POPEHAT’S KEN WHITE: How the government is charging Ammon Bundy and his self-styled Oregon militia members.

After debacles like Waco and Ruby Ridge, it seems the federal government has finally learned how to handle self-styled insurrection. If the rebels extend an invitation to a violent, headline-grabbing siege, politely decline. If they frame the dispute as a fight between liberty and tyranny, brush your shoulders off.

Just as the arrest was cautious, so is the charge. In the federal criminal complaint – which the FBI didn’t obtain until after the arrests – the U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon charges the eight defendants with a single count of conspiracy to impede an officer of the United States. That federal criminal statute doesn’t see much use, and it’s not one of the Justice Department’s big guns: Its maximum penalty is only six years. To prosecutors, the virtue of such conspiracy charges are their flexibility: The government need only prove that two or more of the defendants agreed to prevent some federal employee from discharging his or her duty by force, intimidation or threat. Prosecutors don’t have to prove they were successful.

It used to be hard to prove what defendants agreed to do: You had to infer it from their actions, or find a snitch to repeat their conversations, or wiretap them. But this is 2016, and we arrange our affairs in the open. The government’s 31-page affidavit in support of the complaint against the eight occupiers is chock-full of their own words: statements in press interviews, statements in videos posted to YouTube, statements in widely distributed emails. It’s enough to make a defense attorney weep.

If you’re a serious revolutionary, this sort of behavior should be avoided.