BY AMANDA MARCOTTE
Most Republican politicians kept their distance when a group of armed militants, under the leadership of the infamous Bundy family, took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon earlier this year. But while they didn’t love the optics of the Oregon takeover, it appears that some Republicans do embrace radical opposition to the federal government’s power to protect land from corporate exploitation.
The latest battle over public lands pits Republican congressmen against a coalition of Native American tribes over the status of Bears Ears, an area of southern Utah that encompasses 1.9 million acres of mountainous land that features thousands of sites of archeological interest...