Fullerton, California residents infuriated by the murder of homeless man Kelly Thomas at the hands of the local police gave vent to their anger at a recent City Council meeting captured on camera by Reason magazine.

“Those police officers were dangerous — and you knew it, you sick man!” exclaimed one participant in the meeting, pointing at a Council member who had defended the actions of the cops who beat Kelly to death. “You saw that video and you kept those police officers on the streets!”

The surveillance video to which she referred was released to the public after being shown at a preliminary hearing for Officer Manuel Ramos and Corporal John Cicinelli, who are charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, respectively.

In the security camera footage, Ramos is shown threatening Thomas — a small, skinny man who suffered from schizophrenia — and barraging him with adolescent profanity: “You see these fists? They’re about to f**k you up.” As if eagerly seeking a pretext to beat the helpless man, Ramos issues contradictory demands — and eventually throws him face-down to the ground. Cicinelli and several other officers soon join in, repeatedly slugging, elbowing, kicking, and tasering the helpless victim, who shrieks out in terror and eventually starts crying out for his father. Kelly was beaten into a coma and left in a pool of his own blood while his assailants, indifferent to his condition, congratulated themselves on their achievement. Left brain-dead by the assault, Kelly was removed from life support several days later.

Steven Greenhut of the Orange County Register points out that Fullerton has traditionally been a bastion of  GOP-aligned “law-and-order” conservatism. The sheer viciousness and unalloyed sadism displayed by the police who beat Kelly Thomas to death, and the casual corruption exhibited by the municipal government in covering up that crime, have prompted residents of all political persuasions to rebel against the status quo, Greenhut recalls:

After the beating, and Fullerton residents were consumed by anger and demanded answers, their leaders failed them. The now-departed police chief took vacation and then went on disability leave. That left the council to take charge. But the council majority dissembled.

It was bad enough that the Fullerton Police Department released false information (i.e., claiming that officers suffered broken bones after a supposedly brutal fight with Thomas), but here’s what Mayor Jones said, which is as insensitive as it is idiotic: “I’ve seen far worse injuries that are survivable. I don’t know why he died.” Thomas was fine, then he was beaten into a pulp—something now undeniable, thanks to the video—and these city “leaders” couldn’t figure out what killed him.

Furthermore, the three council members opposed the release of the video to the public. They backed the department. McKinley, a former police chief who hired the officers involved in the beating, wanted to keep the officers on the street. These three didn’t seriously question the police department, which allowed the officers to watch the video and get their stories straight before giving their testimony to investigators. Jones referred to the peaceful citizens of his city who were protesting the Thomas death as the equivalent of a “lynch mob.”For Jones, peaceful protest is “mob” violence, and a gang beating by police officers is an exercise of civic virtue.

The victim’s father, former Orange County Sheriff’s Detective Ron Thomas, offers a sounder perspective: “His death was gang-involved, the way I see it… A gang of rogue officers … brutally beat my son to death.”

Actually, a “rogue” officer — one committed to acting as a peace officer and protecting the innocent from all criminal violence, including that inflicted by other cops — may have been the only thing that could have saved Kelly Thomas.

A typically bizarre scene at the MEK's Camp Ashraf in Iraq

In another portent of war with Iran, the U.S. State Department is prepared to remove the Iranian group Mujahadin al-Khalq (MEK) or “People’s Mujahadin” from its official list of terrorist organizations. This follows what the Wall Street Journal calls “an aggressive legal and lobbying campaign in Washington over the past two years” carried out by the terrorist group, which has been aided by a lengthy roster of highly influential current and former U.S. officials.

The list of high-profile MEK advocates, some of whom were put on retainer by the group, includes Rep. Patrick Kennedy, former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former Pennsylvania Governor – and founding Secretary of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge, ex-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell, Former CIA Director Michael Hayden, and retired General Wesley Clark.  Under federal law each of the MEK’s supporters is liable to huge fines and lengthy imprisonment for providing material support to a listed terrorist group – that is, if the law actually applied to the elite.

The MEK was created in 1965 as part of a Soviet-sponsored international terrorist network that waged wars of “national liberation” throughout the developing world. Human Rights Watch, which describes the MEK as an “urban guerrilla group,” points out that the group’s ideology is a Muslim variation on “liberation theology.”

In his July 7 testimony before the House Committee on ForeignAffairs, Ray Takeyh, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, pointed out that the MEK sought to “amalgamate Islam and Marxism. Islam was supposed to provide the values while Marxism offered a pathway for organizing the society and defeating the forces of capitalism, imperialism, and feudalism…. [F]rom Lenin they embraced the importance of a vanguard party committed to mass mobilization, and from Third World revolutionaries they took the primacy of guerilla warfare as indispensable agents of political change.”

In 1970, 13 members of the MEK received training (most likely under Soviet supervision) at PLO camps in Jordan and Lebanon. Upon their return, the PLO-trained MEK cadres shared their newly acquired skills with their comrades, and the group embarked on a wave of attacks and bombings intended to bring down the Shah. During one rampage, MEK terrorists killed several U.S. military personnel – including Colonel Lewis Hawkins, the Deputy Chief of Military Mission in Tehran.

Although the group suffered some attrition in its conflict with the SAVAK, the Shah’s hideous secret police, it survived long enough to participate in Khomeini revolution. MEK cadres were involved in the seizure of American hostages in October 1979. But the MEK’s ambitions and ideology made it a poor fit for Khomeini regime, so the group was purged from the ruling coalition in 1981 and much of its leadership was driven into exile in Iraq. There it was, in Takeyh’s words, used “as Saddam’s Praetorian Guard.”

Following Saddam’s US-supported invasion of Iran, the MEK began a hit-and-run guerrilla war against the Iranian regime in the hope of triggering a popular uprising. When that proved unsuccessful, the group set up a political front group called the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI) in Paris. In 1985, notes Human Rights Watch, the MEK’s “leadership was transformed when Masoud Rajavi announced his marriage to Maryam Uzdanlu…. The husband and wife team became co-leaders” of the MEK and announced an “ideological revolution.”

All of the group’s members were required to undertake an individual “ideological revolution” by engaging in Maoist-style “self-criticism” sessions. Adherents were expected to listen raptly “to radio messages and explanations provided by [their] commanders” in order to “gain a deep insight into the greatness of our new leadership, meaning the leadership of Masoud and Maryam…. To believe in them as well as to show ideological and revolutionary obedience to them.”

By 1987, the MEK had acquired “all the main attributes of a cult,” writes Iranian scholar Ervand Abrahamian, with Masoud Rajavi claiming the titles Rahbar (leader) and Imam-i hal (the Present Imam), and the forerunner to the impending second advent of the Mahdi. In 1994, the House Foreign Relations Committee described the group as a violent, Marxist-influenced cult. The Committee Chairman at the time was Congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Indiana), who is now on the group’s payroll.

“Friendships and all emotional relationships are forbidden” to those recruited into the MEK, writes Elizabeth Rubin of the New York Times magazine, who has spent time at the group’s headquarters at Camp Ashraf, 40 miles north of Baghdad. “From the time they are toddlers, boys and girls are not allowed to speak to each other. Each day at Camp Ashraf you had to report your dreams and thoughts.” Maoist “struggle sessions” and severe punishment for “deviationism” are commonplace.

Expelled from France in 1986, Masoud Rajavi was welcomed in Baghdad, where he and his followers built a “National Liberation Army” that joined the Iran-Iraq war on Saddam’s side. The MEK’s plan was to recruit a huge army of suicide commandos whose sacrifice would inspire the “liberation” of Iran.

“We will not be fighting alone; we will have the people on our side,” proclaimed Rajavi. “They are tired of this regime, and … they have every incentive to get rid of it forever. We will only have to act as their shields, protecting them from being easy targets for the [revolutionary] guards. Wherever we go there will be masses of citizens joining us, and the prisoners we liberate from jails will help us lead them towards victory. It will be like an avalanche, growing as it progresses.”

When the war ended in 1988 without victory for Iraq or the “National Liberation Army,” the MEK leadership imposed yet another “ideological revolution” on its followers, this one including compelled mass divorces and widespread torture of those suspected of espionage or ideological deviation. Following the first Gulf War, the MEK collaborated in Saddam’s crackdown on Shi’ites and Kurds.

In its campaign to build support for the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration mentioned MEK camps in Iraq as evidence of Saddam’s support for international terrorism. Following the invasion, U.S. forces disarmed MEK fighters who operated several camps within 60 miles of the Iranian border. Rather than treating them as terrorists, the Bush administration designated the MEK fighters as “protected” persons under the Geneva Convention.

In fact, the Bush administration was so intent on sheltering the MEK – which, recall had killed Americans and taken part in the seizure of American hostages – that it rebuffed an offer from Iran to exchange MEK leaders for al-Qaeda suspects being held in Tehran. In exchange for protection, the MEK began to produce a series of lurid – and entirely fabricated – “intelligence” reports regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

The MEK has no support among reform-minded Iranians; in fact, the group is immensely useful to the incumbent regime as a way of discrediting its opposition, which in official propaganda is depicted as allies of the bizarre Islamo-Leninist cult. The current Iranian government is awful; if it were to seize power, the MEK — which is the Persian equivalent of the Khmer Rouge — would be dramatically worse.

Read more here.

(See Adam Kokesh’s video commentary here.)
Thanks to Beaumont, California Police Officer Enoch Clark,  32-year-old Monique Hernandez will never see her ten-year-old daughter again.

On February 21, Clark conducted a traffic stop involving Hernandez, who was suspected of drunk driving. When Clark attempted to handcuff her, Hernandez resisted. The officer responded by using a JPX device – a weapon that uses a gunpowder charge to fire a stream of pepper spray at roughly 400 miles an hour.

The JPX weapon is designed for use at a distance of 6 to 15 feet, and training presentations depict it being used against aggressive, armed assailants. Promotional literature for the JPX weapon – which isn’t categorized as a firearm, because it doesn’t fire a projectile – boasts of “devastating stopping power.”

The payload of weaponized OC spray is propelled over the prescribed distance at less than three one-hundredths of a second, making it “too fast to avoid…. The effect is immediate; there is no chance to resist.”

Clark’s attorney insists that the officer’s attack was justified in order “to gain compliance and in defense of his person.” The JPX is not designed to induce “compliance,” but rather to incapacitate an aggressor at a distance. Clark – who was armed and wearing body armor — fired it into Hernandez’s temple from a distance of roughly ten inches, blowing apart her right eye and leaving the left with severe, irreparable damage.

Anyone who had undergone rudimentary training with the JPX would understand that the weapon should not be fired directly into the head or face of a non-violent suspect. Clark’s actions suggest that his intention was not to gain “compliance,” but rather to inflict summary street punishment for “contempt of cop.”

Hernandez was taken to the hospital and never charged. Following an investigation by the county Sherriff’s office, a grand jury indicted Clark on four felony charges: Assault under color of authority, assault with a less lethal weapon, use of force causing severe bodily injury, and assault with force likely to cause severe bodily injury. Free on $50,000 bail, Clark faces up to 20 years in prison. At present, the officer – who is chairman of the local police union — was placed on administrative leave, which is to say that he was given a paid vacation.

Interestingly, the law firm representing Clark in his criminal trial is involving in a union lawsuit against Beaumont Police Chief Frank Coe, claiming that the chief retaliated against critics on in the department by denying them promotions, thereby leaving several positions vacant.

Tragically, the blinding of Monique Hernandez arose out of a domestic disturbance that led to a 911 call. Two officers responded to the call, one of whom reportedly witnessed the assault while speaking with Hernandez’s family.

It should be remembered that any time someone calls for police “assistance,” he’s inviting the intervention of people who consider themselves licensed to inflict potentially lethal violence as punishment for non-compliance. It should be assumed that if the police get involved, somebody is going to injured or killed – generally without just cause.

Read more here.

When he was a teenager, Saverin and his family immigrated to the U.S., where he eventually went to Harvard and became a billionaire. Recently, Saverin announced that he was repudiating his U.S. citizenship and moving to Singapore. As he did when he was a child, Saverin is fleeing from an extortion gang. This time, it’s the government afflicting our nation, which is seeking, by way of the legalized theft called the capital gains tax, to steal more than $600 million that Saverin has earned.

Speaking on behalf of the collectivist parasite class, columnist Farhad Manjoo of Slate accuses Saverin of crass ingratitude, insisting that he owes “everything” to the country in which his talents were allowed to flourish. Like all collectivists, Manjoo dishonestly conflates the country with the degenerate political class that presumes to rule it. Like extortionists of every variety, he insists that it is just and moral to confiscate wealth at gunpoint, saying that seizing $600 million from Saverin is “more than fair.”

Saverin is just one of hundreds of innovators and entrepreneurs fleeing the socialist monstrosity that America has become.

“At the U.S. Embassy in London, there is a waiting list that none of the officials like to discuss,” reported the Financial Times in August 2010. “On the list are Americans hoping to give up their citizenship, as they seek shelter from the Internal Revenue Service.” This is a serious and troubling step, because “If you give up a U.S. passport, you take the chance that you will never be able to go back and live and work in the U.S. again.”

Some who make this choice are understandably alarmed over the government’s relentless profligacy, which inevitably results in confiscatory taxes. The feeders of Leviathan are doing their best to shut down avenues of retreat for those who are determined to keep what they have earned – by adopting the totalitarian measure of locking people into the country.

Writing in Business Insider, Simon Black describes how America is becoming a Soviet-style prison society:

The U.S. Passport Act of 1926 is an obscure piece of legislation that was enacted decades ago when the idea of passports started catching fire around the world.

Subsequently absorbed into U.S. Code Title 22, the law was originally intended to authorize and issue passports for citizens to travel abroad.

Several years ago, the law was modified to provide the Secretary of State with the authority to revoke or deny a passport to any U.S. citizen convicted of engaging in immoral acts with minors overseas.

Until now, this has been the only instance of excluding a U.S. citizen from travel abroad. But if Senator Barbara Boxer gets her way, there’s going to be one more.

As part of Senate Bill 1813 (known as MAP-21), Congress has inserted language that would oblige the Secretary of State to revoke or deny a passport to any U.S. citizen who the IRS Commissioner deems as having “seriously delinquent tax debt.”

For the purposes of MAP-21, “seriously delinquent tax debt” is defined as an amount in excess of $50,000 in which a notice of lien or levy has been filed in public records.

Bear in mind, this is strictly an administrative procedure; there is no due process. By comparison, even pedophiles go in front of a judge before losing their passports.

It is impossible for someone to “owe” something that is taken from him by force – unless it is assumed that the supposed debtor and his labor are in some sense the property of those making that claim upon him. This arrangement is best described as slavery, at least in principle. Enacting measures restricting emigration for those who seek to avoid wealth confiscation would put slavery into practice.
Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-19/home/31365245_1_issue-passports-foreign-banks-citizen#ixzz1uukoD8YE

The face of a thief and a liar: Officer Larry Bates

In the State of Tennessee, highway robbery in the name of “asset forfeiture” is commonplace — and Monterey PD Officer Larry Bates, who stole $22,000 from New Jersey businessman George Reby, is the embodiment of this unfathomably corrupt practice.

Reby, an insurance adjuster, was stopped for speeding by Bates on Interstate 40. Like too many honest and innocent people, Reby made the mistake of answering questions posed by the armed stranger who materialized at the driver’s side door.

Bates asked if Reby was carrying any large amounts of cash.

“I said, `Around $20,000,” Reby recalled in a television interview with the Nashville CBS affiliate. “Then, at that point, he said, `Do you mind if I search your vehicle?’ I said, `No, I don’t mind.’ I certainly didn’t feel I was doing anything wrong. It was my money.”

In fact, the ingenuous businessman actually handed the money to the officer.

What Reby didn’t understand is that through the practice of “civil asset forfeiture,” every traffic stop is a potential highway robbery — and police everywhere are encouraged to view cash and other valuables as subject to confiscation on the pretext that they are “proceeds” of narcotics trafficking. All that is necessary is for the officer to cobble together what he considers a plausible statement justifying his suspicion — however emancipated from the facts of the case — that the money or valuables is connected to actual or potential narcotics commerce.

Bates didn’t arrest Reby. He did, however, steal his money, later insisting that this was proper because the businessman “couldn’t prove it was legitimate.” In the work of fiction he filed later as an official affidavit, Bates invoked his “training” to justify the seizure, insisting that “common people do not carry this much currency.”

“On the street, a thousand-dollar bundle could approximately buy two ounces of cocaine,” Bates told a news reporter for Channel 5, as if this crashing non-sequitur ended the discussion.

Reby explained — and documented — that he had an active eBay bid on a car. Pressed by the reporter, Bates admitted that Reby had said as much during the traffic stop.

“But you did not include that in your report,” the TV reporter pointed out in his interview with Bates.

“If it’s not in there, I didn’t put it in there,” simpered the officer — offering an evasive answer of the sort that comes readily to a practiced liar and thief.

Asked why he hadn’t mentioned this germane fact in his report, Bates took refuge in sullen silence before replying: “I don’t know.”

Bates had told the judge that Reby had hidden the money inside “a tool bag underneath trash to [deter] law enforcement from finding it.”

While it is indeed a good idea to conceal your money from armed robbers in government–issued costumes, Reby had done nothing of the kind: “That’s inaccurate; I pulled out the bag and gave it to him,” he told the reporter.

Making use of access to a computerized database, Bates learned that Reby had been arrested on suspicion of cocaine use twenty years ago, but never convicted. It’s quite likely that the same is true of at least some of the people who work alongside Officer Bates.

In Tennessee, forfeiture proceedings are conducted ex parte, which means that the judge only heard the thief’s side of the story. Reby didn’t learn about the hearing until well after the fact — and if he hadn’t gone to the media, it’s likely he would have lost his money permanently. He had to travel back to Tennessee in order to get a check that was reluctantly written by a police department that refused to apologize for robbing him at gunpoint.

Spectacles of this kind are common on Interstate 40 in Tennessee, where officers from two drug task forces prowl the highway in search of  cash they can seize through civil asset forfeiture.

Kim Helper, District Attorney for Tennessee’s 21st Judicial District, insists that the highway robbery scheme is “a way for us to continue to fund our operations so that we can put an end to drug trafficking and the drug trade within this district.” Of course, those two objectives — “continued funding” and “an end to drug trafficking” — are mutually incompatible.

Officers assigned to the task force often ignore actual narcotics shipments, choosing instead to focus almost exclusively on seizing money. This means concentrating on the westbound side of the highway, where the cash is believed to be found, rather than the eastbound lane, which is supposedly used to shuttle drugs in from Mexico.

As Nashville’s CBS affiliate reported last year, the salaries paid to the officers involved in this highway robbery ring are paid directly out of the cash and other assets seized by them; this means that police often find themselves competing to stop and shake down the same cars, sometimes nearly coming to blows in the process.

Larry Bates is an appropriate poster child for the Highway Robbers in uniform who haunt Interstate 40.

On February 21, Clark conducted a traffic stop involving Hernandez, who was suspected of drunk driving. When Clark attempted to handcuff her, Hernandez resisted. The officer responded by using a JPX device – a weapon that uses a gunpowder charge to fire a stream of pepper spray at roughly 400 miles an hour.

The JPX weapon is designed for use at a distance of 6 to 15 feet, and training presentations depict it being used against aggressive, armed assailants. Promotional literature for the JPX weapon – which isn’t categorized as a firearm, because it doesn’t fire a projectile – boasts of “devastating stopping power.”

Officer Enoch Clark

The payload of weaponized OC spray is propelled over the prescribed distance at less than three one-hundredths of a second, making it “too fast to avoid…. The effect is immediate; there is no chance to resist.”

Clark’s attorney insists that the officer’s attack was justified in order “to gain compliance and in defense of his person.” The JPX is not designed to induce “compliance,” but rather to incapacitate an aggressor at a distance. Clark – who was armed and wearing body armor — fired it into Hernandez’s temple from a distance of roughly ten inches, blowing apart her right eye and leaving the left with severe, irreparable damage.

Anyone who had undergone rudimentary training with the JPX would understand that the weapon should not be fired directly into the head or face of a non-violent suspect. Clark’s actions suggest that his intention was not to gain “compliance,” but rather to inflict summary street punishment for “contempt of cop.”

Hernandez was taken to the hospital and never charged. Following an investigation by the county Sherriff’s office, a grand jury indicted Clark on four felony charges: Assault under color of authority, assault with a less lethal weapon, use of force causing severe bodily injury, and assault with force likely to cause severe bodily injury. Free on $50,000 bail, Clark faces up to 20 years in prison. At present, the officer – who is chairman of the local police union — was placed on administrative leave, which is to say that he was given a paid vacation.

Stormtroopers armed with JPX pepper spray guns

Interestingly, the law firm representing Clark in his criminal trial is involving in a union lawsuit against Beaumont Police Chief Frank Coe, claiming that the chief retaliated against critics on in the department by denying them promotions, thereby leaving several positions vacant.

Tragically, the blinding of Monique Hernandez arose out of a domestic disturbance that led to a 911 call. Two officers responded to the call, one of whom reportedly witnessed the assault while speaking with Hernandez’s family.

It should be remembered that any time someone calls for police “assistance,” he’s inviting the intervention of people who consider themselves licensed to inflict potentially lethal violence as punishment for non-compliance. It should be assumed that if the police get involved, somebody is going to injured or killed – generally without just cause.

Read more here.

Chong, a senior at the University of California-San Diego, was one of nine people swept up in an April 21 narcotics raid by the Drug Enforcement Administration. After his arrest he spent four hours handcuffed in a cell before being questioned. One of the agents who questioned Chong described him as someone who was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

After being interrogated, the student was told that he would be released and provided with paperwork to sign. He was then handcuffed and put into a five-by-ten-foot detention cell, where he was held for five days in conditions that qualify as torture under any rational reading of either domestic or international law.

The DEA’s story was that Chong was simply “forgotten.” A likelier explanation is that he was ignored, or even singled out for deliberate abuse. Chong shouted and screamed for help, kicking against the heavy door of his cell. Although his hands were cuffed, he managed to tear a small fragment from his jacket, which he shoved under the door in an effort to get the attention of his jailers.

Since Chong had no difficulty hearing conversations and other sounds outside his cell, there’s no reason to doubt that his pleas were heard, and simply disregarded.

For at least two days and nights, Chong was left alone, handcuffed, in complete darkness, and began to hallucinate. Fearing that he might die in captivity, Chong shattered his eyeglasses and used broken shards to carve the words “Sorry, mother” into his arm.

Although Chong has admitted he had gone to a friend’s house to commemorate “4/20,” an unofficial observance celebrating recreational marijuana use, he was not charged with a narcotics offense. Through its prohibition enforcement action, DEA managed to create conditions in which Chong ingested substances much worse for him than marijuana. Left for several days without food or water to sustain him, Chong made a futile attempt to trigger an overhead fire sprinkler, and then eventually drank his own urine. Tormented by the insistent protests of an empty stomach, he consumed a small amount of a white, powdery substance that was found to be methamphetamine.

By the time two agents “discovered” him, Chong was literally pleading for his captors to kill him. After being released, he was hospitalized for severe dehydration, renal failure, a perforated esophagus, and cramps. He had shed 15 pounds. He has never received an apology.

If a dog had been subjected to treatment similar to the abuse inflicted on Daniel Chong, those responsible would face felony charges. Thanks to the spurious principle of “supremacy clause immunity,” there is no measurable likelihood that the people who nearly tortured Chong to death will face criminal charges. It’s quite likely they will never be identified.

It’s not just the Feds employed by the DEA – an agency best described as the CIA’s slow-witted sibling – who enjoy this privilege.

No criminal charges have been filed against the Lee County, Florida Sheriff’s Deputies responsible for the torture death of Cleveland resident Nick Christie. The emotionally disturbed 62-year-old man was detained for several days in March 2009 after his frantic wife Joyce made the fatal mistake of calling the police for “help.”

Mr. Christie, who had recently been prescribed a potent anti-depressant called Lexapro, suddenly left his home in Cleveland to visit family in Ft. Myers.  When he arrived at his brother’s house, Christie’s behavior became dangerously erratic.

Acting on the common and entirely misplaced assumption that police intervention is a good idea in situations of this kind, Joyce called the Lee County Sheriff’s Department to ask them to find Nick and get him to a hospital. After deputies found the retired boilermaker, they arrested him on trespassing charges. Over the next 43 hours, Christie was repeatedly shackled in a restraint chair, hooded, and attacked with military-grade pepper spray. The chemical assault was so intense that it left other inmates gagging on the fumes. Christie, who suffered from respiratory and heart disease, pleaded with deputies to remove the spit mask because he couldn’t breathe. One inmate described how Nick turned “purple and almost blue” as he suffocated.

When medical personnel arrived to check on Nick, they were overwhelmed by the pepper spray residue. The victim died of heart failure two days after his arrest. The death was ruled a homicide – but the State Attorney’s office insisted that there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of the deputies who tortured Nick Christie to death.

The same blanket immunity from prosecution shields the members of the thugscrum –at least ten and as many as fifteen officers – from Fresno, California, who beat, pepper-sprayed, and repeatedly tasered a man named Raul Rosas.

The police had arrived at Rosas’s residence on June 6 of last year in response to an unspecified “domestic disturbance.” When the police arrived, Rosas took refuge in the bathroom. One of the officers kicked open the front door and dragged out the unarmed man, who was immediately hit with a dose of pepper spray. The chemical weapon attack was a prelude to a full-scale onslaught: Witnesses reported hearing the sounds of a taser being used for at least eight to ten minutes.

After hog-tying Rosas, the assailants earned extra points for creative sadism by using a garden hose to drown him as he pleaded for water – a crude but effective simulacrum of waterboarding. This atrocity was witnessed by Rosas’s horrified children and several neighbors, who repeatedly warned that the victim was suffocating. “After some time had passed, [Rosas] had clear spit bubbles coming out of his mouth,” recounts a lawsuit filed by the victim’s family. “Witnesses observed [his] lips turn purple.”

When one of the witnesses told the cops they were killing Rosas, one of them sneeringly insisted that the victim was “faking it.” Eventually one of the officers felt for a pulse and found nothing. None of the officers involved in this torture-murder has ever been publicly identified, much less subjected to prosecution or administrative punishment.

Given the foregoing cases, it could be said that Pennsylvania resident Derena Marie Madison was comparatively fortunate: Although she was physically abused and humiliated, she wasn’t killed or severely injured.

At about 2:30 a.m. on February 3, 2011, Pennsylvania State Troopers Chad Weaver and Michael Zampogna pulled over a vehicle driven by Jamie Cornell, who was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. After Cornell was taken into custody, the troopers threatened to have the vehicle towed. This prompted Madison, who was a passenger, to exit the car in protest. This gave the troopers an excuse to arrest her for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct.

Shackled at the wrists and ankles, Madison was taken to a nearby State Police barracks, where she was chained to a bench with her hands cuffed behind her back. Without provocation, Weaver hit Madison with two blasts of pepper spray to her face. None of the other officers intervened.

Still trussed with handcuffs and leg shackles, Madison was unable to wipe the pepper spray residue from her face. In response to her pleas for help, several troopers – whom she couldn’t identify, because she was blinded from the pepper spray — carried her downstairs and outside the barracks. After being thrown to the snowy ground and doused with a large quantity of water, Madison blacked out. When she regained consciousness, she quickly realized that one or more of the assailants had urinated on her head, face, and neck.

Taken back to inside the barracks, Madison was chained to the bench again and briefly held before being released without receiving medical attention. Eleven days later, she was formally charged with public drunkness and disorderly conduct, and eventually found guilty on both charges.

Responding to Miss Madison’s lawsuit, the State Troopers didn’t contest her account; instead, they claimed that their actions were taken pursuant to their duties, and therefore they were protected by “sovereign immunity,” maintaining that “subduing persons is one of the acts law enforcement officers are employed to perform [and that] officers are also permitted to use force, if necessary, in the commission of their duties.”

Although the State Troopers described Madison as an “out-of-control person,” there is no evidence that she did anything other than express her displeasure over the prospect of being abandoned once Cornell’s vehicle had been towed away.

Displaying an honesty uncommon among those in his profession, U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster rejected the “sovereign immunity” claim. Repeatedly assaulting a handcuffed woman with pepper spray and urinating on her serves “no legitimate law enforcement purpose,” but indicates a “personal motivation, rather than intent to serve the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” This raises the troubling possibility that behavior of this kind could be considered appropriate if it were “authorized” as a matter of official policy.

A similar possibility was raised by a federal ruling in the case of Niagara, New York resident Ryan S. Smith, who was tortured into providing a DNA sample to police.

Smith, a repeat offender, was suspected of involvement in a July 2006 home invasion and kidnapping. When three of the suspects took one of the hostages to another home, Smith allegedly remained behind to guard two small children, who had been bound and gagged. While there, the suspect helped himself to a soda, apparently unaware that by doing so he would leave behind potentially incriminating DNA evidence.

The DNA residue from the soda can was eventually matched by the FBI’s Combined DNA System (CODIS) with a sample previously taken from Smith. In August 2008, Niagara County Court Judge Sara Sheldon Sperrazza issued an order requiring Smith to provide a DNA sample via a painless swab of his inner cheek. Smith didn’t object, and the sample was taken without difficulty.

At this point, the story becomes complicated by professional incompetence. The Niagara Falls Police sent the sample to the wrong lab, where it was opened and contaminated.

The investigators went back to Judge Sperrazza for a second order, which — unlike the first one – was granted ex parte. This means that Smith’s defense counsel was not informed or consulted. Smith refused to provide a second DNA sample.

This prompted the police to consult with the County District Attorney’s office to learn how much force they could employ to compel Smith to provide potentially self-incriminating evidence – a question that should be foreclosed by the Fifth Amendment.

As Detective Lt. William Thomson would later testify, Assistant Niagara County D.A. Doreen M. Hoffmann, who is presiding over the prosecution of Ryan Smith, instructed the police that “we could use the minimum force that was necessary” to force the suspect to submit to a DNA test.

That formulation is a tautology, since it authorizes the use of any amount of force needed to extract the sample. As long as the police were reasonably careful in calibrating the duress the applied, they could continue escalating the level of force until it broke the suspect; wherever they end up would obviously be the “minimum” necessary to accomplish their objectives.

Smith was brought in handcuffs to the police station and informed that the investigators had been authorized to use physical force. Although nobody intended to harm him, Smith was told, the sample was going to be surrendered; it was just a question of how much he wanted to endure before it was. Smith still refused to comply.

At this point, the police were implicitly authorized to use any method of “pain compliance” they considered appropriate. They could have waterboarded Smith, subjected him to “stress positions,” locked him in a small cell with an insect – in short, they could have employed any of the methods recently extolled by CIA torture supervisor Jose Rodriguez in his recent 60 Minutes interview.

The police elected to use a taser in “drive stun” mode in order to force Smith to cough up the DNA sample. On the basis of that evidence – which was extracted through torture, albeit of a comparatively mild variety, Smith was hit with a 24-count criminal indictment. He was also charged with “criminal contempt of court” for forcing his interrogators to torture him.

When Smith’s defense counsel filed a motion to suppress the evidence based on Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections, the same Judge who issued the ex parte orders produced a ruling validating the use of taser torture as means of forcing compliance, as long as it’s not done “maliciously” or to “excess.”

Judge Sperrazza is “the first judge in western civilization to say you can use a Taser to enforce a court order,” complained Patrick Balkin, Smith’s defense counsel. He also pointed out that the precedent could inspire other practical applications of electro-shock “pain compliance”: “They have now given the Niagara Falls police discretion to Taser anybody anytime they think it’s reasonable. [Sperrazza's] decision says you can enforce a court order by force. If you extrapolate that, we no longer have to have child support hearings; you can just Taser the parent.”

In a lawsuit filed against the City of Niagara Falls, Smith alleged that he was “tortured into unconsciousness” by repeated Taser charges. The police investigators insist that they were much gentler in the application of electro-shock trauma, but their testimony regarding the number and duration of shocks is mutually self-contradictory (as well as inconsistent with the record kept by the Taser unit itself).

Smith was eventually convicted of nearly two dozen offenses. Last March, the New York State Supreme Court overturned Smith’s conviction and ordered a new trial, ruling that the use of a taser to compel the prisoner to surrender a DNA sample was “excessive force.” At the time, Smith “posed no immediate threat to the safety of himself or officers, nor did he attempt to evade the officers by flight,” recounts the decision. Smith “was handcuffed, seated on the floor, and surrounded by three patrol officers and two detectives…. [He] did not threaten, fight with, or physically resist the officers at any time; rather, he simply refused to open his mouth to allow the officers to obtain a buccal swab.”

This is not to say that the ruling foreclosed the future use of taser torture as a police interrogation method. The court suggested that the police could have arrested Smith for “criminal contempt,” and then obtained “judicial approval to use physical force if necessary to extract the DNA sample.”

On this construction, torture is acceptable as long as it’s committed pursuant to a court order. This would be something akin to the “torture warrant” suggested by Alan Dershowitz. That proposal was offered by Dershowtiz a decade ago as a way of addressing a “ticking bomb” scenario involving a hidden nuclear weapon; the New York Supreme Court’s standard would authorize the use of judicially sanctioned torture as an instrument of prosecutorial convenience.

The sobering and unavoidable reality is that in contemporary America, each of us lives under the very plausible threat of being tortured to death by the police.
(This essay is adapted from an earlier version published on the Pro Liberate blog.)

Recently released video captured by Fullerton, California surveillance cameras last July 5, shows officer Manuel Ramos, an exceptionally well-fed Fullerton, California police officer, assailing Kelly Thomas — a much smaller homeless, schizophrenic man — with profane abuse, eventually snapping on latex gloves and threatening to “f** you up.”

Contrary to the much-repeated claims of the Fullerton Police Department, Thomas at no point presented a threat to anyone, especially the girthy, heavily armed Ramos whose voice and mannerisms were those of a sadistic bully, rather than a conscientious peace officer fearing for his safety.

Professional photographer and civil liberties activist Carlos Miller narrates what follows:

Thomas is standing while Ramos is ordering him to get on his “fucking knees,” Fullerton cop Joseph Wolfe, who is not charged in the case, walks up and starts beating his legs with a baton.

Then Ramos gets into the act and Thomas takes off running, moving out of the frame of the camera.

The camera, operated by a dispatcher at the station, then moves toward the beating, showing Ramos and Fullerton cop Jay Cicinelli on top of Thomas as Thomas repeatedly apologizes and telling them he is unable to breathe.

The cops keep telling him to put his hands behind his back and lay on his stomach, but they are both laying on top of him, making it impossible to even breathe, much less move.

As the video continues, one of the cops can be seen kneeing him.

“Please, I can’t breathe,” Thomas pleads as the officers keep telling him to put his hands behind his “fucking back.”

The cops keep telling him to “relax” to which he responds, “I can’t, dude.”

More cops eventually arrive and a little more than four minutes into the video, they start tasing him.

Five minutes into the gang assault, a few additional cops arrived, prompting one of the initial assailants — who had likely grown weary of beating and tasing the victim — to ask the new arrivals to “help us.” Had an actual peace officer been on the scene, he would have intervened on behalf of the victim. The Fullerton Police Officers, however, eagerly joined the thugscrum, which eventually numbered at least a half-dozen and as many as nine officers — an aggregate weight of more than a half-to of armed, tax-fattened humanity focusing its aggressive violence against a pitiful, sick man who weighed less than 150 pounds.

In familiar fashion, the assault was frequently punctuated with the refrain “Stop resisting!” — a demand made only by rapists and police officers. In his death agony, Thomas called out for his father, retired Orange County Sheriff’s Detective Ron Thomas.

“Dad, they’re killing me!” moaned Thomas as his life ebbed away.

“His death was gang-involved, the way I see it,”  declared Ron Thomas after viewing the mangled body of his 37-year-old son. “A gang of rogue officers … brutally beat my son to death.” This act of gang violence was inflicted as “street justice” for the unforgivable offense called “contempt of cop.”

The video was unveiled at the preliminary hearing for Officer Ramos – who instigated the lethal assault — and Officer Jay Cicinelli — who was the first to join in, both of whom face charges of murder and involuntary manslaughter. In keeping with standard procedure, Ramos lied about the incident, telling forensic investigator Dawn Scruggs that Thomas “would not stop fighting” and the the heroic effort to subdue a helpless man whom he outweighed by at least 100 pounds was “the fight of his life.”

The Norfolk Housing and Redevelopment Authority (NHRA), a seven-person soviet appointed by the City Council, “has been busy condemning private property in the Hampton Boulevard area of Norfolk and handing those properties over to Old Dominion University,” reports the Fredericksburg Freelance-Star. Among the properties slated for seizure is the Central Radio Co., a long-established radio construction and repair business owned and operated by Wilson and Dickinson.

Like other criminal juntas involved in the eminent domain racket, the NHRA has designated coveted properties as “blighted.” More than 100 homes and businesses have been claimed in the seizure rampage, which is being conducted on behalf of the State-funded Old Dominion University. The tract where Central Radio is found hasn’t been thus designated, but it sits inside several parcels that have been condemned – so the land-grab soviet has announced its intention to confiscate that property as well.

Wilson, the nephew of Central Radio’s founding owner, lost an initial court case, and decided to make his plight public by hanging a 375-square-foot banner on the side of his building:

50 YEARS ON THIS STREET

78 YEARS IN NORFOLK

100 WORKERS

THREATENED BY EMINENT DOMAIN

Inspectors dispatched by the criminal clique pursuing Wilson’s property issued a summons for violating a municipal ordinance that supposedly limits signs to a size no larger than 60 square feet.

“It’s not the content [of the sign,] but the size,” lied City Attorney Bernard Pishko in an e-mail to a local newspaper. That this claim is a lie is demonstrated by the fact that no action has been taken to sanction those responsible for several nearby signs that are even larger than the one displayed outside Central Radio Co.; those signs advertise Old Dominion University – the corporate benefactor of the Norfolk land grab.

Further confirming the nature of this transparent effort to bully a dissenting voice into silence is Pishko’s complaint that if Central Radio’s sign is permitted to remain, “the limits of political speech would be almost impossible to define…. The acceptance of their position would allow signs anywhere of any dimension and annoyance.”

That objection makes no constitutional sense, unless – as his behavior suggests – Pishko assumes that the document defining government’s revocable powers is Stalin’s Soviet Constitution. The position Pishko and his comrades promote is rooted in the foundational tenet of Marxism-Leninism, as set out in the Communist Manifesto: “The abolition of private property.” Not only are they seeking to steal this private business by force, as an overture to that crime they are seeking to suppress the property owner’s natural right to protest the actions of those who presume to rule him.

The NHRA’s attempt to silence Wilson and Dickinson (who are being represented by the redoubtable Institute for Justice) is not the first instance in which a municipal land-grab soviet has resorted to Stalinesque tactics to punish a dissident. Several years ago, a similar criminal cabal in St. Louis tried – and failed – to do exactly the same thing to business owner Jim Roos, who had posted a similar protest sign on his property.

Even more reprehensible action was taken against Gustavo Rendon, a property rights advocate, was arrested in front of his two young sons by police who threatened to kidnap the children and put them into foster care. Rendon’s “offense” was to hand out flyers and speak at public meetings in opposition to the land grab. Although the spurious charges against Rendon were dismissed, the corporatist camarilla in St. Louis made its point: If the state can seize your property at gunpoint, you have no rights it is required to respect.

Read more here.

On the evening of June 16, Deputy Shulz responded to a call from a woman who had been chased away after she and several friends accidentally trespassed on his farm. Goss, who had suffered a series of robberies and received no help from the Sheriff’s Office, was sitting in his pickup at the end of a long driveway when Shulz arrived. Goss had been abrupt and inhospitable in dealing with the unwanted visitors, and his mood didn’t improve when Shulz showed up. He displayed some asperity in ordering the deputy from his property.

According to Shulz’s original account, Goss approached his vehicle in a “menacing” fashion, which prompted the officer to whirl around and shoot him with a Taser. A struggle then ensued in which the deputy – despite being larger and younger than the farmer – supposedly wound up pinned to the ground on his back as Goss repeatedly beat him with his own radio and threatened to kill him. At that point, according to Shulz, he shot the farmer in self-defense.

That was not the first version of the story told by Shulz, Furthermore, eyewitnesses told a very different story: In that account, Shulz had drawn his gun and was struggling with Goss while firing wildly. One of the rounds struck the car being driven by Goss’s wife, who – worried for her husband –had come down the driveway. After shooting Goss in the stomach, Shulz attempted to shoot him again, but the gun misfired. According to witnesses, Shulz – visibly agitated and muttering to himself — spent several minutes driving in circles in his police vehicle, without calling for an ambulance. Shulz also threatened several eyewitnesses on the scene.

Confronted about his inconsistencies on the witness stand, Shulz — a paragon of self-pity who was reduced to blubbering at several points during the trial — insisted that “the situation was chaotic …. So if I don’t remember something that’s normal and typical.” In a sense, he’s correct: Since cops are trained and expected to lie, self-serving perjury of this kind is entirely normal and typical.

Defense attorney Geoffrey Heim produced photographs of Deputy Shulz after the incident showing that there was dust on the left leg of his trousers, but none on his back. Prosecutor Tanya Karimi insisted that Shulz was “mistaken” about how he had landed on the ground, and that he was on his side when the struggle took place. However, Shulz himself claimed that Goss was kneeling on his chest at the time of the shooting.

At the sentencing hearing, a tearful Shulz continued to wallow in his bottomless sense of victimhood.

“You caused me more pain than you can imagine,” simpered Shulz, addressing the farmer he had attempted to murder. “I have no pity for you even though I know that I should.”

Shulz’s petulant lachrymosity was matched by the arrogant sanctimony of Presiding Judge William Bain, who said that the “message” delivered by caging an innocent farmer for the “crime” of being assaulted by a uniformed tax-feeder was that “if you get in a fight with a cop you’re going to go to prison.”

On the other hand, cops who simply murder a citizen after breaking into his home can expect … nothing, except, perhaps, their next scheduled raise.

Kenneth Chamberlain, a 68-year-old retired Marine from White Plains, New York, was murdered by police in his own home last November 16 after his medic alert pendant accidentally went off.

When the EMTs responded, the police tagged along. For over an hour, the police demanded that Chamberlain open his door. He told them to leave. That was a lawful order the police are required to obey. Rather than doing so, they busted down the door, tasered the elderly man, and gunned him down. One of the officers used a derogatory ethnic slur to refer to the elderly Marine, who was black.

No criminal charges have been filed against any of the cops who murdered Chamberlain.

Apparently, police can invade our property and kill us without cause — or have us sent to prison if we survive.

A source close to the Goss family told Republic that the farmer will appeal his conviction — but that by the time the matter works its way through the legal system, Goss will already have served his sentence. the source also said that the family is declining public comment out of fear that public criticism of the Colorado “justice” system may result in a retaliatory prison assignment that could endanger the health and safety of the 52-year-old farmer.

Because the purported “victim” in this matter was a police officer, Goss was taken directly from the courthouse to a cell. Meanwhile, Jeff Shulz — a proven perjurer whose behavior suggests a capacity for pathological violence — remains on duty.

Chong, a senior at the University of California-San Diego, was one of nine people swept up in an April 21 narcotics raid by the Drug Enforcement Administration. After his arrest he spent four hours handcuffed in a cell before being questioned. One of the agents who questioned Chong described him as someone who was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” After being interrogated, the student was told that he would be released. Instead he was thrown into a five-by-ten-foot detention cell, where he was held for five days in conditions that would qualify as torture under the Geneva Convention (or any rational reading of domestic law). In addition to being deprived of food, water, bedding, and toilet access, Chong spent at least two days and nights in total darkness.

The DEA’s story was that Chong was simply “forgotten.” A likelier explanation is that he was ignored, or even singled out for deliberate abuse. Chong shouted and screamed for help, kicking against the heavy door of his cell. Since he had no difficulty hearing conversations and other sounds outside his cell, there’s no reason to doubt that his pleas were heard, and simply disregarded.

After several days, Chong — worried he might die in captivity – shattered his eyeglasses and used broken shards to carve the words “Sorry, mother” into his arm.

Chong was not suspected of using or trafficking in drugs; one of his interrogators told him he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet during his imprisonment he found and used a small amount of a white, powdery substance that was found to be methamphetamine.

Many methamphetamine users are introduced to the drug while behind bars. Dave Lanphier, a ex-convict, has described how his ten-year addiction to meth began when he was imprisoned on non-drug charges.

“Nothing seemed to matter but the drug … it pretty much took hold of my life and that’s what I lived for each day,” the Boise resident told the local NBC affiliate, KTVB. A large part of the problem is that the meth was “cheap and easy to get,” he explained.

What this means is that we could literally turn the United States into a fully realized prison society – and yet, somehow, those who are determined to ingest meth or other drugs will find a way to do so.

According to Slate‘s media critic Jack Shafer, there are good reasons to suspect that methamphetamine use today is much less common than it was during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1958, notes Shafer, pharmaceutical companies “produced 3.5 billion legal tablets of various amphetamines in 1958, enough to supply every American with 20 standard doses … a year. Those pills were potentially just as addictive and potentially just as deadly as the meth found on the street today. Less than a decade later, the annual production of pharmaceutical amphetamines had climbed to 8 billion tablets, and by 1971 it topped 12 billion. These quantities far exceeded the amount needed for the then-approved medical uses of amphetamines in treatment of narcolepsy, obesity, depression, fatigue, anxiety, and hyperkinetic children.”

Where amphetamines were routinely prescribed – even to children – a generation ago, today it is common for people to be prosecuted for buying “too much” of a common cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine, which until recently was an over-the-counter medication.  This offers such people an opportunity to experience the same kind of conscientious care the DEA extended to Daniel Chong.

Read more here.

This year’s Law Day theme, “No Courts, No Justice, No Freedom,” recalls the historic role our courts have played in protecting the fundamental rights and liberties of all Americans. Our courts are the guarantors of civil justice, social order, and public safety, and we must do everything we can to enable their critical work. The courthouse doors must be open and the necessary services must be in place to allow all litigants, judges, and juries to operate efficiently. Likewise, we must ensure that access to justice is not an abstract theory, but a concrete commitment that delivers the promise of counsel and assistance for all who seek it.

Read with a perceptive eye, that decree is a potent indictment of the Obama administration.

The same president who affixed his signature to those words has murdered at least two U.S. citizens – one of them a 16-year-old boy – by way of drone-fired missile strikes. Neither Anwar al-Awlaki nor his teenage son Abdulrahman was every formally accused of a crime, let alone indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced. Their executions were approved by a secretive, anonymous, unaccountable panel, rather than a court or jury of any kind. There was certainly a great deal of “efficiency” in this arrangement – but not so much as a hint or whisper of due process.

In a tortured exercise in sophistry, Attorney General Eric Holder told an audience at Northwestern University Law School that “due process” doesn’t require “judicial process” – a self-serving claim that is impossible to reconcile with Obama’s strident insistence that without the “critical work” of the court system, justice is merely an “abstract theory.”

During congressional testimony on March 7, FBI Director Robert Mueller was asked about Eric Holder’s claim that the president can order the execution of American citizens without judicial process. He artlessly ducked the question by claiming he would “have to go back” and check if that was addressed in administration policy. Mueller has not found the time to report what he has learned.

Not only does the Obama administration consider courts unnecessary in dealing with presidentially designated “terrorists,” it finds them similarly useless in addressing crimes committed by high-ranking government officials – such as the overtly criminal torture program now openly boasted about by those who carried it out.

Rather than being a modest commercial republic ruled by law, the United States is a fully realized imperial regime whose rulers operate on the basis of Lenin’s definition of a “scientific dictatorship”: Power without limit, resting directly on force, restrained by no laws….” The president is not bound by the Constitution or the law; he is an elected dictator whose power is limited only by his imagination and ambition.

“Law Day” was created by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1958 as a joint observance with “Loyalty Day.” This commemoration – which is not an official government holiday – was meant as a counterweight to May Day, or “International Workers Day,” perhaps the holiest date on the revolutionary calendar.  According to the 1961 Public Law officially designating May 1 as “Law and Loyalty Day,” the date is intended as a special day of celebration by the people of the United States … in appreciation of their liberties and the reaffirmation of their loyalty to the United States and of their rededication to the ideals of equality and justice under law in their relations with each other and with other countries … and for the cultivation of the respect for law that is so vital to the democratic way of life.”

The true focus of “Law and Loyalty Day” is the unconditional demand for the latter from a government that incessantly violates the former.

Read the White House “Law Day” proclamation here.

If a customer neglects to pay his internet service provider, the company discontinues the service. The service ends when the payments stop. But the cable company can’t threaten to cut off the customer’s gas or electricity if he has kept current on those bills.

Someone who stops paying the government, by way of contrast, can expect personalized service from the government, which produces nothing useful and is devoted entirely to the practice of coercion. Government is the only enterprise whose so-called customers — that is, victims – make payments in order to prevent the delivery of the services provided.

The city claims that residents “owe” it an aggregate $2 million in unpaid traffic tickets issued by way of red light cameras that were installed in 2009. Those cameras were maintained by the corrupt Australian corporation Redflex, which has built a huge industry out of such arrangements. Revenue harvested by the automated ticketing machines was to be apportioned between the city government, Redflex, and the New Mexico state government.

In March 2011, the state government shut down two of the cameras that were operating on state roads after the legislature enacted a measure outlawing their use. Desperate to devise a rationale for continuing the revenue grab, the Las Cruces ruling clique commissioned a report by New Mexico State University intended to demonstrate that robot camera enforcement enhances public safety. However, the study documented that the program yields no statistically provable difference in crash rates.

Spokesman for extortionists: Las Cruces municipal spokesman Udell Vigil

Deprived of a scientific basis for a red light camera program that was operating in defiance of both the public consensus and state law, and facing nearly uniform non-compliance by city residents, the Las Cruces city government has resorted to undisguised extortion.

The “Pay Up or Dry Up” proposal is tantamount to a death threat against the most impoverished residents of the desert city. New Mexico utilities commissioner Pat Lyons describes the proposal as “unacceptable,” noting that water and related utility services are “necessities, not luxuries.” In defense of their brazen blackmail, the Las Cruces soviet cites a section of the municipal code that decrees: “The city may decline, fail or cease to furnish utility service to any person who may be in debt to the city for any reason, except ad valorem taxes and special assessments.” It requires government-grade dishonesty to refer to a spurious traffic ticket as a “debt.”

This is not the first display of perverse creativity on the part of the criminal caste in charge of the Las Cruces municipal government.  In March 2011, the city government introduced program to seize the cars of people with unpaid tickets. Shortly after announcing the “Pay Up or Dry Up” extortion scheme, the city government deployed police on a ticket-writing binge.

“Pay Up or Dry Up” is the most acutely indecent of several recent initiatives by revenue-hungry city governments to preserve and expand the red light camera racket. In Las Cruces, the city government insists that it can set aside a state ban on red light cameras within its jurisdiction. In Washington, by way of contrast, the State Supreme Court overturned a ballot initiative banning the use of traffic enforcement cameras in Mukilteo, despite the fact that it earned a 71 percent majority. In that case, the court ruled that “The legislature’s grant of authority does not extend to the electorate” – which means that the city government, rather than the people, are the locus of legitimate authority in the matter.

In similar fashion, the City of Houston – with the aid of a federal judge — simply ignored the results of a referendum abolishing red light cameras.

Few issues demonstrate the cruelty, arrogance, and unfiltered criminality of municipal government than the red light camera scam, which amply vindicates St. Augustine’s description of government as a criminal gang that has granted itself impunity.

Read more here

For Bogata, New Jersey Police Officer Regina Tasca, the issue was quite simple: “I didn’t fail to aid another officer; I acted to stop a beatdown.” In an almost unprecedented act of principle, Tasca intervened to stop Sgt. Joe Rella’s assault on 22-year-old Kyle Sharp, an emotionally troubled young man who had done nothing to justify police violence of any kind. About two days later, Tasca was suspended after being deemed a “danger” to her fellow officers. She is currently undergoing a disciplinary hearing to determine if she will lose her job permanently.

On April 29, 2011, Tasca was on patrol when she got a call for medical assistance. Former Bogota Council Member Tara Sharp, concerned about the erratic behavior of her son Kyle, called the police to take him to the hospital for a psychological evaluation. Requesting police intervention, particularly in cases of this kind, is never a good idea. Sharp was exceptionally fortunate that Officer Tasca was the first to respond: She has years of experience as an EMT and had just completed specialized training on situations involving psychologically disturbed people.

Once on the scene, Tasca acted quickly to calm down the distraught young man.

“When the call came, I heard that a couple of officers from Ridgefield Park were coming to provide backup, which I thought was OK, Tasca related to Pro Libertate. “Kyle had been shouting and swearing when I got there, but I got him calmed down.” The young man’s mood changed abruptly when he saw the other officers arrive.

“He noticed them and asked me, `Why is there another police officer here from another town?’ Then he said that he was leaving, and he moved maybe two or three steps when one of the Ridgefield officers jumped him.”

Sgt. Chris Thibault tackled Kyle, wrapped him in a bear hug, and attempted to handcuff him. Within an instant, Sgt. Joe Rella piled on and began to slug Kyle in the head while his horrified mother screamed at the officers to stop.

Tasca instinctively did what any legitimate peace officer would do: She intervened to protect the victim, pulling Rella off the helpless and battered young man.In nearly every other case of which we have a record, police officers close ranks and protect the assailant from outside intervention once a beating has begun. Tasca’s act was one of instinctive decency, genuine principle, and no small amount of courage.

Eventually the Ridgefield officers handcuffed Kyle – who, it should be recalled, was not a criminal suspect, nor the subject of a medical order of any kind. At that point, the infuriating officers directed their fury at Tasca.

“One of them yelled at me, `We can’t have this!’” she recalled. “I said, we `can’t have’ what? There was no reason to take that kid to the ground and start slugging him. This was a medical assistance call, and the mother was sitting their screaming at them to stop beating on their son.”

Earlier in the same month, Tasca had prompted criticism for failing to rush to the aid of a male cop who suffered a trivial scratch on his hand during a brief confrontation with a tiny, drunken woman at a hospital. At the time the woman — who posed no conceivable threat to a male cop who towered over her by roughly ten inches, and outweighed her by about one hundred pounds — was surrounded by at least a dozen people who could have rendered aid to the poor, beleaguered hero in body armor. Yet Tasca’s refusal to shove aside med techs, nurses, and security guards in order to help her traumatized partner ground and pound the tiny woman supposedly demonstrated a “pattern” of “bizarre” and “outrageous” behavior on her part that made her an unacceptable risk to her colleagues.

See the video here.

Officer Regina Tasca imperils her career by intervening to stop a criminal assault by a fellow cop.

Regina Tasca of Bogata, New Jersey is a “rogue cop” – and God bless her for it. She is in the middle of disciplinary hearings that may result in her termination from the local Police Department. She stands accused of “bizarre and outlandish” behavior in two incidents a year ago during which she revealed herself to be “A danger to other police officers.”

Her first supposed offense — which wasn’t mentioned until after the second — was a failure to assist another officer who was “attacked” by a drunken woman who was roughly half his weight and barely five feet tall. Her second was was to intervene when a police officer from another jurisdiction viciously assaulted an emotionally troubled young man who was not suspected of a crime.

“I consider myself a peace officer,” Tasca told Republic. “My thing is to help make sure that people are safe, and that they don’t have a reason to fear the police – that we treat them like human beings. The incident that started all of this was one in which I intervened to prevent excessive force against a kid who was the subject of a medical call, not a criminal suspect.”

On April 29, 2011, Tasca was on patrol when she got a call for medical assistance. Former Bogota Council Member Tara Sharp, concerned about the erratic behavior of her 22-year-old son Kyle, called the police to take him to the hospital for a psychological evaluation. Requesting police intervention, particularly in cases of this kind, is never a good idea. Sharp was exceptionally fortunate that Officer Tasca was the first to respond: She has years of experience as an EMT and had just completed specialized training on situations involving psychologically disturbed people.

Once on the scene, Tasca acted quickly to calm down the distraught young man.

“When the call came, I heard that a couple of officers from Ridgefield Park were coming to provide backup, which I thought was OK, Tasca related to Republic. “Kyle had been shouting and swearing when I got there, but I got him calmed down.” The young man’s mood changed abruptly when he saw the other officers arrive.

“He noticed them and asked me, `Why is there another police officer here from another town?’ Then he said that he was leaving, and he moved maybe two or three steps when one of the Ridgefield officers jumped him.”

Sgt. Chris Thibault tackled Kyle, wrapped him in a bear hug, and attempted to handcuff him. Within an instant, Sgt. Joe Rella piled on and began to slug Kyle in the head while his horrified mother screamed at the officers to stop.

Tasca instinctively did what any legitimate peace officer would do: She intervened to protect the victim, pulling Rella off the helpless and battered young man. Eventually the Ridgefield officers handcuffed Kyle – then turned their fury on Tasca.

“One of them yelled at me, `We can’t have this!’” she recalled. “I said, we `can’t have’ what? There was no reason to take that kid to the ground and start slugging him. This was a medical assistance call, and the mother was sitting their screaming at them to stop beating on their son. I didn’t fail to aid another officer; I acted to stop a beatdown.”

Two days later, Tasca was summoned by her captain, who informed her that she was being suspended pending a disciplinary hearing. She learned that in addition to “using force” to stop Rella’s assault on Kyle Sharp, Tasca was accused of failing to assist Bogota Officer Jerome Fowler when he was “assaulted” by an intoxicated woman on April 3.

“Nobody had said anything to me about the earlier case until after the incident with the Ridgefield officers,” Tasca pointed out to me.

Tasca was on night patrol when she came across “this young girl walking in the middle of the street, crying, with one broken heel. She was very drunk, and the officer who had picked her up had just dropped her off at the apartment of somebody who was described as a `male friend’ – but practically nothing was known about this guy. He just left her there without finding out anything about the situation at that apartment; she could have been assaulted, raped, or killed. Whoever it was, he just threw her back out on the street – which actually might have been the best outcome. So she was crying hysterically and very distraught when I found her. I radioed HQ that I would be assisting her, and the officer who had picked her up arrived, and we went to the hospital with me carrying her in the back seat of my police car.”

The young woman was taken to the Emergency Room at Holy Name Medical Center.

“Once we got there, our job was done,” Tasca continues. “I stuck around for a little while to make sure everything was OK. There were about a half-dozen hospital security personnel on the scene, as well as about four or five EMTs and nurses there. The girl walked over to the nurse’s station, then decided that she didn’t want to go to the hospital. When Jay [Officer Fowler] reached for her, she started flailing her arms, and hit his hand, opening up an old cut he had on one of his knuckles.”

This was the “assault” that figures so prominently in the charges against Tasca. The officers who ganged up on Kyle Sharp have not been charged or subjected to administrative discipline – but Tasca’s refusal to help ground and pound a tiny, intoxicated woman who had made incidental contact with a fellow officer is being treated as a career-imperiling delinquency.

“Apparently, Jay believed I should have pushed all these people aside and help him subdue a tiny girl — she was about five foot one, and very skinny – who had given him a scratch,” Tasca pointed out.

After being put on suspension, Tasca was subjected to a psychological evaluation by Dr. Matthew Geller, a psychiatrist who does contact work for New Jersey law enforcement agencies. Geller provided the diagnosis he had been paid for, ruling that Tasca was unfit for duty. At the same time, the Bogota PD’s internal affairs officer produced a report concluding that Tasca’s refusal to assist Officer Fowler in the April 3 incident demonstrated her unfitness.

The internal affairs review wasn’t exactly a model of investigative rigor, Tasca observes: “There were nearly a dozen other people who witnessed the incident – and the only one he interviewed was a 14-year-old Ambulance Corps volunteer who happened to be his niece!”

Tasca, an openly gay female police officer, believes that at least some of the problems she’s experienced are the product of a cultural clash with what she describes as “the Old Boys Club.” More importantly, however, she has been targeted for the unforgiveable offense of “crossing the Blue Line” by taking the side of a Mundane being attacked by a member of the Brotherhood.

“I’ve been an officer here in Bogata for eleven years, and spent seven or eight years as a Class 2 Special Officer in Fairview, which is where I grew up,” Tasca told Republic. “Until now, I’ve never had problems with anybody on the force, or anybody in the community. Oh, sure, when you work near people for ten or twelve hours every day, you’ll have disagreements and maybe say some things you shouldn’t, but that’s typical of just about any relationship, professional or otherwise. But never in my career had I been accused of unfitness for duty until after that incident a year ago.

As a veteran with nearly twenty years in law enforcement, Tasca has noticed a dramatic change in the institutional culture of law enforcement in recent years.

“I think what we’re seeing is a lot of kids who are given power and immediately begin to abuse it,” Tasca observes. “Some of these guys are as young as 18 years old. You give them a uniform, and it goes right to their head. And even many of those that don’t do abusive things miss the point, which is that we’re supposed to be peace officers. They get a badge and a gun and they think they’re gods, or at least that they’re entitled to treat people like dirt. I see them as people, and insist on treating them like I’d want to be treated.”

In contemporary law enforcement, commitment to the Golden Rule is a firing offense. Just ask Ramon Perez, whose experience is strikingly similar to that of Regina Tasca.

Perez, a probationary officer who had won the top leadership award at his police academy, was cashiered by the Austin, Texas Police Department as a result of his refusal to use a Taser on an elderly, non-violent man during a domestic disturbance in January 2005. The order was unconstitutional, illegal, a violation of the guidelines in the department’s handbook and, most importantly, immoral.

A few days after that incident, Perez was given a punitive transfer to the night shift. Two months later, Perez was told to report to APD psychologist Carol Logan to undergo what he was told would be a “communication” exercise. In fact, it was a disguised “fit-for-duty review” intended to ratify the pre-ordained decision to fire him.

Logan’s four page report focused entirely on Perez’s moral and religious beliefs. Perez is a self-described non-denominational fundamentalist Christian, an ordained minister who home-schools his children. He is also firmly convinced that protection of civil liberties is the paramount duty of a peace officer – a duty he regarded, literally, as a sacred trust.

According to Logan, the depth of his commitment to his beliefs – beginning with that perennially unpopular tenet called the Golden Rule — produces an “impairment” of his ability to absorb new facts, to communicate with his superiors, and to deal with “feedback.”

As was the case with Regina Tasca, Ramon Perez’s detractors dredged up a second incident of “misconduct” involving a refusal to use unnecessary force.

By twice displaying a peace officer’s preference for de-escalation, Perez had established himself as a repeat offender. He was purged from the APD, a department that has since done much to distinguish itself – in the face of fierce and plentiful competition — as one of the most abusive in the country.

A vast geographic and cultural gulf separates Ramon Perez, a Fundamentalist Evangelical from Texas, and Regina Tasca, an openly gay Roman Catholic from New Jersey. They have at least one critically important thing in common: Both of them intervened in defense of helpless citizens facing criminal violence from fellow cops, and learned that for people who have chosen a career in law enforcement, behaving like a peace officer is a firing offense.

(This article was adapted from an earlier version that was published on the Pro Libertate blog.)

Krystal Rice was a married 22-year-old when she joined New York’s Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. She was approached by a senior detective named Steven Cote, who enlisted her in what he described as a sting operation targeting online pedophiles.

Cote told Rice that he was maintaining an online profile in the name of a 15-year-old girl, and needed to take Rice’s photo to send to suspected predators who requested a picture.  Cote took Rice to a remote location and took several sexually suggestive photographs.

During the photo shoot, Cote asked Rice “to lift her skirt to expose her thigh, and, for a separate shot, to expose her thong-style underwear,” claims the lawsuit. He then asked her to “remove her top and cover herself with her hands.” Despite a growing sense of alarmed unease, Rice – who, recall, was a probationary officer at the time, complied in the belief that Cote “was an experienced officer and knew the types of pictures he `needed’ to catch a pedophile.”

Rice’s sense of unease grew dramatically when it became clear that the photographs were being circulated through the department. This development likewise led to understandable friction in her marriage, which eventually broke up. Cote’s marriage was already disintegrating as well – a fact that would have very negative repercussions on Rice.

A few months after the photo shoot, Rice began to receive vulgar text messages from Detective Cote. She also learned that Cote and others from the department had been propagating rumors about her character and the reasons for the breakup of her marriage. In March 2009, one of Rice’s friends told her that he had received a phone call from Cote in which the Detective referred to her as “a whore” and claimed that she’s slept with half the department” and that anybody who had an intimate relationship with her should be “tested.”

Facing an escalating campaign of harassment and defamation, Rice has filed a lawsuit against Cote and several other officials in the sheriff’s office for the extravagant sum of $50 million.

In late April, Rice – who is pursuing a law degree and plans on becoming an attorney – reportedly received a threatening telephone call from someone identifying himself as a member of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department  As summarized by Rice’s attorney, Charu Narang, Rice was warned that if she proceeded with the lawsuit,  she would find it prohibitively difficult to practice law in the State of New York,  and that she would face constant traffic stops, making her life unbearable.

Lost in this controversy is this question: When a male detective posing as an underage girl creates a pornographic image of an adult woman, how is the consumer of that image – however depraved he might be — the real criminal in the transaction?

By a 5-2 majority, the Michigan State Supreme Court upheld the “Castle Doctrine” by validating a citizen’s right to resist unlawful arrest.  In People v. Moreno, a 5-2 majority ruled that Angel Moreno, Jr. acted legally when he refused to allow the police access to his home without a warrant.

On December 30, 2008, Officers Matthew Hamberg and Troy DeWeis knocked on Moreno’s door while searching for an individual suspected of a probation violation. Moreno made the mistake of speaking with Hamberg through an open door, thereby giving the policeman an excuse to say that he detected the odor of marijuana (even though DeWeis – who apparently didn’t have Hamberg’s uniquely acute sense of smell — did not).

When Moreno refused to consent to a search, Hamberg said that he would get a warrant – and then lied by saying that it was necessary for him to enter the house in order to “secure” it.

Moreno ordered Hamberg to get off his porch, and began to close the door. Rather than obeying that lawful order from a citizen, Hamberg bulled his way into the house. A brief struggle ensued that ended when Hamberg told his companion to attack the victim with his Taser. Although a trivial amount of marijuana was found, no drug-related charges were filed. Convicted of resisting and obstructing and assault on a police officer, Moreno appealed the case to the state supreme court.

In its brief before the state supreme court, the State admitted that Hamberg’s search was “unlawful.” In other words, he acted as an armed, violent intruder, rather than a peace officer. This means that under Michigan’s version of the “Castle Doctrine,” as laid out in its Self-Defense Act (SDA), Moreno had a legally recognized right to employ deadly force, if necessary, to defend himself and his home.

As the Michigan State Supreme Court acknowledged in People v. Riddle (2002), “regardless of the circumstances one who is attacked in his dwelling is never required to retreat where it is otherwise necessary to exercise deadly force in self-defense. When a person is in his `castle,’ there is no safer place to retreat….”

The primary focus of the “Castle Doctrine” is the threat posed by government agents, rather than private trespassers. In a 1999 ruling (People v. Wess), the state Court of Appeals expressly recognized the individual right “to use such reasonable force as is necessary to prevent an illegal attachment and to resist an illegal arrest.”

In the dicta of that ruling the court pleaded with the legislature to change the Self-Defense Act:

“We share the concerns of other jurisdictions that the right to resist an illegal arrest is an outmoded and dangerous doctrine, and we urge our Supreme Court to reconsider this doctrine at the first available opportunity…. [W]e see no benefit to continuing the right to resist an otherwise peaceful arrest made by a law enforcement officer, merely because the arrestee believes the arrest is illegal. Given modern procedural safeguards for criminal defendants, the `right’ only preserves the possibility that harm will come to the arresting officer or the defendant.”

Prompted by the Court of Appeals, the Michigan Legislature modified the relevant section of the state code (MCL 705.81d) by removing the word “lawful”; this supposedly meant that citizens would have to submit to an arrest irrespective of its legitimacy. However, the legislature did not expressly abrogate the common law right to resist unlawful arrest.

In a 2004 ruling (People v. Ventura) dealing with the right to resist an unlawful arrest, the same Michigan Court of Appeals, which had badgered the state legislature to modify the SDA, cited that modification as a positive statement of legislative intent. In a richly disingenuous passage, the court wrote that “it is not within our province to disturb our Legislature’s obvious affirmative choice to modify the traditional common-law rule that a person may resist an unlawful arrest.”

In People v. Moreno, the Michigan Supreme Court pointed out that “the right to resist unlawful arrests, and other unlawful invasions of private rights, is well established in our state’s common law.” Although the resisting and obstructing statute was modified, the majority continued, “the Legislature expressed no intent to do away with the common-law right to resist an unlawful arrest.”

The Moreno dissent advanced a very dangerous doctrine, insisting that “the issue here is not whether the officers lawfully entered defendant’s house, but rather whether the officers were acting to further their employer’s … interests.”

“The fact that a municipality may be liable for an unlawful act of an officer if the act that was done in the course of the officer’s official duty or employment necessarily means that an officer can commit an unlawful act while `performing his or her duties,” observed the dissent. As long as police officers are about “their master’s business,” they have license to commit unlawful acts – and citizens have no choice but to submit.

Read the People v. Moreno opinion here.

Over the course of several decades, his personal magnetism attracted scores of women to him, and he felt no compunctions about using them shamelessly. Sex “was an addiction” for him, one of his longtime friends told Time magazine: “If he was interested in a woman, that was the only thing that existed.” The key to his appeal was his ability to empathize. As another friend pointed out, women were drawn to him because “he feigned he cared” about them. But female groupies were not the only ones who fell for this predator’s “I feel your pain” routine. Corporate leaders, foundation heads, well-placed political brokers, and other Insiders lavished money and fame upon him. He never held a legitimate job, living off the corporate patronage of the Establishment – even getting a position as a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Govermment.

Guru Without Portfolio

 In 1979, he informed a gathering in London, “I was very surprised recently when I was approached by the Rockefellers and offered whatever amount of money I wanted to run for public office.” When his audience expressed puzzlement as to why the Rockefellers would make such an overture, he explained that “they need a front…. They’re constantly hunting for people.” Since he had already dabbled in electoral politics and found it less than fulfilling, he declined the Rockefellers’ offer. “I felt I had a lot more power doing what I was doing,” he told his listeners, referring to his work as a “guru without portfolio” on behalf of various drug culture and new age causes.

So Ira Einhorn returned from London to Philadelphia, where he would shortly be arrested for the murder of Holly Maddux. And the Rockefeller-led elite continued to cultivate another promising graduate of the 1960s counterculture – a young sociopath named William Jefferson Clinton, who was then in the first year of his first term as governor of Arkansas.

On Febru ary 18 [1999], ju st a day before Juanita Broaddrick publicly disclosed that Bill Clint on had raped her in 1978, a French court agreed to extradite Ira Einhorn to the United States. History sometimes displays mischievous synchronicity, and the convergence of these two events offers an opportunity to examine the remarkable parallels between the “Man from Hope” and the “Unicorn” from Philadelphia. Perhaps “parallels” is the wrong expression: The individual stories of Bill Clinton and Ira Einhorn intersect in some fascinating ways, the most astounding of which is the role of Arlen Specter in helping both of them elude justice. In any case, it is reasonable to believe that, had circumstances been changed just slightly, Bill Clinton may have been Ira Einhorn, and vice-versa. Most importantly, this tale of two sociopaths lays bare the unimaginable corruption that characterizes our political Establishment, particularly as veterans of the 1960s counterculture begin to achieve cultural hegemony.

Hobnobbing With the Powerful

 By the late 1970s, Ira Einhorn’s network of influence, wrote Steven Levy in his 1988 book The Unicorn ‘s Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius, included “Uri Geller, the shah [of Iran], the family who owned Seagram liquors, the vice president of AT&T, top NASA officials, Timothy Leary, [theosophical luminary] Krishnamurti, [and] the Trilateral Commission….” In his work as a free-lance counterculture guru, Einhorn rubbed shoulders with many who would become influential figure s in Clinton -era America.

Just shortly before he was arrested for the murder of Holly Maddux, for example, Einhorn met with the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future , a bipartisan New Age caucus created by “futurist” Alvin Toffler. Among Toffler’s early recruits was a “conservative” Republican Congressman from Georgia named Newt Gingrich, who would probably have been in Einhorn’s audience; the same is true of Tennessee Congressman Al Gore, a former chairman of the Clearinghouse and future U.S. Vice President.

Einhorn – who, translating his German -Jewish surname, preferred to call himself the “Unicorn” – may very well have been what Bill Clint on is now, but for two things. First of all was the fact that, unlike the current resident of the White House, Einhorn could not dissimulate regarding his drug use: A chief guru of  Philadelphia’s drug culture, Einhorn ‘s name is inseparably associated with those of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsburg, and the rest of that despicable lot. In the late 1960s, Einhorn was a frequent visitor at the Esalen Institut e in Big Sur, California, where he hobnobbed with the drug culture elite – including LSD priestess Jean Huston, who decades later would guide First Lady Hillary Clinton through seances in the White House solarium..

Einhorn’s deep entanglement in hard drugs was only one insurmountable political obstacle. His second insuperable difficulty relates to the events of March 28, 1979, the day police Detective Michael Chitwood served a search warrant on Einhorn’s apartment in Philadelphia’s Powelton Village. Chitwood was searching for 30-year-old Holly Maddux, an erstwhile girlfriend of Einhorn who had disappeared in September 1977.

Murderous Pacifist

Einhorn’s neighbors had noticed a pungent odor emanating from his apartment. By itself this was only mildly peculiar, since the Unicorn, who regarded personal hygiene to be a bourgeois affectation, always emitted an unpleasant bodil y funk. However, when a foul-smelling viscous liquid began seeping through the floor of Einhorn ‘s second-story apartment, the occupants of the adjoining first-story room notified the police.

Holly Maddux, at the time of her relationship with Einhorn. To see what was left of her afterwards, look below.

Chitwood eventually found Holly’s desiccated remains locked in a steamer trunk in the Unicorn ‘s closet.

“We found the body,” Chitwood remarked to Einhorn. “It looks like Holly’s body.”

Einhorn stolidly replied, “You found what you found.”

An autopsy conducted on the body – which had shriveled to 37 pounds – found at least a dozen skull fractures. One of the blows had broken off her lower jawbone and forced it into her mouth. Einhorn had killed Holly in a violent rage after she had begun a relationship with a more stable man. Einhorn had a previous history of violence against women following a breakup. In two previous instances, noted the Houston Chronicle, Einhorn “had choked the women intounconsciousness and, in one, he had struck the woman from behind with a Coke bottle.”

“Of all the people in the City of Brotherly Love,” wrote Steven Levy, “Ira Einhorn had been the one most closely associated with nonviolence, conciliation, pacifism, and the Love Generation. Was it really plausible that he would commit such a brutal act? And compound the deed with the Gothic touch of retaining the corpse?”

Cert ainly the political Establishment, both in Philadelphia and across the nation, did not want to admit the possibility. Einhorn had carved out a niche as a “peacemaker,” and had been one of the cofounders of Earth Day in 1970. His network was vast and influential, and it produced a remarkable stream of high-profile character witnesses at his April 1979 pre-trial bail hearing. Corporate leaders, renowned attorneys, clergymen – all of them took the stand to hymn Einhorn’s virtues as a man of peace, tolerance, compassion, and character, creating what Levy described as “a daisy chain of accolades that seemed to have no end.”

Savior Specter

 Einhorn scored a remarkable coup in retaining as defense counsel a former Philadelphia district attorney who would shortly be elected to the Senate – “moderate” Republican Arlen Specter, who 20 years later would play a pivotal role in saving Bill Clinton’s Presidency by being one of the first Republican senators publicly to oppose convicting the impeached President.

Underscoring the calculated brutality of the murder for which Einhorn stood accused, prosecuting attorney Joe Murray asked for $100,000 bail. Specter protested that the amount was excessive, insisting that the state had no “direct evidence” that Einhorn had committed the crime. Stunned by Specter’s absurd claim, Judge William Marutani asked, “Isn’t it a little unusual to have a dead body in a trunk in one’s own residence? Doesn ‘t that raise some eyebrows?”

Specter, who would latr invoke Scottish law to justify his vote not to convict Bill Clinton, buried the judge beneath obscure and largely irrelevant – legal precedents. He insisted that the violence of the crime committed upon Holly Maddux should not determine bail for Einhorn. He also argued, wrote Levy, that “Ira Einhorn, on the basis of who he was and his extraordinary accomplishments, was entitled to ‘a great many presumptions.’” Reasonable bail, Specter contended, would be $5,000. Judge Marutani set bail at $40,000 , which meant that Einhorn and his supporters would have to post $4,000 cash  bond. Barbara Bronfman, then-wife of Seagram Liquor magnate Charles Bronfman , eagerly ponied up the cash bond, leaving Einhorn’s parents to assume liability for the remaining $36,000 when he fled.

“Einhorn, never at a loss to explain the mysteries of the universe, calmly assured his minions he had been framed and relished the chance to prove it at his murder trial,” recalled the September 27, 1997 issue of Time. Prefiguring the Clinton White House’s refrain in the immediate aftermath of the Lewinsky revelations, Einhorn’s approach could be described as promising “more rather than less, sooner rather than later.” In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Einhorn dropped tantalizing hints that he was the victim of a dark plot by covert intelligence agencies and American neoNazis.

In 1980, shortly before he jumped bail, Einhorn told some of his friends in the “progressive” press that Fred Maddux, Holly ‘s father, was “a high officer in the American Nazi Party,” recalled Steven Levy in The Unicorn ‘s Secret. As the tale was spun by Einhorn, Maddux – supposedly inspired by his bigotry and “reactionary” political views, killed Holly and framed Einhorn for the crime. To this day, a “biography” compiled by Einhorn and distributed to the press identifies the late Fred Maddux as a “prominent Neo-Nazi”- a contemptible smear of a man who fought in Europe with the 508th Parachute Regiment and served as a bodyguard for both Eisenhower and Patton.

While Einhorn’s neo-Nazi conspiracy theory is an act of inventive lunacy, it is only marginally more demented than the notion, generated by the Clinton smear apparatus and picked up by the press and “progressive” Democrats in Congress, that the impeachment campaign was hatched by white supremacists angry with Clinton over civil rights issues. With the same pathological composure Bill Clinton would later display in his finger-wagging denial of “sexual relations with that woman,” Einhorn would often look directly in the eyes of his supporters and say, “I did not kill Holly” – which, by any measure, was a much more serious offense than sexually exploiting a young intern and abusing the authority of the presidency to cover up that misbehavior.

But as his 1981 trial date approached, Einhorn began to sense that he was fighting a rearguard battle against the truth. Friends and supporters who once embraced him on the streets now pretended not to notice him, or avoided him in public. As the shunning began to take its toll, Einhorn – who once could seduce nearly any woman he desired, and receive a corporate subsidy in nearly any amount upon request – complained to his friend George Keegan, “I’m not going to be able to be Ira Einhorn now.”

It was then, Keegan told Time, that “I realized he was a selfish, arrogant bastard .”

Shortly before his trial was to commence, the Unicorn fled the jurisdiction.

On the Lam

Ira Einhorn’s plentiful international contacts, and occasional infusions of cashfrom the Seagram dynasty, helped the fugitive elude an international dragnet for 16 years. The turning point in the pursuit of Einhorn came in 1988, when Levy published The Unicorn’s Secret, which found its way into the hands of Barbara Bronfman (who had by then divorced Charles). Sickened by what she read, she stopped sending money to Einhorn. Then she provided the key clue to Richard DiBenedetto, an investigator in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, who had pursued Einhorn across five countries: She told him to find a woman in Sweden named Annika Flodin. Following up on the lead, investigators nearly nabbed Einhorn in Ireland and in Stockholm, only to see him wriggle out of the trap.

In 1993, while DiBenedetto continued to pursue his murderous quarry, Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham used a newly passed state law to convict Einhorn in absentia; the jury, after hearing two weeks’ worth of evidence, delivered its verdict in less than two hours. Some of the most compelling exhibits for the prosecution were excerpts from Einhorn’s 63 personal journals, which had been collected by DiBenedetto.

“Sadism sounds nice – run it over your tongue – contemplate with joy the pains of others,” read a typical entry. “To beat a woman – what joy,” enthused another. Yet another passage reads like a confession of the Maddux murder: “The violence that flowed through my being tonight . . could result in the murder of that which I seem to love so deeply.”

Beginning of the End

The law finally caught up with the Unicorn on June 13, 1997, when a brigade ofFrench national police surrounded a village in Champagne-Mouton, where the convicted murderer lived, under the alias of Eugene Mallon, with Annika Flodin (whom he had married). French Judge Michel Arrighi conducted an extradition hearing six months later, during which Einhorn, his wife, and his legal team depicted the convicted murderer as a political dissident, pitilessly pursued by the legal system of a barbaric nation in which the death penalty was still used (although Einhorn does not face execution when he is returned to the United States).

“The reason I want to be released is because of what prison does to me,” whined Einhorn at his extradition hearing . “It has ruined my life.” (Since Einhorn somehow managed to live for 18 months with the constant stench of Holly Maddux’s decaying corpse, it’s difficult to see how prison could hold many horrors for him.) His wife complained that the attempt to extradite Einhorn was “a legal attempt to kidnap my husband.” Einhorn ‘s French attorney, Dominique Tricaud, playing to Gallic anti-Americanism, urged the judge not to extradite the killer to prove that “France is not a banana republic, bowing to U.S. pressure.” Judge Arrig hi released Einhorn on the condition that he report to local police once a week.

The slender rationale for Einhorn’s release was a provision in French law that forbids extradition of criminals tried in absentia. The Pennsylvania legislature removed that obstacle by passing a measure permitting a new trial for Einhorn. Thus , on December 1st of last year, the aging Unicorn found himself once again appearing before an extradition hearing in Bordeaux.

When asked to testify on his own behalf, Einhorn – as if in conscious mimicry of Bill Clinton’s defiant, finger-wagging denial of the Lewinsky affair – wagged his finger at the presiding judge and declared, “One thing: I did not kill Holly. C’est tout [that's all].”

Holly ‘s surviving siblings – three sisters and a brother – had flown to France to witness the hearing. Of Einhorn’s  ourtroom denial , Elisabeth Hall , Holly ‘s younger sister, told the Houston Chronicle: “He was smirking as he said it. It was a clear attempt to provoke some kind of outburst. He’s a pitiful character, and he knows exactly what he’s done.”

Einhorn’s smirk was a particularly Clintonesque touch. As is so often the case when a smirk descends upon the face of Mr. Clinto n, Einhorn ‘s self-satisfied expression conveyed his arrogant assurance that he was simply too intelligent, too adroit , to be caught, no matter how compelling the evidence against him. However, the smirk was wiped off Einhorn ‘s face on February 18th, when the three-judge panel in Bordeaux announced a “favorable decision for the request of extradition.”

Einhorn was eventually extradited. In October 2002, he was convicted of murdering Holly Maddux and sentenced to life in prison. Bill Clinton, who committed his most serious crimes — including mass murder — under the color of presidential “authority,” receives a lavish pension and round-the-clock Secret Service protection. As an ex-president, Clinton is considered a statesman and a moral leader, rather than a squalid criminal who evaded punishment for his crimes — not merely the relatively trivial dalliance with an intern young enough to be his daughter, but his offenses against the rights and property of innocent people both here and abroad.

Dueling Sociopaths

 “I know now who he is, what he is,” Jesse Jackson said of Bill Clinton in 1992. “There’s nothing he won’t do. He’s immune to shame. Move past all the nice posturing and get really down in there in him, you find absolutely nothing . . . nothing but an appetite.” This diagnosis applies with equal accuracy to both Bill Clinton and Ira Einhorn.

Both Clinton and Einhorn displayed messianic delusions as well. “Einhorn charmed many into believing the planet was warping into new frontiers and only the Unicorn could lead them into the Age  of Aquarius,” noted Time magazine. Bill Clinton anointed himse lf the “walking apostle of hope and progress,” and never missed an opportunity to remind us that he is our living “bridge to the twenty- first century.”

Both Ira Einhorn and Bill Clinton were carried into the political “mainstream” on the currents of what Steven Levy calls “the American Ganges that was the rich flow of the sixties.” It is worth recalling that the Ganges, one of the earth’s filthiest rivers , is utterly choked with human feculence.

In the aftermath of Juanita Broaddrick’s belated disclosure , this question urges itself upon us: What if, after being raped by Bill Clinton 21 years ago, she had immediately gone to the authorities? According to her accoun t, Bill Clinton , with the physical expertise of a practiced rapist , bit her lip (a tactic used by rapists to force women to open their legs), leaving her with a visible injury. After using her, he calmly adjusted his clothing, donned his sunglasses, and said : “You’d better put some ice on that.”

Broaddrick told the February 22nd New York Post, “If my husband had his way at the time he would have killed” then-Arkansas Attorney General Clinton . Had Broaddrick gone public with her account, it is almost certain that Bill Clinton ‘s political career would have been over.Rather than defiling the White House, Mr. Clinton might well be in prison, an ex-convict, or a fugitive like Ira Einhorn.

Toby Hall, a student of Celtic paganism who knew Einhorn under an alias during the Irish phase of the murderer’s exile, was untroubled by the Unicorn ‘s past: “To me, he was a positive person . I’ve never met a more useful person for society. As far as the United States is concerned, they could do with a guy like that for President.”  Unfortunately, at the time of Einhorn’s extradition, our current President was indeed “a guy like that.”

Like Einhorn , Bill Clinton has displayed a pattern of violence against women.To Broaddrick’s account can be added those of Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, and perhaps others still unknown. But unlike Einhorn, Bill Clinton can summon the services of a team of smear artists- some of whom receive tax-funded paychecks who will defame , harass, and intimidate his victims and their supporters.

One other grim fact must be acknowledged. Einhorn was convicted of a single murder. However, in his politically motivated military strikes against Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan – all launched in transparent efforts to manipulate the impeachment process — Bi1ll Clinton has established his credentials as a serial killer. Scores, perhaps hundreds, of innocent human beings have been massacred as a result of Bill Clinton’s use of military strikes as a form of political spin control. Bill Clinton’s acquittal on impeachment charges illustrates that for America’s ruling elite, criminal behavior is consecrated by political power. The subsequent revelation that Bill Clinton is a rapist adds a new, and even more troubling, dimension to the elite’s philosophy of government: We are now expected to believe that there is nothing amiss in handing control over the world’s most powerful military and law enforcement apparatus to a sociopath.

(A version of this essay was originally published in the March 29, 1999 issue of The New American magazine. This updated version was published with the author’s permission.)

After a Milwaukee cop was caught on video repeatedly slugging a handcuffed, unresisting man while screaming “Stop resisting!” the department issued a statement describing this act of felonious aggravated battery as “focused strikes to gain compliance.”

Presumably, the cop’s use of such expressions as “Get out of the f****g car!” and “Shut your f*****g mouth!” were examples of the “focused” use of thug vulgarity, as well.

Jeffrey Strasser, the victim of this assault, was allegedly intoxicated while driving, and the assailants claimed that he had run a stop light while operating his Lamborghini without headlights. Those alleged delinquencies on Strasser’s part “endangered the public,” insists the department. The uniformed cretin who attacked the helpless man — whose inclination toward gratuitous violence and documented criminal inclinations pose a much more severe threat to public safety — will not be disciplined or transferred.

“If the internet has taught us anything, it is that cops appear to be trained to yell `stop resisting”’while beating or tasing citizens into submission,” comments photojournalist and police reform activist Carlos Miller. “I learned that after my first arrest when Miami police pounded my head into the pavement, which is why by my third arrest, I learned to beat them to the punch (no pun intended) by declaring, `I’m not resisting.’”

Until recently, police officers and rapists were the only people who could commit acts of violence in the serene confidence that their victims had been counseled not to resist. Fortunately, rape prevention courses now instruct potential victims to put up whatever resistance they can, and then seek help immediately. Unfortunately, victims of criminal violence by police are still expected to endure whatever the uniformed aggressor sees fit to inflict on them — and as Miller pointed out, police are trained to create a pretext for violence by exclaiming “Stop resisting!” even before the attack begins.

In Milwaukee, the line separating police from rapists is rather indistinct. This was demonstrated by the case of a single mother in (whose name has not been publicly disclosed) who was raped by Officer Ladmarald Cates when he responded to a 911 call after someone had hurled a brick through the woman’s bathroom window. After dismissing the woman’s boyfriend on an errand, Cates maneuvered the woman into the bathroom,  where he forcibly sodomized and raped her.

BOSTON – April 19 – National guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned assault weapons were ambushed earlier today by elements of a paramilitary extremist faction. Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.

Speaking after the clash, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens, has links to
the radical right-wing tax protest movement. Gage blamed the extremists for recent incidents of vandalism directed against internal revenue offices.

The Governor, who described the group’s organizers as “criminals,” issued an executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual who has interfered with the government’s efforts to secure law and order. The military raid on the extremist arsenal followed widespread refusal by the
local citizenry to turn over recently outlawed assault weapons. Gage issued a ban on military style assault weapons and ammunition earlier in the week.

This decision followed a meeting in early April between government and military leaders at which the governor authorized the forcible confiscation of illegal arms. One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed out that “none of these people would have been killed had the extremists obeyed the law and turned over their weapons voluntarily.”

Government troops initially succeeded in confiscating a large supply of outlawed weapons and ammunition. However, troops attempting to seize arms and ammunition in Lexington met with resistance from heavily-armed extremists. The insurrectionists were apparently well-informed of Government plans by the “moles” they had placed deep within Government circles.

During a tense standoff in Lexington’s town park, National Guard Colonel Francis Smith, commander of the government operation, ordered the armed group to surrender and return to their homes. The impasse was broken by a single shot, which was reportedly fired by one of the right-wing extremists. Eight civilians were killed in the ensuing exchange.

Ironically, the local citizenry blamed government forces rather than the extremists for the civilian deaths. Before order could be restored, armed citizens from surrounding areas had descended upon the guard units. Colonel Smith, finding his forces over-matched by the armed mob, ordered a retreat.

Governor Gage has called upon citizens to support the state/national joint task force in its effort to restore law and order. The governor has also demanded the surrender of those responsible for planning and leading the attack against the government troops. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, who have been identified as “ringleaders” of the extremist faction, remain at large.

Read more here.

(Editor’s postscript: This satirical essay originally appeared as an unsigned piece in The New American magazine about 18 years ago. It was written by Thomas R. Eddlem, with minor editorial input from William N. Grigg.)

According to architect Jonathan Levi, the renovation of the IRS regional headquarters in Andover, Massachusetts is a “visionary” project that “will be relevant 50 years from now.”

This is true in exactly the same sense that the Soviet-era monuments that still disfigure the Russian countryside remain relevant reminders of that omnivorous state.

Our descendants would be exceptionally fortunate if the Andover IRS “service center” were among the institutional tombstones marking the demise of history’s most profligate kleptocracy.

This morning’s headlines bring fresh evidence that the Regime may implode far sooner than many expect: The Federal Government’s debt will exceed the gross domestic product no later than 2012, a development that will most likely initiate a “debt super cycle” in which we will experience both hyperinflation and extortionate interest rates.

Like their antecedents in the Gorbachev-era Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the American nomenklatura is preparing for the impending implosion by siphoning away whatever wealth they can find. This is why maintaining and enhancing the State’s instruments of coercion and wealth extraction is the Regime’s most urgent priority.

The $92 million “stimulus” -funded expansion and renovation of the Andover IRS “service center” is a tangible illustration of that fact. But as with so many other things, it’s the backstory here that is most significant.

Until two years ago, the IRS planned to shut down the Andover outpost no later than 2009. At the time, the facility — which processed paper tax returns — was already obsolete, since a majority of tax victims now fill out and file those documents on-line. This development — which had been anticipated since 2002 — would have left roughly 1,400 tax-subsidized chair-moisteners without employment.

It’s quite common for private businesses to undergo workforce reductions as a result of changing technology and market demands. For example, just last week Hewlett-Packard announced that it would be shedding 9,000 jobs as a result of what it described as “consolidation” and “streamlining” of its operations.

Despite the best efforts by the IRS to mimic the behavior of productive people — calling those it plunders “customers,” for instance, a term that applies to tax victims in the same way the word “lover” could be used to describe a victim of prison rape, and for exactly the same reason — the IRS is, unalterably, a government entity.

Since it doesn’t conduct “business,” it cannot go out of business, and its employees receive special solicitude from the political class.

In April 2008, six New England Congressbeings, led by Massachusetts Rep. Niki Tsongas, began to pressure IRS commissar Douglas Shulman and the Treasury Department to find some way to keep the 1,400 surplus cubicle-dwellers on the public payroll. The pressure campaign grew increasingly shrill and insistent as the June 30, 2009 deadline for closing down the Andover office drew closer.

Beginning in early 2009, many of the Andover functionaries were given sinecures distributing “stimulus” checks to other appendages of the Leviathan. But this simply wasn’t enough to keep the trough filled. Displaying a certain depraved creativity, Rep. Tsongas and her comrades suggested that IRS employees be given another make-”work” position courtesy of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the corporate socialist centerpiece of the October Revolution of 2008.

Tsongas and her crew fired off a letter to TARP Special Inspector General Neil M. Barofsky urging him to guarantee a “preference” for Andover IRS employees in handing out pork-barrel positions. This is because, as every dutiful collectivist will tell you, prosperity is a product of government control over the economy.

“The creation and preservation of jobs within the federal government are paramount toward rebuilding and strengthening America’s economy,” insisted Tsongas and her colleagues. “Keeping America’s workforce working is key to rebuilding our broken economy.” (Emphasis added.)

Note well that “America’s workforce” as defined in that letter consists entirely of people in the tax-consuming class, rather than the wealth-producing sector. Note also that keeping the parasites firmly attached to the dying host is of “paramount” concern.

All of these efforts to save IRS jobs in Andover are delaying actions intended to keep the payroll swollen with tax-engorged apparatchiks until the Tax Mahal is complete.

The IRS was permitted to keep $92 million in confiscated wealth — an amount designated as “stimulus” funds — to expand and “modernize” its Andover “campus.” Supposedly justified in the name of reducing the regional office’s “carbon footprint,” the funding is actually being used to pimp out the facility in Cadillac fashion.

Among the new appointments and appurtenances, reports the Boston Herald, will be a reflecting pool, an art gallery, indoor gardens, a 7,000-square-foot cafeteria and an ampitheater.” The objective, explains architect Jonathan Levi, is to turn the IRS facility into “a comfortable, collaborative environment. It will be welcoming for the people who use it.”

The “comforts,” of course, are for the benefits of the government-employed predators who will staff the office. Visitors who find themselves on the receiving end of the IRS’s malign attentions won’t find any consolation in the extravagant appointments and ornamental touches.

This is how the Regime ruling us defines economic “recovery”:

Two years ago, that building was scheduled to be shut down, with a corresponding reduction in the wealth-devouring population. Now it’s being expensively renovated, and plans are being finalized to expand the ranks of tax-gatherers and paper-polluters stationed therein.

On April 1 — the symbolic birthday of anyone who still believes that government is in any sense compatible with civilized living — Tsongas and 14 other Congressional figures (“representatives” doesn’t work)  from Massachusetts and New Hampshire sent another letter to IRS commissar Shulman urging him to exploit “this state-of-the-art resource by expanding the number of employees at the facility.” Not surprisingly, one specific personnel recommendation was to expand the number of auditors stationed in Andover.

Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr, who enjoys goading gangsters in both the private and public sectors, points out that “last year, 626 streetlights were turned off” in Andover “because the town couldn’t afford them anymore.”

“Billions are sucked out of what remains of the economy’s productive sector to pay ever-more-outrageous salaries and benefits to politically correct layabouts who spend all day e-mailing one [another] and sharpening pencils, assuming they show up at all,” observed Carr. “Meanwhile, on Main Street, every week you drive by more empty storefronts, not to mention shuttered factories or car dealerships, and further out of town, dying or abandoned malls.”

While contemplating the exertions undertaken by the political class infesting New England to save 1,400 IRS jobs, I was reminded of Bill Clinton’s April 1993 “Timber Summit” in Portland, Oregon.

The advertised purpose of that event was to draw together “stakeholders” in the Pacific Northwest to devise a federal management plan that would expand endangered species protection for the spotted owl, while inflicting no “net job loss” for the region.

The substantive purpose of that event, of course, was to offer patently insincere gestures of  comfort to the hundreds of thousands of families in the Northwest whose livelihoods were about to be destroyed by a land lockup program that had already been finished behind the scenes.

Screwing his face into what would become a nauseatingly familiar simulacrum of sympathy, Clinton told the audience at the Timber Summit that although he would try to save their jobs, “I can’t repeal the laws of change.” Those purported “laws” dictated that millions of acres be locked up by Washington, leaving entire towns destitute and reducing their residents to dependency on federal welfare.

This wasn’t the ineluctable outcome of impersonal historical forces, or a product of market demand; it was a result of deliberate choices imposed on millions of productive Americans by the Regime that presumes to rule them.

On the other hand, the trends that would have resulted in the closure of the IRS’s Andover office reflected natural, organic change, at least in terms of the relevant technology. Yet the same government that ravaged the Northwest’s timber industry has spared no expense or effort to spare the paychecks of 1,400 tax-consumers on the IRS’s payroll.

Immunizing the wealth-devouring population from the “laws of change” is just one element of the Regime’s full-spectrum lawlessness. It is devoutly to be wished that our descendants will be both wiser and freer than we have been, and will transmit to their heirs the dismal lessons they have learned as they sift through the rubble of the state that presently afflicts us.

(Originally published in the June 7, 2010 edition of Pro Libertate; read more here.)

Maxwell Smart (referring to various implements of torture): Are you sure KAOS has all these devices?

CONTROL scientist Carlson: Oh, yes — it’s standard equipment for terrorist organizations.

Max: Well, where did you get these?

Carlson: From the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

“More tax is collected by fear and intimidation than by the law. People are afraid of the IRS.”

Given its source — former IRS District Chief David Patnoe — that indictment of the Regime’s most notorious secret police organ could be considered a confession. What he describes can only be called state terrorism.

The IRS is an agency that uses the threat of lethal violence to terrorize people into surrendering their legitimately earned wealth. In their unguarded moments, officials of that dreaded terror syndicate admit that they are at war with the public they supposedly serve.

“The language of war and the culture of conflict are the only means to prepare us for what is expected of us,” recalled former IRS revenue officer Richard Yancey in his invaluable memoir Confessions of a Tax Collector. “How else could they [the commissars whom Yancey and his fellow cadres in the agency] demand what was expected of us? You can’t take [the] life savings [of income tax victims], their car, their paycheck, the roof over their head and the heads of their children, without dehumanizing them, without casting yourself in a role that by necessity makes them the enemy.”

One of Yancey’s supervisors considered taxpayers to be, at best, fodder for the firing squad. That official, Yancey recalls, ended a profanity-infused tirade by describing taxpayers unable to surrender every dime demanded by agents of federal extortion as “Deadbeats … if it were up to me, I’d line ‘em all up against a wall and shoot them.”

Yancey’s supervisor obviously shared the late Joseph Stack’s view that “violence is the only answer” — whether that violence is implicit or overt.

When Weaver — displaying admirable character — refused to become a stukach, the same Regime that entrapped him laid siege to his family, murdering his wife and only son. Weaver had never had any trouble with the “law” prior to his encounter with a street-level thug employed by the ATF — an agency that could be considered the clumsier, more overtly thuggish sibling of the IRS. Despite the fact that he had done no harm to anybody, Randy Weaver and his family like the “deadbeats” denigrated by Yancey’s IRS supervisor, were seen as suitable targets for extermination.

The term “deadbeats,” of course, is properly applied to people who refuse to carry out legitimate contractual obligations by making timely payments. Since nobody has the moral right to claim the property of another through force, there is nothing legitimate about the supposed “obligations” the IRS enforces through terrorism.

Those who cannot or will not pay what the IRS demands are not deadbeats in any sense. They are “criminals” in exactly the same sense that the term could be applied to escaped slaves in the antebellum South, or those who abetted their escape in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Those who refuse to pay taxes are making a prudential calculation with which I do not agree, but one that neither harms nor threatens me in any way. The same cannot be said of the means used by the IRS to enforce the spurious enactments its functionaries call the “law” — a usage that illustrates that not even the language is safe from the violence employed by that abhorrent agency.

The outpouring of statist sanctimony following Joseph Stack’s despairing murder-suicide attack against the IRS was predictable — and as malodorous — as the consequences of drinking untreated water in Mexico. The effects of that onslaught are most unpleasant in the immediate vicinity of the main emunctory orifice, which in the present case is the fraudulent outfit called the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“This morning’s attack by Joseph Andrew Stack against an IRS building in Austin, Tex., is a reminder again of how extreme hatred of government can morph into violence,” oozed SPLC commissarina Heidi Berich.

Neither she nor anyone else at the SPLC deigned to prescribe the proper attitude toward a government that can ruin a man’s career and financial prospects through a small change in the vast and all-but-inscrutable tax code. Nor has the SPLC or other self-anointed arbiters of acceptable political attitudes evinced concern over the hatred toward tax victims that can be found suppurating from the IRS, or the violence that frequently results from it.

In 1997 congressional testimony, Houston IRS agent Jennifer Long explained that the agency teaches its agents to use “tactics — which appear nowhere in the IRS manual … to extract unfairly assessed taxes from taxpayers, literally ruining families, lives, and businesses — all unnecessarily and sometimes illegally.”

“The IRS will often pursue a taxpayer who is viewed to be vulnerable,” testified Long. “To the IRS, vulnerability can be based on a perception that the taxpayer has limited formal education, has suffered a personal tragedy, is having a financial crisis, or may not necessarily have a solid grasp of their legal rights. Please understand, many agents are encouraged by management to pursue tax assessments that have no basis in tax law from individuals who simply can’t fight back. However, if that taxpayer does object or complain, every effort will be made by the IRS to run up their tax assessment, despite their financial resources and force them to capitulate to IRS demands.”

In many cases, Long continued, “IRS Management can determine that a particular taxpayer is simply someone `to get.’… Management will go about fabricating evidence against that taxpayer to demonstrate that he, or she, owes [sic] more taxes than was originally claimed.”

“In certain instances, the IRS Management has even employed its authority [sic -- the IRS exercises power, not authority] to intimidate the actual taxpayers into fabricating evidence against its own IRS employees,” Long disclosed. This is done to retaliate against any IRS agent who objects to the agency’s illegal and immoral tactics. Sometimes the threats are mingled with offers of reduced or vacated tax judgments or even cash awards to those willing to perjure themselves.

Those disclosures, remember, were made by an active duty employee of the IRS. To her considerable credit, Long eschewed the long-established practice of other defectors from crime syndicates by declining to concealing her identity. Not surprisingly, Long’s genuinely patriotic act of public truth-telling provoked severe and undisguised retaliation from the agency’s ruling oligarchy.

A year prior to Long’s testimony, a videotaped training lecture by an IRS agent for the Arkansas-Oklahoma district was leaked to the public. In that record (described and documented in James Bovard’s 2000 book Feeling your Pain) the instructor is seen catechizing the trainees about the supposed virtues of arrogant, sadistic cruelty:

“Make them cry. We don’t give points around here for being good scouts. The word is `enforced.’ If that’s not tattooed on your forehead, or somewhere else, then you need to get it. Enforcement. Seizure and sales. That’s our mind-set…. You’re not out there to take any prisoners. Prisoners are like an installment agreement. They [prisoners] have to be fed and clothed and housed. All that stuff. They’re expensive. We’re not here to do that. If you’ve got an assessment, enforce collection until they come to their knees.”

The SPLC and its allies, who play to prurient interests by diligently documenting and publicizing vituperative utterances by repulsive but obscure and powerless Klansmen and neo-Nazis, have never bestirred themselves to object to violent rhetoric of this kind issuing from the tax-devouring pie-hole of someone who actually carries out such terroristic threats against helpless people. (It’s worth remembering that many of those professional racists are federal assets paid with funds extorted from the taxpayers by the IRS.)

In his memoir, Yancey recalls a similar training session in which he and other future revenue agents were told by the instructor that the IRS had no use for “those who anguished over each closure, as if their decisions meant life or death for the taxpayer.”

One trainee, in whom the light of human decency had yet to be extinguished, objected that the decision to confiscate a tax victim’s money and property very often are matters of life and death. Oh, pish, retorted the supervisor: The IRS’s mission has nothing at all to do with “doing the right thing for the taxpayer”; your mission is that of “protecting the government’s interest.”

“But what if the government’s interest is wrong?” persisted the trainee.

“Our interest is never wrong or right,” rejoined the supervisor in a reply worthy of his kindred spirits in the service of other totalitarian enforcement organs. “It just is.”

From that perspective, the State — like Jehovah Himself — is a self-existing, morally autonomous entity, and its consecrated agents are likewise above accountability to any power under heaven.

Former IRS Revenue Officer David Patnoe offers a parallel account to that of Yancey. In his congressional testimony, Patnoe — who became a representative of tax victims before the IRS’s Collection Division in California — described, in detail, the “outright illegal and highly behavior of IRS officials he encountered in his new profession.

In one case, an IRS functionary placed an illegal levy on $21,000 on an account belonging to one of his customers, a small businessman who owed no taxes but paid $7,000 in what can only be described as ransom in the hope of appeasing the IRS.

“I informed the Revenue Officer that … her actions were not just abusive, but blatantly illegal,” Patnoe recalled. “The Revenue Officer responded with one word: `AND?’”

That single, contemptuous syllable — like so many other lawless actions undertaken by IRS functionaries — offers an echo of Vladimir Lenin’s 1920 definition of “scientific dictatorship”: “Power without limit, resting directly on force, restrained by no laws, absolutely unrestricted by rules.” (Emphasis added.)

In the days that have passed since Joseph Stack made the tragic and unsupportable decision to end his life in an act of aggressive violence (taking the life of another man, a father and grandfather, in the process), the organs of approved opinion have barraged the public with potted platitudes denouncing Stack’s lawless behavior.

During that same period, the Regime served by the IRS killed at least dozens — more likely scores, or even hundreds — of innocent people in an illegal war of aggression against a distant, impoverished land.

The branch of the central government wittily called the department of “Justice” announced that its lengthy investigation of the Bush Regime’s torture policies would result in no criminal, civil, or professional penalties against the apparatchiks who had devised “legal” rationales for those crimes.

The official report of that investigation revealed that one of the architects of the torture state, John C. Yoo, was committed to the principle that it is a suitable and proper use of presidential “authority” to order the wanton slaughter of civilians, if mass murder comports with his “tactical” judgment.

All of this provided the coda to a week that began — as if by way of depraved overture — with former Vice President Dick Cheney smugly confessing to the crime of abetting torture during his reign.

Yet we are ordered to believe, or at least pretend to believe, that all of this was eclipsed by Joseph Stack’s self-destructive act of criminal violence.

The unduly revered Oliver Wendell Holmes, a belligerent statist (albeit one more akin to Maistre and Mussolini, rather than Marx and Lenin), memorably described taxes as the price we’re compelled to pay for “civilization.”

After all, absent the key confiscatory role played by the tax collector, how could torturers and other agents of state-sanctified violence perform their vital civilizing functions?

Civilization is built on the foundation of peaceful cooperation, rather than official coercion. It won’t be restored through cathartic but morally unsound and strategically counter-productive acts of retaliatory aggressive violence.

The least we can do — perhaps all we can do — is exercise the liberty to call things by their proper names (e.g., “taxpayers” are more properly called “tax victims”; one doesn’t “owe” taxes, but has them “extorted” from him), and use whatever peaceful means are at our disposal to cultivate contemptuous disrespect for anyone employed by the Regime’s apparatus of wealth confiscation.

Each gesture of this sort, taken individually, seems as evanescent as a snowflake. But an avalanche begins as nothing more than a particularly large gathering of individual snowflakes that somehow found their way to the high ground.

(Originally published in the February 22, 2010 edition of Pro Libertate; read more here.)

For defenders of the “Stand Your Ground” principle, the case of Georgia resident John McNeil presents none of the ambiguities of the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman.

In December 2005, McNeil, a resident of Cobb County, shot a notoriously violent man named Brian Epp who had trespassed on their property and threatened his son, La’Ron, with a knife. By the time McNeil arrived at the home in response to his son’s urgent phone call, he had already called 911 to ask for help from the police. Spying Epps on his property, McNeil grabbed his gun and ordered him to leave.  When the intruder advanced on him, McNeil – retreating a few steps – fired a warning shot into the ground. Epps charged at McNeil while reaching into his pocket. McNeil responded by shooting the trespasser in the head, killing him.

Several eyewitnesses, including neighbors who had also been intimidated by Epps, corroborated McNeil’s version of the event. The utility knife that had been used to threaten La’Ron was in Epps’s pocket (although it was closed). After investigating the incident, police declined to press charges, concluding that it was a clear case of self-defense – an almost textbook specimen of Georgia’s “Castle Doctrine.” This view was buttressed by the fact that McNeil was not the only resident who considered Epps a threat. Because of difficulty they had with Epp, David Samson and his wife, Libby Jones, had an attorney send him a letter ordering him to stay clear of their property, and the couple later testified that they “carried a gun” to protect themselves against Epp.

Nonetheless, a year after police had concluded their investigation without filing charges, Cobb County DA Patrick Head indicted McNeil for murder. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, McNeil’s attorney, Mark Yurachek, learned of several letters that had been send to the DA’s office demanding that McNeil be charged; one was from his widow, the others were anonymous. “They were mostly emails from people cajoling prosecutors to investigate,” Yurachek told Salon.

DA Head succeeded in obtaining a conviction, and McNeil is presently serving a life sentence in prison.  On appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court, the conviction was upheld by a 6-1 majority. While the majority stipulated to the facts of the incident as presented by the defense, they insisted that a “rational trier of fact” could conclude that McNeil’s actions did not constitute self-defense, and that a murder conviction was sustainable.

In her dissent, Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears sternly rebuked the majority for ignoring the text and intent of Georgia’s self-defense law, under which McNeil had no “duty to retreat either when he drove onto his property or when Epp charged him”:

[I]n analyzing whether the evidence is sufficient to support the verdict, the majority fails to acknowledge that the undisputed evidence shows that the shooting occurred on McNeil’s property, that McNeil never left his property, that Epp was on a neighbor’s property when McNeil drove into his driveway, and that Epp left the neighbor’s property and crossed over the neighbor’s yard and onto McNeil’s property. As to whether McNeil could have reasonably believed that deadly force was necessary, the majority also fails to acknowledge that Bobby Smith, a neutral witness, testified that McNeil was on his property and in his driveway when Epp began approaching him from the neighbor’s yard. Smith added that McNeil fired a shot into the ground and verbally warned Epp not to come any closer.”

Chief Justice Sears points out that under Georgia’s self-defense law, “the State had the burden to disprove self-defense” but failed to present “any evidence to rebut McNeil’s evidence that Epp was the aggressor, that Epp came onto McNeil’s property from a neighbor’s yard despite being told previously that he did not have permission to do so, that McNeil knew that Epp had threatened to stab his son moments earlier, and that Epp had a knife on his person when he charged McNeil. In fact, the only witness called by the State who actually saw the shooting, Bobby Smith, gave testimony that actually supported McNeil’s evidence that Epp was the aggressor.”

Despite the fact that the Cobb County DA was able to obtain a guilty verdict in criminal court, a lawsuit filed against McNeil by Epp’s family in 2009 was dismissed after a civil jury ruled that McNeil was not liable for the intruder’s death.

Like the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, the John McNeil has a racial subtext: McNeil, a successful and well-respected middle-class businessman, is black; Epps, an independent contractor with a well-established reputation for violence, was white. This led Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, a member of the NAACP’s national board, to suggest a revision to English legal philosopher Edward Coke’s famous maxim, “An Englishman’s home is his castle.”

“In Georgia,” Dr. Barber observed, “a black man’s home is nothing.”

Of course, racist motives aren’t a necessary ingredient for injustice; the perverse ambitions of a career-minded and politically pliant prosecutor are sufficient. In any case, just as McNeil’s encounter with Epp was precisely the kind of situation envisioned by the drafters of the self-defense act, this wrongfully imprisoned law-abiding gun owner who defended his family and property from criminal aggression should attract the sympathy and support of all proponents of the right to armed self-defense.

Read more here.

People who dial 911 in the hope of police assistance often learn, to their chagrin, that they’ve made a tragic mistake. If they confront immediate danger, the police won’t arrive in time to help, and they have no enforceable duty to provide assistance in any case. If the situation faced by the caller isn’t life-threatening,  it will soon become one, thanks to the arrival of armed strangers clothed in the supposed authority to kill. This is what happened in the case of Kenneth Chamberlain, the 68-year-old retired Marine from White Plains, New York who was murdered by police in his home after his medical alert system issued a false alarm.

The Denver Police Department, which consistently finds a way to make life miserable for the population is supposedly serves, has devised a new method of turning a 911 call into a death sentence: Using the 911 dispatcher as a victim-wrangler for a homicidal maniac.

Jimma Reat was shot and killed in Denver near the city’s boundary with a suburb called Wheat Ridge. Shortly before the shooting, Reat’s cousin, Ran Pal, had called 911 to report that the occupants of another vehicle, a red Jeep SUV, had thrown bottles at their car and threatened them; one of them was brandishing a gun. An official later admitted that the caller “was in shock … covered with shards” from a shattered automobile window.

By the time the call was made, Reat and the others had left Denver’s municipal boundaries. The dispatcher instructed them to return to the scene in order to receive police “assistance.”

“The operator told them to return to Denver, find a safe spot to park and wait for police,” reports the Denver Post. Understandably, this didn’t make any sense to the person who had made the 911 call.

“He told the dispatcher that it isn’t safe there,” recalled Gatwec Dengpathot, who was with Reat’s group. “We don’t want to go there, that is where the problem happened, they were threatening us with a gun.” The dispatcher adamantly insisted that unless the group complied, they wouldn’t receive “assistance.”

After a brief argument, the group did as they were told – and Reat, a 24-year-old Sudanese refugee, was shot to death.

Describing himself as “deeply saddened” by the incident, Carl Simpson, executive director of Denver 911, insisted that the dispatcher “didn’t follow procedures.” Specifically, he followed “lower-level” procedures appropriate to a traffic accident, rather than those suitable to a “higher-level” incident. The police found the stolen Jeep the next day, but have yet to identify the perpetrators.

This is not the first time a Denver PD dispatcher has directed the victim of a violent crime to return to the scene of the confrontation.

Denver’s CBS affiliate interviewed a woman who was a victim of a similar attack eight years ago.

“Two guys in a car had pulled up next to me and started throwing things at my car and one pulled out a baseball bat and hit the back of my windshield,” she recalled. Like Reat and his relatives, she was instructed to return to the site of the incident – a directive that left her crying and “hysterical,” according to the official 911 call log. Longtime Denver 911 dispatcher Lenny Rubner confirmed that such incidents reflect the “overall policy” of the department.

Reat and his friends had escaped from danger; the “help” provided by the Denver PD consisted of forcing them to return to it. If they hadn’t called the police, or had refused to comply with their demands, Reat would most likely be alive today. This is a new and somewhat inventive riff on a familiar tune: Dial 911 and die.

Read more here.

Henderson Police Chief Jutta Chambers, who bears command responsibility for the atrocity, was permitted to retire – with his pension intact – on March 1. This effectively immunized Henderson PD Sgt. Brett Seekatz – who was captured on camera repeatedly kicking the prone and unresisting victim while exclaiming, “Don’t resist, mother***er!” – against a criminal charge of “oppression under color of office.”

According to Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson, in order to indict Seekatz, it would be necessary to demonstrate that he acted with “malice.” After reviewing the Henderson PD’s policies and training – for which former Chief Chambers would be responsible – Wolfson concluded that Seekatz simply behaved in accordance with his training.

“When he was specifically trained that he could use kicks to effectuate arrest and a detention, how is that malice?” stated Wolfson as he announced his decision not to prosecute the assailant. None of the five officers composing the thugscrum that beat Greene engaged in criminal behavior, according to Wolfson.

Last October 29, Greene was driving to work at about 4:30 a.m. when he went into insulin shock . The Honda Civic he was driving began to weave between lanes, attracting the nearly fatal interest of the police, who assumed that he was driving while intoxicated. After a pursuit of about 15 minutes, Greene stopped at an intersection.

Seekatz “approached Adam’s vehicle with his gun draw and kicked the window,” recounted the lawsuit filed on behalf of Greene. “Adam was unresponsive to the officer’s drawn weapon, commands and kick … because of the Insulin shock.”

Seekatz was joined by a second officer, and together they dragged him from the car and threw him face-down on the pavement. Seconds later, Greene – who was completely passive and helpless, owing to his condition —  was surrounded by a five officers. Several of them restrained him while Seekatz kicked him repeatedly in the face and head, shouting “Stop resisting, motherfu**er!” Two others struck him repeatedly in the side and midsection.

In his report on the episode, Wolfson actually blames Greene for the beating: “After kicking Mr. Green [sic] approximately five times, Sergeant Seekatz seemed to realize that his actions were not helping to overcome Mr. Green’s [sic] apparently confrontational behavior.”

That “behavior,” once again, consisted of lying face-down on the pavement while being pitilessly beaten by several large, armed strangers.

After the grievously injured man was handcuffed, Seekatz – exhibiting the obsession with “officer safety” that defines his occupation – asked the others, “Is anybody hurt?” He made no such inquiry of the victim. A search of Adam’s pockets revealed vial of insulin, and Seekatz – who is obviously not the most finely whetted knife in the cutlery drawer – came to the tardy realization that he and his comrades had just assaulted a sick diabetic, rather than a drunken driver.

“He’s a diabetic,” one of the officers told a dispatcher over the radio. “He’s probably in shock, semiconscious.”

By that time, the assailants were already moving to cover up their crime. A dashcam video of the incident caught one officer expressing concern over the fact that the incident had been recorded.

“It’s on camera,” the officer said.

“They don’t know you,” another replied. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

After paramedics from the Henderson EMS showed up to treat Greene, one officer offered a perfunctory apology to the victim for “beating him up.”

The victim was taken to the emergency room, where it was discovered that he had suffered several fractured ribs, in addition to a number of severe contusions, abrasions, and numerous other injuries. After being dismissed from the hospital, Greene was “unable to find any relief from the incredible pain he experienced simply from breathing, standing up, sitting down, and lying down,” recalls the lawsuit. “He discovered a large, painful lump on his back. His ribs were very painful and made getting around extremely difficult. He was unable to sleep through the night for some time because of the severity of the pain.”

Greene “continues to feel extreme worry and apprehension over the incident, and feels extreme anxiety in the presence of police officers,” observes the lawsuit. This is entirely understandable, given that Seekatz and his comrades were simply doing what they were trained to do, according to the Clark County DA.

Read more here.

Gray, who posts videos of his encounters at YouTube under the name “HonorYourOath,” can frequently be seen at the side of the road warning motorists of speed traps. Whenever confronted by police, Gray explains that he is helping them by encouraging people to slow down. On many occasions these exchanges end on a fairly cordial note, albeit one tinged with frustration on the part of the officer. Of course, Gray is well-known to the local costumed enforcer community, some of whom begin every conversation by identifying him by name. This was the case in his most recent encounter: Officer Michael Starling addressed Gray by name before demanding identification — which Gray isn’t required to provide by law, unless he is driving a vehicle or a criminal suspect. When Gray declined to provide ID, he was immediately cuffed and taken into custody.

Under Chapter 787.02 of Florida State law, the officers who accosted Gray, handcuffed him, and imprisoned him without legal cause committed the third-degree felony of false imprisonment. In a transparent attempt at intimidation, the officers who committed that crime compounded it by suggesting that Gray faced additional criminal charges for carrying a concealed weapon (for which he had a permit) and video recording the encounter (as he was legally entitled to do). Should the officers be prosecuted for their offenses — as they should — these actions should be construed as aggravating the underlying offense of false imprisonment at gunpoint.

Upon his release from detention, Gray was told by officials at the Bradford County Jail that they didn’t have his iPhone, iPod, and pistol — despite the fact that those items had been confiscated by him after he was kidnapped. This led Gray to have a conversation with Sheriff Gordon Smith about the incident and the Lawtey Police Officers — Michael Starling and David Hughes — responsible for his mistreatment. As it turns out, Hughes is a “gypsy cop” — a police officer who lost his previous job in nearby Hampton after outraged citizens demanded that his speed trap be shut down.

In his report on the incident, video activist Carlos Miller, curator of the indispensable Photography is Not a Crime blog, summarizes:

Smith also told Gray Hughes may have taken personal offense to him warning drivers about the speed trap because he had lost his job as a police officer in a neighboring town after the speed traps got shut down. Hughes had worked as an officer in Hampton, another rural town that rakes in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on speed traps. But Smith said he shut the speed traps down because the town is so small, the cops were clocking drivers before they had entered it, which meant they had no right to issue drivers tickets based on those speeds.

So Hughes was laid-off as a result of there not being anything else for him to do in that town and he ended up getting a job in Lawtey. So naturally he doesn’t just perceive Gray to be an annoyance by warning drivers to slow down, he sees him as a threat to his job.

For more on this incident, go here.

In his most recent dispatch, Krugman denounces what he calls “destructive” criticism of the Fed, insisting that such impious talk impedes the ability of the Regime’s official counterfeiters to inflate the money supply. According to Krugman, inflation is an unalloyed blessing, and we should pray for the Fed to rain it down upon us without measure:

The attackers want the Fed to slam on the brakes when it should be stepping on the gas; they want the Fed to choke off recovery when it should be doing much more to accelerate recovery. Fundamentally, the right wants the Fed to obsess over inflation, when the truth is that we’d be better off if the Fed paid less attention to inflation and more attention to unemployment. Indeed, a bit more inflation would be a good thing, not a bad thing.

As a high priest of the Keynesian cult, Krugman exhorts Americans to prostrate ourselves before Bernanke the Blessed, oracle of the all-powerful Fed, and humbly beseech him to debase our currency with greater vigor. Yes, this would mean sacrificing our savings, investments, and whatever remains of our private retirement accounts; it would mean undisguised catastrophe for millions of American households already on the brink of ruin owing to stagnant earnings and steadily increasing living expenses.

We must simply accept such hardships, and any others Bernanke and his comrades see fit to inflict on us, with reverent stoicism –  if not chastened gratitude for the privilege of being ruled by such wise and insightful beings – because audible criticism of their ministrations impedes their ability to transmute debt into prosperity. And of course, their failures don’t impeach their abilities or demonstrate the foolishness of their ideology, but rather are to be seen as the result of our lack of faith in them.

Like others of his persuasion, Krugman believes that thrift is sinful and profligacy is virtuous. A few years ago, during debate over the Obama administration’s “stimulus” proposals, the Nobel-winning Keynesian nitwit shared his formula for economic recovery: “Spend now, while the economy remains depressed; save later, once it has recovered.” This makes as much sense as saying, “Feast now while the pantry is bare; diet later, once the larder overflows.”

Krugman’s praise for debt-peddlers is unstinting, and he zealously denounces those unwilling to become slaves to them. In a fashion that might have earned the admiration of Josef Stalin, Krugman has accused the thrifty of acting as economic “wreckers”: He has blamed the ongoing – and deepening – depression on what he calls a “savings glut.” This dreadful surplus originated with disciplined and industrious Asian workers and countries who saved what they earned, and it continues today as, in Krugman’s words, “impoverished consumers have rediscovered the virtues of thrift,” thereby reducing consumer demand.

Perhaps the only recorded instance in which Krugman has offered praise for austerity came in his discussion of the Obamacare act, which contains a provision creating an “Advisory Board” in charge of financial triage – the much-discussed “death panel” that would either authorize or deny funding for various kinds of medical treatment. As Krugman approvingly noted, the Advisory Board would have “the ability to make more or less binding judgments on saying this particular treatment doesn’t do any good medically and so we are not going to pay for it. That is actually going to save a lot of money” – by abbreviating the lives of people who are deemed unworthy of such expenditures, of course.

Arguably the best way to measure the distance separating Paul Krugman from reality was his suggestion that the government stage a phony alien invasion in order to generate support for federal “stimulus” spending. Of such stuff are Nobel-winning public intellectuals made.

Read more here.

During his years as a Criminal Court Judge in Knoxville, Tennessee, Richard Baumgartner sent hundreds of people to prison, many of them convicted on drug or alcohol-related charges or sex offenses. Some of them offered their services to Baumgartner, who had a lengthy history of drug and alcohol addiction – a condition that left him physically and emotionally unable to carry out his official functions.

Deena Castleman was convicted of drug offenses in Baumgartner’s court. She was also one of several convicts who supplied narcotics to the judge. Castleman, who was half the married judge’s age, would also provide sexual favors to the judge during breaks between court sessions.

According to the Knoxville News, Baumgartner came under the scrutiny of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) in March 2010 “when the ex-wife of  Christopher Gibson, a felon on probation in Baumgartner’s court, revealed she had secretly taken a photograph of the judge’s car in Gibson’s Gap Road driveway. She alleged Baumgartner had been buying prescription painkillers from Gibson and having trysts at Gibson’s house with a graduate of the Drug Court program Baumgartner oversaw.”

After being confronted by the TBI in January 2011, Baumgartner did what police, prosecutors, and judges generally do in such situations: He went on “medical leave.” Two months later, he resigned from the bench, submitted to disbarment, and pleaded guilty to a single charge of judicial misconduct.

The sentence imposed by Special Judge Jon Kerry Attwood  included no jail time, and the felony conviction will be wiped clean of the former judge’s record if he doesn’t re-offend. This permitted Baumgartner to retain his pension.

Court employees had complained that Baumgartner – in addition to being crude and unprofessional – was frequently unable to perform his official duties. The judge, who was frequently doped-up during proceedings, often displayed an inability to focus on germane details and occasionally fell asleep at the bench.

Louisville resident R.J. Taylor, a legal professional with 25 years’ experience, commented in a letter to the Knoxville News that while “countless” people who had done business in Baumgartner’s court had taken note of his abysmal performance, none of them took corrective action. This is because “you do not report a judge of wrongdoing in any court unless you want severe repercussions. And who exactly would you report the judge’s actions to? Report Judge Baumgartner to Special Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood or another judge in Knox County? It is virtually impossible to schedule any time of trial/hearing on a judge’s calendar, much less have a `chat’ about another judge who appears strung out on pills or sleeping in court…. The cardinal sin is for an attorney to report a judge or other court official for wrongdoing. Whether the allegations are true or not, it is something that you do not do. It is not the good-ol’-boy network; it is called surviving and keeping your job. Whistle-blowers do not survive in the legal field.”

In other words: Job security, not justice, is the prime directive of people employed in the criminal “justice” system.

Scores of convictions handed down by Baumgartner will be reviewed. This includes the horrific torture-murder of 21-year-old Channon Christian and her 23-year-old boyfriend Christopher Newsom, who were kidnapped during a carjacking, then sexually assaulted before being killed.   Most of the documents related to Baumgartner’s misconduct have been sealed and withheld from public inspection.

Baumgartner is the second Tennessee Criminal Court Judge recently sentenced on drug-related charges.

As Republic previously reported, Shannon Jones, an attorney and former judge in Tennessee’s Crockett County pleaded guilty last fall to federal meth charges. Like Baumgartner, Jones was given the lightest permissible sentence — six months in prison, three years of supervised release, a $100 assessment fee, and $3,300 in restitution to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

At his arraignment a year ago, Jones was charged with manufacturing/delivery/sale of methamphetamine. Had he not been a member of the privileged elite, the 41-year-old attorney would most likely spend the rest of his life behind bars.Under Tennessee’s drug laws, any act construed as “promoting” meth manufacture – such as possession of “any ingredient, chemical, drug or apparatus” that can be used to synthesize the drug — is a Class D felony punishable by 2-12 years in prison, as well as fines and “forfeiture” (that is, government theft of any property deemed to have a “nexus” to the offense). Possession of any amount of methamphetamine is a Class C felony that can result in prison sentences of 3-15 years and fines up to $100,000. Possession of more than .5 grams is a Class B felony that can result in a prison term of up to 30 years.

During his January 26 sentencing hearing, Jones described himself as a victim of his addiction who considered it a “relief” when his activities were discovered.

“I was ready to quit all the lying,” Jones said in court. “It was a relief…. I was using pretty heavily.” Following his February 2011 arrest, Jones immediately contacted the Tennessee Lawyers Assistance Program and enrolled in a Middle Tennessee treatment program that involves third-party monitoring and random drug screenings. His “strict compliance” with the treatment program, coupled with the intervention of “numerous experts and supporters,” persuaded Federal Judge J. Daniel Breen to dismiss all charges but a single count of “conspiracy.”

Official perversion of justice is among the most serious crimes imaginable – but Judge Baumgartner, like Judge Jones, was protected by the leniency that our system extends exclusively to the corrupt and powerful.

Read more here.

“This was the first step of our larger legal battle to keep his home,” Strickland told CBS News. “He had options. He had a way out. And he had a good case.” The attorney, who had met Wordes just days prior to his death, was not the first legal counsel to come to his aid: Former Georgia Roy Barnes had represented him during his lengthy, expensive, and frustrating struggle with the implacable criminal syndicate calling itself the Roswell city government.

A resident of the mid-sized Atlanta suburb for about 13 years, Wordes acquired the sobriquet “Chicken Man” for his enthusiasm for poultry: He maintained a small backyard chicken farm on his one-acre plot, and would often speak to others with great knowledge and enthusiasm about the virtues of urban self-sufficiency.

In 2009, a petty complaint by Wordes’ neighbor resulted in a citation from code enforcement officers for having “too many” chickens on his own property. Since the statute regulating livestock explicitly excluded chickens, Wordes – with the help of former Governor Barnes — challenged the citation in court, and won.

After the Judge Maurice Hillard dismissed the case in May 2009, the Roswell municipal soviet rewrote the statute by enacting a measure, without a “grandfather clause,” specifically targeting Wordes. That is to say, the city council enacted an unconstitutional bill of attainder that was intended to drive the harmless man off the property he legally owned.

As the American Daily Herald’s Glen Horowitz points out, “The city wanted Wordes’ property and boldly planned to use it themselves.” The municipal elite, which had created a land use schematic called the “Roswell 2030 Plan,” coveted Wordes’ property as part of a “green space” area, and they would scruple at nothing to seize it from him.

Wordes went to court a second time – and, once again, Judge Hillard found in his favor, in part. The Judge ruled that Wordes’ chicken farm was “grandfathered” under the law. However, the also ruled that the home owner had committed an infraction by using a borrowed Bobcat vehicle to move dirt on his property to deal with a catastrophic flood. This purported zoning violation resulted in a 180 “community service” requirement.

Unknown to Wordes, the city government had also secretly requested that the property owner be put on probation — and it instructed its enforcement arm, the Roswell Police Department, to harass him at every opportunity. Roswell PD vehicles became a constant presence near Wordes’ home, and he was ticketed, stopped, and jailed on several occasions.

Wordes offered to sell his property to the city. Roswell’s ruling clique, being typical specimens of the criminal class called “politicians,” decided there was no point in honestly buying something it could take through force and fraud. In an attempt to seize the property, the City government filed a 55-page “nuisance suit” against him, resulting in yet another costly and time-devouring legal struggle.

In July 2011, Wordes attended a political rally. When he returned he found that someone had vandalized his poultry farm and poisoned his birds, at least one-third of which died over the next few days. A few weeks later Wordes was dragged into court to deal with an alleged violation of the terms of his secret probation. Once at the courthouse, Wordes was abducted (or, as the assailants would put it, “arrested”) and held for 99 days for the contrived zoning violation.

While Wordes was in jail, his home went into foreclosure. Seeking to exploit this opportunity, the City denied Wordes access to his records or legal counsel. Burglars broke into his vacant and unprotected home, stealing several of his firearms and a large quantity of ammunition, thereby facilitating a potential threat to public safety. When Wordes was finally released from jail, he stood to lose everything – so, in an act combining despair and defiance, he destroyed his home and ended his life.

Frontman for a criminal clique: Roswell Mayor Jere Woods

The local political class “hounded and hounded him, mainly because some bureaucrats had made a plan that excluded his home,” summarizes Jeffrey Tucker of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. “They carried out that plan. He became an enemy of the state. Demoralized and beaten down, he finally had no way out. He ended his life.”

Every political government rests on the threat – and occasional exercise – of aggressive force, and there is no government too small to kill you. Andrew Wordes is not the only  innocent person to be driven to suicide by the criminal actions of a municipal soviet; his case is quite similar to that of the late Ronald “Bo” Ward of Clarksville, Tennessee, who shot himself to death during a City Council meeting in October 2007.

Bo – who took a paternal interest in the soldiers at nearby Fort Campbell, often giving them haircuts for free — had incurred debts by expanding his shop. He could get a debt consolidation loan on his home if it had been re-zoned as a commercial property.

When he put in a request to the City Council in September, Bo explained that if the loan didn’t go through, “I lose my home, I lose my shop, I lose everything I got.”

Bo’s real problem, of course, is that he was a small businessman, rather than a representative of a large corporation with financial and political clout. Had the latter been the case, the planning and zoning board would have been positively giddy in its enthusiasm to accommodate his every whim, and the city government would have been eager to use its powers of eminent domain on behalf of his corporation.

But Bo, once again, was a small businessman – a well-beloved pillar of the community. In other words, he was the kind of person to whom things were done by the municipal government, rather than the kind for whom things were done. So at the Clarksville City Council meeting last October 4, Bo’s request was finally and definitively turned down, no doubt by very polite, well-dressed people who contorted their faces into the appropriate expressions of condescending pity as they sentenced that unassuming man to financial ruin.

Bo had asked to make more profitable use of his own property, only to learn that he didn’t really own “his” property. After all, one doesn’t need permission of another to use something that belongs to him as he sees fit.

“Y’all have put me under,” Bo said in resignation, pulling out a handgun. “I’m out of here.” He then killed himself. His suicide left the community shocked, and prompted a personal note of condolences from Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schlosser, commanding officer of the 101^st Airborne Division at nearby Ft. Campbell. But there’s no sign that Ward’s tragic death prompted anyone to think deeply about the entrenched, commonplace injustices committed by planning and zoning bureaucracies in Clarksville and across the country; it was simply filed away under the heading, “I guess it just sucked to be him.”

A similar stolid indifference typifies official reactions to the death of Andrew Wordes, a man whose life was literally stolen from him at gunpoint by the Roswell municipal government.

“We were lucky,” commented Antonio Johnson, a spokesman for the Fulton County marshals who had gathered to evict Wordes on the day of the fire. “Officer safety is first.”

Read more here.

“You’re under arrest, dude,” grunted Bendzsa. Seizing Hefferon’s arm and beginning to twist it, Bendzsa — mouthing the familiar refrain of rapists, police, and others who engage in unprovoked violence against the helpless — began to chant “Stop resisting!” even though the startled and puzzled Hefferon had put up no resistance of any kind.

“I was just standing there talking, explaining,” Hefferon later told the Fort Collins Coloradan newspaper. “And all of a sudden, he [Calahan] just snaps…. He just unloaded into my chest.”

Hefferon and two friends had been drinking in Fort Collins’ Old Town on the night of March 25 when they damaged a bicycle taxi. The vehicle flipped, breaking a rear reflector. Summoned by the taxi operator, the officers told the trio — Hefferon and friends Jarvis Gullatt and Josh Cullip — that they could either pay for the damage at the scene, or be cited for property damage. Calahan was writing a citation when he committed the felonious assault on Hefferon.

In an exchange captured on video, Hefferon was trying to explain that his ATM card didn’t work. He was speaking quietly, with his arms folded across his chest in a non-confrontational posture. He neither said nor did anything to indicate aggressive intent — yet Calahan, apropos of nothing, suddenly delivered a sharp blow to Hefferon’s chest while bellowing, “Get back!”

“I was in no position to be any threat,” Hefferon later recalled. “I wasn’t in his face to begin with. As I’m sitting there explaining it to him, not even close to him, he tells me to get back. I step back and fold my arms and stare at him. That’s when he punches me in the chest and tells me to get back.”

After being punched in the chest and shoved several feet back, an angry and startled Hefferon exclaimed: “Don’t push me again!”

It was Hefferon’s angry reaction to Calahan’s act of felonious battery that prompted the interest of Officer Bendzsa, who — in keeping with the fraternal discipline of his government-licensed street gang — intervened on behalf of the badge-wearing assailant, rather than the innocent victim. Under the relevant section of Colorado state law, Calahan’s attack qualifies as second-degree assault, a class five felony.

After being seized by Bendzsa, an incredulous Hefferon asks why he is being placed under arrest; the second officer mutters, “Resisting” — a supposed offense that consisted of being on the receiving end of illicit violence inflicted by Calahan and then demanding that the offender not repeat the criminal act.

Hefferon was charged with “Criminal Mischief and Obstructing a Peace [sic] Officer; Cullip and Gullatt, who did nothing, were likewise cited for “Interference” and “Obstructing.”

Hefferon has filed a complaint against his assailant. Fort Collins Police Chief John Hutto has announced an “internal investigation” of the incident, which means that the department will perform the familiar charade that serves as a lengthy prelude to exonerating the assailant.

Read more about this episode here. See the video of Calahan’s assault — and Bendzsa’s unwarranted abduction of the victim — here.

Starting at midnight, March 30, patrols would be expanded, and encouraged to engage in a ticket-writing binge, Schirillo explained. “I am asking that everyone, myself included, contribute to this effort,” stated the e-mail, which was obtained by WTNH-TV. “[W] have to issue at least 60 infractions / Misdemeanors each shift for a total of 180 infractions in order to outperform both Troop F and Troop G…. One day Troop F issued 301 tickets. Troop G responded by issuing 345 in one day. We can do better…” The State Police Troop that harvested the greatest amount of citations would be rewarded with pizza.

“NOTE if we happen to issue 350 tickets in one day that would be stellar,” Schirillo concluded.

Seeking to maintain the official fiction that ticket-writing is something other than an exercise in “taxation by citation” carried out by unionized revenue farmers, Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance fired off an angry e-mail missive to WTNH denying that the ticket-writing binge followed a “quota system.”

“This is not a joke or a game,” protested Lt. Vance said. “It’s a troop commanders’ attempt to stimulate his personnel to enhance highway safety and this goes on all across the state. You will see enhanced enforcement as we continue along in the spring months.”

Ironically, some of the most pointed criticism of the quota system-by-any-other-name was offered by Andrew Matthews of the state police union.

“Troopers are expected to do their job,” Matthews insisted. “We will do our job, but we don’t need to be told we need a certain number of tickets within a specified period of time.”

That “job,” of course, is primarily to rake in revenue. Matthews, like practically everybody else in the racket called “law enforcement,” concerned primarily with the holy imperative of “officer safety,” and points out that imposing quotas and other performance goals on officers will enhance the risks they face. However, he is also concerned about the fact that revenue-collecting rampage will have a huge and painful impact on economically afflicted motorists: “Whether it’s motivational or a quota, it’s disturbing to us because at a time when the taxpayers are out of work ’cause they’re unemployed, or gas is $4 a gallon and unemployment is like around 9%, now is not the time to be just issuing tickets to generate revenue.”

Actually, there is no proper time to use tickets as a revenue stream. The practice is forbidden by statutes in every state – and quietly carried out by police departments in every jurisdiction.

In 2004, Bert Reeves, the Boss Hogg avatar serving as mayor of Cottageville, South Carolina – a town described by the Charleston Post and Courier as a well-known Lowcountry speed trap — was captured on tape explaining to Officer Jeremy Shomber that his the “main priority” of his job was to generate revenue for the city. The conversation was taped by Shombler using the same wireless microphone he triggers during traffic stops, and the tape was provided to the local media by an anonymous source.

“If you’re not writing tickets, you’re not paying for yourself, you need to hit the road,” said Reeves during a November 22, 2004 meeting with Officer Shomber and Police Chief Ray Taylor. “The main priority of your job — and I don’t like it — is to generate revenue…. That’s in order to pay for your position. Yours is the lowest position. I’m just being point-blank.”

Seeking further clarification during the brief period when Mayor Reeves was called away, Officer Shomber asked the police chief if he should pull the Mayor over next time he catches him speeding.

“That probably wouldn’t be a good idea,” the chief replied, despite the fact that the Mayor had an extensive record of traffic infractions – including a habitual offender conviction and a conviction for driving under suspension, and had been clocked a few weeks earlier going 71 mph in a 55 mph zone just outside town limits, according to the Post and Courier.

Because the small town doesn’t have much of a tax base, the chief told Shomber, the younger officer should concentrate on writing at least one ticket an hour. “The tickets are there to write, he suggested helpfully. “Whether you want to call it making up numbers, yes, some tickets are bad tickets, but the majority of tickets that come through are good tickets.” Shomber’s job, the chief emphasized, was to “do what was necessary in order to keep the department the size we are.

Shomber’s job was threatened because he had posted a photo of himself in uniform on the old MySpace social networking site. His chief rebuked Shomber for his failure to generate a profitable return for the syndicate:

“If you’re not writing tickets, you’re not paying for yourself. You got a chip on your shoulder. As far as I’m concerned you’d be fired now. I want someone to play on my team…. If you got canned today, and you had to go out looking, you’d come back in a couple months and say you know what, I had it made.”

To his considerable credit, Shomber grew disenchanted with his job as an armed revenue extractor for the local political syndicate, and went straight. But as the Connecticut ticket-writing competition reminds us, traffic enforcement is nothing less than an officially sanctioned shakedown from sea to sea.

Read more about the Connecticut taxation-by-citation rampage here.

Offering a splendid example of the dubious practice called “lying by headline,” the New York Times reports that a federal judge in Michigan has “acquitted” members of the Hutaree militia on sedition charges.  Although the ruling, like an acquittal, is not reversible, using that term to describe the outcome dramatically understates the magnitude of the federal government’s loss in the sedition case, which was thrown out of court before it could reach the jury.

In dismissing the sedition charge, U.S. District Judge Victoria A. Roberts ruled – for the second time – that the case was entirely devoid of merit. This wasn’t so much an acquittal of the defendants as a summary rebuke to the over-reaching prosecution – who had manufactured a “seditious conspiracy” charge with the help of a paid agent provocateur.

The Obama administration’s indictment was “built largely of circumstantial evidence,” pronounced Judge Roberts. “While this evidence could certainly lead a rational fact-finder to conclude that `something fishy’ was going on, it does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants reached a concrete agreement to forcibly oppose the United States government.”

While two of the defendants, David Brian Stone and his son Joshua, still face relatively trivial weapons charges, dismissal of the spurious sedition case relieves all of the defendants of the prospect of life in prison as punishment for engaging in “hate speech” regarding law enforcement officers and other government officials.

Former federal prosecutor Peter J. Henning, a law professor at Michigan’s Wayne State University, predicts that dismissal of the case against the loosely organized and previously obscure Hutaree militia – which was more properly described as a “social club” – will “make the FBI more hesitant to intervene early on when you’re talking about domestic threats.” In this case – like many others involving purported Muslim terrorist cells – the FBI actually manufactured a supposed “threat” by planting a paid informant in the midst of a group of political dissidents with no documented inclination toward criminal violence.

The federal indictment described the Hutaree militia as a domestic terrorist group – the very incarnation of recent warnings from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security regarding the supposed menace of “anti-government extremism.” At the beginning of the trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Graveline dramatically announced:”The court will hear testimony and examine evidence concerning this particular group’s hatred for, and desire to do physical harm to, law enforcement.”

The federal case was built on 100 hours of covertly recorded conversations and the testimony of a confidential informant (that is, federal snitch) who has pleaded guilty to a domestic violence charge involving the use of a firearm.

Rather than accusing Hutaree activists with plotting specific material offenses, the Feds charged them with “sedition” – an “offense” consisting of expressing opinions about government corruption and making physical preparations to for self-defense against criminal violence by government authorities.

The Hutaree group militia was accused of plotting to murder a law enforcement officer and then follow up with opportunistic attacks on other LEOs who would attend the funeral. (Ironically, a similar tactic has been used by the Obama administration in its drone-fired missile strikes in Pakistan, in which initial attacks on suspected “militants” are quickly followed by secondary assaults targeting first responders and others who rush to the scene to aid victims.) This assault  would supposedly precipitate a wide-scale revolt against the federal government and its local affiliates.

Conversations discussing that scenario were reported by the federal informant who infiltrated the group and – acting as a provocateur– thoughtfully offered to teach them how to make improvised explosive devices.

While federal prosecutors collected evidence that members of the Hutaree group are passionately anti-government — a sentiment as innately American as baseball, apple pie, and the writings of Thomas Paine – they weren’t able to demonstrate that the group did anything more than engage in survivalist training.

Defense attorneys, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio decision, insisted that seditious speech — including speech that constitutes an incitement to violence — is protected by the First Amendment as long as it does not indicate an “imminent” threat.

The prosecutors’ brief, invoking the 1995 seditious conspiracy trial of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, maintained that it was not necessary to demonstrate a threat of imminent harm, but rather only that the defendants had formed an “agreement to oppose by force the authority of the United States.”

(It should be noted that Rahman was able to obtain a U.S. visa only through the CIA’s intervention, and that the radical Muslim terrorist cell he joined, which carried out the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, included at least three others who  had been on the payroll of U.S. intelligence.)

Federal prosecutors originally attempted to have all nine members of the Hutaree militia held without bail as a severe threat to public safety. In May 2010, Judge Roberts granted them bail. She also expressed pointed misgivings about the merits of the federal case.

Judge Roberts didn’t find the government’s case compelling.

“Discussions about killing local law enforcement officers — and even discussions about killing members of the judicial branch of government — do not translate to conspiring to overthrow, or levy war against, the United States government,” she wrote.

“The message emanating from this case is it is not only protected speech to criticize the government, it is downright patriotic to question authority,” asserted attorney Todd Shanker, who had represented David Stone, Jr., told the Detroit Free Press. Erstwhile Hutaree defendant Michael Meeks – one of nine people who had endured arrest, detention, and years of expensive and stressful official persecution for exercising their rights — offered a more sobering assessment of the outcome.

“Watch what you say,” Meeks, a former U.S. Marine, summarized. “Even the most innocent of statements can be used against you.”

Read more here.

“That would almost look like to me, if I gave … an officer involved in a shooting a $500 check, someone might think, `Oh, that’s a quick way to make money,” commented Idaho State Police Corporal Fred Rice, chairman of the Idaho State Police Association, in an interview with the AP.

Maria Haberfield, chair of the Department of Law & Police Science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, agreed that this system — described as a way to help officers “decompress” after a shooting — is fraught with perverse incentives.

“I’m not a psychologist. I’m a criminologist,” Haberfield commented to the AP. “But if you give somebody a monetary incentive to do their job, usually people are tempted by the monetary incentive. To me, this is a violation of professional ethics.”

Albuquerque resident Mike Gomez, whose unarmed son was fatally shot by the APD last year, characterizes the payment arrangement as a “reward system, a bounty.”

“I think it might not be a bounty that they want it for,” stated Gomez, “but in these police guys’ minds, they know they are going to get that money. So when they get in a situation, it’s who’s going to get him first? Who’s going to shoot him first?”

APD Officer Sean Wallace, the cop who shot and killed Gomez’s son, has received $500 union payments for that 2011 shooting and also for a non-fatal shooting the previous year. Wallace reportedly shot Alan Gomez in the back during what was described as a hostage situation. Following the shooting, APD officials said the officers involved in the incident thought Alan Gomez was armed; he was actually holding a large, black spoon.

Disclosure of the “decompression” payments by the Albuquerque Journal prompted Albuquerque Mayor Richard Barry to demand an immediate end to the system, even though he has no control over the police officers’ union.

“I am convinced there are … ways other than cash payments to support our officers and their families during times of great stress and crisis in their lives,” Berry declared, urging Police Chief Ray Schultz to use his influence with the union to end the practice.

New Mexico law enforcement has a long and colorful history of officially sanctioned misbehavior that includes extending taxpayer-subsidized “professional courtesy” to corrupt officers at the expense of victims’ rights. Roughly twenty years ago, for example, it was disclosed that the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office had arranged a $235,000 settlement — paid for by local tax victims — to settle domestic abuse claims brought by Katherine Teupell, the battered wife of Deputy Scott Finley, a member of what was described as the department’s “elite” Crime Suppression Unit.” The APD, which responded to domestic violence calls by Teupell in 1993 and 1994, but no charges were filed.

In her 1997 civil rights lawsuit against the APD and the City of Albuquerque, Teupell claimed that the department had a “We don’t do blue” policy regarding investigations of domestic abuse by police officers. That claim was buttressed by APD Officer Cassandra Estrada, who responded to Teupell’s 911 call. In compliance with department policy, Estrada confiscated Deputy Finley’s handgun — only to see it returned to him by other officers who arrived on the scene and took over the investigation. Estrada, who said that she was committing “career suicide” by testifying in Teupell’s suit, recalled that the other officers sneeringly dismissed her as a “f*****g rookie” for following established procedures, rather than offering the deputy “professional courtesy.”

According to Teupell, her husband was similarly contemptuous of her threat to call the police: “Go ahead and call. How can you break the law when you are the law?”

Finley eventually pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges. Although he was compelled to resign from the police force, he didn’t spend any time in a government cage. The APD, which insisted that it had conducted itself “appropriately,” received a $500,000 federal grant to appoint a “victim advocate” devoted entirely to dealing with police-related domestic violence cases.

Read more here.

Wright, owner of an Englewood tavern called “Tank’s,” has a criminal record — a theft conviction in 1990, and convictions on weapons-related offenses in 1968 and 1994. Englewood resident Darryl Smith describes Wright as a respected business owner and a “responsible man.”

“Here’s an 80-year-old man who’s defending himself against a teenager [who's] breaking the door in,” Smith commented to the Chicago Tribune. “What if he didn’t have a gun? We’d be having a press conference about something very different.”Rather than charging the elderly man with a crime, the police and prosecutors should have been content simply to take the gun, Smith opines. “His life is as valuable as someone who doesn’t have a felony.”

Under Chicago’s municipal gun ordinances, however, Wright’s life is not as valuable as a member of the city’s political class or its enforcement arm. Columnist Steve Chapman, who resides in Chicago, points out that  although “handgun ownership is not allowed in the city of Chicago,” elected officials routinely ignore the restrictions that apply to everybody else.

In 1994, a burglar stole an unregistered handgun from the home of Illinois State Senator Ricky Hendon. “I have a right to protect myself,” Hendon defiantly — and correctly — asserted, apparently untroubled by the fact that he was part of a political class that deprives “common” people of that right. Hendon wasn’t charged for his admitted violation of Chicago’s gun ordinances.

“Gun control” measures disarm only the law-abiding public, while doing nothing to inhibit the violence of the criminal element — both street-level thugs and their more vicious counterparts in the political class.

“Does [this] attitude carry the distinct tang of hypocrisy?” asks Chapman. “Yes, but that’s not out of the ordinary for Chicago politicians”:

Under a state law dating back to 1872, mayors and aldermen are designated peace officers. And, conveniently, peace officers are permitted to not only own but carry handguns. That makes aldermen a special class in Illinois, one of only two states with an almost complete ban on the carrying of concealed handguns. In most places, an adult with no criminal record or history of psychiatric commitment can get a concealed-carry license after taking a training class. But here, we have a unique system. You want to be able to pack a weapon in public for your safety? Fine. All you have to do is 1) run for the city council and 2) win.

Like “gun control” enactments everywhere, Chicago’s approach is designed to cartelize gun ownership for the benefit of the most violent and corrupt element of society. As Chapman wittily notes: “Since 1972, 27 [aldermen] have been convicted on charges involving malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance, disfeasance, and anti-feasance with mopery aforethought. It would be hard to come up with a group of people that has proven itself less deserving of blanket trust.”

For the criminal element running Chicago, guns are properly used to seize the property of the productive and protect those who profit from public plunder; using them to protect property, on the other hand, is an unforgivable crime.

Read more here.

While the Bible’s Book of Isaiah condemns those who make people “a sinner for a word,” under the doctrine of “officer safety” it’s possible to accuse a silent man of multiple felonies — just ask 58-year-old Fredericksburg, Virginia resident David Loveless, who was arrested and charged with two felony counts for allegedly pointing a finger in the direction of two intrepid members of the local police force.

“He made a gesture with his hand,” insisted department spokesperson Natatia Bledsoe, insisting that finger-pointing was intended to “intimidate” two detectives who had testified against Loveless’s 22-year-old son in a robbery case.

A clearly nonplussed Loveless insisted that he had no intention of communicating any message — either benign or threatening — to the officers, because he wasn’t pointing at them.

“I don’t see how I was pointing my finger,” he told a reporter for local ABC affiliate WJLA. “If anything I was reaching into my pocket to get a pack of cigarettes. It that’s what they saw, they have a vivid imagination.

Nonetheless, Loveless — who has no criminal record — was arrested at his home shortly after the incident outside the county courthouse and charged with two felony counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer through intimidation and two misdemeanor counts of obstruction of justice.

These were almost certainly cover charges filed by the detectives as official retaliation for the unforgivable offense called “contempt of cop”: Loveless was reacting to what he perceived as perjured testimony by the detectives.

“When I said, `That’s a lie,’ the lawyer turned around and said shut up,” he recalled.

Punitive arrests and other forms of police retaliation against “disrespectful” citizens are becoming increasingly common, and the facially ludicrous charges against Loveless are probably a precedent for similar action by officers in other jurisdictions, as the opportunity presents itself. Retired federal prosecutor Joseph DiGenova points out that “There are statutes like this all over the country and they are designed to protect civilian witnesses as well as police officers. They come from a history of witness intimidation which is growing in the United States and has become an extremely serious problem particularly in the District of Columbia because of the gang wars [and] the drug wars.”

It takes a remarkable gift for self-preoccupation and the instincts of a drama queen to see a portly, mild-mannered 58-year-old who lives with his invalid, octogenarian mother as a crime lord, but the valiant badasses of the Fredericksburg PD have the necessary skills to transmute a fleeting and harmless gesture into an acute threat to “officer safety” — that highest and holiest of all social considerations. While this case appears to be the first of its kind, it’s something akin to a certainty that it won’t be the last.

“I’m not surprised by it at all, especially since the target was a law enforcement official who had just testified in a legal proceeding against the son of the defendant,” opines DiGenova, his  background as a prosecutor made obvious by his instinct to accept the charge as valid. “This also demonstrates why it is important to have prosecutors who really do have a good sense of discretion…. If this gentleman has no record, no previous record, I think it is probably the kind of case that a prosecutor would break down or lower the charges.” Apparently, dismissing them outright simply isn’t a possibility: Since the Mundane “dissed” his betters, some punishment must be imposed, even if the incident involved neither a criminal act nor criminal intent.

In a way, the official persecution of David Loveless could be seen as fulfillment of a directive issued a couple of years ago by Patrick Lynch, the union boss who heads the New York City Policemen’s Benevolent Association. “We need to make it clear, that if someone lifts even a finger against a police officer, their life could be on the line,” fulminated Lynch as he demanded special sentence enhancements for people who kill police officers. Under Lynch’s standard, summary execution would be a suitable punishment next time someone is perceived to be “lifting a finger” in the vicinity of the sanctified purveyors of official violence.

Read more here.

Two weeks after Isabella was born, a false child abuse report was filed with the DCYF alleging that Austin and his sister Ally had been molested by their father, who was married to Dot’s other daughter, Holly.When they were notified of the accusation, Dot and Holly immediately took the children to the Southern New Hampshire Medical Center to be examined for evidence of molestation. A comprehensive screening revealed no evidence of abuse of any kind.

Nonetheless, during a preliminary hearing regarding custody of Isabella on September 26, 2005, DCYF official Kate McClure unflinchingly committed perjury by claiming that the medically debunked molestation charge had been “confirmed,” adorning that lie with a critical decorative detail: The purported act has supposedly taken place in the grandparents’ home.

Once that charge had been made by the DCYF, the fate of Dot’s grandchildren was settled, in everything but the details.

A DCYF document entitled “Notice to Accused Parent” explains the ground rules that govern New Hampshire’s “family law” court system: “All Court hearings and records of abuse and neglect cases are confidential. The hearings are not open to the public and only people involved in the case, or invited by the parties and approved by the Court, will be admitted to the Court hearings.” In practice this means that DCYF banishes from such hearings anybody who can speak effectively on behalf of the accused.

A “preliminary hearing” can result in the DCYF being awarded “protective supervision or legal custody” over a child, “which would give DCYF the right to temporarily remove your child[ren] from parental care and custody and determine where and with whom your child[ren] will live,” explains the document.

At no point in the process is it necessary to prove that abuse occurred. Even at an “adjudicatory hearing” — the equivalent of a criminal trial — the standard is a “preponderance of evidence,” rather than a requirement to demonstrate guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But the threshold for a judicial decision to award custody of a child to the DCYF is merely the presentation of “evidence.”

In substantive terms, an anonymous, uncorroborated accusation of abuse qualifies as “evidence.” In the same fashion, “temporary,” as defined in New Hampshire child abuse cases, is a synonym for “indefinite.” Once a judge has granted custody or protective supervision to the DCYF, the matter is placed beyond judicial remedy, and the child’s fate will be determined by the child-snatcher bureaucracy.

After Candy was charged with “neglecting” Isabella by receiving a morphine drip during a difficult delivery, the grandparents were forbidden to present evidence at either the preliminary or the adjudicatory hearing. On October 3, 2005, the DCYF seized Isabella, who at the time was a little more than one month old. She was never seen again by her grandparents.Candy was allowed brief, sporadic visits until March of 2006.

One particularly provocative aspect of this case involves Candy’s refusal to apply for DCYF-administered welfare benefits. On September 2, 2005 — less than a month after Isabella was born — DCYF employee Melissa Deane tried to persuade Candy to apply for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Candy refused to do so, pointing out that she and Isabella would be living with the grandparents and wouldn’t need welfare aid — or the invasive government supervision that would come with it.

On September 28 — two days after the preliminary hearing upheld the neglect charge against Candy — Ms. Deane signed the application and filed it herself. A few days later, DCYF kidnapped Isabella from the hospital, eventually arranging for her adoption to another family.

Dot Knightly points out that as long as Isabella remained with Candy, the DCYF would not be able to obtain federal welfare funding in her name. That problem was “solved” by filing an application over the objections of Isabella’s mother, and then stealing her child.
The DCYF then turned its predatory attention to Dot’s other daughter, Holly, and her two children, Austin and Ally.

On January 19, 2006, Holly went to the hospital following a friend’s suicide attempt. While there she was arrested for “belligerent behavior” by a police officer who believed that she was intoxicated. Although she was on various prescription medications (she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder), a test confirmed that there was no alcohol in her system at the time of her arrest. Regardless of that fact, Holly was charged with “child endangerment.”

The arresting officer, Patrolman Josue I. Santia, delivered Holly’s children Austin and Ally to Dot’s home. Santia noted in his report that he and his partner “felt comfortable leaving the children in [the grandparents'] custody.” On the following morning the grandparents were awarded temporary supervisory care over the children while the child endangerment charge was examined. That charge was eventually dropped, but DCYF wasn’t willing to end its pursuit of Holly’s kids.

Darren Hood Tucker, an attorney employed by DCYF, went “judge shopping” and “found another Judge willing to modify the court order” granting temporary custody to the grandparents, Dot Knightly recounts. Tucker was able to suborn a judge into ruling that it was inappropriate for Austin and Ally to have contact with Dot’s daughter Candy — whose only “offense” had been to give birth to a child who was later abducted by the DCYF.

“They sent four police officers to our home and took those children away at gunpoint,” Dot recalls. “Poor Austin was literally dragged down the street kicking and screaming as the neighbors looked on.” Shortly after the siblings were placed in a foster home in Merrimack, Austin — who had no previous record of behavioral problems — tried to hang himself.
News of the suicide attempt sent Holly rushing to the hospital, where she was intercepted by DCYF caseworker Anna Salvatore. The caseworker “threatened my daughter Holly by stating that if Holly didn’t sign Austin’s admission to Anna Philbrook Psychiatric Hospital … the Judge would sign a court order terminating Holly’s parental rights,” Dot Knightly relates.

Just days earlier, Austin had been a bright-eyed, friendly, cheerful little boy.
Austin’s disposition and physical appearance changed dramatically after he was seized by armed strangers and forced to take mind-altering drugs.

During the four months that DCYF caseworker Anna Salvatore was on maternity leave (remember that detail; I’ll return to it momentarily), Dot, her husband, and Austin’s mother were able to have one brief phone call with Austin and his attending physician at the Psychiatric Hospital. The doctor told Dot that “after Austin spoke to his family his whole demeanor changed … and he was not the same violent little boy as when he was admitted.” When DCYF Supervisor Tracy Gubbins learned of that phone call, she issued instructions that there would be no further contact between Austin and his grandparents or his mother.

The only reason Dot was able to talk to her grandson was because the newly single caseworker was on maternity leave. Dot believes that Anna Salvatore — who is now known as Anna Edlund — may have become pregnant as a result of an affair.

“Holly and her husband had been having problems, but after this whole mess began they actually moved into a new apartment and seemed to be starting over,” Dot told Pro Libertate. “The caseworker, or `home-wrecker,’ Anna Salvatore found out about this and had them separated again within a week. Then Salvatore started to visit Holly’s husband on nights and weekends, with or without the children, which eventually ruined her own marriage. And then she ended up divorced and pregnant — after tearing my daughter’s family apart.”

The record should reflect that Ms. Edlund strenuously and categorically denies this aspect of Dot’s account.

Not even this could be considered the crowning act of cruelty inflicted on this long-suffering family by New Hampshire’s child “protection” racket.
By 2008, Dot — who still hoped that she would be permitted to care for her grandchildren — had completed her coursework to be a state-certified foster parent, but was refused a license. She was told by DCYF official Lorraine Bartlett that she would never be permitted to care for Austin out of fear that she would take him off the toxic psychotropic drugs he was forced to take.

Through a steady series of dilatory and obstructionist maneuvers, the DCYF made it impossible for Dot to qualify as a foster parent for her grandchildren. When it was decided that Austin would be adopted by another couple, Dot and her husband were instructed by Bartlett to write a good-bye letter to their grandson in order to bring “closure” to the atrocity. This gesture reminds me a bit of the way that firing squads employed by Ethiopian despot Mengistu Haile Mariam would force families of the victims to pay for the ammunition used to murder their loved ones.

Dot insisted that she would continue her legal efforts to get Austin back.

“Nobody gets their kids back in New Hampshire,” replied the DCYF official. “The government gives us the power to decide how these cases turn out. Everyone who fights us loses.”

(Adapted from the October 13, 2010 edition of the Pro Libertate blog.)

Trentadue, whose brother Kenney was murdered by federal agents in Oklahoma shortly after the 1995 terrorist attack, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for surveillance video of Timothy McVeigh parking the truck bomb outside the Murrah Federal Building, and dashcam video of his arrest by a state trooper 90 minutes after the explosion. The FBI claims that these indispensable pieces of evidence regarding what was at the time the worst terrorist act in U.S. history have simply vanished in the tenebrous depths of an official warehouse, much like the Ark of the Covenant was at the end of the first Indiana Jones film. The attorney filed his first FOIA request in December 2006, and the Bureau has done its formidable best to ignore, mislead, misdirect, and otherwise obstruct efforts to produce the records, as it is required to by law.

“The FBI has submitted several declarations from its top records manager to show the agency has searched electronic databases and evidence warehouses without success,” reports the Deseret News of Salt Lake City. “But Waddoups said the declarations lack credibility because they do not include firsthand knowledge or details about who, when, where or how the searches were conducted.”

Attorney Kathryn Wyer, representing the criminal clique that wittily calls itself the Department of Justice, produced the novel complaint that compelling the FBI to comply with its legal duty to find the video evidence – as opposed to conducting cursory database searches and then dismissing the matter – would be tantamount to issuing a “search warrant.” This objection, which emits the pungent odor of bad conscience and the rank aroma of desperation, is absurd: The purpose of a search warrant is to protect the privacy rights of individual citizens from government invasion, not the reverse.

With each new enrichment of the federal government’s surveillance powers, the public is told that the innocent need not fear enhanced scrutiny. Yet the FBI – which is a pillar of the surveillance state – is so anxious to prevent disclosure of key OKC documents that it will take refuge in facially ludicrous claims. What is the Bureau trying to hide? After roughly a decade and a half of investigating the murder of his brother, Jesse Trentadue is convinced that the Bureau is trying to conceal its criminal complicity in the OKC bombing – either by way of culpable negligence in a blown “sting” operation, or as a full partner in a “false flag” operation intended to frame the “radical right” as a domestic terrorist enemy.

Kenneth Trentadue, known to friends and family as Kenney, was one of countless Vietnam veterans who became addicted to drugs. In the service of his addiction, Kenney became involved in strong-arm robberies. This led to a prison term, which he served stoically and without incident.

Following his release in 1988, Kenney married a woman named Karmen and found employment as a construction worker. He also wound up as the charge of a petty authoritarian parole officer who insisted that in addition to illicit drugs, Kenney refrain from alcohol – despite the fact that Kenney was not an alcoholic and had no intoxication-related offenses on his record. Annoyed by this unwarranted and presumptuous restriction, Kenney simply stopped checking in with his parole officer, focusing instead on providing for his family — and enjoying the occasional adult beverage, in moderation. This resulted in an arrest warrant being issued for a parole violation.

Shortly after the April 19, 1995 OKC bombing, Kenney was detained in San Diego as he re-entered the U.S. from Mexico. His wife Carmen had family down in Mexico, and Kenney had made a quick trip to visit them down south. Kenney was stopped by a border guard who ran a background check on him.  He was bundled onto a plane bound for Oklahoma City.

Kenney was arrested on June 10, 1995. He was 44 years old, in good health, and – apart from the hardships inflict on him by his parole officer – enjoying a second chance for a good life. His wife was expecting a child, who was born while Kenney was in federal custody.

Just a couple of weeks later, federal indictments were handed down against Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nicholas — as well as “others unknown” — for their role in the Oklahoma City Bombing. This occurred on August 10. Kenney arrived at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Facility — just a few miles from the courtroom where McVeigh and Nicholas had been indicted — on August 18. Three days later, he was dead, supposedly of suicide.

On August 21, 1995, guards “found” Kenney’s body hanging from a bedsheet in his cell.
A few hours after this “discovery,” Kenney’s mother Wilma received a call from acting warden Marie Cutler informing her of the supposed suicide. The call was both perfunctory and pushy: Cutler informed Kenney’s mother that the body was to be cremated very soon. Shocked as she was to hear that her youngest son was dead, Mrs. Trentadue had the presence of mind to demand that nothing of the sort would be done without the permission of Kenney’s wife. Cutler was nonplussed to learn that Kenney was the married father of a newborn son; she had been told he was single.

Not only were prison officials indecently eager to cremate Kenney’s body, they were also frantic to sanitize the “suicide-proof” cell. Doing so before the medical examiner had a chance to inspect the scene was a criminal offense — but it was done anyway.

The floors and walls of the cell were mopped and scrubbed; the bed sheet with which Kenney had supposedly hung himself was “lost” or destroyed; most of his clothing ended up in the possession of an FBI agent who – in the finest tradition of that incurably corrupt and tactically incompetent bureaucracy — let that vital physical evidence putrefy in the trunk of his car.

There was a wealth of physical evidence produced by the untimely death of Kenney Trentadue, and within a few hours of the event most of it had been “lost” or destroyed through the coordinated efforts of the FBI and prison officials.

When Kenney’s mother Wilma and older brother Jesse were finally allowed to see the body, they did so in the obnoxious company of Michael Hood, regional counsel for the Bureau of Prisons. As Jesse later recalled the conversation, the appropriately named Hood issued an ineptly veiled warning: “The Bureau of Prisons, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office — we’re one big Justice Department.”

A plainer rendering might be: Don’t get any ideas about challenging the Official Line, because nobody in the federal government will offer any help.

Left alone with Kenney’s body, his mother and brother set to the awful task of scraping away several layers of post-mortem makeup. They found his body decorated with contusions and other evidence of a severe beating, administered by both fists and batons. His head had been repeatedly lacerated, and his throat appeared to have been cut.

“My brother had been so badly beaten that I personally saw several mourners leave the viewing to vomit in the parking lot!” Jesse, a trial attorney, wrote in an August 30, 1995 letter to the Bureau of Prisons that was incandescent with justified outrage. “Anyone seeing my brother’s battered body with his bruised and lacerated forehead, throat cut, and blue-black knuckles would not have concluded that his death was either easy or a ‘suicide’! ”

“I will always be grateful to my brother for his love of life, great heart and strength,” wrote Jesse. “Had my brother been less of a man, your guards would have been able to kill him without inflicting so much injury to his body. Had that occurred, Kenney’s family would forever be guilt-ridden over his death. Each of us would have lived with the pain of thinking that Kenneth took his own life and that we had somehow failed him. By making the fight he did for his life, Ken has saved us that pain, and God bless for having done so!”

Jesse wasn’t the only one who found the official story facially implausible. On August 22, Kevin Rowland, chief examiner for the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s office, filed a complaint with the FBI describing Kenney’s death as “murder.”The state’s chief Medical Examiner, Fred Jordan, refused to classify the death as a suicide, labeling the cause of Trendtadue’s death “unknown.”

The Bureau of Prisons convened a board of inquiry, and — in keeping with Michael Hood’s promise — immediately slammed down the portcullis: The attorney heading the probe classified its findings as “attorney work product, a move intended to foreclose discovery of the material in future court actions.

While corrupt cover-ups are commonplace, Jesse found it strange that federal functionaries were so anxious to conceal the circumstances of Kenney’s death. He was, after all, a reformed ex-con whose only offense was a trivial parole violation. With a wife and newborn son waiting for him, Kenney had no reason to kill himself. In phone calls to his family during the days before his death, Kenney hadn’t displayed any symptoms of suicidal depression. The evidence inscribed in his body by his assailants demonstrated that Kenney had been beaten and tortured to death. Why?

Shortly after he fired off his letter to the BOP, Jesse received an anonymous phone call providing him with an explanation:

“Look, your brother was murdered by the FBI. There was an interrogation that went wrong…. He fit a profile.”

Kenney was the victim of a monumentally improbable case of mistaken identity. He was a near-physical match for one of the “Others Unknown” suspected of involvement in the OKC Bombing: Richard Lee Guthrie.

As portrayed in the terse language of an all-points bulletin, Guthrie — aka “John Doe #2,” — was a ringer for Kenney Trentadue. He was 5’9″ and weighed a solid 180-190 lbs, brown-haired, with a dragon tattoo on his left forearm. Most importantly, Guthrie was a bank robber, as Kenney had been before going to prison. More specifically, Guthrie robbed banks on behalf of the Aryan Republican Army, which conducted some 22 bank heists in the early 1990s and netted about $250,000 to fund domestic terrorism.

Guthrie was in federal custody at the time of Kenney’s arrest – a fact that was lost somewhere in the trackless wasteland of the federal bureaucracy.
Like Kenney, Guthrie would later be the victim of an anomalous prison suicide: His body was “found” by a guard hanging from a bedsheet in his cell in 1996. Just before his death, Guthrie had told the Los Angeles Times that he was writing a memoir that would, among other things, describe connections between the ARA and the OKC bombing.

Nor was Guthrie the only other inmate connected to the Trentadue case to end up dangling from the ceiling of his cell. Alden Gillis Baker, an inmate at the OKC Transfer Center, told Jesse that he had overheard an “altercation” involving “a lot of physical violence” the night Kenney was killed; that was followed by “faint moaning” and the sound of bedsheets being torn. Baker repeated that account in a subsequent deposition that was rejected by a judge. In 2000, Baker was also “found” hanged to death by a guard in a California federal prison.

For more than a decade, as he pursued the truth about his brother’s death with irrepressible tenacity, Jesse Trentadue experienced first-hand the concentrated, malicious corruption of the Regime that rules us. He witnessed what he describes as an “epidemic of government corruption” — “Perjury, subornation of perjury, threats to witnesses [including Fred Jordan, the Oklahoma medical examiner, who was intimidated into changing his conclusions about Kenney's death], fabrication of evidence, and a sh*t-pile of other acts of obstruction of justice…. The government obtained an order preventing me from reporting those crimes to either federal prosecutors or the Senate Judiciary Committee while at the same time it was trying to indict me and my attorneys with the perjured testimony of a secret FBI informant.”

The bogus perjury charge, Jess Trentadue explained was based on an accusation “that I had paid people to perjure themselves. Look, I don’t have the money to pay for perjury; I’m a trial attorney who’s doing the investigation into Kenney’s death on my own time and at my own expense. And even if I wanted to buy witnesses, I couldn’t outbid the Feds.” That charge was laughed out of court.

Apart from the self-defense reflex of corrupt officials, the cover-up made no sense to Jesse — until 2004, when he received — from a sympathetic source at the FBI — two redacted documents proving that the FBI had been aware of a connection between the OKC bombing and the Aryan Republican Army, a connection that ran through a bizarre white supremacist commune in Oklahoma called Elohim City. That tip primed a Freedom of Information Act Request that brought forth more than 250 pages of documents — all of them heavily censored — confirming that the FBI and other federal agencies (including the ATF, which had planted Carol Howe at Elohim City) had abundant and detailed advance intelligence of the bombing.

Elohim City was not merely a racist redoubt: As with any similar gathering of white supremacists, federal informants were thick on the ground in that commune. In addition to the above-mentioned Carol Howe, the late Robert Millar, the patriarch of that particular kibbutz, was on the federal payroll.

An enigmatic German national named Andreas Strassmeir, who was the group’s head of security, has long been suspected of being an intelligence asset for both Washington and his own national government. A hyper-violent Klan activist named Dennis Mahon, also spent time at Elohim City, was likewise doing snitch duty. At least one other individual there was taking notes and passing them along to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a self-appointed “watchdog” group headed by self-promoting fraud and sexual degenerate Morris Dees.

At least two ARA members were “part-time” residents of Elohim City, and there is reason to believe that Timothy McVeigh — who called the commune just shortly before the OKC bombing — had hooked up with the ARA to carry out at least some of their robberies.

In 2007, shortly after filing his FOIA request for the OKC bombing videos, Jesse Trentadue contacted by Terry Nichols — who is serving a life sentence for his role in the bombing, and cannot be tried again on capital charges. With Trentadue’s assistance, Nichols filed a deposition in a Salt Lake City federal court. Not only did he implicate the ARA in the bombing plot, he claimed that McVeigh — who allegedly had been recruited while in the Army to carry out undercover missions — had been working under the supervision of Larry Potts, the shame-encrusted FBI official who presided over the murderous attack on the Randy Weaver family and the annihilation of the Branch Davidians at Mt. Carmel, Texas.

In April 2008, Jesse won two significant victories in federal court. A federal judge in Oklahoma, ruling that the FBI had intentionally inflicted severe mental suffering on the Trentadue family, awarded the victims nearly one million dollars in damages. A few days later, U.S. Federal District Court Judge Ted Stewart ordered the “Justice” department to hand over its long-suppressed report on Kenney’s death.

“The Justice [sic] Department’s lawyers at the hearing were muttering about how they needed `extensions,’ and the judge wasn’t having any of it,” Jesse Trentadue told Pro Libertate in an April 2008 interview. “When Judge Stewart reminded them that the 10th Circuit Court had just ruled that Jesse had a right to see the documents, and imposed a deadline of April 10th, “the Justice [sic!] Department lawyers said that they needed `permission from their superiors’ to produce the documents — which really didn’t sit well with the judge,” Jesse continues. “He gave them until May 1 to turn over the documents or be hit with a contempt citation.”

This would mean “that arrest warrants would be issued, and federal Marshals sent to arrest the non-cooperating officials” — although, in the insuperably improbable event that the Marshals were sent to collect the miscreants, they would be treated with much greater delicacy than Kenney had been.

Through no desire of his own, Jesse Trentadue has become something of an expert about the federal prison system. He has come to the rueful conclusion that torture is commonplace within the U.S. gulag – particularly when the victim is a political dissident or similarly inconvenient detainee.

“[Torture is] very common, I think,” Trentadue concludes. “And if you look at what was done to Kenney back in 1995, it was the same kind of thing that was done years later at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. It could be said that they used my brother as practice for Iraq. But that kind of thing happens in our system here all the time, I’m convinced.”

“There must be something really ugly in that set of documents,” Jesse points out. “The Feds have done everything they could for nearly a decade and a half to keep me from getting them.”

Does he believe Nichols’ claim that the OKC bombing was a federally staged event? ‘

“That’s Mr. Nichols’ account, and he has no reason I can think of to lie,” Jesse told me. “He tried to get [former Attorney General] John Ashcroft to look into his testimony, but he wasn’t interested. And David Paul Hammer, who was McVeigh’s cellmate [on death row prior to McVeigh's execution] has filed a deposition describing how McVeigh confirmed the same story — that McVeigh was a government-run undercover operative, that he was involved in the ARA’s bank robberies, and that the Elohim City group was riddled with federal informants.”

At least three people, including Kenney, were killed through staged prison “suicides” to cover up something “really ugly” about Federal foreknowledge of, and participation in, the OKC bombing plot. Kenney was tortured to death. This wasn’t done because the Feds wanted to know something Kenney (mistakenly identified as Guthrie) knew; it was done because the Feds assumed he could tell the truth about OKC, and wanted to shut him up permanently.
Trentadue’s tenacious investigation has pried loose many critical revelations hinting that the “really ugly” truth the Feds seek to conceal is a multi-decade covert operation called “PATCON” intended to infiltrate the so-called “radical right” for the purpose of staging false flag operations.
“PATCON is an acronym for `Patriot Conspiracy,’ a Clinton-Reno-Holder, FBI and ATF undercover operation,” Trentadue wrote late last year. “PATCON was designed to infiltrate and incite the milita and evangelical Christians to violence so that the Department of Justice could crush them. Ruby Ridge was a PATCON operation. Waco was a PATCON operation. And so, too, I believe was the Oklahoma City Bombing.”

The “Holder” to whom Trentadue refers is Eric Holder, the incumbent Attorney General who at the time of Kenney’s murder was a Deputy Attorney General to Janet Reno. E-mails and memos pried loose by Trentadue demonstrate that that Holder’s job was “to cover up my brother’s murder, basically to stop all inquiry.” This prefigured the obstructionist tactics employed by Holder in covering up Operation Fast and Furious, another of the Federal Government’s countless false flag/provocation operations.

Since he began his investigation of his brother’s murder, Trentadue – who has somehow maintained a legal practice in Salt Lake City – has endured a constant onslaught of threats, harassment, and abuse from the Feds, some of it targeting his parents and family. This has been coupled with a determined campaign to prevent disclosure of information the FBI and Justice Department are legally required to provide – such as the identity of the FBI Agents who tortured Kenney to death.

Judge Waddoups has given the FBI a June 15 deadline to provide the OKC bombing videos, or a satisfactory explanation for their absence. On previous performance it’s a near-certainty that the Bureau will do neither.

(Jesse Trentadue was recently interviewed by Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig von Mises Institute; go here to listen to that revealing and infuriating interview.)

President Obama’s March 16 executive order on National Defense Resources Preparedness revises and extends an existing framework created during the Korean War – but, more importantly, it completes a comprehensive system of regimentation and surveillance that could properly be called a matrix for martial law.

Many commentators have dismissed concerns about the Obama order by pointing out that it has been renewed by every U.S. president since Truman. None of Obama’s predecessors, however, have claimed the supposed authority to conduct summary executions of U.S. citizens. No previous president had been given an explicit license – by way of a provision tucked into the most recent National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – to subject U.S. citizens to unlimited military detention without even the pretense of due process.

All of those illicit powers have long been implicit in the framework created during the Truman administration. Many of them were overtly exercised during the administration of George W. Bush. After winning office on a promise to rehabilitate constitutional restraints on executive power, Obama granted a plenary indulgence to executive branch officials who authorized torture, illegal surveillance, and committed other crimes against the Constitution – while conducting retaliatory prosecutions of honorable officials who tried to expose those crimes. He has also made extensive use of the same extra-constitutional powers exercised by his predecessor.

If Obama claims the power to do something, he will do the thing in question – and this is the perspective we should adopt in assessing the danger posed by the most recent “national security” executive order.

The Obama order is rooted in the Defense Production Act of 1950, which treats the entire resource and agricultural base of the United States as the presumptive property of the federal government. The measure claims the authority to nationalize any element of the economy the U.S. government deems appropriate in the context of a “national security emergency” – such as a military threat, a natural disaster, or some other catastrophe – and sets out a detailed schematic for “the diversion of certain materials and facilities from ordinary use to national defense purposes, when national defense needs cannot otherwise be satisfied in a timely fashion….”

“Mobilization” of economic assets and regimentation of the population in the name of “national security” was likewise the theme of NSC-68, a 58-page document created by the Truman administration’s National Security Council in 1950 that became the template for the National Security State – including the subtle repudiation of American independence in favor of a UN-administered global order.

NSC-68 was a blueprint for a lengthy strategic confrontation with the Soviet Union. It envisioned the creation of a permanent, globally engaged military establishment, radical enhancement of presidential authority, the use of diplomacy and economic aid to encourage widespread involvement of other nations in “regional or broader associations of states consistent with the United Nations’ Charter” – such as NATO – and progress toward the ultimate goal of “the effective control of all armaments by the United Nations or a successor organization.” From that time forward, America’s foreign policy would be defined in terms of “collective security,” rather than the preservation of independence.

NSC-68 was finished on April 14, 1950, but not declassified until twenty-five years later. Elements of the program, and the broad outlines of its policy priorities, were shared with Congress and, to a lesser extent, the public. Not surprisingly, even those limited glimpses of that blueprint for “world order” prompted fierce opposition by people who wanted to preserve American independence.

Roughly three months after the classified blueprint was finished, the Korean War erupted – a development that delighted the architects of NSC-68. By instigating the war, observed Dean Acheson, the abominable figure who served as Truman’s Secretary of State, “the Russians presented a check which was drawn on the bank of collective security” – one that would be paid in the coin of bloodshed and lost liberties. But that price was one that Acheson and his ilk were eager to pay; this is why he expressed relief that “Korea came along and saved us” – that is, it saved the ambitions of the “collective security” cabal from the resurgence of “isolationism” — or simply a desire on the part of the American public for a restoration of the pre-war market economy. The new “national security” paradigm would require the public to see government-provided “safety,” rather than individual liberty, as a measure of national greatness.

“There are risks in making ourselves strong,” allowed the authors of NSC-68. “A large measure of sacrifice and discipline will be demanded of the American people [who will be] asked to give up some of the benefits which they have come to associate with their freedoms.”

That is to say: The people exist to serve and succor the government, rather than the reverse. This certainly resonates with the Obama administration’s collectivist credo of “shared sacrifice” on behalf of the “common good,” as the Regime would define it. It is likewise faithful to the Progressive-era war communism that prevailed under Woodrow Wilson.

Bernard Baruch, chairman of the National War Industries Board under Wilson, explained the administration’s wartime priorities in an August 17, 1918 newspaper editorial:

“Every man’s life is at the call of the nation and so must be every man’s property. We are living today in a highly organized state of socialism. The state is all; the individual is of importance only as he contributes to the welfare of the state. His property is his only as the state does not need it. He must hold his life and possessions at the call of the state.”

The concept of the “Nation in Arms,” Baruch would later write in a post-war report, meant that “in war, her entire resources of men, money and things should suddenly become a compact instrument of destruction…. [T]he entire population must suddenly cease to be a congeries of individuals, each following a self-appointed course, and become a vast unitary mechanism.” This would necessarily mean an end to the price system, which is the nervous system of a market economy:  “In modern war, administrative control must replace the law of supply and demand.”

There is a name for an economic system in which the individual is regarded as “nothing,” and all resource decisions are imposed by state decree, rather conducted on the basis of freely negotiated prices: Communism. Much to Baruch’s disappointment, World War I ended before the U.S. could be transmuted into a fully realized Communist state – one worthy of the most deranged dreams of Mao or Kim Il Sung, with the population readily submitting to the decrees of their supervisors in all things, including the clothing that they would wear.

“Had the war gone on another year, our whole civil population would have gradually emerged (as wardrobes and inventories became exhausted) in cheap but serviceable uniform,” he wrote wistfully in his book American Industry in the War, published in 1941 as the Regime in Washington geared up for a second mass bloodletting. “Types of shoes were to be reduced to two or three. The manufacture of pleasure automobiles was to cease.”

As it turned out, Baruch would have to be content with creation of an imperfectly realized corporate state – that is, a prototype of the fascist system later developed in Italy and expanded in Germany. This kinship was proudly acknowledged by Baruch in 1940. Writing of Germany’s National Socialist regime, Baruch proudly noted: “German military experts have said, ‘Except for a few minor changes, the German economic mobilization system was conscientiously built in imitation of the similar American system’” during World War I.

As historian Michael J. Hogan of Ohio State University pointed out in his 1998 book Cross of Iron, the progressive corporate state created by Baruch and his comrades is now deeply entrenched in the U.S. It was strengthened during the New Deal and then radically expanded by the National Security Act (NSA) of 1947, NSC-68, and the executive orders that grew out of those measures.

During the debate over the NSA in 1947, “Both sides understood that a peacetime national security state was in the making where none had existed before,” writes Hogan. And both sides made candid use of the ominous expression “garrison state” to describe what America could very easily become – a society “dominated by military leaders and devoted to military purposes.”

The prospect of a militarist dictatorship is embedded in the “national security” measures that have been in place in 1947; all that has been lacking was a suitable crisis and the appropriate personality in the White House. In Barack Obama, the garrison state may well have found the dictator it has long waited for.

Go here to read the text of Obama’s executive order.

Civilian disarmament advocates have implicated Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law in the shooting death of 17-year-old Miami resident Trayvon Martin by self-appointed crime watch “captain” George Zimmerman on February 26. The Sanford, Florida Police have refused to charge Zimmerman, insisting that “under the law, it had no call to bring charges,” reported the New York Times. The known facts of the incident strongly suggest that the refusal to charge Zimmerman has more to do with the Sanford PD’s decision to treat him like a cop, rather than any provision of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law.

Enacted in 2005, Florida’s “Justifiable Use of Force” statute (Title XLVI, Chapter 776) recognizes that an individual has the natural right to use deadly force when confronting the threat of “death or great bodily harm” from an intruder or an aggressor. This does not apply when “The person against whom the defensive force is used has the right to be in … [a] dwelling, residence, or vehicle,” or if the individual who employed the defensive force  “ is engaged in an unlawful activity….”

Martin, an unarmed teenager with no criminal record, was headed to his  father’s home in the Miami Gardens gated community with a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea when he was fatally shot by Zimmerman, who described himself as a “neighborhood watch captain” despite having no formal affiliation with that volunteer organization. Although he was described by Zimmerman to the police as a “suspicious individual,” Martin had an unqualified legal right to be where he was.

Zimmerman called 911 to report what he described as a “suspicious” individual: “There’s a real suspicious guy. This guy looks like he’s up to no good, on drugs or something….. These a**holes always get away.” Zimmerman actively pursued Martin, after being specifically instructed by a police dispatcher that this was unnecessary.

When Martin noticed Zimmerman, the teenager – who was speaking to a girlfriend via cellphone – made reference to being “hounded by a strange man on a cellphone who ran after him, corned him and confronted him,” as summarized in an ABC News report.

“Why are you following me?” Martin asked Zimmerman. A few moments later, Zimmerman shot Martin with his 9 millimeter handgun. Several witnesses reported hearing the teenager cry for help before the shot was fired.

“They’re wrestling right in the back of my porch,” one witness told a police dispatcher. “The guy’s yelling help and I’m not going out.”

For some reason, police investigating the matter “corrected” one key witness, a local schoolteacher, by insisting that it was Zimmerman, not Martin, who had cried for help. This makes little sense: Zimmerman was armed and outweighed the frightened teenager by more than 100 pounds.

In addition to “correcting” one eyewitness, the Sanford PD pointedly ignored the testimony of Martin’s girlfriend, to whom the victim expressed his own fears about the unidentified man who was stalking him.

Zimmerman’s original story, as summarized by the Miami Herald, was that “he had stepped out of his truck to check the name of the street he was on when [Martin] attacked him from behind as he walked back to his truck.” Zimmerman claims that he shot Martin “because he feared for his life.”

Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee appeared satisfied with Zimmerman’s version of the incident, moving quickly to wrap up the case because “there is no evidence to dispute the shooter’s claim of self-defense.”  The police released him without testing him for drugs or alcohol.

Zimmerman, who was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting an officer in 2005 – has called the police to report “suspicious” black males 46 times since January 2011. Neighbors have described him as “fixated on crime” and have complained about his “aggressive tactics.”

During the February 17 incident, Zimmerman did not “stand his ground”; he pursued Martin, who had a legal right to be where he was. By creating the confrontation, Zimmerman was the aggressor. He had both the moral and legal duty to retreat, rather than to escalate the confrontation by employing force of any kind.

Florida’s self-defense law, like similar statutes elsewhere, makes an exception for law enforcement officers. Although he was not employed by a police department and not an official member of the volunteer neighborhood watch, Zimmerman clearly considered himself to be acting in a law enforcement capacity. The Sanford PD uncritically accepted Zimmerman’s self-characterization, treating him as if he were part of their privileged fraternity of official coercion, going so far as to tamper with eyewitness testimony on his behalf.

Under the terms of the Florida statute, Zimmerman committed an act of criminal homicide, not justified self-defense.

As outrage over the incident coalesces, a grand jury has been called to investigate the shooting and the FBI has announced that it will “monitor” the inquiry. Martin’s family has suggested that racial bigotry underlies both Zimmerman’s actions and the refusal by police to charge him. ABC News reports that “The Sanford Police Department says it stands by its investigation, and that it was not race or incompetence that prevented it from arresting Zimmerman but the law.”

The civilian disarmament lobby loudly opposes “stand your ground” and “castle doctrine” laws recognizing the individual right to armed self-defense. In recent months, police unions have lobbied against “castle doctrine” laws in Minnesota and Indiana that explicitly recognize the natural right of citizens to use lethal force against police officers who unlawfully invade their property or threaten their lives.

Blaming the outrageous killing of Treyvon Martin on a “castle doctrine”-style self-defense law would fit comfortably into the police union narrative. Could the union’s political agenda – rather than racism or incompetence – explain the Sanford PD’s otherwise inexplicable decision to treat George Zimmerman as if he were a law enforcement officer?

Read more here.

“Police lie. It’s part of their job,” wrote Val Van Brocklin in an essay entitled “Training Cops to Lie,” which was published in the November 16, 2009 edition of the online journal Officer.com. A nearly identical admission was made by former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper on page 129 of his 2005 memoir, Breaking Rank: “Cops lie. Most of them lie a couple of times per shift, at least.” Stamper claims to find value in what might be called situational dishonesty, but he has no tolerance for the kind of routine truth-shading or outright perjury that has become tragically commonplace in contemporary law enforcement.

Radley Balko, a prolific and perceptive commentator regarding police abuses, provides a useful play-by-play summary of this infuriating — but entirely typical — episode of police mendacity:

This one has it all. Reichert lies about why he pulled them over. He lies to justify the K9 search. He then conducts a highly dubious pass around the car with his dog, after which he lies about the dog alerting. When he doesn’t find any drugs, he lies about the dog alerting to some marijuana “shake” on the floor. Finally, we learn at the end of the video that Reichert has [a prior conviction] and had resign from a previous police department for lying under oath about a drug case.

The kicker: Reichert found out that the driver had an old arrest that was supposed to have been expunged when he ran the driver’s license. This was one of his justifications for conducting a search.

It’s useful to underscore a few other critical points.

First of all, the officer is part of a drug enforcement task force that operates like a gang of highway robbers: He is lying (in both sense of the term) in wait for potential victims, preferably with out-of-state license plates, who can be waylaid in search of money or other valuables to be seized in the name of “asset forfeiture.” Officer “Third” Reichert, the ambulatory wad  of arrogance and dishonesty featured in this clip, adverted to this when he told the driver that there is a “big problem” with drug smuggling along that stretch of I-70. For police departments, this isn’t a “problem”; it’s a profit center.

Second, Third Reichert invented a traffic stop ex nihilo — then gave the driver a “warning” as a justification after-the-fact. The illustrates that police can detain any of us at gunpoint at literally any time of their choosing.

Third, as Third Reichert dug up the expunged conviction, he referred to the driver as a “Motherf***er” — a gesture that displays the contemptuous hostility toward Mundanes that seethes just below the superficial professionalism of most law enforcement officers. With heroic and genuinely commendable exceptions, police see the public as unpunished criminals, rather than innocent people who are minding their own business. They’re also trained to be professional cowards, which is why Third Reichert — who was dealing with a couple of unarmed, timid Trekkies, for heaven’s sake — immediately called for backup.

Fourth, the passenger was also asked for ID — which he didn’t have to provide — and then his nervousness was used as a “justification” for the search. Why shouldn’t people be anxious when confronted by an armed stranger who claims the right to kill them at his discretion?

Fifth, the driver was far too cooperative, answering detailed questions about himself, his activities, and his vehicle, even consenting to a search. Never, never, never do this. Do not volunteer information. Do not consent to a search. If one is forced on you, make your objections part of the record. Do not assume that the police officer is an honorable, well-intentioned public servant — he isn’t: He’s a guy with a gun who is trying to find an excuse to put you in jail. Don’t help him.

To see the video of Officer Mike “Third” Reichert displaying his Olympic-level proficiency at lying, go here.

Police unions have mobilized to thwart efforts to restore the “Castle Doctrine” — the ancient Anglo-Saxon principle that an individual is sovereign over his home, and can use lethal force to defend it, as well as his person and property, and has no moral duty to retreat when confronting criminal aggression. This understanding is embedded in the Second Amendment, of course, but it is also woven into the Third and Fourth Amendments as well, which recognize the right of the sovereign individual to withstand invasions by people acting as agents of the State.

Over the last decade, several states have enacted statutes providing legal support for that natural right.  “Caste Doctrine” bills in Minnesota and Indiana have provoked opposition from police unions, because they explicitly recognize the right of individuals to repel criminal aggression by police officers. As noted in the following essay, representatives of police unions have admitted that in many circumstances it is all but impossible to distinguish between the behavior of “law enforcement”officers and home invaders — which is why recognizing the citizen’s right to repel unlawful aggressors irrespective of their identity is seen as an acute threat to “officer safety.” They also insist that citizens are never justified in resisting law enforcement — a blanket prohibition that would apply to circumstances in which the officer’s behavior is unambiguously criminal, and the actions of the citizen are clearly lawful.

Republic magazine managing editor William Norman Grigg discussed the “Castle Doctrine” in a recent interview on Antiwar Radio. The essay below, which was originally published at the Pro Libertate blog, offers a detailed and documented examination of this vitally important subject.

As the lower house of the Indiana State Legislature approved Senate Bill 1 on March 1, Representative Linda Lawson lamented that if it were passed the measure would signal that it’s “open season on law enforcement.”

“You have men and women in your community who are willing to die for you, willing to die for your family,” insisted Lawson, who – as a former police officer herself – spoke on behalf of 15,000 members of the police union. The only suitable way to display proper gratitude to the heroic paladins of public order, according to Lawson, is to protect their purported authority to invade your home and kill you with impunity – a privilege that would be undermined by SB 1.

The text of SB 1 states that its legislative purpose “is to protect citizens from unlawful entry into their homes by law enforcement officers or persons pretending to be law enforcement officers. Both citizens and law enforcement officers benefit from clear guidance about the parameters of lawful home entry, which will reduce the potential for violence and respect the privacy and property of citizens.”

To that end, the bill recognizes that an individual “may use force … to prevent or terminate a law enforcement officer’s unlawful entry.”

Although Lawson’s hunting metaphor was probably used because it was a convenient cliché, it contains a deeper significance that should not be ignored: Like the rest of the State’s exalted brotherhood of coercion, she assumes that the privacy of the individual’s home falls within the police officer’s natural habitat.

SB1 is not an innovation; it simply restores an explicit understanding of Indiana’s “castle doctrine,” which was subverted last year in the Indiana State Supreme Court’s Barnes v. State ruling. As a wire service report observed at the time, that ruling effectively nullified the core protections contained in the Fourth Amendment and the equivalent provision in the Indiana constitution, as well as protections and immunities recognized by “common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215.” The 3–2 decision last May 12 held that Indiana residents have no right to obstruct unlawful police incursions into their homes.

As summarized by a legislative report last November, the incident that gave rise to the Barnes ruling occurred four years earlier, when police were summoned to the home of Richard Barnes and his wife by a 911 call reporting a domestic disturbance.

Barnes was in the parking lot arguing with his girlfriend when the police arrived. She had already thrown a duffel bag of his belongings outside the apartment, and told him to “take the rest of his stuff.” As Barnes re-entered the apartment to do so, the police attempted to follow him inside. Barnes quite properly told the police to stay out, and enforced that lawful order by shoving a police officer who disobeyed.

Barnes was charged with Battery on a Police Officer, Resisting Law Enforcement, Disorderly Conduct, and Interfering with the Reporting of a Crime. The judge rejected a proposed jury instruction that Barnes had the right to resist unlawful police entry, and he was convicted on the second and third charges. The Court of Appeals ruled that the trial court committed a reversible error by rejecting that jury instruction. The state, frantic appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld Barnes’s conviction.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” wrote Justice Steven David. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

Although the “risks” to a police officer in such an encounter are vanishingly small, we shouldn’t forget that at all times, and in all places, “officer safety” is the controlling priority. “It’s not surprising that [the court] would say there’s no right to beat the hell out of the officer,” commented Professor Ivan Bodensteiner of Valparaiso University School of Law.

When a cop invades a home without legal authority, he is acting as a criminal, rather than a peace officer. SB 1 recognizes that principle by focusing on the act of illegal entry, rather than the identity of the aggressor.

The measure allows for forcible entry only when the officer has a valid warrant or legitimate probable cause; is in pursuit of a criminal suspect; or is acting with the consent or on the invitation of an adult resident. In other words: It would restore the status quo ante Barnes, which – in nullifying the Fourth Amendment – actually issued a hunting license to the police.

Last June, 71 members of the state legislature filed a petition with the Supreme Court protesting the Barnes decision and demanding that it be revisited. In September, the Court issued a ruling reiterating the claim that “the Castle Doctrine is not a defense to the crime of battery or other violent acts on a police officer,” and recognizing that the state legislature had the authority to create statutory defenses against that supposed crime.

“Our laws, our statutes, our Constitution, and the value of our country [were built] on one premise, and that was to defend our citizens against the government –not defend our government against our citizens,” noted State Senator Mike Young of Indianapolis, author of SB 1. “The [Barnes] ruling was a ruling that defended the government against the citizens.”

Rep. Jud McMillin of Dearborn, who wrote the house version of the bill, added: “The distinction here is not between police officers and citizens. The distinction to be made here is between what is lawful and what is unlawful. In a society where we value our freedoms, we cannot have a bright-line test that tells people when they cannot exercise their freedoms.”*

Such talk is intolerable to those employed by Indiana’s affiliate of the Homeland Security State, who insist that public policy must preserve the privileges of the powerful, rather that the rights of the individual.

“We believe people have the right to be secure in their homes,” testified Hendricks County Sheriff Dave Galloway, uttering a sentence pregnant with the invalidating conjunction “but” – which, of course, followed immediately. “But the people who hear about this law are going to think it’s okay to kill a law enforcement officer. What you and I think is `reasonable’ isn’t the same as somebody high on meth. They’re going to shoot first, and ask questions later.”

A far greater and more common danger is that posed by police officers who are high on the most lethal of all narcotics – power. The official position of the Indiana Fraternal Order of Police is that any use of coercive force by the State’s costumed enforcers is self-validating.

“Our position is there is never an opportunity to resist law enforcement,” insisted Bill Owensby, president of the Indianapolis FOP. A great deal is revealed in Owensby’s choice of adverb: “Never” would apply to situations in which police officers commit unambiguous crimes against person and property.

Among the most prominent critics of SB 1 are rent-seeking activists and social engineers attached to the state’s domestic violence industry, who insist that the measure would impede the ability of police to respond to situations involving spousal abuse. Under the “no-resistance” doctrine, however, a police officer can commit domestic violence and then charge the victim with a crime if she resists. As was illustrated by the case of Jerry Cunningham, the former assistant chief of the Danville, Indiana Police Department, police and prosecutors are eager to extenuate crimes of domestic violence when perpetrated by a member of their hyper-violent sodality.

In October 2010, Cunningham – who was in the middle of a divorce – tracked his estranged wife to another man’s home. After tearing down the screen door, Cunningham began what was described as an “altercation” in which he slapped his wife and slugged her paramour. A neighbor called 911 to report the incident, but made the mistake of identifying Cunningham as a police officer.

As a result, rather than being “cuffed and stuffed” by a SWAT team, Cunningham received the personal attention of Chief Keith Gill, who displayed unaccustomed daintiness in bringing in his underling. Rather than booking him immediately into the jail, Gill took Cunningham to his home “to find out what’s going on – call for help, call for some counseling,” the Chief later recounted.

After being placed on paid vacation (which was hastily redefined as “medical leave” in order to keep him on the payroll after the police merit board ruled that he be suspended without pay), Cunningham faced three charges, including a felonious unlawful home entry. He was eventually found guilty only of one count of misdemeanor battery. He was given a 363-day suspended jail sentence and slapped with a fine of $1. He was also permitted to keep his job, albeit with a reduction in rank to patrolman – a position in which, under the Barnes ruling, he would be permitted to invade homes at will and shoot anyone who resists his criminal aggression.

Cunningham was not the only domestic abuser on the payroll of the Danville PD, nor was he even the most violent offender; that distinction belongs to Officer Chris Gill, the Chief’s son. According to his ex-wife Teresa, Officer Gill repeatedly beat her, throwing her against the wall of their home and even threatening to murder her in the presence of their child.

An investigation of Officer Gill conducted by Policeabuse.com – a group composed of retired police officers, private investigators, and court-qualified expert witnesses on police practices — revealed a long history of official misconduct and criminal behavior by the gypsy cop. Gill had been cashiered by police departments in Paris and Atwood, Illinois, before his father made room for him on the Danville PD. Sheltered behind the impregnable barricade of nepotism, Gill continues to prowl the streets of Danville despite protection orders granted to his ex-wife and ex-in-laws – and a pending criminal trial on domestic abuse charges.

As her marriage with the officer disintegrated, Teresa Gill placed their daughter with her mother and father, Joyce and Robert Abernathy. In March 2010, while Officer Gill was still on the payroll of the Paris, Illinois PD, he used his position to remove the child from the Abertnathys’ home: He filed a false police report claiming that Teresa had threatened to kill that child. As he collected the child from her grandparents, Gill lifted his coat to display his gun and badge in a vulgar display of murderous intent.

During an April 2010 child visitation, Gill assaulted both Teresa and their son, which resulted in Teresa filing felony domestic battery charges against him.

Gill, who stands to lose his job if he is convicted, has repeatedly barraged his soon-to-be-ex-wife and her parents with threats of lethal violence – while reveling in his sense of privilege as a member of the Brotherhood in Blue.

“I’m gonna do whatever it takes to f**k up your life,” Gill promised in a June 22, 2010 text message to Teresa. “I am a cop, they won’t believe you. Have them drop [the charges] and I will stop… Nice try Whore.”

During legislative hearings about the Barnes ruling, Leo Blackwell, President of Indiana’s Fraternal Order of Police insisted that “legal disputes about the right of entry should be decided by the courts, not on the doorstep.” Under the doctrine supported by Blackwell’s police union, Gill could invade his estranged wife’s home without a warrant or probable cause – and then arrest and charge her with a crime if she proved to be insufficiently submissive. Sure, this would eventually get straightened out by the courts – assuming that Teresa and her children survive the initial encounter.

“The FOP will not compromise when it comes to officer safety,” declared Blackwell in a recent legislative alert to union members. SB 1 “is terrible for law enforcement and could result in the loss of life (maybe yours) if passed.” According to the union, it is “never” permissible to resist a police officer – even when the sacred cause of preserving “officer safety”means leaving a battered and terrorized woman entirely defenseless because the terrorist is carrying a badge.

* It should be acknowledged that Rep. McMillin’s zeal for uniform application of the law has its limits: He withdrew a measure proposing drug tests for welfare recipients after it was amended to include legislators. For McMillin, apparently, some tax-consumers are more equal than others.

As Republic magazine previously reported, Laurence – who faces felony charges involving prescription drug fraud – is suspected of involvement in a local drug trafficking ring. Many residents of the tiny community, including former police officers, have described incidents of intimidation, harassment, and retaliation by Laurence and his officers, including vandalism, false arrest, and death threats.

On March 9, subsequent to his arrest and release on $20,000 bail, Laurence was fired by the Covington City Council. A follow-up meeting on March 12 led to the resignations of Detective Andrew Montgomery and Officer Troy Arthur. As a result, “We are now completely without a police department,” Covington resident and former CPD Officer Scott Parker told Republic. Covington Mayor pro tem Allan Snider resigned the same evening.

According to Parker, the residual municipal government, which includes Council members Martha “Marty” Smith and Rose Diaz, as well as newly appointed Mayor pro tem Shirley Erichson, is expected to reinstate former Police Chief Dowell Missildine and Officer Kayla Richardson. Missildine, who was the department’s founding chief, was investigating Laurence as a suspect in the theft of drugs from an evidence locker when he was ousted as chief nine months ago. Officer Richardson, who was also involved in that investigation, was purged shortly thereafter. Both of them filed detailed reports with the Texas Rangers describing Laurence’s alleged involvement in drug trafficking and his illegal reprisals against his critics and political opponents.

“There is peace among people now knowing that he’s not there,” Parker told Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA, with reference to Laurence’s eviction from the position of police chief. “They know that Laurence’s officers who were mistreating people are no longer there. There’s comfort now.”

“I think there’s a lot of relief,” concurred City Council member Rose Diaz.

While Kayla Richardson is also relieved that Laurence and his comrades are gone, she is concerned that Laurence and his allies may still be able to intimidate the understaffed city government. Richardson’s fiancé, Clifton Shelby, was arrested during a December City Council meeting in an obvious act of retaliation, and is still dealing with a bogus assault charge. She also pointed out to Republic that Covington falls within the jurisdiction of the scandal-plagued Hill County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Jeffrey Lyon has been sued by two former deputies; five others have filed sexual harassment complaints against him. Lyon’s supporters describe the charges as election-year acts of “character assassination.” One act described in a sexual harassment complaint has been confirmed by the Sheriff’s supporters, who insist that it was intended as a “joke.”

Small-town law enforcement scandals are becoming very commonplace. Many cash-poor municipalities are simply liquidating local police forces outright.

At the same time Covington, Texas was dispensing with its police force, the Village Council of Mount Sterling, Ohio — population 1,800 — disbanded its entire police force following an incident in which a police officer assaulted a child with a Taser.

Officer Scott O’Neil was called to deal with a 9-year-old who refused to go to school. According to the Columbus Dispatch, “the situation somehow escalated” and O’Neill used his Taser to subdue the child.

A woman who spoke with the victim’s mother said that the child appeared to have suffered a total of six burns on his back from multiple Taser strikes. Details of the incident aren’t available because Village Administrator Joe Johnson, in violation of the Ohio open records law, has refused to release the official report. The Village Council learned of the assault from another police department, because Police Chief Mike McCoy initially withheld information about it from Mayor Charlie Neff.

Last August 1, Mayor Mary Lee Cook of Oak Hill, Florida (population 1544), removed Police Chief Linda Young. The City Commission then abolished the entire six-member police force. As is so often the case, it wasn’t clear why Oak Hill, a town with a population of 1544 with a non-existent violent crime problem, considered a police force to be a necessity.

Prior to becoming Mayor, Mrs. Cook had been one of two members of the five-member City Commission seeking the removal of Chief Young, who was appointed to the post in 2010. The other negative vote had been case by then-Mayor Darla Lauer, who resigned roughly a year later to protest the corruption and incompetence of the police force.

In her application to the Oak Hill Police Force in 2002, Young admitted to an extensive history of drug use, which included marijuana, cocaine, and quaaludes. Immediately following her appointment, Young certified one newly hired officer, Brandy Sutherlin, as “fit for duty” — even though he failed a drug test immediately before being sworn in. Shortly thereafter, Sutherlin — who was off-duty at the time — got involved in a “road rage” incident in which he pursued another motorist on I-95 at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour while firing several shots at the fleeing vehicle. At the time, Sutherlin’s three young children were in the car with him, a fact that prompted a 9-11 dispatcher to demand repeatedly that he stand down.

Cook and Lauer were not the only outspoken critics of Chief Young. Sgt. Manny Perez filed an affidavit accusing Young of ticket-fixing, sexual and ethnic harassment (such as grabbing him in intimate fashion and referring to him by such demeaning nicknames as “Mexican jumping bean”), and official corruption. Perez also claimed that after he expressed misgivings about Young’s performance to a member of the City Commission, the Chief “initiated two (2) Internal Affairs investigations” against him.

Perez was accused of stealing gasoline and suspended from the force – but the charge was later dismissed as “unfounded.”

In an interview with NSBNNews.net, Perez described Young as a Machiavellian operator who “pits officer against officer and … gets them to do her bidding.” Young, Perez insists, should “never have been promoted as chief or even hired as an officer in the first place since she has admitted to more than a hundred felonies” – meaning one hundred separate instances of cocaine use. The Oak Hill PD was a “sinking ship,” Perez lamented, with officers being driven out by a “coke-snorting police chief.”

In another act of retaliation, Young attempted to frame Mayor Cook – an 84-year-old woman – on drug charges. Last June 6, deputies assigned to the East Volusia County Narcotics Task Force appeared on Young’s doorstep and explained that they had received a report from Chief Young that following an “anonymous tip” she had found evidence of a marijuana grow in Cook’s backyard. Without notifying Cook or presenting a search warrant, Young had climbed a fence and taken photographs of the illicit plants.

The deputies searched Cook’s backyard and found a half-dozen ragged, dried-out pot plants. Rather than arresting the octogenarian and charging her with a drug offense, the deputies had the rare and commendable good sense to recognize the clumsy frame-up and destroyed the plants instead.

Interestingly, former Covington Police Chief Laurence used a variation on this tactic against Council member Marty Smith, threatening to arrest her or her grandchildren on drug trafficking charges.

Mount Sterling and, at least temporarily, Covington have joined a substantial and growing roster of small towns that have recently dispensed with municipal police departments. In one case, police corruption led to the abolition of an entire city government: Maywood, California’s municipal government was dissolved after repeated lawsuits against its police department left it bankrupt Other small towns across the country — such as Kilbruck, Pennsylvania; Columbus, New Mexico; Hoschton, Georgia; and Pewaukee, Wisconsin — have dismissed their police forces, usually as an austerity measure.

Go here to read more about recent events in Covington, Texas.

The attack caused Maudsley, who had been arrested after allegedly leaving the scene of two traffic accidents, to fall backwards and hit her head on the concrete sidewalk. The 19-year-old immediately lost consciousness and lapsed into what appears to be an irreversible coma. Cole claimed that using the Taser was appropriate because of concerns that the woman, who was running in the direction of a highway, might be hit by a car — something that could have been prevented had the officer been willing to exert himself just a little bit.

“Tell me that’s not excessive force,” protested Cheryl Maudsley, the victim’s mother. “I’m not saying she was an angel, but she didn’t deserve that. He couldn’t reach out and grab her? He was an arm’s length away.”

Going “hands-on,” however, posed unacceptable risks, Cole protested during the inquiry.

“I [couldn't] just jump on her,” Cole maintained. “I’m three times her weight. If we go down, one or both of us is going to get hurt. The Taser is the intermediate weapon of choice.”

Although routinely described as a “non-lethal” alternative to firearms, the Taser is regarded as a deadly weapon when it is seized by a criminal suspect and used against a police officer. Assuming that it is properly described as an “intermediate” option in the use-of-force continuum, Cole’s decision to employ it against a tiny, handcuffed, non-violent misdemeanor suspect is an unmistakable violation of the guidelines contained in the Florida Highway Patrol’s policy manual. Use of a Taser (referred to as an Electronic Control Device, or ECD) by a trooper, the manual states, is appropriate only in dealing with a suspect who “(a) Has the apparent ability to physically threaten the [officer] or others; or, (b) Is preparing or attempting to flee or escape. (NOTE: Fleeing cannot be the sole reason for deployment of the ECD).” (Emphasis in the original.)

The manual also dictates that “Unless exigent circumstances exist, members shall not use the device in the following situations: (a) In a punitive or coercive manner;
(b) On a handcuffed or secured prisoner” (emphasis in the original). While Maudsley was not “secured,” she was handcuffed. Cole’s laziness or lack of conditioning did not constitute an “exigent” circumstance.

In retrospect, despite the consequences to a non-violent offender who posed no threat to anybody, Cole defiantly said that he would do exactly the same thing in the future under the same circumstances. After reviewing the incident, both the Florida Highway Patrol and the Florida State Department of Law Enforcement concurred with Cole, ruling that his actions were “justified.” Maudsley’s family has filed a lawsuit against the FHP, which is protected from public accountability through the legal fiction called “sovereign immunity.”

Read more here. Watch the video of the Taser assault here.

According to Florida Trooper Dan Cole, the Taser strike against handcuffed Danielle Maudsley that left her brain-dead was justified because “she was already outrunning me.” A dashcam video of the September 19 incident documents that at the time Cole used the Taser, the fleeing woman — who, as Cole said, was roughly one-third his weight — was, at most, a couple of feet away. During the official inquiry, Cole likewise admitted that he did not issue a verbal warning about the Taser strike because of the “short time” in which the incident occurred and the urgent need to “stop her.”

The attack caused Maudsley, who had been arrested after allegedly leaving the scene of two traffic accidents, to fall backwards and hit her head on the concrete sidewalk. The 19-year-old immediately lost consciousness and lapsed into what appears to be an irreversible coma. Cole claimed that using the Taser was appropriate because of concerns that the woman, who was running in the direction of a highway, might be hit by a car — something that could have been prevented had the officer been willing to exert himself just a little bit.

“Tell me that’s not excessive force,” protested Cheryl Maudsley, the victim’s mother. “I’m not saying she was an angel, but she didn’t deserve that. He couldn’t reach out and grab her? He was an arm’s length away.”

Going “hands-on,” however, posed unacceptable risks, Cole protested during the inquiry.

“I [couldn't] just jump on her,” Cole maintained. “I’m three times her weight. If we go down, one or both of us is going to get hurt. The Taser is the intermediate weapon of choice.”

Although routinely described as a “non-lethal” alternative to firearms, the Taser is regarded as a deadly weapon when it is seized by a criminal suspect and used against a police officer. Assuming that it is properly described as an “intermediate” option in the use-of-force continuum, Cole’s decision to employ it against a tiny, handcuffed, non-violent misdemeanor suspect is an unmistakable violation of the guidelines contained in the Florida Highway Patrol’s policy manual. Use of a Taser (referred to as an Electronic Control Device, or ECD) by a trooper, the manual states, is appropriate only in dealing with a suspect who “(a) Has the apparent ability to physically threaten the [officer] or others; or, (b) Is preparing or attempting to flee or escape. (NOTE: Fleeing cannot be the sole reason for deployment of the ECD).” (Emphasis in the original.)

The manual also dictates that “Unless exigent circumstances exist, members shall not use the device in the following situations: (a) In a punitive or coercive manner;
(b) On a handcuffed or secured prisoner” (emphasis in the original). While Maudsley was not “secured,” she was handcuffed. Cole’s laziness or lack of conditioning did not constitute an “exigent” circumstance.

In retrospect, despite the consequences to a non-violent offender who posed no threat to anybody, Cole defiantly said that he would do exactly the same thing in the future under the same circumstances. After reviewing the incident, both the Florida Highway Patrol and the Florida State Department of Law Enforcement concurred with Cole, ruling that his actions were “justified.” Maudsley’s family has filed a lawsuit against the FHP, which is protected from public accountability through the legal fiction called “sovereign immunity.”

Read more here. Watch the video of the Taser assault here.

Ruling in favor of a lawsuit filed by a one-person corporate front group, the Washington State Supreme Court overturned a ballot initiative banning the use of traffic enforcement cameras in Mukilteo, an upscale town of roughly 20,000 people. That initiative was enacted with a 71 percent majority – a fact that was blithely dismissed by the court.

“We hold that because the legislature expressly granted authority to the governing body of the city of Mukilteo to enact ordinances on the use of automated traffic safety cameras, the subject matter of Proposition 1 is not within the initiative power,” wrote Justice Barbara A. Madsen. “The legislature’s grant of authority does not extend to the electorate.”

In fact, any authority exercised by the state legislature begins with the electorate, and can be revoked by it. This is made clear in Article One, Section 1 of the Washington State Constitution, which reiterates the foundational tenet of America’s constitutional system: “All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed….”

The court’s totalitarian reasoning effectively substitutes the word “submission” for “consent.”

As initiative co-sponsor Tim Eyman pointed out in an interview with TheNewspaper.com, the Washington Supreme Court inverted that political order by pretending that all power originates with the political class:

 The government’s going to decide which issues are okay for you to talk about and which issues are not okay for you to talk about. Essentially the courts, the government and red light camera companies are saying, ‘Wait a minute, if you have a discussion and debate on this, you’re going to end up coming out against what we want and so therefore we have to shut down this discussion. There must not be any more votes on this topic because they don’t go our way.’ It’s Putin-esque.

The lawsuit challenging the initiative was filed by “Mukilteo Citizens for Simple Government,” a one-person front group for the city government and American Traffic Solutions – one of several corrupt and highly influential corporate entities promoting the red light camera scam in cities nation-wide.

In every city where it has been put to a vote, the unconstitutional practice of automated traffic enforcement has been defeated. This is why local governments and the corporate allies, working in tandem with corrupt judicial officials, are simply shutting down any avenue of peaceful political redress by opponents of the red light camera syndicate.

Photo credit: YouTube via TheNewspaper.com

During a 2009 meeting of the Duncanville, Texas City Council, for example, Councilman Paul Ford used a few seconds of his time to condemn Mayor David Green’s support for the unconstitutional use of red light cameras. The Mayor replied by declaring Ford out of order, cutting his mike and the audio recording, and ordering the Police Chief to arrest the Councilman.

Most of the time, supporters of the red light camera racket prefer to conduct their dirty business with a degree of subtlety.

During the 2010 election cycle, ATS, the leading contractor in the hugely profitable and deeply corrupt traffic enforcement racket, spent millions of dollars in a futile effort to defeat the citizen-driven initiatives in five cities – including Houston, Texas and Anaheim, California. Rather than deferring to the will of the sovereign people, ATS and its allies in the political class went to court. In Houston, which was ATS’s biggest account, the corporation filed a federal lawsuit to stop citizens from voting on the measure.

When opponents of the red light camera racket prevailed, Houston’s mayor and City Council, citing the possibility of another lawsuit, refused to cancel its contract, and simply continued to operate the cameras in defiance of the election results. Houston’s government harvested $44 million in red light camera citations since the surveillance cameras were installed in 2006. A protest movement sprung up urging Houston residents not to pay any citations issued through the use of red light cameras.

In January, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes –acting without even a whisper of constitutional or legal authority – issued a one-sentence order ruling that the removal of ATS’s revenue-collecting robot cameras was “denied.”

Institutional arrogance of that kind led to revolutionary bloodshed before. It’s quite likely this will happen again – and sooner than most people expect.

Read more at TheNewspaper.com.

A Republic Magazine exclusive

UPDATE, March 10: Chief Laurence was fired by the Covington City Council during its March 9 meeting.

Wade Laurence, Chief of Police in a minuscule town called Covington, Texas, has been arrested by the Texas Rangers and charged with using a fraudulent prescription to obtain controlled substances, a third degree felony. With the Chief free on $20,000 bail, the City Council is planning to meet this evening (March 9), reportedly to consider disbanding the police force. Under Wade’s direction, the Covington PD has carried out what some residents of the town — including former members of the police force — describe as something akin to a reign of terror. In addition to fraudulently procuring prescription medications, Laurence has been accused of involvement in dealing drugs to local schoolchildren and illegal diversion of confiscated marijuana.

“They are scared to death now,” says City Council member Martha Smith. “They lock their doors, they lock their car doors because they are scared of the police.”

A report filed with the Texas Rangers by Officer Kayla Richardson (who provided a copy to Republic) describes how Wade — at the time a sergeant in the Covington PD — engineered the removal of Chief Dowell Missildine about a year ago. This happened after Chief Missildine began investigating Wade’s suspected theft of hydrocodone pills (a controlled substance) from the department’s evidence locker.

In his own report to the Rangers, Missildine relates how Wade had “asked me at one time if he could have Dr. [Petros] Chapanos fill some prescriptions in my name” for hydrocodone “because he stated that he accidentally threw his prescription in the trash…. I told Wade that I did not think he would do that because it was illegal.” Missildine later documented that Wade had indeed used the Chief’s prescription to obtain both hyrdocodone and Cialis. (Copies of those documents were provided to Republic as well).

Missildine recalled that he and Officer Richardson “had several conversations and she told me that [citizens] were complaining about drug activity and allegations of officers selling drugs to school kids and wanting her to do something about it. I told her I knew of most of the situations she was telling me about because of citizens contacting me also.” Last October, after Wade had forced out Missildine and replaced him as Chief, Richardson — who was still on the force — told him that “she was afraid for her life and that she felt they [Wade and his allies on the police force] were going to set her up on a traffic stop and have her killed because of information she was aware of in reference to the hydrocodone case.”

Shortly thereafter, Officer Richardson was also purged from the police force. She was not the only resident of the 250-person town — located a short distance south of Forth Worth — who is afraid of potentially lethal reprisals from the police.

“I’m scared people are going to start shooting me,” Covington-area resident Tracey Baccus told Republic. Baccus, who runs a sewer service company, volunteers in local sports leagues as a coach and umpire. Roughly a year ago he became concerned when he noticed that a number of kids displayed the symptoms of drug use.

“Kids began to tell me that stuff was being sold to them by the police,” Baccus recounted to Republic. “They said the police had assured them, `It’s not drugs, it’s prescription meds — and they’re legal.’” The supposedly innocuous “meds” included what Baccus described as “military-grade” Xanax. He contacted Missildine with his concerns.

“We talked to DEA; we talked to everybody,” he recalls. “I told Kayla [Richardson], and they took care of her. They even arrested her boyfriend in a City Council meeting.”

Retaliation: Shelby arrested at Covington City Council meeting

Richardson’s fiance, Clifton Shelby, was arrested during the same City Council meeting in which she appealed her termination.To justify this transparent act of retaliation, Chief Wade filed a complaint charging Shelby with “assault with a deadly weapon” for an incident on a local highway several weeks earlier that didn’t involve a collision: As Shelby, who was driving his truck, passed Wade’s Corvette on the wet and slippery road, he momentarily swerved into the other lane. Although Wade confronted Shelby at the side of the road, he didn’t write a citation or file a complaint until much later — when it offered him an opportunity to humiliate both Richardson and Shelby by dragging him from a public meeting in handcuffs.

The threats and retaliatory harassment have only escalated since then. Former Fire Chief George Burnett*, who circulated a petition calling to disband the police department, was also threatened by Chief Wade.

“The police chief and three other of his police came down and were raising Cain about me getting this petition signed,” Burnett told Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA. “They said I was raising a lot of trouble in town.”

Council member Martha Smith, 69, was threatened with arrest when she visited the municipal office to request copies of the official minutes for the years 2005-2007.

After Smith made her request, the town clerk, Courtney Childress — Wade’s girlfriend — “said that she wanted to talk to me,” Smith informed Republic. The two went to a back room where Childress indignantly told Smith that “CPS had been called and were trying to get custody of her son.” Smith, who had not called CPS on anybody, was puzzled by Childress’s behavior, which was aggressive and confrontational. “It seemed like she was trying to provoke me,” Smith related — an impression that was fortified when Wade and a Covington PD Detective named Andy Montgomery suddenly flanked Childress.

By this time, according to Smith, “I’d already put my hands behind my back.” However, hauling away a 69-year-old female City Council member would require some evidence of a crime, and Smith hadn’t provided any. She was allowed to leave — only to experience another shock when she went home.

“My 16-year-old foster son told me that a girl at school that day said that I was supposed to be arrested,” Smith reports. “It seems pretty clear that they were trying to set me up, and that if I had even touched her [Childress], they planned to take me to jail.”

This wasn’t the only threat Smith has endured.

“I was told that if I talked to the Texas Rangers [about Wade and his associates on the force] they would find some way to frame me or my family for drug trafficking,” Smith told Republic. “They said things such as, `We know who your grandkids are buying and selling from.’ I asked them, `You want to have them tested?’ I know they’re not doing anything like that.”

Threats having failed to silence Smith, somebody apparently decided to try a different approach: Sometime during the evening of March 1, the rear windshield of her SUV was vandalized. Both Smith and Scott Parker — another former police officer — told Republic that this took place on a night when Smith’s home was kept under constant scrutiny by officers driving “blacked-out” Covington SUVs.

Three Covington residents — including two former police officers — suspect that Wade and an ally on the police force are improperly shipping controlled substances, out of state. A “Transport Notice” issued last September (a copy of which was provided to Republic) announced that Detective Montgomery — who, along with Chief Wade, threatened Council member Martha Smith — planned to carry drug paraphernalia “to K-9 trainer Marcus Rynak” in Sterling, Colorado. Sources close to the Covington PD claim that a large amount of confiscated marijuana that should have been shipped to a Texas Department of Public Safety facility in Waco have been illegally diverted to Colorado.

Covington is one of several Texas communities that are dealing with drug-related municipal corruption:

*As Republic previously reported, Constable Fred Walker of Texas’s Shelby County allegedly ordered the illegal bugging of municipal officials in the village of Tenaha, which has been at the center of a multi-million-dollar drug asset forfeiture scam. Those charges were made in an affidavit filed by Roderette McClure, who was arrested last fall for breaking into the offices at Walker’s direction. McClure, who on February 14 pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, told FBI investigators that Constable Walker “had him install surveillance cameras disguised as smoke detectors and hidden voice-activated digital recording equipment in the offices of Tenana Mayor George Boyers and deputy city marshal Barry Washington,” reports the AP. “Walker said he wanted to `cover’ himself over the traffic stops, most of which were conducted by Washington….”

According to McClure’s affidavit, he and Walker ran a drug trafficking ring when Walker was City Marshal. They eventually embezzled roughly 500 pounds in contraband – including marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and hydrocone – from the Tenaha City Marshal’s office evidence room. In November 2010, the pair received an extortion threat from someone identifying himself as “Jack Frost” who said he was aware that Walker and McClure were stealing confiscated drugs and selling them. This led them to “stage a burglary as a cover for the missing drugs” – and then to install the listening devices in city office buildings in order to find out who was aware the City Marshall was moonlighting as a drug lord.

*In late February, Willie Gandara, Jr., a Commissioner in El Paso County, was arrested as part of a multi-jurisdictional investigation into drug trafficking.The five-count federal indictment accuses Gandara – referred to in the document by the pseudonym “Godfather” — of possessing 110 pounds of marijuana and operating a so-called “stash house” for drug traffickers.

Last September, Willie Gandara, Jr., a County Commissioner  in Texas’ El Paso County, assailed what he called “wolves in sheep’s clothing” who opposed the war on drugs. Such people, Gandara told the El Paso Times, are acting on an “ulterior motive.” Legalizing drugs, insisted Commissioner Gandara, is a coward’s approach to a social problem, as well as “an insult to our men and women in law enforcement, and the laziest form of parenting our children and youth about the effects of drugs.”

Gandara directed those remarks at aspiring legislative candidate Beto O’Rourke, who has advocated legalization of marijuana as a way of reducing the profits accumulated by Mexican drug cartels. The cartels have benefited enormously from drug prohibition, which amounts to a huge price support program for some of the most vicious criminal personalities in human history.

If the charges against Gandara are true, it’s likely that his attacks on drug war critics were inspired by a desire to preserve his illicit profits.

Shortly before Chief Laurence was arrested, Republic magazine made repeated efforts to contact him to respond to allegations that he — like Constable Walker and Commissioner Gandara — was playing both sides of the “War on Drugs.” He declined to answer our requests for information.

“I was proud to be a police officer, but I can understand why people in Covington are afraid of the police force and want to see it disbanded now,” Kayla Richardson lamented to Republic. “The police should be protecting people’s rights, not intimidating and threatening them.”

Go here for more coverage of events in Covington.

*The original version of this story incorrectly identified Mr. Burnett as the “Covington Fire Chief.” As he explains in a comment below, he’s not currently a fire chief, and the fire department is not part of Covington’s municipal government. I regret the error, and appreciate Mr. Burnett’s correction. — WNG

The Arizona Star reports that Pauline Guerena — who is married to Jose’s brother, Alejandro — her father, Jose Celaya, and her sister, Denise Ruiz, were arrested outside their home by deputies on the morning of March 8. The deputies– who, oddly enough, weren’t attired in paramilitary drag — were waiting to serve a search warrant. Somehow they managed to take the suspects into custody without laying siege to the home as if they were conducting counter-insurgency operations in Fallujah, which most likely proved to be a frustrating experience for the officers.

The suspects — who supposedly belong to what the government-aligned media is calling the “Guerena Drug Trafficking Organization” — were charged with “illegal control of enterprise, marijuana possession for sale, fraudulent schemes and artifice,” and money laundering. Those charges will doubtless result in the “forfeiture” of $30,000 deputies found in a vehicles belonging to the suspects. Interestingly, although the charges assume the existence of marijuana, no mention was made of the discovery of such contraband as a result of the arrests.

Jose Guerena, an honorably discharged Marine veteran of multiple tours in Iraq, was killed by the Pima County SWAT team during a raid on the morning of May 5, 2011. He had just fallen asleep after a graveyard shift at a local copper mine when his panicked wife, Vanessa, informed him that there were armed men surrounding their house. Guerena told his wife to take their four-year-old son, Joel, and hide in the closet — then he grabbed his AR 10 rifle to confront the invaders. Although Guerena never fired a shot — in fact, he never released the safety on his rifle — he was hit with 22 of an estimated 71 shots fired within a matter of seconds.

Although his injuries were survivable, and there was at least one field medic in the SWAT team that laid siege to the home, Guerena was allowed to bleed to death. SWAT operators turned away paramedics who arrived on the scene within a few minutes of the shooting; rather than rendering aid, they dispatched a remote-controlled robot to poke and nudge the dying man until they were able to verify that he had died.

Vanessa, who had begged the assailants to help her husband, was thrown to the ground and injured, and then interrogated by detectives. She didn’t learn until roughly half-way through the interrogation that Jose had died. The couple’s young son, who had been left alone in the house, eventually wandered out of his own accord, after seeing his father’s mangled and bleeding form.

No evidence of any criminal activity was ever found in Jose Guerena’s home — apart from the exit holes created by the officially sanctioned death squad that murdered him.

The original story put out by the Pima County Sheriff Charles Dupnik was Guerena was suspected of involvement in a marijuana trafficking conspiracy. Amid public outrage over Guerena’s death, the official line was revised: Jose and his family, the public was informed, were somehow “connected” to an alleged home invasion robbery ring, as were three other homes targeted in the same May 5 SWAT operation.

By allowing Guerena to die, rather than rendering aid, the SWAT team committed an act of second degree criminal homicide. Furthermore, since the raid was staged on the basis of an invalid warrant, it was a home invasion robbery — and the unjustified death of Jose Guerena could actually qualify as capital murder under section 13-1105 of the Arizona state code.

In a museum-quality example of “testimony against interest,” Mike Storie, the police union lawyer representing the SWAT operators who murdered Jose Guerena in his home on May 5, admitted during a May 19, 2011 press conference that the supposed search warrant was invalid.

As reported by the Arizona Star, Storie insisted that if the Guerena family had permitted the SWAT team their home, those inside “probably … wouldn’t have been arrested.” This is because the “warrant was not directed at any particular person, and Guerena’s home was not mentioned, but it was targeting whoever might be inside the residence….”

While Dagan insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, he told Stahl in a “60 Minutes” interview to be broadcast this Sunday that “An attack on Iran before you are exploring all other approaches is not the right way” to proceed.

As head of Israeli intelligence, Dagan reportedly presided over an ambitious program to gather intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program and, where possible, destabilize it. That campaign included targeted assassinations, computer virus attacks, and other low-intensity war tactics. Like most of the Israeli political establishment, Dagan is determined to contain a potential threat from Iran. Unlike Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and most U.S. political leaders, however, Dagan — who has detailed information regarding the inner workings of the Iranian government, its goals, tactics, and objectives — believes that the Iranian rulers can be dealt with through negotiation and deterrence.

Dagan’s assessment of Iran as a rational actor — albeit one following something other than a “Western” model of rationality — is at odds with the emerging narrative of Iran as a country ruled by a deranged theocratic clique motivated by messianic delusions and bent on an apocalyptic war with Israel. For many supporters of Israel, that depiction had dramatic resonance during the past week, in which many Jews observed the holiday Purim — which commemorates the deliverance of the captive Jews from the murderous ambitions of Haman, an adviser to the Persian king at a time when Israel was under that ancient empire’s dominion.

Bob Wright of The Atlantic describes how Netanyahu used Purim as a thematic device during his recent visit to Washington, D.C. — particularly his meeting with President Obama:

Yesterday [March 5] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Obama a copy of the book of Esther, which will be read in synagogues this week in observance of Purim. Esther tells the story of a Persian government that tries and fails to wipe out all the Jews in the Persian Empire. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Netanyahu saw this as an occasion to generalize about Persians (or, as we call them today, Iranians). He told Obama, “Then, too, they wanted to wipe us out.”

Here’s a thought experiment: Suppose that an Arab or Iranian leader of Muslim faith met with President Obama and told him about some part of the Koran that alludes to conflict between Muhammad and Jewish tribes. For example, according to Muslim tradition, the Jewish tribe known as the Qurayzah, though living in Muhammad’s town of Medina, secretly sided with Muhammad’s enemies in Mecca. Suppose this Muslim said to Obama, “Then, too, the Jews were bent on destroying Muslims.” What would our reaction be?

“Why is it routine to talk about Iranian religious fanatics who are leading us toward war and so rare to acknowledge the role that religious tribalism in America–among both conservative Jews and conservative Christians–is playing in leading us to war?” asks Wright. “And why is it that when Muslim radicals use religious scripture in a way that foments belligerence we consider it primitive and vile, whereas when Bibi Netanyahu does the same thing (more subtly, I grant you) we nod politely and smile?”

Read more here.

“When it comes to the kind of military action where we want to build a coalition with our international partners, then we would like to have some kind of legal basis on which to do it, as we did in Libya,” Panetta said during an extended colloquy with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama).

Significantly, the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya was coordinated by the NATO alliance (a regional UN affiliate), which acted on the supposed authority provided by a UN Security Council resolution issued in response to a petition from the Arab League. Congress played no role whatsoever in authorizing the action. As Republic has previously noted, the same Power Elite players who choreographed the Libyan intervention have revised that script, re-casting Bashir Assad in the role played by the late Muamar Ghadafi – and Secretary Panetta made it plain that the administration intends to leave Congress on the cutting room floor once again.

“Do you think you can act without Congress to initiate a no-fly zone in Syria – without congressional approval?” asked Sen. Sessions.

“Our goal would be to seek international permission,” replied Panetta, adding – as if by way of patronizing afterthought – that “we would come to the Congress and inform you” about the progress of the unconstitutional onslaught against Syria. Once “legal permission” had been granted by NATO or “some kind of UN Security Council resolution,” he maintained, Obama wouldn’t need authorization from Congress.

“They provide no legal authority,” Sessions observed with more than a hint of exasperation coloring his voice. “The only legal authority to deploy the United States military is the Congress and the president … and the Constitution.”

Clinging tenaciously to his scripted talking points, Panetta replied that the Constitution entrusts the president with the authority to act in defense of the United States – a consideration that doesn’t apply in this case, since we have never been attacked nor threatened by Syria – but when the U.S. joins an international coalition, no congressional authorization is necessary: A permission slip from the UN or NATO will suffice.

Sen. Sessions appeared to perceive the arrangement described by Panetta as an impediment to U.S. military action. The truth is exactly the opposite: Involvement in the United Nations has facilitated U.S. military adventurism by removing Congress – the body supposed to represent the people – from the equation. From its origins in World War II, the United Nations has always been a war-making entity, and U.S. involvement in it amounts to an open-ended declaration of war.

On December 20, 1945, Truman signed a measure entitled the United Nations Participation Act of 1945 (UNPA), which effectively abolished Congress’s constitutional function in declaring war. Under the UNPA, the U.S. President can “negotiate a special agreement or agreements with the Security Council” concerning the use of American military personnel and facilities for UN “peacekeeping” and “peace enforcement” missions.

According to the text of that measure, “The President shall not be deemed to require the authorization of the Congress” to make American troops and assets available to the Security Council. In essence, Truman and his successors – including George W. Bush, whose conservative supporters considered an enemy of UN-centered “multilateralism” — have used the UNPA as a perpetual declaration of war granting them authority to deploy American troops anywhere in the world under the color of the UN’s supposed authority.

Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-Michigan), who had been a defender of U.S. independence before being blackmailed by British intelligence into supporting the internationalist cause, observed during the debate over the UNPA that requiring “the consent of Congress to every use of our armed forces … would violate the spirit of the [UN] Charter” – as if that document, not the U.S. Constitution, was the one he was sworn to uphold. That confusion may have come naturally to Vandenberg, given that he had signed the Charter as a delegate to the UN’s founding conference in San Francisco.

In a tissue of tortured sophistry issued on April 1, 2011, an administration functionary named Caroline D. Krass claimed that Obama needed no congressional authorization of any kind to commit aggressive war against Libya, since in his all-sufficient and infallible judgment the possibility of “regional instability” and injury to the “credibility and effectiveness of the United Nations Security Council” posed threats to our national security that demanded a military response. Accordingly, Krass concluded, Obama could initiate war with Libya “as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive and pursuant to his foreign affairs powers … even without prior specific congressional approval.’

According to Krass, the only “possible constitutionally-based limit” on the president’s supposed authority to wage war would involve “a planned military engagement that constitutes a `war’ within the meaning of the Declaration of War Clause….” This is to say that from the Regime’s perspective, there is a vague, and not terribly important, possibility that the Declaration of War Clause might actually impose a hypothetical limit on presidential war powers. However, the memo goes on to assert that “the historical practice of even intensive military action [such as] … some two months of bombing in Yugoslavia in 1999 — without specific prior congressional approval” effectively nullifies that constitutional limitation.

Panetta was preaching the same anti-American vision in his discussion with Sen. Sessions. In doing so, he committed a “gaffe” in the Washington sense of the term – which Michael Kinsley, with unerringly precise cynicism, defined as an inadvertent admission of the truth. Seeking to walk back that admission, an anonymous Pentagon official told CNN that Panetta was merely “re-emphasizing the need for an international mandate. We are not ceding U.S. decision-making authority to some foreign body.”

There is a sense in which this is true: It is not the Obama administration that is making that concession; it was made in December 1945 – and what was given away is not the mythical “decision-making authority” of the president in matters of war, but the constitutionally mandated role of the Congress in making that decision.

To see a video of this exchange, go here.

Yes, the decal on the Stasi-mobile says "Axis." Sometimes it's just that obvious.

Organizers of the sixth annual “Border Security Expo” underway in Phoenix  have a very simple pitch for police state profiteers: “The U.S. Senate has passed a $4 billion increase in Homeland Security spending focused on gaining control over the U.S. border with Mexico — are you securing your share of this market?”

Although packaged as an event devoted to border security and immigration control, the expo is a totalitarian trade show designed to wed tax-subsidized corporate contractors with tax-devouring bureaucrats from across the United States — and from fifteen foreign countries

“Mexico, Canada, and European countries are sending delegations specifically to purchase UAVs, biometric technologies, and surveillance equipment, sensors, monitors, and vehicles,” continues the on-line promotional brochure, noting that “several billion dollars have been allocated by the U.S., Canadian, and Mexican governments” for the purpose of police state procurement. Think of it as a festive gathering of corporate whores and political pimps — only it’s the taxpayers who are getting screwed. Local new coverage displays the vapid credulity that typifies state-centric media outlets, with reporters cooing and gurgling over the shiny new hi-tech hardware — without expressing even a hint of curiosity about the uses to which it will be put.

Attendees “will see things like an unmanned patrol boat, along with surveillance cameras and radar systems that can spot a person or vehicle at a distance of eight miles,” relates one typically incurious report. “There is also a variety of vehicles designed for desert driving and equipped with attack gear like .50-caliber machine guns.

Motorola, a corporation that has long suckled at the teat of the Military-Industrial-Homeland Security Complex, proudly unveiled the “Smart Car” — a computerized police vehicle that “responds to verbal commands and uses cameras to capture license plate numbers and run them automatically.” This tricked-out Stasi-mobile, which looks like something derived from the dystopian film “RoboCop,” would act as a passive surveillance probe for an all-encompassing system of surveillance in which everybody within sensor range would be scrutinized as a criminal suspect — or, more likely, a potential “enemy combatant.” Vehicles of this type are already being used by police in East Orange, New Jersey, which — with the help of taxpayer funding from the Department of Homeland Security — is building a Panopticon-style system of immersive surveillance.

Ten years ago, the Bush administration used the image of remote-piloted drones in American skies to frighten people into supporting a war against the regime of Saddam Hussein — who supposedly planned to use those robot aircraft (which he didn’t have) to dispense death upon helpless Americans. Today, practically every police department in the United States is queuing up to get its own fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). A Maryland-based engineering firm was among the exhibitors peddling drones in Phoenix.

“The UAVs are used now in Afghanistan but the company is hoping to produce UAVs for border protection at a lower cost,” reports the local ABC affiliate. “Each one is estimated to cost $1 million…. Neany showcased its flagship UAV, the Arrow, and its newest technology, an unmanned surface vehicle. It’s essentially a remote-control surveillance watercraft.

The focus of this event, as reporter Ryan O’Donnell stated in what was likely a moment of unintentional candor, is “not border security, but security in general, police security” — that is, providing for the safety and security of the people who regiment the rest of us on behalf of the political class, a cause dear to what passes for the hearts of rulers and law enforcers of every nationality.

For more, go here.

Yes, the decal on that Stasi-mobile reads "Axis."

Organizers of the sixth annual “Border Security Expo” underway in Phoenix  have a very simple pitch for police state profiteers: “The U.S. Senate has passed a $4 billion increase in Homeland Security spending focused on gaining control over the U.S. border with Mexico — are you securing your share of this market?”

Although packaged as an event devoted to border security and immigration control, the expo is a totalitarian trade show designed to wed tax-subsidized corporate contractors with tax-devouring bureaucrats from across the United States — and from fifteen foreign countries

“Mexico, Canada, and European countries are sending delegations specifically to purchase UAVs, biometric technologies, and surveillance equipment, sensors, monitors, and vehicles,” continues the on-line promotional brochure, noting that “several billion dollars have been allocated by the U.S., Canadian, and Mexican governments” for the purpose of police state procurement. Think of it as a festive gathering of corporate whores and political pimps — only it’s the taxpayers who are getting screwed. Local new coverage displays the vapid credulity that typifies state-centric media outlets, with reporters cooing and gurgling over the shiny new hi-tech hardware — without expressing even a hint of curiosity about the uses to which it will be put.

Attendees “will see things like an unmanned patrol boat, along with surveillance cameras and radar systems that can spot a person or vehicle at a distance of eight miles,” relates one typically incurious report. “There is also a variety of vehicles designed for desert driving and equipped with attack gear like .50-caliber machine guns.

Motorola, a corporation that has long suckled at the teat of the Military-Industrial-Homeland Security Complex, proudly unveiled the “Smart Car” — a computerized police vehicle that “responds to verbal commands and uses cameras to capture license plate numbers and run them automatically.” This tricked-out Stasi-mobile, which looks like something derived from the dystopian film “RoboCop,” would act as a passive surveillance probe for an all-encompassing system of surveillance in which everybody within sensor range would be scrutinized as a criminal suspect — or, more likely, a potential “enemy combatant.” Vehicles of this type are already being used by police in East Orange, New Jersey, which — with the help of taxpayer funding from the Department of Homeland Security — is building a Panopticon-style system of immersive surveillance.

Ten years ago, the Bush administration used the image of remote-piloted drones in American skies to frighten people into supporting a war against the regime of Saddam Hussein — who supposedly planned to use those robot aircraft (which he didn’t have) to dispense death upon helpless Americans. Today, practically every police department in the United States is queuing up to get its own fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). A Maryland-based engineering firm was among the exhibitors peddling drones in Phoenix.

“The UAVs are used now in Afghanistan but the company is hoping to produce UAVs for border protection at a lower cost,” reports the local ABC affiliate. “Each one is estimated to cost $1 million…. Neany showcased its flagship UAV, the Arrow, and its newest technology, an unmanned surface vehicle. It’s essentially a remote-control surveillance watercraft.

The focus of this event, as reporter Ryan O’Donnell stated in what was likely a moment of unintentional candor, is “not border security, but security in general, police security” — that is, providing for the safety and security of the people who regiment the rest of us on behalf of the political class, a cause dear to what passes for the hearts of rulers and law enforcers of every nationality.

For more, go here.

“We’ve waited for diplomacy to work. We’ve waited for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer,” insisted Netanyahu, alluding to Iran’s purported drive to develop nuclear weapons capacity. “As Prime Minister of Israel, I will never let my people live under the shadow of annihilation.” After recalling that the Allies had declined to bomb Auschwitz near the end of World War II, Netanyahu bellowed: “My friends, 2012 is not 1944…. Never again.”

“Seventy years after the Holocaust, many in the world are silent in the face of Iran’s pledges to wipe Israel off the face of the earth,” declared Netanyahu, retailing the discredited line that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad has threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” “This is a day in which the leaders of the world must commit not to allow another genocide.”

Actually, some members of Netanyahu’s government have actually endorsed the use of genocidal measures – such as engineered starvation – against Iran. The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot reports that members of the Netanyahu government have concluded that “Iran’s citizens should be starved in order to curb Tehran’s nuclear program.”

The paper cited a highly placed Israeli government source who called for “suffocating” sanctions that would “lead to a grave economic situation in Iran and to a shortage of food. This would force the regime to consider whether the nuclear adventure is worthwhile, while the Persian people have nothing to eat and may rise up as was the case in Syria, Tunisia and other Arab states.”

It isn’t difficult to imagine how Israeli or American leaders would react if their Iranian counterparts were to speak of imposing a “suffocating” embargo on Israel for the purpose of starving its population. Discussions of mass starvation as a weapon involve the language of genocide.

Would Israel be justified in waging “pre-emptive” genocide? If an argument can be fashioned to fit that need, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz can probably provide it.

Unless he’s being paid a sultan’s ransom to defend a celebrity murder defendant, Dershowitz is a consistent defender of state power, particularly when wielded by the Israeli government. He supports the institutionalization of torture, and endorses preemptive nuclear war against Iran. Six years ago, in his book Pre-emption, Dershowitz introduced a concept of collective punishment based on what he calls a “continuum of civilianality” in which protected civilian status “is often a matter of degree, rather than a bright line.”

During the summer of 2006, Israeli troops invaded Lebanon following terrorist attacks by Hezbollah. In a July 22, 2006 Los Angeles Times column, Dershowitz insisted that Lebanese citizens who refused to abandon their homes when commanded to do so by an invading foreign army became retroactively “complicit” in Hezbollah’s attacks, and were thus fair game. Those who were unable to leave, such as the elderly and infirm, were “innocent victims,” he allowed — but the IDF shouldn’t be expected to spare them if doing so detracted from their military objectives.

Two weeks later, Dershowitz abandoned any pretense of proportionality, insisting that the only requirement to be considered a “terrorist” is to be a citizen of a country that has been invaded by the Israeli (or, presumably, the U.S.) Army.

“Lebanon has chosen sides — not all Lebanese, but the democratically chosen Lebanese government,” wrote Dershowitz. “When a nation chooses sides in a war … its civilians pay a price for that choice…. Lebanon has chosen the wrong side and its citizens are paying the price. Maybe next time a democracy must choose between collaborating with terrorism or resisting terrorism, it will choose the right side.”

If Washington or Tel Aviv were to launch an attack that killed thousands of Iranians, it’s likely that Dershowitz would insist that the victims had “chosen the wrong side” and were “paying the price.”

Dershowtiz, who apparently considers himself to be a moral tutor to the world, has not seen fit to castigate U.S. and Israeli officials for speaking so freely of their willingness to starve millions of Iranians. He spares such moral outrage for denouncing really serious crimes against humanity – such as the use of the term “Israel-Firster” by M.J. Rosenberg, an obscure blogger employed by the left-leaning Media Matters organization.

Rosenberg, who himself is Jewish, was accused of “anti-Semitism” for supposedly downplaying the Iranian “threat” and for slamming AIPAC and other Jewish organizations that work in lock-step with certain factions within the Israeli government.

“There is no need here to describe who the Israel Firsters are,” wrote Rosenberg. “They are those people (of whatever ethnic background) who invariably support Israel’s policies over those of the United States.” Demanding that Rosenberg be fired, Dershowitz accused him of invoking “a canard that goes back hundreds of years and falls into the category of anti-Semitism.”

Actually, on the evidence of this week’s annual AIPAC convention in Washington, the use of that term is entirely descriptive. Notes Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, after Netanyahu and President Obama used speeches to the group to express minor disagreements regarding the proper approach to Iran, AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr pointedly criticized Obama, while offering Netanyahu’s address unqualified support.

The nub of the disagreement is the appropriate “redline” for an attack on Iran. Obama insists that this threshold will be met if there is evidence that Iran possesses a nuclear bomb; Netanyahu insists that the “capability” to produce a bomb would justify an attack.

Speaking on behalf of his organization, Kohr embraces the latter view:

It is not necessary for Iran to actually have the bomb –to demonstrate beyond doubt that they have crossed the nuclear threshold. Iran with simply the capacity to quickly produce a weapon – is a risk to peace, and a threat to the world. Iran, as a threshold nuclear state will strengthen our foes and frighten our friends. . . . That is why all U.S. officials must speak with one voice – so Tehran clearly hears that America is unified in its determination to prevent a nuclear capable Iran.

In other words, AIPAC demands that all American officials, with “one voice,” echo the policy prescriptions of the faction currently controlling a foreign government.

Whether one characterizes Kohr’s statement as an expression of an “Israel First” perspective, it is a prescription for disaster.

Supporters of the envisioned strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities claim it would be justified by the nature of the regime in Tehran, which supposedly threatens the entire world.  Iran – which has a gross domestic product smaller than that of Norway, and is surrounded by dozens of U.S. military facilities – is hardly a globe-bestriding Colossus.

If Iran has an interest in possessing, or the capacity to develop, nuclear weapons, Israel would be harvesting seeds it planted decades ago, when Israeli intelligence and that nation’s arms industry helped build the Shah’s military-industrial capacity and secret police force.

“Documents seized by Iranian students from the US embassy in Tehran after the 1979 revolution revealed the Shah expressed an interest to Israel in developing nuclear arms,” reported the May 23, 2010 London Guardian. Two years earlier, the Tel Aviv-Tehran axis embarked on a $1 billion joint venture called Operation Flower, which was intended to build a nuclear-capable surface-to-air missile.

Military collaboration with Iran continued following the Shah’s ouster. In 1982, the New York Times reported that Israel was responsible for supplying more than half of the armaments used to equip the Iranian military in the early phase of the war with Iraq.

Many of the most lucrative arms deals with Iran were brokered by Israeli military attaché (and Mossad veteran) Ya’acov Nimrodi, who helped build the Shah’s Savak secret police and later played a key role in the arms-for-hostages scandal. The overthrow of the Shah’s regime left many Israeli weapons merchants dejected. However, when Nimrodi – who maintained contacts with the Khomeni regime – described to several leading contractors that Revolutionary Iran would be a bonanza for arms dealers, “people’s eyes lit up,” he recalled. “They have been laying people off in the defense industry, and this meant jobs.”

In addition to supplying the Iranian government with small arms, explosives, anti-tank weapons, and aircraft components, the Israeli government was covertly supporting South Africa’s covert nuclear program. Documents provided by the South African government in 2010 prove that “Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime,” reported the Guardian. “The `top secret’ minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa’s defense minister, P.W. Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defense minister and now its president, responded by offering them `in three sizes.’”

A familiar refrain being sung by the War-with-Iran chorus is that once Tehran acquires nuclear “capacity,” it will immediately begin to share weapons-grade material with other “rogue states” or terrorist groups. While this claim is entirely speculative where Iran is concerned, this is exactly what Israel did during the 1970s.

The Israeli government’s support for Iran, and its cultivation of the South African nuclear program, were based on its calculations of national interest: Iran was seen as a non-Arab strategic hedge against Israel’s Arab rivals, and South Africa as a regional counterweight to other potential threats. In both instances, Israel actually undermined the nuclear non-proliferation system, and helped create nuclear programs that were inherited by anti-Western figures identified as terrorists – the Ayatollah Khomeni in Tehran, and Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress, in Pretoria.

If a preventive war on Iran would be justified because it possesses nuclear “capability,” wouldn’t a similar strike against South Africa be appropriate, as well? Then again, if Israel or the U.S. were to pre-empt every nation possessing nuclear capability, this would mean sanctions and military action against more than 40 countries that have both the necessary materials and technical expertise to build nuclear weapons quickly – or perhaps even the 140 countries possessing the basic technical capacity to do so.

Mahmoud Ahmadenijad may well be a madman determined to set the world on fire — but if so, he certainly has quite a bit of company in Washington and Tel Aviv.

People of the statist persuasion eagerly embrace natural disasters – such as the horrific tornadoes that have battered the Midwest – as an opportunity to tutor the rest of us about the supposedly indispensable role of government entities like FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) as Savior and Provider. This inclination led CNN’s Candy Crowley to pose what she mistakenly believed to be a clever question to Dr. Ron Paul during a March 4 interview with the Republican presidential candidate.

“You have frequently been critical of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the federal money that is given to some of these home owners and those that are also — other victims of storms like this,” observed Crowley. “Is there a role for federal money in helping all of these citizens get their lives back together?”

As is his wont, Dr. Paul replied with unstinting candor:

“Not really, because it’s not authorized and there is no such thing as federal money. Federal money is just what they steal from the states and steal from you and me. So there is no federal money unless you say, well, they can print it and cause internal problems.” Rep. Paul went on to explain that FEMA has a well-earned reputation for profligacy and inefficiency, and that hurricane victims in his own district who had experienced no small amount of difficulty with the agency understood why he consistently voted against FEMA appropriations.

The Democratic Party-aligned Crooks and Liars blog seized on and misrepresented Dr. Paul’s remarks, claiming that he had said that tornado victims that they’re on their own. As memorably displayed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, victims of natural disasters are “on their own” even when FEMA intervenes: The agency exists to expand government power, promote its institutional interests, and enrich its client constituencies, rather than to provide material help to traumatized people.

One telling illustration of this was described by the September 6, 2005 Salt Lake Tribune:

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters–his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week–a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta. Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers. Instead, they … learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

In order to help out hurricane victims, NBA Hall of Fame member Karl Malone – a Louisiana native — went to Pascagoula, Mississippi with a fleet of 18 vehicles. He pulled self-assigned 12-hour shifts behind the wheel of his heavy machinery clearing 114 lots with a backhoe, three bulldozers and several RVs for him and his crew.

”We were totally self-contained with our own food and everything,” Malone recalled. ”We didn’t want to take even one bottle of water away from these people [recovering from the disaster]. When we told them we were doing this for free, they looked at us like we were crazy or something.”

The Mailman – as he was known throughout his career – said he was deeply inspired by the unconquerable sirit of the people who worked to rebuilt after the catastrophe.

”Everything about this just felt right,” he commented to the AP. ”My mom died two years ago, and in our last conversation, she told me that one day I would have to step up on a grand scale and help people. I knew this was it.”

In order to help out, however, Malone had to plow through FEMA’s bureaucratic obstruction as if the agency had been a hapless defender standing between him and the hoop.

”There was a lot of red tape, and I ain’t got time for that,” Malone commented. ”I found out that if you’re going to do something good, just go ahead and do it. Once I get in my machine, no one is going to get me out. We just said ‘the hell with it.’ FEMA didn’t approve, but we did it for the people.”

At every opportunity, FEMA did its formidable best to obstruct volunteers, retard progress in cleaning up, and redirect resources from victims to politically connected contractors and other parasites.  In one particularly infuriating piece of bureaucratic “stove-piping,” the agency impeded efforts to locate roughly 500 children who went missing after Hurricane Katrina hit when it “refused to share its evacuee database with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,” reported the December 23, 2005 Washington Post.

FEMA combines incurable incompetence with exquisite sensitivity to criticism.

After Hurricane Opal ravaged Alabama in 1995, Lew Rockwell – chairman of the Auburn-based Ludwig von Mises Institute, a free-market think-tank – wrote an op-ed column for the Los Angeles Times insisting that federal disaster aid was unconstitutional and immoral, and denouncing FEMA bureaucrats who exploit human misery for the purpose of job security.

That opinion piece provoked an irate phone call from FEMA functionary Morry Goodman, who heads what Jeffrey Tucker called the agency’s “Headquarters of Critic Intimidation.”

“I gave you a $100,000 grant” to study emergency warning systems in Alabama,” Goodman raged in the mistaken belief that the Mises Institute was connected to a university. Tucker patiently endured the harangue before pointing out that the Institute receives no government money of any kind, “so you can’t bribe us into not criticizing FEMA.”

After Tucker recounted that incident in the December 1995 issue of The Free Market, Goodman called again to denounce him as “a very sick and dangerous human being.”

The experience of Syrian-American businessman Abdulrahman Zeitoun illustrates what FEMAcrats like Goodman would like to do to “sick and dangerous” people who criticize the agency. Zeitoun, a New Orleans resident who had paddled a canoe through the flooded streets to render aid to his neighbors, was seized in his own home by National Guardsmen, imprisoned on unspecified charges in “Camp Greyhound,” a FEMA constructed detention facility.

The guards at Camp FEMA exploited any excuse to inflict exemplary “discipline” on the detainees, most of whom had been arrested for violating curfew or similar petty matters.

“Always the procedure was the same,” recalled David Eggers in his book Zeitoun; “a prisoner would be removed from his cage and dragged to the ground nearby, in full view of the rest of the prisoners. His hands and feet would be tied, and then, sometimes with a guard’s knee on his back, he would be sprayed directly in the face” with pepper spray. “If the prisoner protested,” continued Eggers, “the knee would dig deeper into his back. The spraying would continue until his spirit was broken. Then he would be doused with [a] bucket and returned to his cage.”

The victims of this pointless and whimsical cruelty included one disturbed man with the intellectual and emotional capacity of a child who was “punished” because he displayed the irrepressible symptoms of mental illness.

Zeitoun was able to escape his imprisonment only because of the providential intervention of a Christian clergyman who happened to visit his cell after he had been transferred to the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center.

Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and fires are disasters – acts of God over which we have no control. FEMA, however, is a man-made plague we can and should eradicate.

More here.

Video of the presentation, which was covertly recorded by people in the employ of Romney’s Democratic opponent, was provided to ABC News, which pointed out that in an interview with the network two weeks ago, Romney maintained that the 2002 Winter Olympics received federal subsidies only for transportation and security. That description is suitable for Romney’s current campaign, in which he depicts himself as savvy private entrepreneur and the soul of austerity. In 2002, when it was politically useful to do so, Romney used his Olympic experience to underscore his success as a well-connected crony capitalist.

“We actually received over $410 million from the federal government for the Olympic Games,” boasted Romney, referring to stolen money that had been plundered from tax victims nation-wide. “That is a huge increase over anything ever done before. We did that by going after every agency of government.” He took particular pride in the ingenuity he displayed in wheedling more than a million dollars in subsidies through the Department of Education “to buy tickets for kids.”

“That kind of creativity I want to bring to everything we do,” Romney emphasized. “I want to go after every grant, every project, every department….”

The 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics is the marquee entry in Romney’s resume as a corporate “turn-around” specialist capable of rescuing ailing businesses – and, presumably, saving America’s sick economy. Romney took over the Salt Lake Olympic Committee (SLOC) following a huge bribery scandal involving the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and corporate interests in Utah.

To rescue the Olympics, Romney was given – according to a 2002 General Accounting Office report – a total of at least $1.3 billion from the federal government. As Sports Illustrated pointed out, in inflation-adjusted terms this exceeded the total amount “spent by lawmakers to support all seven Olympic Games held in the U.S. since 1904–combined.”

At the time, Romney blithely acknowledged that his supposedly miraculous “turn-around” of the Winter Games was simply a matter of acting as a pass-through for federal subsidies: “We couldn’t have done it without them. These are America’s Games.” Mike Leavitt, Utah’s Republican Governor, described that arrangement as “a public-private partnership” – what is now called “crony capitalism,” or – to be even blunter – a bailout. In principle, it is indistinguishable from more recent bailouts of Wall Street investment firms or the federal takeover of General Motors – with elitists in Utah profiting from their relationship to the Romney-led SLOC.

Once the Games were awarded to Salt Lake City, Utah’s Republican congressional delegation, led by Senators Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett, had a ready-made rationale to lavish subsidies on their state.

Sports Illustrated summarized the process: “Just help your hometown land the Olympics. Then, when no one’s looking, persuade the federal government to pay for a good chunk of the Games, including virtually any project to which the magic word Olympics can be attached…. With the skill, grace and precision of a hockey team on a power play, Utah’s five-member congressional delegation has used the Olympics to drain money from an unprecedented number of federal departments, agencies and offices — some three dozen in all, from the Office of National Drug Control Policy to the Agriculture Department.”

Once the Games were awarded to Utah, the state’s political caste and Olympics boosters found that they could wrap nearly any conceivable subsidy in the Olympic flag. “We are, without shame, using the Olympics to try to get federal funds,” explained Tom Warne, head of the Utah Department of Transportation, after a 1997 lobbying session in Washington. “We’ve designed a strategy to separate Utah from the 49 other states.” Salt Lake City’s Deseret News reported on March 9, 1997 that “Olympic organizers said there’s nothing wrong with telling Congress that every project on Utah’s $4.3 billion [wish list] … is needed for the Winter Games, even though their own must-do projects on that list total $55 million.”

In the name of the 2002 Winter Olympics, taxpayers across the nation were soaked for $500 million in highway improvements, $326 million for a light rail transit system, $30 million for revamping parking lots, $1 million for a weather-forecasting array, and millions of dollars for numerous other Olympics-related infrastructure projects. The most infuriating elements of this saturnalia of corporate socialism were the federal subsidies directed to Olympics-connected private interests, several of whom were among the nation’s wealthiest developers.

Clinton Charles Meyer, a contractor based in California, traded a 386-acre tract of land for the Olympic park for an access road across a different tract in which he held a majority interest; that road was paid for with $2 million drawn from federal mineral-rights and petroleum royalties. With the access road in place, 750 acres were opened up for condominiums and luxury homes. The land value of Meyer’s Summit Ranch development, where the new homes were built, skyrocketed from $3 million in 1990 to $48 million in 2000 — a windfall underwritten, in part, by U.S. taxpayers.

Perhaps the most outrageous case is that of oil billionaire Robert Earl Holding, owner of Utah’s Snowbasin ski resort, which will host the downhill skiing competition and several other Winter Games events. As a member of the SLOC, “Holding sat on the committee that had awarded him $14 million for his involvement in the Olympics,” Andrew Jennings pointed out in his book The Great Olympic Swindle. Holding also found other ways to cash in on the Winter Games.

For years Holding had sought to expand Snowbasin to make it competitive with other Utah ski resorts, but like many developers and property owners in the western United States his plans were thwarted by the federal government, which owned the land he needed. Shortly after Utah secured the 2002 Olympics, Senator Hatch and Utah Representative Jim Hansen introduced legislation providing for a “land swap” that would give Holding 1,320 acres he coveted in exchange “for lands of approximately equal value” owned by one of his companies. Rep. Hansen insisted that the swap was necessary to facilitate the Winter Games. The legislation was written with input from Gray Reynolds, a senior official in the U.S. Forest Service.

The land-swap measure was tucked into an omnibus public lands management act that was signed in November 1996. Shortly thereafter Reynolds retired from the Forest Service — and went to work for Holding as general manager of Snowbasin. Holding (who, at the time, came in at number 236 on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans) also received taxpayer funds to build a $15 million road through his newly acquired lands to his ski resort. Senator Bennett inserted the necessary appropriation into the U.S. Forest Service budget. “If we don’t get [the $15 million appropriation] this year,” Bennett insisted in 1998, “we might as well hold the downhill in Colorado.”

One concern expressed by Utahns who opposed the state’s Olympics bid was that the Winter Games would leave the state saddled with debt. But as Utah Representative Merrill Cook explained, putting taxpayers nationwide on the hook for the cost of the Games “means any talk of a tax increase at home has been laid to rest.” Besides, Cook maintained in an interview with the Deseret News, it’s the responsibility of the federal government to help Utah deal with the “great burden of hosting the 2002 Winter Games on America’s behalf.”

Romney, who has a different face for every occasion, posed as a plucky capitalist fix-it man for public consumption. That mask was discarded during what he thought was a private briefing for connected corporate interests during his gubernatorial campaign.

See the video here.

President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, which was released by the White House last April, is most likely a forgery, according to a “cold case posse” organized by  Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County. During a lengthy March 1 press conference, Arpaio insisted that there is “probable cause” to believe that both the birth certificate and Mr. Obama’s selective service card were fabricated by “persons unknown.”

In its report, the “posse” declared that “the evidence contained in the computer-generated PDF file released by the White House as well as important deficiencies in the Hawaii process of certifying the long-form birth certificate establish probable cause that a forgery has been committed.”

“We don’t know who the perpetrators are of these documents,” stated Arpaio, who likewise maintained that “I’m not going after Obama,” whose administration is currently investigating Arpaio for alleged criminal civil rights abuses. Arpaio’s inquiry – which yielded no new evidence — was organized last summer in response to a request made by 250 people attached to a Tea Party group in Maricopa County.

“I’m just doing my job,” the sheriff explained. A number of critics, including some with impeccable conservative credentials, contend that Arpaio’s full-time “job” – its official description notwithstanding – is self-promotion, rather than protecting the life, liberty, and property of Maricopa County’s residents.

“He has botched 432 sex crime cases in Maricopa County instead of protecting children from rapists and pedophiles, he was too busy doing other things that distract him,” complained Rep. Ruben Gallego during a December 2011 press conference.

The Goldwater Institute – a libertarian-leaning think tank — has criticized Arpaio’s department for its laxity in serving an estimated 40,000-80,000 outstanding felony warrants. The Institute also criticized Arpaio for conducting  “open warfare” against his political critics in Maricopa County.

In 2010, notes the Los Angeles Times, Arpaio “filed a racketeering lawsuit against the entire Maricopa County power structure…. Last year, when Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon called for a federal investigation of Arpaio’s immigration enforcement, the Sheriff’s Office demanded to see Gordon’s e-mails, phone logs and appointment calendars. When the police chief in one suburb complained about the [immigration] sweeps, Arpaio’s deputies raided that town’s City Hall. [There have been] two dozen instances of the sheriff launching investigations of critics, none of which led to convictions. The most notorious case involves county Supervisor Don Stapley, a Republican who has sometimes disagreed with Arpaio’s immigration tactics. Last December, deputies arrested Stapley on charges of failing to disclose business interests properly on his statement of economic interest.”

In filing that charge against Stapley, Arpaio was apparently using the power of his office to misdirect attention from his own misrepresentations in financial disclosure reports, which — if he and Stapley were treated alike — would result in more than a dozen criminal counts against the sheriff.

Instead of facing an investigation for his own irregularities, Arpaio — with the aid Maricopa County prosecutor, Andrew Thomas — attempted to prosecute and imprison the people who had brought those irregularities to light: The reporters and editorial staff of the independent Phoenix New Times newspaper.

In August 2007, the Maricopa County Prosecutor’s Office hit the Phoenix New Times with a grand jury subpoena demanding detailed information, including “Every note, tape, and record from every story written about Sheriff Arpaio by every reporter over a period of years” as well as “detailed information on anyone who has looked at the New Times Web site since 2004″ as well as every individual “individual who looked at any story, review, listing, classified, or retail ad [in the publication] over a period of years.”

The pretext for that act of official harassment was that the New Times, in investigating Arpaio’s conflicts of interest regarding ownership of commercial properties, had violated state law by disclosing the valiant sheriff’s home address.

To their credit, the editorial staff of the New Times went public with the details of that Grand Jury subpoena. That prompted Arpaio to send his Selective Enforcement Unit to arrest Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, the owners of the Phoenix New Times on a spurious charge of interfering with the deliberations of a grand jury.

The joint assault by Arpaio and Thomas on freedom of speech and the press provoked nation-wide outrage; Thomas was  forced to free Lacey and Larkin and withdraw the charges against them. It was later revealed that no grand jury had actually been empaneled.

“It’s just extraordinary, the kind of thing that takes place in Third World dictatorships,” observed former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, who represented Donald Stapley. “So many people are of one mind on a single issue — illegal immigration — that they are willing to ignore [Arpaio's] misdeeds.”

There being no other great enough to confer the title, Arpaio has designated himself “The World’s Toughest Sheriff.” His high-profile campaign against illegal immigration has made him a national celebrity among populist conservatives, and a significant player in the 2012 Republican presidential race: He endorsed former Texas Governor Rick Perry, and his support has been solicited by Rep. Michelle Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum. His media prominence seems inversely proportionate to his actual success as a peace officer.

An official investigation of Arpaio’s county jails in the mid-1990s conducted by Oregon corrections consultant George Sullivan concluded that “an unwise abundance of stun guns, pepper spray, restraint chairs and the practice of hog-tying, combined with Arpaio’s macho rhetoric about getting tough on inmates–70 percent of whom await trial under an assumption of innocence–has led to an environment where Arpaio’s employees have made `unprovoked, unnecessary and, consequently, unjustified and excessive’ use of force,” summarized the Phoenix New Times.  Nearly identical findings were reported in a separate federal inquiry two years earlier.

The Sheriff himself has compiled a record heavily laden with odd instances of hypocrisy and casual corruption:

*Five years ago, under the threat of a federal lawsuit, Arpaio was compelled to shut down a live webcast of female inmates using the bathroom.

*During a 2004 Republican primary against former Mesa Police Chief, Daniel Saban, Arpaio leaked unsubstantiated rape allegations against his political rival to a local television station.

*In the course of a prostitution sting four years ago, Arpaio authorized undercover deputies and members of his volunteer “posse” to disrobe and even engage in sexual contact with prostitutes as part of their “investigation” — conduct that, if carried out by private citizens, would have earned them a stay in Arpaio’s “Tent City.” In fact, although most of the 70 people arrested in the “sting” were released without charges, a handful of customers were prosecuted for conduct more or less identical to that of Arpaio’s “investigators.”

*In March 2011, Arpaio’s office – as part of a reality show featuring one-time action star Steven Seagal – staged a paramilitary raid on the home of Jesus Sanchez Llovera, who was suspected of running an illegal cockfighting ring. Arpaio’s deputies arrived in full riot gear; Seagal arrived in a tank, which demolished part of the home. Officers killed the family’s dog and more than 100 roosters, which Llovera – who has sued Arpaio and Seagal – said were raised for show, rather than sport.

Llovera’s $100,000 lawsuit is just one of many filed during Arpaio’s tenure. Since 1997, Maricopa County has paid more than $13 million in legal settlements, many of them dealing with the preventable deaths of people held in Arpaio’s much-publicized “Tent City” jail.

Richard Mack, former Sheriff of Arizona’s Graham County and founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, observes that the county sheriff occupies the highest constitutional office in the county – and has the primary responsibility for the protection of the rights and property of law-abiding citizens living therein. Supporters of Arpaio should seriously consider whether his conduct and priorities are those of a constitutional sheriff – or a petty, self-serving, power-intoxicated thug.

Read more here.

Warren Taylor, a 32-year-old New York City resident employed as a gas mechanic by Con Edison, was arrested and charged with sexual assault and criminal impersonation of a police officer. Posing as a cop, Taylor allegedly compelled prostitutes to provide sexual favors for him. He was inspired by media accounts of an investigation into Officer Mandy Green, an NYPD undercover vice cop suspected of sidelining as a pimp.

“You looking for a daddy?” Green asked a prostitute named Candy in a secretly recorded conversation. In a separate exchange, Candy discussed business arrangements, asking Green “how much do you get?” from her nightly take as a hooker.

“Depends on how well you did,” Green replied.

The New York Daily News reports that although Green has been the subject of an ongoing internal affairs inquiry since 2009, he has not been charged with a crime. He contends that his conversations were merely “flirtatious talk” with a woman he found attractive. His attorney insists that although Green – who is married with children, was posing as a “mack daddy” in an attempt to sleep with her: “He may not be the husband of the year, but he’s not a criminal.”

There is strong circumstantial evidence that Green is not merely a philanderer: He is accused of numerous acts of “menacing” and official misconduct in an effort to cover up his activities. The Gothamist points out that the investigation has foundered “because the suspected prostitutes were intimidated and refused to cooperate with prosecutors.”

Green is a New York City cop in the mold of 19th Century NYPD Officer Alexander “Clubber” Williams, who created an immensely lucrative fiefdom in a precinct ripe with vice and graft of every conceivable variety.  Clubber’s antics – and his brazen quotability — produced an endless supply of lurid copy for the press. “There is more law in the end of a policeman’s nightstick than in a decision of the Supreme Court,” he explained when he was criticized about his penchant for brutality. Clubber’s unique variety of glib shamelessness gave New York’s vice district its name: “All my life I have never had anything but chuck steak. Now I’m gonna get me some tenderloin.”

This seemed like a good deal to Warren Taylor: Why settle for being an honest mechanic when he could live the high life as a crooked cop? Ironically – or perhaps predictably – Taylor, who merely posed as a crooked cop, will likely spend time behind bars, while the authentically crooked Officer Green most likely will remain scot free and eventually collect his pension.

Although utility worker Warren Taylor confronts imprisonment for impersonating a cop in New York City, Detective Paul Giovannoni of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office in Florida is untroubled by similar prospects for impersonating a utility worker as part of a long-term campaign of harassment directed at a floral business called Simply Hydroponics.

In a deposition made during an internal affairs inquiry, Giovannoni admitted that he disguised himself in a uniform from the Progress Energy utility in order to gain access – without a search warrant — to the company’s property, in the hope of detecting the telltale aroma of marijuana. The Sheriff’s Office has conducted long-term surveillance of the business by way of a video camera, which has been used to record license plate numbers of visiting customers. Since 2009, dozens of clients have been investigated by deputies on the sole basis of purchasing hydroponic gardening supplies from the store.

Giovannoni dismissed his actions as a “ruse.” In fact, they constituted Criminal trespass under section 810.09(2)(b) of the Florida State Code – a first degree misdemeanor – and an act of “private business invasion by false personation,” defined by section 817.025 as a second degree felony punishable by up to fifteen years in prison.

Under Florida state law, impersonating a police officer is a felony. If an ordinary citizen dressed as a cop had made a legitimate purchase at Simply Hydroponics, he would likely spend time in prison. Detective Giovanonni, who impersonated a civilian for the purpose of violating the property and constitutional rights of the business owners, faces at most a trivial reprimand – and may actually receive a commendation for his criminal ingenuity.

Read more here.

A woman who was stopped by a police impersonator in Georgia’s Paulding County was fortunate that the stranger was a fake cop. Had he been an actual police officer, the woman most likely would have been arrested, abused, or perhaps even killed for refusing to expose herself to acute danger along a dark, isolated stretch of rural road.

During the incident last December, the unidentified  man, who was driving what appeared to be an unmarked, undercover police vehicle equipped with flashing blue running lights, demanded that the woman provide her driver’s license; after returning it to her, the pseudo-cop said that he would let the driver go with a “warning,” but demanded that she step out of the car. Rather than doing so, the woman asked the man to follow her to a well-lit grocery store parking lot nearby.

“He didn’t want to do that, so he asked her again to get out and she refused,” recalled Sgt. Brandon Gurley of the Paulding County Sheriff’s Office. “He eventually just became frustrated and stated `never mind’ and turned to his vehicle to leave.”

Incidents of this kind “hurt public trust” in law enforcement, complained Sgt. Gurley. This is actually the most beneficial aspect of incidents of this kind, since an individual in those circumstances – particularly a solitary woman – should not reflexively trust any armed stranger, irrespective of his occupation. Furthermore, in encounters of this kind, a police impersonator is less dangerous than an actual police officer: While an impostor will generally back down when confronted with resistance, a cop will escalate the encounter until the victim is forced to submit.

According to Sgt. Gurley, a driver concerned about his or her safety in a traffic stop can slow down, turn on the vehicle’s hazard lights to display the intent to stop, and then drive to the nearest public area, the deputy told Atlanta ABC affiliate WSBT. “They can even dial 911 from their cellphone to ask the dispatcher if, in fact, a real police officer is attempting to stop their car on the road they’re traveling on,” he added.

This advice is entirely reasonable – and perfectly useless. This is illustrated by the infuriating case of Arizona resident Dibor Roberts, who was convicted on two felony counts (resisting arrest — which shouldn’t be a criminal offense — and unlawful flight) by a Verde Valley, Arizona jury in May 2008. Dibor’s “offense” consisted of frustrating a high-strung, officious twit named Sgt. Jeff Newnum, who was employed as a deputy by the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office.

On July 29, 2007, Mrs. Roberts, a 48-year-old nurse and naturalized American citizen from Africa, was returning from work at about 10:45 PM when she saw a car driving erratically in front of her.

After Roberts passed the vehicle she noticed what appeared to be a set of police lights in her rear-view. Her first impulse was gratitude, assuming that the erratic driver was going to be pulled over. But she became first puzzled, then alarmed, when it became clear that the apparent police vehicle intended to stop her.

In the weeks leading up that that encounter, Mrs. Roberts and her husband had discussed some recent incidents involving police impersonators. They were aware of advice of the sort provided by Sgt. Gurley to people being pulled over by purported police officers in dangerous circumstances: Drive carefully to a well-lit, preferably public area, and call 911 if possible to verify that the pursuer is a police officer. That is the established policy of the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department, as well.

With that advice in mind, and worried about the suspicious disinterest of the alleged police officer in dealing with the erratic driver, Roberts slowed down and proceeded in the direction of a better-lit area. Her behavior was in strict compliance with the advertised advice of local police authorities. But even if it hadn’t been, it still wasn’t the behavior of someone trying to flee from the police.

Deputy Newnum, who radioed his headquarters to say that he was pursuing a “black driver” who refused to stop, pulled alongside Dibor’s car, and eventually cut her off, forcing her to stop. He then came boiling out of his vehicle with his gun drawn because, as he later testified, “I knew I had an angry driver” – and Newnum apparently believed that threatening the driver with a firearm was the best way to de-escalate the situation.

Mrs. Roberts, who was understandably alarmed, gestured that she wanted to proceed to a well-lit area, and tried to make her intention clear by shouting through her windows. Newnum took out a baton and shattered the driver’s side window, seizing the terrified woman and dragging her out of the car. As he did so, Dibor’s foot came off the brake and her car — which was still in gear — rolled forward over Newnum’s foot.

“He pulled me out and the car jerked because I had my foot on the brakes,” Roberts explained after the incident.

“She took it too far when she ran over my foot,” lied Newnum later in court. We know that this is a lie because, first, it was Newnum who took things “too far” by needlessly escalating the encounter; second, because the driver didn’t try to escape after supposedly assaulting the officer; third, and most importantly, because although he stated definitively in court that Mrs. Roberts had deliberately run him over, he said in his official report six months earlier that he “couldn’t remember” whether this was the case. (He also equivocated, under oath, as to whether he was injured in the supposed attack.)

Through her window, Roberts repeatedly yelled “It’s too dark; I’m afraid.” She was dragged from her vehicle yelling “No, no, no, no,” as Newnum threw her to the ground. Her cellphone was taken from her and thrown away as well.

She had no chance to call either 911 or her husband, a detail that was confirmed, ironically, by Newnum’s boss, Sheriff Steve Waugh. This is significant because the state’s corroborating witness, Colin Bass, claimed to have heard Roberts use her cell phone to ask her husband how to escape.

Why was Newnum so wired when he came charging at Roberts with a drawn gun? He testified that he was worried that he couldn’t see Roberts’ hands; that was the “threat” she supposedly presented to him. But he also testified that he saw her hands plainly, that they were gripping her steering wheel “firmly” — supposedly the behavior of an impaired driver. In either case, the jury bought into the idea that the police officer’s behavior was appropriate, given the supposed threat posed by a terrified, small-boned, 120-pound, 48-year-old nurse.

Roberts, who was initially arrested and held in jail for six days, was eventually convicted of two felonies, resisting arrest and unlawful flight (interestingly, the initial traffic violation was apparently dismissed outright). The first charge was dropped by the judge, and the nurse was given a sentence of six months’ supervised probation. But she has an unearned, unwarranted felony conviction on her record, which means that she cannot continue to work as a nurse (or vote, or — more importantly — legally own a firearm).

Despite the fact that Roberts, not Newnum, had carried out his department’s policy regarding late-night traffic stops, Sheriff Steve Waugh insisted that his officer had “acted appropriately.” In fact, it was Mrs. Roberts who behaved appropriately – according to the instructions Sheriff Waugh himself had provided – and yet she was the one who wound up with a felony conviction.

In his closing arguments during Dibor’s trial, Yavapai County Prosecutor Glen Hammond insisted that her crime was that “she did not stop” — which would mean that Sheriff Waugh had abetted the crime by instructing motorists uncertain of the identity of their pursuer not to stop until they reached a well-lit area. Hammond’s position was that Roberts was a criminal because she had obeyed the instructions offered by the Sheriff’s Department, and that it was not necessary to prove that she had willfully tried to flee or injure Newnum.

After fastening the noose of an unjustified felony conviction around Roberts’ neck, Hammond — as if determined to validate the suspicion that prosecutors are uniformly despicable — actually tried to depict her as the bully in this entire affair.

“All he [Newnum] wanted from the very beginning was an apology and [he] left it up to the County Attorney what to do with this case,” stated Hammond. “It was a misunderstanding. It has been really tough on him and his family due to a lot of press, a lot of hate mail. He has been called a racist…. He just wants everyone to move forward and let the healing begin.”

So caught up was Hammond in his pathos-saturated peroration that he inadvertently confessed to actionable malfeasance of office: If this even was a “misunderstanding,” then it wasn’t a crime, and shouldn’t have been prosecuted as such.

Police are indoctrinated to perceive every traffic stop as a potential life-and-death encounter with a dangerous stranger. This effort to cultivate reflexive fear and hostility toward the public has been amplified in recent years by a relentless propaganda campaign waged by the so-called Southern Poverty Law Center and the FBI targeting so-called “sovereign citizens” – a category that apparently includes everyone who rejects the murderous doctrine of state supremacy. Thanks to that agitprop campaign, officers are increasingly primed to see situations like the one involving Dibor Roberts as potentially life-threatening confrontations with “sovereign citizens” — and be prepared to employ lethal force in the name of that holiest of all causes, “officer safety.”

Reasonable people should understand that in any encounter between a citizen and an armed stranger wearing government-issued insignia and authorized to employ deadly force, it is the former who is threatened, not the latter. Unfortunately, most Americans have been acculturated to defer to “authority.”

“You wave a badge at someone and tell them to pull over and you’d be amazed at how many people are going to obey,” observes psychologist Dr. Naftali Berrill, head of the New York Center for Neuropyschology and Forensic Behavioral Science. “They disarm their victims by appearing to be cops.” (Emphasis added.)

It is potentially fatal for an individual to allow himself, or herself, to be psychologically disarmed by someone who wears a costume and carries a gun. This is certainly true where street criminals are concerned. But in historic terms, it is even deadlier to allow one’s self to be disarmed, in any sense, by agents of the State.

Read more about the December 2011 incident in Georgia’s Paulding County here.

Restaurant entrepreneur Donald Michael Galbraith, former owner of the Hurricane Grill and Wings in Royal Palm Beach, will be forced to pay $200,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) – but the Feds will do nothing to punish the cop who had terrorized the waitress at the center of the case.

The EEOC lawsuit “charges [that] the company violated federal law when it permitted female serves to be sexually harassed by a customer, a Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy,” reports the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. The restaurant later fired a waitress named Stacy Sorenson “after management learned she had hired a lawyer to assist her in filing an EEOC complaint.”

While the epithet doesn’t apply to everyone employed in law enforcement, Commodore Bradford, richly deserves to be called a pig. For several years, Bradford would visit the Hurricane Grill and Wings restaurant and assail the waitresses with the crudest sexual overtures imaginable.

Beginning in April 2009, Deputy Bradford “routinely visited the restaurant multiple times nearly each week and stayed at the restaurant for extended periods of time,” recounts the EEOC’s civil complaint. During those extended, taxpayer-subsidized lunch breaks, Bradford – who obviously had trouble keeping himself busy – engaged in what the document calls “harassing conduct” that “included, but was not limited to, frequent comments about the female servers’ anatomy, displays of pornographic photographs, unwelcome sexual advances, and unwanted touching.”

During multiple visits to the restaurant, Bradford would assail the waitresses with exuberantly foul sexual remarks (which are recounted in the lawsuit but cannot be reproduced verbatim here):

Bradford made sexually offensive comments on a regular basis to female servers, including but not limited to, `Your t*ts are really nice,’ `Your t*ts are big,’ and `When are we all gonna bang?’

Bradford repeatedly displayed pornographic photographs on his cell phone for the female servers to see. He would call them over under the guise of asking a question and then he would show them pictures including, but not limited to, photos of his penis, of his wife performing [a sexual act], and of his wife engaging in sexual acts with multiple partners.

Bradford regularly made unwelcome sexual advances toward Charging Party [that is, Stacy Sorenson] and similarly situated females including, but not limited to, asking [Sorenson] to participate in a ménage a trois with his wife, following [Sorenson] around the restaurant with his camera phone, seeking to take pictures of her breasts.

Bradford intimidated and humiliated [Sorenson] and similarly situated females by grabbing their breasts, slapping their buttocks, and brushing his penis against their bodies.”

These accusations don’t describe mere sexual harassment; this is the resume of a violent sexual predator.

Under Florida State law (Title XLVI, Chapter 784.045) “Unwanted touching” of any kind constitutes second degree felony battery, rather than mere “sexual harassment” when committed by someone possessing a deadly weapon. Under Section 784.048, Bradford’s conduct in inflicting “substantial emotional distress” on waitresses who were understandably intimidated by him constitutes aggravated stalking, a third-degree felony. Sexual contact involving the use of a deadly weapon is defined by section 794.011 as aggravated sexual battery, which is described as a “life felony” in the state code.

Sorenson and several other waitresses demanded that Bradford desist, but he ignored them. She complained to the management, who – also intimidated by the officer and daunted by the prospect of official retaliation, did nothing to help. Finally, she prepared to file a lawsuit. The management fired the waitress, rather than banning the bully. This precipitated thelawsuit by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.The federal agency took no action against the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office (PBCSO), which employed Bradford – which is what the EEOC would have done if it were interested in actually defending the weak, rather than destroying a private business. No law enforcement agency opened a criminal investigation into Bradford’s conduct.

During the time he was engaged in his campaign of sexual predation at the Hurricane Grill and Wings, Deputy Bradford was assigned to work as a drill instructor at the Eagle Academy in nearby Belle Glade, a bootcamp-style facility for troubled adolescents. That facility, was closed in 2011 for budgetary reasons, was the focus of multiple allegations of physical abuse and sexual misconduct.

Former Hurricane Grill and Wings owner Galbraith sold the restaurant last year, and the new owners – doubtless under pressure from the Feds – “agreed to provide training to managers to prevent sexual harassment,” observes the Sun-Sentinel. It’s difficult to see how this is intended to address the criminal conduct of Deputy Bradford, who has been spared criminal charges and has suffered no professional consequences: A deputy in the PBCSO’s media relations department informed Republic on February 29 that Bradford is currently “assigned to road patrol in district six.”

Read the EEOC complaint here.

David Sarti, an honorably discharged Air Force veteran and retired truck driver from Lebanon, Tennessee, was declared “mentally incompetent” and had his firearms confiscated by the state government after appearing on the National Geographic Channel’s program “Doomsday Preppers.” This was done on the pretext that Sarti, who had sought treatment following what he thought might have been a heart attack in late 2011, was supposedly a suicide risk.

Sarti underwent a series of tests at a heart clinic in November 2011. It wasn’t until January 16 – after Sarti had been featured in the cable program – that he had a follow-up visit. Having ruled out a heart attack as the cause of Sarti’s chest pains and breathing difficulties, the physician, Dr. Andre C. Olivier, suggested an invasive procedure involving the insertion of a tracheal breathing tube.

“I said, `why not let me pass on if you’re thinking of putting tubes and holes in me?’” Sarti recalls. “I don’t want to do that.” The discussion turned to the subject of suicide. “I told him I can’t do suicide, because I’m a Christian,” Sarti explains.

At the time, the discussion appeared to be light-hearted – but it acquired a more ominous character when Dr. Andre said Sarti would need to go to the emergency room. Explaining that he didn’t have time, and had a farm to tend to, Sarti went home. Fifteen minutes later, sheriff’s deputies materialized on Sarti’s property and forcibly took him to the emergency room.

“The logic of sending somebody with a gun after somebody who’s going to commit suicide fails me,” Sarti pointed out during an interview with broadcaster Alex Jones. After being hauled away to the hospital by sheriff’s deputies, Sarti was detained for several hours while undergoing a lengthy and redundant series of tests. Protesting again that he had a farm to tend and animals to feed, Sarti told the hospital staff that he considered himself to be a “prisoner” and demanded to speak with an attorney. At that point he was taken to a mental health facility and held for “observation.”

“At no time did I ever say I wanted to commit suicide,” Sarti insists. “I feel that they put me in there [the mental health ward] because I made them mad by saying I was a prisoner … and I told them they were Gestapo.”

He also refused to take psychotropic drugs that had been prescribed to him, “so that was another black mark.” Significantly, the drug advisory provided by the nurse listed suicidal thoughts as a side-effect of the “anti-depressant” Sarti had refused.

Sarti spent two days in confinement before being allowed to speak with an attorney – an indifferent and ill-informed public defender named David Kennedy. Two more days passed before he was able to see Judge John Gwynne. His four-day psychiatric confinement amounted to an involuntary fast, since he had been placed on a low-carbohydrate diet and the only food available – except for one hamburger patty, one serving of scrambled eggs, and a handful of cheese squares – consisted of starchy, sugar-laden foods.

Following his release, Sarti discovered, “by accident,” that medical authorities had “terminated” his right to own firearms and seized his guns.

“You have been declared mentally defective by having been committed to a mental institution,” declares the document Sarti received.

Sarti has never been accused of a crime. He has never been declared mentally unfit by a judge, nor has he ever said that he wanted to end his life; in fact, he emphatically and repeatedly declared that he would never commit suicide — a determination underscored by his refusal to take a mind-altering drug that might lead to suicidal thoughts. Like fellow veteran Matthew Corrigan of Washington, D.C., David Sarti was imprisoned for several days, and then forcibly disarmed, after seeking medical treatment. The evidence also demonstrates that Sarti — like Gregory Girard of Salem County, Massachusetts — was declared mentally “defective” because his libertarian beliefs and preparedness-oriented lifestyle are considered politically incorrect.

Here’s an important principle to remember: One case of this kind may be an anomaly, a second merely a coincidence – but three or more constitute a pattern. Clearly, these cases demonstrate the existence of an integrated system of social control in which the “mental health” professionals are used to identify what the Soviets used to call “socially dangerous persons,” who are subject to extra-judicial detention and disarmament.

Clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine points out that in contemporary America, the psychiatric profession treats political dissent and social non-conformity as symptoms of psychological derangement. In post-constitutional America, as in Soviet Russia, “many natural anti-authoritarians are now psychopathologized and medicated before they achieve political consciousness,” Levine writes. This is because “The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians. Degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance.”

While acknowledging that many people suffer from legitimate psychological afflictions, Levine points out that the psychological establishment works to “criminalize anti-authoritarianism,” diagnose those displaying that tendency as suffering from a clinical condition, and “market drugs for their `cure.’”

As David Sarti points out, he was forcibly confined, and then illegally disarmed, after he rejected a dangerous – but government-approved – mind-altering drug. It is also significant that his entire ordeal began after he was prominent featured in the “Doomsday Preppers” program, in which he expressed views about potential natural disasters and social upheavals that are thoroughly out of harmony with the official “consensus.” As a result, Sarti found himself on the receiving end of treatment that differs only in degree from the summary punishment inflicted on dissidents in the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union.

Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky spent 12 years in the gulag, including a stint in the psihuska (psychiatric prison). In his memoir To Build a Castle, Bukovsky recalled that the regime “figured that it was impossible for people in a socialist society to have an anti-socialist consciousness.” According to Soviet dogma, socialism satisfied all human needs; thus “criminality was impossible.” By that reasoning, Soviet dissidents were not criminals, but madmen who had to be forcibly “cured” of their dementia. This is why “special psychiatric hospitals began to spring up like mushrooms” under Khrushchev’s reign.

Shortly after being imprisoned in the psihuska, a state psychiatrist “tried to prove to us that we really were crazy: first, because we had come into conflict with society, whereas a normal person adapts to society; and second, because we had risked our freedom for the sake of stupid ideas, neglecting the interests of our families and careers,” wrote Bukovsky.

Decreed the state psychiatrist, “This … is called an obsession with self, the first sign of a paranoid development of the personality.” A steady stream of doctors and specialists hectored Bukovsky by repeatedly asking him the same questions: “Why was I in conflict with society and its accepted norms? Why did my beliefs seem of overwhelming importance to me–more important than my liberty, my studies, or my mother’s peace of mind?”

Not surprisingly, many of Bukovsky’s fellow inmates broke down. Others who resisted were treated to regular beatings. In one case, after an inmate was severely beaten, medical personnel listed his wounds as evidence that he had “become violent” and prescribed “injections of sulfazine or aminazine”–despite knowing how his wounds had been inflicted.

Bukovsky’s account–minus the sadistic physical abuse—isn’t all that different from what happened to David Sarti, and it may provide a grim outline of what we can expect as America under the NDAA — that is, de facto military rule — ripens into a full-fledged totalitarian society.

For more about David Sarti’s infuriating case, go here.

In this January 2006 traffic stop captured by a South Carolina police officer’s dashboard camera, a motorist is stopped for speeding. The officers put the driver through a battery of sobriety tests, all of which he passes easily.When one officer asks the driver how much he had been drinking, the motorist makes the unfortunate error of answering “not much” — rather than simply ignoring the question.

Always remember: The police are looking for an excuse to arrest you; they are trained to invent one, if necessary, and are authorized to lie in order to do so. Don’t assume they’re honest or honorable, because they don’t have to be. While you shouldn’t lie to them, don’t assume that you will earn their favor by being honest. Don’t help them by answering any of their questions, or consenting to a search of any kind.

From the beginning of this encounter, the police treat the driver as if he were a threat: within seconds of ordering the man out of the car, one of the officers reaches for his pepper spray canister and moves to flank him. This underscores another important tactical point: When confronted by multiple police officers, always keep them in front of you, if at all possible — don’t let one get behind you, or position himself in such a way that he can blind-side you.

Understandably frustrated to be dealing with officious armed busy-bodies, the driver quietly and politely protests his innocence, which infuriates the cops. They have no evidence that he was impaired or involved in actual criminal behavior, but “Contempt of Cop” simply can’t be allowed to go unpunished. So they call a group of their boyfriends for backup and form a six-officer thugscrum that swarms the unresisting driver — who is struck and tasered while on the ground, despite his utter passivity.

That spectacle understandably enrages the victim’s elderly mother — and she, in turn, is set upon by the valiant bullies in blue, who gang up on her, slam her to the pavement, and treat her to a dose of weaponized capiscum spray as well.

“Having neutralized the threat of the completely passive driver, the cops turn their attention to the pressing matter of his elderly mother, who they pepper-spray into submission,” observes the incredulous British narrator. “This is almost like a microcosm of America’s foreign policy.”

Whether at home or abroad, the Regime’s armed enforcers treat even the most fleeting displays of resistance as a form of terrorism. According to Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, the prevalence of “sovereign citizens” means that any traffic stop “has a potential to go high and right very fast” — that is, each time a police officer stops a car, he should be prepared to escalate the encounter very quickly, because he never knows if he’s dealing with the threat posed by a “sovereign.”

As this video documents, that was the approach being followed by armed revenue farmers years ago — before the FBI and its allies in the SPLC devised the “sovereign citizen” pretext to justify such methods.

The task force would study the “potential impacts on Wyoming” of a number of acute emergencies – such as a sudden, precipitous decline in the value of the dollar, a constitutional crisis that destroys the “legitimacy” of federal authority, or wide-scale disruptions in energy and food distribution systems.

It’s tempting to think of House Bill 85, which would create the doomsday task force, as the “Jericho Act.” A short-lived television program of that title, which was set in a small, fictional Kansas city of that name, depicted life in America following a catastrophic nuclear attack. In this post-apocalyptic setting, the once- united States broke up into at least two contending factions: The Allied States of America, with its national capitol in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the United States of America, which was composed of states east of the Mississippi. (Texas reverted to its status as an independent republic).

In the course of the story it was revealed that the devastating nuclear attack on 23 cities was not the act of a hostile foreign power or terrorists – either foreign or domestic – but a false flag operation carried out by a corporatist cabal seeking to institute a new political order.

Tautly written, lavishly produced, and well-acted, “Jericho” lasted only 29 episodes but won a cult following by offering a plausible and unflinching dramatization of a society in which small rural communities must deal with the political and economic fallout from the disintegration of existing commercial and political networks. Of particular note is the truncated seven-episode second season, during which the U.S. military arrives in Jericho to impose martial law as part of a “reconstruction” program; that story arc offers a memorable – and chillingly realistic – portrayal of the use of “enhanced interrogation” tactics on the central character, Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich) after he has been taken into military custody.

Those interested in understanding the likely trajectory of post-NDAA America following a terrorist attack should make a point of watching “Jericho.” Apparently, at least a few people in the Wyoming legislature have done so.

Among the proposals contained in HB 85 is the possibility of making gold and silver legal tender once again – an approach also being examined or adopted by at least ten other states. Unfortunately, the panel would also discuss the idea of creating a standing army and imposing a military draft – measures that would make preservation of the political class, rather than defense of individual life and property, the chief priority. Any government claiming the power to force people to fight on its behalf is a government unworthy of support.

The first national conscription law (apart from Civil War measures that permitted wealthy citizens to pay a “bounty” for others to serve) was enacted during World War I as part of the same package of proto-totalitarian “progressive” reforms that included the income tax and creation of the Federal Reserve System.  Wyoming and other states should reacquaint themselves with the founding principles of our republic, rather than duplicating the errors that led to our current crisis.

A thinly populated but energy-rich state, Wyoming would be a significant regional player in the event that the U.S.A. disintegrates under the weight of accumulated economic and political corruption. The willingness of the Wyoming legislature to consider chartering a “doomsday panel” offers some validation to the prediction by Gerald Celente, founder and director of the Trends Research Institute, that 2012 will witness an event he calls an “Economic 9/11,” followed by the imposition of “economic martial law.”

Sometime this year, “they’re going to bring down the gavel on the system,” Celente warned in a radio interview with Lew Rockwell, founder and director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. This would start with targeted scapegoating of “speculators” and other supposed “wreckers” of the economy, but eventually expand to encompass anyone considered an enemy of the ruling Power Elite, Celente predicts.

 Read the text of HB 85 here.

El Paso County Commissioner Willie Gandara, Jr., who has condemned advocates of drug decriminalization, was arrested by a DEA-led multi-jurisdictional task force on February 22 and indicted as the “Godfather” of a drug trafficking operation.

In a speech last September, Gandara – who remains on the ballot as a candidate for the state legislature — assailed what he called “wolves in sheep’s clothing” who opposed the war on drugs. Such people, Gandara told the El Paso Times, are acting on an “ulterior motive.” Legalizing drugs is a coward’s approach to a social problem, as well as “an insult to our men and women in law enforcement, and the laziest form of parenting our children and youth about the effects of drugs,” he insisted.

Those remarks were chiefly directed at an aspiring state legislative candidate named Beto O’Rourke, who has advocated legalization of marijuana as a way of reducing the profits accumulated by Mexican drug cartels. The cartels have benefited enormously from drug prohibition, which amounts to a huge price support program for some of the most vicious criminal personalities in human history.

In late February, Mr. Gandara was arrested as part of a multi-jurisdictional investigation into drug trafficking. The five-count federal indictment accuses Gandara – referred to in the document by the pseudonym “Godfather” — of possessing 110 pounds of marijuana and operating a so-called “stash house” for drug traffickers.

Commissioner Gandara’s father, Willie Gandara, Sr., is a former trustee of the Socorro Independent School District. The elder Gandara has been indicted on several corruption-related charges relating to the management of the school district’s resources. Speaking with a local TV station, Gary Bandara described the arrests of his father and brother as part of a politically motivated vendetta against his family.

“This has been going on too long,” Gary Gandara told ABC affiliate KVIA. “Basically you can’t sleep because you don’t know who they want to pick on next in the family. I know my brother, I know our family. We’ve worked really hard and people don’t understand that if you work hard, you can live a good life. But if you live a good life and people around you see that, automatically [they assume] you’re a drug dealer.”

If the charges against Gandara are true, it’s likely that his attacks on drug war critics were inspired by a desire to preserve his politically manufactured profits. This is a potent illustration of an economic principle explained by economic parable of the “Baptist and the Bootlegger.”

“The bootlegger’s business depends on strict alcohol regulation that creates demand for illegal booze,” relates commentator Timothy P. Carney. “While the bootlegger funds the prohibitionist politician’s election, the local Baptist minister goes on stage for campaign rallies. Regulation protects special-interest profit, but it’s touted as a public good.”

Prohibition never reduces demand for a targeted vice.  As Professor Alfred W. McCoy of the University of Wisconsin-Madison points out, through prohibition, police act as “an informal regulator, controlling the volume of vice trading and setting the level of syndication”; this results in the creation of “powerful syndicates and a high volume of illicit activity.”

This symbiosis between police agencies and the vice cartels they help create enriches criminal kingpins on both sides – while destroying the lives and liberties of innocent people who aren’t party to that corrupt entente.

Read more here.

Pittsburgh Police Officer Adam Skweres was arrested on February 17 after attempting to extort sex from a woman in exchange for legal assistance – the fourth accusation of sexual assault against Skweres since 2008.

On February 11, Skweres reportedly visited the home of a woman (whose name has not been made public) whose boyfriend had been arrested by the officer last November. Skweres had kept in touch with the couple on the pretext of using them as informants. With her boyfriend in jail, the woman was alone when the officer showed up in full uniform.

Skweres was acting strangely, asking the woman if she was wearing a “wire.” Alarmed by his unwanted presence and odd behavior, the woman ordered the officer out of her home, but he refused to leave. Instead he ordered her into the kitchen, where he turned on the faucet – presumably to mask any incriminating sounds in the event that the two of them were under surveillance – and wrote a demand for sex on a piece of paper.

When the woman refused, Skweres asked if she wanted his help to get her boyfriend out of jail. “Just let me have sex with you,” he demanded, before attempting to rape her. Terrified and helpless, the woman collapsed in a chair, where she was forced to perform oral sex on the officer. He then cleaned himself with a paper towel which he was careful to take with him.

Another woman, Melissa Watkins, accuses Skweres of doing almost exactly the same thing to her last December. Watkins, whose boyfriend is also in jail, was alone with her young daughter when Skweres materialized on her doorstep.

“He locked my front door and everything, he said, `so no one could bother us,’” Watkins told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “There’s a man with a badge and a gun in front of you, trying to proposition you. You don’t know which way it’s going to go.”

After asking Watkins if she wanted to “help” her boyfriend, Skweres unzipped his uniform trousers and demanded that the young mother service him.

“He kept asking me if I was smart enough to forget the conversation,” Watkins recalls. “I couldn’t even see a cop car without my throat closing up and feeling really nervous, like he could hop out at any time.”

Another woman claims that during a June 2008 custody hearing, Skweres offered to write a favorable letter to the Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth and Families on her behalf in exchange for oral sex – and that he would compose a negative letter if she refused.

On July 14 of the same year, Skweres attempted to extract sexual concessions from Sarah Smith following a traffic accident.

Smith, in the company of a friend, was driving to work when her car was sideswiped by a man on a motorcycle. At the time, she had no liability insurance, and was driving with an expired license. So she was understandably overwrought when Skweres arrived on the scene. Her anxiety soon congealed into terror.

Skweres drew Smith aside and told her “he could make it look like it was my fault or he could give the motorcycle driver a ticket for failure to obey signs,” she recalls. This would depend on her cooperation, which was to take the form of sexual favors. The policeman told her that what he would require “wasn’t as bad as what would happen to me in jail.”

Smith was told that if she fled she would be arrested for resisting arrest, then raped in the back of the patrol car. Gesturing to his gun, Skweres told her:  “If you say anything about this I’ll make sure you never walk, talk, or breathe again.”

This happened in 2008. The Pittsburgh police were aware of this case, and two others like it – but didn’t arrest Skweres, or even remove him from duty, until a week ago — after he allegedly attempted to rape a fourth victim.

Who can protect the public when police become predators?

Read more here.

According to Sacramento ABC affiliate KXTV, Sheehan “refused to answer any questions about her finances after receiving a summons at her Vacaville home. The U.S. Attorney’s office on Tuesday filed a petition to enforce the IRS summons.The summons ordered Sheehan to produce bank account statements for the period from August through early November 2011.”

Sheehan says that she has made it clear to the IRS that she has no intention of paying taxes, given that “the government has already taken enough from her,” continues the report: “If they can give me my son back, I’ll pay my taxes, but that’s not going to happen.”

Following the death of her son in 2004, Sheehan attracted public notice by setting up a protest outpost she dubbed “Camp Casey” near George W. Bush’s ranch outside Crawford, Texas. Her vigil inspired counter-protests by supporters of the war in Iraq, which — after a determined campaign of official falsehood by the Bush administration — was waged without benefit of a constitutionally required congressional declaration. Sheehan’s status as a “Gold Star Mother” didn’t protect her from the invective of the Bush-aligned Right: Talk show host Glenn Beck described her as a “tragedy whore,” and many participants in the online Republican-centered forum FreeRepublic routinely referred to her as “the bitch in the ditch.”

In a 2005 essay entitled “Empty Boots,” Mrs. Sheehan recalled a confrontation with a retired Marine Vietnam veteran during an anti-war event in Dallas sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). That event, the “Eyes Wide Open” exhibit, displayed 1496 pairs of empty combat boots – one pair for each of the U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq to that date. Goaded by a regimist talk show host who misrepresented the memorial as part of a campaign to have all military personnel tried for crimes against humanity, several dozen protesters assembled – including the angry veteran with whom Sheehan spoke.

“The man was beside himself with fury,” wrote Sheehan. “He accused me and the AFSC of being shameful and that the AFSC wanted to see all of our soldiers in Iraq `tried for war crimes.’ I just sat at the hospitality table trying to let the veteran blow off some steam…. The very, very angry man finally screamed one thing that I couldn’t ignore. He was practically frothing at the mouth when he roared: `You people are all cowards. You wouldn’t die for anything.’”

“That’s when I had had just about enough of Mr. Marine,” Sheehan continued:

I stood up to him and I said: “You are wrong about that, sir. I would have gladly gone to Iraq instead of my son. I would have died in his place without question.’” This simple but true statement, which any parent would make, took the wind out of Mr. Marine’s sails. He got tears in his eyes and he said: “I’m so sorry for your loss, ma’am. I would have taken your son’s place, too.” Then we hugged each other and both of us cried — me for my devastating loss, and I’m not sure what the Veteran gentleman was crying for. My loss — or the losses he experienced as a soldier in Vietnam? Maybe a little of both.

“In peace, sons bury their fathers,” observed Herodotus. “In war, fathers bury their sons.” If this inversion of the natural order can ever be justified, it is only in the context of a desperate struggle to defend one’s own home and family against those who threaten it. In the war that claimed the life of Casey Sheehan, the people who waged a struggle of that kind were Iraqis, not the Americans who invaded and occupied that country in a war that was patently illegal, indisputably unjust, and utterly indefensible. No genuine American patriot would ever support a war in which fellow Americans would be put in a position to kill, or be killed by, patriots of other countries who are defending their homes and families.

Cindy Sheehan may wind up in prison for refusing to pay taxes to the government that stole the life of her son. Meanwhile, George W. Bush and the elitist clique that orchestrated that illegal war – thereby embezzling hundreds of billions of dollars and murdering tens of thousands of people – enjoy huge tax-provided pensions, pull down extravagant speaking fees and publishing advances for their self-exculpating memoirs, and luxuriate in the smug assurance that they are immune to the demands of justice, at least on this side of eternity.

Read more here.

The police did nothing to prevent the robbery of Dennis Fleming’s home in Farmington, New Hampshire, or to catch the burglar – but they may succeed in sending the 61-year-old grandfather to prison for using a handgun to apprehend the man suspected of several local break-ins.

On February 19, Fleming discovered that his home had been robbed. Spying a suspicious-looking man with a backpack, Fleming grabbed his handgun and strode off in pursuit.

Shortly thereafter, Fleming heard a loud crash and saw the same suspicious man jumping out of a neighbor’s rear window. Holding out his handgun, Fleming ordered the intruder to freeze, firing a single round into the ground. He detained the suspect until the police arrived.

The suspect, 27-year-old Joseph Herbert, was found to be in possession of a number of stolen items, including antique watches and silver coins. There is evidence that the same suspect had been involved in a string of robberies elsewhere in town.

A few hours later, Fleming called the police to find out if the suspect had been released on bail. To his amazement, Fleming discovered that he because he had harmlessly discharged his firearm into the ground, he was going to be charged with reckless conduct – a Class B felony that could result in a prison sentence of the same length confronted by the robber he had detained.

“I didn’t think I could handle this guy physically, so I fired into the ground,” Fleming told a local Fox News affiliate. “He stopped. He knew I was serious. I was angry … and I was worried that this guy was going to come after me.”

If Fleming had been wearing a government-issued costume, he could have justified shooting the suspect – or even an innocent bystander — in the name of “officer safety,” without facing criminal charges. Furthermore, New Hampshire’s recently expanded “Castle Law” recognizes that Fleming – like all other citizens of the Granite State – has an unqualified right to armed self-defense. As Judge Andrew Napolitano points out, Fleming’s action reflects a “uniquely American way to protect his property and to protect his neighbor’s property.”

Blithely dismissing those considerations, the local Foster’s Daily Democrat opines:

A message must be sent that firing a handgun in an area where someone can easily be injured is highly inappropriate. On the other hand, it is not as if Fleming went on a drunken rage and fired indiscriminately. Additionally, the thought that Fleming could spend as much time in prison as the burglar he caught is chilling. Attention also must be drawn to the recent spate of burglaries in area and how jumpy residents have become while waiting to see who is next.

The editorial board here at Foster’s Daily Democrat believes an example has already been made of Fleming. To that end, we urge that at worse he be cited for a misdemeanor. We would hope, however, that the County Attorney’s Office allows the charges to be filed for a year, after which charges can be dismissed based on good behavior.

Inflicting punishment on someone who committed no crime is itself a crime. Despite the fact that Fleming acted properly and legally, he most likely will face punishment of some kind for violating the State’s monopoly on the use of force – thereby underscoring the patent uselessness of law enforcement agencies as a means of protecting individual lives and property.

This is not the first time an innocent New Hampshire resident has faced the prospect of a prison term for committing the “offense” of defending himself in a way that embarrassed the police.

Shortly after midnight on November 8, 2008, Dustin Almon of Kensington, New Hampshire noticed two people following him.

Almon finally withdrew a tiny pocketknife from his pants pocket, turned around, and, holding the knife at his side, demanded: “Why are you following me?”

One of the stalkers, Anthony Cattabriga, yelled: “Police!” He and his partner were undercover Liquor Enforcement officers trailing Almon as part of a training exercise. Almon eagerly cooperated with their demands – only to be charged with “criminal threatening.”

Cattabriga and his partner carried concealed handguns and Tasers. Almon was twenty feet away from them when he pulled his pocketknife, and he made no threatening moves. Yet Cattabriga insisted in court that “I feared for my safety.” This was enough to convince Judge Sawako Gardner of Almon’s guilt. The stalking victim was sentenced to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine (half of which was “suspended”).

Almon’s only offense was to protect himself against unidentified strangers – and, perhaps, to expose the incurable cowardice of the police officers who had him outnumbered and out-gunned.

Read more here.

(Editor’s note: This version has been corrected and slightly expanded from the original.)

Mike Kennedy, police chief of Sunriver, Oregon, was fired on February 16, receiving a reported severance package of $100,000. That sum, representing the balance of Kennedy’s 2012 salary and accrued vacation time, seems more than a little extravagant, given that his position was little more than a glorified sinecure.

“This is not about Mike being a bad guy, or anything of that nature,” Ron Angell, chairman of SSD’s Managing Board, told the Bend Bulletin. Angell described the severance deal as “fair and generous”; the second adjective is a pronounced understatement, and the first is at best disputable, given that there’s no evidence that the people whose property and rental taxes were used to pay Kennedy and his cohorts benefited at all from that arrangement.

Some Sunriver residents have long wondered why a resort community with a permanent population of roughly 1,000 people with a negligible crime rate needs a police department. This arrangement is even more peculiar in light of the fact that the U.S. Census Bureau considers the vacation enclave to be part of nearby Bend.

With Kennedy removed from his position, the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office will be providing “oversight” to the Sunriver PD — which now consists of two sergeants and eight officers – until a new chief is appointed. There is no obvious reason why a resort already covered by the County Sheriff’s Office requires its own police force. Although Angell – the only member of the SSD willing to speak on the record – maintained that Kennedy, who joined the Sunriver PD in 1990, “served our community well,” he also told the Bulletin that the decision to fire the chief was based on a desire to “develop a closer relationship with the community.”

At least some Sunriver residents insist that the police are already too close for comfort.

Reporters for NBC affiliate KTVZ spoke with a “handful” of Sunriver business owners who “declined to speak on camera, but mentioned some tension involving claims of abuse or harassment by the resort community’s police force.” Those problems are most acutely displayed by the bizarre case of Robert Foster.

A long-time Sunriver resident and Bend native, Foster runs Tubs Alive, a hot tub service business with more than 600 clients in the area. In 2010, two members of the Sunriver Police Department – Sergeant Joseph Patnode and Officer Kasey Hughes – obtained a restraining order against Foster, claiming that he was “stalking and harassing” them. Under the terms of that restraining order – which was arranged ex parte – the supposed victims can have Foster arrested any time he comes within their field of vision within Sunriver’s jurisdiction.

The order targeting Robert Foster – who had no prior criminal record of any kind — amounts to a bill of attainder. Chief Kennedy and three of his subordinates tidily disposed of the necessity of providing evidence that Foster had ever committed a crime. Instead, they criminalized the person of Robert Foster, as if he were the municipal equivalent of an “unlawful enemy combatant” subject to indefinite detention without legal recourse.

Foster, a slender, gray-haired 52-year-old grandfather, is outspoken and occasionally confrontational in a way that civic-minded businessmen should be. Foster’s troubles began several years ago when he distinguished himself as a critic of a proposal from the Sunriver Owners Association (SROA) – the resort’s equivalent of a municipal government – to create a fully accredited police force as a revenue-farming apparatus.

Between 1987 and  2007, Sunriver’s police force, such as it was, had no authority to issue traffic citations and other instruments of “taxation by citation.”

The resort property’s roads, which had been classified as public highways under the jurisdiction of Deschutes County, were transferred to the SROA in 1987. Although the Sunriver PD continued to act as if they were public conveyances, and obfuscate the question whenever it came up, the roads were actually private premises accessible to the public — that is, they had the same legal status as a private driveway. In 2001 a man named Robert J. Ball challenged a ticket issued by the Sunriver PD for driving with a suspended license. Although Ball’s conviction was upheld by the Oregon Appellate Court in 2004, that ruling addressed the narrow issue of the “reasonable suspicion” behind the traffic stop; the decision didn’t address whether Sunriver’s roads were highways.

By that time, the SROA had made it clear that the roads were not highways. In 2002 — while Ball’s case was working its way through the courts — the SROA re-opened the question after its Public Works Department purchased an ATV for use in service calls. Chief Kennedy insisted that Oregon’s Motor Vehicle Code didn’t permit the use of an ATV on a highway. When the SROA modified the community’s rules and regulations to allow the ATV to operate on Sunriver streets, Kennedy objected that this was still impermissible under state law. For the next four years, the Sunriver police continued to issue traffic tickets of dubious legality while a special committee studied the matter. In December 2006, the SROA proposed a “public access easement” to Deschutes County — but this was rejected by the County, which ruled that Sunriver’s streets were private roads, rather than public highways.

In February 2007 — nearly twenty years after Sunriver’s roads had been privatized — the SROA formally recognized that they were “premises open to the public,” rather than public highways. This meant that most of the traffic stops conducted in Sunriver during the previous two decades had been illegal.

In practical terms, commented Susan Lawson of the Sunriver Scene  in 2007, this meant that “If someone were robbing the mini-mart up the road the police would obviously have the power to arrest the suspect. The police are simply not permitted to enforce a very small number – it’s either six or eight – of laws dealing with minor traffic infractions, because our roads are the equivalent of private property.”

“No seatbelt? No citation. No tail light? No ticket. In too much of a hurry? Not to worry,” reported a March 3, 2007 AP story from Sunriver. “Sgt. P.J. Beaty watches people in this upscale development breaking traffic laws, and sees plenty of them. But he can’t pull them over. A man swerved head-on into Beaty’s lane, and then back out again and Beaty couldn’t lay a glove on him.”

This simply wouldn’t do, of course.  The SROA successfully lobbied Oregon State Rep. Gene Whisnat to sponsor H.B. 3445, a bill custom-tailored for Sunriver that extended police “authority” to include roads and streets on “premises open to the public that are owned by a homeowners association….”

In 2008, following passage of H.B 3445 — which put the police in the business of collecting revenue at gunpoint — the SROA enacted a special multi-million-dollar tax assessment for a special service district (SSD) it had created in 2002. The SSD now included a fully functional – and entirely redundant – police department.

Many local residents thought this arrangement was wasteful and unnecessary, but only Bob Foster made himself conspicuous by his public opposition to it. He became a familiar presence at public meetings, where he would barrage the SROA with pointed questions and express forceful opposition to an arrangement he regarded as both profligate and counter-productive.

During one public meeting in which the town’s economic challenges were discussed, Foster suggested that the SROA could save several millions of dollars each year by seceding from Deschutes County, thereby canceling the expensive service district agreement. He also recommended that the duties of the police be scaled back to their pre-2007 role, and that Sunriver contract with a nearby town called La Pine for emergency services.

“That’s the kind of talk that made me Public Enemy Number One,” Foster recalled during an interview last year. In a sense, Foster became a material threat to the Sunriver Police – not to the physical safety of any of its officers, but to the agency’s continued access to a steady revenue stream. He and his daughter, Rebecca Foster Kossler (who has spent countless hours immersed in every detail of this complex and infuriating case), suspect that Chief Kennedy, along with members of the SROA, conceived of the “stalking” order as a way of intimidating, silencing – and perhaps exiling – a local businessman who had become a prominent political dissident.

During a June 15, 2010 sworn deposition, then-Chief Kennedy insisted that Foster “breaks the law all the time,” but admitted that neither he nor any member of his department had ever arrested him. (Foster has been subsequently arrested twice for supposed violations of the stalking order.)

In his testimony, Kennedy insisted that Foster’s alleged crimes included “disorderly conduct, interfering with a police officer, menacing, harassment, and stalking.”

“Was he ever arrested for any of those?” asked attorney Frank Wesson, who was representing Foster in the hearing.

“No; fortunately for him, no,” Kennedy replied.

If Foster had been the fearsome one-man crime wave Kennedy described, the Chief’s own testimony provided sufficient reason for him to be terminated for cause: He had admitted, under oath, that the police department he led was allowing a repeat offender to prowl the streets of Sunriver.

Rather than instructing his officers to arrest Foster if there was evidence that he had committed a crime, Kennedy explained that he instructed them “to document every time they had a problem with Mr. Foster.” He did this because “Mr. Foster was harassing and stalking our officers.”

The resulting memoranda depict foster as if he were a cartoon super-villain. For example, one official report from Sunriver Officer Dree Warren to Chief Kennedy described Foster as glaring at Sunriver police officers and emitting a sinister laugh like that of “the villain the Joker from the Batman cartoons.”

A report filed by Officer Kasey Hughes in the fall of 2010 is heavy on sinister insinuation and barren of anything remotely resembling evidence of criminal behavior. Hughes described how he and two other officers were responding to a citizen complaint at the Crossroads Gas Station in Sunriver when he saw Foster “sitting at a table directly in front of his truck,” writing in a notepad. A few minutes later, while interviewing a local resident, “I saw Foster standing outside his vehicle, staring at me,” Hughes continued. “I also noticed him washing his windshield very slowly.”

Foster’s “threatening” behavior was supposedly noticed by the individual Hughes was interviewing. “Man, he’s eye-f**king you,” the resident told Hughes, according to the officer’s unsupported account. According to the report, this incident was enough to frighten Hughes away – although, oddly enough, his supposed stalker “was still at the gas pumps when I left.”

Incidents of that kind were sufficient to persuade a judge to issue a restraining order for the purpose of protecting the timid creatures employed by the Sunriver PD from the supposed menace of a skinny, peaceful grandfather who looks like an aging hippie whose only “offenses” were to speak his mind and refuse to be intimidated.

In an October 8 2010 petition seeking the extension of the stalking protection order, Officer Kasey Hughes accused Foster of making “violent and aggressive” statements that displayed a “distorted perception” of the police department. Among those supposedly criminal utterances was “You’re a public servant, I’m your boss.” On another occasion Foster “referred to the Sunriver Police as `the local Gestapo’” – an assessment which, given the department’s behavior, barely qualifies as hyperbole.

Foster “appears to be a highly volatile person,” simpered Hughes, accusing him of “obsessive behavior that could turn to aggression at any point.” Besides, Foster “has access to guns,” pouted Hughes, who – unlike his supposed persecutor – carries one with him at all times. Furthermore, to the extent that either overt or oblique threats have been made, Foster was the victim, not the aggressor.

Last year, Foster’s civil case was submitted to third-party arbitration. Under the terms of the police department’s settlement offer, Foster would be subject to a 10-year permanent stalking protection order that could not be modified, or he could choose a 5-year permanent stalking order and pay $10,000 in legal costs. In either case, Foster would agree not to file a civil rights complaint he had filed against the police, and the existing legal record of the case – including the critical admissions offered by then-Chief Kennedy – would be expunged. This would leave the police with the ability to arrest Foster on sight.

All of this was admitted by William Flinn, the attorney from Bend appointed to serve as arbitrator.

“I know Bob feels that, had he accepted the [settlement] offer, the police still would have found some way to construe episodes of his future conduct as stalking,” Flinn wrote to Foster’s defense counsel on July 11, 2011. “But, I don’t think that was a good reason to reject the offer.”

In a follow-up e-mail four days later, Flinn reiterated his demand that Foster submit to the ludicrous settlement offer, telling his attorney that “there is virtually no chance that Bob will prevail in court, despite your excellent trial skills and some evidence of paranoia/lack of candor on the part of the police.” (Emphasis added) A more appropriate term to describe that “lack of candor” is “perjury.”

In addition to being “paranoid,” the Sunriver police also pose a threat of potentially lethal violence to Foster, according to Flinn:

“The skirmishing between the Sunriver police and Bob Foster has been going on for over five years. So far, no one has resorted to the use of weapons, but it appears the risk increases with every new encounter. If I were the judge hearing this case, my priority would be to defuse the situation before it gets violent. No judge wants to be blamed, in retrospect, for passing up an opportunity to prevent armed conflict and the loss of life.”

In his sworn deposition, then-Chief Kennedy admitted that Foster has never been seen carrying a firearm. The only threat of violence in any of those encounters was that posed Kennedy and his cohorts – and it could have been neutralized at any time by withdrawing the ludicrous protective order.

A judicial hearing into the case was scheduled for January 26. Foster, who had been forced to leave Sunriver for three months to avoid violating the spurious stalking order, returned from visiting family in Florida. Dozens of people – including nearly the entire Sunriver Police Department, dressed in uniform and wearing body armor – crowded into a tiny room in the Deschutes County Courthouse. Although the hearing was scheduled for 9:30 a.m., the assembled crowd waited for several hours while District Judge Barbara Haslinger held a series of off-the-record conversations with each of the parties in her chambers.

Haslinger, a former social worker, proposed to replace the Protective Order with a “civil order” that would require a hearing to examine a stalking complaint against Foster before he could be arrested for “stalking” a police officer. In practical terms, this would mean that rather than being hauled away in handcuffs any time he was spied by any of his “victims” on the police force, Foster would merely be hauled into court. Not surprisingly, Foster rejected the proposed deal. The hearing was rescheduled for April. This meant that Foster had to depart Sunriver once again, while the SROA and the police department – buttressed with money gleaned from local home and business owners – devised another round of dilatory tactics.

Tellingly, Foster and his family are eager to get the matter into court – and their supposed victims on the police force are just as determined to avoid offering sworn testimony in public. Was the decision to fire Chief Kennedy pre-emptive damage control by SROA in anticipation of the April hearing into Bob Foster’s case?

Read more here.

Politically progressive parents who withdraw their children from government schools are ideological hypocrites who undermine the common good, insists Dana Goldstein, a  Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation.

In recent years, “there has been a resurgence of interest in homeschooling – not just the religious fundamentalist variety practiced by Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum, but also in secular, liberal homeschooling,” writes Goldstein in an essay for Slate.

Although a definitive tally of the number of home-schooled children is elusive, the best estimate places the “un-schooled” population somewhere in the vicinity of two millions, “and the number is growing. It is unclear home many homeschooling families are secular, but the political scientist Rob Reich has written that there is little doubt that the homeschooling population has diversified in recent years.”

As someone who adheres to the cult of the State as a quasi-divine entity that is the source of all good things, Goldstein is troubled that the individualist heresy has taken root among self-described progressives. Homeschooling “is rooted in distrust of the public sphere, in class privilege, and in the dated presumption that children hail from two-parent families, in which one parent can afford (and wants) to take significant time away from paid work in order to manage a process – education – that most parents entrust to the community-at-large,” she writes with a palpable sense of disgust.

For the devout collectivist, the question is not whether homeschooling “best serve[s] the interests not just of those who are doing it, but of society as a whole,” according to Goldstein. Furthermore, it’s entirely inappropriate to “encourage children to trust only their parents or those hand-selected by them, and to mistrust civic life and public institutions…. Nor can we allow homeschoolers to believe their choice impacts only their own offspring.” Removing intellectually capable children from the government school environment undermines the “peer effects” created in the classroom setting, thereby supposedly making it “harder for less-advantaged children to thrive.”

For all of these reasons, Goldstein writes in a scolding tone, “Lefty homeschoolers might be preaching sound social values to their children, but they aren’t practicing them.”

For centuries, wrote the late social commentator  Christopher Lasch (who in his youth was a Marxist) in his book The True and Only Heaven, social engineers have “sought to remove children from the influence of their families … and to place them under the benign influence of state and school.” This is true not only of Dana Goldstein’s ideological ancestors among 19^th and early 20^th century American progressives, but among her ideological kindred in the Soviet Union.

In his 1937 work A Book for Parents, Soviet sociologist A.S. Makarenko–at the time a personal favorite of Josef Stalin–wrote that the Soviet family “is not a closed-in, collective body, like the bourgeois family. It is an organic part of Soviet society….” While “parents are not without authority” in the Soviet system, “this authority is only the reflection of social authority,” insisted Makarenko.

Not surprisingly, given his role as a functionary in a state apparatus devoted to the extirpation of religious belief, Makarenko explicitly repudiated the biblical foundations of parental authority, stating that in the pre-socialist world “parental authority issued from the Lord’s commandment. In our modern family things are different.” He denounced the pre-socialist father as an “odious figure”–”Master, overseer, teacher, judge and sometimes executioner,” “despotic,” a monarch who exploited his children. He taught that the State—the institutional arrangement that made it possible for Stalin to annihilate slaughtered tens of millions–must forbid parental physical punishment and “maternal indulgence.” This wasn’t because Makarenko had moral objections to corporal punishment, but rather because allowing such displays of limited punitive authority would undermine the State’s monopoly on force.

The family’s purpose in the Soviet system was to raise the State’s children according to the State’s dictates. “Morality requires general emulation of the most perfect conduct,” wrote Makarenko. “Our morality must already be the morality of communist society…. In our country he alone is a man of worth whose needs and desires are the needs and desires of a collectivist. Our family offers rich soil for the cultivation of such collectivism.”

Thirty years after publication of Makarenko’s book in the Soviet Union, it was published in the United States under the title The Collective Family: A Handbook for Russian Parents. The introduction in the English-language edition was written by Russian expatriate Urie Bronfenbrenner, who at the time (1967) was a member of the Planning Committee for the Head Start program. According to Bronfenbrenner, the wisdom offered in Makarenko’s Soviet handbook should help shape American social policy:

The Collective Family … has something to say to the Western world…. Soviet leaders and educators have emphasized that effective character training requires imposing on the child challenging responsibilities for service and self-discipline not only within the family but, equally importantly, in his collective or peer group both within and outside the school.

The vision that enchanted Bronfenbrenner, and inspired generations of American educators, bureaucrats, and social engineers, was laid out with remarkable clarity at a Communist Party Congress held shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution. In that gathering (as recounted in the 1986 book Utopia in Power: A History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present, by Russian expatriate scholars Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr Nekrich), Soviet educators were told: “We must remove the children from the crude influence of their families. We must take them over and, to speak frankly, nationalize them. From the first days of their lives they will be under the healthy influence of Communist children’s nurseries and schools. There they will grow up to be real Communists.”

The American social welfare revolution of the past five decades has followed precisely the same course. Home school families constitute a counter-revolution – and, increasingly, their ranks include disillusioned “Lefty” parents who commendably place a higher value on the practical education of their own children than the theoretical best interests of the “community-at-large.”

Read more here.

Constable Fred Walker of Texas’s Shelby County allegedly ordered the illegal bugging of municipal officials in the village of Tenaha, which has been at the center of a multi-million-dollar drug asset forfeiture scam. Those charges were made in an affidavit filed by Roderette McClure, who was arrested last fall for breaking into the offices at Walker’s direction.

Tenaha is strategically placed along a major north-south highway that serves as a significant conduit for drug traffic. Thanks to the “War on Drugs,” it became the center of a highway robbery scheme conducted by local government officials, who employed the practice of “civil asset forfeiture” to prey on out-of-state travelers.

“Civil asset forfeiture” is the practice of seizing money and property from people suspected of involvement in criminal activity – usually involving narcotics trafficking. Unlike criminal forfeiture, which occurs pursuant to a conviction, “civil” forfeiture doesn’t require that the subject be found guilty of a crime, or even be formally charged with an offense. All that is necessary is a suspicion that a “nexus” exists between the confiscated property and a narcotics offense. The property is then sued in civil court in what is described as an “in rem” (Latin for “against the thing”) proceeding, where a judgment is granted on the basis of a preponderance of evidence.

For the past several years, police and prosecutors in Tenaha, Texas — a town on roughly 1,100  in Shelby County bordering Louisiana — have added some innovative wrinkles to the familiar forfeiture racket. A  federal lawsuit describes how Tenaha police have refined to a science the practice of targeting motorists — generally “racial and ethnic minorities, and those in their company” — for unjustified traffic stops, during which they are questioned as to “whether they have money or valuables” and then subjected to illegal searches.

Should money or items of value be found, the motorist and passengers would then be placed under arrest for “money laundering” or drug-related charges, and given an ultimatum: Sign away their property or face prosecution. This form of extortion-robbery is particularly effective when the victim is carrying an abnormal but relatively small amount of cash — say, less than $5,000 — that wouldn’t be enough to compensate for the hassle and expense of mounting a legal defense.

The people in charge of this racket focused their efforts almost exclusively on people who were entirely innocent and helpless: Those actually connected to drug cartels were either allowed to go free without prosecution of given the lightest possible sentences.

In one of the cases described in the lawsuit, an individual named Danny Green who works as an investigator for the Shelby County Prosecutor’s Office threatened to kidnap a couple’s children if they didn’t sign a document surrendering about $6,000 in cash.

George Bowers, the elderly mayor of Tenaha, insisted that the seizures are justified not because of a compelling law enforcement need, but because his municipal government needs the money.  One measure of the depth of Shelby County’s municipal was provided by the reaction of District Attorney Lynda Russell to the federal lawsuit: She sought official permission to use forfeited funds to defend herself from charges that she had illegally confiscated those same  funds.

When the FBI, reacting to public outrage, began to investigate the asset forfeiture racket, officials throughout Shelby County began a frantic effort to protect themselves.

McClure, who on February 14 pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, told FBI investigators that Constable Walker “had him install surveillance cameras disguised as smoke detectors and hidden voice-activated digital recording equipment in the offices of Tenana Mayor George Boyers and deputy city marshal Barry Washington,” reports the AP. “Walker said he wanted to `cover’ himself over the traffic stops, most of which were conducted by Washington….”

According to McClure’s affidavit, he and Walker ran a drug trafficking ring when Walker was City Marshal. They eventually embezzled roughly 500 pounds in contraband – including marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and hydrocone – from the Tenaha City Marshal’s office evidence room. In November 2010, the pair received an extortion threat from someone identifying himself as “Jack Frost” who said he was aware that Walker and McClure were stealing confiscated drugs and selling them. This led them to “stage a burglary as a cover for the missing drugs” – and then to install the listening devices in city office buildings in order to find out who was aware the City Marshall was moonlighting as a drug lord.

Read more here.

One measure of Idaho’s significance in that event is found in the fact that the three serious GOP contenders — Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Dr. Paul — all visited Idaho, giving the state’s Republican-dominated electorate an an unprecedented level of attention. Of similar significance is the fact that Dr. Paul, who was the last to schedule appearances in the state, drew by far the largest and most enthusiastic crowds.

William N. Grigg, managing editor of Republic magazine, was invited to introduce Dr. Paul at the February 18 event in Boise. Following are his remarks as written for delivery.

The country we love is under the rule of an elected dictator who recognizes no limits on his power to regiment our lives, plunder our wealth, and imprison or even kill anyone of his choosing.

Three Republican candidates seek to replace him not because they object to this tyrannical accumulation of power, but because they covet it for themselves. Only one Republican contender seeks the office because he is committed to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. In a few minutes we will be privileged to hear from him.

A familiar classic rock tune informs us that “Everybody wants to rule the world.” The people who wrote that song obviously weren’t acquainted with Dr. Ron Paul. Uniquely among contemporary political figures, Dr. Paul has no desire to rule anybody – but rather to restore the rule of law that is indispensable to the protection of individual liberty.

For every other candidate seeking the presidency, all human progress begins with a bureaucrat and the armed enforcer who implements that bureaucrat’s decrees. Ron Paul understands that all progress begins with the free individual, who is the owner of his life and deserves to keep everything he has earned through his industry and creativity.

Dr. Paul likewise understands that while the right of armed self-defense is indispensable, no government ever improved a person’s life by pointing guns at him. For decades he has courageously opposed the untethered madness of drug prohibition and every other front of the government’s ever-escalating war against the Bill of Rights. He does this not because drug addiction is harmless, but because there is no deadlier narcotic than power – and government has no authority to regulate what people freely choose to consume.

The same government that conjures new powers out of the air colludes with a quasi-private criminal syndicate called the Federal Reserve to debase the currency in order to fund its grandiose designs.

For decades, Dr. Paul has worked to expose the crimes of that officially licensed counterfeiting ring, and its role in making debt slaves out of us and our children. And he has waged an unremitting campaign to end the reign of terror conducted by the world’s most notorious three-letter secret police agency – the IRS.

Alone among Republican contenders, Dr. Paul seeks to restore a foreign policy compatible with that of Washington, Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams.  He alone is committed to the actual defense of our country, rather than perpetual military entanglements in the affairs of other nations that do nothing to protect our freedom and a great deal to cultivate the animosities from which future acts of terrorism will eventually spring.

Were the Framers of the Constitution to interview the current crop of presidential hopefuls, it would immediately become clear that Dr. Paul is the only one with whom they could have an intelligent conversation. That is because the language of liberty is his native tongue – not some unfamiliar dialect from which he borrows an occasional phrase for use during election campaigns.

The most important qualification for the presidency is an understanding of the Constitution, and the character to preserve, protect, and defend it. Dr. Paul’s rivals for the nomination recognize those qualities in him, which is why, during debates, they habitually defer to his insights whenever constitutional questions are addressed. And this is why Dr. Paul is the only candidate who, if elected, could take the oath of office without committing an act of public perjury.

We who are blessed to live in Idaho have been given a rare opportunity to cast a consequential vote on behalf of peace, prosperity, and individual liberty in next month’s caucuses. Don’t let that opportunity be wasted.

As Shakespeare once wrote:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads to fortune…. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”

Dr. Paul helped summon a wave of peaceful, principled rebellion against a government that has long since slipped the chains of the Constitution. Regardless of what happens at the ballot box this November, that wave will continue to grow. But it can carry this uniquely qualified and decent man to the Oval Office.

My fellow Idahoans, I give you the man who — if God is unusually generous, and the American people are wiser than we’ve recently been — will be the next President of the United States of America: Dr. Ron Paul.

Scottsdale Police Officer James Peters, a former SWAT operative previously involved in six fatal officer-involved shootings, killed John Loxas II Tuesday night (February 14) while the 50-year-old grandfather was holding a baby.

Although police “could see that the suspect had the baby in his arms” just before Peters fired the fatal shot, Loxas was unarmed, according to a Scripps wire service account. “After several calls for Loxas to exit the home, he opened the door with the baby in his left hand, and stood just inside the doorway…. Officers then saw Loxas reach down to his right, lowering the baby and exposing his head and upper body. Peters then responded to the movement with a single shot to Loxas’ head.”

Two years ago, Loxas was arrested following a report that he had been seen “yelling and walking around with a handgun.” Although officers described Loxas as “drunk” and “threatening his neighbors with a pistol,” he was not charged with aggravated assault – as Arizona statutes would dictate – but for the trivial offense of “disorderly conduct.”

Tuesday’s episode was quite similar: The police were summoned by a report that he had kicked a neighbor’s garbage can into the street while he was on a walk with his nine-month-old grandson. When police arrived they found him outside his home. Ordered to “step away” from the house, Loxas retreated inside. Without any evidence that Loxas intended to harm the child, the officers created a “crisis entry team” – that is, they escalated the conflict by imposing a military protocol that led to the summary execution of a man who wasn’t suspected of a violent crime.

That decision might have been prompted by the fact that Loxas – in addition to having a turbulent relationship with his neighbors — was an outspoken political dissident who briefly considered running for President.

“A REVOLUTION IS COMING,” Loxas wrote in a March 2011 Facebook entry. “THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO CHANGE. The question is: Who do YOU want to be President of the United States AFTER the revolution is over?”

“I believe that the World Bank/International Monetary Fund/Federal Reserve/IRS, mainstream media, corporatism, Zionism and GREED are the true axes of evil whether or not … they know or believe that themselves,” he continued. “Right or wrong, true or untrue; this is MY belief, and I firmly stand by it.”

Given his characterization of government as an all-encompassing criminal menace – a description no rational, honest person would dispute – it’s not surprising that Loxas regarded “ANY agent of the government” to be “an enemy of the PEOPLE,” and insisted that in the event of large-scale civic unrest that people should focus their rage on government buildings or officials, rather than each other. Whatever one thinks of the wisdom of such exhortations, they are indistinguishable, in tenor and reasoning, from countless similar examples one can cull from the writings of America’s revolutionary period.

Killer cop: James Peters now on paid vacation.

Although Loxas was treated as if he were a heavily armed barricaded kidnapper, a search of his home turned up a total of two firearms – neither of which was within easy reach when he was killed by Officer Peters – and an object described as a “functional improvised explosive device” that was disposed of by a bomb squad and not inspected by any independent party.

The Scottsdale PD has claimed that the paramilitary tactics used in the confrontation were dictated by concerns for the infant’s safety. It’s not clear how shooting the grandfather while he was holding the infant was to the child’s benefit. Another possibility is that Loxas, by virtue of his impassioned political opinions, fit the profile of the dreaded “Sovereign Citizens” movement, which has been designated by the FBI as the most prominent domestic “terrorist” threat – and the most acute threat to “officer safety.”

In late January, an FBI-led paramilitary strike team conducted a full-force raid on the residence of a Lake Mary, Florida couple suspected of harboring “Sovereign Citizens”-derived political views.  Brandishing automatic weapons and deploying camera-equipped robots, the SWAT team went through the house and garage, removing several boxes of documents. The couple has yet to be charged with a crime.

Last June, the Department of Homeland Security conducted drone surveillance of a remote farm outside Lakota, North Dakota at the request of Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke. The farm belonged to the family of Rodney Brossart, who was involved in a dispute with the Sheriff regarding the disposition of cattle that had wandered onto his land. Citing material emitted by the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, Sheriff Janke described Brossart and his wife as suspected “Sovereign Citizens” – a designation that apparently elevated this insignificant quarrel over wandering livestock to the status of a threat against Homeland Security.

Read more here.

After doing her formidable best to sow misery and bloodshed as the Obama administration’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is reportedly seeking appointment as president of the World Bank. If chosen for the post, Mrs. Clinton will replace Robert Zoellick, who had served as George W. Bush’s trade representative.

Zoellick “would potentially be a strong candidate for a senior position if a Republican takes the White House in presidential elections in November,” observes Reuters. He was appointed in 2007 to replace former Paul Wolfowitz, another Bush administration alum who had previously been Deputy Defense Secretary – and one of the chief architects of the disastrous war in Iraq. Wolfowitz’s term was cut short by a staff rebellion triggered by disclosures that he had arranged to give an unearned raise to a female staffer euphemistically referred to as his “companion.”

Created as part of the post-WWII constellation of globalist organizations (which includes the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and the World Trade Organization), the World Bank has an entirely unearned reputation for promoting economic development and relief around the world. In fact, it has done more propagate hardship and terror than any institution in history.

In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, economist John Perkins describes the role played by the World Bank in a global loan-sharking scheme. Covertly recruited by a corporate front for the U.S. intelligence “community” in the late 1960s, Perkins was dispatched to various countries, including Indonesia and Panama, to help induce national leaders to take out huge World Bank loans to fund mammoth infrastructure programs.

According to Perkins, he was just one Economic Hit Man (EHM) among thousands plying the same trade worldwide. If an EHM is successful, writes Perkins, “the [World Bank] loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the
installation of military bases, or access to precious resources. Of course, the debtor still owes us money s and another country is added to our global empire.”

Economic Hit Men aren’t the only weapons in the Power Elite’s arsenal. Perkins also refers to “Jackals,” who are sent to deal with the most refractory foreign leaders by fomenting revolutions, or staging assassinations. Writes Perkins: “When the Jackals fail,
young Americans are sent in to kill and die.”
Perkins’ account brings to mind a conversation this reported had with former World Bank chief Barber Conable during the 1995 International Development Conference in Washington, D.C. Pointing out that the Constitution didn’t authorize the federal government to take tax dollars from American citizens and disburse them as foreign aid, I asked Conable how the practice could be justified.

Dismissing the constitutional argument as “specious,” Conable insisted that foreign aid “has to do with our position in the world. There are all kinds of ways of dealing with the problems of our relationships with the rest of the world. One is to do it the most extreme way, using national defense as your ultimate weapon. Of course, the other way is
to find ways of anticipating that, and avoiding the necessity of it” through the use of foreign aid.

Which is to say that for Conable and his ilk, foreign policy is based on the idea of inducing other governments to behave in a desired fashion s which means that it boils down to a matter of “bomb ‘em or bribe ‘em.” In principle, Conable and Perkins agree how foreign aid works — although Perkins, to his credit, now condemns the practice and has repudiated the elite responsible for it.

When Wolfowitz was tapped to head the World Bank in 2005, left-leaning commentator David Corn of The Nation correctly pointed out that Wolfowitz was following in the footsteps of Robert McNamara, “the captain of the Vietnam tragedy, [who] left his post as secretary of defense to become president of the World Bank. So Bush is establishing
a bipartisan tradition: you screw up a war, you get to run the World Bank. With this announcement, the impoverished of the world have less reason for hope.”

Hillary Clinton’s appointment follows in that tradition: She was deeply involved in orchestrating the NATO-led military assault on Libya, which resulted in the removal and execution of long-time dictator Muammar Khadafy – and his replacement by a clique of even bloodier Islamist radicals. By the time Zoellick steps down in June, it’s possible that Clinton – who has long been a hard-liner with respect to Iran – will have helped choreograph another war, this time in the Persian Gulf. Apparently, instigating wars and mass bloodshed is a key prerequisite for American elitists who cover the top position at the World Bank.

As John Perkins points out, rather than offering impoverished nations a “reason for hope,” the World Bank has done more than its share to crush the hopes of the world’s impoverished peoples. The problem with the World Bank is not that sometimes it is run by the “wrong” people, but rather that it exists at all.

Read more here.

(See update below)

School choice initiatives expanding parental control over education are unacceptable, insists Debbie Squires of the Michigan Elementary and Middle Schools Principals Association, because “Educators know best how to serve children, not necessarily regular parents.”

That stunning assertion of bureaucratic supremacy came during Squires’ testimony in a February 1 hearing of the Michigan House Education Committee. Chairman Thomas McMillin offered a stunned, one-word reaction: “Wow.”

“I’m surprised I didn’t lose it when she said that,” McMillan later told legislative correspondent Dave Murray of MLive.com. “They think they know what’s better for children than their own parents, and that’s what I find upsetting.”

The hearing examined SB 619, a bill that would raise the existing cap on the number of “virtual charter schools” that would allow K-12 students to attend on-line classes with the help of a parent or guardian who acts as a “learning coach.” Presently, two virtual charter schools are operating in Michigan, each of which has a long waiting list for students eager to enroll. The state’s education establishment opposes any expansion of the program, claiming that it’s necessary to wait several years until it’s possible to assess long-term academic performance. Squires’ candid statement, however, demonstrates that “This is a case of the education establishment in this state not wanting parents to have choices,” McMillin declares. “They want to be in control.”

The mindset displayed by Debbie Squires is rooted in the evil concept of parens patriae – a Latin expression referring to the idea that the State has primacy in the lives of children, with actual parents playing a peripheral role in raising the State’s children.

Another conspicuous example of that mindset occurred in at a Pre-Kindergarten program at West Hoke Elementary School in Raeford, North Carolina. A mother who had enrolled her four-year-old daughter in the program was disgusted to learn that a “government inspector” had ruled that the student’s home-made lunch – which contained a turkey sandwich, a banana, apple juice, and potato chips — was unsuitable. The inspector compelled the child to take a helping of processed chicken nuggets, milk, a fruit and a vegetable to supplement the lunch her mother had packed for her – of which only the chicken nuggets, a highly processed and nutrition-free pseudo-food, were eaten.

The mother, who says that her daughter “isn’t a vegetable eater,” told the Civitas Institute that she has been involved in a long and frustrating struggle with the school bureaucracy, which has ignored her requests to leave the girl’s home-packed lunches alone. She has also been warned that parents could be charged a cafeteria fee when inspectors provide what they consider the “missing portions” of a government-approved lunch.

After being contacted by the mother, North Carolina state Representative G.L. Pridgen “learned this is a nationwide practice based on federal guidelines,” reports the Civitas Institute. “An assistant to Pridgen says the girl’s grandmother was also upset and asked, `This isn’t China, is it?’”

No, this isn’t China – but the government ruling us, like the one afflicting that country, has long embraced the assumption that it has the authority to regiment the lives of all children residing within its jurisdiction.

In 1882, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled: “It is the unquestioned right and imperative duty of every enlightened government, in its character of parens patriae to protect and provide for the comfort and well-being of its citizens…. The performance of this duty is justly regarded as one of the most important governmental functions, and all constitutional limitations must be so understood and construed so as not to interfere with its proper and legitimate exercise.” (Emphasis added.)

Since the Constitution assigns no legitimate role to any government regarding the care and education of children, that ruling demolished “constitutional limitations” rather than merely re-defining them. Similar rulings were issued by courts in other states throughout the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. At the same time, the embryonic educational establishment, and activists in kindred social work disciplines, were being indoctrinated to act as evangelists for the gospel of government paternalism.

In 1913, Dr. Arthur W. Calhoun published A Social History of The American Family: From Colonial Times to the Present, which would become an authoritative text for American social-service and welfare workers. Calhoun was remarkably unabashed in promoting a perspective on State supremacy that could have been offered by Marx and Engels (who brazenly called for “abolition of the family!” in the Communist Manifesto):

“American history consummates the disappearance of the wider [or extended] familism and the substitution of the parentalism of society…. The new view is that the higher and more obligatory relation is to society rather than to the family; the family goes back to the age of savagery while the state belongs to the age of civilization. The modern individual is a world citizen, served by the world, and home interests can no longer be supreme.”

By 1930, the year that President Herbert Hoover convened the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, it was possible for an American president to describe, in public, the individual child as someone “who belongs to the community almost as much as to the family,” and a citizen of “a world predestinedly [sic] moving toward unity.”

Assumptions of that sort are woven into the fabric of the government’s educational system – and every once in a while parents are shocked to discover that they are regarded as untutored savages by the people in charge of that system.

UPDATE –

The League of Ordinary Gentlemen blog offers some important qualifications to the story from North Carolina:

[T]he “state agent” in this story turns out to be nothing more than a researcher from a program that grades the performance of pre-schools and operates out of the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  It also does not appear that this institute has any actual authority other than to provide assessments, which the state then uses in making licensing decisions and in setting the fees it will pay the day care provider for subsidized care.

Notably, as the second-linked story above suggests, the mother’s main gripe here does not even appear to be with this “state agent,” but instead with the school’s teachers, who continue to give the girl milk and vegetables despite letters from the mother asking them not to.  Indeed, the notion that this “state agent” was going around inspecting every single lunch box brought to the school does not appear to have much basis, as the agent apparently ordered full school lunches for every single child in this program and was evaluating the school’s compliance with standards, not individual parents’ compliance.  Even if he was doing such an inspection, there’s a pretty obvious context-specific reason for it: this is an opt-in program for parents who largely can’t afford to provide fully balanced meals.

In short, while this incident does offer a snapshot of the Nanny State, the portrait is marginally more benign than it would appear on first impression.

The Seattle PD, which has been involved in a string of high-profile abuses, is currently being investigated by the federal Justice Department. Last fall the Seattle ABC affiliate filed a lawsuit against the Seattle PD in King County Superior Court, insisting that the department had “intentionally and illegally stonewalled” efforts to obtain dashcam videos of controversial police actions:

Whether it’s a DUI suspect failing a field sobriety test or a police officer under the microscope following an officer-involved shooting, most video evidence comes directly from the police department itself. Often the video is from cameras mounted on the dashboards of patrol  cars.

After each shift the officer transfers their video into the department’s system and a database keeps track of the recordings. The Problem Solvers have been fighting with the Seattle Police Department for more than a year to gain access to that database so we’d have an index to request specific videos. At every turn the Seattle Police Department has blocked us.

The City of Seattle is also using exceptionally cynical methods to obstruct defense attorney James Egan from obtaining dashcam videos. Egan  has represented several victims of police abuse and has publicized videos of those incidents. After he filed a request under the Washington Public Records Law for another batch of dashcam videos, Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes filed a suit against Egan, making the preposterous claim that the request was a violation of the Privacy Act.

“Should Holmes prevail, it would take at least three years to obtain the vids – just when the statute of limitations for lawsuits against SPD runs out and when the department routinely erases stored videos,” reports the Seattle Weekly.

“The idea that you can’t get a video until three years later is self protectionism,” Egan points out. “They don’t want the public to know the skeletons in their closet.”

In its 67-page report, the Justice Department described the Seattle PD as a “broken” agency that routinely commits crimes against the constitutionally protected rights of the public it supposedly protects:

We find that SPD engages in a pattern or practice of using unnecessary or excessive force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Section 14141. Deficiencies in SPD’s training, policies, and oversight with regard to the use of force contribute to the constitutional violations. Officers lack adequate training or policies on when and how to report force and when and how to use many impact weapons (such as batons and flashlights). We also find that, starting from the top, SPD supervisors often fail to meet their responsibility to provide oversight of the use of force by individual officers. Command staff does not always provide supervisors with clear direction or expectations of how to supervise the use of force.

The inquiry determined that “When SPD officers use force, they do so in an unconstitutional manner nearly 20% of the time”; that “SPD officers too quickly resort to the use of impact weapons, such as batons and flashlights”; and that “SPD officers escalate situations and use unnecessary or excessive force when arresting individuals for minor offenses.”

Go here to see the video of an SPD officer casually admitting that he fabricates evidence, and here to read more about KOMO’s investigation of systemic abuse by the SPD.

Following a series of legal setbacks, and despite the absence of tangible evidence in a case built on the testimony of a spectacularly dubious star witness, federal prosecutors are prepared to begin the sedition trial of seven members of Michigan’s “Hutaree” militia.

The federal indictment describes the Hutaree militia as a domestic terrorist group – the embodiment of recent warnings from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security regarding the supposed menace of “anti-government extremism.” According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Graveline,”The court will hear testimony and examine evidence concerning this particular group’s hatred for, and desire to do physical harm to, law enforcement.” The case against the Hutaree members relies heavily on 100 hours of covertly recorded conversations and the testimony of a confidential informant (that is, snitch for the Feds) who has pleaded guilty to a domestic violence charge involving the use of a firearm.

Rather than charging the Hutaree members with overt criminal acts, the Feds are prosecuting them for “sedition” – that is, criminal “offenses” that consist of expressing opinions about government corruption and making physical preparations to for self-defense against criminal violence by government authorities.

Lloyd Meyer, a Chicago attorney and former terrorism prosecutor, points out that this kind of prosecution is very unusual:

“How often do American citizens get charged with sedition or inciting discontent and resistance against big government? Heck, most citizens are discontented with the government. In this case, no one pulled a trigger and no one got hurt. … A jury could believe that the feds went after this group with a meat cleaver instead of a scalpel.

Federal prosecutors initially attempted to have all nine members of the Hutaree militia held without bail as a severe threat to public safety. In May 2010, Federal District Judge Victoria Roberts granted them bail. She also expressed pointed misgivings about the merits of the federal case.

The Hutaree group militia allegedly plotted to murder a law enforcement officer and then follow up with opportunistic attacks on other LEOs who would attend the funeral. This rampage would supposedly precipitate a wide-scale revolt against the federal government and its local affiliates.

Conversations discussing that scenario were reported by a federal informant who infiltrated the group and – acting as a provocateur– thoughtfully offered to teach them how to make improvised explosive devices.

While federal prosecutors have provided ample evidence that members of the Hutaree are passionately anti-government — what decent person isn’t? — they haven’t been able to demonstrate that the group did anything more than engage in survivalist training and indulge in apocalyptic rhetoric.

Defense attorneys, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio decision, maintain that seditious speech — including speech that constitutes an incitement to violence — is protected by the First Amendment as long as it does not indicate an “imminent” threat.

The prosecutors’ brief, invoking the the 1995 seditious conspiracy trial of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, maintained that it was not necessary to demonstrate a threat of imminent harm, but rather only that the defendants had formed an “agreement to oppose by force the authority of the United States.”

(It should be noted that Rahman was able to obtain a U.S. visa only through the CIA’s intervention, and that the radical Muslim terrorist cell he joined, which carried out the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, included at least three others who  had been on the payroll of U.S. intelligence.)

Judge Roberts didn’t find the government’s case compelling.

“Discussions about killing local law enforcement officers — and even discussions about killing members of the judicial branch of government — do not translate to conspiring to overthrow, or levy war against, the United States government,” she wrote.

Since the federal case against the Hutaree rests entirely on what was said by the suspects, rather than anything specific that was done by them, it’s difficult to see what’s left of it. But that hasn’t deterred the Feds from proceeding with the show trial, which is most likely intended to be a template for future prosecutions of other Americans deemed to be “anti-government extremists.”

Read more here.

A little less than a year after the Arab League set the stage for war by asking the UN to conduct a “humanitarian” intervention in Libya, the regional forum has passed a resolution demanding similar military action by the world body in Syria

The three-page draft resolution, introduced by the Saudis (who, as Sunni Muslims, see Syria as an ally of their regional rivals, Shiite-ruled Iran), “`strongly condemns’ the violations of human rights by Syrian authorities,” summarizes CNN, referring to an unpublished version of the document. “It cites `the use of force against civilians, arbitrary executions, killing and persecution of protesters, human rights defenders and journalists, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, interference with access to medical treatment, torture, sexual violence and ill-treatment, including against children.’”

This bill of particulars “will be submitted to the U.N. General Assembly, where vetoes are not allowed, but resolutions are not legally binding,” continues the CNN report. “Russia and China have vetoed previous U.N. Security Council attempts at passing a resolution condemning the Syrian regime.”

In March 2011, the Arab League – acting by an unrecorded voice vote – petitioned the UN to intervene in Libya by imposing a “no-fly zone.” This action was supposedly justified in order to prevent what was described as a near-genocidal onslaught by the regime of the late Libyan ruler Muamar Ghadafi, who was supposedly engaged in the pitiless slaughter of helpless civilians. At the time, Ghadafi – who was certainly capable of unalloyed brutality – was dealing with an insurrection supported by the U.S., Britain, and France, which was built around a nucleus of al Qaeda-aligned mujahedeen, many of whom had previously fought U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Similar conditions exist in Syria today. Ayman al-Zawahiri, identified as the leader of al Qaeda, has urged Muslim jihadists to converge on Syria to join the struggle to topple Bashar Assad, the hereditary strongman who rules in Damascus.

The 2011 Arab League action against Libya was part of a cynical covert deal between Washington and Riyadh allowing the Saudis to dispatch an expeditionary force to Bahrain to help the Sunni al-Khalifa monarchy put down an uprising on the part of its suppressed and persecuted Shiite minority. While the Saudis performed operatic cadenzas of outrage over the bloodshed in Libya, it was dispatching troops to aid the Bahraini security forces, who – equipped with American-made tanks, helicopters, and armored personnel carriers – were mowing down unarmed protesters in the streets.

After the Arab League approved the Saudi-authored resolution calling for a “limited” UN-enforced no-fly zone over Libya, the Obama administration went all-in for a full-scale military assault. Circumnavigating Congress entirely, the administration assembled a rump international “coalition” for a Chapter Seven resolution – the UN equivalent of a formal declaration of war. That resolution was approved by ten members of the UN Security Council, with five abstentions – which included permanent members Russia and China, along with India, Brazil, and Germany.

In this fashion, the U.S. was committed to a war in Libya without Congress playing any material role in the decision. There is a strong and growing possibility that the same approach will lead to U.S. involvement in a UN-sponsored military strike on Syria – which could, in turn, open a back door to war with Iran.

Commentator Charles Krauthammer, a consistent advocate for foreign adventurism (especially in the Middle East), explains that “the fate of the Assad regime is geopolitically crucial” in the escalating conflict with Iran. Toppling the current Syrian government, he contends, is necessary in order to beat back what he describes as a growing threat from “hegemonic Iran.”

To that end, Krauthammer – whose writings generally reflect the “consensus” of the war lobby – calls for a three-stage campaign against Damasc

First, a total boycott of Syria, beyond just oil and including a full arms embargo. Second, a flood of aid to the resistance (through Turkey, which harbors both rebel militias and the political opposition, or directly and clandestinely into Syria). Third, a Security Council resolution calling for the removal of the Assad regime. Russia, Assad’s last major outside ally, should be forced to either accede or incur the wrath of the Arab states with a veto.

Those steps would globalize the Syrian conflict. Given Russia’s growing opposition to Washington’s low-key intervention in Syria, the course Krauthammer prescribes could lead to a potentially disastrous confrontation between Washington and Moscow. This is precisely the kind of thing the UN was supposed to prevent — but it must be understood that the world body was always designed to facilitate war, rather than prevent it.

“American critics of the United Nations often zero in on its lack of serious military capacity … [and consider it to be little more than ] ineffective do-goodery gone wrong,” observed British journalist Simon Tisdall in a review of the book America, Hitler, and the UN. “Imagine their surprise, then, to learn that the UN was born amid nude scenes in a White House bathroom and that its primary purpose was as a war-fighting machine.”

On December 8, 1939, the U.S. State Department, working with a grant provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, commissioned the Council on Foreign Relations (a group not without influence in policy-making circles) to create a “Committee on Post-War Problems.” It was through that committee that the Roosevelt administration devised its grand military strategy, including the creation of a permanent United Nations organization following the war. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the war itself was seen by Roosevelt and his handlers as a means to create that world body.

“For Roosevelt, the critical task in 1943-45, beyond winning the war, was to commit the United States to postwar international structures before peace could return the nation to its old habits,” pointed out Establishment court historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. “So he moved methodically to prepare the American people for a continuing world role”; this meant, among other things, putting in place key elements of the UN system, beginning with the financial institutions – the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

“Above all, FDR saw the United Nations, in the words of [presidential adviser] Charles E. Bohlen, as ‘the only device that could keep the United States from slipping back into isolationism,” Schlesinger continued. “He was determined to put the United Nations in business while the war was still on so that the American people were still in an internationalist mood; hence the founding conference in San Francisco, which took place after his death but before victory. And, as Winston Churchill emphasized, the new international organization ‘will not shrink from establishing its will against the evil-doer or evil-planner in good time and by force of arms.’”

Despite the fact that Congress has not declared war since December 1941, the United States has been involved in foreign conflicts of one sort or another constantly since the end of World War II. This is in large measure a product of our nation’s improvident involvement in the UN and its regional affiliates, such as NATO. By becoming entangled in these multilateral alliances, the United States has effectively amended the Constitution – albeit in illegitimate fashion – to permit the president to commit the government to a foreign war through the UN.

Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-Michigan), a one-time defender of U.S. independence who became an internationalist after being morally compromised by British intelligence, observed that requiring “the consent of Congress to every use of our armed forces … would violate the spirit of the [UN] Charter” – as if that document, not the U.S. Constitution, was the one he was sworn to uphold. That confusion may have come naturally to Vandenberg, given that he had signed the Charter as a delegate to the UN’s founding conference in San Francisco.

On December 20, 1945, Truman signed into “law” a measure called the United Nations Participation Act of 1945 (UNPA), which amounts to a statutory repudiation of Congress’s constitutional duty to declare war. The UNPA authorizes the U.S. President to “negotiate a special agreement or agreements with the Security Council” concerning the use of American military personnel and facilities for UN “peacekeeping” and “peace enforcement” missions.

The measure also specifies, “The President shall not be deemed to require the authorization of the Congress” to make American troops and assets available to the Security Council. In essence, Truman and his successors have used the UNPA as a perpetual declaration of war granting them authority to deploy American troops anywhere in the world under the color of the UN’s purported authority.

The first test of this extra-constitutional arrangement came in 1951, when, as Arthur Schlesinger recalled, “President Truman proposed, without reference to Congress, to send four divisions to Europe – not to engage in combat but merely to reinforce the American Army under NATO,” a treaty organization that was designed to be a regional affiliate of the United Nations.

“Representative Frederic Coudert of New York City introduced a Sense of the Congress Resolution declaring that ‘no additional military forces’ could be sent abroad ‘without the prior authorization of the Congress in each instance,’” recounted Schlesinger. “Truman replied that he certainly did not need the approval of Congress to send more troops to Europe, and his administration ‘would continue to send troops wherever it is necessary to uphold our obligations to the United Nations.’”

Truman used America’s alleged “obligations” to the United Nations to justify sending troops to serve in NATO; shortly thereafter, in a remarkable example of seamless bootstrapping, Truman invoked the precedent of sending troops to serve under NATO command as authority for his decision to wage war on behalf of the UN in Korea. Although a cease-fire ended active hostilities, the UN-supervised Korean War has never ended, and U.S. military personnel remain entrenched in the Korean peninsula, under UN command, more than six decades later.

Barack Obama’s immaculately conceived war in Libya – a military venture arranged entirely by the Arab League and the UN – added a new dimension to this ongoing betrayal. Building on that precedent, the administration and its allies may succeed in bringing about a regional war that would start with Syria and then spread to Iran – perhaps eventually propagating another global conflict.

Read more here.

In an interview with TheDaily.com, 73-year-old Julia Brown, who has called Detroit her home since the 1950s, recalls that the last time she bothered to call 911 to report a burglary, “they didn’t show up until the next day.” The following day she applied for a handgun permit.

“I don’t intend to be one of their victims,” said Brown, referring to the packs of armed thugs who are burglarizing her neighborhood. “I’m planning on taking one out.”

When a Detroit resident calls for police assistance, odds are they won’t bother to respond. However, things can go much worse when the police actually show up – as they did late in the evening of May 17, 2010, at the home of 7-year-old Aiyana Jones. The Detroit SWAT team – which starred in its own “reality TV” program, and was being featured on a cable program called “The First 48” – was seeking a homicide suspect.

Rather than surrounding the home and quietly waiting to arrest the suspect outside, the SWAT team — which had a cable TV crew embedded with it — chose to play to the cameras by staging a  “dynamic entry” that involved flinging a “flash-bang” grenade into the living room where Aiyana was sleeping, then charging in with fingers on the trigger of their assault rifles. Aiyana was severely burned and then shot to death.

None of the people responsible for that criminal homicide has ever been charged with a crime, owing to the fact that they have a government license to commit bloody mayhem. Private citizens who employ much less drastic means to deal with actual crime, on the other hand, can expect to be severely punished.

Roughly three years ago, Alvin Davis became enraged by the indifference displayed by the police to repeated break-ins at his mother’s home. Davis, at the time a 32-year-old agent of the Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, tracked down and detained the alleged assailants, at one point shoving the barrel of his handgun into their mouths. Davis was convicted of unlawful imprisonment and assault and sentenced to four years in prison.

That prosecution was probably meant to deter Detroit residents from “vigilantism”; if so, it had the opposite of the intended effect.

“Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands,” reports TheDaily.com. “The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they’re offering no apologies.”

While the local police are carefully avoiding confrontations with actual criminals, they are diligently exploiting every opportunity to wring whatever revenues they can from the economically devastated Detroit region. This is why civil asset forfeiture – the confiscation of money and other property allegedly implicated in criminal activity  – has become one of the highest priorities for municipal police departments in the greater Detroit area. Civil asset forfeiture can proceed even in the absence of a criminal conviction, and police departments are allowed to keep most of what they collect.

Between 2003 and 2007, Romulus, Michigan witnessed a 118 percent increase in forfeiture revenues. Rather than reducing street-level criminal activity, that forfeiture rampage facilitated an official crime wave.

Last September 27, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced the arrest and indictment of former Romulus Police Chief Michael St. Andre, his wife, and five detectives, all of whom were accused of using forfeiture proceeds for their personal benefit.  St. Andre was accused of using forfeiture money to buy a tanning salon for his wife. Some of the money was allegedly used to procure the services of prostitutes. Some $40,000 was reportedly spent on alcohol and marijuana.

With street criminals becoming increasingly brazen, and police departments becoming little more than roving bands of plunderers, Detroit residents are either organizing armed self-help groups, or hiring private security companies, observes TheDaily:

The city’s wealthier enclaves have hired private security firms. Intimidating men in armored trucks patrol streets lined with gracious old homes in a scene more likely seen in Mexico City than the United States.

That kind of paid protection can run residents anywhere from $10 to $200 per month, and companies say business is good.

“We’re booming,” said Dale Brown, the owner of Threat Management Group, which along with Recon Security patrols neighborhoods like Palmer Woods in black Hummers.

“We’re paramilitary, but we’re positive. I’m not a vigilante. I’m an agent of change.”

According to collectivist dogma, the government must possess monopoly on the “legitimate” use of force, and government police agencies exist to enforce that monopoly. However, this arrangement benefits the political class, while having little if any impact on deterring property crimes or crimes of violence. This was demonstrated by the Police Foundation’ s1974 “Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment.” That year-long study revealed that conventional “preventive patrols” by police had no effect on the crime rate.

Furthermore, most of the “laws” enforced by police have nothing to do with the protection of life, liberty, and property.

Libertarian activist Michael Suede points out that eighty-six percent of all federal inmates were punished for what are called “victimless crimes.”  It is reasonable to assume that similar trends exist at the state and local level as well.

Obviously, police do offer some socially useful services at least some of the time, and there are occasions when individual police officers display courage and nobility in the defense of the innocent. This is all the more remarkable in light of the fact that service of that kind is not part of the formal job description of government police.

Rather than serving as  peace officers, most police are armed revenue collectors and enforcement agents of the local municipal corporation that hired them.A police officer can refuse to render aid to a citizen, or abuse the rights of the innocent, and keep his job; the career prospects of a cop who fails to bring in sufficient revenues by way of citations, however, aren’t nearly as encouraging.

This results in a huge under-served security market, despite the billions spent each year on “law and order.” The privatization of law enforcement in Detroit  is not an anomaly, but part of a larger trend. As economist Robert Higgs pointed out roughly a decade ago, “there are three times as many private policemen as there are public ones.”

In choosing to pay for private security assistance, Americans freely spend more than twice the amount stolen from us each year to pay for the government’s armed enforcement caste. This is because the government that takes our money fails to provide the promised social good – protection of life and property.

Read more here.

To their considerable credit, the protesters objected to the lawless harassment from the Houston Police, refusing to comply with unconstitutional demands and loudly denouncing the unwarranted acts of assault, abduction, and — eventually — aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

The first protester arrested in the video, Derrick Broze, was charged with a spurious misdemeanor called “failure to obey” — a charge that assumes that peaceful, law-abiding citizens are required to render immediate, unquestioning obedience to any demand that dribbles down the chins of an ambulatory carbohydrate sculpture with a bad crewcut and an extra-extra large government-issued costume.

At one point just prior to grabbing a shotgun and jacking a shell into the chamber, the officer waddled menacingly toward the protesters and grunted: “Your freedom ends tonight.”

Broze offered this account on the Houston Freethinkers website:

On Friday January 27th the Houston Free Thinkers held one of their usual benefit shows at the Compound off 2305 Wheeler in Houston, Texas. Every 3 weeks these events are held to raise money for local charities or like minded small businesses. This particular event was called HFT for the Community! And was a completely free event put together as a Thank You to all those who have helped HFT out in it’s nearly 2 year existence.

The party was packed with hundreds of people over 20 bands and DJ’s, kegs, jello shots, food provided by Food Not Bombs Houston, and lots of friends. Around 10:15 the Houston Police Department arrived for a noise complaint. Veon McReynolds, owner of The Compound and myself, met with the officers around the backside closest to the street. About 5-10 officers were present for this noise complaint.

We attempted to work with the officers to resolve the issue but they seemed to content with nothing less than the entire party shutting down. Several officers began looking around the private property of the compound. I inquired if they had a warrant to be doing so, and was immediately asked if I had identification. I informed the officer I was not operating a motor vehicle and therefore was not carrying ID, but offered my full name and birth date and made it clear to the officers I was not failing to identify myself. The same officer asked me to come with him to his car, and I asked if I was being detained.

Upon being told I was not being detained I told him I would remain where I was. He then grabbed me by the arm and attempted to pull me to his car. I stepped back and asked why I was being assaulted. I informed the officer that I respected him but was not going anywhere. He then grabbed me and dragged me out the back to the street and pushed me to the backside of the car.  At this point Micah Jackson came out and interviewed me about what was going on.

Micah Jackson was detained, but eventually released without charges.

Go here to read more about this episode.

Washington, D.C. resident Matthew Corrigan, a depressed veteran seeking help for a sleeping disorder, was arrested by a SWAT team after he mistakenly called the National Suicide Hotline. Despite the fact that he was not a criminal suspect nor a suicide risk, Corrigan was hauled away in handcuffs and spent days in jail – only to return to a house that had been thoroughly trashed by the SWAT team and a bomb squad.

When Corrigan, an Army Reservist employed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, placed the phone call on February 2, 2010, he hadn’t slept for several days. He dialed what he thought was the number to the Military Emotional Support Hotline. While speaking with a counselor, Corrigan mentioned that he was a veteran, and answered “yes” when asked if he owned a firearm. He then turned off the phone, took a sleeping pill, and retired for the night.

At about 4:00 a.m. the following day, Corrigan was startled awake by the sound of his name being called through a police bullhorn. Ordered to come out of the house, Corrigan did so, locking the door behind him. He was surrounded by police, handcuffed, and put in the back of a van. When the officer commanding the Emergency Response Team (ERT, the local equivalent of SWAT) demanded access to his home, Corrigan replied: “There is no way I am giving you consent to enter my place.”

To which the Lt. Robert Glover, the on-scene ERT commander angrily, replied: “I don’t have time to play this constitutional bullshit!” and ordered the team to invade the property. Corrigan was taken to a VA hospital, where he was found not to be a suicide risk. He was taken to jail for three days. In his absence, the SWAT team ransacked his residence. Without either a warrant or probable cause, the police deployed a bomb squad to search for explosives and firearms. They eventually found two handguns and a rifle, all of which were legally owned and properly stored.

Corrigan, who was never charged with a crime, was held in jail for roughly two weeks before being released. He was also required to report each week to Pretrial Services.

This was hardly the first case in which an innocent, law-abiding gun owner has been abducted by a SWAT team and detained without criminal charges owing to his suspected psychological instability.

On March 8, 2010, David Pyles of Medford, Oregon awoke to find his home surrounded by a mob of heavily armed police — two SWAT teams, officers from two local police departments, sheriff’s deputies from two counties, and troopers from the Oregon State Police. Days earlier, Pyles had purchased two handguns and an AK-47 rifle. Shortly before Pyles bought the guns — something he had long planned to do, but hadn’t been financially feasible until he received a tax refund — he had been put on administrative leave by the Oregon Department of Transportation.

This convergence of events led police to categorize Pyles — without evidence of criminal intent or derangement — as a “disgruntled employee” planning retaliation of some kind against his ODOT supervisor. The police that surrounded his house demanded that he submit to a mental health evaluation. They also seized his firearms for “safekeeping.”

“They woke me up with a phone call at about 5:50 in the morning,” Pyles told Reason magazine.
“I looked out the window and saw the SWAT team pointing their guns at my house. The officer on the phone told me to turn myself in. I told them I would, on three conditions: I would not be handcuffed. I would not be taken off my property. And I would not be forced to get a mental health evaluation. He agreed.”

The negotiator, being a police officer, did what comes naturally to people in that profession. He lied.

“The second I stepped outside, they jumped me,” continues Pyles. “Then they handcuffed me, took me off my property, and took me to get a mental health evaluation.”

Within a few hours Pyles had been discharged from the hospital. He never saw the inside of a jail cell. The local police — most likely in reaction to a nation-wide outpouring of outrage triggered by their persecution of an innocent gun owner — returned the firearms, albeit not before lying to him again by claiming that he would have to undergo a second “background check.”

All of this, according to Sgt. Jeff Proulx of the Oregon State Police, was a successful exercise in “proactive” police work.

Another similar case occurred in February 2010, when police staged a paramilitary assault on the home of Gregory Girard, an engineer living in Salem County, Massachusetts. The police learned of Girard’s unremarkable gun collection — invariably described as an “arsenal” or “cache” — when his wife, a psychiatrist, told them that she was afraid to return to their home following an argument.

On the following day the police were contacted by the ATF, which relayed a report from someone described as a “friend” of Girard’s wife who supposedly saw hand grenades in the condo.

At the time, Girard held a Class A firearms license and had dutifully registered all of his weapons. The purpose of a firearms license, as Girard would learn, is to simplify the process of revoking the state-granted “privilege” off gun ownership. Glenn McKiel, Chief of the Manchester-by-the-sea Police Department, revoked Girard’s license and called in the Cape Ann Response Team (CART) — the Homeland Security State’s local paramilitary affiliate — for a joint assault on Girard’s home.

Among the specific concerns related to the police by Girard’s wife was his supposedly alarming view that martial law is imminent. Since it is unacceptable for people to believe that government agents will carry out paramilitary raids to confiscate firearms, a paramilitary force was sent to Girard’s home to confiscate his firearms. Owing to the fact that he was targeted for a Stasi-style raid, Girard’s innocuous collection of 11 legally purchased and registered rifles and two handguns, was transmuted into “an alarming, nearly military-grade stockpile.” Through a similar act of rhetorical alchemy, Girard’s food storage, flashlights, batteries, and camping gear were also described as “military-style items.”

No charges were ever filed relating to Girard’s “arsenal” of firearms. The charges of owning “infernal machines” — five “explosive” hand grenades — were dismissed because, as he had patiently tried to explain to his abductors, the objects in question were perfectly legal non-explosive gas grenades. The charge of “carrying dangerous weapons” was also vacated, since Girard was never accused of carrying a knife or baton outside his home, and no state or local ordinance forbids private ownership of knives or clubs.

After four months in jail without a criminal charge, Girard saw his case “dismissed without a finding.” He was designated a “ward of the court,” compelled to undergo routine psychiatric evaluation and treatment, and notified that he could be arrested and subjected to indefinite detention at any time such action was deemed suitable by his persecutors.

This was done to Girard because he was classified to be what law enforcement organs in the Soviet Union called a “socially dangerous person.” The as the very similar cases of Matthew Corrigan and David Pyles demonstrate, that designation can be arbitrarily applied to any gun owner who comes to the attention of the local affiliate of the Homeland Security State.

Matthew Corrigan has filed a federal lawsuit against the municipal government of the District of Columbia; go here to see his civil complaint.

Adam Greene of Henderson, Nevada, who was severely beaten by a thugscrum  municipal and state police while suffering from diabetic shock, has been offered roughly $188,000 by the city and state to settle a federal lawsuit.

Last October 29, Greene was driving to work at about 4:30 a.m. when his blood sugar plummeted and he “gradually slipped towards or into Insulin shock,” recounts the lawsuit. When he stopped at an intersection, a still-unidentified officer “approached Adam’s vehicle with his gun draw and kicked the window…. Adam was unresponsive to the officer’s drawn weapon, commands and kick … because of the Insulin shock.”

Another officer arrived and dragged Adam violently from the car and threw him face-down to the pavement. Within seconds, Adam – who was inert and completely passive, owing to his condition — was surrounded by a five officers. Several of them restrained him while one kicked him repeatedly in the face and head, shouting “Stop resisting, motherfu**er!” Two others struck him repeatedly in the side and midsection.

After the victim was handcuffed, one of the assailants – displaying the preoccupation with “officer safety” that defines every violent interaction between police and helpless citizens – asked the others, “Is anybody hurt?” By this time, a search of Adam’s pockets had turned up a vial of insulin, and the officers were aware that they were dealing with a sick diabetic, rather than a drunken driver.

“He’s a diabetic,” one of the officers told a dispatcher over the radio. “He’s probably in shock, semiconscious.”

Nevertheless, Adam – who was still handcuffed behind his back – was dragged to his feet and forced to blow into a Breathalyzer, even though he had been beaten bloody and had difficulty breathing.

The officers involved in this gang assault have never been identified by name. A dashcam video of the incident caught one officer expressing concern over the fact that the incident had been recorded.

“It’s on camera,” the officer said.

“They don’t know you,” another replied. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

After paramedics from the Henderson EMS showed up to treat Adam, one officer offered a perfunctory apology to the victim for “beating him up” – and as far as the Henderson Police Department and Nevada State Police are concerned, that satisfies the “accountability” requirement for this episode of aggravated armed assault.

After being taken to the emergency room, Adam was discovered to have several fractured ribs, as well as painful contusions, abrasions, and other injuries. When he went home, he was “unable to find any relief from the incredible pain he experienced simply from breathing, standing up, sitting down, and lying down,” relates the lawsuit. “He discovered a large, painful lump on his back. His ribs were very painful and made getting around extremely difficult. He was unable to sleep through the night for some time because of the severity of the pain.”

Not surprisingly, given what he experienced, Adam “continues to feel extreme worry and apprehension over the incident, and feels extreme anxiety in the presence of police officers.”

Given the impunity that characterizes contemporary law enforcement, what honest citizen wouldn’t feel anxiety in their unwanted company?

Read the text of Adam Greene’s lawsuit here. To see what you can do to restore legal protection for the right of citizens to defend themselves against criminal violence by police, go here.

Americans on the receiving end of police abuse are often smugly told, “You might beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride” — as if they had no right to resist when they are victims of a criminal assault by people in government-issued costumes. Bystanders who witness episodes of that kind are often told that the propriety of a police beat-down is a matter “for the courts to decide” — even when an obviously innocent person has already been left battered and bloody by an attack that constitutes summary punishment for what police often call “contempt of cop.”

In fact, the right to resist criminal violence by agents of state coercion — including unlawful arrest — is a common law right recognized for centuries in both Anglo-Saxon and American judicial precedents.

“The weight of authoritative precedent supports a right to repel an unlawful arrest with force…. This was the rule at common law,” observed the Alaska State Supreme Court in its ruling in the 1969 case Terry Glenn Miller v. State of Alaska.“It was based on the proposition that everyone should be privileged to use reasonable force to prevent an unlawful invasion of his physical integrity and personal liberty.” While that court argued that the common law right to resist should be abandoned, they candidly acknowledged that it was a central part of our legal heritage.

In the decades just prior to the American founding, the Queen’s Court in England handed down two rulings — Hopkin Hugget’s Case (1666) and Queen v. Tooley (1710) — acknowledging that the Magna Carta protected an individual right to employ lethal force to prevent an illegal arrest. In fact, in the latter decision the English High Court described an attempt to carry out an unlawful arrest as a criminal abduction, and expressed the view that bystanders have the legal authority to use whatever force is required to prevent the consummation of that crime.

Simply put: A constable or police officer attempting an illegal arrest is a criminal, and citizens who witness an act of that kind have the legal authority to act as peace officers in order to prevent that crime or arrest the officially licensed offender. The United States Supreme Court recognized that principle in its decision in the 1900 case John Bad Elk v. U.S., which is still a valid precedent. In United States v. Di Re(1948), the Court observed: “One has an undoubted right to resist an unlawful arrest, and courts will uphold the right of resistance in proper cases.” That right was recognized and protected by state laws across the nation until the late 1960s, and has occasionally been acknowledged in recent court rulings.

In the 1999 decision Victoria Price Brown v. Commonwealth of Virginia, that state’s Court of Appeals vindicated the claim that a woman assaulted and arrested by police in a case of mistaken identity “had the right to resist upon self-defense principles. The Commonwealth cannot expunge that right even by showing the officers acted in `good faith.’”  The Louisiana Supreme Court, in a 1994 decision entitled State v. Stowe, ruled: “The right of personal liberty is one of the fundamental rights guaranteed to every citizen, and any unlawful interference with it may be resisted. Every person has the right to resist an unlawful arrest, and in preventing such illegal restraint on his liberty, he may use such force as necessary.” (Emphasis added.) Late last year, the Michigan State Supreme Court heard oral arguments in State v. Moreno, a case involving the right to resist an unlawful police search and subsequent physical resistance by the victim; a ruling is expected later this year.

Current dogma holds that citizens have a duty to defer to any order issued by an armed individual carrying government credentials. This includes permitting ourselves to be restrained, arrested, and incarcerated without just cause, on the assumption that the same State that stole our liberty will agree not to take any more of it when the matter is examined in court.

Without a right to resist, we have a duty to submit. And submission to unlawful police violence too frequently results in injury, sexual assault, and death.

Yes, resisting lawless state-authorized violence is dangerous, and can be counterproductive. Citizens confronting the prospect of an illegal arrest should be governed by the test of proportionality — that is, would forceful resistance result in more harm than submission? And the same consideration should define the actions of third parties thinking of intervening to prevent an abuse of police authority.

This assumes, of course, that the actors in question reside in a state where the right to resist is protected by law. Where this is not the case, an effort should be made to restore legal protection for that right, and to educate policy makers, law enforcement officers, and the public about the legitimacy of forceful resistance to unlawful arrest.

The model legislation below is based on the constitution and laws of the State of Idaho, but it can be adapted to those of any other state:

Restoring the Right to Resist Arrest: A Model Statute

An Act

Relating to the restoration of the right of a citizen to resist unlawful arrest, search, and seizure, by amending Title 18, Idaho Code, through deletion of section 18-705 and its replacement by language restoring the common law right to resist unlawful arrest and establishing penalties for unlawful assault by public officials and sentence enhancement following conviction of those who resist arrest in the course of committing crimes against persons and property.

Legislative findings:

Whereas – Article I, section 2 of the Idaho State Constitution decrees: “All political power is inherent in the people.[…] Government is instituted for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter, reform or abolish the same whenever they may deem it necessary; and no special privileges or immunities shall ever be granted that may not be altered, revoked, or repealed by the legislature” (emphasis added); and

Whereas – The authority delegated by the sovereign people to any government official, including a licensed peace officer, cannot be greater than that of any law-abiding citizen from whom that authorization is derived; and

Whereas – Title 18, Ch. 7, Sec. 18-703 of the Idaho State Code designates the arrest or detention of any individual, or the seizure, levy, or dispossession of any property “without a regular process or other lawful authority,” as a crime; and

Whereas – Title 18, Ch. 7, Sec. 18-706 of the Idaho Code defines a physical assault by a public officer “under color of authority, without lawful necessity” as a crime punishable “by a fine not exceeding $5,000 and imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one (1) year”; and

Whereas – The Idaho Code Judicial Instructions (ICJI 1262) asserts that “it is the person’s duty to refrain from using force or any weapon in resisting arrest regardless of whether or not there is a legal basis for the arrest” – thereby creating a spurious “privilege” or “immunity” liable to revocation by the legislature; and

Whereas – Current state judicial precedent (State v. Lusby, 2008) encourages licensed peace officers to violate those statutes by provoking physical confrontations in the hope of charging citizens with “resisting arrest” in order to circumvent Fourth Amendment restrictions on search and seizure (according to the Idaho Court of Appeals, “ although officers may have conducted an unconstitutional search or seizure, a subsequent attack on the officer is a new crime unrelated to any prior illegality”); and

Whereas – The Idaho State Supreme Court, in its 1973 decision State V. Richardson, explicitly acknowledged that “At common law a person unlawfully arrested could resist such an arrest by the use of reasonable force,” then – without legislative direction or other authorization by the sovereign people of the State – decreed that “the trend is, and should be, away from the traditional common law rule, and therefore we hold that if a person has reasonable ground to believe he is being arrested by a peace officer, it is his duty to refrain from using force or any weapon in resisting arrest regardless of whether or not there is a legal basis for the arrest,” thereby illegitimately abrogating what the Court itself acknowledged to be a valid and long-standing individual right; and

Whereas – In its decision in John Bad Elk v. U.S. (1900), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a police officer trying to make an unlawful arrest has “no right to unnecessarily injure, much less to kill, his assailant; but where the officer is killed in the course of the disorder which naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction, when the officer had the right to make the arrest, from what it does if the officer had no such right” – thereby explicitly recognizing a citizen’s right to use lethal force to prevent an unlawful arrest; and

Whereas —  ”The right to resist unlawful arrest memorializes one of the principal elements in the heritage of the English revolution: the belief that the will to resist arbitrary authority in a reasonable way is valuable and ought not to be suppressed by the criminal law” (Paul G. Chevigny, The Right to Resist an Unlawful Arrest, 78 Yale L.J. 1128,1129 [1969]);

Therefore, be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Idaho:

SECTION 1. That Title 18, Chapter 7, sec. 18-705 of the Idaho Criminal Code dealing with “Arrests and Seizures of Persons or Property – Special Officers,” is hereby amended by removing the offense of “Resisting and obstructing officers,” and replacing it with the following:

18-705. Resisting lawful arrest, and the crime of unlawful arrest. Every person who willfully resists, delays or obstructs any licensed peace officer in the course of executing a valid warrant or conducting a lawful arrest will – upon conviction of a property crime or crime of violence – be subject to an additional penalty of up to one year imprisonment in the county jail, and/or a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000). These penalties are of secondary effect and cannot be imposed in the absence of a predicate offense against person or property.

SECTION 2. That any individual – whether licensed peace officer or member of the public – who assaults or detains another, or presumes to seize or levy property, without a valid warrant or court order, or legitimate probable cause that a crime against person or property has been or is about to be committed, is guilty of the crime of false arrest, as well as other related offenses, and is liable to appropriate criminal prosecution and civil action.

SECTION 3. Notwithstanding any previous judicial ruling or administrative finding or policy, the right of the individual to resist unlawful arrest will be recognized as a valid defense in all criminal and civil proceedings.

Go here to read more about the case for restoring legal protection for the right to resist unlawful arrest.

Mark and Amy Denicore of Waterford, Virginia face a March 14 criminal trial because their three schoolchildren have accumulated roughly thirty tardy slips. The couple was arraigned on February 6 before Judge Pamela L. Brooks of the Loudon County juvenile and domestic relations court. Each of them has been charged with three Class 3 misdemeanors, each of which carries a maximum fine of $500, according to the Washington Post.

Reports the Loudoun Times:

Mark Denicore, who works as an attorney, says he could lose his license to practice law if he loses the case, not to mention paying in upwards of $3,000 in fines for his children’s tardiness.

The three children have only missed less than three hours each of school since September, Mark Denicore said.

“I would say that it’s pretty extreme. The Virginia truancy statute is for kids that are blowing off school without their parent’s knowledge, not for this kind of thing,” Mark Denicore said. “They’re taking a lot of leeway in their interpretation of what the code says to make it criminal conduct, it’s outrageous.”

Washington Post education columnist Petula Dvorak, who attended the February 6 hearing, points out that “The Denicores got a court summons and now have a March 14 trial date set because they often get their three kids to school about three minutes late…. The children have missed about an hour of school total, because of tardiness. Compare that to a kid who leaves early for a swim lesson or misses several days to go on a family vacation, Mark Denicore says. No court date for doing that.”

Neither of the applicable statutes specifically addresses tardiness as a basis for prosecution, which means that Loudoun County has no legal authority to convict the Denicores of an offense. The Denicores – both of whom are trained as lawyers, although Mrs. Denicore has chosen to be a full-time mother– are preparing a motion to have the case dismissed. If the trial proceeds, Mark Denicore plans to subpoena several witnesses to testify, “including their kids’ teachers and principal.”

“I would like parents not to be bullied by the school system,” Denicore told the Loudon Times. “We send our children to school so they can learn not to bullied.”

Largely in response to pressures put on them through the federal No Child Left Behind measure, school districts nation-wide are hauling parents into court to face criminal sanctions for chronically tardy or absent children.

Last June, for example, the Long Beach Police Department arrested the mother of a middle school student on charges that she had failed “to ensure her son’s regular attendance in school, in violation of a new truancy law that provides for criminal prosecution” in such cases, reported the Long Beach Signal-Tribune.

In Texas, parents whose children miss more school days than allowed under state law can be criminally prosecuted for “contributing to truancy” and, if convicted in Justice Court, face fines or be sentenced to attend truancy or parenting classes. This measure is potentially profitable for people inclined to spy and inform on their neighbors.

The Arlington and Mansfield Independent School Districts in North Texas have created an anti-truancy program called “You Earn, They Learn.” Tiara Ellis Richard of the Arlington Police Department explains that when residents see a school-age child suspected of cutting classes, they can call in an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers. The police will then dispatch a “school resource officer” to investigate the complaint. The informant will be paid up to $40 for each confirmed tip.

As is always the case, this rat-on-your neighbor initiative is depicted as a form of applied altruism. It will pose obvious and potentially serious problems for local homeschoolers, who can expect a great deal of unwarranted and potentially dangerous attention from the police.

Every police state relies heavily on the cooperation of those who are willing to inform on their friends in exchange for some trivial material reward – and the intoxicating sense of righteousness that comes from being a tattle-tale.

Diane Avera, a 45-year-old grandmother from Meridian, Mississippi, faces a year in prison in Alabama for the supposed crime of buying a box of Sudafed in preparation for a scuba expedition. She was arrested in Demopolis, Alabama after a clerk at the local CVS pharmacy, acting as an informant, tipped off the police about her son’s purchase of Sudafed D.

Avera, who had no previous arrests, has a teenage son who is an admitted drug user with a Methadone prescription. On July 29, 2010, Avera, her husband, and several other friends were preparing for a scuba diving trip to Panama City, Florida. Her scuba instructor, Bob Sample, advised Avera to buy Sudafed or a similar decongestant to help with an ear condition. In Mississippi, Sudafed can only be obtained by prescription. A clerk at the Meridian Walmart suggested that Avera go across the state line to Alabama, where the medicine can be purchased over the counter.

In the company of her teenage son, his girlfriend, and three small children (two grandsons and the girlfriend’s nephew), Avera made two stops – the first to the CVS pharmacy, where he son and his girlfriend each bought a box of Sudafed, and then to Walmart, where she bought another. She wasn’t aware that in Demopolis the local police “were conducting a sting operation,” reports the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. “Pharmacists there informed police when anyone from Mississippi bought medicine containing pseudoephedrine.”

When Avera pulled out of the Walmart parking lot, a police officer quickly intercepted her, continues the Clarion-Ledger:

After leaving Walmart, she said police officer Sgt. Tim Soronen pulled her over and asked, “What brings you to Demopolis?”

“I came over to buy some Sudafed for our scuba diving trip this weekend since we cannot buy it in Meridian anymore,” she said she told him.

She said the officer asked if she knew it was against the law to cross the state line and buy Sudafed. (It is against the law in Mississippi to bring back pseudoephedrine products from another state, but Alabama law permits those from other states to buy the medicine as long as they sign.)

“No, sir, I did not know,” she said she replied.

“I need you to step out of the car,” he said.

“For what? I swear I didn’t know. What did I do?” she said she asked.

“You came to Demopolis to buy some Sudafed. Step to the back of the truck,” she said he told her

A search of the vehicle turned up her son’s drug paraphernalia, which he admitted was his. The officer placed Avera under arrest and placed her terrified grandsons, and the girlfriend’s equally traumatized nephew in the squad car. With the children crying in the background, Sgt. Soronen – using the prospect of abducting the children as leverage – asked Avera if she wanted the Alabama State Department of Human Resources “to pick up these kids.”

Horrified by the prospect, Avera said she would admit to anything as long as her son would be able to take care of “my babies.”

“He told her she had to confess all the Sudafed was hers, thereby putting her over the legal limit in Alabama, she said,” reports the Clarion-Ledger.

After being arrested and left shackled to a metal chair for 17 hours, Avera signed a confession in which she stated that “I did not know it was against the law to cross the state line to purchase Sudafed. I promise to never buy another box in my life.”

“They told me to add that I was making crystal meth so I did,” she told the newspaper.

After a three-day trial, Avera was found guilty of intent to manufacture crystal meth. Despite the fact that several drug tests came back clean, Marengo County District Attorney Greg Griggers claims that Avera confessed that she and her daughter had been using meth for two years.

“That’s a lie,” Avera insists.

Griggers also dismissed the drug tests, claiming that Avera had somehow “diluted” the test samples – a complete uncorroborated charge not confirmed by the clinicians who examined the samples.

Avera, who has appealed her conviction but faces another ten months behind bars if she loses, is described by her husband Keith as a “prisoner of the drug war going on inside America…. When common household medications and disinfectants are now illegal to possess, I believe we have gone overboard in the drug laws.”

Embellishing on that point, it should also be said that when your local pharmacy clerk is a police informant ready to bust you for buying an over-the-counter cold medicine, it should be obvious that we live in a reich or a soyuz, rather than a constitutional republic. Avera’s case is particularly infuriating – not just because of the way the cop used the grandchildren as hostages, but also because the snitch that got the grandmother in trouble works for a large corporation that was spared federal charges for its admitted role in providing large amounts of pseudoephedrine to meth manufacturers.

Since 2005, over-the-counter cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine have been treated as a controlled substance. Jeffrey Tucker of the Ludwig von Mises Institute points out that “Before 2005, you could by as many Sudafed packages as you did Big Mac sandwiches…. Now, your 30-allotment is nine grams,” which probably isn’t enough during cold and flu season. And the government-approved replacement is little better than a placebo.

Pharmacies are required to limit customers to no more than 3.6 grams a day, supposedly to make it more difficult for would-be traffickers to obtain the raw ingredients of methamphetamine.

Predictably, this simply created a flourishing black market for pseudoephedrine. Cash-strapped people are eagerly acting as “smurfers” – that is, proxy buyers who buy huge quantities of Sudafed and other cold remedies on behalf of meth dealers.

The crack-down on meth has resulted in deeply entrenched corruption and perversions of due process. About a year ago, CVS, whose corporate leadership admits that it knowingly allowed extensive purchases of pseudoephedrine by “smurfers,” was spared criminal charges and given a large fine that was passed along to customers. As Avera’s case illustrates, the pharmacy chain is also eager to aid in the prosecution of small-time defendants who purchase excessive amounts of cold medicine. Some of them face years in prison – where meth and other illegal drugs are readily available. This is particularly true in Alabama.

In early 2009, reported the Opelika-Auburn News, twenty-five people in that region of Alabama were arrested on “meth-related charges.” Of those arrested, only two were charged with either possessing or manufacturing methamphetamine; the others were arrested for what was described as “unlawful possession of a precursor” – that is, “purchasing over the legal amount of pseudoephedrine.”

Institutionalized injustice is a defining trait of the Regime’s crackdown on methamphetamines and “precursors.” As Republic magazine recently reported, Shannon Jones, a former judge in Tennessee’s Crockett County who pleaded guilty last fall to federal meth charges, was sentenced to six months in prison, three years of supervised release, a $100 assessment fee, and $3,300 in restitution to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Jones, an admitted meth addict and manufacturer, faced criminal charges that could have resulted in more than thirty years in prison – but was given the leniency that the system ruling us lavishes only on the powerful and well-connected. As a mere Mundane, Diane Avera – whose only “crime” was to buy a legal amount of an over-the-counter palliative – can expect no similar mercy.

Tehran’s much-discussed nuclear program and its supposed threat to Israel and the U.S. are pretexts for a war against Iran intended to precipitate regime change and punish the country for threatening the “petrodollar”-based economy — and that threat, in turn, is exacerbated by the growing likelihood of war.

­“Economic sanctions, spearheaded by the US and, less willingly, the EU could have a disastrous effect on both of their respective economies,” notes RT News. “If Iran cannot sell their oil to Europe, there are plenty of customers waiting in the wings, and if they come bearing not petrodollars, but gold and sovereign currencies, then all the better for Iran.  These sanctions, if enforced, will in effect place a serious dent in the power of the petrodollar. Any rhetoric regarding Iran’s nuclear program and the insistence on crippling it is nothing more than a US attempt to force regime change for one more receptive to maintaining the hegemony of the petrodollar.”

In February 2008, Tehran opened the Iranian Oil Bourse (IOB), which – in the words of  Dr. Krassimir Petrov of the American University in Bulgaria – is a petroleum commodity market “based on a euro-oil-trading mechanism that naturally implies payment for oil in euro,” rather than in dollars.

In August 1971, the Nixon administration severed the last remaining link between the dollar and gold. From that point, “the United Sates had to force the world to continue to accept fiat dollars in exchange for economic goods and to have the world hold more and more of those depreciating dollars. It had to give the world an economic reason to hold them, and that reason was oil.” That link between the dollar and oil, Petrov asserts, resulted from “an iron-clad arrangement with Saudi Arabia to support the House of Saud in exchange for accepting only US Dollars for its oil.”

F. William Engdahl, author or A Century of War: Anlgo-American Politics and the New World Order, describes the U.S.-Saudi pact in detail:

By their firm agreement with Saudi Arabia, as the largest OPEC oil producer,… Washington guaranteed that the world’s largest commodity, oil, essential for every nation’s economy, the basis of all transport and much of the industrial economy,… could only be purchased in world markets in dollars. The deal [was] fixed in June 1974 by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, establishing the US-Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation. The US Treasury and the New York Federal Reserve would “allow” the Saudi central bank, SAMA, to buy US Treasury bonds with Saudi petrodollars. In 1975, OPEC officially agreed to sell its oil only for dollars. A secret US military agreement to arm Saudi Arabia was the quid pro quo.

“The economic essence of this arrangement,” points out Dr. Petrov, “was that the dollar was now backed by oil.” The emergence of an alternative petroleum market setting the price in a different currency, such as the euro, would cause a rapid flight from the greenback. Should the IOB go into operation, Petrov predicted in 2004, “it will eagerly be embraced by major economic powers and will precipitate the demise of the dollar.”
Petrov, Engdahl, and other analysts point out that in 2000, Saddam Hussein began to demand euros, rather than dollars, for his oil exports; once Saddam was deposed, Iraq’s oil exports were once again sold in dollars. This illustrates that the war in Iraq “was not about Saddam’s nuclear capabilities, about defending human rights, about spreading democracy or even about seizing oil fields; it was about defending the dollar,” Petrov concludes.
Other analysts weren’t convinced that the decision to attack Iraq was prompted by Saddam’s threat to the petrodollar.
“While the international prices of record for crude oil may be denominated in dollars, there is nothing stopping buyers and sellers from making any kind of contract arrangements they want in whatever currencies they want — euros, zlotys, rubles, yuan, bolivars, gold dinars, whatever,” commented Charles Featherstone, former assistant editor of Oil Daily. “Even barter is possible. There are no laws or international regulations that require oil be bought and paid in Euros, Saddam’s demand was small fry — few nations were going to follow his lead into Euroland. I doubt it was a serious motivation for the 2003 invasion.”

While skeptical that Saddam’s potential threat to the petrodollar accord prompted the 2003 war, Featherstone didn’t discount the role of the IOB in the long-simmering conflict between Tehran and Washington.

Iran’s independent, non-dollar-dependent oil commodity market helped decrease “demand for dollars [and helped] create an alternative banking system that flows through something other than New York. One that could not be policed, sanctioned or shut down by the US government.”

Thus despite the fact that Iran faces a prohibitive military disadvantage relative to either Israel or the U.S., Tehran does pose a threat to the petrodollar hegemony.

“Iran is breaking the back of the petrodollar,” asserts RT News. “Others have tried, but Iran is succeeding.”

According to persistent but unverified reports, “India, which imports 12% of their oil from Iran, has agreed to purchase oil for gold. Energy trade with China, importing 15% of its oil and natural gas from Iran may be settled in gold, yuan, and rial. South Korea plans to buy 10% of their oil from Iran in 2012, and unless Seoul sides with American and European sanctions, it is likely to use gold or their sovereign currency to pay for it. Also, Iran is already dumping the dollar in its trade with Russia in favor of rials and rubles.”

This is why, as Featherstone predicted years ago, the strategic objective of a war with Iran would not necessarily be to cripple its nuclear program, but rather to “bomb the bourse out of business.”

Read more here.

“They say the culture of an organization is a reflection of its top executive and today’s deplorable behavior against Ron Paul supporter Eddie Dillard in Florida reflects very poorly on Congressman Gingrich,” declared Paul Campaign spokesman Jesse Benton. “I call on Congressman Gingrich to publicly apologize to Mr. Dillard… In addition, we ask that those Gingrich campaign staff directly involved in the episode be immediately terminated. There is simply no excuse for the type of violent, boorish and abusive behavior demonstrated by Mr. Gingrich’s campaign. We hope Mr. Gingrich understands this.”

After voting in the Florida Republican primary at Orlando’s Windermere Baptist Church, Dillard – wearing a “Ron Paul Rocks America” t-shirt and carrying a “Ron Paul 2012” sign – joined a small group of demonstrators outside the polling area. Shortly thereafter, Newt Gingrich showed up for a public appearance.

“When Gingrich’s bus pulled up, Dillard (who was wearing casual attire, including flip-flops) stood silently hoding his sign and watched the news media horde swamp the candidate,” recounted Yahoo News reporter Chris Moody. “Gingrich stepped down from the bus and made a beeline for Dillard. He stopped in front of Dillard and his sign and parked himself for a round of handshaking and pictures with voters. The placement couldn’t have been worse. There was Gingrich, standing with his wife Callista at their first event of the day, and a giant Ron Paul sign floated inches from their crowns.”

This didn’t sit well with Gingrich’s security goons, one of whom stepped in front of him and tried to shoulder him aside. When Dillard didn’t move – he had been there first, after all, and had no cause to relocate – the agent “lifted his heeled shoe over Dillar’s bare foot and dug the back of it into his skin, twisting it side-to-side like he was stomping out a cigarette,” continues Moody’s account. “Shocked, Dillard kept his ground and took a picture of the agent with his phone, which was quickly knocked out of his hand. Dillard slipped off his flip-flop to pick up the phone with his foot, and a Gingrich supporter kicked the sandal away.”

“Don’t kick me!” Dillard demanded of his assailant. That prompted several more of Gingrich’s hired thugs to swarm the victim.

“Just block him!” yelled a campaign aide. “Everyone step on his toes!”

As Gingrich waddled away from the scene, another campaign aide took the opportunity to rebuke the victim – as if he had done something vicious to them.

“If we did this to you, you guys would be furious,” ranted the aide. As he stomped off, the aide was overheard muttering to himself, “They have no class. No class.”

By this point, Dillard noticed that “A bruise was forming, and there was a cut mark where the security agent had dug in his heel,” observes Moody.

This was an unambiguous act of criminal assault and gang violence. By refusing to condemn it and punish those responsible, Gingrich and his campaign organization assumed moral culpability for it. They may also be legally and civilly liable for it, as well.

Legal commentator Jonathan Turley offers the pertinent details:

The description raises a straightforward case of assault and battery. The question is whether such tortious conduct would extend to the campaign and Gingrich. In addition to a claim of vicarious liability through respondeat superior, there is also the possible claim or negligent hiring or training…. Like other states, an employer in Florida is liable “if the wrongful act is done while the employee is acting within the apparent scope of his authority as such employee to serve the interests of the employer, . . . unless the wrongful act of the employee was done to accomplish his own purposes, and not to serve the interests of the employer.”…

Often intentional torts or crimes are ruled as falling outside of the scope of employment. However, there are exceptions, particularly when security staff are involved.

Assuming that these were campaign aides or staff, the question would become whether they were engaged in a “frolic or detour.” This act, if proven, was committed as part of a campaign event to facilitate the campaign activity. This would appear to fit the model of a respondeat superior case. That could add a new dimension to Gingrich’s promises for “tort reform.”

An axiom of common wisdom informs us that “What we permit, we promote.” Newt Gingrich didn’t order the assault on Eddie Dillard – which took place in his presence — but neither did he condemn it after the fact. His behavior contrasts sharply with that of Dr. Paul in a broadly similar situation: During a press availability in Iowa, Dr. Paul quietly but firmly called out a CBS cameraman who was attempting to shove aside a female reporter.

“That’s rude,” Dr. Paul said. “You shouldn’t push her like that. That isn’t nice.”

Even days after the assault on Dillard, Newt Gingrich didn’t have the character to offer even a perfunctory rebuke to his own campaign employees.

The difference between those reactions — “Step on his toes” versus “You shouldn’t push her like that” — eloquently summarizes the differences between the Gingrich and Paul campaigns, and the character of the individuals leading them.

Read more here.

Last August, the FDA filed a motion for summary judgment in a federal court battle with Regenerative Sciences, LLC, a Colorado health clinic offering a non-surgical treatment for people suffering from joint pain. The procedure uses samples of bone marrow or synovial fluid extracted from the client, from which adult stem cells – undifferentiated, highly adaptable cells – are cultured. The cells, along with a medium composed of various nutrients, are then injected into ailing joints to repair damaged tissue. Many mainstream health care professionals and professional athletes have come to regard this approach as a safe, minimally invasive alternative to surgery.

As the Alliance for Natural Health points out, the FDA’s central claim in the motion for summary judgment is that an individual’s stem cells “are drugs and therefore fall within their jurisdiction.” In addition, the agency claims that use of any product shipped across state lines (such as plastic syringes or laboratory flasks) by the clinic, or the involvement of customers from outside the state of Colorado, implicates the procedure in “interstate commerce.”

Most remarkably, the FDA “just nakedly says in court documents that the agency wants to protect the market for FDA-approved drugs,” points out the Alliance for Natural Health. “No more beating around the bush…. This appears to be a novel interpretation of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (FD&C), as evidenced by the government’s failure to cite any judicial precedent for their argument.”

“The implication of the FDA’s interpretation of the law, if upheld by the court, would mean that all food, drugs, devices, and biologic or cosmetic products would be subject to FDA jurisdiction,” the group continues. “The FDA is expanding its reach even to commerce within the state …. in order to protect drug company profits.”

The FDA has never been diffident in making novel jurisdictional claims, and for decades its institutional default setting has been “overkill.” Two decades ago, under the reign of uber-zealot David Kessler – a humorless bureaucratic scold who combined priggish, pharisaical self-righteousness with the executive disposition of a Soviet-era secret police chief – the FDA dispatched armed raiding parties to terrorize grocery stores, chiropractors, nutritionists, and others who were demonized as threats to “public safety.”

In 1991, an FDA strike team invaded a Florida orange juice producer, destroying 24,000 half-gallon containers of Citrus Hill “fresh choice” juice because Kessler and his fellow commissars regarded the label to be misleading. The following year, the FDA conducted a guns-drawn raid on a medical clinic in Tahoma, Washington because the presiding physician emphasized a nutrition-centered approach to some forms of conventional medical treatment.

Two years ago, the FDA dispatched a threatening letter to Michael J. Mendes, CEO of the Diamond Foods company, warning him that advertisements describing the long-documented health benefits of walnuts meant that they would be regulated as drugs:

“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reviewed the label for your `Diamond of California Shelled Walnuts’ products…. Based on our review, we have concluded that your walnut products are in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act…. Based on claims made on your firm’s website, we have determined that your walnut products are promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs because these products are intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease.”

The FDA has also made itself notorious for its escalating jihad against the sale and consumption of raw milk – a campaign involving SWAT raids against Amish dairy farmers in Pennsylvania and rural dairy farmers in Wisconsin, as well as the use of undercover informants and provocateurs deployed against food clubs across the country.

All of this is an outgrowth of the collectivist assumption that the government has the authority to regulate what individuals choose to consume, which means that each individual’s body is in some sense State property – right down to our stem cells.

Read more here.

Shannon Jones, an attorney and former judge in Tennessee’s Crockett County who pleaded guilty last fall to federal meth charges, was given the most lenient sentence imaginable – six months in prison, three years of supervised release, a $100 assessment fee, and $3,300 in restitution to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

When he was arraigned roughly a year ago, Jones was charged with manufacturing/delivery/sale of methamphetamine. Had he been an ordinary citizen – a mere “Mundane” – as opposed to a member of the local elite, the 41-year-old attorney would most likely spend the rest of his life in a cage.

Jones, a former Crockett County General Sessions Judge, was well-acquainted with the state criminal code. Under Tennessee’s drug laws, any act construed as “promoting” meth manufacture – such as possession of “any ingredient, chemical, drug or apparatus” that can be used to synthesize the drug — is a Class D felony punishable by 2-12 years in prison, as well as fines and “forfeiture” (that is, government theft of any property deemed to have a “nexus” to the offense). Possession of any amount of methamphetamine is a Class C felony that can result in prison sentences of 3-15 years and fines up to $100,000. Possession of more than .5 grams is a Class B felony that can result in a prison term of up to 30 years.

During his tenure as judge, Jones was hit with an ethics citation by the Tennessee Court of the Judiciary, which slapped him for a conflict of interest.

“Jones is a part-time judge who accepted employment to represent a litigant who then had a matter pending before the court over which he presides, contrary to the rights of the opposing party,” ruled the court. “His actions also constituted an allowance of an attorney/client relationship to adversely influence his conduct. Jones was given written notice of his charges and is given the opportunity to answer the charges.”

No public record is available of the outcome of that proceeding. Jones left the trial bench and opened a practice as an attorney. He also became, by his own account, a serious meth addict.

During his January 26 sentencing hearing, Jones described himself as a victim of his addiction who considered it a “relief” when his activities were discovered.

“I was ready to quit all the lying,” Jones said in court. “It was a relief…. I was using pretty heavily.” Following his February 2011 arrest, Jones immediately contacted the Tennessee Lawyers Assistance Program and enrolled in a Middle Tennessee treatment program that involves third-party monitoring and random drug screenings. His “strict compliance” with the treatment program, coupled with the intervention of “numerous experts and supporters,” persuaded Federal Judge J. Daniel Breen to dismiss all charges but a single count of “conspiracy.”

Of course, if Shannon Jones had been a truck driver, a fry cook, a farmer, or someone not wired in to the political class’s legal affiliate, he would be treated as a criminal menace to society, rather than someone whose problem should be dealt with through medical intervention.

Read more about this remarkable specimen of unalloyed hypocrisy here.

A January 29 dispute over a recently imposed leash requirement ended with an unidentified park ranger shooting Montara, California resident Gary Hesterberg with a taser in Rancho Corral de Tierra, which was recently subsumed by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

“I heard what I thought was a pistol shot,” recalls eyewitness John Barlett, who was walking his dog nearby. “[Hesterberg] let out a cry of agony as he fell on his back.” The attack, although painful, wasn’t fatal.

Last December, the National Park Service took control of the dog-walking area and imposed a leash requirement. When Hesterberg, who wasn’t carrying identification, was accosted by the ranger, he demanded to see her credentials. The ranger refused that authentically lawful order, according to witnesses. Apparently Hesterberg assumed that since the ranger wouldn’t identify herself, he didn’t have to either, so he gave her a phony name. He also demanded several times that the bureaucrat either issue a citation or release him.

Growing weary of the needless detention, Hesterberg finally walked away. Witnesses report that the ranger shot him in the back with her Taser – a weapon that can only be legally employed in situations justifying the use of lethal force.

When Sheriff’s Deputies arrived a few minutes later, they arrested the victim. Hesterberg was charged with the spurious offenses of failing to obey a supposedly lawful order, having his dogs off-leash, and providing false information.

This is not the first instance in which a Taser has been used by an eco-enforcement ranger in California.

Two years ago, Chico, California resident Jeff Newman, a former National Forest Service employee, was threatened with a Taser on his own property by  ark Ranger Paul Zohovetz, who had materialized on Newman’s doorstep in full battle array. Zohovetz had traveled more than fifty miles to threaten Newman with a citation for posting a commercial flier on a bulletin board in the Lassen National Forest.

Newman commanded the armed intruder to leave his property. Zohovetz, who had already committed criminal trespass, compounded the offense by committing felonious assault with a deadly weapon by pointing his Taser at the man’s face and neck. Newman retreated inside his house and called a friend; after trying and failing to kick in the front door, Zohovetz called for backup from the local police department.

Once his friend had arrived, Newman emerged from the house, only to be handcuffed and dragged away. Newman, a diabetic, had not taken insulin, and went into convulsions. Satisfied that he’d made whatever point he sought to make, Zohovetz released Newman and told him that he was only issuing a “warning” regarding the flier. He also issued a citation for “threatening an officer,” a charge that carried a six month jail sentence and a $5,000 fine.

When the case went to trial in March 2011, U.S. District Court Magistrate Craig M. Kellison ruled that Zohovetz “had no right to remain on Newman’s property once he had been ordered to leave.” He also cited a Supreme Court precedent acknowledging that the “freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.”

Forest Service spokesman John Heil had insisted that Zohovetz behaved appropriately by driving 50 miles to issue a “warning” and then needlessly escalating a trivial matter into a life-threatening confrontation. In similar fashion, National Park Service spokesman Howard Levitt maintained that the still-unidentified ranger who attacked Hesterberg with a deadly weapon conducted herself appropriately as part of an effort to “educate residents” about the new dog leash requirement, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

The day is coming when bureaucrats who presume to “educate” inoffensive, law-abiding citizens through electro-shock abuse are going to be taught a few unpleasant lessons of their own.

Read more about this outrage here.

Crime victims who call 911 often discover that while the police can’t offer help, they can always make the situation significantly worse – as a single mother from Milwaukee learned when she was raped by one of the cops who responded to her call, then arrested for “assaulting an officer.”

Police Officer Ladmarald Cates was one of two Milwaukee cops who responded to a 911 call from the anxious single mother after someone had pitched a brick through her bathroom window.  He arranged to be alone with the woman, then raped her.

As recounted by the Daily Beast:

One [police officer] took her 15-year-old brother outside to speak to him. The other cop, Police Officer Ladmarald Cates, gave her boyfriend $10 and told him to go the store and get some water. She told him that he was welcome to chilled water from her refrigerator.

“I only drink bottled water,” Cates said.

Her boyfriend has a pronounced limp and set off with no promise of returning soon.  Cates asked to see the broken window and she led him down a narrow hallway to a bathroom in the back….

She now stood on a floor littered with broken glass and pointed to the brick. The cop she had summoned to protect her instead chose this moment to grab the back of her head by her hair and sodomize her. Then he raped her.

Her revulsion in the aftermath was so visceral that she vomited as she ran outside. The cop’s partner had become concerned when he did not immediately see Cates and called for back-up. Other cops began arriving and saw a woman screaming incoherently about being raped.

Cates, the rapist, hurried out of the house and grabbed the victim by the waist, causing her feet to strike his partner. This gave the officers an excuse to arrest the battered and traumatized woman for “assaulting an officer.” She was taken to jail and held for 12 hours before receiving medical aid. After the hospital visit, she was sent back to jail for four days before being released without charges.

Although the victim’s accusation was substantiated by medical evidence, the DA refused to prosecute. The department’s Internal Affairs section confronted Cates – a repeat offender – with DNA evidence, and arranged to fire him for “idling and loafing” on duty. If the victim hadn’t persisted long enough to see Cates convicted on civil rights charges, he would have found employment in another police department.

It’s important to remember that, in the words of L. Carey Unkelbach, legal counsel to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado, “Law enforcement generally does not have a federal constitutional duty to protect one private person from another. For example, if a drunk driver injures a pedestrian or a drug dealer beats up an informant, agencies and their officers usually would not be liable for those injuries because there was no duty to protect.”

That view has been vindicated in literally dozens of cases by the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts. In the 1989 case DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Services, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled: “Nothing in the language of the Due Process Clause itself requires the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors.”

What this means is that any time a woman calls for police “assistance,” she is inviting the intervention of armed strangers who have no duty to help, and practically unqualified license to harm her.

Read more here.

During an elk hunting trip last November 26 with her husband, Bill, Tammie McCutcheon of Roundup, Montana – a mother of 18-month-old twins — was sexually assaulted by U.S. Forest Service Officer Shawn Tripp.

“My first thought was … that she was about to get raped,” recalled Bill, describing his reaction to the sight of his terrified wife sprawled over the tailgate beneath a stranger who had thrust his hands inside her clothing.

Tammie, along with her 12-year-old daughter and the twins, had pulled over to the side of the road while Bill and the couple’s teenage son gone into the nearby forest. Tripp, who was patrolling on a four-wheeler, approached the truck from behind. Tammi told the Billings Gazette that Tripp, who was wearing a jacket with no insignia suggesting he was a federal officer (not that this would have justified his subsequent actions), “refused to identify himself and demanded that she get out of the truck.”

Things got dramatically worse from there, the Gazette recounts:

The encounter quickly became heated, Tammie McCutcheon said, as Tripp refused to identify himself and demanded that she get out of the truck. He began questioning her about whether they had driven past the “road closed” sign, she said.

Tammie McCutcheon said she was worried about her twins alone in the truck but was trying to respond to Tripp’s questions.

The encounter escalated, Tammie McCutcheon said, when Tripp tried to remove a hunting tag from the antlers of a deer in the back of the couple’s truck. Tammie McCutcheon said she believed Tripp had no authority to remove the tag, and she grabbed it from his hand, bumping against him as she reached for the tag.

Tripp threw her up against the truck, she said, and placed her in handcuffs behind her back. Tripp then wrestled her to the back of the truck, the woman said, bent her forward over the open tailgate with one hand and reached into her shirt with his other hand.

Tammie McCutcheon said she began screaming for help.

“I thought I was going to get raped,” she said.

Bill McCutcheon said he heard a commotion coming from the direction of the truck and began walking that way. Carrying his hunting rifle, McCutcheon reached the top of a small hill above the truck and saw, from about 100 yards away, a man on top of his wife as she screamed for help.

Hurrying down the hill, McCutcheon ordered the assailant to leave his wife alone. As Tripp later admitted on the record, the properly infuriated husband never pointed his rifle at him – even though he would have been well within his legal and moral rights to use lethal force to stop the assault. Tripp, however, drew his pistol and pointed it at Bill, ordering him to drop his rifle. At one point, according to Tammi, the “unstable” and “muttering” Forest Service enforcer pointed his sidearm at the couple’s 12-year-old daughter.

A call for assistance issued by Tripp was answered by Wheatland County Sheriff Jim Rosenberg, who was hunting nearby. The Sheriff arrested Bill, who was held in jail for five days before being released. Significantly, in an interview with an investigator hired by the McCutcheons’ attorney, Sheriff Rosenberg was told by Tripp that Bill never pointed the rifle at him.

Nonetheless, Bill and Tammie were indicted in federal court on January 26 on charges that they “forcefully assaulted, resisted, opposed, impeded, intimidated, and interfered” with Tripp. Bill McCutcheon faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine; Tammie – whose “crime” consisted of protecting herself from a sexual assault, could be sentenced to 8 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

During a dispute over the Forest Service’s actions in closing down a road in Nevada’s Elko County a decade ago, the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade, a local citizen’s group ran a radio ad describing the agency’s personnel as “armed and dangerous.”

“The Forest Service has a new policy of issuing citations for the following offense: Operating any vehicle off road in a manner which damages or unreasonably disturbs the land, wildlife or vegetative resources,” observed the radio spot. “If apprehended by Forest Service personnel, consider them armed and dangerous and cooperate with them to the fullest. Then contact the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade for assistance.”

That prompted a petulant complaint from the agency that the ads were “inflammatory” and tended to promote “ill will” toward the agency. The incident last November 26 in Montana’s Little Belt Mountains underscores the essential truth of the characterization offered by the Shovel Brigade – and the wisdom of having the means to defend one’s self and one’s family in the event one encounters a predatory Fed in the wilderness.
Read more about this outrageous story here.

Four East Haven, Connecticut police officers characterized as “bullies with badges” were arrested by the FBI as part of an investigation into what oddly alliterative federal officials described as a “cancerous cadre” within the department and the local police union.

Sgt. John Miller and Officers Dennis Spaulding, David Carl, and Jason Zullo were accused of dozens of criminal acts through which they violated the constitutionally protected rights of local residents “not to be arrested and detained without probable cause .…  the right not to be arrested and detained based upon false and misleading evidence … and the right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by law enforcement officers,” alleges an indictment filed by U.S. Attorney David B. Fein.

“It was further part of the conspiracy to ostracize, harass and intimidate individuals, including victims, victims’ advocates, witnesses, fellow officers, Police Commissioners and outside investigators, who attempted to investigate or report misconduct or abuse committed by the defendants,” continues the indictment. “The defendants and their co-conspirators committed these acts of harassment and intimidation in an effort to prevent further investigation or scrutiny of the defendants’ conduct, and thereby conceal the defendants’ abuse from others.” Many of those actions were reportedly undertaken by an individual referred to in the indictment only as “Co-conspirator 1,” who has been identified by Board of Police Commissioners Chairman Fred Brow as the city’s Police Chief, Leonard Gallo.

The New York Times offers a capsule summary of the criminal conspiracy outlined by the federal investigation:

They were known as Miller’s Boys, police officers who worked the 4-to-midnight shift, patrolling the largely working-class town of East Haven, Conn., including the small but growing Hispanic community that has spread out in recent years from New Haven.

The officers were more than well known in that community; according to residents and federal authorities, they were feared. They stopped and detained people, particularly immigrants, without reason … sometimes slapping, hitting or kicking them when they were handcuffed, and once smashing a man’s head into a wall. They followed and arrested residents, including a local priest, who tried to document their behavior.

They rooted through stores looking for damning security videotapes of how they had treated some of their targets, described by one of them on a police radio as having `drifted to this country on rafts made of chicken wings.

And after it became known that the Justice Department was investigating the [New Haven Police Department] … a picture of a rat appeared on a police union bulletin board, and in the locker room, an ominous note: “You know what we do with snitches?”

The potency of that threat is demonstrated by the fact that Sgt. Miller, the ringleader of the marauding unit, is president of the local police union.

Among the most egregious offenses committed by the “cancerous cadre” was the February 2009 arrest of Father James Manship, a Roman Catholic priest who was making a video record of Miller’s goons harassing local Hispanics at a local business called My Country Store. The official report of the arrest, which wasn’t released until thirteen days after the incident, contained a blatantly perjured account of the episode: Officer David Cari claimed that he saw an “unknown shiny silver object” that the priest had “cupped” in his hands, thereby leading the bold and valiant officer to “fear for [my] safety.”

Video footage subsequently provided by Fr. Manship clearly documented that Cari had identified the object as a camera.

“Sir, what are you doing?” the officer said to the priest prior to the arrest. “Is there a reason that you have a camera on me?”

“I’m taking a video of what’s going on here,” the priest replied.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, what I’m going to do with that camera,” just prior to arresting the priest, who was composed, cooperative, and non-threatening.

At a press conference held shortly after Fr. Manship’s arrest, Marcia Chacon, owner of My Country Store,  described how Miller’s squad would lurk outside the store waiting for Hispanic customers to leave, and then pull them over without cause. The day after that press conference, “my husband and I saw police cars waiting outside of the store in the middle of the night,” she later recounted. As they pulled out of their parking lot, they were pulled over immediately and confronted by police, who accused Chacon’s husband of driving with a suspended license.

Chacon described this incident as “retaliation” for speaking out: “We were both terrified. My husband was afraid he would be arrested for no reason.” In a separate incident, two bricks were thrown through the windows on the front door of the couple’s home. Chief Gallo later paid a personal visit to My Country Store for the stated purpose of discussing the couple’s “concerns” – but given his alleged role in covering up the rampage by “Miller’s Boys,” it’s likely that this gesture was intended as nothing better than damage control.

Read the indictment against the “Miller’s Boys” police gang here.

“The message to criminals is: The police are observing you, the police are recording you, and the police are responding,” states East Orange Police Chief William Robinson. Of course, that message applies to everyone within the federally subsidized surveillance net. Furthermore, police in East Orange — like their counterparts in the brotherhood of government coercion elsewhere — are most likely prepared to arrest any citizen who observes, records, and responds to criminal abuse by police officers.

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the son of GOP presidential contender Rep. Ron Paul and an outspoken civil liberties advocate, was detained after refusing an invasive pat-down by TSA functionaries at the Nashville Airport.

“My son @SenRandPaul being detained by TSA for refusing full body pat-down after anomaly in body scanner in Nashville. More details coming,” wrote Rep. Paul by way of his Twitter account. The TSA insisted that Senator Paul had been “detained.” However, an agency spokesman admitted that he was not free to move at will and was “escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement.” To anybody not using a TSA lexicon, this episode clearly qualifies as “detention.”

The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, in tandem with Seminole County Sheriff’s deputies, conducted a full-force raid on the Lake Mary, Florida residence of a family accused of association with the “Sovereign Citizens” tax-protest movement, reports Orlando NBC affiliate WESH-TV.

Neighbor Evelyn Briggs told WESH that the raiding party “even had robots out there, almost like a movie.” Evelyn’s husband Robert told the local Fox affiliate that the strike force consisted of “about a dozen FBI agents and SWAT people.”

“It’s not something you see here in Lake Mary on an everyday basis,” agreed fellow neighbor Jim Famiglietti,” who appeared not to understand how the quiet and unremarkable couple could wind up being the target of such a draconian enforcement action. “It’s kind of shocking, actually. People make mistakes, but you just don’t know….Maybe some tax protesting and that kind of thing. People protest all the time in this country, and it’s your right. I don’t think the FBI would come in with that kind of fire power,” said Famiglietti.

Dutifully carrying out its assigned task of  providing stenography for government agencies, WESH explained that “the FBI listed Sovereign Citizens among the nation’s top domestic terror threats. By some estimates, there are as many as 300,000 of the anti-government extremists in the country.” Despite the fact that nobody in the neighborhood expressed concerns about the family who had been targeted by the Feds, WESH concluded its report by saying: “Neighbors hope the raid will put their fears to rest” — an observation that makes sense only if it’s understood that the fear was a result of the Stasi-style raid, rather than the presence of political non-conformists in the community.

The JTTF mounted a paramilitary raid despite the fact that the couple has yet to be charged with an offense of any kind, and the “evidence” removed from the home reportedly consisted entirely of computers and documents. The invaders also took the opportunity to go through the garage and the couple’s automobiles.

Just one day before the federal raid against suspected “domestic extremists” took place near Orlando, Florida, the White House convened a secretive meeting with scores of top-ranking state and local law enforcement officials to discuss the purported threat of “homegrown terrorism.” This category includes not only Islamic “radicalism” and “white supremacist beliefs,” but also what is described as “anti-government extremism” generally. The event, which was closed to the public, examined 62 case studies as part of a program devoted to “identifying and preventing violent extremism and homegrown terrorism.”

Recounts the Washington Post:

In the 62 cases reviewed, the subjects increasingly spoke out against the government, blamed the government for perceived problems and did so in a way that caught the attention of other people in their communities, according to the senior counterterrorism official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private White House event. Subjects became active on the Internet to espouse extremist views. And in some cases, the subjects purchased weapons, ammunition or explosive materials.

It’s important to point out that none of what is described above — condemning government policies (or even denying its legitimacy entirely, as the Declaration of Independence recognizes), expressing those views on the Internet, or buying weapons — is a crime. Federal and local law enforcement, however, have been indoctrinated since the Oklahoma City Bombing to think in terms of pre-emptive war against individuals and groups suspected of harboring anti-government sentiments.

“I see the formation of a curious crusading mentality among certain law enforcement agencies to stamp out what they see as a threat to government generally,” complained law enforcement consultant Tony Cooper, who taught negotiation methods, in 1995. “It’s an exaggerated concern that they are facing a nationwide conspiracy and that somehow this will get out of control unless it is stamped out at a very early stage.”

Post-9/11, that “crusading mentality” was focused primarily on suspected Islamic militants. However, during the last few years, the Obama-era Department of Homeland Security — continuing a trend that had actually begun in the last year of the George W. Bush administration — redirected its focus toward “Sovereign Citizens” and other purported domestic “threats.” The raid in Lake Mary is the second recent instance in which a high-tech paramilitary operation has been mounted against people suspected of harboring such “illicit” views: Last June, two Predator drones were employed in an effort to arrest the unarmed sons of North Dakota farmer Rodney Brossart, who was involved in a dispute over stray cattle. This extraordinary measure was supposedly justified by the local sheriff’s suspicions that Brossart had some distant and unspecified connection to the “Sovereign Citizen” movement.

For more about the raid in Lake Mary, go here.

When Israel’s government under Benjamin Netanyahu says “all options” are available in dealing with the supposed threat post by Iran, this includes sending Mossad operatives to assassinate President Obama, contends Andrew Adler, publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times.

In an essay that was quickly pulled from the web (but is archived here), Adler discussed what he called “Kobayashi Maru options” for dealing with what he considers an existential threat to Israel’s survival. The name is drawn from Star Trek, describing a training scenario used to test officer cadets at Starfleet Academy: The cadet is placed in a hopeless battle situation in which defeat seems certain. Although the training simulation was originally designed as a test of character — to determine how well a potential starship commander can continue to exercise command authority in the face of inevitable defeat and certain death — one renegade cadet named James Tiberius Kirk recognized that the exercise itself was a “cheat” and re-wrote it to “change the conditions” of the test. By changing the rules, he was able to carry out the rescue the stranded ship at the heart of the scenario and beat the test.

Adler’s essay assumes that Israel –a nuclear-armed power that enjoys prohibitive military superiority over any of its potential regional rivals — confronts a mortal threat from Iran, and a no-win scenario in preserving its security. That assessment is not shared by the current head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, who has said explicitly that Iran is “not an existential threat.” Nonetheless, Adler encourages his readers to contemplate a “Kobyashi Maru”-type scenario in which radical, outside-the-box thinking is necessary “to preserve Israel’s existence.”

There are “essentially only three options available to Israel,” Adler concludes: 1. attack Hezbollah and Hamas; 2. “order the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities at all costs”; 3. assassinate Obama.

In the third scenario, Adler writes, Israel’s Prime Minister would “give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current Vice President to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States. policy includes its helping the Jewish State obliterate its enemies.”

“If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?” asks Adler, who appears determined to live down to every conceivable anti-Jewish caricature and stereotype. The image of a Jewish cabal manipulating American politics — promoting politicians seen as suitably servile, while destroying the reputations of some seen to be intransigent, and even arranging the assassination of particularly troublesome figures — is regarded, and routinely described, as a staple of anti-Semitic propaganda. Adler, who displays no evidence of being a “self-hating Jew,” apparently considers that depiction to be materially true, or at least plausible.

So far it appears that Adler’s endorsement of a presidential assassination by agents of a foreign power has not been resulted in a knock on the door by the U.S. Secret Service — even though far less pointed threats, such as a UFC fighter’s statement that he wanted to “knock some sense” into Obama, have resulted in visits by Secret Service agents.
“I very much regret it, I wish I hadn’t made reference to it at all,” Andrew Adler told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

For more about this story, go here.

Newt and the most recent future ex-Mrs. Gingrich

Bill Clinton cheated, stayed married, and wagged a finger at his critics as he was impeached; Newt cheated, ruined two marriages, demanded an “open marriage” from his second wife (who had been a mistress), waggled his jowls at CNN correspondent John King – thereby, according to Fox News analyst Keith Ablow, displaying a set of traits best described as “presidential.”

Assessing “what Mr. Gingrich’s personal history actually means for those of us who want to right the economy, see our neighbors and friends go back to work, promote freedom here and abroad and defeat the growing threat posed by Iran and other evil regimes,” Dr. Ablow, a psychiatrist who works as a commentator for Fox News, offered this snarky (but apparently serious) analysis:

 1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.

2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.

3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.

Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.

4) Two women—Mr. Gingrich’s first two wives—have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation.

Conclusion: I can only hope Mr. Gingrich will be as direct and unsparing with the Congress, the American people and our allies. If this nation must now move with conviction in the direction of its heart, Newt Gingrich is obviously no stranger to that journey.

All of this is derived from subjective speculation regarding the motives of people Dr. Ablow has never met and with whom he has never spoken. Significantly, Ablow was willing to ignore a critically important objective fact regarding an immensely important matter of public policy. He insists that “Mr. Gingrich’s married life, including his history of infidelity does not mean … that Mr. Gingrich would be unfaithful to the United States of America or the Constitution of the United States.”

In fact, Gingrich has demonstrated himself incapable of obeying the terms of a solemn oath. That behavior can only be described in terms of a clinical compulsion – yet Dr. Ablow – whose professional credibility is apparently on a par with that of Dr. Nick Riviera from The Simpsons – wants to assure the Fox News audience that they can trust the largely unaccountable power of the modern presidency to a compulsive oath-breaker.

Fox News’s charlatan psychiatrist was hardly the first to depict Gingrich’s adulteries – in which he treated his wife of the moment with sociopathic cruelty and dismissiveness – as “a mark of character.”

During his January 19 broadcast, the oft-married Rush Limbaugh offered this reaction:

Now, there’s an accusation out there that Newt wanted an open marriage, just like Bill and Hillary.  And, in fact, Newt even had the politeness to ask permission for it.  Do you think Bill ever did that?… I got a great note from a friend of mine.  “So Newt wanted an open marriage.  BFD. At least he asked his wife for permission instead of cheating on her.  That’s a mark of character, in my book.  Newt’s a victim.  We all are.  Ours is the horniest generation.  We were soldiers in the sex revolution.…. Newt’s slogan ought to be, ‘Hell, yes, I wanted it.’”

Clinton’s adulterous behavior in the Oval Office led to impeachment (a sanction that should have been imposed for any of a dozen of his serious crimes against the Constitution). Gingrich, on the other hand, has paid no price of any kind for his behavior, and has granted himself absolution on the most generous terms imaginable – beginning with the fact that he refuses even to name the offense for what it was.

“There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate,” he said in a 2011 Christian Broadcasting Network interview.

On this construction, Newt’s shameless extra-marital sexual exploits – which began early in his first marriage, and included a repulsive episode in which he visited his ailing first wife in the hospital to press divorce terms while she was recovering from exploratory cancer surgery – were things that “happened” to him because he was just working too hard on behalf of the country he loves so dearly.

This sense of victimhood and entitlement was displayed in Gingrich’s theatrical outburst of “righteous” indignation toward John King during the CNN debate – and that moment of Clintonian sanctimony earned a raucous ovation from most of the pious Republicans in the audience, and plaudits from pundits across the political spectrum.
Read more, if you can stand to, here.

A joint effort by the Pentagon and NYPD to deploy Terahertz Imagining Detection body scanners on the streets of the Big Apple is a significant step toward completion of a “Panopticon”-style prison society.

Reports RT News:

The head of the New York Police Department is working with the Pentagon to secure body scanners to be used throughout the Big Apple.

If Kelly gets his wish, the city will be receiving a whole slew of Terahertz Imagining Detection scanners, a high-tech radiation detector that measures the energy that is emitted from a persons’ body. As CBS News reports, “It measures the energy radiating from a body up to 16 feet away, and can detect anything blocking it, like a gun.”

What it can also do, however, is allow the NYPD to conduct illegal searches by means of scanning anyone walking the streets of New York. Any object on your person could be privy to the eyes of the detector, and any suspicious screens can prompt police officers to search someone on suspicion of having a gun, or anything else under their clothes.

According to Commissioner Kelly, the scanners would only be used in “reasonably suspicious circumstances,” but what constitutes “suspicious” in the eyes of the NYPD could greatly differ from what the 8 million residents of the five boroughs have in mind.

In practice, “suspicious” behavior for the NYPD consists of anything done by a young black or Hispanic male. In a New York Times op-ed, 23-year-old New York City resident Nicholas Peart describes being repeatedly detained, searched, and even thrown to the ground at gunpoint by police officers while carrying on such “suspicious” activities as attending a friend’s birthday party or going to the gym.

In 2010, Peart observes “the N.Y.P.D. recorded more than 600,000 stops; 84 percent of those stopped were blacks or Latinos. Police are far more likely to use force when stopping blacks or Latinos than whites. In half the stops police cite the vague `furtive movements’ as the reason for the stop. Maybe black and brown people just look more furtive, whatever that means.”

One reason for the proliferation of stop-and-frisk detentions is a rigid but officially disavowed quota system. Two years ago, NYPD Officer Adil Polanco exposed that system in an interview with ABC News.

“Our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them,” Officer Polanco lamented. Each night he and other officers were expected to make at least one arrest and issue at least twenty summonses. To document that claim, Polanco provided an audio recording of a roll call briefing at the NYPD’s 41^st precinct.

“If you think 1 and 20 is breaking your balls, guess what you’re going to be doing. You’re going to be doing a lot more, a lot more than what they’re saying,” declared the Patrol Supervisor. On another occasion, the supervisor escalated the pressure, unambiguously coupling quota-based performance expectations with job security: “Next week, 25  [summonses] and one [arrest], thirty-five and one and until you decide to quit this job to go to work at a Pizza Hut, this is what you’re going to be doing till then. Do you understand?”

As a result of these arrest and citation requirements, Polanco complained, “We are stopping kids walking upstairs to their house, stopping kids going to the store, young adults. In order to keep the quota.”

In addition to eviscerating the Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments, and deepening the constitutionally impermissible relationship between the Pentagon and the New York Police Department, the mobile scanner scheme will inevitably lead to a spike in unnecessary police violence against innocent pedestrians triggered by “suspicious” scanner readings. The passive radiation generated by the scanners can be blocked by any opaque object – not only a gun, but also such things as cellphones or soft drink containers. This is illustrated by the case of Jordan Miles, an honor student severely beaten by Pittsburgh police who mistook a soft drink bottle for a weapon.

Two years ago, a wolf pack of police officers assigned to an undercover street unit in Pittsburgh surrounded  Miles while he was walking to his grandmother’s house. Thinking they were common criminals, rather than the more dangerous government-employed variety, Miles tried to leave. He ran three steps before slipping and falling to the sidewalk, whereupon the officers attacked him with a stun gun and beat him with fists, knees, and a branch — and tore out a huge chunk of hair for good measure. (See photos of the beating victim here.)

In a criminal report the assailants claimed that the 5’6″, 150-pound viola player looked “suspicious” and appeared to be armed with a “heavy object”; the weapon in question proved to be a bottle of Mountain Dew, an admittedly deadly concoction but one that is dangerous only to those who consume the beverage. The odds are pretty good that incidents of this kind  will become commonplace when the quota-driven NYPD is provided with technology that can transform any solid object into grounds for a supposedly legal detention.

Read more here.

Insisting that “Ron Paul needs to shhhhh on foreign policy,” Glenn Beck told Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly that the Republican presidential candidate sounded “a little like Osama Bin Laden at times” when he offered a Golden Rule-based critique of U.S. foreign policy.

During the January 16 GOP presidential debate in South Carolina, Dr. Paul provoked a chorus of booing from the audience – most of whom are proudly pious Christian church-goers – for insisting that the United States government was bound by the Golden Rule in its treatment of other countries.

The Glenn Beck Radio Program’s website offered this artlessly dishonest summary of the incident:  “Ron Paul got a strong whiff of reality today when real conservative voters in South Carolina booed him while Paul blamed America for terrorism. To Paul’s credit, he didn’t back down from his left of Obama foreign policy and tried to explain his America creates terrorism logic to the audience.”

Beck, who has appointed himself a leader of what he calls a spiritual “revival” of American culture, either didn’t recognize the central moral tenet of the Christian faith he professes to share, doesn’t believe that it applies to the conduct of government, or doesn’t think it’s a sin to bear false witness where political matters are concerned. Dr. Paul’s non-interventionist foreign policy does differ dramatically from that of any of the other Republican contenders and the Democratic incumbent – all of whom have embraced a doctrine of perpetual foreign intervention that is an outgrowth of the same Marxist “Progressivism” Glenn Beck claims to despise.

Beck, who affects a professorial mien (despite being a college drop-out) and likes to offer reading assignments to his audience, should read an indispensable book by Richard Gamble entitled The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation. Gamble’s book demonstrates that at the turn of the 20^th Century, theologically and political conservative Christians opposed foreign wars and other imperial entanglements. It was the “Progressive” clergy, who mingled scripture with the teachings of Hegel, Kant, Darwin, and Marx, who promoted militarism. This appetite for war was of a piece with the “Progressive” belief that the Christian Church had to justify its existence by playing a “positive” role in the expansion of the State as an instrument of redemption in human affairs – and for them, nothing was as redemptive as bloodshed.

Rather than playing the biblically mandated role of peacemakers, the progressive clergy eagerly supported World War I “as transforming event in the life of the church,” observes Gamble. Many of them applauded the Wilson administration’s war aims as a form of Christian “altruism,” one that promised temporal redemption “at the sacrifice, if need be, of five millions of men and billions of wealth,” as an effusive Literary Digest editorial put it.

This righteous campaign to re-make the world through state coercion would continue even after the altruistic mass murder came to an end. Writes Gamble: “The progressives longed for, and expected, the war for righteousness to continue after the guns in Europe fell silent.”

The “Progressive” gospel of the Total State, as translated into the idiom of American Christianity, has rarely if ever been stated as bluntly as it was by William P. Merrill in this couplet published in the April 26, 1917 issue of Christian Century (just weeks after war was declared on Germany):

The strength of the State we’ll lavish on more, Than making of wealth and making of war; We are learning at last, though the lesson comes late, That the making of man is the task of the State.

Beck routinely execrates Woodrow Wilson, who richly deserves such treatment. He likewise castigates the Wilson-era Progressive Movement, another eminently worthy target. Yet he embraces militarism without qualification, and he promotes an idolatrous vision of the U.S. government as blameless in its foreign policy – thereby revealing himself to be squarely in the Progressive camp in his views of discretionary killing by the State. Also of a piece with Progressivism is Beck’s reflexive insistence that the U.S. Government and the American people are indistinguishable.

During his appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s program, Beck insisted that terrorism is “not America’s fault, and I don’t think Ron Paul gets that.” Dr. Paul has been careful to draw a distinction between the criminal acts of the U.S. Government and the people in whose name those crimes are committed. His view is that the American people suffer the inevitable terrorist “blowback” generated by the Government’s criminal policies.

Rather than allowing the same Government to steal what remains of our liberty and prosperity on the pretext of protecting us from the consequences of its actions, Dr. Paul maintains, we should change our foreign policy to bring it into alignment with the non-interventionist principles of Washington and Jefferson, as well as the foundational moral law of human society, the Golden Rule.  There is one sense in which the American people are to blame for this: The anti-American terrorist backlash is a predictable consequence of allowing ourselves to be ruled by a government that promiscuously breaks the Golden Rule.

Beck’s claim that this position “sounds like Bin Laden” means that he’s either handicapped with an incurable tin ear, or has carefully cultivated a lying tongue.

Read more here.

Rick Santorum, the butt of one of the Web’s most notorious cyber-jokes, served up a frothy cocktail of collectivist rhetoric defending the infamous SOPA Internet censorship bill – and in doing so he embraced one of Bill Clinton’s favorite themes in promoting gun control, namely the need to limit freedom when it’s being “abused” by irresponsible people.

“My general feeling is that we have a free market, and the free market should work,” Santorum began during a campaign stop Q-and-A exchange captured on video and posted to YouTube.  “But like any freedom, there has to be regulation. You’re not unlimited in any right, even rights that we have in our Constitution; they’re not unlimited rights. There is, and can be, limitations on that. Freedom of speech – there are things you can’t say. You can’t cry `Fire!’ in a crowded theater. There are limitations to all freedom. They’re not absolute rights. They are rights that have responsibilities that come with them. And if you abuse those rights – piracy – you have a consequence of abusing those rights.”

Although Mr. Santorum has claimed to have a “firm grasp of the Constitution,” he clearly doesn’t understand its function. The Constitution doesn’t list individual rights; it assigns limited and revocable powers to the general (or federal) government. The purpose of the Bill of Rights is to forbid government interference in a small selection of the numerous and indefinite rights that inhere in individuals as a function of our humanity. The Bill of Rights, which provides what have been called “auxiliary protections” to liberty, was never intended as a comprehensive roster of individual rights.

Furthermore, it is impossible to “abuse” a right. All abusive behavior involves the use of force or fraud to commit aggression against the rights of another. The weary metaphor invoked by Santorum of crying “Fire!” in a crowded theater, interestingly, was coined by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes to justify prosecution and imprisonment of an anti-draft pamphleteer during World War I. In other words, it was devised to justify suppression of peaceful rhetoric opposing the State’s aggressive violence against the most basic form of private property – ownership of one’s own person.

Santorum is one of the most conspicuous conservative proponents of the communitarian perspective on government. Communitarianism emphasizes the idea that individual rights are contingent on the fulfillment of government-enforced social “responsibilities,” and that government must employ coercion to create a “moral” society. Santorum knows practically nothing about the details of the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act), which would allow the federal government to seize and shut down websites on the flimsiest of pretexts. As a communitarian, however, Santorum’s default assumption is that government regulation of otherwise unrestricted freedom is a good thing.

While admitting that he wasn’t sufficiently familiar with SOPA to assess its supposed merits, Santorum observed during the Q-and-A that “I have, in the past, said that there are limits to the freedom on the Internet. The Internet is a powerful source for good, and as we all know it has been a powerful source for bad in this country.”

In addition to dealing with the theft of intellectual property, federal regulation of the Web should also suppress “pornography, or other areas where we are destroying the moral fabric of our country,” Santorum continued. Would this include political advocacy and activism he would find objectionable? Santorum has consistently promoted a pre-emptive war with Iran. Wwould a President Santorum decree that anti-war agitation online is the equivalent of “cry[ing] `Fire!’ in a crowded theater,” and employ SOPA to shut it down?

Irrespective of the merits of SOPA and PIPA, Santorum favors government regulation of the Internet as an innate good, if only because the spectacle of unrestricted freedom simply makes him uncomfortable. “The idea that we’re looking at that and saying, `Well, you can’t regulate here’ – I reject that,” Santorum stated at the campaign event. “I absolutely reject that.”

New York Times columnist Gail Collins recently described Santorum as “a right-wing, avenging angel version of Bill Clinton,” owing to their shared enthusiasm for the sound of their own interminable harangues. However, there is a deeper philosophical affinity between Santorum and Clinton regarding the supposed need for authoritarian restraints on individual liberty.

“When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly,” Bill Clinton declared during an April 19, 1994 forum televised by MTV.  “What’s happened in America today is too many people live where there’s no family structure, and no work structure. And so there’s a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there’s too much personal freedom.”

“When person freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it,” Clinton continued, segueing to the subject of civilian disarmament — or, as it’s more commonly called, gun control. In the interest of limiting the threat posed by individual freedom, he explained, “we’re going to have weapons sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities.”

For Clinton, making people “safer” meant a government assault on the liberty protected by the Second Amendment; Santorum, who likewise wants to protect us from the threat of unrestricted freedom, prefers to target the liberties guaranteed by the First.

To see the video of Santorum’s defense of SOPA, go here.

After video of that humiliating but instructive episode was released to the public, Paige filed a lawsuit against the agency. In 2010, a federal District Court ruled that Paige hadn’t provided any evidence regarding the identity of the individual who leaked the video to the public. On January 17, a federal appeals court ruled against Paige’s appeal.

“This is a Glock Forty,” explained DEA agent Lee Paige during a presentation to about fifty students and parents at the Orlando Minority Youth Golf Association.  After dry-firing the handgun – thereby loading a round — Paige informed the gathering, “I’m the only one I know professional enough to carry this Glock Forty.” An instant later Paige shot himself in the left foot.

Limping painfully on his wounded foot, Paige attempted to salvage some object lesson from his own culpable foolishness by emphasizing that if guns are dangerous in the hands of trained, professional Feds like himself, they must be absolutely deadly in the unhallowed hands of mere Mundanes (that is, kids and other common citizens).

“See how that accident happened?” exclaimed Paige. “It can happen to you, and you can be blown away. So guys, never play with guns.”

He then instructed an assistant to hand him another firearm  – which prompted the schoolchildren to plead with the dangerously inept government employee to put the weapon down.

The videotape of the April 2004 incident in Orlando was turned over to the DEA. Shortly thereafter it leaked onto the internet. It was also broadcast “on the Jay Leno Show, a Current Affair, Jimmy Kimbel Live [sic], CNN Headline News, CNN News, Fox News, and VH1: Show `Webjunk20’ (regarding `Volume 1 Stupid Cops’), complained Paige in his lawsuit against the agency.  He also reported that “White supremacy organizations have used the videotape to ridicule black Americans and general and Mr. Paige in particular,” an observation relating to the inconsequential fact that Paige – a muscular, dreadlock-wearing former pro football player – is black.

“As a result of the disclosure … by the DEA, Mr. Paige became and is the target of jokes, derision, ridicule and disparaging comments,” continued the lawsuit. In addition, owing to “the notoriety arising from the disclosure of the videotape, Mr. Paige is no longer permitted or able to give educational motivational speeches and presentations.”

Doubtless this comes as a considerable relief to parents whose children might otherwise find themselves confined in a room containing loaded weapons and a dangerously irresponsible federal agent.

While dismissing Paige’s lawsuit, the federal appeals court panel sniped at the DEA for permitting the public release of the video.

“The widespread circulation of the accidental discharge video demonstrates the need for every federal agency to safeguard video records with extreme diligence in this Internet age of iPhones and YouTube with their instantaneous and universal reach.”

From that perspective, the real scandal here is not the fact that an arrogant government employee discharged a weapon in a school – something that would be prosecuted as a federal crime if committed by someone other than a member of the exalted punitive caste – but rather that the public was allowed to know about this act of potentially lethal criminal irresponsibility.

Paige earned every syllable of ridicule he has experienced, and should never be allowed near firearms again. Then again, the same is true of most government employees.

Read more here.

If rogue judges are going to be arrested, as Newt Gingrich recently suggested, trial Judge Kenneth Post in Michigan’s Ottawa County – who jailed a defense attorney for asserting his client’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination — should be at the top of the list.There’s an element of irony at work here, since Post appears to be the kind of judge Gingrich would admire.

Post ruled that attorney Scott Millard was in contempt for invoking the Fifth Amendment, and then used the threat of a weekend in jail in an attempt to extort a promise that the attorney would waive the right against self-incrimination in future proceedings. That abuse of discretion earned a bracing rebuke from Michigan Circuit Court Judge Edward R. Post (no relation), who overturned the contempt conviction against attorney Millard and assigned the original case to a different judge.

During a December 2 arraignment, Post jailed attorney Scott G. Millard for the supposed offense of advising his client, a 20-year-old facing a charge of minor in possession of alcohol, not to answer self-incriminating questions. Post interrupted Millard no fewer than a dozen times. His manner was alternately abrasive and dismissive; he was insulting, sarcastic, patronizing, and openly contemptuous of the Constitution.

As Judge Edward Post noted in his opinion and order:

During the arraignment, [Judge Ken Post] questioned the client regarding illegal drug use so it could set an appropriate bond, specifically, whether he would `test dirty’ and when he had last used illegal drugs. [Millard] advised the court that his client would stand mute because he had a Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. After an exchange regarding the right and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, [Post] advised [Millard], `One more word and I’m going to hold you in contempt.’ After [Post] again asked his client about drug use, [Millard] against stated that his client did not have to incriminate himself and was not on bond.

At this point Post abandoned any pretense of a judicial disposition, adopting the sneering demeanor of a schoolyard bully taunting an overmatched victim. He first imposed a $100 fine and then taunted Millard: “[I]f you want to keep going, you name it, because we’re going to do it by the days” – meaning days in jail.

Millard’s composure never faltered in the face of the abuse. He displayed respect that Post did not deserve or reciprocate. Post ordered a Bailiff to take Millard to jail, where he would have spent the weekend. While en route, the Bailiff was called back to the courtroom so that Post could offer Millard an opportunity to grovel by purchasing his freedom at the expense of his client’s constitutionally guaranteed rights.

“You have been held in contempt of court,” Post grandly announced. “And I am willing to set that [aside] and release you at this point if on Monday morning you’re willing to have your client come in and appear and answer the questions I put to him.”

Millard explained that as a temporary substitute for the client’s retained attorney, he wouldn’t be attending the hearing on Monday. This should have rendered the matter moot – but Post was determined to extract a pound of flesh. As the Circuit Court order recalls, Post “attempted to obtain appellant’s promise to allow future clients to answer the court’s questions, seemingly without regard to the clients’ constitutional rights.”

Post had no authority to make such a demand, and Millard had no inclination to accede to it. He replied that he would instruct his clients to answer “everything required by law”; this prompted Post to tell the Bailiff, “He’s yours.” Millard was taken to jail, and released a few hours later following an emergency appeal.

Note that Millard’s “contempt” consisted of expressing unqualified respect for the law, rather than unconditional deference to the robe-bedecked bully who afflicts the 58^th District Court in Ottawa County, Michigan.

Post has developed a reputation as a “hanging judge,” largely on the strength of his insistence on criminal sentences for first-time juvenile offenders found guilty of alcohol-related offenses. Michigan State Law permits first-time offenders the option of a “diversion” program, but Post – unique among trial judges in the state – adamantly refuses to grant diversion, thereby leaving young people who have committed no offense against person or property with an ineffaceable criminal conviction.

Another recent ruling by an appellate judge struck down a sentence imposed by Post on a teenager found guilty of shoplifting – a conviction for which a diversion option would have been appropriate. That decision pointedly instructed Post that in the future, when he refuses to grant the diversion option, he will “state [his] reasoning for the denial on the record.”

Post’s term as trial judge expires in 2016. Some long-suffering residents of Ottawa County who are eager to hurry things along have organized a Facebook-centered recall effort.

Read Judge Edward R. Post’s order overturning the contempt citation against Scott Millard here.

Ron Paul’s insurgent presidential campaign has been targeted by provocateurs carrying out “false flag” operations and other dirty tricks. This includes a scheme to seed Ron Paul campaign events with people attired in KKK regalia.

According to Katerina Nikolas of Digital Journal:

A Machiavellian plot to besmirch the reputation of Ron Paul has been hatched by anti-Paul campaigners. The dirty tactics were launched under a Facebook page called “Stop Ron Paul.” The plot involved plans for anti-Paul supporters to pose as members of the Ku Klux Klan, adorned in hoods and robes, and follow Paul around the campaign trial in South Carolina, ahead of the Primary…. Full details of the plot were exposed on All Voices, which revealed the intent was to have fake KKK members, holding support Ron Paul signs, attempt to appear in photographs with the GOP candidate, obviously to cash in on the newsletters that purported to depict Paul as a racist.

“If you live in South Carolina and want to have some real fun with these Paulbots here is what we do- go online and buy or make your very own KKK robe, complete with hood (hood is important),” wrote former Herman Cain supporter Jere Brower on his “Stop Ron Paul” Facebook page. “Then get some Ron Paul signs off the internet or make your own. Follow Paul around South Carolina and be sure to get photographed by the media. Again, hoods are important. All can be Klansmen for Paul. Black, white, Jewish, Asian- those Paulbots will sh*t a brick!”

Mr. Brown’s effort to traduce Dr. Paul as a covert bigot came hard on the heels of a similar effort by the now-defunct Jon Huntsman campaign. On the eve of the New Hampshire Primary, an anonymous figure posting under the nom de cyber “NHLiberty4Paul” posted a crude, amateurish YouTube video that depicted Huntsman, a Mandarin-speaking former ambassador to China with an adopted Chinese daughter, as a covert asset of Beijing.

The video attracted no attention until the Huntsman campaign demanded that the Paul campaign condemn it. That demand was echoed and amplified by media organs nation-wide. It was left to the “amateur” media to discover that the very first place that video was posted was to the Huntsman Campaign’s official website.

Dirty tricks of this kind have been commonplace throughout American political history. The Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), a non-government entity aligned with Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election effort, refined the practice to a science, employing forged letters, planted stooges at campaign events, and other dishonest tactics meant to embarrass and discredit the McGovern campaign.

Laird Wilcox, a historian who specializes in the study of political “extremism,” points out that self-appointed leftist “watchdog” groups such as the so-called Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have also made extensive use of this method. In some instances, this meant either infiltrating hate groups, or making them up from scratch.

“James Mitchell Rosenberg, a career infiltrator for the Anti-Defamation League, regularly attended and was a speaker at Ku Klux Klan rallies and meetings of the Mountain Church in Cohoctah, MI, considered a gathering place for neo-Nazis of all kinds,” writes Wilcox in his book The Watchdogs. For the benefit of television reporters, Rosenberg also posed as a leader of a para-military group called the “Christian Patriot’s Defense League,” which was the subject of a breathless exposé entitled “Armies of the Right.” In 1981, Rosenberg and an associate were arrested on a New York City rooftop and charged with carrying an unregistered rifle. “The two were posing as paramilitary extremists for a photographic fabrication exaggerating the threat from the far right,” explains Wilcox. “The charges were subsequently dropped at the request [of] the ADL’s Irwin Suall, Rosenberg’s direct supervisor.”

Ron Paul’s campaign, which focuses on dismantling Washington’s debt-fueled foreign empire abroad and dramatically reducing domestic government intervention, is difficult to characterize as appealing to the “far right.” Much of his support comes from young voters and activists who consider themselves to be political independents. One persistent criticism of Dr. Paul voiced by talk radio personalities such as Sean Hannity and Mark Levin is that the candidate’s non-interventionist foreign policy supposedly places him on the “far left.” In fact, the Paul campaign is actually creating a trans-partisan movement focused on individual liberty.

“Although many political pundits intransigently continue to perceive the political world as a dichotomy along a left-right political spectrum, Paul’s success appears to be largely owed to the many Americans who do not fit neatly along a socially/economically liberal vs. socially/economically conservative spectrum,” observes Emily Eakins of Reason magazine. “Instead, he attracts a diverse group, with many self-identifying as fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Despite Paul’s fiscally conservative base of support, these voters are not Republican stalwarts and may defect if the party fails to meet their demands.”

Read more at Digital Journal.

Hayden condemns the “Blue Culture of Silence” in which officer solidarity undermines the duty to “protect and serve.” He points out that “violations of the Fourth Amendment” most likely are committed by police departments across the country every day. While some small and mid-sized departments do provide useful services, Hayden contends, the mechanism of the militarized police state is simply too large, too powerful, too well-funded, and too deeply entrenched to overcome by working inside the system. This is particularly true regarding the so-called “war on drugs” — a literal war against the liberties of the American public, which has completely redefined the mission of nearly every police department and Sheriff’s department in the country. Hayden recalls how he, as an active-duty NOPD officer, nearly came to blows with a colleague simply by questioning the wisdom and propriety of the drug war — which is an institutional dogma embraced with nearly religious zeal by most police officers.

Hayden, a Ron Paul supporter and liberty activist who maintains the website truthistreason.net, was interviewed by Adam Kokesh as part of his web-based program “Adam v. The Man.”

While Obama administration officials insist that the video of Marine snipers urinating on the bodies of dead Afghan fighters is an isolated outrage, some Afghan civilians claim that the corpse desecration incident is the sort of thing that “happens all the time.”

Reports the McClatchy News Service:

In the video, one Marine says, “Have a good day, buddy,” as he urinates on an Afghan. Another says, “Golden like a shower.”

In the past, there’ve been videos of U.S. helicopter pilots laughing as they shot at civilians who were carrying an injured man to a van in Baghdad. U.S. troops have photographed themselves smiling while posing next to dead Afghans and Iraqis.

Only recently has the military begun aggressively charging soldiers for such actions. The Army is investigating allegations of a “kill team” in Afghanistan composed of members of the 5th Stryker brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, that targeted unarmed Afghans and cut off their fingers as war trophies while deployed in southern Afghanistan in late 2009 and early 2010.

So far, 11 soldiers have been convicted in connection with the deaths of the Afghans.

According to Jamal Karimi, a shopkeeper from the city of Kandahar, “I know a lot of horrible things happen in the south and nobody but the locals know about it. Such things happen all the time, and people talk about it but media hardly report them.”

Interestingly, a similar assessment was provided in 2010 by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who at the time was the senior commander of both U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” Gen. McChrystal said during a videoconference.

Significantly, the general was speaking with reference to civilians killed at military checkpoints — a body count that was dwarfed by the number of civilians killed as “collateral damage” in airstrikes and nighttime raids by Special Forces units.

While the Obama administration has dealt with the most recent controversy by exhausting the thesaurus in search of suitable synonyms for “outrage,” some elements of the GOP-centered Right has either stoutly defended the Marines in the video – or actually celebrated the corpse desecration as a defiant gesture toward what it perceives as an all-encompassing enemy devoted to our complete destruction.

In comments published by The Weekly Standard, Florida Republican Congressman Allen West, a retired Army Lt. Colonel who was cashiered in disgrace for abusing a prisoner in a fashion that merited prosecution under Article 93 of the UCMJ – blamed the controversy on what he called “over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks.”

“The Marines were wrong,” West concedes. “Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file….  As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

Nationally syndicated talk radio personality Michael Savage depicted the episode as a case of heroic Marines being targeted by a campaign orchestrated by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which he characterized as a “hate group.”

“Granted, it’s not civil palace etiquette or, more important, U.S. military doctrine to urinate on battle-killed enemy fighters – in this case, three dead Taliban in Afghanistan,” commented neo-conservative historian Diana West in an op-ed column for WorldNetDaily. “But could we just move on? That’ll be the day. Get set for Abu Ghraib 2, a national wallow in a wholly manufactured and inflated evil, the kind of masochistic frolic our extremely twisted elites, safe on their sound stages, find so extremely pleasurable. Get set for the exclusion of any and all context related to heat-of-battle conditions, battle fatigue or Taliban depredations.”

“I love these Marines,” gushed Pamela Geller, a prominent anti-Muslim agitator and West’s colleague as a columnist for WorldNetDaily. “Perhaps this is the infidel interpretation of the Islamic ritual of washing and preparing the body for burial.” Describing the dead Afghans as “murderous savages,” Geller insisted that “We are at war with an enemy that means to slaughter us and overthrow the United States of America.”

One persistent theme woven into much of the commentary provoked by this event is that the actions of the Marine snipers were atypical of the behavior of U.S. servicemen – that they were the unfortunate but understandable reaction of young men suffering from the stress of battle against a vicious and resilient enemy. Others who have defended the Marines have suggested that such actions, while repellent, are typical of wartime and thus entirely understandable.

Episodes of this kind are to be expected when “you are putting 18- and 19-year-olds in combat,” commented Captain Andrew Exum, U.S. Army (ret.) on the PBS program Newshour. “I think, in a lot of ways, it’s good for the American people to see these videos because most people don’t have an idea of what Afghanistan is like, what the war is like,” continued Exum, who served in Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004, is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “And, yet, yet it’s important that people see the way that soldiers can be dehumanized through the experience.”

It’s worth recalling that this is not the only recent story involving Americans in uniform urinating on someone they have subdued through force.

Just days ago, Republic reported on the story of Pennsylvania woman Derena Marie Madison, who was arrested for “disorderly conduct” and “public intoxication” during a traffic stop. Ms. Madison, who was the passenger of the car, rather than the driver, was handcuffed and shackled, and taken to a state police barracks, where she was repeatedly pepper-sprayed while still in restraints.

Blinded by the chemical agent, Madison begged for help. Several troopers dragged her behind the barracks, where she was doused with cold water and thrown into the snow. During the abuse, she briefly passed out. When she regained consciousness, Madison discovered that the officers had urinated on her.  In response of Madison’s lawsuit, the officers claimed that they were immune to civil liability under the doctrine of “sovereign immunity” – an argument rejected by U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster, who is allowing Madison’s lawsuit to proceed.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that military veterans are disproportionately represented in the personnel pool from which domestic law enforcement officers are drawn. The abuses we authorize against foreign populations abroad will eventually become common practice here at home – particularly as the military assumes a greater role in domestic law enforcement.

Read more here.

Canton, Ohio Patrol Officer Daniel Harless, the snarling psychotic immortalized in a viral video showing him threatening to murder a terrified man during a traffic stop, has been fired.

Police union spokesman Bill Adams told the Canton Repository that Harless – who had racked up 18 internal affairs complaints since 2000 – was fired by Canton Safety Director Thomas Ream.

“It is quite clear that [Harless’] actions represented a pattern of behavior where inappropriate verbal abuse and threats of death or great bodily harm of the various complainants occurred,” explained Ream. With the union’s support, Harless is appealing that decision. In the meantime, Harless will join the large and expanding population of “gypsy cops” – cashiered police officers who remain free to seek employment in other jurisdictions. Like many others who fit that description, Harless should be on trial for serious crimes.

In a June 8, 2011 traffic stop that was captured on video, Harless repeatedly threatened to murder the driver, William E. Bartlett, for carrying a concealed handgun for which he had obtained a the appropriate permit. At the time, Bartlett was attempting to comply with an Ohio State ordinance by notifying Harless that he was carrying a weapon, and by displaying his concealed carry license. Bartlett was composed and deferential; Harless’s behavior was that of a borderline psychotic eagerly seeking an excuse to kill somebody.

“As soon as I felt your gun I should have took [sic] two steps back, pulled my Glock 40 and just put ten bullets in your ass and let you drop,” snarled Harless. “And I wouldn’t have lost any sleep.” Apparently Harless doesn’t buy into the police union propaganda that cops are afflicted with a bone-deep dread of pulling their firearms.

After threatening to “put lumps on” a witness to the incident, Harless told Bartlett, “I’m so close to caving in your f*****g head…. You’re just a stupid human being…. F*****g talking to me with a f*****g gun. You want me to pull mine and stick it to your head?” He later threatened to invent and excuse to stop Bartlett every time he saw him, and towing – that is, stealing – his car and taking him to jail.

This was not the first time Harless had threatened to kill a citizen during a traffic stop. After the video of his encounter with Bartlett went viral, records of two very similar episodes were churned to the surface. One of them involved a man named Stanley Pearson, a man with whom he had previously fought.

During the stop, Harless said, “I will be honest with you. I will not even dance with you. I’ll shoot you dead this time.” Pearson replied: “I understand.”

In an interview late last year, Canton PD Chief Dean McKimm insisted that despite 18 internal affairs complaints and a file 700 pages long, “there was no evidence Harless was a problem” until the videos were made public.

Until the video of the June 8 traffic stop emerged, Harless was considered one of “Canton’s Finest” – a bit rough around the edges, perhaps, but a stalwart and valuable officer nonetheless. Immediately after his behavior was exposed, however, Harless went on “sick leave” – that is, paid vacation. Other officers donated sick days when Harless expended his own. The police union rallied on his behalf by demanding an extension for the disciplinary hearing after the officer was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Obviously, it’s an unfortunate set of circumstances that transpired,” comments union rep Adams. “We feel that due to the fact that [Harless] has PTSD, that nobody realized it for eight-plus years, for it to come to light the way it did … this is not a way we wanted to play this out. PTSD is obviously a disease.”

That is true – and Harless’s rampages, as captured on video, were not symptoms of a disease, they were criminal acts.  Section 2903.21 of Ohio State Law defines Harless’s actions as a felony called “aggravated menacing” – “caus[ing] another to believe that the offender will cause serious physical harm to the person or property of the other person….”

Odd, is it not, that none of Harless’s colleagues, supervisors, or union buddies were aware of his untreated affliction – until after he was exposed, on camera, as a serial felon?

Read more here.

Ten years ago today, “the first prisoners from the Bush Administration’s `War on Terror’ were landed at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, a forty-five-square-mile enclave at the eastern end of Cuba that America secured in a 1903 treaty and has held ever since,” recalls international human rights attorney Scott Horton in Harper’s magazine. “In the intervening years, the prison population swelled, with a total of 779 prisoners having been held there at some point. Some 600 were released (mostly by the Bush Administration), and of the 171 still held there, a majority have actually been cleared for release. These eighty-nine men are something of a political ping-pong ball between Republicans, who continue to do everything in their power to keep Gitmo open and to block the prisoners’ release, and the Obama White House, which seems intent on keeping questions surrounding Gitmo out of the headlines.”

Although ritually demonized as the “worst of the worst,” many Gitmo inmates were hapless individuals – such as farmers, tourists, and aid workers – who were swept up by Pakistani bounty hunters eager for rewards offered by the CIA.  Among that number was Bosnian citizen Lakhdar Boumediene, a humanitarian worker with the Red Crescent (the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross). In an anguished New York Times op-ed column, Boumediene recalls how he was seized by bounty hunters and delivered into U.S. custody. Separated from his wife and daughters, Boumediene was tortured through prolonged sleep deprivation and being forced to spend hours in painful stress positions.

German citizen Murnat Kurnaz, who spent nearly five years in Gitmo without being accused of a crime,   described his very similar experiences in a Times op-ed. While in U.S. custody at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, he was tortured by interrogators who “dunked my head under water and punched me in the stomach….” The mistreatment continued once he was sent to Gitmo: “At one point, I was chained to the ceiling of a building and hung by my hands for days…. There were more beatings, endless solitary confinement, freezing temperatures and extreme heat, days of forced sleeplessness.”

Kurnaz offer a more detained account in his memoir Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo. After being vended to the CIA for a $3,000 bounty, Kurnaz was designated an “unlawful combatant.” Any violation of the arbitrary — and ever-changing — rules of prisoner conduct provoked an attack by the Initial Reaction Force (IRF), a unit composed of “five to eight soldiers with plastic shields, breastplates, hard-plastic knee-, elbow-, and shoulder-protectors, helmets with plastic visors, gloves with hard-plastic knuckles, heavy boots, and billyclubs.”

Breaking a rule wasn’t a prerequisite for a visit from the IRF. The team would be summoned to inflict punishment for any act of defiance — an insult hurled at an abusive guard, for example, or even an attempt to exercise. Typically the IRF would soften up the target by infusing the cell with a liberal dose of weaponized capsaicin – that is, pepper spray. Once the prisoner had been left entirely incapacitated, the IRF would swarm him to deliver a beating.

Former military interrogator Erik Saar offers a description of the IRF in action in his memoir, Inside the Wire.

“The five IRF-team MPs lined up outside the cell door,” writes Saar. “Starting in the back, they each shouted `Ready!’ and one by one slapped the shoulder of the next soldier up. The first soldier opened the door and directed a good dose of pepper spray at the detainee, then started to back him into a corner with his shield. But the captive managed to swipe the shield away and tried to kick the second soldier in line. He landed a good blow to the shoulder, but before he could put his foot down the third soldier, thinking fast, grabbed it and jerked. The detainee’s body rose in the air and came crashing to the metal floor.”

“All five MPs swarmed over him,” continues Saar’s account. “One was responsible for securing his head, and the other four were supposed to take one limb each. The detainee was kicking and squirming, fueled by his hostility. Mo [an Army translator] was shouting to him in Arabic to stop resisting. One of the stronger soldiers who had a solid grip on one arm was punching him in the ribs….”

British citizen Omar Deghayes, who was imprisoned at Gitmo  after being kidnapped by bounty hunters in Pakistan, was left blinded and permanently disfigured in an unprovoked assault by the IRF. Bound in chains and suffocating beneath a scrum of armored guards, unable to flee or defend himself, Deghayes felt a pair of fingers probe into his eye sockets.

As the assailant tore and gouged at his eyes, Deghayes suppressed the scream that was gathering in his throat out of determination not to concede anything to his tormentors. Even as he suppressed the scream that gathered in his throat, Deghayes heard the IRF’s commander order the assailant to press harder. Today Deghayes, who lost the sight in his right eye, lives in England. The beast in human form who blinded him most likely has a job as a policeman or sheriff’s deputy.

Brandon Neeley, a former Army prison guard at Gitmo, has described how members of the IRT were indoctrinated to treat inmates as incorrigibly dangerous sub-humans unworthy of even rudimentary human decencies. To understand the depth of the indoctrination and the potency of the hatred instilled in the guards it’s useful to consider the case of Sean Baker, an Army Specialist who was nearly beaten to death by his comrades during an IRF training drill.

Baker, clad in the same orange jumpsuit worn by detainees, was dragged from the cell by an IRF “extraction team.” He had been given a “safety word” — “red” — to use if the drill became too intense. He desperately spat out that “safety word” as his head was repeatedly slammed against the stainless steel floor while one of his assailants tried to suffocate him.

Despite the fact that all “extractions” were videotaped, the record of this incident disappeared.

After it was finally established that Baker was one of “us” rather than “them,” Baker was flown to the Portsmouth Naval Medical Center in Virginia, where he was diagnosed with a severe concussion. For years after the experience, Baker suffered from seizures as a result of a beating he’d received at the hands of his colleagues.

The tactics used at Gitmo differ only in nuance from those used at “Camp Greyhound” in New Orleans, an improvised jail modeled after Gitmo and operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Among those imprisoned there was Syrian-American businessman Abdulrahman Zeitoun, who was seized in his own home by National Guardsmen, imprisoned on unspecified charges, and escaped with his life only because of the providential intervention of a Christian clergyman who happened to visit his cell after Zeitoun had been transferred to a state prison.

Zeitoun and the other prisoners at the FEMA facility were entirely at the mercy of sadistic, unaccountable guards who could exploit any excuse to inflict exemplary “discipline” on the detainees, most of whom had been arrested for violating curfew or similar petty matters.

“Always the procedure was the same,” recalled David Eggers in his book Zeitoun; “a prisoner would be removed from his cage and dragged to the ground nearby, in full view of the rest of the prisoners. His hands and feet would be tied, and then, sometimes with a guard’s knee on his back, he would be sprayed directly in the face” with pepper spray. “If the prisoner protested,” continued Eggers, “the knee would dig deeper into his back. The spraying would continue until his spirit was broken. Then he would be doused with [a] bucket and returned to his cage.”

The victims of this pointless and whimsical cruelty included one disturbed man with the intellectual and emotional capacity of a child who was “punished” because he displayed the irrepressible symptoms of mental illness.

Those acts of sadism, Eggers observes, were “born of a combination of opportunity, cruelty, ambivalence, and sport.” They were intended to torment the other prisoners, most of whom — like Zeitoun – were possessed of more decency than their captors and thus left sick with rage by the spectacle of helpless men being tortured.

“Under any normal circumstances [Zeitoun] would have leapt to the defense of a man victimized as that man had been,” observes Eggers. “But that he had to watch, helpless, knowing how depraved it was — this was punishment for the others, too. It diminished the humanity of them all.”

The same treatment continued once Zeitoun was transferred from the makeshift FEMA detention camp to a “regular” prison. For more than two weeks he and his cellmate were abused, insulted, humiliated, and treated to a visit from a Gitmo-style “Extreme Repression Force” (ERP). Swaddled in riot gear, wielding ballistic shields, batons, and other weapons, the ERP “burst in as if [Zeitoun] were in the process of committing murder,” writes Eggers. “Cursing at him, three men used their shields to push him to the wall. As they pressed his face against the cinderblock, they cuffed his arms and shackled his legs.”

FEMA’s “Camp Greyhound,” like Gitmo, was a laboratory for indefinite detention and institutionalized abuse. Thanks to the NDAA, the doctrines field-tested in those “temporary” prisons have become embedded in the warp and weave of America’s “Homeland Security” system.

For more about the legal, constitutional, and political ramifications of Gitmo, read Scott Horton’s Harper’s magazine essay here.

Offering the common-sense observation that repeatedly assaulting a handcuffed woman with pepper spray and urinating on her serves “no legitimate law enforcement purpose,” U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster has rejected a claim of “sovereign immunity presented by three Pennsylvania State Troopers  accused of torturing Derena Marie Madison following a traffic stop roughly a year ago.

At about 2:30 a.m. on February 3, 2011, Pennsylvania State Troopers Chad Weaver and Michael Zampogna pulled over a vehicle driven by Jamie Cornell, who was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. After Cornell was taken into custody, the troopers threatened to have the vehicle towed. This prompted Cornell’s passenger, Derena Marie Madison, to exit the car in protest. In short order she was arrested for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct.

Shackled at the wrists and ankles, Madison was taken to a nearby State Police barracks. Judge Lancaster’s memorandum describes what reportedly happened next:

“Ms. Madison, with hands still restrained behind her back, was placed on a bench. Her feet were shackled to the bench. As she sat on the bench, Mr. Weaver twice sprayed Ms. Madison’s face, head and body with pepper spray, without justification. The other defendants saw the spraying, but took no action to prevent it. Ms. Madison alleges that the actions were for the purpose of torturing her.”

Still trussed with handcuffs and leg shackles, Madison was unable to wipe the pepper spray residue from her face. When she called for help, “several defendants carried her downstairs and outside the barracks,” continues Lancaster. The victim “was unable to identify the defendants who carried her, because she was blinded by the pepper spray” – which is why the lawsuit names two officer “Does” involved in the assault.

“Once outside, one or more of the defendants, whose identities are likewise unknown, doused her with large quantities of cold water,” the memorandum recounts. “Ms. Madison blacked out momentarily, and fell to her knees in the snow. When she regained consciousness, she felt and smelled urine on her head, face, neck, and person. She believes that while she was unconscious, one or more of the defendants urinated on her. Ms. Madison remained handcuffed and in leg manacles throughout this period.”

Taken back to inside the barracks, Madison was chained to the bench again and briefly held before being released without receiving medical attention. Eleven days later, she was formally charged with public drunkness and disorderly conduct, and eventually found guilty on both charges.

Responding to Miss Madison’s lawsuit, the State Troopers didn’t contest her account; instead, they claimed that their actions were taken pursuant to their duties, and therefore they were protected by “sovereign immunity”:

“Defendants claim sovereign immunity with respect to [Madison’s ] tort claims of intentional infliction of emotional distress and assault and battery…. [They] argue that subduing persons is one of the acts law enforcement officers are employed to perform [and that] officers are also permitted to use force, if necessary, in the commission of their duties.”

Although the State Troopers describe Madison as an “out-of-control person,” there is no evidence that she did anything other than express her displeasure over the prospect of being abandoned once Cornell’s vehicle had been towed away. Furthermore, as Judge Lancaster astringently observes, assaulting the shackled woman with pepper spray and urine are acts “not related to `subduing’ her”; instead, they “suggest personal motivation, rather than intent to serve the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

An AP story points out that Madison has a long arrest record for various kinds of disorderly conduct. Obviously, this wouldn’t justify the treatment she reportedly received – but it might suggest why the officers felt free to treat her with such concentrated disdain and casual cruelty, then justify that behavior as a routine part of their job.  A federal judge rejected that claim – but the fact it was made in the first place tells us volumes about the mindset of those who supposedly protect and serve us.

For the details of this case, see Judge Lancaster’s preliminary ruling here.

As former Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle tells the story, he sucker-punched 55-year-old Jesse Ventura in a bar in September 2006 and then ran away – but Ventura, an honorably discharged Vietnam veteran who completed SEAL training himself,* insists the criminal assault “never happened,” and he’s willing to clear Kyle’s name.

“If a former governor within the SEAL community had been knocked down and … assaulted, it would have traveled through the SEAL community like wildfire,” Ventura pointed out in a radio interview with broadcaster Alex Jones, underscoring the fact that the alleged incident was never heard of prior to Kyle’s recent media tour to promote his new book, American Sniper. “He never hit me; I don’t even know who he is…. I want to clear his name because he’s confessing to assaulting me, and it didn’t happen.”

Ventura, a former Minnesota Governor, long-time professional wrestling performer, and movie actor who has become an outspoken peace activist, was en route to Mexico when Kyle made the allegations during an interview on “The O’Reilly Factor” to plug American Sniper. At the time of his retirement in 2009, Kyle was considered the most lethal sniper in U.S. history, credited with 255 kills – all of them involving Iraqi insurgents who, it should be noted, were fighting on their home soil to expel a foreign army of occupation.

“It was my duty to shoot the enemy, and I don’t regret it,” Kyle, a native of Odessa, told the publication Texas Monthly. “My regrets are for the people I couldn’t save: Marines, soldiers, buddies. I’m not naive, and I don’t romanticize war. The worst moments of my life have come as a SEAL. But I can stand before God with a clear conscience about doing my job.”

According to Kyle’s account, the confrontation with Ventura occurred at McP’s Irish Pub, a popular SEAL hangout near the Naval Special Warfare Center, in September 2006. Although Ventura insists that he has no recollection of the incident, he says that he may have been at the bar – whose owner is one of Ventura’s former instructors – to attend a function at the SEAL facility.

In an interview with Sirius Radio personalities Opie and Anthony, Kyle claimed that Ventura, who made no secret of his opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and his support for anti-war Republican presidential contender Ron Paul), “was bad-mouthing the war, bad-mouthing Bush, bad-mouthing America…. He told us that we were killing innocent people over there, men women children [and] that we were murders … [and] then he said that we deserved to lose a few guys.”

Ventura supposedly made those remarks despite the presence of family members of slain SEAL Michael Monsoor, who died on September 29, 2006 in Ramadi, Iraq. Monsoor, who smothered a grenade with his body to save his colleagues, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. As Kyle told the story on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Ventura was asked to tone down his comments, but simply became louder and increasingly disrespectful – so he slugged the 55-year-old man in the face.

“That happened? You knocked him out?” Bill O’Reilly asked.

“Well, I knocked him down,” Mr Kyle responded, explaining that rather than sticking around to see how Ventura would respond, he fled the scene – acting on the wisdom of a SEAL Master Chief who supposedly taught him to “Punch and run.” The story left self-styled tough guy O’Reilly was visibly giddy with admiration, despite the fact that what Kyle described was a cheap shot of the sort that would be taken by a bullying punk, rather than the heroic take-down of a marauder. This assumes, of course, that the incident ever happened.

As Ventura points out, “nobody goes to McP’s alone,” and if Kyle is telling the truth, there should be witnesses to his criminal assault. While the ex-Governor’s concern to clear Kyle’s name is most likely facetious, there is a serious question about his credibility. Only 160 of Kyle’s 255 claimed sniper kills have been confirmed; if he has invented the story of his less-than-valiant face-off with Jesse Ventura, or embellished it beyond recognition, how reliable are the war stories he is peddling in his new book?

More importantly Kyle isn’t merely a guy peddling a book: He’s also a major player in Craft International, a Homeland Security contractor involved in training domestic law enforcement agencies, where he will have ample opportunity to teach SWAT operators and other police personnel the same “Punch and run” ethic he claims to have displayed in his encounter with Jesse Ventura.

To hear Gov. Ventura’s interview with Alex Jones, go here.

__

*The original version of this story described Ventura as a “retired SEAL”; as a commenter below observed, that description of his military career has been disputed, a fact acknowledged in the revised language above. Republic magazine appreciates the correction.

The University of Arizona in Tucson was the site of an event to commemorate the January 8 anniversary of  the hideous “Safeway Massacre,” during which Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head. Six people — including nine-year-old Christina Taylor-Green — were killed in the attack; seven others were wounded. In the immediate aftermath of the atrocity, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, speaking without a particle of evidence to support his claim, insisted that the atrocity reflected the supposed fact that Arizona had become “a Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

A few weeks later, the Sheriff’s Office over which Dupnik presides was involved in another fatal rampage a few months later — the May 5 murder of Jose Guerena, a 24-year-old Marine combat veteran who was slaughtered by the Pima County SWAT team while defending his family from what he believed — correctly, as it turned out — to be a home invasion robbery.

Guerena died in a fusillade of 71 shots fired within the space of a few seconds, twenty-two of which perforated his body. Contrary to initial reports, he never fired a shot; in fact, he never released the safety on his AR-15  rifle. Furthermore, his wounds were not immediately fatal. Had emergency medical aid been provided, Guerena may have survived. His terrified wife Vanessa, who took shelter in a closet with the couple’s 4-year-old son Joel, called 911 to report the assault; after the shooting, she begged the SWAT team to call for medical assistance. Instead, the assailants turned away paramedics who had arrived on the scene within minutes of the shooting. Despite the fact that one of the SWAT team was a fully qualified field medic, the team refused to provide medical aid. Over the next hour — while Jose Guerena’s lifeblood puddled on carpet of his living room floor — the armored SWAT operators dithered and equivocated, eventually sending in a remote-controlled robot to confirm that the victim was dead.

During that time, 4-year-old Joel, after being left alone with his bleeding and mortally wounded father, staggered tearfully through the front door. Vanessa, who was thrown roughly to the ground and injured by the SWAT team after leaving the house, was interrogated by Sheriff’s detectives, who wanted to know if there were drugs, drug proceeds, or illegal weapons on the premises — details they should have known before assaulting the home, if they had acted on a legitimate search warrant.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution dictates that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized….” Michael Storie, the police union attorney representing the SWAT team members who murdered Guerena, has admitted that the warrant they were enforcing on May 5  “was not directed at any particular person, and Guerena’s home was not mentioned, but it was targeting whoever might be inside the residence” — which means that it was invalid, the raid was the legal and moral equivalent of a home invasion robbery, and the killing of Jose Guerena was criminal homicide at best, and capital murder at worst.

No contraband or evidence of a crime was ever discovered in the Guerena residence. The murderous raid on the Guerena home was one of three SWAT assaults carried out the morning of May 5 as part of what was described as a wide-ranging and urgent investigation into a marijuana smuggling ring. Yet more than nine months after that terrible morning, no criminal charges have been filed, no arrests have been made — and nobody has been held accountable for the act of criminal homicide that took place at the Guerena household.

Jose Guerena served multiple combat tours in Iraq, and has been described by fellow Marines as a solid and conscientious family man. He worked the graveyard shift at a local copper mine, which is not the sort of occupation that would leave time to be the kingpin of a drug smuggling operation — or the kind of work he would choose if he were soaking up hundreds of thousands of dollars by peddling weed. Apart from a rally organized by the Oath Keepers, a grassroots constitutionalist organization of active-duty and retired military and law enforcement personnel, there have been no memorials held on behalf of Jose and his traumatized family. It’s safe to predict that the May 5 anniversary of the killing won’t be the subject of a public event organized by Tucson’s civic elite.

Summarizing the January 8 memorial service in Tucson, the Los Angeles Times summarizes the January 8 provides an overview of Rep. Gifford’s remarkable recovery after being shot in the head by Loughner:

Giffords was nearly killed in the attack, and her public appearances have been rare since then. But wearing a red shawl and holding the hand of her husband, former astronaut Mark E. Kelly, she ventured on stage at the University of Arizona. There, she led the crowd of about 1,000 in the Pledge of Allegiance, giving extra emphasis to the conclusion, “with liberty and justice for all.” The crowd began cheering as soon as Giffords was seen coming from backstage and continued as she walked up the stairs. Giffords spoke the words of the pledge with Ron Barber, the three-term congresswoman’s district director, who was among those wounded in the Jan. 8, 2011, shooting. Barber, who was shot twice and seriously wounded, served as the master of ceremonies for the event. Giffords has been undergoing physical and speech rehabilitation in Houston, and has kept largely out of the public eye. But she has been seen walking, and she went to Washington last year to cast a key vote. She also gave ABC’s Diane Sawyer an interview in May.

Loughner was known to have psychological problems, and was diagnosed as a psychotic after the shooting. He has been indicted on 49 federal charges arising from the shooting. Those responsible for killing Jose Guerena, by way of contrast, face neither criminal charges nor administrative sanctions for carrying out an illegal paramilitary raid that ended in the murder of Jose Guerena.

(Check out the next issue of Republic magazine for an in-depth examination of the murder of Jose Guerena.)

Go to the Los Angeles Times for more on the Tucson memorial.

“All the kids I talk to are into Ron Paul,” Perry commented via Twitter on January 3. “They like his voting record. He’s not a smiling grinning talking head spewing party BS.” While Perry and his longtime partner in rock mayhem Steven Tyler are close friends of prominent Republican rocker Ted Nugent, the Hall of Fame rocker has never been conspicuously political – until now.

“Obama hasn’t done anything close to what he promised to do,” Perry complained in another post, noting that the incumbent “didn’t get my vote and I got a lotta grief” – presumably from Democratic-leaning comrades in the music and entertainment industry. “Well, my vote[’s] for Ron Paul…. [I’m] not saying who to vote for. Just have open mind and figure a sm[all] handful of people own very large [proportion] of tv, Internet, papers.”

Perry’s assessment of the media is shaped by decades of experience dealing with the self-appointed arbiters of popular opinion. He has seen how the media can make and break people according to the whims of those who control it – and he sees an orchestrated effort to destroy Paul’s insurgent campaign, which threatens the status quo.

“[The] Media is trying to crush Paul,” Perry warns. “It’s so transparent. They will smear him every chance. [B]eware! Get your news from lot of different sources.”
Joe Perry’s endorsement of Paul via Twitter came shortly after chart-topping pop chanteuse Kelly Clarkson, an “American Idol” alumnus, offered her own support for the libertarian-leaning Republic Congressman via the social media site. Although Fox News – which visibly and volubly opposes the Paul campaign – claimed that Clarkson’s support for Dr. Paul “alienated” her fan base, sales of her most recent album, “Stronger,” jumped by 442 percent in the days immediately following her endorsement.

Several other high-profile celebrities have spoken out in support of Dr. Paul’s quixotic presidential bid, among them “Fear Factor” host and UFC commentator Joe Rogan and actor Vince Vaughn (who introduced the candidate at a recent libertarian conference in Reno, Nevada). Although he has not embraced Ron Paul’s political agenda, noted film critic Roger Ebert has repeatedly expressed a measure of respect for the candidate.

“Leaving politics out of it, what sets Ron Paul aside from every other GOP candidate? He’s the only one who’s cool,” observed Ebert via his Twitter account on January 3.

Joe Perry and the rest of the band have been finishing up their still-untitled new album, which is due in May. This will be the band’s first studio recording since its 2004 all-covers album, “Honkin’ on Bobo,” and the first set of all-new originals since its 2001 disc “Just Push Play.” The band has reunited with producer Jack Douglass, who worked behind the mixing board on their legendary 1970s albums “Get Your Wings,” “Rocks,” and “Toys in the Attic,” which produced such enduring classic rock staples as “Same Old Song and Dance,” “Last Child,” and “Walk This Way.”

To be fair, Ron Paul isn’t the only Republican candidate with rock and roll cred. Fellow contender (assuming that word applies to a candidate polling in the low single digits) Jon Huntsman dropped out of High School to play keyboards in a prog-rock band called “Wizard.” Maybe Huntsman could get the band back together for a reunion gig playing at a Ron Paul inaugural ball – perhaps as the warm-up act on a bill featuring Aerosmith and Kelly Clarkson.

Alluding to the ongoing debate over the size, expense, and global mission of the U.S. military, one reporter commented:  “This is all getting’ interrupted when he’s, Ron Paul becomes president.”

“See this room?” another reporter stated, referring to the gaggle of military correspondents at the event. “Two-thirds of us [are] laid off when Ron Paul is president.”

In his January 1961 farewell speech, President Dwight Eisenhower introduced the American public to the expression “military-industrial complex,” which refers to the seamlessly integrated political, corporate, and bureaucratic apparatus that thrives on military spending and promotes permanent mobilization for war. Dr.Andrew J. Bacevich, a West Point graduate, Vietnam combat veteran, and Boston University history professor, points out that Eisenhower’s description of “the cozy relations between the military and corporate worlds understates the contemporary reality.”

C. Wright Mills, author of the seminal study The Power Elite, “came closer to the mark when he wrote of `a coalition of generals in the roles of corporation executives, of politicians masquerading as admirals, of corporation executives acting like politicians,’” comments Bacevich. “Add to that list the retired senior officers passing as pundits (often while simultaneously cashing the checks of weapons manufacturers), policy wonks pretending to be field marshals, and journalists eagerly competing to carry water for heroic field commanders. Throw in the former members of Congress who lobby their successors on behalf of defense contractors, and the serving members who vote in favor of any defense appropriations that send money to their districts, and one begins to get a sense of the true topog­raphy” of power relations in Washington.

This also helps explain why the Washington-centric media – not just the reliably bellicose “conservatives” at Fox News, but also the urbane pseudo-progressives at CNN and MSNBC – treat Ron Paul and the movement supporting his candidacy as a threat. The prospect of ending Washington’s imperial foreign policy threatens the livelihood of literally thousands of media personnel who work as publicists and propagandists for the Military-Industrial Complex.

Obama’s proposed strategic revisions – which would diminish the role of “boots on the ground” in favor of more spending on attack aircraft, remote-piloted unmanned drones, and other sophisticated war technology –has prompted predictable complaints that he is inflicting devastating cuts on the military, leaving the country weakened and vulnerable. Economist Veronique de Rugy, a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, observes that the extravagantly over-fed Pentagon is overdue for a budget diet.

“The United States spent $728 billion on its military in 2010, about 45% of the world’s $1.6 trillion total,” she points out. “U.S. spending amounts to more than the next fourteen largest military spending countries combined…. In fact, the U.S. spends nearly 6 times more than the next largest military spender, China. In addition, most of the top-spending countries are American allies.”

“With or without the automatic cuts to defense from the Budget Control Act of 2011, the United States will remain the biggest player on the defense field,” Rugy concludes. (It should be pointed out that the term “defense” doesn’t accurately describe most of what the Pentagon does with its money.)

As of 2005 – seven years and literally trillions of dollars ago – the U.S. Marine Corps was fifty percent larger than the entire British Army, and it had more attack aircraft than the Royal Air Force. The U.S. Navy had an even larger air fleet, as did the U.S. Army – and, of course, the U.S. military had a separate branch called the U.S. Air Force. This is to say that the U.S. military, by itself, which devoured roughly half of the world’s aggregate military spending, also controlled the world’s four largest air forces. At present, the U.S. Navy boasts a total of thirteen carrier task forces. No other nation’s navy has as much as a single carrier task force.

Were the United States the commercial republic it was intended to be, it would not burn through a trillion dollars in total military-related expenditures each year. The grim truth is that, since 1947, the U.S. economy has become dangerously – perhaps fatally – addicted to “military Keynesianism,” a form of Big Government socialism that appeals to both the welfare state Left (which favors domestic government interventionism) and the militarist Right (which prefers military intervention abroad).

“Today, engagement in actual hostilities has become the new normal, exacting a steep price,” writes Dr. Bacevich in the Atlantic. “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost at least $1 trillion—with the meter still running. Some observers estimate that total costs will eventually reach $2 trillion or even $3 trillion.”

“Furthermore, military Keynesianism has proved to be a bust,” he continues. “In contrast to the 1950s, military extravagance is depleting rather than adding to the nation’s wealth. In the Eisenhower era, the United States, a creditor nation, produced at home the essentials defining the American way of life—everything from oil to cars to televisions. Today, we import far more than we export, with ever-increasing debt as one result. Furthermore, in the 1950s, we were mostly at peace; today we are mostly at war—and, as a result, more of the resources provided to the military go abroad and stay there.”

This is patently unsustainable, of course:  “American soldiers traipse wearily from one conflict to the next while the nation as a whole suffers from acute economic distress.”

Ron Paul has repeatedly and unabashedly emphasized the fact that rescuing our economy will require an end to Washington’s imperial foreign policy, and the over-grown military establishment on which it rests. This is why his campaign has proven so attractive to active-duty military personnel – and so threatening to the well-fed, scandalously over-paid REMFs who profit on the misery, hardship, and needless death inflicted on the world by the Military-Industrial-Media Complex.

To see the press briefing video, go here.

Antonio Buehler, 34, a combat veteran of Kosovo and Iraq, West Point graduate, and middle school teacher, was serving as a designated driver shortly after midnight on January 1 when he saw a woman being abused by police outside a 7-11. The costumed assailants were members of the Austin PD, who were conducting what they called a DWI arrest. To Buehler and his friends, the spectacle looked more like a gang assault.

“We hear a loud scream, and we look over, and we see the cop violently yanking the female out of the car onto the ground,” Buehler told local ABC affiliate KVUE. “She is screaming. The other cop ran up and they both sort of grabbed her arms. Her hands were behind her back straight out and they lifted her up by her arms. It looked extremely painful.”

With the help of a friend, Buehler began to document this act of “street justice” with his cell phone. That prompted one of the assailants to peel away and confront Buehler, who was nowhere near the scene of the assault.

According to Buehler, the cop snarled, “What the hell are you taking pictures for?”

“My response was, `I am allowed to. Public official in a public place.’”

As he was trained to, the cop started to lie in an effort to devise a cover charge against Buehler. First he claimed that Buehler was somehow “interfering with the investigation,” which was patently untrue. Then the cop assaulted Buhler by pushing the unresisting man — who would have been more than a match for the donut-grazer, had he chosen to fight back — up against a truck.

“Once he had me pinned up against the back of the truck he kept leaning in,” Buehler continued. “He kept pushing me.”

Eventually the cop got so close that Buehler actually breathed on him — which gave him a pretext to accuse the witness of “spitting” on him. After finally wrestling Buehler (who offered only passive resistance) to the ground, being joined by one of his comrades, and threatening to shoot him with a Taser, the cop took him to a BAT van—- a patently unreliable mobile alcohol testing unit — in the hope of documenting that the witness was intoxicated, which he wasn’t. The cop finally settled on charging him with “harassing a public servant” — a third-degree felony — and “resisting arrest.”

Through Craig’s List, Buehler was able to obtain a second video of the event that corroborates key elements of his story. According to KVUE, “there was a female who witnessed the altercation and offered to give Beuhler’s friend her card,” but was prevented from doing so by the police.

“We need to keep the pressure on the City of Austin,” commented Beuhler in a post to his Facebook page. “There are two criminals on the loose: they are looking to get into fights, they wear blue, they are armed and they wear badges.”

“Second, thanks for words such as `hero,’” he continued. “I appreciate it. But the other heroes are those citizens who stood up, took photos and video, and are writing affidavits. Without them, I might be looking at serious jail time for a fraudulent charge from a crooked, evil, worthless cop.”

For more on this story, go to KVUE.com.

Corporal Jesse Thornsen, a veteran of two deployments to Afghanistan who is preparing for a third, voted for Ron Paul in the Iowa caucuses — and was cut off by a CNN “glitch” as he tried to explain to reporter Dana Bash why he, like so many other active-duty military personnel, support Dr. Paul’s non-interventionist foreign policy.

“I’m really excited about a lot of his ideas, especially when it comes to bringing the soldiers home,” Thorsen, a first-time caucus voter, explained. “I’ve been serving for 10 years now, and all ten of those have been in wartime. I’d like to see a little peacetime Army – and I think he has the right idea.”

Bash noted that Thornsen has a replica of the Twin Towers tattooed on his neck, and dutifully recited the Regime-approved platitude that Dr. Paul is considered “dangerous” because he would withdraw troops from their deployments overseas.

“Well, I think it would be even more dangerous to start nit-picking wars with other countries, like Iran,” Cpl. Thornsen replied. ” Israel is more than capable…”

Before Thornsen could finish expressing what was almost certainly the transgressive thought that Israel could provide for its own defense, the image suddenly froze, as if a digital video had been paused. The image didn’t dissolve in a burst of static, or break up; there was a brief glitch akin to a vertical hold malfunction on an old TV set, followed by the static image of a silent Cpl. Thornsen.

“We’ve just lost our tech connection, unfortunately,” interjected anchor Wolf Blitzer at CNN’s “Election Center” before quickly cutting away to Mitt Romney’s Iowa campaign headquarters.

Addressing his supporters after it became clear that he would finish in third place behind statistically deadlocked candidates Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, Dr. Paul graciously allowed Cpl. Thornsen an opportunity to finish the thought that had been cut off in mid-sentence by CNN’s serendipitously timed “glitch.” This prompted Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post — which has spent the past week tirelessly retailing accusations that Ron Paul is a covert bigot — to click his heels and play tattle-tale, accusing Cpl. Thorsen of violating “military protocol” by participating in the caucus while in uniform.

“That might have been easy to dismiss — until Thorsen appeared at the podium alongside Paul,” wrote Linkins. “Military protocol is clear on the subject of how soldier can participate in political activity. Matthew Tully at the Army Times addressed this matter back in 2008, and summarizes the military protocol thusly: `Active-duty members may register, vote and express their opinions on political candidates and issues — but not as a representative of the armed forces. In other words, you cannot appear at any kind of political forum in uniform and speak on behalf of a particular candidate.’”

Linkins noted that an individual who uploaded a YouTube clip of Thorsen’s interrupted interview suggested that the “glitch” may have been an act of military censorship. Given CNN’s history of collaboration in Pentagon disinformation campaigns, this possibility should not be dismissed outright.

In October 2004, CNN — working with the Pentagon  — broadcast a statement by Lt. Lyle Gilbert of the Marine Corps in which he announced the beginning of a military offensive in Fallouja, Iraq.

“In fact, the Fallouja offensive would not kick off for another three weeks,” observed the Los Angeles Times. “Gilbert’s carefully worded announcement was an elaborate psychological operation — or `psy-op’ — intended to dupe insurgents in Fallouja and allow U.S. commanders to see how guerrillas would react if they believed U.S. troops were entering the city, according to several Pentagon officials….Officials at the Pentagon and other U.S. national security agencies said the CNN incident was not an isolated feint — the type used throughout history by armies to deceive their enemies — but part of a broad effort underway within the Bush administration to use information to its advantage in the war on terrorism.”

Prior to 2002, psy-ops and disinformation campaigns of this sort were conducted through the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence (OSI). After that agency was closed down, “much of OSI’s mission — using information as a tool of war — has been assumed by other offices throughout the U.S. government,” the Times continued. “lthough most of the work remains classified, officials say that some of the ongoing efforts include having U.S. military spokesmen play a greater role in psychological operations in Iraq, as well as planting information with sources used by Arabic TV channels such as Al Jazeera to help influence the portrayal of the United States. Other specific examples were not known, although U.S. national security officials said an emphasis had been placed on influencing how foreign media depict the United States.”

The most important target of information management, of course, is the American public — which is why we shouldn’t summarily dismiss the possibility that the sudden interruption of Cpt. Thornsen’s remarks was the product of something other than technical incompetence on the part of CNN.

To see the truncated interview and suspiciously timed “glitch,” go to RTR.org.

"Protected" and slaughtered: 62-year-old Nicholas Christie after being murdered by police.

The image of 62-year-old Nicholas Christie after being pepper-sprayed by police looks like something out of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib Prison — but the assailants were Sheriff’s deputies in Lee County, Florida, who had taken the psychologically troubled man into “protective” custody at the request of his wife. Mr. Christie’s widow, having learned in the most tragic way that police are the last people from whom help should be sought, is now suing the department.

Reports Tampa Bay’s Fox News affiliate, WVTV:

The photo shows the Ohio man restrained inside the Lee County Jail with his body covered in pepper spray.

“This photo is a picture of a man who is strapped to a chair naked inside a jail for hours with a hood over his face. That evokes thoughts of being tortured,” says Cleveland-based lawyer Nick DiCello who represents the Christie family.

The photo, which was obtained by FOX 13′s investigative unit, was taken in the final hours of Christie’s life.

The District 21 Medical Examiner ruled his death was a homicide because he had been restrained and sprayed with pepper sprayed by law enforcement officers. But to this day, nobody has ever been charged with a crime, and the Lee County State Attorney cleared the sheriff’s office of any wrong doing.

It’s been more than two and a half years and his wife still can’t accept what happened.

Cleveland resident Joyce Christie was understandably concerned when her 62-year-old husband, Nick, who suffered from emotional problems, suddenly took off to visit his brother in Ft. Myers, Florida. Nick, who had recently been prescribed Lexapro, a potent anti-depressant, didn’t take the medication with him when he department for Ft. Myers.While the actual therapeutic value of high-potency pharmaceuticals is debatable, it was clear to Mr. Christie’s wife that in his unmedicated and unsupervised condition he was a danger to himself. When he arrived at his brother’s house his behavior became dangerously erratic.

Acting on the common and entirely misplaced assumption that police intervention is a good idea in situations of this kind, Joyce called the Lee County Sheriff’s Department to ask them to find Nick and get him the help he needed. Deputies soon arrested the retired boilermaker on trespassing charges. While in the County Jail over the next 43 hours, Nick was repeatedly shackled in a restraint chair, hooded, and attacked with military-grade pepper spray. The chemical assault was so intense that it left other inmates gagging on the fumes. Nick, who suffered from respiratory and heart disease, pleaded with deputies to remove the spit mask because he couldn’t breathe. One inmate described how Nick turned “purple and almost blue” as he suffocated.

When medical personnel arrived to check on Nick, they were overwhelmed by the pepper spray residue. The victim died of heart failure two days after his arrest. The death was ruled a homicide – but the State Attorney’s office insists that there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of the deputies who tortured Nick Christie to death.

For more about this outrage, go to WVTV.

The manhunt for Washington resident Benjamin Colton Barnes, an Iraq War veteran discharged for “misconduct” issues, ended with the discovery of the shooting suspect’s frozen body in Paradise Creek. A SWAT team had been mobilized to apprehend Barnes, who was suspected of murdering Park Ranger Margaret Anderson, a 34-year-old mother of two, on New Year’s Day. Anderson was fatally shot as she set attempted to stop Barnes at a roadblock. The alleged shooter had previously refused to stop at a chain-up checkpoint in Washington’s Mount Rainer National Park.

The body of Barnes, who was described as having survival skills, was found partially submerged about a mile inside a forest. At the time of his death he was wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and a single shoe. A firearm described as an “assault-style rifle” was found upstream from Barnes’ body.

Although Barnes’ combat record was ambiguous, he had served for more than two years in the U.S. Army, including a deployment to Iraq. The mother of his infant daughter reported that Barnes had spoken of suicide and displayed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Summarizes the Seattle Times:

Barnes, who served in Iraq, had been a private first class. His military service ended in the fall of 2009. He received a misconduct discharge at Fort Lewis (now Joint Base Lewis-McChord) after he was charged with DUI and improper transport of a privately owned weapon. By then, he had served two years and seven months of active duty, according to Army Human Resources Command information cited by Maj. Chris Ophardt, a spokesman for Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Barnes served with the Fourth Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, a unit that deployed to Iraq in 2007 with 8-wheeled Stryker vehicles…. In Iraq, Barnes’ job involved helping to install, maintain and troubleshoot communications equipment, a duty that could involve heading out on patrols, but also might largely confine a soldier to a base, according to Ophardt. Army records indicate that Barnes was assigned to a headquarter’s unit.

He had struggled after returning from Iraq. In July, Nicole Santos, the mother of his 1-year-old daughter, obtained a protection order and curtailed his visits with his daughter because of angry, erratic and sometimes suicidal behavior, according to child-custody documents filed in Pierce County Superior Court.

On the other end of the continent, Norwood, Massachusetts residents Carlos Arrendondo and Victoria Foley are absorbing the loss of their son, Brian, who took his own life on December 19. Brian, 24, had been left inconsolable and incurably depressed by the death of his older brother, Alexander, a Marine who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Alexander and Brian “were joined at the hip,” Victoria told the Boston Herald. “And ever since his brother died, he had a very hard time. He was tortured. Just tortured.”

Carlos Arrendondo, a native of Costa Rica, wasn’t even a citizen of the United States when he learned on August 25, 2004, that Alexander had been killed in Iraq. It was Carlos’s birthday. Rather than a phone call from Alex, however, Carlos — who at the time lived in Hollywood, Florida — received a visit from a Marine Corps “Casualty Assistance Team,” who informed him that his son — just twenty days after his own 20th birthday — had been killed fightin in Iraq.

On learning of this irrecoverable loss, Carlos suffered an epic breakdown.

“At that moment, not expect [sic] those words, my world tumbled and I felt my heart go down to the ground and rush up through my throat,” Carlos recalled later. Like many parents confronted with the news that their children had been killed in the service of the State, Carlos was seized with the desperate thought that if he could force the Marines to leave, his son would still be alive.

Momentarily deranged, Carlos went into his garage and grabbed a container of gasoline and a welding torch, which he used to set the Marine Casualty Assistance Team’s van on fire — igniting himself in the process. Although understandably startled by vehemence of Carlos’s reaction, the Marines acted quickly to save Carlos’s life, retrieving him from the burning van, suffocating the flames that threatened to kill him, and arranging for medical attention.

Three years later, as a naturalized U.S. citizen participating in an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C., Carlos was surrounded by pro-war counter-protesters, beaten, and kicked, after one of them had presumptuously seized a photograph of Alexander that Carlos had brought to illustrate his family’s loss in a stupid and senseless war.

That war is now officially “over” — but the killing and hardship it inflicts on American and Iraqi families will continue for years, or longer.

Go to the Seattle Times for more about the tragedy in Washington.

After spending 2011 expanding the power of the executive branch to wage war abroad and at home, Barack Obama celebrated New Year’s eve by signing the amended National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which effectively turned the United States into a military junta. The National Defense Authorization Act incorporates provisions mandating the military arrest and indefinite detention of anyone, including U.S. citizens, who is designated a terrorist suspect or enemy combatant. That measure also permits the rendition of detainees – including, once again, American citizens – to foreign countries for interrogation and torture.

Geopolitical affairs analyst Stephen Lendman limns the implications of the NDAA:

It gives presidents unchecked power to order military force arrests and indefinite detentions of US citizens, based solely on uncorroborated accusations of terrorist group associations.

Constitutional, statute and international law protections don’t apply. America’s military may snatch and grab anyone, throw them in torture prisons, and hold them indefinitely without charge or trial, based solely on suspicions, spurious allegations or none at all.

Earlier by Executive Order, Obama authorized indefinite detentions of anyone designated national security threats. Specifically intended for Guantanamo detainees, it’s now for everyone, including US citizens at home or abroad.

Moreover, CIA operatives and Special Forces death squads got presidential authorization to kill targeted US citizens abroad. As a result, they can be hunted down and murdered in cold blood for any reason or none at all.

As of December 31, anyone anywhere, including US citizens, can be called national security threats and judged guilty by accusation. Activists opposing America’s imperium risk arrest, permanent detention or assassination.

So do social justice protesters. Military dungeons or FEMA camps await them. Martial law may authorize it, claiming “catastrophic emergency” powers. The original Senate bill excluded US citizens. Obama demanded their inclusion.

Inviolable rights no longer apply. Protesting imperial lawlessness, social injustice, corporate crime, government corruption, or political Washington run of, by and for rich elites can be criminalized. So can free speech, assembly, religion, or anything challenging America’s right to kill, destroy and pillage with impunity.

It’s official. Tyranny arrived in America. The nation’s unsafe to live in. There’s no place to hide. They’re coming for anyone challenging injustice.

The deployment of fully militarized domestic law enforcement bodies became a familiar spectacle during the “Occupy” protests that erupted across the United States. A precedent-setting incident occurred in June when Predator drones belonging to the Department of Homeland Security were used to fly surveillance missions over a family farm in North Dakota; the drones were used to target the Brossart family, who have been involved in several disputes with the local Sheriff’s office. Although the Predators used in that incident were equipped with sensors rather than weapons, they can be retro-fitted with weapons, including missiles. Those ominous possibilities were pointed out by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Conroe, Texas, which acquired its own unmanned aerial weapons platform last year.

The expansion of the militarized killing apparatus has also seen increased official reliance on quasi-private contractors, both at home and abroad.

The Los Angeles Times has reported that the Pentagon increasingly makes use of civilian advisers in the “kill chain” of lethal drone operations overseas. In some cases those analysts are given target selection authority over military personnel controlling the missile-laden UAVs. A broadly similar role was carried out by the so-called Southern Poverty Law Center in the case of the Broassart family in North Dakota: The SPLC had identified the family as “sovereign citizens,” a designation marking them as a species of domestic terrorists worthy of exceptional treatment.

Civilian interrogators are likewise given a prominent role in the new military order.

Investigative reporter Alexander Cockburn points out that a lawsuit making its way through the courts may result in an expansive new grant of immunity to civilian prison guards, including contractors employed by privately owned prisons. The plaintiffs are 72 Iraqis had been illegally held and tortured at Abu Ghraib prison. The abuses inflicted on them included rape, being forced to watch others – including relatives – being raped, beatings, mock executions, and other forms of torture. Much of this was done by private contractors employed by the U.S. military and the CIA. None of the victims was ever charged with a crime.

The corporate defendants have claimed absolute immunity under the doctrine of “military preemption,” despite the fact that the personnel were private contractors, rather than soldiers. Because the victims were designated “enemy aliens,” from this perspective, all of their rights are subject to “military pre-emption.”

The same may soon be true of American citizens considered potential troublemakers under the new military regime.

Go here for more on this story from Stephen Lendman.

With the U.S. and Israeli governments discussing “triggers” that would lead to an attack on Iranian nuclear sites, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the self-appointed arbiter of the foreign policy “consensus,” describes the prospect of war in the new year as the “least bad option” for dealing with Tehran.

“The truth is that a military strike intended to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, if managed carefully, could spare the region and the world a very real threat and dramatically improve the long-term national security of the United States,” declares the January/February issue of the CFR’s flagship journal Foreign Affairs in a piece bearing the unambiguous title “Time to Attack Iran.” While acknowledging concerns that a military strike on nuclear sites “would likely fail and, even if it succeeded, would spark a full-fledged war and a global economic crisis,” the CFR insists that a bombing raid can be carried out with surgical precision and lightning efficiency, decapitating a potential nuclear threat with few significant after-effects.

To bolster the case for what would be an aggressive war against Iran, the CFR alludes to the supposed Iranian conspiracy to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington — a singularly implausible (and widely discredited) plot that bears an uncanny resemblance to dozens of false-flag operations staged by the FBI since 2002. Not mentioned in the CFR’s essay is the recent “judgment by default” rendered by U.S. District Court Judge George B. Daniels purporting to find the Iranian government responsible for the 9-11 attacks. It’s important to recognize that this ruling didn’t prove any of the claims made by the plaintiffs, who are survivors and relatives of people murdered in the attacks; it found in favor of the plaintiffs because none of the people or organizations listed as defendants responded to the lawsuit.

In practical terms, this ruling is about as authoritative as a similar unilateral ruling by an Iranian court holding U.S. government agencies and individual officials liable for alleged abuses inflicted on Iranian citizens. For those who lust for war with Iran, Judge Daniels’ decree will serve as a potent propaganda device — a supposedly tangible link between the war effort and the defining trauma of recent U.S. history. This would revive the twin themes used by the Bush administration in its 2002 campaign for war with Iraq: The supposed need to preempt development of weapons of mass destruction, and the mission to avenge the victims of 9-11.

With the CFR openly demanding war on Iran, Washington and Tel Aviv debating “red lines” and “triggers” that could justify bombing raids, and every Republican presidential contender except Ron Paul endorsing an attack, the Iranian military is warning that it could shut down the Straits of Hormuz, thereby choking off much of the world’s commercial oil supply. Given that Iran is surrounded by U.S. military outposts and dealing with overt threats of aggression, those warnings are probably intended as a form of deterrence — yet they are being depicted by Washington as an act of aggression.

Lt. Rebecca Rebarich, spokeswoman for the Bahrain-based  U.S. 5th Fleet, reacted to the warning from Iran by declaring that any move to close down the Straits “will not be tolerated” and that the U.S. is “always ready to counter malevolent actions to ensure freedom of navigation” — including, one supposes, malevolent actions undertaken in response to Washington’s aggressive behavior in the region.

Read more about this at the home page of the CFR’s Journal, Foreign Affairs.

Man of Peace: Ron Paul on the Campaign Trail

Brandishing a handful of inconsequential quotes from ancient newsletters, the opinion cartel is pretending that Ron Paul is a covert racist who secretly pines for a “race war” in the United States. In a week that witnessed the death of North Korea’s mass-murdering dictator, and the first tentative but unmistakable steps toward war in Iran, Huge amounts of bandwidth, broadcast time, and column inches have been devoted to affected outrage over the idea that Ron Paul once permitted “insensitive” things to be published in a newsletter bearing his name.

The coordinated assault on Dr. Paul began with Fox “News” media personality Sean Hannity, whose unabashed whorishness would bring down the moral tone of a Tijuana brothel. For several days following Dr. Paul’s emergence as front-runner in the Iowa caucus polls, Hannity – no doubt working from notes written in small words with big, crayon-inscribed letters – tirelessly flogged the supposedly scandalous Ron Paul newsletters on his radio program and TV show.

From there this reheated pseudo-scandal – a casserole of stale, leftover smears from the 2008 campaign – was taken up by the entire corporate media establishment, from the neo-Trotskyite Weekly Standard and the CIA-controlled National Review and CNN.

In apportioning moral outrage, the collectivist left employs a sliding scale. The late Ted Kennedy killed an innocent girl through depraved indifference and lived a life of impenitent debauchery, and yet was hailed as a moral titan because of his devotion to official plunder and regimentation. The same devotion to the holy cause of State-sanctified theft purchased Robert Byrd a plenary indulgence for his membership in the Ku Klux Klan as a young adult – a background he shared with more than a few Democratic Party luminaries.

President Obama is presently slaughtering innocent “people of color” in at least three countries. His administration continues to imprison young black and Hispanic men for drug “offenses.” This is done by way of a “Justice” system riddled with racial profiling and sentencing guidelines that result in wildly disproportionate sentences for black offenders – a system that has been denounced, in detail, by Dr. Paul, who has called for an end to the insane and terminally corrupt exercise called the “War on Drugs.”

Newsweek-affiliated blogger Andrew Sullivan, a self-described conservative who supported Obama in 2008, has been grudgingly impressed by Dr. Paul’s ethical and ideological consistency. Referring to the contrived controversy over the supposedly racist newsletters, Sullivan writes:  “[A]sk yourself: you’ve now heard this guy countless times; he’s been in three presidential campaigns; he’s not exactly known for self-editing. And nothing like this [the purportedly shocking quotes from the newsletters] has ever crossed his lips in public. You have to make a call on character. Compared with the rest on offer, compared with the money-grubbing lobbyist, Gingrich, or the say-anything Romney, or that hate-anyone Bachmann, I’ve made my call.”

Nelson Linder, president of the Austin, Texas chapter of the NAACP, has known Dr. Paul for decades. Speaking for himself on the basis of that long and close association, Linder emphatically denies that the mild and avuncular Congressman is a racist or bigot of any kind, and commends him for his repeated denunciation of police repression of black people.

Linder points out that Dr. Paul has made powerful enemies by his public opposition to the Federal Reserve System and its allied War Lobby.

“If you scare the folks that have the money, they’re going to attack you and they’re going to take [your statements] out of context,” Linder points out “What he’s saying is really really threatening the powers that be and that’s what they fear.”

While the collectivist Left is assailing Paul as a secret “racist,” the proto-Fascist Right continues to execrate him as an “appeaser.” Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who has endorsed pre-emptive war on Iran and publicly expressed support for a bizarre Islamo-Communist cult called the MEK – a terrorist group that seeks to seize power in Tehran – recently told a group of schoolchildren that Dr. Paul would permit them to be killed by non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons.

Political consultant and notorious foot fetishist Dick Morris, who made a lucrative living as an adviser to Bill Clinton and then a fortune condemning him on Fox News, insisted on Sean Hannity’s radio show that “no true patriot could be for Ron Paul.” Dorothy Rabbinowitz of the Wall Street Journal , offended by Dr. Paul’s campaign to end Washington’s deranged interventionist foreign policy, traduced the candidate as “the best-known of our homegrown propagandists for our chief enemies in the world.” That description wouldn’t be recognizable to the countless military personnel – both active-duty and veterans – who have donated to Dr. Paul’s presidential campaign. Ron Paul is the uncontested front-runner among military donors in the 2012 presidential election cycle.

“As of the last reporting date, at the end of September, Paul leads all candidates by far in donations from service members,” observed Tim Egan of the New York Times. “This trend has been in place since 2008, when Paul ran for president with a similar stance: calling nonsense at hawk squawk from both parties. This year, Paul has 10 times the individual donations – totaling $113,739 – from the military as does Mitt Romney. And he has a hundred times more than Newt Gingrich, who sat out the Vietnam War with college deferments and now promises he would strike foes at the slightest provocation.”

Bellicose blatherskites like Gingrich and Romney are indecently eager to propagate war and bloodshed. However, those “who actually fought in Iraq know better,” Egan observes.
“They can tell a phony warrior from a real one. And in Ron Paul, the veteran who served as a flight surgeon for the Air Force, the man some call crazy, they hear a voice of sanity – at least in the realm of war and peace.”

For decades, as a private citizen, activist, and elected representative, Ron Paul has espoused and lived by a philosophy of individual liberty protected by law. No public figure in recent memory has more consistently preached and practiced the non-aggression axiom – more properly called the Golden Rule – than Dr. Paul. In political terms, this means the categorical rejection of aggressive violence, including state-licensed coercion.

His fidelity to principle has entailed a considerable degree of personal sacrifice: As a private obstetrician, long before he was dragged reluctantly into politics, Paul refused to accept government subsidies through Medicare or Medicaid. He also refused to have anything to do with abortion – thereby displaying the same unqualified respect for the sanctity of human life that led him to become an outspoken opponent of war, and a proponent of abolishing the death penalty.

During the past two decades, those deemed to be “respectable” have supported more than a half-dozen foreign wars – two in Iraq, as well as one in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya, in addition to low-grade but bloody proxy conflicts in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Columbia, and Mexico – that have slaughtered millions of people. In 1996, at roughly the same time that Ron Paul’s supposedly intolerable newsletters were in circulation, Madeleine Albright, the Clinton administration’s UN representative, blithely said on 60 Minutes that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children through starvation and disease as a result of a U.S.-imposed embargo was “worth it.” Those words resonated in the Muslim world – and their deadly echoes were heard on the morning of 9-11.

Ron Paul, a guileless and principled man, has seen his reputation come under pitiless assault because he has adamantly refused to endorse genocide in Iraq, or aggressive war anywhere. According to the canons of collectivist piety, bombs and drones may break our bones, but only politically incorrect words can hurt us.

According to Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, “it may be months before an investigation determines exactly what happened Friday night when a sheriff’s deputy hit and killed two pedestrians in Oildale.” Police who responded to the incident took the deputy to the hospital — and arrested grieving relatives on the scene.

Daniel Hiler ran out of gas during an evening motorcycle ride in Oildale, California on December 16. While walking his bike to a gas station, the twenty-year-old father of two ran into a family friend named Chrystal Jolley. The pair was crossing a street at a widely-recognized intersection when they were fatally blindsided by a vehicle traveling at a speed well in excess of the posted speed limit. Despite the fact that darkness had descended, the driver hadn’t turned on his headlights. The victims were killed instantly.

Within minutes, police swarmed the scene, and arrests were made — none of which involved the driver, Deputy John Swearengin of the Kern County Sheriff’s Office. The four people arrested were relatives of the victims, who got into what the Sheriff’s Office described as an “altercation” with California Highway Patrol officers when they attempted to identify the victims.

“I was at home on Friday night working on my car when someone came running over and told me that a deputy ran over my daughter in the street,” recalls Jimmy Clevenger, Jolley’s father. “I ran down here, I was very upset…. The next thing I know, they had me by the neck and threw me to the ground and said I resisted arrest. My daughter was dead in the street and it was their fault.”

The outraged relatives were taken to jail, and face criminal charges. Swearengin, the killer, was taken to the hospital and wasn’t compelled to undergo drug or alcohol screening

The posted local speed limit (for Mundanes, of course) is 45 miles per hour.  According to several on-scene accounts from horrified witnesses, Swearengin blew through the intersection at a speed of 75–90 miles per hour. Despite the fact that he was obviously in a hurry, Swearengin didn’t activate his siren or running lights — or, according to at least one eyewitness, his headlights.

Sheriff Donny Youngblood told the Bakersfield Californian that the deputy “was responding to a report of a stolen vehicle with a suspect still at the scene” when he struck his victims. This would mean that he was not involved in a high-speed pursuit. Furthermore, as some skeptical witnesses pointed out, the main office of the Sheriff’s Department is about a mile or two west of the intersection where Swearengin killed Hiler and Jolley — and he was headed that direction at the time of the incident. This suggests that the deputy wasn’t motivated by an urgent call from an isolated and over-matched comrade, but rather engaging in a favorite pastime of uniformed adolescents — “Kickin’ ass and drivin’ fast.”

Some residents of Oildale, a suburb of Bakersfield, describe the Kern County Sheriff’s Deputies as notorious for their habit of speeding through the town’s narrow streets, blithely ignoring speed limits without bothering to activate their lights or sirens.

“They have no consideration for the other public,” objects Michelle Cameron, a distant relative of Jolley. Her assessment is seconded by Forrest Faulkner, an 11-year resident of Oildale who claims to know and be on good terms with most of the department. “They’re great people,” Faulkner maintains, even as he criticizes the department’s habit of putting the public at risk by needlessly reckless driving. “I’ve seen sparks fly from the car’s undercarriage when they hit a dip,” Faulkner recounts.

According to Whittney Peaker, Hiler’s fiance, the night before he was killed the young man had complained about the habitual disregard of traffic safety rules displayed by the department: “The night before, we left McDonald’s and a sheriff pulled out right in front of us with no lights on and Daniel said ‘I freakin’ hate when they do that.’ The next day they freaking take his life because he didn’t have his lights on.”

“I just see them flying through the air I mean like rag dolls. It didn’t even look real. It sounded like an explosion, like a stick of dynamite went off. It was at least a half a block down the street where they landed. It was far,” said Chris Moody, who witnessed the accident.

Under section 192 [c][2] of California state law, the deaths of Hiler and Jolley resulted from an act of vehicular homicide — one involving “gross negligence,” and therefore a felony. No charges have been filed against Swearengin, and the deputy faces only an “administrative” inquiry, rather than a criminal investigation.  The outcome of the administrative procedure isn’t exactly shrouded in mystery.

“What gets me is we already know the outcome,” complained Anna Rodriguez, one of Hiler’s friends, to a local reporter. “The officer will go on paid suspension. Then they will say he didn’t do anything wrong. And that will be the end of it.”

For more on this story, go to KGET.com.

According to television personality Bill O’Reilly, Iran is a global menace akin to Nazi Germany, Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul is Neville Chamberlain revisited, and the Pentagon must be prepared for war to contain Tehran’s aggression at any cost. Appearing on NBC’s Today Show to flog his most recent ghost-written bestseller Killing Lincoln, O’Reilly sneered: “His foreign policy disqualifies him in my eyes as an American — not as a journalist. I don’t think we need another Neville Chamberlain with Iran. So, he wants to be friends with Iran, that’s swell.”

Citing a key Bush-era National Intelligence Estimate and subsequent CIA findings, Dr. Paul has consistently emphasized that the Iranian government — although domestically repressive — is not pursuing aggressive designs against the United States. For this reason, Iran — like Soviet Russia and Communist China before it — can be dealt with through conventional diplomacy, rather than through pre-emptive war, as every other Republican candidate insists.

O’Reilly, who is Fox News’s ambassador to the geriatric warmonger demographic, consistently displays an unfavorable ratio of certitude to knowledge. He appears to be unaware of a recent official Pentagon threat analysis of Iran which validates Dr. Paul’s assessment.

According to the Pentagon — which self-appointed super-patriot O’Reilly must consider a nest of appeasers — the Iranian military is not configured for apocalyptic warfare against the United States, Israel, or any other country:

To ensure regime survival, Iran’s security strategy is based first on deterring an attack…. At present Iran’s forces are sufficent to deter or defend against conventional threats from Iran’s weaker neighbors such as post-war Iraq, the GCC, Azerbaijan or Afghanistan but lack the air power and logistical ability to power much beyond Iran’s borders or to confront regional powers such as Turkey or Israel. (Emphasis added)

“Stated simply Iran wants to obtain the necessary weapons to defend itself in a bad neighborhood where it finds itself surrounded by a global superpower,” summarizes Shaun Booth of the political and economic affairs blog Milwaukee Story. “The hyping of the potential nuclear program in Iran is Washington’s attempt to establish a pretext that would garner public support for a strike/destabilization campaign on Iran. The obvious goal would be regime change. So the real reason the Pentagon sees a nuclear program in Iran as a threat is not because it would be used as a first strike weapon against Israel, but because it would make it more difficult for the US and its allies to take out the regime in Tehran.”

Every star is a US military base. (Courtesy of Juan Cole.)

Oddly enough, this perspective is shared by some of the most impassioned supporters of war with Iran, who are worried that a nuclear-armed Iranian regime might prove to be both reasonable and impossible for Washington to push around.

The American Enterprise Institute is one of the most prominent of the Washington-based think-tanks promoting preemptive war against Iran. Danielle Pletka, who heads the group’s foreign policy section, is an unabashed war hawk regarding Iran.

In a recent address, Ms. Pletka offered a revealing assessment of the real dangers posed by a nuclear Iran: “The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it; it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it.” This would result in Iran being perceived as a “reasonable power,” rather than a rogue regime.

Thomas Donnelly, Pletka’s comrade at AEI, insists that war with Iran is necessary not to prevent nuclear genocide, but in order to preserve “the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East.”

For years, the American public has been barraged with apocalyptic predictions that a nuclear-armed Iran would launch a genocidal attack on Israel. The AEI, which is one of the most hawkish neo-con think-tanks in Washington, appears to believe that if Iran is seeking a nuclear arsenal, it’s doing so for the purposes of deterrence, not aggression.

It should be noted as well that the current Iranian regime is not the first to pursue nuclear power — or a nuclear weapons capacity.

During the administration of Gerald Ford, the U.S. government supported Iran’s nuclear program. At the time, Iran was ruled by Shah Reza Pahlavi, a brutal militarist dictator whose regime was propped up by a spectacularly vicious secret police agency, and who maintained a military configured for regional adventurism. Despite concerns over nuclear proliferation, the Ford administration encouraged the Shah’s effort to develop nuclear energy as a hedge against declining oil production.

Today, the Islamic theocracy ruling the country insists that its nuclear program is a continuation of the Shah’s efforts – which were, once again, supported by Washington – to diversify its energy industry.

Where the Shah openly admitted in 1974 that his government was seeking to build nuclear weapons, the current regime insists that it has no intention of doing so. Yet Washington, which provided the Shah with a huge military establishment and supported his efforts to develop nuclear power, treats Iran’s current effort to develop nuclear power as a cause for war.

During the past sixty years, the U.S. has targeted Iran for a coup, propped up a vicious dictator, encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade that country, and threatened it with pre-emptive war. Given that none of this has worked, restoring diplomatic relations with Iran would hardly constitute appeasement — at least, to anybody not residing within the cartoon realm in which a blustering, self-satisfied ignoramus like Bill O’Reilly is regarded as a legitimate pundit.

Read more at the Milwaukee Story.

Detroit resident Maryanne Godboldo, whose handicapped teenage daughter was abducted at gunpoint by child “protection” officials and a SWAT team last March, won two critical courtroom victories on December 13 — yet vindictive prosecutors have signaled their intention to continue their official persecution of the homeschooling mother.

Reports the Detroit News:

Two judges in different Wayne County courtrooms sided Monday with a mother who resisted police forcing their way into her home last March to take her teenage daughter during a dispute with a Child Protective Services worker over medications.

A Family Court judge Monday afternoon accepted positive medical and education reports, and over the objections of an assistant state attorney general representing the Department of Health and Human Services, dismissed jurisdiction that had for nine months come between now 14-year-old Arianna Godboldo and her family.

Earlier Monday, a Wayne County Circuit judge refused to reinstate criminal charges, dismissed in August by a 36th District Court judge, that alleged the mother, Maryanne Godboldo, illegally resisted and assaulted police by allegedly firing a shot at them.

Godboldo’s daughter Ariana, who was 13 at the time she was kidnapped, suffers from a variety of physical handicaps and had been diagnosed with psychological problems. A psychiatrist ordered that she undergo injections of a dangerous psychotropic drug called Risperdal.

Godboldo, a professor at a local college, would not countenance the forcible drugging of her daughter. So the local child abduction agency – dishonestly called the Child Protective Services (CPS) – materialized on Godboldo’s doorstep, in the company of Sheriff’s deputies, to seize the child from her mother. To her eternal credit, Godboldo refused to surrender her daughter. At one point, Godboldo allegedly fired a single gunshot to ward off the intruders. A SWAT team – complete with automatic weapons and armored vehicles – was dispatched to surround the home. After ten hours, Goldboldo surrendered. She was incarcerated on $500,000 bond, and her daughter, in short order, was being forcibly drugged at the hands of her abductors.

The CPS gave itself permission to kidnap Ariana because of “medical neglect” — yet the agency discontinued the Risperdal injections shortly after seizing the girl from her mother, and no physical or emotional damage occurred on account of that supposed “neglect.” In other words, Godboldo’s home was invaded, and her life was threatened, because she had made exactly the same choice later made by the “experts” who had violently and illegally seized her child. None of this had anything to do with the welfare of Ariana; this exercise in state terrorism was intended to validate the supposed authority of functionaries to seize a child at whim.

In August, Detroit District Court Judge Ronald Giles acknowledged that Godboldo was morally and legally entitled to use deadly force in an attempt to prevent the illegal abduction of her mentally handicapped 13-year-old daughter by the child “protection” mafia. In testimony before Judge Giles, CPS officials admitted that the removal order was never signed by a judge; instead, it was rubber-stamped with a forged signature by a social worker with no legal training or judicial authority. Judge Giles ruled that the order was “ridiculous” and dismissed all charges against Godboldo.

Unfortunately, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy has promised “to make a third appeal to reinstate criminal charges,” observes the Detroit News. In addition,Family Court Judge Lynne Pierce “told Assistant Attorney General Deborah Carley, who complained it appears the girl has never received anything other than homeschooling her entire life, she is not barred from pursuing criminal truancy charges if she feels the parents are flouting state law that required the education of children.”

Read more at the Detroit News.

Click on the link below to listen to the interview:

Tales of the Predator State

Across the United States, police are being militarized, SWAT teams are running amok, and school children are terrorized by lockdown drills — often used to conceal warrantless searches of their personal belongings. Listen to a Pro Libertate Radio podcast featuring Republic magazine managing editor William Norman Grigg (click on the link below):

Garrison State America

Through the officially sanctioned plunder called “civil asset forfeiture,” police departments across the country have confiscated untold millions in cash and property – and now some of the robbers are squabbling over how to divide the loot.

Police officers in the town of Westminster, Maryland (population roughly 19,000) are accusing their superiors “of misspending money seized from drug suspects by buying iPads and iPhones for top commanders,” reports the Baltimore Sun. It’s important to understand that through civil asset forfeiture, cash or property can be confiscated – that is, stolen – from people who have never been formally accused of a criminal offense, let alone convicted of one. This is a different proposition from criminal asset forfeiture, which involves seizure of money or property from an individual who has actually been convicted of a crime.

Through their local union, the Carroll County Fraternal Order of Police, officers in Westminster have charged that “bosses are getting all the perks while the rank and file are left cleaning up the mess,” explains attorney and police union labor negotiator Gary McLhinney.

While dismissing the allegations as union posturing in the context of contract negotiations, police and city officials have yet to offer a substantive denial.

Reports the Sun:

“Clearly, someone disagrees with the manner in which some of the forfeiture funds have been spent,” said Westminster Police Chief Jeffrey Spaulding, declining to confirm, as the law firm alleges, that he and his top commanders — a major and three captains — have iPhones or iPads purchased with funds collected as part of criminal forfeitures.

The mayor refused to say how much money the city has gotten from the asset forfeiture program, or release an annual audit of the programs at participating police agencies in Carroll County.

“We’re not going to release anything from the city of Westminster until we have a chance to talk to our attorney,” Utz said. “Then we’ll be able to respond. I have nothing to hide.”

Expenditures from asset forfeiture programs must follow guidelines from the U.S. Department of Justice. McLhinney said he is not alleging that the spending was illegal but that it was inappropriate. The guidelines, for example, allow money to be spent on computers and communication equipment.

McLhinney said the money shouldn’t be spent on smartphones for commanders but for officers who could use them. For instance, Baltimore police officers have BlackBerrys that can access warrant information. “There are men and women risking their lives to make these seizures, what, so the boss can have an Apple iPhone?” he said.

The idea that police are “risking their lives” to confiscate money and property is self-serving and melodramatic. Even if it were true, however, this wouldn’t make their actions any more heroic than those of any other band of armed robbers.

The Fifth Amendment dictates that government may not deprive any individual of his property “without due process of law”; one has to be convicted of a crime before the state can impose a punishment. At least that’s how things were intended to operate in the old constitutional republic. The degenerate corporate state ruling us today operates in a fashion similar to that of feudal kleptocracies, in which robbers (sometimes called “tax farmers”) were permitted to keep a portion of whatever they stole from the public.

One early specimen of what is now called “forfeiture” was described by British historian Arthur Arnold after he visited 19th century feudal Iran. Arnold observed that government agents were “free to extort all that [they] can get, upon condition of making a certain annual payment to Tehran.” In this fashion, the subjects were “kept in perpetual disorder by the demands of armed men, who plunder under the pretense of [law], and who … are scarcely preferred to robbers.”

This is essentially the same arrangement that emerged from “forfeiture” reform efforts ten years ago. Amid a growing chorus of public outrage over the practice, Congress and various states enacted measures supposedly forbidding police to profit from forfeiture. The Justice Department, however, nullified those laws by permitting police to keep eighty percent of whatever they confiscate in joint operations with the Feds – thereby instituting a scheme remarkably similar to the 19^th Century Iranian feudal system described by Arnold.

While “civil asset forfeiture” is generally described as a valid law enforcement tool, in practice it is undisguised theft. In a detailed investigative series, the Detroit News reported a couple of years ago: “Local law enforcement agencies are raising millions of dollars by seizing private property suspected in crimes, but often without charges being filed — and sometimes even when authorities admit no offense was committed.”

As Republic magazine recently noted (see “The Stasi State Expands,” October 21),
Between 2003 and 2007, Romulus, Michigan witnessed a 118 percent increase in forfeiture revenues despite the fact that there has not been a corresponding increase in criminal activity. Well, make that unofficial criminal activity.

On September 27, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced the arrest and indictment of former Romulus Police Chief Michael St. Andre, his wife, and five detectives, all of whom were accused of using forfeiture proceeds for their personal benefit.  St. Andre was accused of using forfeiture money to buy a tanning salon for his wife. Some of the money was allegedly used to procure the services of prostitutes. Some $40,000 was reportedly spent on alcohol and marijuana.

Police aren’t the only “public servants” who can live the high life thanks to the miracle of asset forfeiture. Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, to cite one example, drives a customized high-end SUV confiscated from Charles Melvin Fox, who is accused of running a prostitution ring. Buckhorn selected his pimped-out ride from a “forfeiture fleet” – that is, a large collection of autos stolen by police from people either accused of crimes or associated with them – but not yet convicted in court.

Buckhorn insists that the SUV was seized from “someone engaged in criminal activity.” That may or may not be true of Charles Fox. It is unambiguously true of Buckhorn, who – as a politician – belongs to a class of criminals more loathsome than pimps or prostitutes.

Any vice – that is to say, a prohibited activity engaged in by consenting adults – can be turned into a potential revenue bonanza for the political class. This includes not only drug use and prostitution, but gambling, as well.

In 2009, Maryland’s Anne Arundel County Police Department set up a fraudulent account for “Linwood Payment Solutions” to process payments for online gambling. The funds were deposited directly into the federal government’s asset forfeiture fund. Earlier this year, the Feds seized the online domains and other assets of online gambling sites – and smugly instructed Americans who had participated in online gambling, none of whom committed a prosecutable offense, to contact the websites if they wanted to get their funds back.

Those funds, of course, had already been stolen by the Feds. For its role in the heist, the Anne Arundel County Police Department netted a cut of nearly a half-million dollars, which will be used to fund the SWAT teams employed to carry out smash-and-grab invasions under the rubric of the “War on Drugs.”

In addition to the obvious material benefits it provides for opportunistic police and civic officials, the practice of asset forfeiture provides an unaccountable pool of funds that can be used to cover up other forms of official corruption.

Nassau County, New York is burdened with one of the worst and most abusive criminal “justice” systems in the country. The County Police Department’s crime lab has been shut down because of incurable corruption. Thousands of criminal convictions may be tainted because of perjury and evidence tampering on the part of crime lab officials.

Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice has announced that thousands of forensic samples from the lab will have to be re-tested at a cost of nearly a half-million dollars. The expenses will be paid out of the police department’s forfeiture funds.

When asked how much money was in the forfeiture slush funds, Rice refused to answer. The police department – in a fashion typical of the risk-aversive plunderers who gravitate to that disreputable occupation – insists that a public accounting of the forfeiture funds would put officers “at risk.” It’s understandable that the thieves would try to avoid riling up the victims by describing the size of their haul.

No other criminal racket can compete with the one called “government” – and officially sanctioned robbery of this kind grows increasingly common as the productive economy dies.

Read more about this in the Baltimore Sun.

Yes, they're watching you: A "Reaper" drone operated by the DHS

The Predator Drones used to carry out CIA assassinations in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere are deployed over American skies – and they have “domestic extremists” in their targets.

During a conflict arising over stray cattle last June, Sheriff Kelly Janke of North Dakota’s Nelson County organized a multi-agency task force, including elements “from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances, and deputy sheriffs from three other counties,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “He also called in a Predator B drone.”

Continues the Times:

“As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations….

`We don’t use [drones] on every call out,’ said Bill Macki, head of the police SWAT team in Grand Forks. `If we have something in town like an apartment complex, we don’t call them.’”

The Predator-aided SWAT assault in June targeted the family of a local farmer named Rodney Brossart, who live near the tiny village of Lakota, about 100 miles northwest of Fargo. A few days earlier, about a half-dozen stray cattle wandered onto Brossart’s property. The farmer reportedly believed that the cattle were unclaimed and thus belonged to him under a disputed interpretation of open-range law.

On June 23, after Brossart refused to surrender the livestock, a team of Sheriff’s deputies Tasered him and took him into custody. They also arrested Brossart’s wife when she attempted to defend her father, and his wife when she supposedly “misled” deputies who were searching for what were described as “illegal” weapons.

When deputies returned the following day, they were reportedly confronted by Brossart’s three sons, who were allegedly carrying rifles. This led Sheriff Janke to escalate the confrontation to a full-spectrum military response – including the local SWAT team and a Predator B drone supplied by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP), an affiliate of the Department of Homeland Security.

The CBP’s drone fleet, significantly, is described as a counter-terrorism asset. According to the so-called Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a self-appointed leftist watchdog group, Brossart’s family received special attention because Sheriff Janke “knew the Brossarts were followers of another Lakota resident, Roger Elvick, one of the original gurus of the bizarre but remarkably resilient sovereign citizens movement.”

For the past several years, the SPLC has been indoctrinating local law enforcement agencies in the belief that the sovereign citizens movement – and the “radical Right” in general, a label the SPLC applies to anyone more conservative than Hugo Chavez — has emerged as a fearsome “domestic terrorism” threat. That campaign has been assisted by the State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) program, which is funded through the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance. National and regional law enforcement seminars have been used to cultivate alarm among police officers regarding the supposedly all-encompassing terrorist threat posed by domestic “extremists.”

The Predator-aided strike on the Brossart family might be a direct payoff of the SLPC’s indoctrination efforts.

During the June confrontation, Sheriff Janke actually took time to respond to an interview request from the SPLC’s Intelligence Report.

“We’re trying to reach out to the family to get them to surrender,” Janke told the publication. “It’s not common for people to brandish weapons against law enforcement, and to have them all be family members is unique. [It tells me] they’re up to something, they’re planning something, they have some different beliefs…. We’re meeting with a team of experts to find out the best possible way to resolve this.”

Those “experts,” of course, proved to be the people in charge of the vertically integrated, militarized Homeland Security State.

Read more on this story at the Los Angeles Times.

Almost twenty years to the day after the end of the Soviet Union, the Euro Summit to deal with the debt crisis produced a framework for what Mikhail Gorbachev called a “new European Soviet” encompassing nearly two dozen nations. Representatives of twenty-three European countries, including 17 member states of the European Union, approved an outline for what the European Council in Brussels daintily calls a “fiscal stability union” – a scheme for what it calls “deeper integration” and “enhanced governance” of economic policy in order to deal with the continent’s debt crisis.

In broad outline, the “reinforced architecture for Economic and Monetary Union” was a collaboration between German Chancellor Angela Merkel (a former Communist Party youth leader in East Germany) and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The result, notes the New York Times, is that “Berlin effectively united Europe under its control” — using a framework for continental integration that envisions an ambitious regulatory regime and a command-and-control economic model.

As summarized by the BBC:

The key proposal on the agenda of the gathering in the Belgian capital  … is how to enforce budgetary discipline with automatic penalties for those eurozone nations that overspend.

Germany and France are pushing for new European Union treaties, saying stricter fiscal rules should be enshrined there.

Mr Sarkozy said Europe was in much danger.

“Never has Europe been so necessary. Never has it been in so much danger,” he said.

The German-French plan is based on the following key provisions:

• the European Commission to have the power to impose penalties for nations that run excessive budget deficits
• all 17 eurozone nations should amend their national legislation to require balanced budgets
• the eurozone countries to have common corporation and financial transaction taxes
• any future bailouts would not require private investors to absorb part of the costs, as happened in the Greece case.

In material terms, notes economic analyst Michael S. Rozeff, the revisions to the European Union will mean “a stronger central government for those European states that agree to it. It advances toward a United States of Europe. There is zero in it that advances freedom, just the opposite. It maintains all the presumptions of our era: big governments, central banks, fiat money, macroeconomic control.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who had expressed significant reservations about the proposed revisions, vetoed the draft treaty. The Daily Mail of London described his misgivings:

 Key to [Cameron’s] demands was that any transfer of power from a national to an EU regulator on financial services could be vetoed by the UK. He wanted to prevent any EU action that would harm Britain’s ability to operate its own regime of regulation for financial services….

In particular, the Prime Minister wanted to avoid any move towards a financial transaction tax that would see London become less attractive as a destination to conduct business versus other jurisdictions such as New York or Hong Kong.

Additionally, he wanted measures that would prevent a block of eurozone countries demanding that euro-denominated transactions be conducted in Frankfurt or Paris, something that would reduce the amount of business being done in the City of London.

Cameron was also anxious that an EU-wide treaty change would see Britain paying for EU bureaucrats to draft and police regulations for the eurozone block of nations – which Britain is not part of – using EU resources and buildings that Britain was helping to pay for.

Cameron’s proposals were intended to protect precisely what the EU summit sought to undermine – national independence. This was made clear in a joint communique from Merkel and Sarkozy: “We need more binding and more ambitious rules and commitments for the Euro area Member States. They should reflect that sharing a single currency means sharing responsibility for the Euro area as a whole. The building blocks of the new Stability and Growth Union are: A strengthened institutional architecture. Euro area governance needs to be substantially reinforced.” (Emphasis added.)

Dan Murphy, a financial affairs analyst for the Christian Science Monitor, points out that the Merkel/Sarkozy framework calls for nothing less than an “end to sovereign control over European budgets” and an arrangement in which EU member states would definitively cede “national control to a supranational body” – that is, the Soviet-style mega-state described by Gorbachev more than a decade ago.

Read more at the Daily Mail.

Through Operation “Fast and Furious,” the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (still known by the acronym ATF)  “secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the `big fish,’” while using the illegal sales as a pretext for gun grab-favorable legislation, reports CBS News:

ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called “Demand Letter 3″. That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or “long guns.” Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.

On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF’s Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:

“Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.”

Whistleblowers within the notorious corrupt federal agency (which has no constitutionally defensible reason to exist) have disclosed to Congress and the media that this practice of “gunwalking” made firearms available that “were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.”

In December 8 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee,  Attorney General Eric Holder, who has come under acute criticism for obstructing congressional probes into the affair, offered tardy, grudging, and qualified acknowledgement of the scandal, while maintaining that it somehow underscored the supposed need for tighter restrictions on gun sales: “As we work to identify where errors occurred and to ensure that these mistakes never happen again, we must not lose sight of the critical challenge this flawed operation has highlighted: the battle to stop the flow of guns to Mexico.”

Of course, it was the federal government that was promoting the flow of guns into the hands of Mexican crime cartels; now the same government seeks to capitalize on its corruption by expanding its power to regulate and persecute American gun dealers and gun owners. The legendary 19th Century French free market advocate Frederic Bastiat referred to this kind of thing as “creating the antidote and the poison in the same laboratory.”

This tendency is deeply woven into most federal policy, especially regarding such issues as terrorism, international organized crime, and the “war on drugs” — all of which are implicated in the “Fast and Furious” scandal.

From the Afghan opium fields that are guarded by U.S. troops, to the street-level drug retail networks that are honeycombed with informants and undercover police officers, the narcotics trade is a vertically integrated joint venture between international organized crime and the government agencies supposedly fighting it.

The most recent illustration of this evil symbiosis was provided by the December 3 New York Times, which describes how the federal Drug Enforcement Administration has “laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds” on behalf of Mexican narcotics cartels.

“American agents transport the cash on government flights to the United States, where it is deposited into traffickers’ accounts, and then wired to companies that provide goods and services to the cartel,” recounts the Times.

It’s quite likely that at least some of that money was used to purchase firearms through Operation Fast and Furious.

Things of this sort make perfect sense — once it’s understood that governments and criminal syndicates are in the same business.

Read more at CBSNews.com.

Government is the only human enterprise that profits through failure and thrives on human tragedy. This is why dates saturated with tragedy — such as September 11 and December 7 — are regarded as high holy days for those who worship government power. On those days, Americans are commanded to reflect on the bottomless malice of our foreign enemies, and to pledge even deeper resolve to support whatever our rulers decree is necessary in order to provide us with “security.” We are likewise urged to look with scorn and hostility at “isolationists,” who supposedly undermine our national unity.

In a speech observing the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor twenty years ago, then-President George H.W. Bush used to occasion to slander “isolationists” — American patriots who embraced the foreign policy of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams:

“Ironically, isolationists gathered together at what was known in those days as an ‘American [sic] First’ rally in Pittsburgh at precisely the moment the first Americans met early, violent deaths right here at Pearl Harbor. The isolationists failed to see that the seeds of Pearl Harbor were sown back in 1919, when a victorious America decided that in the absence of a threatening enemy abroad, we should turn all of our energies inward. That notion of isolationism flew escort for the very bombers that attacked our men 50 years ago.”

To the Power Elite, the belief that America should refrain from prowling the globe “in search of monsters to destroy” is a heresy. It is an even graver thoughtcrime  to consider the possibility that events such as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or the terrorist assaults of 9/11 were anticipated and welcomed — or even facilitated — by the people who presume to rule us. Where Pearl Harbor is concerned, however, any honest reading of the relevant history leads inevitably to that conclusion.

Writing in The American Conservative, Patrick Buchanan summarizes the newly published “secret history” compiled by Herbert Hoover between 1943 and 1963, which provides the former President’s explanation “of what happened before, during and after the world war that may prove yet the death knell of the West”:

Edited by historian George Nash, Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath, is a searing indictment of FDR and the men around him as politicians who lied prodigiously about their desire to keep America out of war, even as they took one deliberate step after another to take us into war.

Yet the book is no polemic. The 50-page run-up to the war in the Pacific uses memoirs and documents from all sides to prove Hoover’s indictment. And perhaps the best way to show the power of this book is the way Hoover does it — chronologically, painstakingly, week by week.

Inside the Japanese government “was a powerful faction led by Prime Minister Prince Fumimaro Konoye that desperately did not want a war with the United States,” Buchanan recounts. The navy favored peace with the U.S. and Britain, while the more bellicose faction was led by en. Hideki Tojo and vehemently anti-American Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka. On July 18, Konoye replaced Matsuoka with Admiral Teijiro Toyoda, who wanted to avoid war with the U.S. A week later, as if to punish Japan’s conciliatory posture, Washington froze all Japanese assets in the U.S., cut off all trade, and imposed an oil embargo.

Puzzled but determined, Konoye continued to reach out to Washington, bringing the army to heel and requesting a meeting with FDR – on the U.S. side of the Pacific – to negotiate.  U.S. Ambassador Joseph Grew, who mistakenly assumed that the FDR administration was seeking to avoid a war, rather than provoke one, begged Washington to respond to Konoye’s initiative. A month after Washington imposed economic sanctions on Tokyo, the Japanese ambassador in Washington presented FDR a personal letter from Konoye imploring him to meet.

That letter was leaked to the press on September 3. Three days later, Konoye met with Grew to tell him Japan “now agreed with the four principles the Americans were demanding as the basis for peace,” Buchanan continues – yet no response came.

“Konoye’s warship is ready waiting to take him to Honolulu, Alaska or anyplace designated by the president,” Ambassador Grew wrote in a desperate September 30 telegraph. Again, the response was stolid silence. About two weeks thereafter, Konoye’s government collapsed – but last-ditch peace initiatives continued for more than a month thereafter.

“In November, the U.S. intercepted two new offers from Tokyo: a Plan A for an end to the China war and occupation of Indochina and, if that were rejected, a Plan B, a modus vivendi where neither side would make any new move,” Buchanan notes. “When presented, these, too, were rejected out of hand.”

After all, as Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote following a November 25 meeting of FDR’s war council, the objective was not to avoid war with Japan, but rather to “maneuver them Japanese into … firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”

The revelations contained in Hoover’s “secret history” add to a mountainous collection of irrefutable evidence supporting the conclusion that it was FDR’s administration, not the Japanese, that coveted war — and that the administration was willing to sacrifice thousands of American servicemen in order to precipitate a war the American electorate did not want.

According to the June 1, 2001 Washington Times, former Justice Department official Daryl S. Borgquist, who has devoted great time and energy to independent research into Pearl Harbor, discovered that a major portion of the first draft of FDR’s “Day of Infamy” speech, prepared by a team headed by Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Berle, was composed on December 6th – several hours before the Japanese attack.  This was just one of many revelations Borgquist had pried loose through his diligent research.

In a 1999 article in Naval History magazine, Borgquist described the recollections of Helen E. Hamman, the daughter of Don C. Smith, who directed the War Service for the Red Cross before WWII. “Shortly before the attack in 1941,” recalled Hamman, “President Roosevelt called [my father] to the White House for a meeting concerning a top-secret matter. At this meeting, the president advised my father that his intelligence staff had informed him of a pending attack on Pearl Harbor. He anticipated many casualties and much loss; he instructed my father to send workers and supplies to a holding area. When he protested to the president …Roosevelt told him that the American people would never agree to enter the war in Europe unless they were attack[ed] within their own borders….”

Tragically, Roosevelt was right. The Japanese attack came, and independent, peaceful America quickly morphed into a war-making machine. Americans were told to “remember Pearl Harbor,” and they went on to avenge it. Japan was not the only enemy, however, and Nazi Germany soon felt the wrath of American interventionism as well. For post-War Americans, stopping the spread of Nazi evil was the most important justification of U.S. involvement in World War II, but the extent of that evil would not fully be known until after war’s end. And until recently it wasn’t known that FDR, who had stiff-armed every Japanese peace overture, had followed the same course with Germany prior to the war.

In the weeks leading up to Pearl Harbor, FDR’s administration perversely refused to respond to German officials seeking to overthrow Hitler and repudiate Germany’s territorial conquests in Europe. In his book The New Dealers’ War, noted historian Thomas Fleming describes a November 1941 meeting in Berlin between liberal American journalist Louis Lochner and 15 members of the Front der anstandiger Leute (“Front of Decent People”). Drawn from the Reichstag, the German military, the secret police, and the clergy, the Front “hoped to overthrow Hitler, renounce his conquests and his war on the Jews, and restore Germany as a peaceful member of the family of nations.”

Hitler’s German enemies were even willing to listen to American advice as to a suitable post-Hitler German government. However, before Lochner – who knew FDR well – could convey the Front’s message to Roosevelt, Pearl Harbor was attacked, with FDR’s connivance. Four days later, Hitler declared war on America, prompted by the December 6th leak of “Rainbow Five,” a classified American plan for war against Germany. (Fleming makes a persuasive case that FDR arranged for the leak for the specific purpose of provoking Hitler to declare war.)

Throughout the war, the Front – often acting through Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German Secret Service – sought to make contact with the American government, but was repeatedly rebuffed. A group of German anti-Nazi scholars, many of them Jewish refugees, employed by the Office of Strategic Studies (the forerunner to the CIA) “urged the Allied governments to make contact with the resisters to ‘give some substance to the hope,’” recalls Fleming. “Their advice was totally ignored.” When Lochner tried to file an AP report from Europe about the Front in 1944, the story was killed by Army censors. “He was told a special regulation was in force ‘From the President of the United States in his capacity as commander in chief, forbidding all mention of any German resistance.” Public recognition of the Front of Decent People was incompatible with FDR’s dogmatic insistence upon “unconditional surrender” – and that insistence made it impossible for Hitler’s domestic enemies to gain any traction.

Accordingly, the war ground on for years, devouring millions upon millions of lives, drawing the Soviets into Europe, and paving the way for the Communist conquest of China. FDR’s continued demand for unconditional surrender after D-Day cost as many as two million casualties, according to Fleming. “If we add to this toll the number of Jews who were killed in the last year of the war, the figure can easily be doubled,” he continues. (If the Front had been successful, Hitler’s regime might have been toppled before the 1942 Wannsee Conference, which organized the “Final Solution.”) “If we add all the dead and wounded since 1943, when unconditional surrender was promulgated, destroying the German resistance’s hope of overthrowing Hitler, that figure too could be doubled – to 8 million. Unquestionably, this ultimatum was written in blood.”

World War II was America’s introduction into the despicable practice of totalitarian war – not only from studying the demonic accomplishments of the Nazis, Soviets, and Imperial Japanese, but also under the guidance of our own totalitarian ruling class. Many critics of the detestable New Deal “Brain Trust” might flinch from using the term “totalitarian” to describe FDR’s administration. This wasn’t true of Lend- Lease chief (and Soviet agent) Harry Hopkins, who was hailed by Winston Churchill as FDR’s “Lord Root of the Matter” for his ability to reduce complex issues to their essence.

In April 1941 - eight months before Pearl Harbor – Hopkins composed a memorandum entitled “The New Deal of Roosevelt is the Designate and Invincible Adversary of the New Order of Hitler. “‘As Hopkins saw it,” Fleming in The New Dealers’ War, “the new order of Hitler ‘can never be defeated by the old order of democracy, which is the status quo. ‘There was only one way to beat Hitler: ‘By the new order of democracy, which is the New Deal universally extended and applied.”‘

Almost as daunting was Hopkins’s view of how to achieve this new world order continues Fleming. “Democracy ‘must wage total war against totalitarian war. It must exceed the Nazi in fury, ruthlessness, and efficiency.”‘

One measure of the “ruthlessness” championed by Stalin’s tool Harry Hopkins can be seen in FDR’s cynical sacrifice of thousands of American lives at Pearl Harbor — and down-payment on the costs that would ultimately be paid to build a the globe-straddling empire Hopkins and his comrades envisioned.

Read more at The American Conservative.

One self-appointed left-leaning “watchdog” group had something to say about the military detention measure – Media Matters for America, a group created with the help of Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, and other veterans of the Clinton administration. Rather than focusing on the substance of the NDAA, Media Matters criticized retired New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano for inviting former Graham County, Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack on his program “Freedom Watch” to condemn the measure and to urge Sheriffs and other law enforcement personnel to interpose on behalf of the citizens living within their jurisdictions.

Since the organization of that name was founded a few years ago by U.S. Army Veteran and Yale Law School graduate Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers movement has been the subject of numerous sloppy and sophomoric smears, most of them repackaged from materials generated by the SPLC. An April 08, 2010 essay by Newsweek‘s Evan Thomas is typical of that genre of fact-starved pseudo-reporting:

Oath Keepers do not run around the woods on the weekend shooting weapons or threatening the violent overthrow of the government. Their oath is to uphold the Constitution and defend the American people from dictatorship.

But by conjuring up the specter of revolution—or counterrevolution—is Rhodes adding to the threat of real violence? Oath Keepers are “a particularly worrisome example of the ‘patriot’ revival,” according to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate speech and extremist organizations. “Patriot” groups—described by the SPLC as outfits “that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose ‘one-world government’ on liberty-loving Americans”—are “roaring back” after years out of the limelight, according to Potok. Notorious in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the patriot groups seemed to fade away under the shadow of 9/11, but hard times and the nation’s first African-American president seem to have brought about a revival—from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 (127 of them militias) in 2009, according to the SPLC.

Potok didn’t explain what is “worrisome” about an organization of current and former law enforcement and military personnel who publicly resolve to defend the U.S. Constitution and — just as importantly — to refuse to carry out ten specifically enumerated unlawful orders, the third of which is “to detain American citizens as `unlawful enemy combatants’ or to subject them to military tribunal.”

According to Rhodes, the NDAA, which includes the military detention provision, is “a declaration of war against the American people, authorizing the Obama Administration and all future administrations to treat Americans the same as citizens of occupied Iraq or Afghanistan, subjecting us all to military jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of the international laws of war, rather than our Bill of Rights and our domestic criminal laws, upon the mere say so of Obama or one of his minions.”

A very similar assessment of the measure was offered in an interview on Antiwar Radio by Scott Horton, a much-lauded international human rights attorney who lectures at Columbia University. According to Horton, the measure effectively abolishes the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, demolishes what remained of the habeas corpus guarantee, and radically escalates the “militarization” of the criminal justice system.

There’s no record of the SPLC, ADL, or Media Matters assailing Horton as an “extremist” for expressing views on this matter that are practically indistinguishable from those of Stewart Rhodes and Richard Mack. For statists of a hyper-partisan bent, apparently, the chief question is not the substance of what is said, but rather the identity and affiliations of the individual saying it — and left-leaning “Watchdog” groups are too busy compiling rosters of internal enemies to consider the possibility that they may someday fall into the pit they’re digging for others.

Go here for more information on the threat of the NDAA’s military detention provision.

(An earlier version of this essay erroneously described Andrew Napolitano as a retired federal judge.)

On “Black Friday,” a record number of Americans purchased firearms. Just a few days later, the Senate enacted a measure that could eventually be used to imprison some of those citizens as terrorist suspects, or “unprivileged combatants.”

“Someone who has guns, someone who has ammunition that is weatherproofed, someone who has 7 days of food in their house” could be treated as a potential terrorist and be subject to indefinite military detention, warned freshman Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) in a detailed and impassioned speech to the Senate opposing S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Section 1031 of that measure allows the indefinite military detention of any individual – including a U.S. citizen – who is designated a suspected terrorist or “unlawful combatant.” As Senator Paul pointed out, existing laws and official policy guidelines are replete with open-ended definitions under which law-abiding U.S. citizens could be regarded as actual or potential terrorists.

While insisting that the measure was chiefly intended to deal with the amorphous threat posed by al-Qaeda, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the bill, admitted in a floor speech that Section 1031, “the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”

In principle, this means nothing less than universal martial law, to the extent the U.S. military has the power to enforce it. On that assumption, U.S. citizens identified as “enemies” can be seized anywhere on the planet, including on American soil, and imprisoned under military jurisdiction either at home or abroad. Proposed amendments that would remove or modify that language were voted down by the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.”

As summarized by Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the ACLU, this measure “puts military detention authority on steroids and makes it permanent,” thereby putting U.C. citizens “at greater risk of being locked away by the military without charge or trial.”

Playing to that element of his constituency that still cares about civil liberties, President Obama has threatened to veto the measure – not because it annihilates whatever is left of the Anglo-Saxon guarantees of individual liberty, but rather because it intrudes on what he regards as plenary presidential authority to imprison or execute people at whim. In fact, proposed language exempting U.S. citizens from military detention was removed from the bill at the behest of the White House, as civil liberties activist David Kopel points out.

The Obama administration acknowledges the existence of a secretive “kill list” of citizens subject to summary execution – whether by way of a hit team, or a drone-fired missile. In recent weeks, the administration has carried out two executive-ordered “hits” in Yemen against alleged terrorism advocate Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son (who had gone to that country in a frantic effort to find his father).

A president claiming the authority to kill a citizen without even the most rudimentary form of due process certainly wouldn’t scruple to imprison citizens without trial or judicial review of any kind. The only dispute between the White House and the Senate involves the question of primacy – specifically, whether the president’s powers are supreme and illimitable, or whether they are subject to legislative restrictions of some kind. In either case, the NDAA would destroy whatever remains of habeas corpus, the foundational civil liberties guarantee in Anglo-Saxon legal tradition.

Habeas corpus (Latin for “present the body”) refers to the ancient requirement that an individual arrested for a crime must be immediately brought before an independent judge and either formally charged or set free. This is intended to prevent kings and other rulers from conducting arbitrary arrests and open-ended imprisonment, without trial, of people regarded as enemies of the State.

Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution specifies that “the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” This loophole-laden provision isn’t an ironclad guarantee against tyranny. However, it is indisputably clear that the United States presently confronts neither an invasion nor a rebellion that would meet the constitutional standard for the temporary suspension of habeas corpus – let alone the permanent abolition of that guarantee in the name of a universal war against unspecified enemies that will continue in perpetuity.

Abhorrent as it is, the NDAA is not a revolutionary development; instead, it fortifies and institutionalizes existing policies. Five years ago Congress passed the Military Commission Act, under which the president was given permission to imprison anyone he chooses to designate as an “unlawful enemy combatant.” Although then-Senator Barack Obama opposed the 2006 Military Commissions Act, he signed into law a virtually identical measure when it was folded into the 2010 Defense Authorization Bill.

The NDAA itself is the immediate outgrowth of the “Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010,” a measure proposed by Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut). One section of that bill dealing with “Detention without Trial of Unprivileged Enemy Belligerents” stated that suspects “may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.”

That provision, in slightly modified form, was incorporated into the NDAA. Those subject to military detention, according to the NDAA, include anyone “who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”  The carefully ambiguous language translates into a license to imprison practically anybody who is accused of providing unspecified “support” for any group the U.S. government doesn’t like.

Some Americans still cherish the notion that we are freer than people in such countries as Cuba, Iran, Syria, or Saudi Arabia. The brutal truth is that Americans — like Cubans, Iranians,  Syrians, and subjects of the House of Saud – exercise whatever freedoms will still enjoy only by grace of our master in the White House and his duly appointed agents. They may leave us alone entirely; they may disturb us with relatively slight impositions; they may suddenly descend on us in fury to deprive us of our homes, our families, and our lives. According to what our rulers are pleased to call the “law,” the choice is entirely theirs.

John Locke, who greatly influenced America’s Founders, pointed out that “slavery” consists of being “subject to the incessant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man” and that “absolute arbitrary power” is the practice of “governing without settled standing laws.” The NDAA, like similar measures that preceded it, is designed to enslave Americans by leaving us at the mercy of those wielding arbitrary power.

“A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master, who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression,” wrote British historian Edward Gibbon. At this point, the ability of our rulers to kill and imprison us is restrained only by the limits of their depraved imagination.

Rick Aleman: An innocent man with a conscience -- and, therefore, a police victim

Rick Aleman ran a day care facility in Hanover Park, Illinois. In September 2005, a woman named Danielle Schrik, whose 11-month-old son Joshua was enrolled in the day care, dropped off her son after telling Aleman that the child had been feverish and lethargic.

Shortly after Ms. Schrik left, Joshua collapsed. Aleman called 911 and began to administer CPR. Police took Aleman in for questioning. The officers pressed Aleman to sign a waiver of his Miranda rights against self-incrimination, and repeatedly deflected his requests for help from an attorney.  Video of the interrogation showed that when Aleman asked to consult with his lawyer he was told to “keep quiet,” and subjected to alternating promises and threats.

“You need to tell us something or you’re not going anywhere,” one officer told Aleman.

At one point Aleman was told that doctors had concluded that Joshua’s death was the result of shaken-baby syndrome ; this prompted the grief-stricken man to say that he must have been responsible.

“During the interrogation [Officer Joseph] Micci repeatedly told Aleman that he’d talked to three doctors and all had told him that Joshua had been shaken in such a way that he would have become unresponsive (unconscious) immediately, meaning that Aleman’s shaking must have caused Joshua’s injury,” recounted Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in a November 21 ruling. “This account of what the doctors had said was a lie, but it elicited from Aleman the statement that `I know in my heart that if the only way to cause [the injuries] is to shake that baby, then, when I shook that baby, I hurt that baby․ I admit it. I did shake the baby too hard.’ Yet intermittently throughout the protracted interrogation he continued to deny, and express disbelief, that he could have caused the injury.”

.Aleman was charged with murder when Joshua died a few days later.Following what Aleman’s wife Barbara described as “fourteen months of hell,” that charge was dismissed when it was revealed that Todd Carlson, one of the investigating officers, had lied about the doctors’ findings. He had also covered up the violent criminal history of Joshua’s mother, in whom he had a romantic interest.

“Carlson, who played the central role in screwing up the investigation … had been dispatched to the hospital immediately after Joshua was taken there on September 9, to interview Joshua’s family and the doctors who were caring for him,” explained Judge Posner in reviewing the facts of the case. “He asked Danielle whether she had ever struck Joshua and she said no, although she acknowledged that he’d had a fever in the days leading up to his collapse. This should have been a warning that his collapse on September 9 might have been caused by a blow or a shaking several days earlier that had first manifested itself in his fever and lethargy…. Nevertheless Carlson decided he would investigate Danielle Schrik no further. From his subsequent conduct in attempting to protect her from questioning by Booker and in holding her hand and sobbing with her at Joshua’s funeral, a reasonable jury might infer that he was sexually attracted to her and for that reason wanted to keep the investigation focused on Aleman.”

When child abuse investigator Michael Booker learned about Carlson’s actions, “he was disturbed and on September 13, the day of Joshua’s death, interviewed Danielle in Carlson’s presence, “continues Judge Posner’s account. “She acknowledged some of her criminal background, which included crimes of violence, but not all of it. According to statements by her mother and her boyfriend, Danielle had broken her mother’s jaw and threatened to kill her and Joshua; she had had physical fights with Joshua’s father and been arrested and charged with battery during one of those fights; and her mother had seen her shake Joshua frequently and the mother’s boyfriend had had to protect the child from Danielle.”

Carlson and his comrades had done everything they could to compel Aleman to testify against himself. His behavior toward his would-be paramour was strikingly different: “Carlson told Danielle not to speak to Booker or any other investigator, and when Booker repeatedly tried to call her after the initial interview there was never a response.”

It was Aleman’s providential good fortune that his case was reviewed by that rarest of things, a conscientious prosecutor, who concluded that the videotaped interrogation was “more exculpatory than inculpatory.” However, before the case was finally put to rest more than a year later, the Aleman family would lose practically everything they had worked for.

“To post $150,000 in cash, or 10 percent of his $1.5 million bond, the father of five sold his Hanover Park house and borrowed money,” reported the Chicago Daily Herald. Aleman also had to move his family out of the suburb out of fear for the safety of his children. Years later, the once-independent and financially secure businessman was still paying off loans and attorney fees.

“I had no house, no money and no job,” Aleman recalled after the case was dismissed. “I had to start over from scratch…. We’re living a different kind of life,” Aleman said. “We were comfortable before and now we’re struggling. It’s taken a major toll on us. Who’s responsible?”

Aleman filed a suit for wrongful arrest, malicious prosecution, and numerous civil rights violations. Carlson and his comrades, invoking the spurious doctrine of “qualified immunity,” sought to have the lawsuit dismissed. The November 21 federal appeals court ruling will permit the suit to proceed.

If Aleman had stolidly refused to cooperate with the police, he would most likely have been spared this ordeal. Like too many other Americans, Aleman assumes that police are trustworthy and motivated by a desire to learn and act on the truth. In fact, police are taught to lie – through both informal on-the-job training and formal instruction. They consider it a personal prerogative and an indispensable part of their professional skill set.

“Police lie. It’s part of their job. They lie to suspects and others in hopes of obtaining evidence.”

That assessment wasn’t offered by a criminal defense attorney. Those are the opening words of an essay by former prosecutor Val Van Brocklin in the “training” section of Officer.com. In fact, that essay is the first installment in a two-part series entitled “Training Cops to Lie,” in which Van Brocklin offers guidance to police officers regarding their supposed right to lie and deceive criminal suspects. Nowhere in her essay does Van Brocklin admit the harm done to innocent people by lying police. As a former prosecutor who now makes her living addressing law enforcement audiences, her sole intent is to teach police how to lie effectively, and protect themselves from negative consequences.

Never talk to the police. Always assume they are lying to you. They aren’t interested in the truth; they are trying to put you in jail. Don’t help them.

That’s the sort of line we’d hear if Gorbachev-era Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff — who was consigned to internal exile in Branson, Missouri following the Soviet Union’s collapse — could update his schtick to reflect current realities. Since the October Revolution of 2008, the Federal Reserve and its comrades in the banking oligarchy have been siphoning away what remains of the country’s wealth. The purpose of the $17 trillion Fed bailout of the global banking system was not to stabilize the “world economy,” but rather to immune the politically protected banking class from the consequences of their corruption.

A breathtakingly vulgar example of those priorities was recently revealed by Bloomberg news service:

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself for just $10 a share to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Now, amid tumbling home prices and near-record foreclosures, attention was focused on a new source of contagion: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together had more than $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and other debt outstanding….

Paulson had been pushing a plan in Congress to open lines of credit to the two struggling firms and to grant authority for the Treasury Department to buy equity in them. Yet he had told reporters on July 13 that the firms must remain shareholder owned and had testified at a Senate hearing two days later that giving the government new power to intervene made actual intervention improbable….

At the Eton Park meeting, he sent a different message, according to a fund manager who attended. Over sandwiches and pasta salad, he delivered that information to a group of men capable of profiting from any disclosure.

Around the conference room table were a dozen or so hedge- fund managers and other Wall Street executives — at least five of them alumni of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from 1999 to 2006…. After a perfunctory discussion of the market turmoil, the fund manager says, the discussion turned to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Paulson …. went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into “conservatorship” — a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets.

Paulson’s act, observed Janet Tavakoli, founder of Chicago-based financial consulting firm Tavakoli Structured Finance Inc., was a museum-quality specimen of “crony capitalism” — the unfathomably corrupt union of a large, unaccountable political and economic interests. Another name for this arrangement is corporatism. When it is further combined with foreign militarism and domestic regimentation, the proper description is “fascism.”

The plunderbund Paulson represented continues to raid what remains of America’s wealth in an effort to prop up its allies overseas.

Reports the AP:

Central banks will make it cheaper for commercial banks in their countries to borrow dollars, the dominant currency of trade. It was the most extraordinary coordinated effort by the central banks since they cut interest rates together in October 2008, at the depths of the financial crisis.

But while it should ease borrowing for banks, it does little to solve the underlying problem of mountains of government debt in Europe, leaving markets still waiting for a permanent fix. European leaders gather next week for a summit on the debt crisis.

The European Central Bank, which has been reluctant to intervene to stop the growing crisis on its own continent, was joined in the decision by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the central banks of Canada, Japan and Switzerland.

This is a dilatory maneuver, of course. It may purchase a very brief delay in the full onset of the Eurozone’s debt contagion, which will inevitably propagate itself throughout the entire global economy. Those responsible for this latest bailout are simply draining the lifeblood from less privileged people while the elites make their preparations to deal with the unfolding financial apocalypse.

Make no mistake: This is a collapse that is already underway, not an impending one. This is illustrated in a telling anecdote shared by financial affairs analyst (and former Federal Reserve Board official) David Zervos, who attended an event about the “peripheral Eurozone” at the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank:

There was one other highlight from the conference worth noting purely for entertainment value. The presenter from Greece kept getting his bank card DK’ed [declined] at the ATM. In addition, he could not find anywhere to exchange his cash euros for dollars, so he was effectively broke in the US. Yes highly ironic! Being a good American (and ex FRB employee) I came to his rescue and swapped him some dollars for euros at a friendly rate!

Actually, Zervos’s generosity was atypical of the Federal Reserve Board’s behavior, since he bailed out the impecunious Greek with his own money, rather than stealing from others through currency debasement.

Gerald Celente, founder and director of the Trends Research Institute and one of the most perceptive and reliable economic and social forecasters, predicts that 2012 will witness an event he calls an “Economic 9/11,” followed by the imposition of “economic martial law.”

“In the New Year, they’re going to bring down the gavel on the system,” Celente predicted in an interview on the Lew Rockwell Show (hosted by the Chairman of the free market-promoting Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama). Following the Christmas holiday, he continued, we will see a “bank holiday in some form” in the first quarter of 2012. This will lead to scapegoating — and perhaps even Soviet-style show trials — of people who will be cast as economic “wreckers.”

“They’re going to blame commodities speculators — especially in gold — for bringing down the financial system as they’re `trying so hard to save it,’” Celente declared. The official line will be that “These evil speculators were doing these dirty deals to undermine confidence in the dollar and the integrity of the United States Government — and all the little sheeple will applaud.”

In addition to large-scale plunder by the banking oligarchy, Celente points out, petty crime by opportunistic predators is increasing. He noted that several buildings near his home in rural New York had been cannibalized by thieves who stripped out the copper to be sold as scrap.

Those who have some understanding of the escalating crisis should follow what Celente calls the “Three-G Survival Plan — Guns, Gold, and a Getaway Plan.”

"Don't say this out loud -- but I'm actually a New Age statist posing as a conservative!"

Republican presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich, the most recent contender embraced by the “Anybody-but-Mitt” constituency, received what many consider an ironic endorsement from former political antagonist Bill Clinton:

 “He’s articulate and he tries to think of a conservative version of an idea that will solve a legitimate problem, For example, I watched the national security debate … And Newt said two things that would make an independent voter say, ‘Well, I gotta consider that.’”

Gingrich and Clinton are much more compatible than many observers might suspect. In 1993, when then-First Lady Hillary Clinton was promoting a nationalized health care scheme, Gingrich (at the time a Republican Congressman from Georgia) publicly supported the idea of a federally enforced individual health insurance mandate – a much-despised mechanism incorporated into the “Obamacare” program. In a Meet the Press interview earlier this year, Gingrich expressed his support for a “variation” on the Obama-era health insurance mandate.

Under the reign of Bill Clinton – the first president to acknowledge youthful “experimentation” with narcotics, albeit in oddly qualified fashion – the federal War on Drugs escalated dramatically. Gingrich, who likewise spent some of his youth “frolicking in the autumn mist,” as it were, also offers unqualified support for the federal anti-drug jihad. As House Speaker in 1996, Gingrich introduced legislation to impose the death penalty on drug smugglers.

Asked about that proposal during a recent interview, Gingrich reiterated his support for capital punishment for drug offenses. He also insisted that “draconian” anti-drug policies imposed by Singapore and other authoritarian countries are compatible with  the “American” view of the citizen’s relationship with the government.

“You can either be in the Ron Paul tradition and say there’s nothing wrong with heroin and cocaine or you can be in the tradition that says, These kind of addictive drugs are terrible, they deprive you of full citizenship and they lead you to a dependency which is antithetical to being an American,” pontificated Gingrich. “If you’re serious about the latter view, then we need to think through a strategy that makes it radically less likely that we’re going to have drugs in this country.”

Gingrich, who has ruined two marriages through adulterous affairs and whose corpulent form is not the physique of someone who practices rigorous self-discipline, is eager to dispense potted homilies of that kind, most of which combine hypocrisy and dishonest history. Rep. Ron Paul, a long-time physician and ardent physical fitness buff who still rides a bicycle 20 miles a day at the age of 76, emphatically opposes drug abuse. He also understands that no government has the moral right or constitutional authority to regulate what adults choose to ingest.

What Gingrich breezily dismisses as “the Ron Paul tradition” – which rejects prohibition in all forms – was actually settled social policy in the United States until the early 20^th Century. Our pious, abstemious 19^th Century forebears lived in a country in which cocaine was available at the corner apothecary and advertised in family magazines as a topical analgesic for use in treating children’s dental pain. Gingrich’s authoritarian paternalism is much more in keeping with the “Progressive” movement, which promoted the use of federal power to remake society – through, among other things, the prohibition of alcohol.

Gingrich’s itch for social engineering isn’t limited to the domestic “War on Drugs.” He has long championed a Progressive-style interventionist foreign policy and its necessary coefficient, a domestic police state to deal with the terrorist “blowback” that is inevitably generated by military adventurism abroad.

During the late 1990s, Gingrich helped create the The United States Commission on National Security/21st Century – often referred to as the Hart-Rudman Commission because its co-chairmen were former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman. That Commission helped draft the proposals that were incorporated into the so-called PATRIOT Act; in fact, the blueprint for that legislation was on the president’s desk months before the 9-11 attack.  Gingrich’s role in creating that measure helps explain the asperity he displayed when it was criticized by Rep. Paul during the recent Republican National Security Debate in Washington, D.C.

Although Gingrich consistently supports radically expanded federal power to protect Americans from terrorism, he has actually suggested – in all seriousness – that the federal government needs to permit an occasional terrorist attack in order to maintain a public “psychology” that will support a more invasive government.

During a visit to a Long Island bookstore during a 2008 tour to promote his book “Days of Infamy,” Gingrich lamented that the Bush administration’s purported success in stopping terrorist threats (which are actually vanishingly rare) was among the “great tragedies” of recent history. “This means there’s less proof … that we’re in danger,” he claimed. “And it’s almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us.”

As his audience laughed, Gingrich made it clear that he intended for the shocking remark to be taken seriously:  “The more successful they’ve been at intercepting and stopping the bad guys, the less proof there is that we’re actually in danger. Think about the psychology.”

Gingrich’s influence-peddling on behalf of various corporate interests – from the Ethanol lobby to the unfathomably corrupt mortgage giant Freddie Mac – provoked George F. Will’s lacerating description of the former House Speaker as a “classic rental politician.” Devoid of conservative principles, hostile to individual liberty, utterly indifferent to the stench of his personal hypocrisy, and suffused with unearned self-regard, Gingrich isn’t likely to win the Republican nomination. The eagerness with which the pundit class has embraced him most likely reflects its anxiety to create a plausible contender to Romney – and its dogmatic insistence on pretending that Ron Paul doesn’t exist.

Jerald Newman, 54, bleeds into the floor after being assaulted by police.

If people can be driven into a mass frenzy over the prospect of buying two-dollar waffle makers and badly over-priced consumer ephemera, how will Americans behave if and when there is a full-scale economic meltdown — and necessities now taken for granted become inaccessible?

The fact that debt-plagued U.S. households have scanty disposable income this Christmas season didn’t mitigate the madness of the annual ritual of consumer excess called “Black Friday.” Noted an AP report:

A woman turned herself in to police after allegedly pepper-spraying 20 other customers at a Los Angeles-area Walmart on Thursday in what investigators said was an attempt to get at a crate of Xbox video game consoles. In Kinston, N.C. a security guard also pepper-sprayed customers seeking electronics before the start of a midnight sale.

In New York, crowds reportedly looted a clothing store in Soho. At a Walmart near Phoenix, a man was bloodied while being subdued by police officer on suspicion of shoplifting a video game. There was a shooting outside a store in San Leandro, Calif., shots fired at a mall in Fayetteville, N.C. and a stabbing outside a store in Sacramento, N.Y.

Betty Thomas, who witnessed the incident in the Phoenix-area WalMart, pointed out to the local FOX affiliate that while previous Black Friday shopping frenzies have been brutal, “The difference this year is that instead of a nice sweater you need a bullet proof vest and goggles.” Thomas was among several eyewitnesses who described the police assault on 54-year-old grandfather Jerald Newman as unprovoked and unnecessary.

Phoenix FOX affiliate KSAZ reports:

Witnesses told Fox 10 Friday morning that a grandfather was with his grandson and wife looking at video games. They said that people were tearing the box of games apart, trying to get to the videos, and a woman ended up getting punched.

“You literally would have thought there was a cure for cancer in this box, people were going insane,” said witness Skylar Stone, who saw the whole thing and called it ‘uncalled for.’

The grandson was trampled on in all the mayhem — even cutting his lip. His grandpa put the game in his waistband so that he could lift the boy out of the crowd, according to some witnesses.

Witnesses said that’s when a police officer grabbed the man and slammed him to the ground – possibly thinking he was stealing the game.

On a cell phone video taken at the Walmart, blood can be seen streaming from the grandfather’s face. But witnesses said police didn’t believe anything was wrong until they turned the man over.

“They grabbed the guy, body planted him into the ground — face shatters on concrete. That’s a hard concrete floor inside Walmart.

“All of a sudden, you see this little boy run up and wailing and yelling, ‘Grandpa, Grandpa,’ and crying his eyes out,” Stone said.

Witnesses said the man had about $600 worth of electronics that he was purchasing and wasn’t trying to steal anything. They said he was just trying to get his grandson out of harm’s way.

An account provided by RT News notes that the police assault, which began with a leg-sweep on the grandfather — which sent him face-first into the concrete floor — prompted several witnesses to deploy their cell phones.  “As he laid motionless and silent, cops mounted the man while a pool of blood began to spill out into the store,” observed the report. “`Get that on camera. See how fu***d up that is,’ a bystander is heard yelling at the cops.”

Police Brutality on Black Friday

A police spokesman insisted that Newman had “escalated” the confrontation and that the actions of the officers on-scene were justified, as they supposedly always are. The assailants’ version is disputed by several witnesses on the scene, including David Chadd, who told RT that police had already handcuffed Newman without incident and were walking him though the store when an officer “hooked the leg of the man and grabbed [him] by the shirt and slammed him face first into the ground…. The man was instantly knocked out and gushing blood.” Newman was unconscious for roughly ten minutes before he was taken to a hospital for medical care. He was later booked on charges of shoplifting and “resisting arrest” (which, although treated as an offense, is a common-law right, not a crime).

The incident in the Buckeye, Arizona WalMart is in some ways a microcosm and foreshadowing of what to expect in the future: Heedless, insensate mob panic leavened with officially sanctioned violence by law enforcement personnel who don’t care about protecting person or property but insist on immediate obedience — and will dispense summary punishment at the first tremor of resistance (or even less-than-enthusiastic cooperation).

“Preppers,” take note: Black Friday 2011 should be regarded as an overture to even greater ugliness to come.

http://news.yahoo.com/much-crazier-black-friday-221456950.html

Seeking to “cure” Michael of his rambunctiousness, the commissariat in charge of Rio Calaveras Elementary School arranged a meeting with Lt. Frank Gordo, a “resource officer” assigned to the district. The “scared straight” script called for Lt. Gordo – whose surname, so appropriate for a tax-feeder, is one of God’s little jokes – to waddle menacingly into the room, reducing young Michael displayed a precociously healthy disposition by being un-intimidated by the state functionary in full battle array.

At one point, according to Gordo’s account, he placed his hand on Michael. This was the very definition of a “bad touch,” and Michael quite sensibly rebelled. Gordo reported that the youngster “pushed my hand away in a batting motion, pushed papers off the table, and kicked me in the right knee” – a perfectly proportionate response to armed physical aggression by a much larger assailant (although I suspect Michael’s aim was a little low).

Rather than backing off and calming down, which is how a functioning adult would have behaved, Gordo escalated the assault and compounded it with armed abduction by hog-tying the five-year-old, zip-tying his hands and ankles and dragging him to the station, where he was charged with “battery on a police officer.” The child would remain trussed for at least two hours. During that time he was forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation – since, as all dutiful subjects in the Soyuz understand, only someone clinically ill would display such hostility toward an agent of the State.

It wasn’t until two weeks later that the police and school district deigned to share the details of the incident with Michael’s mother, Thelma Gray. “I was led to believe that Michael saw and police officer and attacked a police officer on sight,” Gray told a news team from the local NBC affiliate KCRA.

Michael, whose parents are divorced, may have emotional problems. This much should be said: Whatever “affliction” inspired this youngster’s reflexive hostility toward a member of the State’s punitive priesthood is something I wish the rest of us would catch.

It’s worth noting that “resource officers” – the uniformed bullies who prowl the hallways of government schools looking for trouble –are taught to see themselves as an army of occupation whose mission is to overawe a hostile population.

In his keynote address to the 2007 National Association of School Resources Conference, held against the rugged and forbidding backdrop of Orlando’s Disney World, self-styled tactical and counter-terrorism  “expert” John Giduck opened a window into this mindset:

“You’ve got to be a one-man fighting force…. You’ve got to have enough guns, and ammunition and body armor to stay alive…. You should be walking around in schools every day in complete tactical equipment, with semi-automatic weapons…. You can no longer afford to think of yourselves as peace officers…. You must think of yourself [sic] as soldiers in a war because we’re going to ask you to act like soldiers.”

Perhaps the intrepid Lt. Gordo will receive the equivalent of the Purple Heart for the wounds of honor he received in hands-on combat with Michael Davis.
Read more: http://www.kcra.com/news/29847063/detail.html#ixzz1ejfhVfFu

The one-time auto dealership on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina has been vacant for several years. A few weeks ago a small group of protesters calling themselves “Occupy Everywhere” took up residence in the building and announced grandiose plans to turn it into a free clinic, child care center, and dormitory. The “anti-capitalist” protesters admitted that they had broken the law by trespassing on the premises, which are owned by an out-of-town businessman.

On November 13, reports the Raleigh News & Observer,

“A police tactical team of more than 25 police officers arrested eight demonstrators Sunday afternoon and charged them with breaking and entering for occupying a vacant car dealership on Franklin Street. Officers brandishing guns and semi-automatic rifles rushed the building at about 4:30 p.m. They pointed weapons at those standing outside, and ordered them to put their faces on the ground. They surrounded the building and cleared out those who were inside. About 13 people, including a New & Observer staff writer covering the demonstration, were forced to the ground and hand-cuffed.”

The police treated the raid as a military operation, conducting detailed surveillance of the target, using squad cars to close off four downtown blocks, and then striking with overwhelming force. The supposed justification for the raid was the threat of property damage by protesters, who were suspected of setting “traps” and fortifying the occupied building. Yet this made-for-TV raid resulted in a handful of misdemeanor charges.

84-year-old police assault victim Dorli Rainey

Two days after the paramilitary operation in Chapel Hill, police in Seattle — a department that has become notorious for the gratuitous use of violence, including lethal force — conducted a pepper spray assault against protesters who had gathered to express “solidarity” with the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Among those incapacitated by the chemical attack was 84-year-old Dorli Rainey, who caught a full blast in the face.

The June 1998 investigation focused on an ll-year-old boy who was part of Sandusky’s “Second Mile” program. Identified as “Victim 6″ or “BK,” the child was allegedly fondled by Sandusky while the two of them were showering in the locker room at Penn State’s Holuba Hall. When the child was dropped off at his home, his mother noticed that his hair was wet. After learning about the showering incident, the understandably upset mother called the police. She also confronted Sandusky, who admitted that he had showered with other boys and that his “private parts” had “maybe” come into contact with the child’s intimate anatomy.

“I understand. I was wrong,” Sandusky told the mother in a conversation overheard by police investigators. “I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead.”

Page 20 of the grand jury’s “presentment” against Sandusky reports:

“Jerry Lauro, an investigator with the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, testified that during the 1998 investigation, Sandusky was interviewed on June 1, 1998 by Lauro and Detective Shreffler. Sandusky admitted to showering naked with Victim 6 [aka "B.K."], admitted to hugging Victim 6 while in the shower and admitted that it was wrong. Detective Schreffler advised Sandusky not to shower with any child again and Sandusky said that he would not.

The Grand Jury was unable to subpoena B.K. because he is in the military and is stationed outside the United States.”

As NBC’s Philadelphia affiliate points out, “It is strange that Centre County District Atorney Ray Gricar never prosecuted Jerry Sandusky on child-rape charges 13 years ago, some speculate, because Gricar was known for being fiercely independent and hard on crime. But it is even stranger that we cannot ask Gricar why Sandusky was not put behind bars, because the tough-as-nails district attorney disappeared in 2005. And though he was declared dead [in] July of this year, his body has never been found.”

According to his nephew, Gricar had a “bitter taste in his mouth for the [Penn State] program, and its coach.” On the day of his disappearance, Gricar told his girlfriend that he was going on a drive. His abandoned car was later found near an antique mall in Lewisburg; on the following day, his laptop computer — with its hard drive removed — was found in the Susquehanna River.

Pittsburgh radio host Mark Madden, who has followed the Sandusky case carefully, claims that others who have investigated the matter suspect that the former Penn State assistant football coach was “pimping” children from his Second Mile Foundation to wealthy university donors:

“I hear there’s a rumor that there will be a more shocking development from the Second Mile Foundation — and hold on to your stomachs, boys, this is gross, I will use the only language I can — that Jerry Sandusky and Second Mile were pimping out young boys to rich donors. That was being investigated by two prominent columnists even as I speak.”

The guilty connivance of Paterno and university officials in covering up Sandusky’s criminal predation has received a great deal of coverage — yet officials were aware of Sandusky’s actions no later than 1998, and no action was taken. The only individual who knows why that decision was made is, or was, Ray Gricar, who was apparently aware of at least some of the recently uncovered nastiness at least six years ago. Solving the mystery of Gricar’s disappearance would probably reveal the extent of the corruption, the depth of the official cover-up — and, perhaps, the truth about the rumors Mark Madden referred to.

Read the grand jury report about the Sandusky case here.

Cyndi Steele, the victim of the car-bombing plot, has long maintained her husband’s innocence.

“We have a great marriage,” Cyndi Steele told the U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill, who presided at both the criminal trial and the sentencing hearing. “I am not a victim of my husband because my husband did nothing wrong. I am a victim of the government.”

“There is no justice today in America for the politically incorrect,” Steele declared during the hearing. “I am a political prisoner.”

Dutifully carrying out its role as propagator of the official line, the Associated Press used its account of the Edgar Steele sentence to focus on his political views and professional connection to the Aryan Nation:

Steele is well known in anti-Semitic and white supremacist circles as the attorney who defended Butler in a lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The human rights group brought the case on behalf of two people who claimed they were attacked by Aryan Nations security guards; Steele lost the case, and the white supremacist group was bankrupted by the $6.3 million damages awarded to the victims.

Butler moved to northern Idaho in the 1970s and bought a 20-acre parcel that served as headquarters for Aryan Nations. He held annual gatherings that drew hundreds of supporters from around the country.

Butler’s group also held summertime marches through downtown Coeur d’Alene, and some of his followers fanned out to commit violent crimes across the country. A handful of people in the area continue to call themselves Aryan Nations members, but the group is largely inactive.

In the years since that case, Steele has made speeches at white supremacist events and launched the website ConspiracyPenPal.com, where he published his views. He also wrote a book titled “Defensive Racism: An Unapologetic Examination of Racial Differences.”

Typical of the coverage given to this story was the headline used by the Huffington Post news site, which described Steele’s supposed offense as the “murder” of his wife — who is alive and a forceful advocate of her husband’s innocence. Also of note is the claim in the AP story that Steele intended to “collect on an uninsured motorist insurance policy” — something that couldn’t be done in a single-vehicle fatality involving a pipe bomb. Cyndi Steele had no life insurance policy at the time of the supposed plot.

Lying headline: Edgar Steele's wife is alive, and defended him in court.

At the time of Steele’s arrest in June 2010, he was researching a book he planned to write about the worldwide sex trafficking trade. This included on-line conversations with women in the former Soviet Union who advertised themselves as mail-order brides. Federal prosecutors, led by U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson, claimed that Steele sought to murder his wife in order to clear the way for an affair with a woman from the Ukraine with whom he was supposedly  conducting a covert on-line affair. However, Mrs. Steele, the couple’s daughter, and family friends all testified that Steele’s research was well-known to them, and that he was not furtively carrying on a long-distance dalliance with a younger woman.

Larry Fairfax, the handyman from northern Idaho who supposedly plotted with Steele to murder Cyndi, tardily admitted to planting a pipe bomb on her SUV after the device was found during an oil change. Although his were the only fingerprints on the would-be murder weapon, and despite the fact that he said nothing about the bomb for weeks after he approached the FBI, Fairfax was sentenced to only 27 months in a low-security prison for a firearms violation.

The evidence connecting Steele to Fairfax’s crime was a third-generation copy of a digital recording of alleged conversations between the two men. Dr. George Papcun, perhaps the world’s leading expert on voice recognition and a consultant to several federal agencies, concluded that there was “a reasonable degree of scientific probability that [the recordings] do not represent a true and valid representation of reality and they are unreliable.” Judge Winmill, whose favortism toward the prosecution was extensive and undisguised, refused to allow Dr. Papcun to testify.

The cover story for the next issue of Republic magazine will be a detailed expose of the Soviet-style show trial of Edgar Steele.

Read more — if you can stand to — at the Huffington Post.

Operation Vigilant Shield 12, or VS 12, is a joint exercise supported by the Joint Coalition Warfare Center and conducted as a command post exercise with a supporting field training exercise in Key West, FL. The exercise is also linked to a Canada Command exercise called “Determined Dragon,” and runs concurrently with the Arizona’s “Vigilant Guard” exercise. It runs Nov. 1-10.

According to the Army, the overall exercise scenario for VS 12 is based on potential threats to the U.S. and Canada that require extensive military planning to support national objectives and provide multiple military options to the national leadership.

The exercise, which is taking place behind a barricade of buzzwords like “interoperability” and “integrated command,” is based on a scenario involving “enemy attacks” and similar incidents set in Florida, Coloroado, Arizona, and Washington, D.C. It envisions a coordinated effort involving everyone from local “first responders” — police, sheriffs, firefighters, and other emergency personnel — to NORAD and the Pentagon. It will most likely be coordinated with the unprecedented November 9 nation-wide emergency alert system test.

Northern Command is the first “Unified Combatant Command” established by the Army covering the United States itself as a potential battlefield, and the scope and detail of VS 12 illustrates the extent to which geographically local police agencies are considered appendages of the military — part of an occupying army, rather than “peace officers” accountable to the communities in which they live. In recent decades, owing to the so-called “War on Drugs,” police departments have received huge federal subsidies, as well as massive amounts of hardware and a great deal of specialized training from the military, particularly special forces operators. Every police department that participates in a federal/state narcotics “task force” will have a SWAT team that is equipped and trained to be used as a military assault force. Many of them recruit directly from the military — especially personnel with active duty experience involving nighttime raids in Iraq and Afghanistan that are similar to the increasingly familiar full-force raids conducted by SWAT teams domestically.

It’s worth recalling that  three years ago, the U.S. Army’s Northern Command announced that it would deploy a specialized, combat-tested unit as an “on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” This “dwell-time” domestic deployment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team would permit its soldiers to “use some of the [skills] they acquired in the war zone” to deal with “civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.”

The critical take-away from that announcement was that “homeland tours” are expected to become a routine part of the rotation of soldiers who are deployed overseas and whose mindset is entirely incompatible with civilian duty as “peace officers.”

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution sought desperately to prevent the creation of a standing army that would be used as an apparatus of repression. They would have no difficulty recognizing the militarized American “homeland” as precisely the nightmare they sought to avoid.

Read more at Government Security News.

After Culbertson continued to speak out, the Harris County District Attorney’s office retaliated against her by cancelling a county contract with her company – in effect, firing her.

Recounts the Houston Chronicle:

Harris County commissioners, at the recommendation of District Attorney Pat Lykos‘ staff, canceled a contract with a Lone Star College laboratory that has performed breathalyzer analysis for the sheriff’s office for decades. The lab just happened to have hired Culbertson, who had resigned her HPD position. Defense attorneys charged that the move was payback by the DA for Culbertson’s undermining of DWI prosecutions.

In the latest twist, Harris County’s 185th criminal court grand jury, an institution normally controlled by prosecutors, has apparently turned its investigative focus on the DA’s handling of the tainted evidence and possibly issues of retaliation against Culbertson. The grand jury not only barred prosecutors from being present during its questioning of witnesses, but also called three assistant district attorneys as well as a former prosecutor who is now a judge to testify about their handling of DWI cases.

When the Grand Jury sought to hear from Culbertson, and from former County Prosecutor Brent Mayr, the D.A. sent two assistant prosecutors to monitor their testimony. The Grand Jury Foreman ordered the DA’s representatives to leave. When that directive was ignored, the Foreman instructed the Baliff to place them under arrest if they didn’t leave.

District Attorney Lykos unsuccessfully sought a court order compelling the grand jury to allow her minions to monitor the proceedings. When that effort failed, the DA’s office exploited a back-channel to obtain official transcripts of the grand jury testimony. This has led to a summons from Judge Susan Brown to assistant DAs Carl Hobbs and Steve Morris — two of Lykos’s underlings who had attempted to bully their way into the grand jury hearing — along with court reporters Javier Leal and Katherine Chagaris.

“It is now come to this court’s attention that members of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office may be in possession of official transcripts of testimony from witnesses who appeared before the grand jury,” Judge Brown declared in the summons. If found guilty of contempt, the officials subject to the summons face the prospect of six months in jail.

The Harris County grand jury’s behavior has caused consternation in the DA’s office, and astonishment in the local media.

“All too often in the past, Harris County grand juries have functioned as rubber stamps providing prosecutors with indictments without impartial scrutiny of their substance,” notes the Chronicle. Of course, this is true of practically every grand jury in the country since 1946, when Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure was enacted. That measure, notes constitutional scholar Roger Roots, “made independently-acting grand juries illegal for all practical purposes.” Prior to that time, it was understood that a grand jury is not a government-controlled institution, but rather an independent assembly of citizens whose role is “to act as a check on the government — a people’s watchdog against arbitrary and malevolent prosecutions.”

Just as a trial jury has plenary authority to rule on both the facts and the law, a grand jury – as an independent body of responsible citizens — has unqualified authority to investigate government corruption. What happened in Harris County was not an example of a grand jury going rogue, but rather one behaving exactly as it should.

See the Houston Chronicle for more on this story.

At least to some people, the Awlakis were Americans only by accident of birth. Their political views made them suspect, and the fact that they had traveled abroad and (in the case of the father) criticized the U.S. government on foreign soil strongly intimated sympathy for terrorism. Besides, lethal sanctions of this kind only apply to people who live abroad – right?

Wrong.

For years, the same unmanned drones that have been used to conduct missile strikes abroad have been plying the skies over the United States. Now, for the first time, a supposedly civilian law enforcement department will deploy an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can be upgraded into a fully realized weapons platform.

According to Click2Houston:

 A Houston area law enforcement agency is prepared to launch an unmanned drone that could someday carry weapons, Local 2 Investigates reported Friday.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Conroe paid $300,000 in federal homeland security grant money and Friday it received the ShadowHawk unmanned helicopter made by Vanguard Defense Industries of Spring.

A laptop computer is used to control the 50-pound unmanned chopper, and a game-like console is used to aim and zoom a powerful camera and infrared heat-seeking device mounted on the front.

“To be in on the ground floor of this is pretty exciting for us here in Montgomery County,” Sheriff Tommy Gage said.

He said the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) could be used in hunting criminals who are running from police or assessing a scene where SWAT team officers are facing an active shooter.

“Tapped to operate the Montgomery County Sheriff’s helicopter UAV are Sgt. Melvin Franklin, a licensed pilot, and Lt. Damon Hall, who heads the department’s crime lab and crime scene unit,” continues the report. Michael Buscher, chief executive officer of manufacturer Vanguard Defense Industries, observed that the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office is the first local law enforcement agency to buy one of his units, which he said are designed to carry weapons for local law enforcement. It will hardly be the last.

It’s reasonable to expect that, ere long, joystick-controlled missile platforms will become part of the standard SWAT arsenal. We should also anticipate learning that the term “bugsplat” has entered the law enforcement lexicon. That term, which was coined by Pentagon’s war planners prior to the Iraq war, was the name of a computer program intended to estimate the percentage of civilian casualties that would result in a given bombing raid.

The same lexicon of long-distance mass murder that gave us the term “bugsplat” offers another newly minted term to describe the terrified civilians who can be seen frantically running for cover: “Squirters.” The vaguely pornographic overtones of that expression are appropriate, given the ubiqtuity of what Dr. P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institution calls “predator porn” – footage of drone attacks proudly circulated by the purported heroes responsible for the carnage.

In a 2009 U.S. Naval Academy lecture, Singer described how “the ability to download a video clip of combat is turning war into a form of entertainment.” This repellent new genre includes a modern variety of snuff film: “A Hellfire missile drops, goes in, and hits the target, followed by an explosion and bodies tossed into the air.” Singer described one clip of that kind, sent to him by a joystick-wielding assassin, that “was set to music, the pop song `I Just Want to Fly’ by the band Sugar Ray.”

Within a few years, “predator porn” will become a regular feature of “reality TV” programs extolling the purported heroism of domestic police agencies.

For more on this story — including a video — go to Click 2 Houston.

Even more recently, however, Santorum endorsed assassination as an instrument of policy when employed by the U.S. government.

“On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead,” he explained, broadly intimating that the U.S. government was responsible. “I think that’s a wonderful thing, candidly…. I think we should send a very clear message that if you are scientist from Russia or North Korea or from Iran, and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a nuclear bomb for Iran, you are not safe.”

As Business Insider points out, Santorum’s comments could create diplomatic and strategic problems for Washington:

Santorum offers these comments while Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is in Pyongyang conducting diplomatic talks with North Korea. Panetta is trying to bring North Korea back to its former commitment to disarmament in exchange for foreign aid and the negotiation has been difficult.

Here is hoping that Rick Santorum’s comments don’t get Leon Panetta kidnapped.

Santorum, who frequently gives the impression that he’s an individual who doesn’t think things through, told those who doubt that the U.S. government would assassinate civilian scientists should take heed to the way it treats American citizens designated enemies of the State:

“When people say, `You can’t go out and assassinate people’ — well, tell that to al-Awlaki…. We’ve done it. We’ve done it to an American citizen.”

Actually, the Obama administration not only assassinated U.S.-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — who was never charged with a crime of any kind, let alone convicted and sentenced by a court — but also al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Adbdulram al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike in Yemen while he was having dinner with a cousin (who also perished).

16-year-old Abdulrahm al-Awlaki: Murdered by the U.S. Government

The Obama administration circulated the story that the 16-year-old was actually an adult “suspected” of being a “militant,” thereby redefining the killing as a strategic success. But the family was able to document that the youngster — who had gone to Yemen in a frantic search for his father, who was known to be on a U.S. assassination list — was born in Colorado in 1996.

If a president can murder anybody at whim, why can’t he invent a justification after the fact? And why can’t he simply order the death of any human being for any reason he considers suitable?

Behavior of this kind is generally associated with the likes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il. Proponents of an aggressive foreign policy often characterize the regimes ruling countries such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea as despotisms that routinely “murder their own citizens,” and thus pose a threat to the peace of the world. Yet Rick Santorum — who yields to nobody in his zeal to wage war against distant and relatively powerless regimes — openly celebrates the summary execution of U.S. citizens, and describes it as a model for similar “wet work” operations against citizens of other countries.

What Santorum is describing – and endorsing — is undisguised state terrorism.

 
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/rick-santorum-dead-north-korean-scientists-are-a-wonderful-thing-2011-10#ixzz1c6onVzte

Olsen, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, was shot in the head by a police projectile during a protest in Oakland, California organized by the Occupy Wall Street movement. Riot police armed with rubber bullets, tear gas, and other supposedly non-lethal weaponry had been deployed to clear the streets of protesters near City Hall.

While doctors prepared Olsen for brain surgery, protesters focused their frustration on Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, a former city council member who had been seen as a critic of corrupt and abusive elements within the police force before being elected to her present position.

Reports the Guardian of London:

One sign taped to a lamppost delivered this message to the police: “You’ve fuelled our fire.”

Speaker after speaker demanded the resignation or recall of the city’s mayor, Jean Quan, who had initially voiced her support of the protesters. “Mayor Quan you did more damage to Oakland in one evening than Occupy Oakland did in two weeks,” said one slogan scrawled near the entrance to her offices.

In an afternoon news conference Quan had struggled to explain the decision to clear the square in the early hours of Tuesday morning and again when protesters returned that evening.

She gave the impression she had been as blindsided as anyone by the decision to close down Occupy Oakland. She had been in Washington at the time and said that although she knew there were hygiene and public safety issues that needed to be addressed, she did not expect that to happen while she was on the other side of the country.

“I only asked the chief to do one thing: to do it when it was the safest for both the police and the demonstrators,” she said, pinning responsibility for the decision on her police chief and the top city administrator. When pressed for more details, Quan said: “I don’t know everything.”

According to protester Robin Vangiesen, “Quan let the [county] sheriffs in to do her dirty work and then said she didn’t know who was responsible for the decision. She’s got to go.” Vangiesen told the Guardian that was in the plaza when Olsen — who was standing between the combat-equipped riot police and the protesters — was struck in the face by a teargas canister: “He was out, man. Totally non-responsive. He had blood pouring out of his nose.”

A video circulated on the internet documents that the initial teargas volley was followed by another projectile — what appeared to be a potentially lethal “flash-bang” grenade — that was tossed by a police officer into a small group of people that had formed a protective barrier around the critically wounded veteran.

According to an AP report, Olsen “participated in the protest because he felt corporations and banks have too much influence on the government….” He had come to the same conclusion as his fellow Marine, Major General Smedley Butler – the most decorated combat veteran in U.S. history.

Eighty years ago, amid the last Great Depression, Butler published a slender book entitled “War is a Racket” in which he lamented the role he had played as an enforcement and collection agent of Wall Street and its allied political elite.

As a Marine Corps veteran, Scott Olsen is the kind of person who would be respected by the Republican-aligned Tea Party movement. His concerns about corporate socialism — the subsidy of corrupt financial institutions at the expense of the embattled middle class — should be shared by principled people of all political backgrounds. While Scott Olsen has become a martyr to “#Occupy” activists, he should be human link connecting the concerns behind both that left-leaning movement and the conservative/populist Tea Party — who should unite in a joint effort to dismantle corporate socialism.

Read more at the Guardian.

During a recent installment of a new current affairs program on MSNBC called “Up,” commentator David Sirota observed that honest discussion of public policy is impossible unless we admit that “our foreign policy has been a project of empire”:

Early Saturday morning [October 22], I spent two hours at 30 Rockefeller Plaza with a distinguished panel of guests on Chris Hayes’ terrific new MSNBC show “Up.” The theme of the discussion, which you can watch here, was the state of national security policy after Moammar Gadhafi’s death and President Barack Obama’s announcement of the end of the Iraq war. The conversation soon turned to a topic that is almost never mentioned, much less seriously explored, in the traditional media: the subject of American Empire. Our dialogue provided a perfect example of how troublesome newspeak continues to muddle our foreign policy discussions.

Fellow panelist P.J. Crowley, a former State Department spokesman, vehemently objected that “you cannot describe the United States as an empire,” insisting that the system should be called “a liberal hegemonic project” built around “a World Trade Organization [and] a functioning United Nations….”

“We have created a system that we invite everyone in the world to participate in,” Crowley observed. Of course, the same could be said of the Soviet Union, which helped create the global architecture whose supposed merits Crowley extols.

The idea that Washington’s unique benevolence entitles it to preside over a “unipolar” world was expressed with breathtaking candor fifteen years ago in an essay published by Foreign Affairs, the flagship journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. Authors William Kristol and Robert Kagan — two prominent representatives of the “neo-con” network that promoted the Iraq War — asserted that Washington exercised a “benevolent global hegemony,” and that the “appropriate goal of American foreign policy … is to preserve that hegemony as far into the future as possible.”

The terms “empire” and “hegemony” are functional synonyms, a fact that is obvious to those who reject the generous imperial invitation and endure humanitarian chastisement – in the form of bombing, embargoes, and occupation – as punishment for their impudence.

“Crowley bridles at the idea that America’s long history of geopolitical aspirations, invasions, occupations and various extensions of power is part of an imperial project,” Sirota points out. “Instead, we are told that it’s all just one `liberal hegemonic project’ (as if alleged liberalism somehow makes it a `hegemonic project’ not an `imperial project’). Yet, even beyond this almost overt contradiction of himself, his examples betray what really drives American foreign policy. The World Trade Organization, for example, uses the imperial threat of sanctions to help American corporate interests trample the will of local governments in order to exploit host nations for profit. Likewise, the United Nations — which certainly does a lot of good, important work — is still structurally rigged with a security council to make sure America has outsize imperial influence in proportion to its population.”

Although his assessment of Washington’s imperial pretensions is sound, Sirota’s qualified enthusiasm for the United Nations is unfortunate: That entity has always been an imperial project. This was acknowledged in A World Effectively Controlled by the United Nations, a 1962 State Department-commissioned study written by Dr. Lincoln P. Bloomfield of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Imposing the “secure military environment” necessary for the UN to exercise effective global control, according to Bloomfield, would require an “international force, balanced appropriately between ground, sea, air, and space elements” as well as “a nuclear force” and (Bloomfield’s study suggests) perhaps even a stock of chemical and biological weapons. In this system, the UN (or, once again, a successor) would “monitor and enforce disarmament, settle disputes, and keep the peace. All other powers [would be] reserved to the nations,” which would be “disarmed to police levels.” Furthermore, “a significant ‘UN presence’ “would exist in all countries to monitor and enforce the disarmament program.

A central concept in A World Effectively Controlled by the United Nations is that the collective security system it describes must be “global, with no exceptions to its fiat: universal membership.” Building that order will require treating nations outside of it as “aggressors,” and forcibly assimilating them. This point is described with stunning candor in a March 2003 Esquire magazine article by Thomas P.M. Barnett, a Pentagon specialist in “Strategic Futures.” Barnett’s essay, “The Pentagon’s New Map,” is essentially an updating of A World Effectively Controlled by the United Nations.

“When the United States finally goes to war again in the Persian Gulf, it will not constitute a settling of old scores, or just an enforced disarmament of illegal weapons, or a distraction in the war on terror,” wrote Barnett in cheerful anticipation of the disastrous Iraq war. Instead, it represents what Bloomfield called a “threshold,” or Barnett calls a “tipping point”: “Our next war in the Gulf will mark a historical tipping point–the moment when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization.”

The conflict with Iraq, continued Barnett,  would force “America to come to terms with what I believe is the new security paradigm [or model] that shapes this age, namely, Disconnectedness defines danger. Saddam Hussein’s outlaw regime is dangerously disconnected from the globalizing world, from its rule sets, its norms, and all the ties that bind countries together in mutually assured dependence.” Notice how Barnett acknowledged that although the designated foreign enemy was Saddam’s regime, the Iraq war’s true target is America, which would be forced to assume a new global role.

The wages of imperial foreign policy include the destruction of domestic tranquility, prosperity, and what remains of our liberty — which will eventually include the freedom to condemn the Empire that is afflicting us.

Read more at Salon.

When Rice’s adult daughter answered the door, the officers repeatedly demanded to know if her life was in danger. According to her mother’s account, she calmly explained that there was nothing wrong, that she and her children were all right, and that the police were free to inspect the home to see if Ruiz was there.

Instead of acting on that invitation, the police seized the young lady, detained her in a vehicle for four hours, and then took her to jail. They then unloaded several rounds of tear gas into the house, leaving it with shattered windows, perforated walls, and a dense, suffocating chemical mist. The residue of the tear gas attack is now infused into the carpets and the furniture. After failing to find the fugitive following a siege that lasted several hours, the police eventually lost interest in the home and drove off without offering to help – or providing so much as an apology.

Reports Stockton’s CBS 13 News:

The San Jose Police Department stormed into a Stockton home searching for an accused killer, but they left without him, and left behind a complete mess.

“I feel like a war was taken on here, and we lost,” homeowner Joann Rice told CBS13.

Almost all of the windows are smashed in, there are holes in the wall, and there’s a layer of tear gas in the air so thick breathing it in makes you cough.

“We want it fixed,” Rice told the local CBS affiliate. “Of course I’m calling my insurance, but San Jose has to pay for this, there is no reason why they shouldn’t.”

Actually, there is a reason – albeit not one reasonable people would find persuasive: Because they were State-licensed purveyors of violence, the armed goons who laid waste to Joann Rice’s home aren’t vandals, but rather “heroes in error.”  That’s the expression used by Ahmed Chalabi, the con-man and CIA-cultivated crook whose “Iraqi National Congress” peddled much of the disinformation used to justify the 2003 invasion of that country.

The marauders who laid waste to Rice’s home acted on bad intelligence, refused to accept the findings of a voluntary inspection, trashed the place, terrorized those who lived therein, and then shrugged and walked away. The same treatment, on a much larger scale and with a huge attendant loss of life, was inflicted on Iraq – and even now, the Regime responsible for that atrocity is refusing to leave that country alone.

While many Americans will be outraged over the treatment inflicted on Joanne Rice, relatively few will understand that it is a microcosm of what the U.S. government did to the innocent people of Iraq. On the other hand, given the extent to which Americans have been programmed to worship the armed emissaries of the divine State, it’s possible that a few – including Michelle Bachman or Dana Rohrabacher, perhaps– will rebuke Rice for her lack of gratitude, and explain to her that she should pay at least part of the expenses for rebuilding her home after its “liberation.”

Read more at CBS 13 News.

Reports the Huffington Post:

The case was triggered by Davis herself, according to a search warrant affidavit written by Norman Conley, an agent for the inspector general.

She emailed a NASA contractor May 10 trying to find a buyer for the rock, as well as a nickel-sized piece of the heat shield that protected the Apollo 11 space capsule as it returned to earth from the first successful manned mission to the moon in 1969.

“I’ve been searching the internet for months attempting to find a buyer,” Davis wrote. “If you have any thoughts as to how I can proceed with the sale of these two items, please call.”

Davis told AP the items were among many of the space-related heirlooms her husband left her when he died in 1986. She said she had worked as a lexicographer and he had worked as an engineer for North American Rockwell, which contracted for NASA during the Apollo era.

Davis claims Armstrong gave the items to her husband, though the affidavit says the first man on the moon has previously told investigators he never gave or sold lunar material to anyone.

In follow-up phone conversations with a NASA agent, Davis acknowledged the rock was not sellable on the open market and fretted about an agent knocking on her door and taking the material, which she was willing to sell for “big money underground.”

“She must know that this is a questionable transaction because she used the term `black market,’” Agent Conley states in the search warrant.

Curiously, though, Davis agreed to sell the sample to NASA for a stellar $1.7 million. She said she wanted to leave her three children an inheritance and take care of her sick son.

NASA investigators then arranged the sting, where Conley met with Davis and her current husband at the Denny’s at Lake Elsinore in Riverside County.

Soon after settling into a booth, Davis said, she pulled out the moon sample and about half a dozen sheriff’s deputies and NASA investigators rushed into the eatery.

Moonrocks and related material are regarded as “government property,” and NASA  — which has its own armed investigative branch — has pursued anyone selling lunar material. It hasn’t always been so fastidious about collecting and retaining regolith: NASA has handed out the incomparably rare specimens to foreign dignitaries as if they were party favors, and thoughtlessly sluiced away a huge volume of lunar dust (some of which may have contained helium-3, a potentially valuable isotope) that was hosed off of EVA suits worn by some of the ten men who have trod the moon’s desolate, airless surface.

In this case, the Feds spent an undisclosed amount of money, and conducted an terrifying armed raid, in order to seize a fragment of moonrock smaller than a grain of sand.

“This [is] abhorrent behavior by the federal government to steal something from a retiree that was given to her,” said Davis’s attorney, Peter Schlueter, who is planning a lawsuit.

Few things bring out the raw courage of Federal law enforcement officers than the prospect of going mano-a-mano with a frail, terrified septuagenarian woman.

Read the full story at the Huffington Post.

Reports the Detroit Free Press:

Motorists driving on expressways around Flint are getting surprised by a stunning tactic that the Genesee County sheriff has been using to fight the flow of illegal drugs — one that legal experts said will not withstand a court challenge.

At least seven times this month, including Tuesday, motorists have said they have seen a pickup towing a large sign on I-69 or U.S.-23 that depicts the sheriff’s badge and warns: “Sheriff narcotics check point, 1 mile ahead — drug dog in use.”

The checkpoints are part of a broad sweep for drugs that Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell and his self-titled Sheriff’s Posse said are needed, calling Flint a crossroads of drug dealing because nearly a half-dozen major roads and expressways pass in and around the city. Pickell said he decided to try checkpoints when he learned that drug shipments might be passing through Flint in tractor-trailers with false compartments.

University of Michigan law professor David Moran points out that a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision held that similar open-ended, all-encompassing narcotics checkpoints in Indianapolis were unconstitutional. He points out that one tactic used by the Genessee County Sheriff’s Office — waiting to stop motorists who make a last-minute U-turn to avoid the illicit checkpoints — is “perilously close to entrapment.”

“It’s just the kind of shabby treatment that the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent,” Moran concludes.

The unconstitutional checkpoints in Flint are an outgrowth of the wide-spread and increasing use of “asset forfeiture” — seizure of money and other assets supposedly related to drug trafficking — that has become an epidemic in economically devastated Michigan.

In Detroit, municipal authorities, led by the local police, have dealt with the economic downturn by resorting to undisguised theft. The Detroit News reports: “Local law enforcement agencies are raising millions of dollars by seizing private property suspected in crimes, but often without charges being filed — and sometimes even when authorities admit no offense was committed.”

Between 2003 and 2007, Romulus, Michigan witnessed a 118 percent increase in forfeiture revenues (the theft, by police, of money and property from people not charged with criminal offenses) despite the fact that there has not been a corresponding increase in criminal activity. Well, make that unofficial criminal activity. One township, Novi, went from $12,278 in 2003 to $2.7 million in 2007. The Wayne County Sheriff’s Office netted $8.69 million in 2007, four times the haul its banditti seized in 2001.

Sgt. Dave Schreiner, who is in charge of Canton Township’s forfeiture unit — which is to say that he’s the kingpin of that community’s most notorious criminal gang — is astonishingly candid: “Police departments right now are looking for ways to generate revenue, and forfeiture is a way to offset the costs of doing business…. You’ll find that departments are doing more forfeitures than they used to because they’ve got to — they’re running out of money and they’ve got to find it somewhere.”

A growing scandal in Romulus indicates that the money and property seized in the name of drug enforcement is actually abetting institutional corruption within law enforcement, a development that should come as a surprise to nobody.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy recently announced criminal charges against former Romulus Police Chief Michael St. Andre, his wife Sandra Vlaz-St. Andre, and five Romulus detectives — Det. Sargent Richard Balzer, Det. Richard Landy, Det. Donald Hopkins, Det. Jeremy Channells and Det. Larry Droege — for misconduct, corruption, embezzlement, and witness intimidation.

“All seven are accused of participating in a scheme to improperly use drug forfeiture funds for personal benefit,” reported MLive.com. “Worthy says the allegations include purchasing a Westland tanning salon operated by Vlaz-St. Andre, hiring prostitutes and spending $40,000 on marijuana and alcohol in a one-year period.”

Drug Checkpoints aren’t a public safety measure. They’re highway robbery carried out under color of the “law.”

Read more about this at the Detroit Free Press.

As a commentator at AlterNet observes, this comparison

illustrates how our nation treats the haves vs. the have-nots — the 1% vs. the 99%, if you will. We live in a country where white collar criminals convicted of multi-billion-dollar fraud schemes get less than 3.5 years in prison, while homeless men who take a hundred bucks (and feel bad about it) are tossed behind bars for 15 years.

Under the current corporate socialist regime, bankers who steal billions can expect clemency; desperate people who steal a pittance from a bank, on the other hand, can expect to face the unfiltered wrath of the state’s punitive apparatus. Or, to put it in terms Yakov Smirnoff might appreciate: “In Soviet Amerika, bank robs you.”

This whole process begins with the malignant engine of fraud called the Federal Reserve.

In the early 2000s, with the Federal Reserve pumping huge amounts of “liquidity” into the economy, it was immensely profitable for lenders to entice borrowers of dubious credit-worthiness into mortgages and other loans they weren’t really able to pay. Before the collapse, bundling and re-selling bad debts to investment banks was a lucrative enterprise for Goldman Sachs and other major powers on Wall Street. Now that the bubble has burst, the titans of Wall Street are bailed out by the same taxpayers who often face the prospect of arrest and incarceration for their own bad debts.

The welfare queens of Wall Street, cushioned by subsidizes extracted from taxpayers at gunpoint, are ill-disposed to liquidate bad debts through negotiation. This helps explain why an increasing number of people who find themselves “upside down” on their home mortgages are practicing “strategic default”: With lenders unwilling to negotiate reasonable terms, the debtors simply stop making payments. This has inspired Wall Street’s tax-subsidized deadbeats to begin a PR campaign to demonize “ruthless borrowers” as uniquely depraved.

“Having been deadbeats and strategic defaulters of the first order,” writes economic analyst Yves Smith, the major banks “continue to manifest their characteristic unmitigated gall [by] hectoring the public about honorable behavior.” Smith predicts that ere long we will witness the return of debtor’s prison, which was supposedly abolished in the 19th century.

A cynic once said that while a petty thief will find himself behind bars or dangling from the end of a rope, the most powerful criminals are those who run the jails and operate the gallows. The corporatist plutocracy controlling our country is determined to make a prophet of that anonymous cynic.

Go here for more on this story from AlterNet.

You’re probably use to seeing TSA’s signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

“Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate,” said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.

Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.

This represents a significant expansion of the powers granted to the TSA, which started out by groping and irradiating airline passengers and stealing their property without improving the security of air travel in any measurable way. The agency has also been an employer of last resort for a remarkably high number of sexual predators and kleptomaniacs.

The VIPER teams initially focused their unwanted and counterproductive attention on Amtrak and Metro stations. More recently, however, the VIPER teams have given themselves the assignment of pestering their betters at practically every significant node of commerce and travel. Even before Tennessee’s state-wide exercise, VIPER teams in other states began to conduct  warrantless searches of private automobiles.

The program’s original purpose, explains the Washington Post, was to “provide a beefed-up law enforcement presence at … public transit stations over the busy holiday period. “ Now it is simply another way the Regime can harass people in search of prosecutable activity – or for property that can be confiscated in the name of asset forfeiture.

See more on this story from Nashville CBS affiliate NewsChannel 5.

Gadhafi, 69, ruled Libya with an iron fist for almost 42 years. He seized control of Libya in Sept., 1969 in a bloodless coup when he was just 27 years old. The then young and dashing army captain and his small band of military officers overthrew the monarch King Idris, setting up a new Libyan Arab Republic that over the years became increasingly isolated from the rest of the world.

Gadhafi took over the top spot as the world’s most wanted man after Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. troops in Pakistan.

At the height of his ability to threaten terrorism, President Ronald Reagan dubbed Gadhafi the “mad dog of the Middle East.”

He was accused of backing the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco popular with American soldiers, reportedly funding the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985, and the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which resulted in the U.N. and United States imposing sanctions on Libya.

Just two years ago, Gadhafi was regarded by Washington as an ally in the “war on terror,” after the regime — at Washington’s behest — dismantled its WMD program. The fact that Gadhafi, who cooperated with Washington, was deposed and then killed at Washington’s orders, is likely to inspire other autocrats to expand their efforts to acquire a nuclear deterrent.

The Obama administration’s war in Libya was the first to be conducted without any congressional input or oversight whatsoever. Since 1951, it has become commonplace for presidents to conduct undeclared (and thus unconstitutional) foreign wars. In carrying out the Libyan campaign, the incumbent administration,circumvented Congress entirely, building an international “coalition” for a UN declaration of war. It did so in stupendously cynical fashion.

In March, the Arab League, by unrecorded voice vote, petitioned the UN to enact a “no-fly zone” over Libya. The League’s resolution was brought about, in large measure, through a covert deal between Washington and Riyadh allowing the Saudis to dispatch an expeditionary force to Bahrain to help the Sunni al-Khalifa monarchy put down an uprising on the part of its suppressed and persecuted Shiite minority. With Washington’s tacit blessing, Saudi troops helped Bahrain’s U.S.-equipped security forces to massacre peaceful protesters — even as the U.S., France, and other NATO member states imposed a UN-authorized “no-fly zone” in Libya for the supposed purpose of preventing a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Libyan “rebels” from which the post-Gadhafi regime will coalesce included various factions organized and supported by the CIA and Britain’s MI6, many of whom had combat experience fighting American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More on this story from ABC News.

The government afflicting the State of Louisiana is expanding this war on cash  by enacting a measure forbidding many kinds of small cash transactions:

House bill 195 basically says those who buy and sell second hand goods cannot use cash to make those transactions, and it flew so far under the radar most businesses don’t even know about it…. The law states those who buy or sell second hand goods are prohibited from using cash. State representative Rickey Hardy co-authored the bill.

Hardy says, “they give a check or a cashiers money order, or electronic one of those three mechanisms is used.”

Hardy says the bill is targeted at criminals who steal anything from copper to televisions, and sell them for a quick buck. Having a paper trail will make it easier for law enforcement.

“It’s a mechanism to be used so the police department has something to go on and have a lead,” explains Hardy.

This is not a measure intended to protect private property. It is designed to make all private commerce subject to state scrutiny, and to make potential criminals out of people who engage in legitimate, mutually beneficial transactions. It will also have a severe negative impact on small businesses involved in downmarket retail.

“We’re gonna lose a lot of business,” protests Danny Guidry, proprietor of the Pioneer Trading Post in Lafayette, which specializes in buying and selling unique second hand items. “We don’t want this cash transaction to be taken away from us. It’s an everyday transaction…. We are being targeted for something we shouldn’t be.”

It should never be forgotten that the only things government makes are criminals out of innocent people — and corpses out of living human beings.

See more on the story from CBS affiliate KLFY.

After Mr. Cain dismissed the “Occupy Wall Street” protests as the work of misinformed malcontents, Rep. Paul pointed out that “Mr. Cain has blamed the victims. There are a lot of people who are victims of this business cycle…. [The Federal Reserve] creates the financial bubbles. Who got stuck? The middle class got stuck. They lost their jobs and they lost their houses…. We have to blame the business cycle and the economic polices that led to this disaster.”

As the Death and Taxes commentary site observes:

Paul, of course, traces a lot of the economic problems back to the Federal Reserve, the fractional banking apparatus of which Herman Cain was a member (of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank), and which allowed a number of banks and investors to make risky investments with criminal financial instruments (the credit-default swap), knowing full well that the Federal Reserve and the federal government would have no choice but to bail them out if toxic mortgage securities began to implode.

While Rep. Paul agrees that at least some elements of the Occupy Wall Street movement are hostage to misguided economic ideas, he — alone among Republican presidential aspirants — understands that the protests are inspired by legitimate outrage over the wholesale plundering of the public on behalf of politically protected Wall Street interests. Herman Cain insisted that the protesters should target the White House, rather than Wall Street — a convenient suggestion, given Cain’s background in the Federal Reserve System, and his desire to replace the current occupant of the Oval Office. Rep. Paul, on the other hand, is a principled critic of both the Federal Reserve and unconstitutional executive policies. Unlike Cain, who has equivocated regarding the need to audit the Fed, Rep. Paul has consistently opposed the institution for nearly four decades.

Read more at Death and Taxes.

The conversation touched on the ongoing — and on-growing — “Occupy Wall Street” movement, its similarities to the Tea Party movement, and Republican presidential contender Herman Cain’s so-called “9-9-9″ tax reform plan. Mr. Obama acknowledged that the protests on both sides of the political spectrum reflect a growing public perception that the “system” in Washington was broken down — an opinion he professed to share, even though he appeared to exempt himself from blame.

Despite the fact the Obama apparently considers his record to be flawless, the one-time college instructor declined to give himself a grade:

Tapper: You have gotten a lot passed though, much of your agenda has been passed — the stimulus, health care, Wall Street reform — so we’re sitting in a state right now where a majority of the voters disapprove of your handling of the economy and we’re going to Virginia later, where a majority of the voters do not thing you deserve to be re-elected. We’re sitting in a school, what grade would you give yourself?

The peaceful Occupy Wall Street protest march turned violent as the NYPD corralled and pepper sprayed the participants.
Mass arrests were made and loaded onto a NYC bus further locking traffic. Read More Here

But Luke’s video brings a new prospective to what is happening down there that we should all think about, including the protesters and the law enforcment.

Real Questions, Police Confrontation, and the one and only Immortal Technique spitting rhymes to raise the spirits at Occupy Wall Street 2 o’clock in the morning.
Watch Video Here

Maybe one day mankind’s love for each other will exceed mankind’s love of money.

But according to  Dylan Stableford over at  The Cutline they seem to think it was all a hoax. While never saying it straight out they are pushing the idea.

But just as quickly, rumors swirled that Rastani was actually a member of the Yes Men, a loose-knit group of merry pranksters and imposters that attempt to manipulate the media with the goal of exposing the dubious conduct of big corporations. Read Full Story Here

How we could only wish it was a hoax, I know I would sleep alot better at night if I knew the money I had wasn’t wasting away due to inflation. But at least I have listened to people like Alessio Rastani, Gerald Celente and Ron Paul or I might be as scared as I know some of you should be.

In defiance of the Due Process guarantees in the Bill of Rights, the Bush administration summarily imprisoned Padilla – an ex-convict suspected of a terrible crime, but an American citizen nonetheless — in a U.S. Navy brig in South Carolina. The administration insisted that the presidential decree had deprived Padilla of any legal immunities or protections, including the ancient habeas corpus guarantee, which requires that the government either formally charge a detainee with a crime, or release him from custody.

For years, the U.S. government systematically worked to destroy Padilla’swill through psychological torture, and – according to attorneys who eventually were permitted to examine him – the forcible administration of psychotropic drugs.  A “Declaration” filed by a political hack named Michael Mobbs was presented as the functional equivalent of a grand jury indictment, and a separate “declaration” by Defense Intelligence Agency head Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby was offered to explain why Padilla could not be permitted due process of any kind, including conventional legal representation.

“Any interruption of the intelligence gathering process, especially from an external source [such as legal counsel], risks mission failure,” insisted Jacoby. The key to extracting intelligence from Padilla, he continued, was “creating an atmosphere of dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator…. Anything that threatens the perceived dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator directly threatens the value of interrogation as an intelligence-gathering tool.”

How were we to know that Padilla was a valuable intelligence source about al-Qaeda, rather than, say, a trivial gang-banger from Chicago whose only serious professional training came at Taco Bell? According to Jacoby, it is enough for us to know that the Grand and Glorious Decider — and let all stand hushed in awe-struck reverence at the mention of his name — has “determined” that this is so.

In 2005, as the Supreme Court prepared to hear a legal challenge to the illegal detention of Padilla, the Bush administration – which had maintained that the suspect was “too dangerous” to be granted a trial in the civil courts – released him from military confinement. Padilla was transferred to a civilian jail, and charged with providing unspecified “support” for terrorism abroad. The evidence Padilla consisted of accusations from two confessed terrorists, who implicated him after being tortured. A third “witness,” Ethiopian refugee Binyam Mohammed, likewise named Padilla after being tortured extensively under CIA supervision by Moroccan secret police.

Padilla was never charged with involvement in the supposed dirty bomb plot. After several years of isolation, forced drugging and other abuse in military detention, Padilla was convicted of conspiring to “support” terrorism abroad. The key evidence in that trial consisted of transcripts of innocuous conversations in which – according to government “experts” — Padilla and Muslim acquaintances spoke in “code” about terrorist activities. The trial judge excluded all evidence of Padilla’s torture, while allowing as evidence statements he made before being Mirandized.

On September 20, a federal appeals court panel vacated, by a 2-1 vote, Padilla’s 17-year prison sentence – not because it was the product of a manifest miscarriage of justice, but because it was considered to be insufficiently severe.

According to the two-judge majority, “Padilla’s sentence is substantively unreasonable because it does not adequately reflect his criminal history, does not adequately account for his risk of recidivism, was based partly on an impermissible comparison to sentences imposed in other terrorism cases, and was based in part on inappropriate factors . . .”

The “inappropriate factors” referred to by the majority included evidence of torture inflicted on Padilla during his illegal military detention – something the two appeals court judges dismissed as irrelevant.

The dissenter on the panel, Judge Rosemary Barkett (a Mexico-born daughter of Syrian parents who was a Catholic nun before going to law school), summarizes some of the evidence dismissively described as “inappropriate factors” taken into account by the trial judge as he imposed a relatively brief prison sentence on Padilla:

“Padilla presented substantial, detailed, and compelling evidence about the inhumane, cruel, and physically, emotionally, and mentally painful conditions in which he had already been detained for a period of almost four years. For example, he presented evidence at sentencing of being kept in extreme isolation at the military brig in South Carolina where he was subjected to cruel interrogations, prolonged physical and mental pain, extreme environmental stresses, noise and temperature variations, and deprivation of sensory stimuli and sleep.”

“In sentencing Padilla, the trial judge accepted the facts of his confinement that had been presented both during the trial and at sentencing, which also included evidence about the impact on one’s mental health of prolonged isolation and solitary confinement, all of which were properly taken into account in deciding how much more confinement should be imposed,” concluded Judge Barkett. “None of these factual findings, nor the trial judge’s consideration of them in fashioning Padilla’s sentence, are challenged on appeal by the government or the majority.”

From the perspective of the other two judges on the panel – Joel Dubina and William Pryor, both Republican appointees – there is nothing unconstitutional about abusing and torturing an illegally imprisoned man, and then convicting him of an entirely different charge on the basis of profoundly dubious “evidence.” However, it is entirely “inappropriate” for a trial judge to mitigate that atrocity by imposing a relatively lenient sentence.

Although Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t recognize the America we live in, Josef Stalin would certainly approve of it.

Today, twenty years after the death of the Soviet Union, Marx’s theory is alive and well in the purported Land of the Free. The current issue of Republic magazine, devoted to the theme of “The Coming Greater Depression,” documents in detail how property rights have been nullified by the American political and economic system – beginning with the “invisible prison” called property taxes. Forcing people to pay tribute on property that they already own makes sense only to those whose minds are held hostage by collectivist assumptions.

But this is hardly the limit of the criminal impositions experienced by property owners – perhaps a better expression would be “people who believe they own property” – by the current system. Those who want to see socialism in action need not travel to Beijing or Pyongyang. All they need to do is attend a meeting of their local planning and zoning board.

The municipal government of San Juan Capistrano California, which was settled by Catholic missionaries, is extorting money from a couple as punishment for the supposed crime of holding prayer meetings on their own property. Chuck and Stephanie Fromm hold Bible study sessions each Wednesday evening and Sunday morning. They also run a home-based business publishing Worship Leader magazine. Their 4,700-square foot home was built on a parcel of land that includes a corral, barn, pool, and sizeable back yard. While dozens of people assemble for the study meetings, parking is ample and the proceedings are meditative – which means that there is no reason for anyone to complain about the noise.

Yet complain someone did, and now the city government has inflicted on the couple $200 in fines for failing to receive a “conditional-use permit” to do something on their own property that no government has the authority to forbid or regulate.

This is hardly the first or only example of a municipal government in the United States of America making use of zoning regulations to punish people for conducting prayer services in their own homes.

Like the Guttmans, Michael and Suzanne Salman of Phoenix, Arizona held regular church services at their home. The couple has also sponsored missionaries to Syria and other Middle Eastern countries.

On June 11, 2009, the Salmans’ home was besieged by a swarm of police officers who detained the family for several hours. The police had been sent by the local zoning board to collect evidence that the Salmans were conducting church services in their home.

For a year and a half, the Salmans worked to comply with the zoning board’s requirements to build a 2,000-square-foot outbuilding, which cost them some $80,000. The function of that building is to entertain visitors. According to the zoning board, it is permissible to use that building to watch movies, but not to hold worship services.

A missionary from Syria who was present during the police raid on June 11 pointed out: “We came to America to get away from this kind of persecution.”

The United Presbyterian Church of Middletown, New York learned that it’s not only the preaching of the word, but also practicing it, that provokes the wrath of municipal Marxists. In December, 2008, as the town experienced a severe cold snap that threatened the lives of homeless people, the church established a shelter that routinely took in dozens of people with no other refuge, providing them with a warm place to sleep, food, and clothing.

Shortly before Christmas, the City sent its fire inspector to examine the premises. He found nothing amiss. Yet the City’s chief legal counsel insisted that the homeless shelter was an impermissible residential use of the church property. The City filed a zoning violation against the church. The perversity of that action was underscored by the fact that until 2007, the zoning ordinance explicitly permitted such charitable use of the church facility. But no church should have to beg the government’s permission to serve the poor, and no property owner should be subject to the scrutiny of socialist community planners.

The Communists who operate county planning soviets are equal-opportunity persecutors of the faithful. In February 2007, the municipal government afflicting the Township of Freehold, New Jersey informed Rabbi Avraham Bernstein that he was in violation of zoning ordinances by holding Sabbath services in his home each Friday night, as well as on Jewish holidays. The Rabbi was issued a legal summons accusing him of illegally operating a house of worship. He was also informed that the Township government had kept their home and visitors under video surveillance.

All of this is patently unconstitutional, both under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, section 3 of the New Jersey State Constitution, which promises that: “No person shall be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience….”

It’s doubtful that Jews living in Tehran have been treated this inhospitably. No government anywhere in the United States has the authority to criminalize worship.

Adam Guerrero, a math teacher and urban homesteader from Memphis, Tennessee, discovered that in America’s Sovietized America’s legal system, any individual can lose what he had considered his own property at the whim of an anonymous detractor – even if that property owner has done no harm to any living thing.

Mr. Guerrero, along with three of his students, maintains an extensive garden in his front yard, as well as a backyard worm farm and equipment for making soap and producing biodiesel. The property is tidy and well-organized. Yet a single anonymous complaint from a neighbor was sufficient to send Guerrero before Shelby County Environmental Court Judge Larry Potter.The Judge told Guerrero that anything that generates a complaint is considered a “nuisance” under city ordinances and ordered him to remove any of his property considered “unsightly” or a “nuisance.”

The foundation of the Soviet legal system was the assumption that anything not explicitly permitted by the government was illegal. The chief enforcement agent of the Soviet police system was the citizen informant, someone eager to report his neighbors or family members at the first sign of non-conformity.

In 2007, Laura Soelberg, who conducted a fall garage sale in the church lot next to her mother’s old house in Minnetonka, Minnesota, was also threatened with a fine and jail time after police arrived to shut down the event. The city accused Soelberg of a zoning violation. Her supposed crime, as in the foregoing examples, was using her own property in a fashion disapproved of by municipal bureaucrats.

One city official told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that Soelberg’s events aren’t authentic garage sales, since she uses each of them as “an income-generating venture” rather than to “get rid of items around the house.” That distinction makes sense only to the sort of person who inhabits a bureaucracy, rather than making an honest living.

Some might object that it is hyperbole to compare planning and zoning bureaucrats with Soviet commissars whose decisions consigned tens of millions to insuperable poverty, and millions more to death. But it must be understood that those who presume to control the property of others arrogate to themselves literal power over life and death. No better illustration can be found than the case of Ronald “Bo” Ward, a genial and well-liked man who operated a barber shop in Clarksville, Tennessee.

During the decades that he ran his shop, Bo cultivated a large and faithful clientele. He took a paternal interest in the soldiers at nearby Fort Campbell, often giving them haircuts for free. During the mid-2000s, amid the housing boom, Bo incurred debts by expanding his shop. He found that he could get a debt consolidation loan on his home if it was re-zoned as a commercial property. When he put in a request to the City Council in September, Bo explained that if the loan didn’t go through, “I lose my home, I lose my shop, I lose everything I got.”

During an October 4 meeting, the City Council turned down the request. Distraught, Bo declared: “Y’all have put me under,” then drew a gun and killed himself.

Bo had asked to make more profitable use of his own property, only to learn that, because of the socialist practice of municipal planning and zoning, he didn’t really own that property – including the life ruined by the local zoning bureaucracy.

Many Americans who remember the horrors of the Cold War remain vigilant for any tremor of Communism’s resurgence abroad. The Commies we should worry about it aren’t haunting the halls of the Kremlin or hiding under our beds. They’re doing their ruinous – and potentially – lethal work at City Hall and in county planning boards.

Official music video for Our world Changed

Rhapsody Productions Chicago
facebook.com/rhapsodyproductions#!/rhapsodyproductionschicago

Directed by Kyle Dunleavy
Produced by Becki Pikula

Help We Are Change produce more videos like this! http://www.wearechange.org/?page_id=9453

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http://www.WeAreChange.org

Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth

http://www.ae911truth.org/

Remember Building 7 is a non-partisan campaign led by 9/11 family members to raise awareness of the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7 through television and other forms of advertising, and to shift public opinion such that the New York City Council and Manhattan District Attorney will be compelled to open an investigation into Building 7′s destruction.

http://rememberbuilding7.org/10/

music Gemineye “Ambushed” By Conspirituality http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4QEbONuxiw

DISC TWO: DEFEAT CONSENSUS. Education expert Beverly Eakman has developed a way to bust up pre-programmed consensus shams. She will teach you the tricks that will drive the pros nuts!

DISC THREE: COORDINATION WORKS. Dan Byfield will teach you how to employ the techniques of coordination at home and turn the feds inside out!

DISC FOUR: NEW MEDIA. Talk radio personality Sam Bushman, independent filmmaker Gary Franchi and marketing expert George Shepherd unite to teach you what you need to know to communicate using Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Internet Radio, Talk Radio and Local Access TV.

Topics include: 10th Amendment Movement, the UN’s Agenda 21, ICLEI, Power of the Local Sheriff, Sustainable Development, 2nd Amendment Issues, Real ID, Boimetrics, Health & Wellness, Government Corruption, the New Media and More!

Topics include: Agenda 21, Sustainable Development, 2nd Amendment Issues, Real ID, Boimetrics, Health & Wellness, Government Corruption, the New Media and More!

Mr. Mottahedeh, by combining his formal economic education, practical financial planing/investment experience and freedom seeker understanding of the FED has learned hoe the Monetary system, irresponsible governmental budget and trade policies affect our economy, jobs, investments, business and families.

You will learn why America is at the very least headed for a hard Stagflation (recession in which high unemployment, high interest rates and high bankruptcies, combine with high inflation at the same time)AND AT WORST, A GREAT DEPRESSION, LIKE THE ONE WE HAD IN THE 1930′S. EXCEPT THAT THIS TIME WE WILL HAVE HIGH INFLATION.

Learn how to protect your investments, income and family during this troubling time!

Artis was savoring his long-overdue meal and pointedly minding his own business when he was accosted by James Rollins of the Raleigh Police Department. Rollins asked if “the beer” belonged to Artis, who replied that he didn’t see any beer. Rollins pointed to a discarded can beneath a newspaper rack at least ten feet from the bus stop.

“Why, Officer, if that beer were mine, I would be enjoying it with my meal,” Artis replied equably, turning his attention back to his taco.

For reasons he never deigned to explain, Rollins demanded that Artis produce identification — a demand for which he had neither a legal warrant nor probable cause.

“Why are you asking me for identification? I already told you that the beer was not mine,” replied the puzzled Artis. The officer replied to that entirely reasonable objection by assaulting Artis by grabbing his arm, jerking it behind his back, and then sweep-kicking his feet out from under him. As Rollins kicked Artis’s leg, the victim heard a distinctive cracking sound, a noise that resulted from what was later diagnosed as a left bicondylar tibial plateau fracture.

After landing face-first on the ground, Artis cried out that his leg had been broken. This didn’t deter Rollins from roughly handcuffing him and dragging him to a detention cell. For hours, the hapless and agonized innocent man was taunted and tormented by Rollins and other uniformed bullies, who insisted that he was exaggerating his injuries.

Roughly an hour and a half after being assaulted by Rollins, Artis was taken, by wheelchair, before a judge identified only as Magistrate Bostrum for an initial appearance on entirely spurious charges of having an open container and “disorderly conduct.”

Bostrum demanded that the injured man stand while bond was set. Artis complained that he was unable to do so. Perhaps wanting to improve upon Officer Rollins’ feat of manufacturing an offense, Bostrum slapped the wounded man with a 300-day contempt sentence without bond. Artis spent the night in jail before he was able to receive medical attention. After awaking from surgery, Artis found pins inserted into a leg that could no longer function normally. He also learned that he was no longer in custody. The initial charges were later dismissed when Officer Rollins didn’t bother to appear in court. Artis has filed suit against Rollins and the police department, which – in light of abundant previous experience – will probably result in a taxpayer-funded settlement.

Artis didn’t commit a crime or even a trivial infraction. There is nothing suspicious about eating a taco in public. Why did Rollins even bother him? Leaving aside the possibility that Rollins is simply a sadistic bully (a personality type that is over-represented in law enforcement), it could be that Rollins was trying to “create a presence” — what those who don’t wear government-issued costumes would describe as “looking for trouble,” or manufacturing some where none was easily found.

Anthony and Chrisianna Smith wound up in jail in Foley, Alabama, charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and second-degree assault on an officer because a policeman named Caleb Bibby simply couldn’t resist exercising his “Authoritah.”

Bibby encountered the couple at a Wal-Mart. According to a spokesman for his agency, Bibby was doing a “walk-through” in order “to create presence and let the owners and customers see [him] out and about.” The Smiths saw the officer and for some reason began to berate him. Such behavior is obnoxious and unnecessary – but it isn’t a crime.

Bibby maneuvered them outside and called for backup, and insisted on arresting Anthony. The man refused to go, insisting that he wanted to go home. At that point Bibby had no reason to continue the confrontation – but he did. . He eventually assaulted Anthony with his taser – a brand-new toy recently purchased by the department. Meanwhile another officer tackled Chrisianna from her blind side, an assault on a querulous but defenseless woman that hardly leaves the officer covered in glory.

Click here to view the embedded video.

One key difference between peace officers and law enforcers is that the former, unlike the latter, don’t go out of their way to manufacture trouble.

Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). “We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen.”

Historian Nick Turse, who has spent years investigating covert military operations, describes JSOC as “a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal `kill/capture’ campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA director David Petraeus, calls `an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.’”

Since the 9-11 attacks ten years ago, JSOC’s ranks have grown from about 1,800 troops to roughly 25,000, according to Priest and Arkin. Although it grew out of Delta Force with the encouragement of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the force bears the unmistakable imprint of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who directed counter-insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seeking to “slip out of the grip” of the Washington bureaucracy – and, significantly, the leash of congressional oversight and accountability – McChrystal improvised a joint operations matrix that includes every acronym in the military and Homeland Security lexicon – CIA, NSA, FBI, and other three-letter agencies familiar only to the initiated.

Priest and Arkin write that McChrystal “also began salting every national security agency in Washington with his top commandos. In all, he deployed 75 officers to Washington agencies and 100 more around the world.” In addition, JSOC personnel have been assigned “a bigger role in nonmilitary assignments … including tracing the flow of money from international banks to finance terrorist networks….” They are also involved in “psychological operations” — that is, official propaganda campaigns that are also referred to as “military information operations.”

JSOC officers deployed to U.S. embassies overseas are concealed within civilian agencies. In combat they do not wear rank insignia or carry identification. Interestingly, personnel operating in this fashion meet the definition of “unlawful combatants” as expressed in Supreme Court rulings (such as the 1942 case Ex Parte Quirin, dealing with Nazi saboteurs captured in the United States) and executive branch policy decisions made during the Bush administration.

As investigative reporter John Grant pointed out in>CounterPunch, the purpose of discarding identifying documents and rank insignia is to “avoid accountability” — that is, for the military officials and policymakers whose orders they are implementing. Significantly, JSOC is organized in a cellular structure very similar to the one employed by terrorists and insurgents: By being compartmentalized in this way, those who are captured can only compromise one or two of their comrades, while protecting those in leadership echelons.

McChrystal, characterized by several analysts as displaying quasi-sociopathic traits, authorized JSOC cadres to conduct brutal interrogations that included practices that can only be described as torture. Among the facilities used by JSOC for that purpose is the notorious Camp NAMA (Nasty Ass Military Area) in Iraq, where torture was officially sanctioned and carefully concealed, according to a detailed investigative report by>Esquiremagazine. Military interrogators at Camp NAMA wore civilian clothes with no rank and used cover names. In addition, the task force itself would frequently change its official designation. Grant notes that “McChrystal bragged to his teams at Camp NAMA (Nasty Ass Military Area) that the Red Cross would never visit their compound, which it never did, despite a number of accusations of torture.”

Between 2004 and 2007, 64 soldiers attached to McChrystal’s JSOC command were disciplined for abuse of detainees. Captain Carolyn Wood, an operations officer with the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, filed a sworn affidavit in 2004 testifying of the existence of a document called TF-121 IROE, which supposedly authorized JSOC’s Task Force 121 to employ abusive methods of interrogation. Despite demands by Congressional investigators and several activist groups, the Pentagon refused to release that document. This meant that JSOC’s compartmentalized scheme worked perfectly: A handful of underlings suffered trivial sanctions, and their superiors – all the way up to Gen. McChrystal and his patrons, Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney – were protected.

According to military affairs analyst James Petras, “McChrystal’s rise to leadership [was] marked by his central role in directing special operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations, systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy missions…. The point of the ‘Special Operations’ teams (SOT) is that they do not distinguish between civilian and military oppositions, between activists and their sympathizers and the armed resistance.”

One example of JSOC’s handiwork was March 15 , 2006 slaughter of an Iraqi family in a village called Ishaqi.

A diplomatic cable unearthed by the WikiLeaks whistleblower group describes how a “Multinational Force” (MNF) unleashed a 25-minute fusillade of small arms fire that was followed by an air strike that demolished the house. Ten unarmed civilians – including five small children were massacred in the assault. An autopsy conducted days after the assault found that the victims – including a five-month-old infant – were shot in the head.

This is just a snapshot of the JSOC’s global killing apparatus at work, according to Nick Turse: “In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of

high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once `special’ for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.”

With America on what amounts to a permanent war footing, that

“industrial-strength killing machine” is the refined essence of the government that presumes to rule us.

“He frequently entertained the people with the most magnificent and costly shows, not only in the amphitheater, but in the circus … where, besides the usual chariot races, with two or four horses abreast, he exhibited the imitation of a battle betwixt cavalry and infantry … and in the amphitheater a sea fight,” recorded Suetonius.  Centuries before the advent of nighttime baseball and football, the Roman masses were treated to gladiator fights illuminated by torchlight. Those who packed the Colosseum were also barraged with “sparisones” – gifts of food, wine, and (occasionally) money lavished on the crowd as tangible evidence of their ruler’s purported beneficence.

Of course, the veneration of the Emperor was not uniform. Romans were advised that within the population existed a small sect of seditionists – impious killjoys and spoilsports who weren’t willing to burn a pinch of incense at Caesar’s altar, a small and supposedly trivial gesture attesting to the divinity of the head of state. Eventually, many of those unpatriotic troublemakers – followers of a Jewish religious leader who had been crucified on the orders of Pontius Pilate – would be fed to lions for the diversion of more public-spirited Roman citizens.

The cynical use of sporting events as a tool of political control has been much-discussed since first century Roman satirist Juvenal coined the expression panem et circenses (“bread and circuses”). The “bread and circuses” motif has been used extensively in popular entertainment – from the Star Trek episode of that name through two versions of the film Rollerball, from The Running Man to the post-apocalyptic Hunger Games novels – and their impending film adaptations. In the decade since 9-11 – in fact, in the two decades since the first Gulf War – public sports have become infused with an unmistakably jingoistic subtext.

Many Americans who enjoy sports, but prefer to do so without being conscripted into militaristic liturgies, are finding that the ballpark can be a very inhospitable place.

“I went to a baseball game tonight,” reports libertarian activist Orlando Machado, Jr. “As is customary, the game would be preceded by a recital of the `Pledge of　Allegiance’ and a singing of the national anthem. The good sport I am, I stood up for both – but I neither removed my hat nor placed my hand over my `heart.’ I also didn’t recite or sing a syllable.Well, some older gentleman a few rows back yelled at me repeatedly to remove my hat. If this state pomposity and pageantry is so important to him, why would he take his attention away from it and focus it on me? I ignored him, figured he’d take a hint.”

“Alas, his skull was too dense for any hint to penetrate – once hats were returned to heads and [posteriors] returned to seats, he　scuttered　up to me and yelled:  `How dare you not take your hat off? Don’t you have any damn respect for this country?’…. I calmly replied: `What better way to respect our freedoms than to exercise them?”

Mr. Machado’s unpleasant experience could have been much worse.  Just ask Brad Campeau-Laurion, a devoted baseball fan for whom the August 26, 2008 game was a special experience: It was the last game he would attend in the old Yankee Stadium. The Yankees, like several other Major League Baseball franchises, has set aside the familiar practice of singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the Seventh Inning Stretch, replacing it with a performance of “God Bless America.” There’s nothing wrong with this, of course – as long as it’s not treated as a compulsory ritual.

When the seventh inning arrived and the music began, Campeau-Laurion – who, like thousands of others in attendance, had consumed a beer or two – headed for the restroom. He was stopped by an off-duty police officer working as a security guard.

“He informed me that I had to wait until the song was over,” recalled Mr. Campeau-Laurion, who describes himself as an atheist. “I responded that I had to use the restroom and that I did not care about `God Bless America.’ As soon as the latter came out of my mouth, my right arm was twisted violently behind my back and I was informed that I was being escorted out of the stadium. A second officer then joined in and twisted my left arm, also in an excessively forceful manner, behind my back.”

Mr. Campeau-Laurion and a friend were sitting at the “tier level” in Yankee Stadium, which meant that he was dragged painfully by his assailants down the entire length of the facility. When at one point he complained that he wasn’t resisting and that it wasn’t necessary to hurt him, one of the armed mouth-breathers grunted something to the effect that the victim should shut up or be hurt even more.

As the two thugs and their victim reached the exit, Campeau-Laurion was rudely thrown out, with the first officer sneering, “Get the hell out of my country if you don’t like it.” They then returned to the section where Campeau-Laurion’s friend was still sitting and began propagating falsehoods about their victim, in one instance – within earshot of the witness – telling a fan that Campeau-Laurion had said “This country sucks.”

In similar fashion, when the NYPD was queried about the matter, they did what police consistently do in such matters: They lied with sociopathic composure.

“The officers observed a male standing on his seat, cursing, using inappropriate language and acting in a disorderly manner while reeking of alcohol, and decided to eject him rather than subject others to his offensive behavior,” lied the NYPD in an official statement.

As a lawsuit filed on Campeau-Laurion’s behalf by the New York Civil Liberties Union recounted, the police officers who assaulted him were part of a “Paid Detail” program in which armed police in official uniform are hired out to private – or, at least, nominally private – entities in the city. The Yankees franchise itself, like most major league sports franchises, is a corporatist entity that has received extensive subsidies and regulatory favors (including property seized through “eminent domain”) from the City and State governments. This is one reason why this conflict can’t be dismissed as a case of a private company enforcing a contract with a paying customer. The lawsuit doesn’t exaggerate one whit in noting that since 1970, when the City of New York bought Yankee Stadium, “the New York City government and the Yankees have been closely intertwined” – and, therefore, the First Amendment and the equivalent provision of the New York State Constitution apply.

“Officers assigned to the Paid Detail are acting under color of law and are acting as agents of the private businesses that hire them,” notes the lawsuit. This is a splendidly concise description of a “public-private partnership” – which is to say, a fascist arrangement, albeit on a relatively modest scale.

Mr. Campeau-Laurion managed to extract a $10,001 settlement from New York City — the entity that owned the old Yankee Stadium and owns the new, taxpayer-funded version. The settlement, which included a tidy $12,000 in attorney fees for the New York branch of the ACLU (which profits handsomely from cases of this kind), includes a stipulation from the city that it has “no policy prohibiting fans from moving about” while “God Bless America” plays during the Seventh Inning Stretch, or that it intends to “institute” such a policy, reported the New York Times.

As Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post points out, 9-11 inaugurated an era of perpetual war for Americans – albeit one in which only a narrow slice of the population has direct experience with the battlefield. There are other ways that permanent war can distort and disfigure a society however. As James Madison famously warned, war “is the parent of armies, and from these proceed debts, and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

Open-ended warfare also leads to government-dictated rituals of public conformity, especially veneration of the same military establishment that is devouring the country’s wealth and extinguishing its freedoms. In a country left bankrupt and tyrannized by perpetual war, mandatory veneration of the military is often seen as the only way to preserve social cohesion.

Under a recently enacted New Jersey state law called the “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights,” students accused of bullying “can be reported to the police by their classmates this fall through anonymous tips to the Crimestoppers hot line,” reports the New York Times. Efforts to cultivate informants will begin as early as Kindergarten, with mandatory instruction supposedly intended to teach the difference between “telling” and “tattling.” High School students are told that “there is no such thing as an innocent bystander when it comes to bullying: if they see it, they have a responsibility to try to stop it.” Presumably that “responsibility” would not include intervening to stop abuse when it is administered by a government-licensed bully, such as the police “resource officers” frequently assigned to prowl the halls of junior high and high schools across the country.

The case of 17-year-old Derby, Kansas resident Jonathan Villareal demonstrates how quickly government-authorized bullies can strike. Villareal was beaten, tasered, and handcuffed by police “resource officers” who took offense over the way the high school student was wearing his pants.

Jonthan, on his way to the bus at the end of a school day, was told by a police officer to pull up his pants. The student pointed out that classes were over, he was headed home, and thus he could wear his pants any way he chose to. This prompted the officer to attack the skinny teenager, throwing him to the floor while bellowing, “Stop resisting!” Another officer threw himself into the fray, and both of the government-authorized bullies repeatedly struck the helpless kid with fists and knees.

When Jonathan struggled to his feet, he was thrown down forcefully; he felt his arm snap as he hit the ground. He struggled to his feet again, thereby giving one of the officers an excuse to report that the victim had assumed an “aggressive stance” – thereby supposedly justifying a potentially lethal taser attack. This brutal assault, remember, was carried out by the people who are supposedly deployed in that school to prevent bullying – at least by people not given official permission to assault and abuse the helpless.

The Derby High School newspaper, appropriately called the Informer, explained that students can be subjected to “administrative” discipline for wearing their pants “inappropriately.” Derby Police Chief Robert Lee described the incident as “a flagrant violation of school policy that could have been handled administratively, if he had not resisted the SRO.”

In other words: It was the victim’s fault that he provoked the bullies who beat him.

“Resource Officers” are an increasingly common sight in government schools, and their presence demonstrates that the State’s schools and prisons have more in common than shared architectural schemes and cafeterias that serve the same unpalatable government-grade cuisine.

In his keynote address to the 2007 National Association of School Resources Conference, held against the rugged and forbidding backdrop of Orlando’s Disney World, self-styled tactical and counter-terrorism John Giduck offered a telling glimpse into the mindset of the armed strangers who haunt local government schools:

“You’ve got to be a one-man fighting force…. You’ve got to have enough guns, and ammunition and body armor to stay alive…. You should be walking around in schools every day in complete tactical equipment, with semi-automatic weapons…. You can no longer afford to think of yourselves as peace officers…. You must think of yourself [sic] as soldiers in a war because we’re going to ask you to act like soldiers.” (Emphasis added.)

That’s a fascinating – and troubling – glimpse into the mindset of the armed functionaries who haunt the halls of the local government school. Parents who aren’t content to entrust the safety of their children to specimens of that kind may want to arrange alternative means of educating their young – through homeschooling or private schools. In North Texas’s Arlington and Mansfield Independent School Districts, parents who choose one of those alternatives might find themselves in trouble with the police – thanks, once again, to neighbors recruited by the government to act as informants.

The Arlington and Mansfield Independent School Districts have created an anti-truancy program called “You Earn, They Learn.” Tiara Ellis Richard of the Arlington Police Department explains that when residents see a school-age child suspected of cutting classes, they can call in an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers. The police will then dispatch a “school resource officer” to investigate the complaint. The informant will be paid up to $40 for each confirmed tip.

As is always the case, this rat-on-your neighbor initiative is depicted as a form of applied altruism. It will pose obvious and potentially serious problems for local homeschooling families, who can expect a great deal of unwarranted and potentially dangerous attention from the police.

Every police state relies heavily on the cooperation of those who are willing to inform on their friends in exchange for some trivial material reward – and the intoxicating sense of righteousness that comes from being a tattle-tale.  The obscene eagerness of many Americans to become informants is a telling indication of how far America has strayed from its former status as the “Land of the Free” – and how far we’ve traveled in the direction of becoming a prison society.

On August 29, Detroit District Court Judge Ronald Giles acknowledged that Maryanne Godboldo was morally and legally entitled to use deadly force in an attempt to prevent the illegal abduction of her mentally handicapped 13-year-old daughter. The CPS, backed by local police, insisted that they had a court order authorizing them to seize the child and subject her to involuntary “treatment” over her mother’s objections.

After making an effort to homeschool to child, Godboldo reluctantly enrolled her in a local government school after her circumstances had changed. The youngster underwent a series of school-mandated vaccinations and immediately began to display emotional and behavioral problems. Godboldo sought treatment for her daughter. The child was given a prescription of Risperdal, a dangerous anti-psychotic drug notorious for its severe side-effects, which can include tardive dyskinesia (an inability to control motor functions) and suicidal impulses. Exercising her innate authority as the girl’s mother and primary caretaker, Godboldo discontinued the injections. This prompted the CPS to accuse the mother – who was obviously a caring and conscientious parent – of “medical neglect,” and filing paperwork to seize the child.

With the aid of a police contingent led by an Iraq war veteran named Lt. Michael Nied, the CPS invaded Godbodlo’s home and demanded that she surrender the traumatized child. Godboldo reportedly fired a gunshot at the invaders, sending them scurrying away in search of reinforcements. A paramilitary SWAT team — complete with automatic weapons, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters — was dispatched to surround Godboldo’s home. After a lengthy siege Godboldo was arrested and her child was taken into custody by the CPS. Ironically, within a few days of the incident the CPS discontinued the Risperdal injections – thereby tacitly admitting that no “medical neglect” had taken place.

Godboldo was arraigned on five charges, including illegal discharge of a weapon and three counts of felonious assault. In the hearing before Judge Giles, CPS officials were compelled to admit under oath that the “judicial order” used to justify the raid hadn’t been signed by a judge. Instead, a probation officer used a rubber stamp to forge a judge’s signature on the removal order. In doing so, the CPS official who filled out the paperwork “checked contradicting boxes on the order — stating that both reasonable efforts to `prevent removal of the child from the home were not made’ and that they were made,” reports Detroit ABC affiliate WXYZ.

The CPS also admitted that the officials responsible for rubber-stamping such orders are neither attorneys nor sworn “referees”; they’re simply bureaucratic functionaries in the employ of an agency that profits from seizing children from parents on any available pretext.

Those admissions validated Godboldo’s account of the confrontation: “They broke into my home illegally in an effort to take my daughter. They had no documentation that said they were allowed to enter my home.” Judge Giles agreed with the assessment, dismissing all criminal charges and describing the behavior of the CPS and police as “ridiculous.”

Although the court still claims custody over Godboldo’s daughter, the youngster is residing with an aunt and receives regular visits from her mother. On August 10, a juvenile court jury ruled that Godboldo was guilty of at least one charge of “neglect.” That verdict came despite the fact that Mia Wenk, the CPS official who spearheaded the removal, admitted on the stand that she was ignorant of the child’s medical history. Wenk, who was responsible for the bogus “removal order” in the Godboldo case, has been reprimanded for nearly identical conduct in previous cases involving government seizure of children from supposedly “neglectful” parents.

The rebels whom the U.S. and NATO would install as Libya’s new government entered Tripoli triumphantly chanting “Allah Akbar!”  Many of them had obtained valuable combat experience by fighting American troops stationed in Iraq. The arrival of the supposed “freedom fighters” was heralded with massacres of accused Gadhafi loyalists. Those executed by the rebels included black African civilians living in the capital city, who were denounced as “mercenaries” and summarily slaughtered.  Some elements of the rebel army were led by British SAS commandos disguised as Arab fighters.

Washington’s involvement in the Libyan war is entirely illegal. Mr. Obama didn’t receive a congressional declaration of war, or even a statement of congressional approval; in fact, he didn’t even consult with Congress before committing the U.S. military to the conflict. The administration went so far as to deny that airstrikes and missile attacks on Libyan targets constituted “hostilities.”

While the Obama administration insisted that it had no time to consult with Congress to obtain legal authority to wage war against Libya, it spared no effort to arrange lucrative oil concessions with government-aligned European oil companies.

Veteran foreign affairs correspondent Eric Margolis, who has intervened Gadhafi and studied the region for decades, points out that just a few years ago the Libyan ruler – who was installed in 1969 with the help of the CIA and British intelligence – was “brought in from the cold” by Washington and London.

“U.S., British and Italian oil firms were granted important new concessions, Margolis observes, and the country was hailed by George W, Bush as “an important ally on the war against terrorism.” Republican John McCain of Arizona, who would later support the war to remove Gadhafi, visited the country in 2009 and lobbied for expanded military and diplomatic support for the regime in Tripoli.

However, Gadhafi – who was sitting on a huge stash of gold and some of the world’s largest reserves of “sweet” crude oil – was seen as insufficiently pliant to Euro-American political and banking interests. Thus it was, Margolis explains, that when rebellion against Gadhafi blossomed in Benghazi in early 2011, “French president Nicholas Sarkozy, eager for a small conflict to boost his sagging fortunes with rightwing voters, recognized the rebels and had his intelligence service, DGSE, cobble together a `Transitional Council.’ This nebulous creation was composed of Libyan exiles who had lived in the west – as in the case of Iraq, many were `assets’ of western intelligence. They were shoved together with Islamic militants who turned out most of the armed amateur fighters.” Nearly all of the serious fighting “was done by NATO airstrikes, Predator drones and attack helicopters, vectored into their targets by British and French special forces on the ground,” Margolis concludes. “NATO naval units played an important role in the final attack on Tripoli.”

During a 2009 domestic violence incident in Houston, Texas, an off-duty police officer working as a security guard was overpowered by the male antagonist, who seized the officer’s Taser and threatened him with it. The officer responded by pulling his firearm and shooting the man twice, killing him. The officer was not charged with criminal homicide. That means that his use of a gun to defend himself from a Taser attack was considered a proportionate response – and that a Taser, at least in the hands of someone other than a police officer, is regarded as a lethal weapon.

While it’s true that scoresof people die each year in Taser-involved confrontations with police, the device itself is never the primary cause of death. The culprit in such lethal episodes is not the Taser shock itself, but rather a chronic health problem revealed only in the post-tasering autopsy, such as heart disease.

Accordingly, when an overweight individual who may suffer from type-2 diabetes, cardiac disease, and similar conditions dies needlessly in police custody, we’re told that it wasn’t tasing, beating, and other mistreatment by police that killed him; it was the sudden, lethal expression of an underlying health problem. This rationale was rolled out to explain away the death of 56-year-old Mount Shasta, California resident Daniel L. Mittelstadt, who died after an encounter with a Boundary County Sheriff’s Deputy in northern Idaho last May.

The deputy, who responded to a report of a “naked” man blocking a road with his car, found Mittelstadt wearing a jacket and displaying an “uncooperative and　irrational” disposition. After a brief scuffle, the deputy shot Mittlestadt with his Taser and then handcuffed him. To his credit, the deputy released the cuffs and attempted to perform CPR on Mittelstadt when the subject had difficulty breathing. Mittlestadt died en route to the hospital. A coroner’s inquest ruled that the cause of death was a pre-existing medical condition — atherosclerotic coronary artery disease – and not the sudden trauma of being electrocuted.

A very similar incident occurred last May 10, when 43-year-old Allen John Kephart, of Crest Park, California, was fatally electrocuted by a deputy sheriff in Twin Peaks. The Riverside Press-Enterprise reported that the deputy had seen Kephart run a stop sign and then “confronted” the driver at a nearby gas station. Speaking on behalf of the armed bureaucrat who killed Kephart, San Bernadino County Sheriff’s Office apparatchik Jodi Miller claimed that the victim became “combative” — which in practice could mean merely that he gave the uniformed stalker a dirty look.

“During the struggle to arrest Kephart … he was tasered and lost consciousness,” the paper reports. “Medical personnel began CPR at the scene. Kephart died at 4:25 p.m. at Mountains Community Hospital in Lake Arrowhead.”

In keeping with established custom, the Sheriff’s Office pretended to be mystified over the cause of death, which certainly couldn’t have anything to do with the entirely gratuitous use of the Portable Electro-Shock Torture device. Thus an autopsy was ordered to provide a suitably exculpatory “official” cause of death, which will probably have something to do with a heart condition, high blood pressure, or some other physical imperfection that is survivable as long as the person thus afflicted is spared the lethal attentions of tax-devouring bullies armed with torture toys.

Missing from the terse press account of this act of criminal homicide is any examination of this question: Why was an arrest “necessary” in order to deal with a minor traffic infraction? No mention was made of Kephart being the subject of an arrest warrant for an actual crime. The likeliest explanation here is that Kephart was considered “combative” because he treated the costumed functionary with the contempt such people richly deserve, rather than submitting with the bovine docility such state employees have been taught to expect. Inflicting injury or death as summary punishment for “Contempt of Cop” is an increasingly common practice.

Others who have died following the ministrations of the sanctified purveyors of official violence succumb to a condition called “excited delirium” – which, oddly enough, is only found among people suffering police-inflicted Taser strikes.

The “excited delirium” rationale can also be applied when police kill innocent, non-violent people who are taking prescription drugs for bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, and similar conditions. Thus when police in southern Utah murdered 32-year-old BrHYPERLINK “http://www.deseretnews.com/article/print/705311091/Recordings-show-Cardall-hit-twice-with-Taser-before-dying.html”ian Cardall near Hurricane in June 2009, practically the first words to fall from the mouth of one of the assailants was that Cardall was killed by “excited delirium.” This followed several repeated Taser strikes used to subdue the husband and father during a psychotic episode as his anguished and terrified wife looked on in horror. Cardall, a talented and well-admired young husband and father, had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was reportedly off his medication during a family trip.

Excited delirium is a pitiless condition that preys on even young and healthy people, such as 15-year-old Brett Elder of Bay City, Michigan. For some reason, however, it can only be diagnosed through the application of a Taser strike by a police officer. Doubtless police unions would describe culling such unhealthy people from the population as just one of many services they provide to an ungrateful public.

It’s reasonable to surmise that Mr. Tossa, and many of his relatives, are familiar with the dreaded “2:00 a.m. knock” that is a familiar tactic of secret police everywhere, including in Saddam’s Iraq. It’s also reasonable to believe that once Tossa became a naturalized U.S. citizen, he never expected to experience that kind of state terrorism in America. Nonetheless, Mr. Tossa’s home was recently invaded by a paramilitary team from the DEA, who pounded on the front door of his home at 2:00 in the morning.

When he opened the door, Tossa was greeted by a team of armed strangers who seized him, dragged him to the front lawn in his bedclothes, and held him down at gunpoint with a laser sight painting his forehead while his wife and daughters – who were “half naked” – were also dragged screaming from the house.

“I kept asking, what’s going on?” Tossa later recalled. “And they held my neck to the ground so I can’t talk.” The thugs gave no explanation and certainly didn’t display a warrant. Only after the invaders had scoured the home did they reveal that they were a strike team from the DEA, who were pursuing a relative of the landlord – who didn’t even reside at the address, and whom the Tossa family had never met.

During the assault on his home, Tossa began to experience chest pains that appeared to be symptoms of an impending heart attack. He was treated by paramedics at the scene before being hospitalized. In addition to the costs involved in repairing the damage to their home, Tossa and his family now confront a large medical bill. Tossa told a local Fox affiliate that his daughters are still dealing with the traumatic experience of having their home invaded and seeing their father held at gunpoint by men who appeared ready to kill him.

Although the DEA admits that neither Tossa nor anyone in his family is a criminal suspect, the agency maintains that there was “likely cause” – as distinct, apparently, from the constitutionally required “probable cause” – to search the one-story dwelling. The agency, which hasn’t apologized for the raid, claims to be taking Tossa’s complaint “seriously.”
The use of SWAT teams and other paramilitary squads to carry out routine search warrants has proliferated in recent years. Rather than requiring that police execute standard “knock and announce” searches, judges frequently issue “no-knock” warrants that permit law enforcement agencies to storm the homes of drug suspects, often late at night or early in the morning. The assumption appears to be that staging raids of that kind at inconvenient hours will prevent the loss of contraband that otherwise might be disposed of by suspects. This approach does result in frequent spectacles of excessive force, including no-knock raids at wrong addresses.

Even in the context of the escalating militarization of law enforcement, Tossa’s experience is particularly troubling for two reasons. First of all, because it was literally a case of the proverbial “Two A.M. Knock” that typifies every police state, and secondly because the victims were refugees from just such a totalitarian police state themselves.
“The first thing I thought was they were terrorists,” Tossa later recalled. Nothing about this episode suggests that Tossa’s first impression was incorrect.

The police had been called to the scene by a report that someone was burglarizing cars. Kelly was identified as a suspect, and was uncooperative with the police. Multiple police cars quickly arrived on the scene to provide “backup,” which from many eyewitness accounts – as well as a cellphone-captured video widely publicized through YouTube – resulted in what can only be described as a gang beating. Witnesses have described how the police continued to strike and taser Kelly long after he was left unmoving and helpless.

“The cops are kicking this poor guy over there,” one woman told a bus driver in a conversation captured by an onboard surveillance camera. “All these cops,” “He’s almost halfway dead,” another passenger informed the driver. “They killed him.”

“They’re freaking ruthless,” another witness can be heard in a separate video of the event. “I don’t know why they don’t just put cuffs on him and call it a night, instead of hitting him.”

Eyewitness Mark Turgeon, 42, recalled seing Thomas face-down on the sidewalk with one officer holding him down and another repeatedly hitting him in the back of the head with a flashlight. More officers arrived and Tasered him multiple times, then hogtied him, he said. Turgeon also saw several officers slamming Thomas’s face into the concrete after he was tied. “They just beat and Tasered him until he stopped moving,” Turgeon said.

Although the coroner has yet to make an official finding of the cause of death, an MRI established that Thomas had suffered extensive blunt force trauma to the head. His heart stopped three times on the way to the hospital, resulting in a lack of oxygen to the brain. At the request of his family, Thomas was removed from life support on July 10.

Several Fullerton residents contacted Kelly Thomas’s grieving family to express condolences and share their recollections of the troubled by “gentle” man.

“I have seen Kelly several times over the years at various places in Fullerton and Placentia,” recalled local resident Ron McKee. “He was a very pleasant person. In all the times I had seen him, I never witnessed him being belligerent, aggressive or out of line.”

Megan Senkbeil of Riverside, California, who recalled sitting next to Kelly on a bench and offering him food, informed his family that “he never asked for a hand out, he never bothered anyone for money…. Kelly was never a threat to even a traveling single woman.”

Ron Thomas, a former Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy who teaches arrest and control techniques, contends that the officers involved in the incident weren’t attempting to arrest him as a criminal suspect, but rather “bullying” him “under color of authority” as punishment for “contempt of cop.”

Judge Perry, who issued those orders, tried the case himself, a fact wryly noted by Schmidter, a volunteer with the Fully Informed Jury Association. “I’m not getting a trial by jury, just thought I’d throw that in,” observed the part-time activist in remarks to the judge.

Chief Assistant State Attorney Bill Vose, who prosecuted the case, insisted that while Schmidter’s intentions were good, he was “guilty of criminal contempt beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt.” Interestingly, Judge Perry didn’t find Schmidter guilty of criminal contempt, but rather of “indirect” criminal contempt. What this means is that the prosecutor admitted that Schmidter did not display criminal intent, and the judge admitted that he didn’t directly commit a criminal act. Neither the prosecutor nor the judge could identify an actual “victim” – who in this case would be a juror or potential juror who had somehow been injured by exposure to Schmidter’s literature.

For a crime to exist, three conditions must be met: There must be criminal intent, a violation of a specific criminal statute, and a victim. Any act failing to meet all three of those criteria cannot legitimately be called a crime. Schmidter’s actions fail that test entirely. Furthermore, he was found guilty of a “criminal” offense without the matter being heard by a jury of his peers.

“If we let people do what they want to do and ignore the laws, it would be utter chaos,” insisted Perry in a patronizing little speech to Schmidter as he pronounced sentence. “To come in and ask jurors to disregard laws…is not what this country is based upon.”

In fact, the principle of “jury nullification” dictates that juries have the right and authority to rule both on the facts of a case, and the validity of a given law. This is widely recognized in judicial precedents in both American history and in Anglo-Saxon common law dating back to the Magna Carta or earlier. It is functionaries like Belvin Perry who ignore the law in requiring that juries defer to the instructions of a trial judge, rather than exercising their plenipotentiary authority in the interests of justice.

Adam H. Sudbury, Schmidter’s attorney, promised an appeal. “I think it’s totally absurd to put someone in jail for 151 days for passing out a leaflet,” Sudbury said, observing that Perry’s orders were “too broad and too vague” and “patently unreasonable.” In fact, since those orders were still in effect at the time of Schmidter’s pseudo-trial before Perry, Sudbury was committing an act of “criminal contempt” by discussing it at the courthouse outside a properly designated “free speech zone,” the attorney told reporters – who likewise were in “criminal contempt” of the judge’s decree by taking part in the conversation.

Let it first be understood that raising the debt ceiling is actually a way to continue evading financial obligations.

Secondly, financial affairs commentator Marc Joffe, former Senior Director at Moody’s Analytics, points out that the U.S. government has actually gone into default on at least three prior occasions – most recently in 1979, when the Treasury Department failed to redeem roughly $122 million in T-bills.
The biggest default in American history, however, occurred in August 1971 when the Nixon administration severed the dollar’s connection to gold. As Charles Goyette points out in his book The Dollar Meltdown, this was done because foreign creditors, alarmed over the profligacy of Washington in fighting a distant war in Vietnam while expanding the welfare state, were demanding to exchange their dollars for gold.

Washington defaulted on its obligations forty years ago. Our deepening economic collapse is merely the long-deferred but inevitable consequence of living in a fiat money society. As Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) pointed out on July 18: “Politicians need to understand that without real change default is inevitable. In fact, default happens every day through monetary policy tricks. Every time the Federal Reserve engages in more quantitative easing and devalues the dollar, it is defaulting on the American people.” It is also continuing the decades-long process of defaulting on its debts by using inflated and increasingly devalued fiat currency to make payments on them. This is the chief reason why China – the largest holder of Washington’s debt – is seeking to unload depreciating dollars in exchange for tangible assets of value.

While many protest that Communist China is “buying up” the U.S.A., what is actually happening is that the country is being sold out by Washington and its allies in the banking cartel.
As Rep. Paul observed, drastic action is necessary at this point. On August 1, Rep. Paul (R-Texas) introduced legislation that would lower the federal government’s debt by canceling the roughly $1.6 trillion in debt held by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve began buying Treasury bonds in earnest late last year as part of its effort to keep long-term interest rates down. But as Rep. Paul points out, Fed purchases of Treasury debt represent a debt that the government owes to itself, and is paid through monetary inflation that is absorbed by American households through higher consumer prices. This is a direct transfer of wealth from the public into the hands of the banking cartel. This is done in order to continue the corrupt and profligate arrangement in which Washington’s political class purchases the favor of large constituencies through deficit spending.

Rep. Paul, the leading critic of the Federal Reserve System, insists canceling the spurious debt to the Fed would quickly make the growing fiscal crisis more manageable. Under his bill, H.R. 2768, the $1.6 trillion that the Treasury “owes” to the Federal Reserve would evaporate.

Ron Paul is the only national leader with the experience, record, and credibility to stand up to the debt limit scheme, cut the spending now, and save our dollar.

Find out more about Ron Paul at www.RonPaul2012.com and learn how you can help him win the Republican nomination for President and Restore America Now.

Even when the media does remember Ron Paul, it’s only to reassure themselves that there’s no need to remember Ron Paul.

Jerry Chambliss of Diamondhead, Arkansas was nearly murdered by Fred Ensminger on the evening of July 21, 2010. In the aftermath of a road-rage incident involving Chambliss’s wife, Cindy Nelson, Ensminger pulled up to the couple’s home in his SUV, then hit Chambliss when the homeowner signaled the driver to stop. Ensminger then drew a gun and opened fire.

“This guy …　 just tried to run my husband over!”

exclaimed Arkansas resident Cindy Nelson in a frantic 911 call on July 21. “Oh, my God — he’s shooting at us! Oh, my God!”

A few minutes later, Fred Ensminger — the assailant — placed a 911 call of his own: “This is Diamondhead 1106…. I have been shot and I need medical at my front gate ASAP.”

At the time of the incident, Ensminger, was no common psychotic. He was employed by the Police Department of Diamondhead, a gated community located south of Hot Springs. Owing to a history of disciplinary problems and criminal behavior, Ensminger had been dismissed by at least two other departments, wandering as a “Gypsy Cop” before he was hired by the Diamonhead Police Department. Although Ensminger avoided criminal charges, he — along with the Diamondhead Property Owners Association — has been sued by Chambliss and Nelson, who accuse him of assault and battery, malicious property damage, and false imprisonment.

After Ensminger began his armed assault, Chambliss returned fire. The Garland County prosecutor subsequently ruled that the homeowner had acted in self-defense.

Just a few minutes before a terrified Cindy Nelsontold a 911 dispatcher that a “guy with a badge” was trying to murder her husband, she had passed Ensminger’s pickup truck, which　was parked by the side of the road.

As Nelson started to go around the truck, Ensminger pulled out in front of her. An eyewitness recalled that Ensminger “stopped suddenly,” causing Nelson to slam on her brakes to avoid a collision.

According to the witness, Ensminger climbed out of his pickup truck and began to harangue Nelson. She reacted by pulling around him and proceeding down the road. An infuriated Ensminger followed in close pursuit.

With Ensinger’s pickup truck looming in her rear-view, Nelson called her husband, Jerry Chambliss, and told him that she was being followed. She had no idea at this point that her stalker was an off-duty police officer.
After Nelson entered the gated community, Chambliss went into the driveway “with my arms up, palms out, hollering stop, stop, stop, what are you doing?” he later told investigators.

Ensminger gunned the pickup forward, striking Chambliss and knocking him down. He then compounded this act of attempted vehicular homicide by grabbing his 40 caliber Glock and firing several rounds into the garage. At some point Ensminger punctuated his acts of attempted criminal homicide by flashing his state-issued costume jewelry.

Chambliss raced into the house and retrieved a loaded 9mm handgun and returned fire, striking Ensminger in the shoulder and forcing the assailant to withdraw.

After Ensminger called for backup, Nelson made a second 911 call requesting a police officer. When the dispatcher replied that an officer was already on the premises, Nelson suggested that it might be worthwhile to send someone other than the person who had just perforated her home with gunfire.

Following surgery to remove the bullet he had received as a consolation prize for finishing second in a shoot-out, Ensminger filed the predictably perjurious official report. He claimed to have observed Nelson driving erratically, and that she had attempted to run him over when he displayed the trinket denoting his supposed authority.

That claim was demolished by contradictory eyewitness testimony, which established that while Ensminger screamed at Nelson and wagged a finger in her direction, he never flashed his badge (which wouldn’t have made a substantive difference in either moral or legal terms).

Ensminger offered a similarly mendacious version of his encounter with Chambliss. In the officer’s account, he was confronted by an “angry unknown man” who slammed on the hood of his car telling him to get out of the driveway.

In this depiction, Chambliss shot Ensminger without provocation, and the off-duty cop returned fire in self-defense. Once again, that account couldn’t be reconciled with the evidence assembled during an investigation by the Arkansas State Police.

In his official report, state Prosecuting Attorney Steve Oliver concluded that Chambliss “was justified in using deadly physical force in the defense of himself and his wife on July 21, 2010…. Under Arkansas law, Mr. Chambliss was not required to retreat if he was not the original aggressor.”

This of necessity means that Fred Ensminger, the “original aggressor,” committed multiple acts of criminal assault, and thus be subject to prosecution — correct?

Well, no.

Oliver ruled that Ensminger displayed “poor judgment in his aggressive pursuit of Ms. Nelson to her residence but he acted with the belief that he was justified under color of law.”

This unsupportable, invalid “belief” was considered sufficient to exculpate Ensminger’s repeated attempts to murder Jerry Chambliss. Oliver didn’t provide any other explanation for his decision not to file criminal charges of any kind against Ensminger, who not only remains free but was permitted to continue on active duty with the Diamondhead Police Department.

“Just because he has a badge he does not have the right to come down and kill citizens,” Chambliss complained to Little Rock’s Fox 16 News. According to Oliver, that state-issued bauble does indeed confer the authority to commit acts of discretionary murder. Oliver’s report clearly suggests that if Ensminger had displayed his chintzy totem of official privilege during the highway confrontation with Cindy Nelson, Chambliss would be facing criminal charges.

Significantly, the shootout between Ensinger and Chambliss was originally described by the Diamondhead Police and the local media as growing out of a “domestic dispute.”

Chief Pat Mahoney and Garland County Deputy Judy Daniel told Little Rock’s Fox 16 News that they were concerned about their injured comrade, who had been stricken in the line of duty as he was “investigating” a purported episode of domestic violence.

That official lie is indigestibly rich in irony, given the fact that Ensminger — a “gypsy cop” who has been repeatedly fired and punished for disciplinary infractions and criminal acts — was himself arrested on a domestic violence charge in 2006. The victim in that assault, which took place in front of the police station in Alexander, Arkansas, was a female police officer.

“We are very happy that the officer is OK and extremely glad that the suspect is in custody,” stated Deputy Daniel shortly after that heroic defender of public order tried to murder Jerry Chambliss. “It just makes it easier on everybody, the other officers, his family.”

Note how this description of　 “everybody” refers exclusively to those employed as agents of government coercion. The “civilian” who used righteous force to repel Ensminger’s criminal assault apparently doesn’t count. Mere Mundanes never do.

John Frederick Ensminger, petty criminal and itinerant police officer, should be made the poster child for the problem of “Gypsy Cops” — corrupt, abusive officers who drift from one agency to another, enjoying both immunity from prosecution and unassailable job security. This problem is particularly acute in Arkansas, where no certification of any kind is required to become a police officer.

To become a licensed practicing cosmetologist in the State of Arkansas, an applicant must pass a state board examination and complete 2,000 hours of specialized training. For an investment of 600 hours an applicant can qualify to work as a manicurist or instructor.

While Arkansas strictly regulates those who cut hair or paint nails in private, voluntary transactions, it imposes no training or licensing standards whatsoever on armed people clothed in government-issued costumes and the supposed authority to inflict lethal violence on others.

The second night I ever put on a badge and gun I was riding in my own car,” recalls Crittenden County Chief Deputy Tommy Martin. At the time, Martin was 21 years old and hadn’t spent so much as a minute inside a police academy classroom, notes Jill Monier of Memphis’s Fox News affiliate.

“According to Arkansas state law, officers do not have to be certified for up to a year after they’re hired,” observes Monier. “The Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training says they can get an 8 month extension on top of that. So for almost 2 years, an officer can patrol the streets, by his or herself, and enforce the law without having any kind of training.”

Understandably, this system is a boon to　 “gypsy” cops. Each time a “gypsy” cop finds a new gig in Arkansas, his 12- to 20-month grace period begins all over again; in this way, officers can be enforcing the “law” for years without receiving certification of any kind.

Ensminger, who couldn’t legally cut hair or manicure nails in Arkansas, remains licensed to kill.

Speaking with studious and intimidated vagueness, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has made reference to what he calls a “secret” PATRIOT Act – meaning classified policy that interprets that measure’s provisions far more broadly than the specific language would suggest. As Wired News reports, “one prominent Patriot-watcher asserts that the secret interpretation empowers the government to deploy　`dragnets’ for massive amounts of information on private citizens.”

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Wired. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.” While carefully avoiding specific provisions, Sen. Wyden pointed to the statute’s so-called ”

business-records provision,” which permits the FBI to compel businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations to turn over any “tangible things” the Bureau deems relevant to a security investigation.

In an attempt to reform implementation of the PATRIOT Act, Wyden and fellow Senator Mark Udall affixed an amendmentto the Patriot Act reauthorization that would require the Attorney General to “publicly disclose the United States Government’s official interpretation of the USA Patriot Act.”

During the “mark-up” process for the reauthorization bill, Wyden and Udall introduced the amendment, which would also include a provision instructing the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to produce a “detailed assessment of the problems posed by the reliance of government agencies“  on “interpretations of domestic surveillance authorities that are inconsistent with the understanding of such authorities by the public.” Sen. Udall warned that the federal government had acquired “unfettered” access to massive amounts of citizen information,

For now, Wyden’s considering his options ahead of the Patriot Act vote on Thursday. He wants to compel as much disclosure as he can on the secret interpretation, arguing　that a shadow broadening of the Patriot Act sets a dangerous precedent.

“I’m talking about instances where the government is relying on secret interpretations of what the law says without telling the public what those interpretations are,” Wyden says, “and the reliance on secret interpretations of the law is growing.”

“There is a significant discrepancy between what most Americans – including many members of Congress – think the Patriot Act allows the government to do and how government officials interpret that same law,” wrote the Senators Wyden and Udall in a letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “We believe that most members of the American public would be very surprised to learn how federal surveillance law is being interpreted in secret.” Their concerns were deflected by the Select Committee, which rejected Wyden and Udall’s proposed amendment to the FY2012 Intelligence Authorization Act.

What this means, of course, is that the federal intelligence bureaucracy – the largest, most expensive, most technologically sophisticated, and most invasive secret police agency in human history – will continue to conduct surveillance against American citizens on the basis of rules they contrive, and that they continue to withhold from public scrutiny. In other words: For the foreseeable future, all Americans will be on “double-secret probation” – under unremitting scrutiny, and subject to the whims of people who are entirely unaccountable to us.

The videos “target specific members of the City of Renton and Renton Police Department with the intent to embarrass and emotionally torment the victims,” contends police investigator Ryan Rutledge in a July 11 affidavit filed in the Superior Court for King County. Rutledge contends that the videos – which by any rational definition constitute politically protected speech – are covered by the Washington State “cyberstalking” statute. Although no institutional or personal names were mentioned in the cartoons, Rutledge reports that “three individuals have come forward and identified themselves as being the persons targeted by embarrassing and emotionally tormenting comments about past sexual relationships or dating relationships that were discussed within some of these videos.”

Identified as purported victims are Detective Tanya Gardanar, Sergeant Christy Matthews, and Crime Prevention Specialist Cyndie Parks, all of who are current employees of the City of Renton. Investigator Rutledge persuaded a judge to sign a search warrant demanding that Google’s Legal Investigations Support department provide any information in its possession that could help identify the “suspect.”

The online cartoons were produced with a software program using Lego-like computer-generated figures who speak with computer-synthesized voices. The anonymous cartoonist, identified only as “Mr. Fiddlesticks,” posted them on YouTube and several other file-sharing sites. All of the cartoons are built around brief dialogue exchanges between a mustachioed cop figure and a female bureaucrat.  “The dry, at times, witty banter between the two touches on some embarrassing insider secrets, some of which seem to match up with internal affairs investigations on file within Renton PD,” observed a report broadcast by Seattle CBS affiliate KIRO-TV.

In an example of something that could be considered meta-satire, the cop figure asks: “Is there any reason why an anonymous video, with no identifying information that ties it to the department or city, is being taken more seriously than officers having sex on duty, arguing with outside agencies while in a drunken stupor off duty, sleeping while on duty, throwing someone off a bridge, and having inappropriate relationships with coworkers and committing adultery?”

The bureaucrat replies: “The reason is that internal dirt is internal. The department will crucify certain people and take care of others.”

Although few clues have been made public regarding the suspected identity of the satirist, the content and specificity of the cartoons strongly suggests that the “culprit” is likely to be a dissident police officer or city employee who is acting as a whistleblower, using the cartoons to publicize and condemn institutional corruption. Rather than being a crime, such activism represents a core function of the right to freedom of expression protected by the First Amendment and its state-level analogues.

“The cyberstalking angle doesn’t pass the laugh test,” constitutional attorney Venkat Balasubramani told KIRO-TV. “It’s a serious stretch and I’d be surprised if somebody looked at it and realistically thought these acts actually fit the statute and we could make somebody criminally liable.”

This case underscores what is likely to become a widespread practice if the so-called Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 is signed into “law.” That measure, which recently passed the House Judiciary Committee, would require that internet providers “keep logs of their customers’ activities for one year – in case police want to review them in the future,” reported Declan McCullagh of CNET News. Politically useful persiflage about “protecting the children” aside, that provision would be of tremendous use to police departments and city governments seeking to identify and punish political critics.

Remarkable as the case in Renton, Washington may be, this is not the first time a city government and its armed enforcement apparatus have sought to identify and prosecute an anonymous critic.

In 2008, municipal officials in the town of Whitewater, Wisconsin, particularly Police Chief James Coan, targeted the pseudonymous John Adams, publisher of

www.freewhitewater.com? In a fashion reminiscent of pamphleteers in colonial America’s pre-revolutionary period, the website lambasted the “narrow-minded” political class governing the rural town of 14,000, which is located about 45 miles southeast of Madison. “Adams” charged that Whitewater’s civic leaders constitute “a small, obstinate, and poorly educated local elite.” He also pointedly referred to a former municipal judge who was convicted of lewd behavior as a “vulgar laughingstock.”

Documents pried loose through an open records law request revealed that Whitewater Police Chief Coan directed at least two detectives, the city’s director of public works, its information technology officer and the city clerk — all working on city time and using taxpayer-funded resources — to find the identity of a man who was described as a “suspect” but who had committed no identifiable crime. Taking refuge in the always-useful appeal to “officer safety,” Coan defended his illegal and opportunistic use of money extracted from taxpayers as necessary to assess “potential threats” from “someone who seems so extremely angry at me and with our department.”

Matt Zimmerman, an attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in San Francisco, has pointed out that the Whitewater case was one of several examples of police departments seeking to criminalize criticism of their performance and practices. In December 2007, the EFF successfully shielded an anonymous blogger in New Jersey from a subpoena seeking to uncover his identity. In quashing the subpoena, the judge properly ruled that the effort to unmask the blogger, who had criticized officials in the township of Manalapan, was “an unjust infringement on the blogger’s First Amendment rights.”

Police departments are persistently looking for ways to circumnavigate that troublesome First Amendment. In many jurisdictions they seek to use wiretapping statutes to prosecute citizens who record their public actions. Now the Renton Police Department is attempting to redefine criticism of its performance as a form of “cyberstalking.”

“An excellent job of condensing a large and complicated topic.” -G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature from Jekyll Island

“Understanding the Federal Reserve System has never been easier. A must read!” -George Shepherd, Republic Magazine

“If someone is new to the subject and wants to get up to speed quickly on the Federal Reserve, Joe Plummer’s book is a great place to start, because he’s made the complicated both clear and concise.” -Jim Babka, President of Downsize DC

“This could be the most important book you read in your lifetime! Succinct and illuminating, after reading this, you will possess the knowledge of history’s greatest scam. Read this book. Get your family to read this book. I can’t over emphasize this book’s import.” -Mark Edge, host of Free Talk Live

For decades, many immigration reform activists have expressed fears of a “demographic revolution” through immigration from Latin America. The typical scenario envisioned a large number of immigrants – both legal and illegal – setting down roots in the United States and acquiring citizenship (through conventional means or by way of “amnesty”). This would create a large, ready-made voting bloc that would favor the Democratic Party, which is seen as the champion of the welfare state.

Supposedly, the newly minted Hispanic voters would be a natural part of the Democratic Party’s constituency. Generation Opportunity’s findings, if genuine, tend to complicate that picture considerably, given that the attributes it imputes to the rising generation of Hispanic Americans are more common among political conservatives than they are among people generally sympathetic to the liberal/Democratic viewpoint.

At about the same time Generation Opportunity published its findings, the Pew Hispanic Center announced the results of a study finding that “Births have surpassed immigration as the main driver of the dynamic growth in the U.S. Hispanic population. This new trend is especially evident among the largest of all Hispanic groups-Mexican-Americans….”

Based on the Center’s analysis of demographic data from the Mexican government, the number of Mexicans annually leaving that country from the United States declined 60% between 2006 and 2010 – the same period, ironically, during which alarm over immigration (particularly illegal immigration) spiked in the U.S. This sharp decline reflects “declining job opportunities and increased border enforcement” in the United States, a combination that “may have made the U.S. less attractive to potential Mexican immigrants,” reports the Center. In addition “recent strong economic growth may have reduced the `push’ factors that often lead Mexicans to emigrate to the U.S.”

Current Michigan law permits law enforcement agencies to keep drug-related proceeds, but can be used only for drug enforcement-related programs. The recently enacted measure, HB 4319, would lift that restriction, thereby permitting police departments to use the loot – large amounts of cash, cars, and even homes and other real property — any way they see fit.

Through a practice called “civil asset forfeiture,” law enforcement agencies can seize property and cash suspected of being proceeds of criminal activity – usually drug trafficking. The owner may not be charged with an offense, but the property itself is “forfeited” through a civil proceeding. This often takes the form of what is called an “in rem” proceeding, which is essentially lawsuit filed against the property itself. The threshold for forfeiture is not guilt beyond “reasonable doubt,” but the much less exacting standard of a “preponderance of evidence.”

Michigan State Rep. Kurt Heise, who sponsored HB 4349, insists that the measure is to help police departments in cash-strapped jurisdictions overcome their budget shortfalls.

“Some police jurisdictions, including Canton, have a large surplus of drug forfeiture money that is no longer needed for drug enforcement-related equipment,” Heise wrote in an essay posted to his website. “Like many of Michigan’s local governments, they are struggling financially. This legislation gives them the option to use drug forfeiture funds for other law enforcement expenditures.”
Critics of the new policy point out that it creates a moral hazard fraught with potential corruption, since it “will only encourage more asset forfeitures by local police and sheriff’s departments in order to boost their budget,” observes Ed Brayton of the Michigan Messenger. “The problem is that the asset forfeiture laws give the government the power to seize money and property from citizens on the premise that it was used in or gained from the commission of a crime, but without ever even charging them with that crime, much less convicting them of it.”

In 2009, according to official records, $33.9 million in of cash and property were confiscated and “forfeited” by Michigan law enforcement agencies. Critics of HB 4349 contend that lifting all restraints on potential use of forfeiture will inevitably lead to widespread abuses.

“Police can now seize property and assets that they believe have been used in the commission of a crime,” observed Michigan State Sen. Tupac Hunter, who represents Detroit. “This means that people can lose their car, their money, and even their homes. This is perfectly reasonable if an investigation leads to a person being charged and subsequently convicted. But if the police fail to bring charges, or if someone is found to be innocent, then keeping their property is not a fair application of our forfeiture laws.”

Speaking with the Michigan Messenger, Sen. Hunter described his own forfeiture reform proposal, which would “protect innocent citizens by requiring that a person’s property and assets be returned to them in a timely manner and that an innocent individual not be charged any impound or forfeiture fees.”

On March 15, 2009, a neighbor called the police to report what he thought was a break-in by a suspect described as a black male. Nine police responded to the call. After being denied entry, they burst into the home and demanded that Sauceda – a mentally handicapped man who speaks very little English – come out of the bathroom, where he had hidden himself. The police eventually extracted the terrified man from the bathroom, using pepper spray, pepper-ball ammunition, fists, and clubs to subdue him.

Robbery charges were quickly dropped. According to Sauceda’s defense attorney, Ryan Deaton, the charge of “evading” and “resisting” arrest was initially dropped by Angelina County Attorney Ed Jones – but was reinstated when Sauceda announced plans to file a lawsuit against the police. Jones insists that the case had to be taken to court because “the statute says that you do not have the right to resist the arrest. We were going to try the case no matter what.”

Title 8, Sec. 38.03 of the Texas Penal Code specifies that “It is no defense to prosecution under this section that the arrest or search was unlawful.” The defense at Sauceda’s trial contended that the force employed by the police was so wildly disproportionate – and so obviously unnecessary – that it would be manifestly unjust to punish a confused, frightened man for what amounts to the “crime” of being beaten up in his own home by police.

“A person should feel secure in their own home, no matter [whether] black, white, Hispanic, Asian, I don’t care who they are, they should feel secure in their home,” Deaton observed in closing arguments at the trial. “The police have no right to come in your house and push you around and beat you up and do the things they did on March 15, 2009.”
Before coming back with the verdict, the jury, which deliberated for about four hours, sent trial Judge Derek Flournoy a note indicating that they would find the defendant guilty, but that since he had been “wronged” the judge should display leniency. The Judge didn’t agree with the Jury’s characterization, lecturing Sauceda that “I don’t agree you are a victim in this case” and insisting that when the terrified man hid in a bathroom he “put … the officers in harm’s way.”

Flournoy told Sauceda that absent the jury’s unusual request, the sentence would have been six months behind bars. After the gavel rang down, Sauceda was taken directly from the courtroom to being his time in jail.

This wasn’t a scene from North Korea, Libya, Iran, or Venezuela. Instead, it happened on June 28 in Quartzsite, Arizona, a town of about 3,600 in the western part of the state. Once known as the “Rock Capital of the World,” and a refuge for thrifty people fleeing the expense and corruption of larger cities.

“People come here to live cheaply; they know how to live within their means and they want their government to do so, too,” local activist and reporter Jennifer “Jade” Jones recently told the New York Times. It Ms. Jones who was arrested and brutalized during the June 28 public Town Council meeting. That event was captured in a video subsequently broadcast to millions via YouTube and Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Fox News program, Freedom Watch. As a result, this obscure western Arizona town – and the escalating feud between a reformist mayor and an entrenched Town Council and police chief – has become an international controversy.

“There’s a cabal running Quartzsite,” Mayor Ed Foster fold the Arizona Republic, “and I’m about to take it down…. “They make up laws as they go. They think they are a kingdom here, and because we’re a small town, they’ve gotten away with it.”

Foster, a retired engineer, was an outspoken critic of what he describes as a municipal oligarchy before being elected in 2009. During the past three years, Quartzsite has been through five mayors and endured three recall elections. Foster himself faces a recall in August, the latest development in what may prove to be the most incendiary municipal feud to take root in Arizona since two opposed factions settled their dispute in a 30-second paroxysm of violence that occurred near the OK Corral in October 1881.

Last May, Foster attempted to convene a town meeting to discuss the grievances of roughly two-thirds of the town’s 14 police officers. Alleging abuse of authority – including arrests of political enemies on contrived charges – the whistleblowers urged that Police Chief Jeff Gilbert be investigated. More than 100 citizens arrived at City Hall, only to find that the Town Council had boycotted the meeting. In short order the janitor – suddenly promoted to the august position of “assistant town manager” – arrived to announce: “City Hall is closed, and this meeting is over.” Officers loyal to Chief Gilbert then cleared the hall under threat of arrest. It was at a subsequent Town Council meeting when Ms. Jones, a blogger who also publishes an independent local newspaper, was arrested for “disorderly conduct” for attempting to speak during a public comment portion of the assembly.

After the incident went public via the web, the Town Council declared a “state of emergency.” It has announced that future meetings will be held without public notice, and that input from the public will be prohibited.

At least 10 residents of the tiny town – including Mayor Foster – claim to have been arrested on petty offenses after making public criticism of the Town Council and Chief Gilbert. In 2009, Foster – who published an independent newspaper called The Mineshaft — was accused of “disorderly conduct” for verbally disagreeing with a member of the Council; shortly thereafter, Chief Gilbert attempted to prosecute Foster for “false reporting of an emergency” when Foster published a report questioning the quality of the local water supply.

An investigation by the Arizona state ombudsman found that the Town Council was in violation of the state’s public-records laws. As is to be expected, the dispute boils down to money – the disposition of increasingly scarce municipal funds amid an ever-worsening economic crisis.

“I’ve been trying to find out where all the money goes in this place,” Foster complains. “But the town manager won’t even speak with me … and the council passed a law that says I can’t get any reports.” And in a fashion reminiscent of a Third World junta, the Town Council’s power depends not on the written law, but the loyalty of men with guns.

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