers over his failure to pay about $1.1 million in grazing fees. For the feds, it was a perfect storm. Bundy's supporters were armed and ready to resist federal officers.The optics presented Bundy as the local rancher being roughhoused by the feds. Plus the federal leadership was green. Both Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Bureau of Land Management Director Neil Kornze were weeks away from the Senate confirming their appointments.

By walking away, federal agents avoided violence -- but they emboldened Bundy and others like him.

An apparent offshoot of that tactic played out last summer on the South Fork of the Clearwater River near Golden, Idaho. There, in defiance of the Clean Water Act, Shannon Poe and the American Mining Rights Association of Coulterville, Calif., engaged in suction dredge mining operations along a portion of the river critical to threatened steelhead and bull trout. Until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded the operations weren't harmful to fish, the river was off-limits. Poe guessed right. He could flout the law with seeming impunity. Other than handing out a few letters of non-compliance, the Forest Service avoided a fight.

Somewhere there's a limit, and Bundy's sons, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, just crossed it. More here.

Question: How do you think the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff will end?