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Dream Machine’s Matthew and Doris Melton were dropped by their record label for being politically-incorrect pragmatists. They exercised their right to express an opinion. Doris, a legal immigrant from Bosnia, said she thought illegal immigrants who break the law should be deported. Doris, a woman, also believes that girl bands have become overly political manhaters who don’t play their instruments properly. Matthew and Doris both believe that we are too sucked into social media that we’re missing out on real life. Those are opinions, but I’m not really sure how they are hateful.

I find it ironic that their record label, Castle Face, dropped them after Matthew said such complimentary things about them.

So, I finally found the interview and thought you should have the opportunity to read what they actually said that was supposedly so “hateful”.

http://www.stillinrock.com/2017/05/interview-dream-machine-melton.html

I first became aware of this controversy on Fox News while I was sweating on the exercise bike. Matthew made a point that I really agreed with – rock has always been about protest and counter-cultural thinking, so it is a real shame that currently you can’t express a politically incorrect opinion without facing sanction.

Matthew believes that, over time, more rock musicians will become more outspoken and start speaking out against political correctness. I hope so and this is my way to do my part toward that movement. Since they don’t do social media, I’ll do it for them.

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The cover for “A Threatening Fragility” (Book 3 in Transformation Project) will be revealed this evening.

I’m celebrating with a Rafflecopter giveaway of books in the series. The grand prize is all three books in the series.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And, you are welcome to join me for a reveal party on Facebook, going on right now.

https://www.facebook.com/events/506887886327272/?active_tab=discussion

 

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So young to be so wise!

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August 28, 2017 – Favorite Foods. What are your favorites, something you could eat weekly or more often. Feel free to share a recipe.

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My parents were restaurant workers. Dad was a chef and Mom was a diner waitress. They even owned a restaurant together for a time. So, I grew up with a tradition of bravery with food and food preparation.

Do I have a favorite dish? Wow, that would be a tough one. I have a favorite broad cuisine – Asian/Oriental. I like a smattering of dishes across the continent. I’m not fond of really hot curries, but I do like milder curries. I’m frankly nervous of sushi because raw fish done wrong will kill you, but I do eat it sometimes. Generally whatever the equivalent of pad thai is in a specific country cuisine is my go-to meal option if dining in a Asian restaurant. I figure if they get that right, I’ll come back and try other dishes at a later time.

I’m fortunate to live in one of the most diverse states in the union. Asian/Oriental restaurants outnumber almost all the other cuisines combined. Oddly, most of these restaurants are owned by Koreans, but they offer other Asian cuisine and do a good job at it. But we also have Italian, Greek, Mexican (by real Mexicans), American Pub Style, Middle Eastern, Seafood, Cuban, Fusion, and, of course, American steakhouses. We even have some vegetarian restaurants. Because Alaska is such a unique place, we have Alaskan-style restaurants which concentrate on what can be flown in fresh by Alaska Airlines. Chena Hot Springs resort also specializes in greenhouse grown veggies from their onsite greenhouses.

But the truth is, we don’t like to spend a lot of money, so we don’t go out to a lot of restaurants. Instead, I make a lot of meals at home. So, our admin suggested a recipe.I have tons, but this is my son’s favorite.

Chinese Fried Rice

• Make several servings of rice the night before and allow to cool. This is very important. You won’t get good results with warm rice.
• Cube up Chinese barbecue pork (you can use any meat, but Kiernan likes barbecue pork). This should be tiny pieces.
• Heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable or canola oil in a wok. Beat eggs with water and make a thin omelette in the wok. Remove from wok and shred into bite-sized pieces.
• Add more oil to the wok – you could splurge and add sesame oil. Don’t skimp. You want enough oil to coat the individual grains of rice when added.
• Add a chopped up yellow onion to the hot oil. Add enough soy sauce to double the pan liquid — you can cut it with water if it’s too salty (or use low salt soy).
• Chop up a red bell pepper (it could be any color, but again, Kiernan likes it that way).
• Add spices. My favorite are chile powder, ground mustard, tumeric/curry powder, cinnamon. Flavor to taste. I can’t give exact measurements, but I’d guess about 1 tsp each.
• When the onion is translucent, the pork and a bag of frozen peas and carrots. Stir. (Using frozen makes this a simple recipe. You can use fresh, but you will need to cook before adding to the rice which turns a 15-minute meal into an hour or more)
• Add cold rice. Break up chunks. Stir to coat individual grains with spices and oil. Add the eggs.

Let mixture warm through. Serve hot.

 

Now my favorite weeknight meal. It takes 25 minutes.

• Oil in the wok. Canola or vegetable will do. I find sesame is too strong for this dish.
• Start rice enough for who you plan to feed.
• Add cubed up pork (could be chicken, beef or shrimp) to the oil when hot.
• Add onions and peppers. (I buy these as a frozen mixture for weeknight ease).
• Add soy sauce (I preferred brewed).
• Add spices. Tumeric, chile, ground mustard, ground ginger, cumin, cinnamon. Experiment for taste. Stir.
• When meat is almost done, add one or two bags of frozen Asian vegetables. Stir. We also like to add kale, bokchoy or mustard greens to this, but it’s not necessary and is probably an acquired taste.
• Pour some bottled sesame-ginger sauce over the warming vegetables. (I make my own, but that’s a lot work for just one meal, and the store brand isn’t bad).
• Put the wok lid on and turn to low. Come back when the rice is ready. Put stir-fry mixture over rice. The melt water from the veggies and the soy sauce combines with the sesame-ginger sauce to make a great sauce that soaks into the rice.

If it takes more than a half-hour to prepare, you’re doing something wrong or making brown rice, which is a valid excuse. The coolest thing about this is that you can change up the flavors with different bags of vegetables or swap the rice for thin noodles (I prefer whole wheat durum thin spaghetti over Asian noodles, but you can do it YOUR way.) Sometimes we use chow mien noddles, adding them to the top of the dish while the veggies are reducing. It gives a crunchy-soft mix to the flavors.

 

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The Way of Love

A friend tells me that he thinks 1 Corinthians 13 may be the most misunderstood chapter in the Bible, because people don’t read it in context. It is sandwiched between Chapter 12 and Chapter 14, which both discuss spiritual gifts within the church. If that’s the gem setting, it casts the message of the chapter in a different light. Because I can’t cover three chapters in one post, I had to break it up, but you can read it for yourself in one go.

And now I will show you a way that is beyond comparison. (1Corinthians 12:31b)

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophesy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I receive no benefit.

Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not brag, it is not puffed up. It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful. It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But if there are prophecies, they will be set aside; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be set aside. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when what is perfect comes, the partial will be set aside. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)

Introduction

I find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe the Corinthians deliberately chose to abandon Christian love. I believe they were so caught up in certain spiritual gifts that they had unconsciously abandoned true love. They were something like Samson after Delilah cut his hair. Samson leapt to his feet, fully expecting to be able to handle the Philistines, not knowing that God’s power had departed (see Judges 16:18-21). The Corinthian church was like the church at Ephesus which had lost its first love (Revelation 2:1-7).

Why is love important? Why do Christians need to study it more intently?

• The whole Old Testament Law is summed up by the one word, “love” (see Leviticus 19:17-18; Matthew 19:19).
• Love sums up the Christian’s responsibilities in the New Testament (Romans 13:9).
• Love is the capstone, the crowning virtue, the consummation of all other virtues (Galatians 5:22-23; 2 Peter 1:5-7; Colossians 3:12-14).
• Love is the goal of Paul’s instruction (1 Timothy 1:5).
• Love is the distinguishing mark of the true Christian (John 13:35).
• Without love, the value of spiritual gifts is greatly diminished (1 Corinthians 12:1-3).
• Love is greater than any of the spiritual gifts and is even greater than faith and hope (1 Corinthians 13:13).
• Love endures suffering under persecution, and Christians will be persecuted (Matthew 24:10; 2 Timothy 3:12).
• Love is easily lost, without one’s even being aware of it (Revelation 2:1-7).
• Love is misunderstood and distorted by the unbelieving world.
• Love is vitally important to Christians, for it should govern our relationships with other Christians, especially those with whom we strongly disagree.

So why did Paul decide to address love right in the middle of an ongoing discussion of spiritual gifts? I think it was because the church at Corinth greatly resembled the churches of today. In the Corinthian church of Paul’s day, and in the evangelical church of our own day, strong polarization exists between charismatic Christians and non-charismatic Christians. As the charismatic movement has grown, it has become more diversified, thereby rendering many generalizations about it reductionistic, but its fair to say both charismatics and non-charismatics often cherish neat stereotypes of the other party.

As judged by the charismatics, non-charismatics tend to be stodgy traditionalists who do not really believe the Bible and who are not really hungry for the Lord. They are afraid of profound spiritual experience, too proud to give themselves wholeheartedly to God, more concerned for ritual than for reality, and more in love with propositional truth than with the truth incarnate. They are better at writing theological tomes than at evangelism; they are defeatist in outlook, defensive in stance, dull in worship, and devoid of the Spirit’s power in their personal experience.

The non-charismatics themselves, of course, tend to see things a little differently. The charismatics, they think, have succumbed to the modern love of ‘experience,’ even at the expense of truth. Charismatics are thought to be profoundly unBiblical, especially when they elevate their experience of tongues to the level of a theological and spiritual shibboleth. If they are growing, no small part of their strength can be ascribed to their raw triumphalism, their populist elitism, their promise of short cuts to holiness and power. They are better at splitting churches and stealing sheep than they are at evangelism, more accomplished in spiritual one-upmanship before other believers than in faithful, humble service. They are imperialistic in outlook (only they have the ‘full gospel’), abrasive in stance, uncontrolled in worship, and devoid of any real grasp of the Bible that goes beyond mere proof-texting.

Of course, both sides concede that the caricatures I have drawn admit notable exceptions; but the profound suspicions on both sides make genuine dialogue extremely difficult. This is especially painful, indeed embarrassing, in the light of the commitment made by most believers on both sides to the Bible’s authority. (D. A. Carson, Showing the Spirit: A Theological Exposition of 1 Corinthians 12-14 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), pp. 11-12.)

But, while all Christians now share in the “unity of the Spirit” (Ephesians 4:3; compare 4:5; 2:14-22; 1 Corinthians 12:13), we do not all share in the “unity of the faith” (Ephesians 4:13). This is because we only “know in part” (1 Corinthians 13:9-12). We Christians disagree, in part at least, because our knowledge is partial and incomplete. We don’t know what we don’t know and we tend to disagree over those things we do not fully know, even though we may believe we do know. Love is the means God provided for us to live in harmony and unity, even though there is a diversity of doctrine in matters which are not fundamental. Paul’s instructions on love then become absolutely vital to our Christian walk and unity.

What is distinctive about Christian love? It’s important to answer that question before looking further at Chapter 13. We overuse that word “love” in the modern world so that the meaning of the word is sort of fluid. And, yes, there are different Greek words for our single English word love and they all have different nuances of meaning, but I’m not going to get into that in this study. Paul provided us with a definition of Christian love in the writing of Chapter 13.

He didn’t instruct us about the importance of distinguishing between Greek words for love. He began in verses 1-3 by showing that spiritual gifts have only minimal value, unless they are exercised in love. In verses 4-7, Paul didn’t attempt to give us a very technical definition of love; instead, he described love in a way which makes it very clear what Biblical love looks like. His description makes it glaringly evident that the Corinthians had indeed lost their first love, even more quickly than the Ephesian saints (compare Revelation 2:1-7). If verses 4-7 contrast the behavior of true love with the conduct of the Corinthians, verses 8-13 contrast love with all spiritual gifts, showing that while all of the spiritual gifts are temporary, Christian love is eternal, outlasting even faith and hope. If we measure the value of something by how long it lasts, love comes out on top. Love is the “better way” (see 12:31) beyond all comparison.

I’m going to break the study up into segments over the next few weeks, but before doing that, I want to make a few observations.  Paul took what are considered to be the greatest gifts anyone could possess, starting with tongues (the “ultimate gift” for the Corinthians and many charismatics today), and granted that each could be exercised to the fullest possible extent. Even then, these spiritual gifts would be of limited value unless exercised out of a heart of love.

Tongues is the ability to speak in unlearned earthly languages as seen in Acts 2. Or is it? If you go back to that Biblical passage (Acts 2) and read it without a preconception, you quickly realize that the miracle was not that the disciples spoke in tongues, but that the hearers understood what they were saying in their own language. Peter could not have preached in more than one language. It would be a physical impossibility to speak in more than one language at the same time. Yet, hearers from all over the Mediterranean understood what he said.  So, while the disciples did speak in tongues that day, it may not be the sort of tongues we are familiar with today. And, even if it were, Paul declared, if this were done apart from love, it would not be profitable to men: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

Can you imagine listening to a cymbal or a gong hour after hour? I actually can because my nephew played the drums. Babysitting him was hell. Hour after agonizing hour of drums pounding away. Some instruments are not good alone. Rather than being enjoyable, they can be irritating. A tongues speaker without love could speak long and loud, enraptured by the sound of his own voice, but apart from interpretation, there would be no value to those who hear or even to the speaker (see 14:14-17). Exercised in love, and in accordance with the restrictions set down by Paul, tongues could be edifying. But without love, tongues would be irritating.

How do I know? I have worshiped with charismatics on-and-off throughout my Christian walk. In very few groups is any interpretation offered. In one prayer meeting a woman erupted into an ecstatic utterance that sounded a great deal like an old-style coffee percolator. I got nothing spiritual out of that meeting, though occasionally I have been in groups where interpretation occurred and it was very uplifting.

Any gift exercised primarily for the benefit of the one who is gifted is a prostitution of that gift, and the end result of that kind of “ministry” is not edification but exasperation. Love seeks to serve others to their benefit and at the sacrifice of the one who serves in love. This kind of ministry blesses others. Self-serving, self-promoting ministry is a pain to others, something to be endured at best.

The Corinthians wrongly measured their own significance by the gifts they possessed. Were this false assumption granted even for a moment, without love, the greatest gift, exercised to the fullest measure, really makes the exerciser a nobody.

Luke 7:36-50 illustrates this truth. There, everybody who was considered important seems to have gathered at the dinner Jesus attended at the home of Simon the Pharisee. A woman regarded as a “nobody” came, uninvited, and washed the feet of our Lord. Simon the Pharisee took note and, in his heart, thought less of Jesus because He allowed this woman to touch him. He thought, “If Jesus knew who she was and what a sinner she was, He would have nothing to do with her.” But Jesus turned the tables. This woman went away forgiven and saved. She who was a “nobody” was a “somebody” in the kingdom of God, simply because she loved her Lord. The one who was least, but loved, was the greatest. Those who were the greatest, without love, were the least.

Look at Jonah, the prophet. He enjoyed the kind of “success” of which the prophet Elijah could only dream. Elijah wanted to convert the nation Israel. He “failed” because this was not God’s purpose for him. So, too, Isaiah “failed” by secular standards of success. But when Jonah preached, the entire city of Nineveh repented. It was a success Jonah did not want. It was a success that made Jonah angry with God. Who could leave the Book of Jonah liking this loveless prophet? He was nothing because he lacked love.

In addition to the gift of prophecy, Paul wrote of the gift of faith. Faith, exercised to the ultimate measure of success, would be a faith that could not only move mountains but remove them (compare Matthew 17:20; 21:21). If one had this kind of faith, yet lacked love, he would be a nobody.

If I possess the greatest of gifts and exercise them to the fullest degree, yet without love, I am nobody. I am nothing. These words must have struck the Corinthians with considerable force.

In verse 3, Paul speaks of gifts in terms of the greatest imaginable sacrifice. “And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” Paul spoke of great personal sacrifice that would gain one favor and approval by his peers (compare Matthew 6:2-4). The ultimate sacrifice is made, either by giving up all of one’s possessions for the sake of the poor, or by the giving up of one’s life as a martyr. Because love is sacrificial (see Ephesians 5:25), some might be tempted to conclude that “great sacrifice” (giving up all one’s possessions or one’s life) was proof of great love.

Paul disagreed. People give away their possessions for any number of reasons, and many of those reasons can be self-serving rather than sacrificial. So what if I bequeath all my wealth to a charitable organization upon my death. I can’t take my money with me anyway. Even if I deprive my children of any inheritance, it really doesn’t mean I’m generous. I’m dead. The bequest doesn’t affect my life. People have set themselves on fire for causes they believe in and I’ve heard pundits ascribe that action to a love motive. I’m not confinced. Ultimate sacrifices can be made apart from love, and if they are loveless, they are of no eternal benefit to the one making the sacrifice.

Benefits and blessings may occur through the loveless exercise of spiritual gifts, but these benefits are greatly reduced when love is lacking. The Corinthians were obsessed with the value of spiritual gifts, equating the social status of the gift with the significance of the one who possesses it. Paul sought to elevate love, the fruit of the Spirit, above the gifts of the Spirit.

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The other day, Kiernan and some friends of his were talking about being bullied in school. For Kiernan, this was a while ago. He made it stop by breaking the law. The kid was actually bullying Kiernan’s friend because he is an Eskimo. Kiernan and Tim walked off campus, let the bully follow them and then Kiernan socked the kid in the nose. He knew we’d have his back, union legal insurance all greased up, if necessary. The parents of the kid he socked didn’t call the cops, so I guess the kid learned his lesson … as did the bully I hit in the head with my metal lunchbox back in the third grade … only in that case the cop took one look at how little I was compared to how big the boy (who was picking on the littler kids I’d been asked to walk home) was and told Colin Cooper’s parents they needed to discipline their son or he’d do it for them. A different era when common sense was still common enough not to be a unicorn.

So while Kiernan and his friends were talking, our friend Lee remarked to Brad “Sounds like prison.” Lee would know. He spent four years in Alaska’s prison system 20-odd years ago. He’s willingly shared his stories with me and they’re becoming part of What If … Wasn’t, my literary fiction that still needs a lot of work. He and his wife home school their four children. Their son just won a full-ride academic scholarship to college having never attended public school, so this may have been the first time Lee became aware of school bullying.

In prison, some prisoners bully other prisoners. Why? Because they can and because in a setting where you have no control of your life, it feels good to put your foot on someone else’s neck, if only for a few minutes, knowing that you won’t get into any real trouble because your victim is as powerless as you are.

Welcome to public school. Like prisons, nobody is there voluntarily. They have no control over their lives in a top-down authoritarian structure. So why not have the pleasure of feeling a little power over someone else who can’t fight back because it’s against the rules? If they even report it, they’ll make themselves look like a wimp and, truth be told, the administration won’t do anything to you that might be worse than being forced to stay inside on a lovely fall day.

Children who are bullied in school have very few choices and very little recourse. Required by law to attend an assigned public school, many children and their parents have few options to withdraw from a bullying scenario. Some parents will look for alternative schooling options for their bullied children, like private schools, charter schools, online schools, or homeschooling, but for many families, these choices are not available or accessible.

In those cases, bullied children must endure daily battering that would be criminal if inflicted on adults. Is it any wonder that we have a rising suicide rate among children? In fact, according to the CDC, the suicide rate among 10- to 14-year-olds has doubledsince 2007.

Wounded By School author Kirsten Olson refers to bullying as “an expression of the shadow side of schooling.” She writes:

If we create school systems in which compulsion, coercion, hierarchy, and fear of failure are central features of the academic experience, and essential to motivating and controlling students, then the energy from those negative experiences will seek expression.”

Placing people in environments where they have little freedom and control can trigger bullying behaviors; and if those who are being bullied can’t freely leave, then hostility may continue indefinitely.

Yeah, we talk a lot about how to “bully-proof” children and how to help students who are victims of bullying. We trot out policies, plans and professional development programs for dealing with bullying.

Most of these are well-intentioned, but they ignore the central issue. Bullying exists due to a compulsory schooling environment that mandates attendance, eliminates freedom, and limits the ability to opt-out. Until that issue is addressed, no amount of reading, policy-making, teacher training, and “bully-proofing” is going to stop bullying from occurring.

The best way to avoid bullying in schools is to question compulsory attendance laws, expand education choice, and create learning environments that nurture childhood freedom and autonomy. We wouldn’t tolerate bullies in our adult lives. Why do we expect our children to?

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Too many people believe that slavery is a “peculiar institution.” That’s what Kenneth Stampp called slavery in his book, “Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South.”

But slavery is by no means peculiar, odd or unusual. It was common among ancient peoples such as the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Greeks, Persians, Armenians and many others. Large numbers of Christians were enslaved during the Ottoman wars in Europe. White slaves were common in Europe from the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages.

It was only after A.D. 1600 that Europeans joined with Arabs and Africans and started the Atlantic slave trade. As David P. Forsythe wrote in his book, “The Globalist,”

“The fact remained that at the beginning of the nineteenth century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom.”

While slavery constitutes one of the grossest encroachments on human liberty, it is by no means unique or restricted to the Western world or United States, as many liberal academics would have us believe. Much of their indoctrination of our young people, at all levels of education, paints our nation’s founders as racist adherents to slavery, but the story is not so simple.

At the time of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, slaves were about 40 percent of the population of the Southern colonies. Apportionment in the House of Representatives and the number of electoral votes each state would have in presidential elections would be based upon population. Southern delegates to the convention wanted slaves to be counted as one person. Northern delegates to the convention, and those opposed to slavery, wanted only free persons of each state to be counted for the purposes of apportionment in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. The compromise reached was that each slave would be counted as only three-fifths of a person.

Many criticize this compromise as proof of racism. My question to these grossly uninformed critics is whether they would have found it more preferable for slaves to be counted as whole persons. Slaves counted as whole persons would have given slave-holding Southern states much more political power. Or, would the critics of the founders prefer that the Northern delegates not compromise and not allow slaves to be counted at all. If they did, it is likely that the Constitution would have not been ratified.

Thus, the question emerges is whether blacks would be better off with Northern states having gone their way and Southern states having gone theirs, resulting in no U.S. Constitution and no Union?

Unlike today’s pseudo-intellectuals, black abolitionist Frederick Douglass understood the compromise, saying that the three-fifths clause was “a downright disability laid upon the slave-holding states” that deprived them of “two-fifths of their natural basis of representation.”

Douglass’ vision was shared by Patrick Henry and others. Henry said, expressing the reality of the three-fifths compromise, “As much as I deplore slavery, I see that prudence forbids its abolition.” With this union, Congress at least had the power to abolish slave trade by 1808. According to delegate James Wilson, many believed the anti-slave-trade clause laid “the foundation for banishing slavery out of this country.” Many of the founders abhorred slavery. Their statements can be read on my website, walterewilliams.com.

The most unique aspect of slavery in the Western world was the moral outrage against it, which began to emerge in the 18th century and led to massive elimination efforts. It was Britain’s military sea power that put an end to the slave trade. And our country fought a costly war that brought an end to slavery. Unfortunately, these facts about slavery are not in the lessons taught in our schools and colleges. Instead, there is gross misrepresentation and suggestion that slavery was a uniquely American practice.

Source: Slavery Was Always and Everywhere

standoff retrial

By KEN RITTERPublished August 22, 2017

Associated Press

 

LAS VEGAS –  A federal jury in Las Vegas refused Tuesday to convict four defendants who were retried on accusations that they threatened and assaulted federal agents by wielding assault weapons in a 2014 confrontation to stop a cattle roundup near the Nevada ranch of states’ rights figure Cliven Bundy.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/08/22/jury-refuses-to-convict-4-in-nevada-ranch-standoff-retrial.html

In a stunning setback to federal prosecutors planning to try the Bundy family patriarch and two adult sons later this year, the jury acquitted Ricky Lovelien and Steven Stewart of all 10 charges, and delivered not-guilty findings on most charges against Scott Drexler and Eric Parker.

More than 30 defendants’ supporters in the courtroom broke into applause after Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro ordered Lovelien and Stewart freed immediately and set Wednesday morning hearings to decide if Parker and Drexler should remain jailed pending a government decision whether to seek a third trial.

“Random people off the streets, these jurors, they told the government again that we’re not going to put up with tyranny,” said a John Lamb, a Montana resident who attended almost all the five weeks of trial, which began with jury selection July 10.

“They’ve been tried twice and found not guilty,” Bundy family matriarch Carol Bundy said outside court. “We the people are not guilty.”

A first trial earlier this year lasted two months and ended in April with a different jury finding two defendants — Gregory Burleson of Phoenix and Todd Engel of Idaho — guilty of some charges but failing to reach verdicts against Drexler, Parker, Lovelien and Stewart.

Prosecutors characterized the six as the least culpable of 19 co-defendants arrested in early 2016 and charged in the case, including Bundy family members. With the release of Lovelien and Stewart, 17 are still in federal custody.

The current jury deliberated four full days after more than 20 days of testimony. The six men and six women returned no verdicts on four charges against Parker — assault on a federal officer, threatening a federal officer and two related counts of use of a firearm — and also hung on charges of assault on a federal officer and brandishing a firearm against Drexler. Navarro declared a mistrial on those counts.

None of the defendants was found guilty of a key conspiracy charge alleging that they plotted with Bundy family members to form a self-styled militia and prevent the lawful enforcement of multiple court orders to remove Bundy cattle from arid desert rangeland in what is now the Gold Butte National Monument.

Bundy stopped paying grazing fees decades ago, saying he refused to recognize federal authority over public land where he said his family grazed cattle since the early 1900s. The dispute has roots in a nearly half-century fight over public lands in Nevada and the West, where the federal government controls vast expanses of land.

Acting U.S. Attorney Steven Myhre declined immediate comment on the verdicts. He said he’d make a determination later whether to seek a third trial for Parker and Drexler.

Stewart became emotional and reached for tissues as the jury findings were read. He and Lovelien were later taken with their lawyers, Richard Tanasi and Shawn Perez, to be processed by U.S. marshals for release.

Stewart, 38, lives in Hailey, Idaho. Lovelien, 54, is from Westville, Oklahoma, but he led a militia group called Montana State Defense Force.

All four men were photographed carrying assault-style weapons during the standoff near the Nevada town of Bunkerville, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Each had faced the possibility of decades in federal prison if they were convicted.

Jurors saw images of Parker and Drexler in prone shooting positions looking down their rifles through slots in the concrete barrier of an Interstate 15 freeway overpass toward heavily armed federal agents guarding a corral of cows below.

Defense attorneys noted that no shots were fired and no one was injured. They cast the tense standoff with more than 100 men, women and children in the potential crossfire as an ultimately peaceful protest involving people upset about aggressive tactics used by federal land managers against Bundy family members.

Drexler, 46, is from Challis, Idaho, and Parker, 34, is from Hailey, Idaho.

Parker’s attorney, Jess Marchese, said he hoped Myhre will dismiss the two charges remaining against his client.

Drexler’s attorney, Todd Leventhal, referred to defense teams’ complaints that Navarro set such strict rules of evidence that defendants weren’t able to tell why they traveled to the Bundy ranch.

The judge rejected testimony from five prospective defense witnesses, and Drexler and Parker were the only defendants to testify in their defense. However, the judge struck Parker’s testimony for what she said was a deliberate failure to keep his testimony within her rules.

All four defense attorneys declined Aug. 15 to make closing arguments, a gesture of standing mute that Leventhal said may have had an effect on the jury.

“As much as we were shut down from bringing anything up, the jury saw through it,” he said.