The Recovery From the Bundy Takeover Mess is an ongoing process: Voting today

http://democratherald.com/news/opinion/editorial/editorial-the-road-to-recovery-in-harney-county/article_ca1f538b-5019-51af-8edd-fab0c3fb3bf0.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=user-share

Harney County covers more than 10,000 square miles of eastern Oregon; it's the largest county in the state.

With only about 7,100 residents, it also has fewer than one resident per square mile. 

So it's a fair bet that the 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by activists protesting federal land policies will be the talk of the county for some time. You don't recover from this sort of event overnight.

In fact, some chapters of the takeover saga remain to be written: Most of the two dozen defendants arrested in the wake of the occupation, including leader Ammon Bundy, await trial in Portland beginning Sept. 7.

And residents of the county are scheduled to vote today on a referendum to recall County Judge Steve Grasty, who for the past 18 years has been the county's top administrative official. Backers of the recall effort point to Grasty's refusal to allow Bundy from holding a public meeting in a county building. Bundy apparently wanted to use the public setting to explain his side of the takeover.

Grasty said that the request didn't fit with the county's policy on public safety.

But the request was ludicrous on its face, and Grasty was completely right to turn it down, for a couple of additional reasons: First and foremost, Bundy and his followers were in the middle of an illegal occupation at a federal wildlife refuge at the time they made a request. Let's say these people were in the middle of robbing a bank: You wouldn't give them a venue on government property to explain their actions: "We're, uh, robbing this bank because, uh, that's where the money is. No further questions."

Second, it's not exactly as if the refuge occupiers and their supporters were silent about the reasons behind the occupation. We are hard-pressed to think of another recent crime in which the parties were so vociferous about talking about it: In fact, the occupiers seemed to miss few opportunities to chat about their doings, whether in press conferences, Facebook posts, tweets, videos — every available medium except carrier pigeon. In fact, the record they left behind is now being gleefully pored over by prosecutors while defense attorneys ponder how to defend a case with so much documentation provided voluntarily by their clients. In fact, defense attorneys probably are grateful that Grasty turned them down; it's one less appearance they need to worry about.