The prospect of using the force of the Montana Legislature to attack a private business engaged in lawful activity should give serious pause.

Mark Twain quipped, “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

In Montana, a state where political proclamations supporting property rights and limited government are ubiquitous, it is disheartening and disturbing to find HJ 28, a joint resolution requesting denial of American Prairie Reserve’s grazing proposal to the Bureau of Land Management. HJ 28 is a thinly veiled attempt by the United Property Owners of Montana, a group formed to protect only the economic interests of its members, to use the coercive power of the state to attack the property rights of APR.