First, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kevin and I am part of an amazing staff here at Republic Magazine. As part of my duties as an editor for website and issue content it is my responsibility to seek out individuals with special talents and skills related to political concepts and issues. With that in mind I decided to schedule a post for the site informing readers and visitors that we are currently seeking guest bloggers and writers for the Republic website. Do you currently own/operate/manage a politically themed website/blog/forum? If so then you more than likely meet or exceed the criteria to be considered eligible for submitting material as guest bloggers. This does not mean that those without the above mentioned criteria are exempt from being given a chance to contribute as guest bloggers. As patriots one of the basic core elements of our lifestyles is the compilation, distribution and sharing of relevant information.

So what do guest bloggers need to do in order to be considered for this opportunity?
1. Research, write and submit a survival related article on any AOE (Area Of Expertise) you consider yourself to have.
2. Use proper SEO guidelines. You do not have to be an internet guru and know all of the ins & outs of SEO and how it functions. Simple SEO guidelines will be offered later in this post.
3. All guest bloggers must submit original copyright free content. Curating content from other websites is acceptable so long as it has been credited to the originating source. (This will also be described in further detail via email correspondence).
4. All guest bloggers are permitted to include back links to any websites/blogs/forums they are directly responsible for. (Links to other sites which guest bloggers visit to read and comment on are generally excluded unless content has been curated from said source).
5. A firm grasp of the English language, grammar and punctuation is greatly appreciated but not absolutely necessary. (As the editor I will assist in fixing content prior to putting it up on the site).
6. Guest bloggers may also include a short 2-3 sentence bio detailing who they are and how they obtained their expertise or experience (i.e. 20+ years Special Forces, EMT career oriented, etc.).

These are the basic stipulations for those interested in possibly becoming guest bloggers on the Republic website. We reserve the right to edit, alter, modify or otherwise make changes to any and all contributed content with or without the originating authors consent or approval. All material content becomes the sole property of Republic Magazine upon submission. Material that is not edited and/or published will be returned/released from copyright considerations at which time the original author may do with it as they please.

Simple SEO Guidelines:
• Select a keyword(s) (example: Down with Democrats) Use keyword(s) in Title of article.
• Use keyword(s) throughout content body of article moderately. Make sure the keyword(s) remain consistent and constant. (In other words do not use variations of the keyword(s) as this will serve to negate SEO tactics. Ex. ‘Putting Democrats Down’ will not have a positive SEO impact for the article.
• Keyword(s) density should be between 1-2%. (For every 100 words the keyword(s) should be included 1-2 times).

If you are interested in becoming one of the guest bloggers for Republic follow these steps for consideration.

• Email me at kevin@survivalist.com.
• Include your name, age range (no need to get specific; decades will suffice. 20-30, 30-40, 40-50, etc.).
• List your AOE’s related to politics.
• Include primary email address for continued correspondence.
• Include primary phone number (if you wish to be contacted via phone rather than email).
• Include a sample of your writing capabilities. (Note any curated content with a subheading for the site curated from. Highlight the content curated for easy identification).
• Word count for sample content should be in the 300-500 range. (Most guest blogs for the site will be in the 500-750 word count range to allow for curating).

Questions, concerns and comments can be directed to the email address provided above. I check my correspondence daily Monday—Friday and will reply within 24 hours. We look forward to hearing from our readers and getting everyone more involved with the Patriotic lifestyle of sharing and communicating!

The Benghazi blame game is currently being played out on the front pages of newspapers all across America. The two main names associated with the Benghazi blame game are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Since Barack and Hillary both come from the same political demographic, the Democratic Party, the Benghazi blame game may be targeting an entire political platform rather than a specific person to be held responsible. It goes without saying that many of the questions and concerns surrounding the Benghazi ordeal have been left unanswered, avoided or explained away with the wave of a hand and the claim that exposing information would place our country’s national security at risk. In the Benghazi blame game the Democratic Party finds itself in the position of either having to own up to and accept responsibility for the actions of a few members, or it must continue to deny involvement and risk further damage once some form of truth has been determined.

CNN:

“Many Republicans see the deadly attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi and the initial reaction by the State Department and the White House as a huge scandal, one that they feel Democrats tried to cover up with the president’s re-election, at the time, less than two months away.”

The Benghazi blame game is just the latest example of how bipartisan politics actually work. Utilizing the Benghazi blame game to identify key players from one party as the main participants isn’t just about rectifying and correcting corruption at the highest ranks right now. The results of the Benghazi blame game will have an impact on the 2016 election process as well, or at least that is part of what the Republican Party hopes for.

CNN:

“Obama can’t run for a third term and Clinton, who’s weighing a White House run, would be the instant front-runner for the Democratic nomination if she launches a bid for president.

Clinton stepped down as secretary of state with sky-high poll numbers, but the incident in Benghazi is a stain on her record at the State Department.

The question is whether it could come back to haunt her if she does seek the presidency.”

Personally I don’t think there is a shadow of doubt as to whether or not the Benghazi blame game will come back to haunt her. Regardless of the final outcome the simple fact that Hillary was mentioned in connection with the Benghazi debacle will fuel the fires of public debates between her and any of the other nominees. Barack, being the first African American elected to the position of POTUS, has all but ensured future African Americans will have twice as difficult the time of running for the highest office. Hillary, being female and holding the front running position for the Democratic Party nomination, has pretty much single handedly ensured the same level of difficulty for females running in the future.

Right or wrong, moral or not, the fact remains that the Benghazi blame game has instilled the fear of forgetfulness across the entire scope of the right. On the left it has caused several followers to question their judgment and consider hopping the fence and running under a different banner.

The American public will not be allowed to forget the Benghazi blame game in 2016. It will be replayed on the center stage of the election campaign trail with both parties pointing to their own supporting evidence to make their case in the public forum. Voters in 2016 will bear in mind the ethnicity, gender and political affiliation of the key players identified through saturated press coverage practices. All things considered this should play out very well for the Republican Party at all levels of government during the next elections. If they use the Benghazi blame game to the best of their abilities, then the tables of the House & Senate should be tilted firmly in their favor.

By now most of us are familiar with United Nations Agenda 21 programs and policies which are being voted on without the approval of the general consensus of the American population. Heralded as a “sustainable development” system, all of the various programs and policies associated with it are by and large grabs for more power and control. In order to establish a tighter grip on a population these programs must be instituted at the earliest possible educational stages of human learning. Common core curriculum falls under the Agenda 21 umbrella regardless of what fancy language and national advertising campaigns are trying to persuade us into accepting and believing.

If common core curriculum is allowed to be instituted throughout the American public education system, then it will signal the beginning of an inevitable end. Common core curriculum consists of material and content authorized by the federal government and United Nations. This type of education will twist and pervert the history of our country for future generations. The heroic stories you and I grew up with in our formative years will be put on display as atrocities carried out by early Americans. Common core curriculum will also entice future generations to accept what is being offered as factual. It will also embody further fear mongering tactics which will eventually lead to less liberty for the individual and more power for the elected elite.

Snipped:

“Common Core is an integral part of UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development: globalization is the standardization of systems. Whether the system is law enforcement or land use or government, the standardization, harmonization, and integration of all international methods of management is essential for total control.”

Common core curriculum is a buy-in blanket propaganda program. It will inform our future generations that the actions of their ancestors are directly responsible for the human condition across the planet. In doing so these future children will be forced to believe that Agenda 21 sustainable development rules and regulations have been enacted to ensure the safety and security of all continents and countries. Common core curriculum will allow an easier transition of control of the collective thought condition.

Snipped:

“Education is the flash point for embedding system acceptance in all sectors of the population. Standardized propaganda is developed for pre-kindergarten to post graduate school; this is what is meant by ‘Life Long Learning.’

Breaking down traditional methods of learning in order to re-socialize the populace is the goal. Obedient, dependent people who are constantly being propagandized will provide the ‘human capital’ to fully implement UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development.”

Basically common core curriculum will pervert the thought process for individuals and entice them to freely give up their rights for a ‘brighter’ future. If we allow our children to be corrupted by an educational system incorporating common core curriculum, then we will be providing the federal government with the faithful unquestioning followers it has always desired. This is all about controlling the minds of the young with regard to the direction those in power would like the country to follow. Our children are already beginning to be subjected to common core curriculum in the current classroom. We see it through subversive actions such as suspending students for exercising their rights to free speech through the attire they wear to class. We need to refuse enrolling our youth in any educational system that utilizes any portion of common core curriculum.

Growing disparity among the American population has caused several anti-Obama groups to call for Presidential impeachment procedures to begin. Some of the people calling for Presidential impeachment procedures understand how this process works, whereas others think the process ultimately results in the resignation and removal of the elected official in question. The Presidential impeachment procedures in America are a complex process. The POTUS charged with offenses worthy of being impeached is not always removed from office, nor do they always face additional criminal charges or face imprisonment. Before everyone goes jumping on the Presidential impeachment procedures bandwagon it would be wise to research the topic and come to the understanding that this policy generally amounts to a ‘time out’ or slap on the wrist.

If you recall recent U.S. history, Bill Clinton, the 42nd sitting President endured the Presidential impeachment procedures. Due to the nature of how Presidential impeachment procedures work Clinton was not convicted of the charges brought forth and was allowed to finish his term in office. Presidential impeachment procedures are handled by the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, not a federal court of the Justice Department.

Wikipedia:

“The impeachment process is a two-step procedure. The House of Representatives must first pass, by a simple majority of those present and voting, articles of impeachment, which constitute the formal allegation or allegations. Upon their passage, the defendant has been “impeached”.”

This is the first step of Presidential impeachment procedures. Even if the House of Representatives obtains enough votes to send the charges listed in the articles of impeachment to the U.S. Senate it does NOT mean the accused will be found guilty. The actions of the House are similar to that of a traditional jury. They hear the charges and vote on a conviction and then their part of the Presidential impeachment procedures is finished.

Wikipedia:

“To convict the accused, a two-thirds majority of the senators present is required. Conviction automatically removes the defendant from office. Following conviction, the Senate may vote to further punish the individual by barring him from holding future federal office, elected or appointed. Conviction by the Senate does not bar criminal prosecution. Even after an accused has left office, it is possible to impeach to disqualify the person from future office or from certain emoluments of his prior office (such as a pension). If there is no charge for which a two-thirds majority of the senators present vote “guilty”, the defendant is acquitted and no punishment is imposed.”

This is the second step of Presidential impeachment procedures. The Senate in this case acts as the Judge and Executioner, so to speak. While the Chief Justice of the United States presides over any and all Presidential impeachment procedures, they are basically nothing more than a figurehead. They do not cast a vote in the process, nor do they have the authority to overrule the voting process of the Senators and issue a conviction if the Senate does not obtain enough votes to convict on their own.

Basically speaking Presidential impeachment procedures are an eminence front. They are a symbolic gesture to indicate to the general public that the government by the people is actually for the people.

Obama’s actions both domestically and internationally, and especially regarding actions against American citizens, would seem worthy of considering Presidential impeachment procedures. The history of Presidential impeachment procedures in the United States indicates the process has been undertaken twice throughout our country’s electoral history. In both instances the sitting President at the time was NOT convicted or removed from office. It therefore stands to reason that even if Presidential impeachment procedures are begun against Obama the outcome will not be his removal from office or additional civil and criminal charges being pressed. Presidential impeachment procedures are an issue that needs to be seriously addressed here in America.

For the last 4 weeks the news reports in America have been focused on a few hot topics. The Boston Marathon Bombing has been nothing short of a complete mess of misinformation. At the onset several MSM agencies were quick to jump on the “domestic terrorism” band wagon. Even before they had suspects the finger pointing had begun. The federal agencies tasked with unearthing evidence associated with acts of terrorism were quick to admit they had NO idea who was responsible for this act. ASM news agencies were just as quick to begin dismantling reports offered by the MSM and construct opposing theories that held just as much if not more weight than those issued by mainstream mouthpieces. So far we are no closer to knowing the real truth of what took place that day. Several issues remain muddled at best. What we are sure of is that this fiasco shed light on just how ineffective our intelligence agencies truly are. This past week we began to see the federal follow up program swing into full effect.

Policymic:

“The FBI may have thwarted a major domestic terrorism attack last week that could have killed several people. The FBI announced on Monday in a press release that they have arrested a man in Minnesota who they suspect was in the planning stages of a domestic terrorist attack.”

Let’s keep in mind that this same agency claimed they had NO previous knowledge of a terrorist attack planned for the Boston Marathon Bombing. Now, less than 4 weeks after that fatal day, these perfectionists would have us believe they uncovered and thwarted another potentially deadly terrorist attack on U.S. soil. This is really just part of the federal follow up program. It appears to be designed as a ‘feel good’ story. It serves to alter the collective course of thinking for the general public. It assures them that although the FBI failed miserably in Boston, they have abolished complacency and are now completely in control of collecting intelligence and using it effectively. As the federal follow up program continues to swing into full effect we are likely going to hear more of these stories in the very near future.

FBI.gov:

“The FBI believes that a terror attack was disrupted by law enforcement personnel and that the lives of several local residents were potentially saved. The terror plot was discovered and subsequently thwarted through the timely analysis of intelligence and through the cooperation and coordination between the aforementioned agencies. Special Agent in Charge of the Minneapolis Division of the FBI J. Christopher Warrener stated that “cooperation between the FBI and its federal, state, and local partners enabled law enforcement to prevent a potential tragedy in Montevideo.””

Like any other federal follow up program the statement released to the general public through the MSM lacks any factual evidence. The second sentence in the paragraph above indicates this as a federal follow up program. ‘Discovered,’ ‘thwarted,’ ‘timely analysis,’ ‘cooperation,’ and ‘coordination,’ have all been used in this sentence to describe an agency that less than a month ago couldn’t find water if they were strapped to a boat in the middle of the Pacific. The sole purpose of the federal follow up program is to get deflect and divert our attention away from the failures discovered during Boston.

Swampland:

“Loven declined to elaborate about the location of the alleged target, other than to say it was believed to be in Montevideo, a city of about 5,000 people about 130 miles west of Minneapolis. He also declined to say whether Rogers was believed to be acting alone or as part of a group, or if other arrests were expected.

“This is a very active investigation,” he said. He added that at this point, authorities are “looking at this from a domestic terrorism standpoint.””

As any good federal follow up program should, this one offers very little information or evidence. It also engages the reader to believe more arrests of domestic terrorists could follow in the near future. They not only seem to want to quiet and calm the fears of the general public, they also seem to making an indisputable push for finding domestic terrorism at all costs. The more frightening the future looks on paper the more willing they expect us to be to abolish our few remaining liberties as the price of more effective security.

Did you ever wonder where all of those WMDs Saddam Hussein was supposed to be housing in Iraq went? Shortly after 9/11 we, the general public, were informed that a second war in the Middle East country of Iraq was going to take place. Our POTUS at the time, ‘Dubya’ let it be known that Iraq possessed an arsenal of WMDs. These weapons of war were reportedly being used against Kurdish populations hovering near the north border. Our troops were assembled and shipped overseas to dismantle the Hussein regime and locate these deadly devices. They never found them and where they went or if they ever existed remains a mystery. Enter the current age and Syria has popped up on the international map. Obama is the current POTUS and as such seems all but ready to engage another Middle East country in what will more than likely turn out to be another witch hunt for WMDs. They are pretty sure Syria has them, but before we go on another witch hunt for WMDs they want to make sure they will be able to find something to burn at the stake.

Clip:

“President Barack Obama said he wants more information about chemical weapons use in the Syrian civil war before he decides on escalating U.S. military or diplomatic responses, despite earlier assertions that use of such weapons would be a “game-changer.””

You can almost see Barry standing in the desert redrawing the line to be crossed before he decides to send in U.S. troops and keep the gears of war grinding. It is after all a profitable industry if you are on the right side of the system. Another witch hunt for WMDs in Syria could last at least another decade, give us time to either self-destruct or find a new international hot head country to interfere with.

Clip:

“With the U.S. disengaging from the unpopular war in Afghanistan and still smarting from the difficult conflict in Iraq, Obama has been reluctant to unleash American military power in the Syrian fighting, a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people.”

With two ugly wars coming to an end the wheels have been hard at work in Washington looking for another area of interest to get involved in. Obama’s administration has basically laughed in the face of North Korea and increased military exercises in the region. Could this be a provocative gesture employed by the administration to try and get North Korea to make the first move? The Syrian situation leads one to believe Obama doesn’t want to appear as though he mounted another witch hunt for WMDs to enter into the affair.

Clip:

“”What we now have is evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria, but we don’t know how they were used, when they were used, who used them. We don’t have a chain of custody that establishes what exactly happened. And when I am making decisions about America’s national security and the potential for taking additional action in response to chemical weapon use, I’ve got to make sure I’ve got the facts. That’s what the American people would expect.”

This exact statement sounds extremely similar to others made shortly after the Boston Marathon Bombing and yet we still have thousands of unanswered questions about the events that took place that day. I have a sinking suspicion our American forces will spill blood on another patch of dirt in the Middle East once another witch hunt for WMDs has been authorized by his heinous highness with or without the approval of the high court. When we are done with Syria will we go on another witch hunt for WMDs in Iran? Why are we so interested in the Middle East anyway? If they have no desire to convert to the American Dream shouldn’t we allow them to suffer their own demise?

Civil unrest and state secession discussions have been an ongoing hot topic for more than a few weeks. In fact ever since Obama’s 2nd election civil unrest and state secession stories have increased dramatically from almost every state currently in the Union. Many people see some of the current signs as early warning signs that our country may be headed for enormous amounts of civil unrest and state secession. The state of Texas has acquired enough signatures to provide the federal government with a petition for seceding from the Union. Other states have followed suit signing and submitting petitions of their own. I recently came across an article that discussed the possibility of a cultural divide resulting in more internal civil unrest and state secession from the Union. It should be no secret that our country is teetering on the edge of both civil unrest and state secession.

LNO:

“GUN CONTROL–Our nation has tolerated the gun control campaign for decades because it has been relatively gradual. Exploiting gun crimes has been a trick that leftist politicians have used to deceive the people into thinking that less guns will make us safer, when the opposite is a documentable fact (To see the association between gun laws and gun crimes over the last several decades, read More Guns, Less Crime by John Lott).”

Even with the most recent gun bill failing on the Senate floor the elected elite are not through with the issue by any means. In what could easily result in immediate civil unrest and state secession some senators have indicated they will push for the bill to be voted on again before the end of the year.

LNO:

“WELFARE (& ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION)–Our nation has tolerated the expansion of welfare because we have been duped into believing that it is charitable. However, resistance is rising. People are fed up with wealth redistribution, corporate welfare, with bailouts of multi-million dollar companies and Wall Street executives. People are fed up with illegal aliens entering this country to suck on the taxpayer nipple.”

Welfare & illegal immigration is looked upon as being charitable, yet being self-reliant, such as in survivalist/prepper communities, is frowned upon by the elected elite. Will this be the issue that sends the country spinning into civil unrest and state secession?

LNO:

“ABORTION–Our nation has tolerated the shedding of innocent blood for forty years. Fifty-five million babies dismembered and disemboweled since 1973 – 25,000 annually in Ohio. Attempts to protect the right-to-life for every preborn baby statewide without exception are gaining ground. Over a million signatures have been gathered nationwide to ban all abortion in state law.”

This could easily end up being the tipping point that results in civil unrest and state secession. Several states already have anti-abortion laws on the books. Obama is a supporter of Planned Parenthood which in turns supports abortion as a means to an end.

LNO:

“SAME-SEX MARRIAGE–Our nation has tolerated the brainwashing of our public school children with “safe sex” nonsense and homosexual propaganda for decades. The homosexual agenda has bullied into apathy a long line of former opponents, from Christian pastors to Republican leaders. But if the sodomites push too hard, it may backfire. If the Supreme Court, for example, makes same-sex marriage a constitutional right nationwide, defying state law, they may have drawn the battle line so far to the left that their friends find themselves on the side of their adversaries.”

Gay rights are always a hot topic for which there is no middle ground, you either support it or you don’t. This could also result in civil unrest and state secession. It probably wouldn’t present the same type of battleground as other hot topic issues would as I don’t think people in gay communities would take to the streets armed with guns to present their position. They never have in the past so it stands to reason they wouldn’t in the future.

LNO:

“FINANCIAL IRRESPONSIBILITY–Our nation has tolerated Congress’ lack of fiscal responsibility only because the changes have been so gradual. If the left pushes too hard on one or more of these issues – gun control, welfare, abortion, or gay marriage – or if a fiscal crisis ensues that turns the red states more firmly against the popular policies of the blue ones, states may choose to resist federal tyranny and take a path of liberty that our nation long ago abandoned.”

Many of the financial gurus in this country have been warning of an economic collapse for several years. The writing has been permanently etched on the wall for all to see. An economic collapse would undoubtedly trigger civil unrest and state secession.

Honestly I think if you still believe this country operates under the principles of democracy you have been in a comatose state of being for the past few decades. The internet is full of chatter on social networking sites from groups touting themselves as “patriotic,” or advertising the site as a portal for “We the People.” There are small pockets of disgruntled citizens all over the country who it would seem are supportive of the notion that massive government reform is in order. The federal government and its various agencies on the other hand continue to look for ways to rewrite the Constitution to their benefit. CISPA is the recent example of this.

Each and every day the list of “rights & freedoms” we supposedly enjoy in this country gets incrementally smaller and smaller as they find new bills to pass or Executive Orders to bypass the letter of the law. Hell I know people who are afraid to go purchase a pressure cooker for canning because they do not want to be visited by 400 heavily armed and invasive troops looking for domestic terrorists. In the midst of everything going on in this country the government continues to try and push through new laws such as CISPA. CISPA will be the ultimate death of democracy. It will also completely destroy any hopes we have of being protected under the 1st, 4th and 5th Amendments.

WND:

“While we were transfixed by the explosions in Boston and Texas, the U.S. House passed the controversial CISPA, the The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. Intended to get companies and the government to share info on cyberthreats, the bill passed 288-127 with bipartisan support and 17 abstentions.”

It’s almost as if there is a pattern being set here. Every time we experience some form of tragedy in this country it entices elected officials to bring forth stricter laws against all citizens. They may name a target group of people the bill is aimed at but the bill itself is in blanket form and affects everyone living in the country. What will CISPA allow the federal government to do?

WND:

“Said to violate Fourth Amendment protections, the legislation will next be considered by the Senate. According to ZDNet.com, CISPA will allow companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google and other private sector, tech and telecom companies – including your cell phone service provider – to search personal and sensitive data of average U.S. residents to identify “threat information.”

If CISPA passes it will not only affect an individual’s 4th Amendment rights, it will use any language deemed threat worthy to identify a “suspected terrorist,” a clear violation of our 1st Amendment rights. We will have to keep our thoughts, opinions and unhappiness to ourselves. In addition CISPA will wipe its dirty feet all over our 5th Amendment rights as well. If the federal government is allowed to eavesdrop on our conversations, anything and everything we say can and will be used against us in a court of law, without being advised of our rights or informed that we are under investigation.

We have already witnessed how federal government agencies work together to misidentify select groups of people. We can therefore assume that CISPA would allow them to misinterpret any language captured and shared through the participating agencies and businesses and use it to start investigations, interrogate potential suspects and file charges against them they wouldn’t otherwise have been faced with. CISPA tells us that our federal government is in serious need of restructuring, reorganizing and reforming. We cannot continue to sit quietly by in fear of being added to a list or singled out. “We the People,” are all in this together!

We’ve all been paying attention to the news lately. If you have Google Alerts set for ‘DHS’ like I do, then you probably wake every morning to at least 10 different news stories involving this illustrious agency of the federal government (Don’t give me a hard time; they’re the ones that started using misnomers and sarcasm for journalistic reporting, I’m just trying to follow suit). The DHS, it would appear, is a hot bed of illicit and possibly even illegal activities. If the double lightning bolt logo hadn’t already been used I’d nominate it for the Red Arm Band Rangers of the DHS. There are currently 2 news stories that seem to be in direct contrast with each other regarding the DHS. One of them represents the DHS denial program in full effect, the other one sheds some light on just how misleading this agency is, both of them omit vital information.

Snippet:

“On average, over the last three fiscal years, DHS procured approximately 120 million rounds of ammunition per year of all calibers and types and fired approximately the same number of rounds per year, almost exclusively for training purposes.”

“As of April 15, 2013, this amounted to DHS having approximately 246,451,611 rounds in inventory,” Nick Nayak said in prepared remarks to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations and Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation, and Regulatory Affairs hearing.”

These news clippings come from a story regarding the testimony about the DHS purchase of ammunition in massive quantities. It goes on to say how the agency uses these rounds but offers no reasonable explanation for the amount currently in inventory, nor does it provide a logical explanation for why the purchase of additional rounds in excess is warranted. This story reveals how much ammo they have on hand prior to the orders they recently processed and is part of the DHS denial program. If this is not a DHS denial program, it sure looks like one and you know what they say…’denial is the first step to recovery.’

Clipped:

“Officials at the Department of Homeland Security denied Thursday that its large-scale ammunition purchases were an effort to keep bullets out of the hands of private citizens. “The idea that you have to have excess rounds, year after year, flies in the face of common sense,” Issa said. In fiscal year 2012, DHS purchased more than 103 million rounds of ammunition, to be used by about 70,000 DHS officers who are currently authorized to use weapons. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said Thursday that “the math” didn’t make sense, pointing out that this means an average 1300-1600 rounds per DHS officer – some 1000 rounds more than the average for an officer in the Army.”

Personally I have come to the conclusion that this DHS denial program is nothing more than a cleverly disguised ruse. I personally conducted research for a couple of upcoming special reports and a resource guide on Survivalist which lead me to believe the very purpose of this DHS purchase was in fact to disarm the American public. Keep an eye on Survivalist for the release of those reports and guide, they will prove that the DHS denial program has taken root.

It seems as if every day in this great country of ours we are presented with news stories that demonstrate the absence of common sense in America. We encounter ridiculous stories about multi-million dollar lawsuits being handed down to a poor helpless victim for an incident that was entirely their fault to begin with. We come across stories abuse of power which we will demonstrate with a video at the end of this post. We read about children being expelled from school for wearing clothing advertising the NRA, even though it didn’t violate any of the school’s policies on attire. The stories are endless and are a direct reflection of the absence of common sense in America. These stories are also an indication of how abusive the people in positions of power can be given a set of circumstances, their willingness to neglect their duties and their misunderstanding of how to appropriately handle a situation. Today was no different than any other when I came across another shining example of stupidity.

Reason:

“Meet Kiera Wilmot…she mix[ed] household chemicals in a tiny 8-ounce water bottle, causing the top to pop off, followed by billowing smoke in [a] small explosion. The explosion happened around 7 a.m. Monday morning on school property, and no one was hurt. Staff, along with the school resource officer, acted quickly.”

Now at first glance one might make the wrongful assumption that this young student was going to be the next “domestic terrorist.” Thankfully nobody was hurt or such a label would have been attached to the innocent student’s name and the situation could have been much worse. We aren’t finished yet; let’s look at the absence of common sense in America which followed.

Reason:

“Even the teen’s principal said, “She made a bad choice. Honestly, I don’t think she meant to ever hurt anyone. She wanted to see what would happen [when the chemicals mixed] and was shocked by what it did.” The principal told 10 News, “She told us everything and was very honest. She didn’t run or try to hide the truth. We had a long conversation with her.”

Not only did the principal come to the conclusion that this was nothing more than a science project gone bad, her classmates confirm this idea. In fact this student had NEVER been in any kind of trouble before this event. She appears by all counts to have made an error in judgment while working on an assignment. So what was the resulting punishment? Was she reprimanded, given a verbal warning and forgiven? Was she assigned detention or tasked with taking the responsibility of cleaning up the lab where the incident occurred? No. As a matter of fact the absence of common sense in America took over and reared its ugly mug once again.

Reason:

“Wilmot was arrested Monday morning and charged with possession/discharge of a weapon on school property and discharging a destructive device. The teen was expelled and will now complete her education in an expulsion program.”

The absence of common sense in America plays a role in all of our daily lives. If we allow actions like the ones mentioned here to continue to take place without standing up for ourselves and our neighbors, then we are part of the problem. Accepting the absence of common sense in America results in complacency, which in turn results in catastrophes; it is up to each of us to rectify this problem at the local, state and federal level.

Although the Boston Marathon Bombing happened over a week ago the surrounding story continues to unfold. We are no closer now to knowing the truth about what took place that day than we were in the hours after the bombs exploded. What we should be aware of by now is that the news reporting in this country sucks. There is no polite way to say it. You can almost smell the seepage of sewage emanating from the pages as you read the stories. There are several theories being promoted by various ASM sources as well as concerned citizens that host their own websites or blogs. One of the more recent theories is that the Boston Marathon Bombing was nothing more than a precursor for the Boston manhunt dress rehearsal for Martial Law.

Here are some of the things we are already familiar with. The DHS has purchased billions of rounds of ammunition. The DHS has also purchased over 2700 MRAP vehicles for the specific purpose of being used on U.S. soil. There is indisputable evidence of FEMA camps and coffins strategically placed around the country. We are also aware of Fusion Centers and the federal government’s desire to use drones over American airspace to spy on citizens. Just with what we have listed here it would not be farfetched for one to come to the conclusion that the latest terrorist attack was nothing more than a stage on which to conduct the Boston manhunt dress rehearsal for Martial Law.

NTEB:

“Last week we watched in shock and horror as two Muslim terrorists planned out and executed the bombings at the Boston Marathon. When it was over 4 lay dead and scores wounded and fighting for their lives in the hospital. But for those who were paying attention, the bombings were not the real story. The real story was the dress rehearsal for martial law that had well over 1,000 armed-to-the-teeth urban police commandos locking the entire city of Boston down while they “searched” for the lone, skinny, 19 year old terrorist who was hiding in a boat.”

Never before in the history of our country have we witnessed this type of armed response to a terrorist attack. On the scale of severity this attack was one of the least damaging in terms of lives lost and property destroyed, yet none of the larger scale attacks were met with such excessive force. If the federal government did use the attack to stage the Boston manhunt dress rehearsal for Martial Law what would it accomplish?

NTEB:

“By running this exercise – Martial Law 1.0 – they accomplished a variety of things in one event:
• Got the people used to seeing a massive, over-sized police presence on the streets, much like what an invading army would look like.
• They were able to gauge how quickly people would respond when ordered, and more importantly, the people who refused to comply. Everything was duly noted and recorded.
• By using the false flag of the bombings, they were able gauge reaction to the commandeering of cell phone records and social media accounts.
The bombings, the Tsarnaev brothers and the bloodshed were just gruesome decoys for the real event of the single, largest martial law exercise in United States history. And by all accounts it was a rousing success.”

The citizens of Boston as well as those in the surrounding suburbs such as Watertown were not asked to assist local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. They were not asked to comply with the requests to stay indoors and off the streets. They were commanded to stay indoors and off the streets. They were not allowed to go to work, the grocery store, run errands or enjoy any sense of normalcy. They were forced to comply and exist in a perpetual state of fear. They feared not only the threat of an elusive terrorist suspect roaming the area, they also feared being misidentified and shot in the street after news broke that the older suspect had been riddled with bullets in a gunfight. If this wasn’t a Boston manhunt dress rehearsal for Martial Law, then what was it? If that isn’t disturbing enough, where this could potentially lead is far more troubling.

NTEB:

“President Obama has no intention stepping down when his second term is through. But he has no intention of remaining president, either. Barry has much loftier goals than that. Obama sees the presidency as the stepping stone and natural path to complete dictatorship just as Adolf Hitler did before him. The paths of both Obama and Hitler have much in common and are well worth considering.”

Where do you get your daily fix for US news? Do you log into the computer every day and scan the headlines listed by various websites? Do you turn on the television before work, at noon or when you get home from work to find out what happened in the country that day? The atrocious regurgitation habits associated with MSM outlets is enough to make one sick to their stomach. The fodder these news agencies offer to their consumers is nothing short of confusing and conflicting. They continue to spew forth more bollocks regarding Boston each and every day. So much so in fact that more and more people have begun to look at ASM or international news agencies to see what they are reporting about a specific incident. The Boston Marathon Bombing incident is just the latest episode reflecting the poor reporting standards adhered to by every MSM agency in the country. These agencies conveniently omit information and intelligence offered by individuals that contrasts what they are offering as the accepted and verified story line. The following represents news you won’t find viewing or listening to an MSM outlet.

Intelhub:

“In a video released by Chris Geo, an interview with an eye witness tells a story completely contradicting FBI official reports of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s death. According to the female witness, she saw an SUV run over Tamerlan Tsarnaev, causing massive physical damage to his body, as well as shots being fired at Tamerlan.”

If this is true, then why are we constantly being fed more bollocks regarding Boston by MSM agencies? What purpose does this serve? It paints a pretty picture of how well local law enforcement and federal agencies work together to achieve a goal. It assures us that the things we fear most are being handled capably by those we force fed to believe are operating in our best interests. When MSM refuses to follow up on an eye witness account that directly conflicts with what they have already reported it sends an unmistakable message. They are spreading more bollocks regarding Boston because that is what they are being instructed to do. They are not reporting; they are regurgitating. If they could indeed provide irrefutable proof that these two “suspects” were the real criminals behind the bombing, then I think we would all applaud anyone, police or otherwise, that used their vehicle to bring one of these terrorists down.

Intelhub:

“Maret Tsarnaeva the aunt of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the suspected Boston marathon bombers has revealed to me that she can positively identify the oldest nephew Tamerlan Tsarnaev as the man who was stripped naked and placed into a police cruiser during the manhunt for the suspects.”

Here yet again we are provided a conflicting and contradictory story that I think we can all agree needs to be answered. If in fact the aunt can identify her nephew from the videos that have gone viral, then we must ask ourselves why we were misled with more bollocks regarding Boston. Why does the MSM continue to engage in what can only be described as decidedly biased reporting standards? Honest investigative reporting would not focus on spreading more bollocks regarding Boston. It would encompass sparing no expense to get to the true facts surrounding an event worthy of being reported.

I am not advocating blindly accepting what ASM outlets offer as evidence either. To be fair ASM agencies could be spreading more bollocks regarding Boston themselves for the same purpose the MSM does; to promote their own agenda. What is apparent is that ASM outlets tend to use pictures and videos provided by eye witnesses when they conduct their reporting. This doesn’t necessarily give them more credit but it does make one question why the MSM outlets avoid using such devices that are also at their disposal even if it was to do nothing more than discredit a conflicting story. In investigative reporting avoidance of evidence equals deception in all accounts. MSM will continue spreading more bollocks regarding Boston until it is either generally accepted or until such a time as they are indisputably exposed for their actions and involvement.

If you have been following some of the posts we have been placing on this site, or have had the wherewithal to conduct a little research yourself, then you are more than likely aware of the Fusion Centers that have popped up all over our country. You are probably remotely aware that these Fusion Centers were born shortly after the events of 9/11. You may even be well-informed about how they operate without oversight by the federal government even though they are information gathering institutes that advise other federal agencies about the possibility of a terrorist threat. This all brings us to the question of what will Fusion Centers of the future consist of? I recently came across an article that sheds a little light on where these institutions may be headed, even though their current track record of effectiveness reflects a lack of ability to function as intended.

WLJ:

“Last month, however, the Milwaukee Police Department’s Intelligence Fusion Center was in the news, and its activities are concerning. Milwaukee is not a prime target for al-Qaida or other international terrorist organizations. Consequently, there is little in the way of terrorist activity to attract the MPD fusion center’s attention.”

It should be noted that the majority of Fusion Centers have shifted their focus from international intelligence gathering activities. Most of these Fusion Centers are now spying on “anti-government” groups here in America rather than focusing on suspects with international ties to a terrorist organization. In order to perform the tasks of spying on law abiding US citizens will Fusion Centers of the future be granted more authoritative power to achieve their goals?

WLJ:

“The fusion center has begun placing microphones throughout the city of Milwaukee. Those microphones are ultrasensitive. When a shot is fired, a car backfires or a door slams, the microphones detect that sound and route it to the fusion center. The microphones are so sensitive that they can pick up ordinary conversations between people talking in public.”

If this information is even remotely accurate it could have wide reaching ramifications for every American citizen, especially those living in medium to large cities. These Fusion Centers are already amassing personal information about people that they deem worthy of inspection. They are doing this in direct violation of our 4th Amendment rights. If ultra-sensitive microphones are indeed being put into place, then it would appear our 1st Amendment rights are also in the process of being violated, at least in Milwaukee. If it can take place in the American Midwest, then how long will it be before they are placed all over the country?

WLJ:

“Rapid advances in technology are threatening the fabric of the Fourth Amendment. Law enforcement can follow cars with GPS devices and track suspects through their cellphones. Police departments are buying drones that could be used to maintain permanent eyes in the sky.
If microphones are being installed throughout Milwaukee, it only will be a matter of time before cameras become ubiquitous.”

The federal government has no problems allowing for further invasive techniques by Fusion Centers even though statistics indicate they are ineffective and expensive to operate. The future of Fusion Centers could place all of us at further risk. Our expectation of personal privacy has been all but eradicated by the tools of the trade employed by these Fusion Centers. I think it is high time we force the federal government to play by their own rules. If they can justify spying on us through the use of advanced technology, then we should enjoy those same privileges and demand that the same equipment be placed in all government offices and facilities with the same lack of oversight associated with Fusion Centers in the country.

Most of the news we see here in America regarding the use of drones involves the federal government’s desire to allow them to fly and spy over US air space against “suspected terrorists.” We are all concerned about how this surveillance system will be used and how many of our rights will be violated in the process. To get an idea of how horrendous Americas deadly drone program is a Senate subcommittee is currently hearing testimony from a Yemeni journalist who has firsthand knowledge of the strikes carried out on foreign soil. As citizens in this country we have been continuously informed that Americas deadly drone program only targets high level suspected terrorist leaders. The testimony offered by this witness seems to indicate we have been misled yet again by the MSM and federal government experts on the situation.

Rolling Stone:

“Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemeni activist and journalist whose village was bombed last week, was one of six witnesses who testified before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday afternoon about the effects and consequences of the Obama administration’s drone and killing program in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere.

Despite recent pledges by President Obama to increase transparency in how the government kills those it suspects of terrorism, the White House declined to send a representative to the hearing – the first on this topic in the Senate.”

The fact that the Obama administration has yet to send a delegate to offer answers and explanations regarding why Americas deadly drone program is necessary to thwart future terrorist attacks leads one to believe they have something to hide.

Rolling Stone:

“Al-Muslimi argued that the purported target of the strike, Hamid al-Radmi, who allegedly had ties to AQAP, was a well-known figure who could have easily been apprehended. “The Yemeni government could easily have found and arrested him,” al-Muslimi said in his opening remarks. “Even the local government could have captured him if the U.S. had told them to do so.”

If the statements made in this testimony are true it begs the question; “Why did the Obama administration elect to utilize Americas deadly drone program when there were obviously other non-lethal forms of capturing and containing this suspected terrorist?” The absence of a representative from the Obama administration at this hearing is disconcerting to say the least. What is more upsetting and worrisome is the cavalier attitude exhibited by several members of Congress during the hearing.

Rolling Stone:

“Senator Lee and other members of the committee also at one point made ill-advised jokes about being sentenced to death for going over one’s allotted time – which in many ways perfectly illustrated how abstract this issue is for Congress.”

Our taxpaying dollars finance Congressional hearings like the one regarding Americas deadly drone program. Are we getting our money’s worth when our elected officials poke fun and make light of the situation? Will they adopt the same carefree attitude should the Obama administration elect to unleash Americas deadly drone program on suspected terrorist targets in heavily populated US cities? Will they tune out witnesses and turn a blind eye to the illegalities of such a program? Who are we to turn to for answers and resolutions when Congress is spearheaded by a bunch of circus clowns that hold their own social status and well-being in high regard compared to that of their constituents and the international community? When will we the people decide we have had enough?

For as long as I can remember there has been a Bill of Rights in this country that was penned into place as protective measures for all citizens living within these hallowed shores. Recent events in this country have shed some light on just how much ‘freedom’ we are actually entitle to according to the US federal government. The Boston Marathon Bombing was a tragic event to say the least. It resulted in an ensuing massive manhunt in the small town of Watertown, Massachusetts. During this door to door manhunt it became apparent that citizens residing in the area were forced into forfeiture of 4th Amendment Rights. An entire city was placed on lockdown in what could easily be described as a watered down Martial Law situation.

OGS:

“For the first time in American history, an entire U.S. City was put on lockdown while teams of armed militarized police patrols performed warrantless house to house raids. Almost a million people were ordered to stay home, and stay off the streets as armed SWAT teams closed down highways, patrolled neighborhoods, and even performed warrantless raids. Boston was completely shut down.”

One can make the argument that these warrantless searches were necessary in order to protect the population from further catastrophe. However it should not have come at the forfeiture of 4th Amendment Rights. The federal government and its henchmen circumnavigated the rights of every citizen in the area under the guise of attempting to bring a criminal to justice. These were not your average ‘boys in blue’ that showed up door to door asking politely for PERMISSION to enter a private dwelling. These were heavily armed and body armored SWAT teams that moved with impunity and held innocent civilians in check through the show of superior firepower.

OGS:

“I get that we were looking for a terrorist suspect, but locking down an entire city and holding innocent Americans at gun point is something that should have never happened. In fact, it did nothing to catch the actual suspect. The suspect was caught because an average American noticed something wasn’t right in his backyard and reported it to authorities. This is how America is supposed to work, but yet again we witness the complete failure of our intelligence agencies.”

The forfeiture of 4th Amendment Rights, such as were on display that day in Watertown, should never be accepted or allowed under any circumstances. Do we want law enforcement agencies to search for and find criminal suspects? Obviously, since that is part of their job description, but the moment we begin accepting practices under dire situations to exist we open the door for future infringements on all of our individual rights.

How long will it be before another atrocity is handled in a similar fashion? The entire nation watched first hand as these extremist militias moved through the streets forcing people from their homes at gun point. The forfeiture of 4th Amendment Rights in this situation was not an option for anyone living in the area. Although these troops were systematically violating the rights of every private home owner in the area, these same citizens could not under any circumstances invoke their rights and request a warrant. Doing so would have undoubtedly resulted in charges of obstructing justice for any soul brave enough to attempt protecting themselves and their property from an illegal search. We must not succumb to accepting the forfeiture of 4th Amendment Rights under any circumstances or will surely be the precursor for our undoing as a free society!

The Boston bombings were just the most recent tragedy to hit our shores here in America. Like other atrocities before it, the lessons learned during the Boston Marathon will eventually fade from memory and be replaced by complacency. This complacency is contagious and starts at the top of the federal government and trickles down throughout society. Our country is at a heightened level of security once an incident of this nature happens. It goes into overdrive from all sectors of society. Stricter attention to detail is enforced at all levels of the infrastructure.

Here are some lessons learned from the Boston Marathon bombings:

#1) Regardless of who committed this heinous act or why they committed it, the fact remains we are NOT as safe as we might be led to believe.

#2) Federal intelligence gathering and counter-terrorism agencies have an abysmal record of preventive work performance. Do not be misguided into believing the rhetoric that they have thwarted dozens of terrorist attacks before they could happen. That jargon derives from Sales & Advertising 101; you have to sell an idea through advertising before any target group will buy it.

#3) The MSM is nothing more than a cog in the propaganda machine. Each and every one of them is guilty of rushing to be the first to report something even if the facts are skewed or do not add up. Rather than ask questions to clarify matters they simply regurgitate what they are being told and print retractions if compelled to do so.

#4) The ASM (Alternate Stream Media) is also guilty of rushing to judgment. This is caused by the MSM issuing early, and often times misleading, labels of “domestic terrorism,” “anti-government patriotic groups” and “survivalists/preppers,” as the possible suspects associated with such an act of cowardice.

#5) TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Knew It) has arrived and is here to stay. Individuals that are absolutely bent on causing death, destruction and damage are going to find a way to do it. No matter how many half-baked security measures they implement, NONE of them are going to have a significant impact on acts of terrorism at any level, domestically or internationally.

The lessons learned from the Boston bombings are the same ones we should have retained after the 9/11 incident. Our borders are NOT secure. Our current president wants to allow more illegal immigrants to reside within our borders by granting them all a free pass. Our international policy of policing every global situation that raises an eyebrow paints an enormous target on our backs. Our war time policies are inefficient and have been for decades. We conquer countries, remove dictators and install new ones, only to deal with removing them at some point in the future. Obviously they are NOT interested in duplicating the American Dream, so be it.

The bigger tragedy in all of this is that the lessons learned from 9/11 were all but forgotten by the time the Boston bombings took place. Our government agencies grew complacent, their underling agencies became complacent, and as a result we all let down our guard and followed suit. I refer to this phenomenon as “subliminal infiltration of the collective conscience.” We are lulled into a false sense of security, which as a result places us in the most vulnerable position on the planet for a terrorist attack to occur.

The sad reality is that one of the harshest lessons learned from all of these terrorist attacks on U.S. soil is that we can no longer rely on the federal government to provide us with a safe and secure country to call our own. It has been infiltrated and these people, domestic or otherwise, are living here among us. It is no longer a question of ‘if’ more attacks will come, but rather one of ‘when’ will more attacks occur?

I will leave the false flag theorizing for another day. Suffice to say that when drawing comparisons between Boston and 9/11 the striking similarities are enough to sicken the soul! I have very little faith that the lessons learned in Boston will not end up being taught again in a future terrorist attack. There were plenty of other lessons learned that dreadful day in Boston. The ones I mentioned here just happen to be the most disconcerting of the bunch. Let us not be cloaked in the security blanket of those who failed to protect us in the first place. We must be self-reliant and vigilant ourselves if we are to bring an end to the fear of terrorism!

Perhaps you have heard the term “Orwellian,” or even used it from time to time yourself. If you value our personal privacy you might want to get familiar with that term, especially if you live in New York or plan on moving there.

We are all aware of how desperately the federal goons of government are trying to pass stricter gun laws. They have demonstrated time and time again that they are less concerned with taking guns out of the hands of criminals than they are with stripping law abiding citizens of their 2nd Amendment rights.

The state of New York under Governor Cuomo has been at the forefront of the gun debate issue. They have implemented ‘stop & frisk” procedures which are stereotypical in nature and serve to violate our 4th Amendment rights. They have also instituted stricter gun control measures across the entire state of New York. Now in what appears to be another attack on our personal privacy, and I say ‘our’ because it could lead to a nationwide trickle down situation for all other states, the state of New York has issued subpoenas to all psychiatrists licensed and operating within its borders. These subpoenas make demands that are in direct conflict with our personal privacy and our 4th Amendment rights.

Clipped:

“The march to tyranny has picked up fierce momentum in the state of New York, where the criminal Cuomo administration is now issuing subpoenas that demand psychiatrists turn over ALL their records to the state, reports AmmoLand.com.”

If this is not challenged before a court of law and all psychiatrists comply with these subpoenas, then it will serve as another stepping stone for invading our personal privacy. It will also be used by the powers that be to strip further law abiding citizens of their 2nd Amendment rights. They do not want to know just who has a mental health issue. They want to know who has a mental health issue and possesses a firearm. Why is that a troubling notion you might ask? True, none of us want stark raving mad lunatics running the streets with automatic weapons, but these medical records contain confidential doctor/patient information which is protected under the law. These medical records are compiled by an individual who is considered an ‘expert’ in the field of discovering mental health disorders. These experts are not always as unbiased as they should be when labeling someone as having a mental health issue. This information could be used a number of different ways, all detrimental to our personal privacy.

Clipped:

“This is not a gun rights issue, this is a patient rights issue. If a state government can simply seize all records from all psychiatrists, then it can also use that information to decide whose children to have taken away by CPS… or who to deny the right to vote by having them labeled “mentally incompetent.”

How damaging would this be if allowed to proceed uncontested? It could be looked on favorably by the federal government and implemented across all 50 states and any territories under government control. We cannot allow our personal privacy to be violated this way, lest we accept defeat and suffer the consequences of our own inactions!

Am I the ONLY person in this country that has grown completely fed up with the use of the term “anti-government patriotic groups?” It is an oxymoron much like the “CIA” is. The only thing central about this organization is its apparent lack of intelligence gathering abilities. Patriotic groups are NOT anti-government, they are simply anti-this-government. They do not envision a world WROL. They want change in government practices and policies. They want what the earliest settlers of this great nation wanted, a government for the people and by the people. They see similarities between the current form of government in this country and the direction it is headed and the forms of government our nation is trying to dismantle around the globe.

Snip:

“Capping four years of explosive growth sparked by the election of America’s first black president and anger over the economy, the number of conspiracy-minded antigovernment “Patriot” groups reached an all-time high of 1,360 in 2012…”

This article goes even further by condemning anti-government patriotic groups as being conspiracy minded. First of all a conspiracy theory is something based on a hypothetical scenario, once it has been exposed it becomes fact or reality. Since much of what patriotic groups see as being detrimental to the American public can be proven, there is NO theory involved. Their fears are based on facts of exposed or leaked documents that point to the evidence supporting their claims, at least for the most part.

Snip:

“As President Obama enters his second term with an agenda of gun control and immigration reform, the rage on the right is likely to intensify.”

And why shouldn’t the rage escalate? The very policies they want to pass into law regarding stricter gun control and allowing illegal immigrants to remain here in this country place us all in jeopardy. We stand to lose our ability to defend ourselves from tyranny as well as the possibility of seeing more jobs handed to people who have NOT landed on our soil through legal avenues of acceptance. Does this mean that everyone who opposes these policies is a member of anti-government patriotic groups? Not in the least.

I consider myself to be a patriot because I firmly believe in the language of the Constitution and the original Bill of Rights with regards to the spirit in which it was written, NOT the misinterpreted modifications the federal government seems destined to apply to it. I am not a member of any anti-government patriotic groups, or any other groups for that matter, I prefer to think for myself. It is a refreshing adventure that some of these members of the news reporting establishment should try from time to time.

Snip:

“From a mere 149 organizations in 2008, the number of Patriot groups shot up to 512 in 2009, jumped again to 824 in 2010, and then skyrocketed to 1,274 in 2011 before hitting their all-time high last year.”

Numbers do not lie folks, plain and simple. Either more of us are beginning to foolishly believe there is a global conspiracy to formulate a one world government, or more of us are beginning to awaken to the facts that such a plan of action is actually in the process of being implemented. There are NO anti-government patriotic groups. There are anti-government groups and there are patriotic groups. The two are entirely different from one another. Why is it we are looked on as being anti-government patriotic groups, yet the federal government isn’t being labeled “anti-patriotic elitists” in the MSM? Maybe it is the federal government that is guilty of harboring conspiracy minded theories about American citizens.

By now you should all be familiar with the term ‘assault weapons,’ they are the inanimate objects of mass destruction the federal government would like to make illegal to own. Well, at least illegal to own by law abiding American civilian citizens. I don’t know about you folks but I for one am growing very bored with the continuing debate over the 2nd Amendment and what it protects and what it shouldn’t protect. I have covered this topic in previous posts and have always drawn the same conclusion. They can’t have them unless they take them by force. We have the right to own them and the day we lay down, roll over and hand in our guns will be the day we abolish any chance of liberty and accept slavery as part of the ‘sustainable development’ program of the New World Order.

I often find it sickening the way MSM and the federal government attack the liberties and freedoms of the common man while hypocritically justifying their own actions. I look for ways to help my fellow countrymen enjoy their freedoms through less violent means than a full blown riot and inciting massive civil unrest. I think I may have come up with a solution that would allow the federal government to abolish all ‘assault weapons,’ yet still allow us to own them. What on Earth could he be talking about you ask? We beat them at their own game when it comes to dealing with the 2nd Amendment and stricter gun control laws and policies.

Snipped:

“In yet another huge blow to the rhetoric and narrative of the Obama administration and its desire to disarm the American public, a DHS bid has been uncovered (see documents below) showing that the Department of Homeland Security recently put out an offer to purchase 7,000 full-auto “assault weapons” to be used domestically, inside the USA.”

This is an older story but bear with me a moment. It provides us all the ammunition to thwart their efforts and win the war on the 2nd Amendment. You can view the purchase order from the DHS here.

Snipped:

“Speaking to the National Urban League in New Orleans, Obama said that he believed in the right to bear arms but ‘a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals, that they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities’.”

AK-47’s if you are unfamiliar with them are classified as ‘assault weapons.’ He wants to ban American citizens from owning ‘assault weapons,’ yet has no problem with the DHS placing an order for purchase. If these weapons belong on a battlefield and not on the streets in American cities, then where exactly does the DHS plan on using them? Since the DHS is not a part of the national militarized Armed Forces, would there ‘battlefield’ not be ‘the streets of our cities’? How does the federal government justify the use of ‘assault weapons’ by the DHS in the event they are successful at passing stricter gun control laws? Through a nifty little trick called ‘reclassification.’

Snipped:

“The juiciest part of this bid is the use of the phrase “Personal Defense Weapons” to describe the full-auto AR-15s being purchased by DHS.

Apparently, when YOU hold an AR-15, it’s an “assault rifle.” But magically, if you hand that same rifle to an armed government homeland security enforcer, it instantly transforms itself into a “personal defense weapon.”

All we need to do is get the gun manufacturers to follow suit and STOP making ‘assault weapons.’ Once they begin making ‘personal defense weapons’ it should fall right in line with any restrictive measures induce by the federal government to try and circumvent the 2nd Amendment. Some of you may think I am being sarcastic or facetious. That could not be further from the truth. I am simply tired of the double standard they want to shove down our throats. If they can justify purchasing the same guns they want to ban for everyone else simply by calling them something else, then we should be allowed to follow the example set forth by our ‘trusted’ politicians, all men being created equal and what not.

The MSM (Main Stream Media) provides a ripe and rich environment for attaching labels to individuals or groups as they see fit. It seems as though every day we can find a news article or articles describing an act of domestic terrorism. Some of these stories use the term domestic terrorism accurately, while others broaden the definition to include any acts the government deems inappropriate.

An older news article caught my attention. It is one of the few times the MSM has used the term ‘domestic terrorism’ correctly. Many of us are unhappy, unsatisfied and upset with the current political front in America. We the people have a right to voice our opinions and be heard by those on Capitol Hill. Plotting to overthrow the government and enact change is NOT an individual task but a collective one that our forefathers afforded us in the language of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. News stories of this nature place all true patriots in a worse light and serves to label us all as ‘anti-government extremists’.

CNN.com:

“This much is clear: Four U.S. Army soldiers based in Georgia are accused of killing two people. Beyond that, a Georgia prosecutor and federal authorities are offering differing responses to a possible plot by the group to overthrow the government and assassinate President Barack Obama.”

‘Differing responses,’ from those handling the case should come as no big surprise. The more confusion involved the greater chance for conspiracy theories to abound. Maybe I am being too harsh in my criticism of the story telling. I suppose it is quite possible all the facts aren’t in yet. Perhaps they just want to make sure this was an act of domestic terrorism before labeling it as such.

CNN.com:

“However, several agencies called into the investigation because of the accumulation of weapons — including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — made scant mention of any alleged assassination plot or government overthrow attempt.
One official described it as a murder case and said no federal charges had been filed.

At the time of their arrest, group members had plotted a number of “acts of domestic terror,” the prosecutor said.
These included “forcibly taking over the ammo control point of Fort Stewart to take the post, bombing vehicles of local and state judicial and political figureheads and federal representatives to include the local department of homeland security, (and plotting) to bomb the fountain at Forsyth Park in Savannah.”

This would seem to be the very definition of domestic terrorism. These are not actions that all ‘patriotic’ groups involve themselves with, yet anyone considering themselves a ‘true patriot’ must now bear the mark of a member of a group bent on domestic terrorism.

Snipped:

“I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”

Snipped:

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”

Yes we need change in our government. It has morphed into an uncontrollable beast running rampant and in need of being reigned in. However before we rise up in arms we should apply logical and less violent solutions. It is our duty and responsibility to STAND TOGETHER in the face of anything we view as being tyrannical. The time for reflection has passed; the time for action is upon us. We CANNOT expect change if we are unwilling to DEMAND change through the proper procedures. Overthrowing the government through acts of force and violence should ALWAYS be a last resort option, the final solution when all else has failed.

Our lovely friends of the federal government, a.k.a. DHS, are in the news yet again. No, this time it isn’t to answer questions concerning the recent stockpiling of more ammunition than has been used in almost all wars combined. Nor is it to educate us on how they intend to use drones to track and interfere with the privacy of every American citizen. It isn’t so they can explain why they need almost 3,000 MRAP vehicles either. This time it is due to their lack of action with biochemical laboratories and the threat of bio-terrorism.

Now I am not always a proponent of the internet as a tool for researching current events. It is a double edged sword that needs to be handled delicately in most cases. Half the material you come across is opinionated (mine included) and the other half is base haphazardly on what little actual ‘facts’ have been divulged. What I do like about is it provides us with more information than would have been available just a few decades ago when we had to look for clues in the content the mass media published, often with the penchant for prettying up the government’s position on topics.

Judicialwatch.org:

“The United States has for years been at risk of a bioterrorism attack because the government agency responsible for securing thousands of labs that conduct research with deadly chemicals fails to do its job.”

That’s nice to know! We have a government agency that is supposed to monitor the actions of biochemical labs and it is so busy sticking its fingers into the proverbial pie of illegal interests that it ignores or fails to perform its job accurately.

Examiner.com:

“Apparently too busy targeting patriots, DHS ignores security lapses At biochemical labs, putting America at risk of a bioterrorism attack,” said investigative journalist Pat Dollard.”

I for one do not find it the least bit funny that our own federal agencies are lacking the level of interest required to perform their duties. Our taxpaying dollars are funding these agencies. Are we getting our money’s worth?

Judicialwatch.org:

“Unbelievable, but true; while the government meddles in areas that it shouldn’t, it fails miserably to fulfill its duties. Critical safety and security risks identified years ago at labs that deal with deadly bioterror germs have been largely ignored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), leaving the nation dangerously vulnerable to a chemical attack.

There are around 3,500 facilities throughout the country that conduct research with potential bioterror germs and a DHS branch called Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD) is responsible for assuring that they are secure under a special program known as Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS). This has not happened, according to several federal audits that date back to 2007.”

Okay, let’s sum this up without the sugar coating normally associated with it. DHS buys more ammunition than they could possibly ever need. DHS purchase armored vehicle armada. DHS gets authorization to use drones to spy on ‘anti-government patriotic groups.’ DHS ignores 3500 biochemical labs capable of creating the very germs and delivery systems for a bioterror attack. News media and the federal government want us to believe that we have several enemies around the globe to be concerned with. What message does this send to all American citizens? It is an exercise in collective conscious misdirection. The true enemies of America occupy the top positions of power within the federal government!

Have you ever seen the movie “Full Metal Jacket?” In this Hollywood hit a character played by Matthew Modine, nicknamed ‘Joker,’ makes a reference to the Jungian Theory and the duality of man. He makes this reference when approached by a superior officer and is asked to answer why he is wearing both the uniform of a U.S. Marine and a peace sign. What does this have to do with Obama you might ask? Quite simply, we can see through Obama’s actions that he has a tendency to embody the duality of man. On one front he insists he has the legal authority and power to execute ‘hostile’ or ‘suspected terrorists’ at any time without approval from a governing body and without allowing the targeted individual(s) their day in court. On the other front Obama pushes for stricter gun control for all U.S. citizens, this is discomforting to say the least. Historically speaking, dictators and tyrants are the only ones that envision such vastly opposing policies.

Washingtontimes.com:

“Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government? How can the president claim the lawful power to kill whomever he wishes and at the same time ask Congress to incapacitate our ability to defend ourselves against those who might seek to kill us?”

These are all serious questions and concerns that should be addressed and rectified at the highest levels of government. Obama has effectively demonstrated he does not believe in the letter of the law established under the U.S. Constitution. He assumes he has the power to neglect an individual’s rights and kill them without providing any supporting evidence or allowing those targeted to have a fair trial before being sentenced.

Washingtontimes.com:

“Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky struck a raw nerve in the weak underbelly of the Obama administration last month with his 13-hour filibuster. Mr. Paul was furious — as every other American should be — that the president refused to acknowledge that he does not possess the lawful authority to kill Americans with drones. The senator used the confirmation hearings of CIA Director John O. Brennan as a forum in which to articulate the principled constitutional argument that whenever the government wants the life, liberty or property of an American, it can obtain that only via due process.”

While many of us are currently concerned with Kim Jong Un, his instability complex and North Korea’s growing desire to possess nuclear weapons, perhaps we should be just as concerned with our own political figurehead’s potential for corrupt illegal activities.

Wahingtontimes.com:

“The next day, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. sent a terse letter to Mr. Paul that reads in its entirety as follows: “It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: ‘Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’ The answer to that question is no.” This is an unremarkable statement, but one that came about only after the senatorial equivalent of pulling teeth.
Mr. Paul’s filibuster was prompted by the administration’s repeated refusal to answer that question.
They all declined to answer the question of whether the president has the power to use drones to kill Americans in America, and they all referred the questioners to their boss in the White House.
Their boss in the White House has never publicly answered that question, but he has exercised that horrific power without publicly defending or legally justifying it.”

In fact Obama continues to refuse to comment publicly or privately on this issue. When the question has been asked or posed to a judicial branch of the government Obama has sent his minions to quiet the masses and ensure those asking that it is well within his Presidential powers to act as HE sees fit, regardless of what the law says.

Washingtontimes.com:

“When attorneys for potential victims of presidential killings (how terrifying does that sound?) sought to ascertain the source of that power, the president dispatched Justice Department attorneys into court to persuade judges that the legal argument supporting killings is classified.”

How much longer will Obama wait to unleash his illegal powers against Americans on American soil? Obama’s classified secret killing policy really isn’t that much different than Saddam Hussein’s use of Kurdish killing programs, and we did NOT stand by quietly and allow that to continue. Obama’s administration should not only be forced to answer for their participation in international unjustified murder, they should also be charged, tried and convicted for their actions, just as every other citizen would be if they took matters into their own hands and just began killing people they considered as hostile/terrorist entities.

I don’t know about you folks but I truly enjoy reading ridiculous opinionated columns around the internet, especially after an event such as the Boston bombings. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not all happy and giddy inside about what took place in Boston, nor am I pleased about the horrific carnage and devastation suffered by those in attendance on that day. These columns and articles come in from MSM as well as blogs and other forms of internet chatter. They are written by people with a passion to be heard regardless of how ridiculous they end up sounding. What is troubling with these published pieces is that the original authors are undoubtedly biased in offering their opinions prior to any factual evidence being furnished. The Boston bombings are just the latest turn of events that have parties on both sides of the propaganda machine quickly deflecting attention from themselves and enticing readers to LOOK in a particular direction. Here are some examples.

Snip:

“…what if this really was the Tea Party? What do we do then? Thus far the Tea Party has had nearly all the makings of a domestic terrorist group: wealthy leaders who are only in it for themselves. Uneducated followers who are in it for reasons which only exist in their minds. Militant language intended to suggest they’ll attempt violence against their own government if they don’t get their way.”

Let’s draw a few comparisons here shall we? Does the tea party have wealthy leaders? Possibly and quite likely. Does the federal government have wealthy leaders? Absolutely! Are Tea Party followers uneducated? Perhaps a few members claiming to be Tea Party affiliated are not as well-informed as their leadership. Does the federal government have uneducated followers? Absolutely, you are more than likely in close proximity to several such individuals on a daily basis. Does the Tea Party use aggressive language to get their point across or suggest overthrowing the government? That argument can be made, but it can also be made against the federal government in regards to how they handle the American public. Thus the Boston bombings could have just as likely been carried out by a covert government operation as it could have been carried out by a member of the Tea Party movement.

Snip:

“Alex Jones, who has become the country’s preeminent conspiracy theorist, wasted no time. As with 9/11, Sandy Hook and other national tragedies, he sees the Boston explosions as a “false flag” attack committed by the government. The objective this time: Expanding the Transportation Security Administration’s reach to sporting events.”

While I personally do not believe everything that Alex Jones of Infowars.com has to say about a subject, this caught my eye. I find it extremely odd that our federal government implemented extensive post 9/11 security measures all around the country and seemed to ‘forget’ all about major sporting events where condensed pockets of population are known to accumulate for a scheduled period of time. That being said, an incident such as the Boston bombings should cause one to believe that the natural course of action would be further implementing ‘protective restrictions’.

Here are the ONLY facts that matter with regards to the Boston bombings. The national intelligence gathering community has been actively pursuing suspected terrorists for over a decade now and they have absolutely NO idea who committed this atrocity, NOR do they claim to know why. The very people we employ to provide us with a safe and secure country to live in have failed miserably.

If you want to eradicate the fear of terrorism in this country it is a simple process. Any time a MSM outlet begins a news story, or has a news story, with the words “experts state…” shut off the computer, turn off the TV, change the channel on the radio. These same ‘experts’ are the ones that have NO evidence about the Boston bombings, NO intelligence or forewarning, NO suspects and a determination to scour the globe to bring those responsible to justice. I’m pretty sure we have all grown accustomed to hearing that claim and seeing NO significant, factual results from their efforts!

The Federal Reserve is often misidentified as being an agency of the federal government. This however could not be further from the truth. The Federal Reserve System is America’s central banking cabal. Many people also falsely assume or believe that the Federal Reserve is responsible for printing currency. The agency that actually prints paper money and mints coins is the U.S. Treasury. While the Treasury prints produces the currency, the Federal Reserve controls it completely, without government interference of oversight.

In the tough economic times that we all face, a growing number of concerned citizens and even financial experts are calling for the Federal Reserve to be abolished. There is no short list of critics or criticisms to this type of financial system. In addition to realistic concerns about how this institution conducts business there are also several conspiracy theories that speculate on the ‘true intentions’ of those controlling the reins of the Federal Reserve System.

Wikipedia.com:

“These criticisms include the assertions that the Federal Reserve System violates the United States Constitution and that it impedes economic prosperity. Critic Miranda Fleschert contends that the twelve regional Federal Reserve banks (as opposed to the entire Federal Reserve System) consider themselves to be private corporations with private funding. The movement to audit the Federal Reserve System has gained national traction; a bill related to the movement was passed through the House of Representatives in 2012. Many critics see auditing the Federal Reserve System as a means of gaining insight into an institution they contend has historically had little to no transparency, that has acted without congressional approval or oversight, and that has the power to create and loan U.S. dollars based on a monetary policy determined by its own interests.”

When a central banking establishment such as the Federal Reserve System is allowed to act with impunity and no governmental oversight, based on the wants and desires of a handful of insiders it sets the stage for illegal practices to occur. This is why many people believe the Federal Reserve System and its policies will ultimately result in America’s economic collapse.

Abolishthefederalreserve.org:

“It is not surprising that most people are unaware of the Fed’s outrageous, fraudulent scam because the media does not report on it . . . Why ? Because the media is controlled by them. They “create” money and then loan it to our government (actually exchange it for U.S. bonds) thus creating an endless cycle of national debt. This is referred to as “monetizing the debt,” which erodes the standard of living for all Americans. They have single handedly been responsible for every inflationary period, every economic recession and every depression that has occurred during their entire unconstitutional existence”

All one really has to do is follow the paper trail back to the point of origin to figure out that the Federal Reserve System was created by an elite group of global bankers who control the purse strings. There really isn’t any hidden agenda. The design behind the Federal Reserve System is to turn a profit off of every citizen in the United States.

TESTING…TESTING…TESTING…1…2…3…is this thing on? Okay, so yesterday was yet another day in the tragic history of our nation. The Boston Marathon Bombing was unlike anything we have become familiar with…or was it? If this latest turn of events doesn’t send bells, whistles, alarms and sirens off in your mind, then perhaps you should begin searching for a smaller rock to live under. Listen folks, you do not have to be an information absorbing sponge to grasp what is going on here. Almost from the moment the bombs exploded and the chaos ensued you could see some early discrepancies. MSM news agencies were quick to rush into reporting on the events that took place. They were quick to bring us all the information possible. They were just as quick to retract statements which pointed fingers or aimed to place blame. Eventually it was discovered that there was a Boston bomb squad drill on the same day as the Marathon. How often have we seen this type of MSM/federal government reporting before?

Now I am not going to claim to have insider information on the subject. I will however point out a few obvious things that need to be brought to our attention. Let’s take a look at some of the information coming in about the Boston bomb squad drill.

Snip:

“…the Boston Globe tweeted today, “Officials: There will be a controlled explosion opposite the library within one minute as part of bomb squad activities.”

This is really all of the information you need to draw a few conclusions as to what is really going on. What agency in their right mind would schedule and conduct a Boston bomb squad drill on the exact same day and during the same hours as the Boston Marathon? Why would you conduct a Boston bomb squad drill on a day when the city is expected to be swarmed with tens of thousands of participants and spectators? With the ongoing threat of “terror,” why would any state or federal agency want to schedule a distractive drill during what should have been a period of heightened security? None of that makes sense unless it is going to be used as propaganda to push for more power by the federal government.

Snip:

“Andrew Katz of TIME tweeted that “police were investigating reports of bombs in other parts of the city,” and “Citing a police scanner, Katz tweeted that there was an ‘incendiary device’ possible at JFK Library as well as ‘another device’ in front of Boston’s luxury Mandarin Hotel.”

Yesterday when the bombings took place we learned that there were no suspects, or did we? Some reports indicate a 20 year old Saudi National is a suspect, others indicate he is merely a person of interest. What they all seem to agree on is that no organization has claimed responsibility. So if nobody claimed responsibility and the Saudi National being investigated is simply a person of interest, exactly where did these reports of other bombs begin streaming in from?

Conducting a Boston bomb squad drill on the same day as the Boston Marathon would make about as much sense as holding aircraft hijacking exercises on the day the twin towers fell…or did they do that already?

That is a tricky question to ask and an even trickier one to answer. Is it possible here in America? Yes! Civil War is possible anywhere and everywhere. Our country has been down that road once before. Are we headed for a Civil War in the near future? One would hope not, but then again those that do not prepare for the worst, are often the hardest hit. Civil War is different from civil unrest. Civil unrest can be anything from a peaceful demonstration to a full blown riot as we have also seen in our country’s recent history.

What will happen if a Civil War erupts here in America? Sides will be chosen and blood will be shed. A lot of what happens will depend on the how the members of the Armed Forces react. It is no secret that our military forces are considered to be the best equipped on the planet. In the event the majority of military members follow orders to shoot on American civilians then we stand very little chance of securing our liberty and freedoms. On the other hand if the majority of Armed Forces members defect and bring their arsenal to the side of the rebellion, then we stand a fighting chance. Forget about those Hollywood feel good flicks like “Red Dawn,” a handful of high school kids armed with non-traditional weapons and no combat experience are not going to save the day or the country. Bass boats and four wheel drive mud trucks are not going to withstand the onslaught of the naval armada and armored military vehicles.

Which countries will come to the aid of those dubbed as the rebellion? That remains to be seen as it will come down to a numbers game. If the two opposing sides, (we’ll call them Leftists and Rightists for the sake of argument), are equal in membership, then chances of outside alliances being formed are decent. On the other hand should one side have a significantly lopsided advantage over the other, then hope of establishing a worthwhile alliance with an outside force is highly unlikely. Make no mistake about it a 2nd American Civil War will set new records for atrocities, the likes of which have never been witnessed before in an act of war.

Smallwarsjournal.com:
“The U.S. Army’s Operating Concept 2016-2028 was issued in August 2010 with three goals. First, it aims to portray how future Army forces will conduct operations as part of a joint force to deter conflict, prevail in war, and succeed in a range of contingencies, at home and abroad. Second, the concept describes the employment of Army forces at the tactical and operational levels of war between 2016 and 2028. Third, in broad terms the concept describes how Army headquarters, from theater army to division, organize and use their forces. The concept goes on to describe the major categories of Army operations, identify the capabilities required of Army forces, and guide how force development should be prioritized. The goal of this concept is to establish a common frame of reference for thinking about how the US Army will conduct full spectrum operations in the coming two decades (US Army Training and Doctrine Command, The Army Operating Concept 2016 – 2028, TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-1, dated 19 August 2010, p. iii. Hereafter cited as TD Pam 525-3-1. The Army defines full spectrum operations as the combination of offensive, defensive, and either stability operations overseas or civil support operations on U.S. soil).”

If things weren’t bad enough on the Korean Peninsula with daily threats coming out of Pyongyang, now it seems as though South Korean citizens are trying to stir the pot, which has only fueled the fire for the North. North Koreas new ultimatum was announced shortly after protestors in South Korea engaged in acts of desecrating images of the DPRK supreme leadership, both past and present.

As world leaders continue to meet to discuss establishing negotiations with the aloof leader and regime of the DPRK the last thing needed is increased tensions among the concerned parties at play here. If recent news stories have told us anything it is that nobody really knows just how seriously unstable and delusional Kim Jong Un really is. Some experts chalk it up to nothing more than chest puffing propaganda, while others shy away from making such assessments and instead view the threats as more serious and complex than previous regime rhetoric that was familiar under Kim’s father and grandfather.

Snip:

“North Korea’s military has issued an ‘ultimatum’ saying it will attack without warning if anti-North Korean activities continue in the South.
The warning came after protesters in Seoul on Monday burned portraits of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung, his son Kim Jong-Il and grandson and current leader Kim Jong-un.”

Now North Koreas new ultimatum may be nothing more than a parry in the ongoing ‘saber rattling’ between it and it’s adversaries to the south. But as intelligence about this new North Korean leader remains highly susceptible to interpretation, it may not be in any countries best interests to dare the new despot to use his weapons.

North Koreas new ultimatum sends a strong message to me that Kim Jong Un has some deep seeded convictions about ruling and running his country. He has basically painted himself into a corner from which there is little wiggle room or exit strategies. Asian cultures dictate that an individual follow through with any threats made or risk losing face. If Kim Jong Un loses face among his countrymen he will likely be overthrown by a military coup and who knows where that will lead.

Snip:

“In an ‘ultimatum’ to the South, it warned: ‘Our retaliatory action will start without any notice from now as such a thrice-cursed criminal act of hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK is being openly committed in the heart of Seoul under the patronage of the puppet authorities.’”

Tough talk for an unknown communist leader who many feel just wants to polish his political and military image. With each passing day of inactivity North Koreas new ultimatum carries less weight in the international community. They also convey a message to his countrymen and military leaders that he hasn’t the intestinal fortitude to follow through on his threats. This is the moment of truth so to speak, the proverbial tipping point. If Kim feels he is losing the respect of his countrymen, military leaders and members of the international community, then he could very well choose to go out with a bang instead of a whimper! North Koreas new ultimatum is not something that should be taken lightly!

This news story is just coming in and storylines are still developing. The Boston Marathon Bombing is already gaining attention as a terrorist act. The question is was it the work of an international terrorist cell or was it the work of a domestic terrorist cell. Not much is known or being reported by the media regarding who is being blamed or claiming responsibility. What has been published so far is that there are at least a couple fatalities and possibly a dozen or more serious injuries, up to and including los of limbs.

As should be expected the Boston Marathon Bombing and all ensuing reports are likely going to stir the fires of conspiracy, with some undoubtedly calling it a false flag scenario and others offering a variety of reports to help solve the crime. The Boston marathon Bombing has also caused several other major cities to step up their level of alertness and take action to protect their citizens.

Snipped:

“Two explosions hit the Boston Marathon as runners crossed the finish line on Monday, killing at least two people and injuring 23 on a day when tens of thousands of people pack the streets to watch one of the world’s best known marathons.”

While tragic beyond a shadow of a doubt, the potential for a higher casualty rate did exist at the time of the event, with tens of thousands of spectators along the route.

Snipped:

“Hundreds of thousands of spectators typically line the 26.2 mile (42.19 km) race course, with the heaviest crowds near the finish line. The blasts occurred more than five hours after the start of the race, at a time when most top athletes were off the course but slower amateur marathoners were still running.”

There are already varying reports streaming in from the Boston Marathon Bombing regarding how many explosions there were and how many additional devices were found that had yet to explode and wreak havoc. There are also conflicting reports of how many were injured and how severe those injuries are.

Snipped:

“Authorities in Boston have found other explosive devices that they were working to dismantle, a federal law enforcement source told CNN.

Massachusetts General Hospital said it was treating 19 injured people, six of them in critical condition. Tufts Medical Center reported that it was treating nine people. Combined, that brings the number of injured to at least 28. Police reported 22 people injured.”

We should expect nothing more from the MSM and responding emergency agencies. Incidents such as the Boston Marathon Bombing create confusion and chaos from the onset. It is a story that deserves to be followed closely, especially given the history of false reporting associated with MSM at times of tragedy and turmoil. One could easily begin amassing conflicting accounts to promote this as a possible false flag situation. We need more facts before we start pointing fingers and laying blame. The call to action for heightened security from other major cities will also not go unnoticed.

Snipped:

“If you see something, say something,” Mark Boughton, mayor of Canbury, Connecticut, wrote on Twitter. “All cities will be on a heightened state of alertness per Homeland Security protocols.”

Statements leaked to the general population such as this one above, will only serve to cement the fears of those proposing this as a false flag event. The mere mention of Homeland Security protocols will set some teetering on the edge of uneasiness, fearing that the federal government is involved and is using the tragedy to their advantage. This may seem far-fetched for some, but for others it is more fuel for the ongoing debate about corrupt government and its potential for engaging in Martial Law. What will happen next remains to be seen, but I for one would not put it beyond the scope of possibility that the Boston Marathon Bombing will result in the federal government and DHS using some of their nifty new tools and policies to see how well they work in real world events.

UPDATE:

“Boston police also reported another explosion at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, which is three miles from the marathon’s finishing line.

“We are not certain that these incidents are related, but we are treating them as if they are,” Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told a news conference.”

UPDATE:

“A federal law-enforcement source confirmed to The Post there are at least 12 dead and nearly 50 injured. Massachusetts General Hospital was treating 10 people with amputated limbs and all operating rooms were on hold, sources said.”

UPDATE:

“Investigators have a suspect — a Saudi Arabian national — in the horrific Boston Marathon bombings, The Post has learned.

Law enforcement sources said the 20-year-old suspect was under guard at an undisclosed Boston hospital.

It was not immediately clear why the man was hospitalized and whether he was injured in the attack or in his apprehension.”

This is starting to smell dirty and raise my eyebrows a bit. How efficient and effective is our nation’s intelligence gathering community? This is NOT the first time I have seen this statement being made after a tragic incident of a terrorist nature.

UPDATE:

““There was, nothing, nothing on the radar screen,” in terms of terrorist threat information, a U.S. homeland security official said.”

This statement was made after it was revealed that the Saudi National named by other MSM outlets as a suspect, was indeed NOT a suspect. The waters are starting to get murky my friends.

Alright, so maybe I have a few things bouncing around up in the old brain bucket that cause me to pause every time I pick up a newspaper and see an article on Obama’s sequestration policy, especially when it shares space on the same page as an article reporting the unnecessary expenditure of more taxpaying dollars. Sequestration, as I understand it (and I could be wrong, it has happened once before), in the simplest terms is the process by which automatic budget cuts are instituted to compensate for annual deficits in aforementioned budget. In other words it is the policy by which the federal government attempts to save money rather than spending more than they have. As with anything that pertains to the federal government and the bloated budget, the language used to explain sequestration often leaves one feeling dumber for having read it. Suffice to say it does very little to balance the budget or rein in the freewheeling spenders on Capitol Hill.

Govcareers.about.com:

“Sequestration forces lawmakers into an unpalatable position. They have three options. First, they can make specific spending cuts that will anger some voters. Second, they can increase the Budget Resolution which makes them look unwilling to make the hard decisions they were elected to make. Third, they can allow a mathematical process to make budget cuts which makes them look weak and will undoubtedly have unintended consequences on federal government operations. This third option is sequestration.”

So basically it’s supposed to stop the government from spending tax payer dollars they don’t already have hidden in the coffers. It’s supposed to be a cost cutting money saving idea…right?
If sequestration is supposed to institute automatic spending cuts, then how does Obama explain this?

Wahingtonpost.com:

“Next week, President Obama will request $105 million in NASA’s 2014 budget for a mission that would capture a small asteroid, tug it near the moon, and later send astronauts to study it and grab samples.”

He wants to cut spending this year to promote giving over $100 million to NASA’s budget next year in order to make an asteroid grabbing mission possible. Didn’t NASA recently mothball the shuttle program? To make matters worse headline grabbing news stories of the Obama family’s various spring vacations at the expense of taxpaying American citizens has ruffled more than a few feathers. His efforts to appear heroic and in tune with the effects of his sequestration has also caused more than a few people to consider his efforts useless.

Washingtonpost.com:

“Obama, who earns $400,000, wrote a check to the U.S. Treasury this week, the first installment of his donation of $20,000, retroactive to March 1, the day sequestration started to slice 5 percent from non-Defense programs, a White House official said. The checks will continue through the end of the year.

According to tax returns, the president and Michelle Obama made $750,000 in 2011. In the previous year, the couple made $1.8 million and in 2009 they reported an annual income of $5.5 million.”

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious but isn’t his meager check for $20,000 like a smack in the face to sequestration considering he makes more from royalties than from his position in office. 1 million federal employees are being furloughed and Obama’s personal payback amounts to trying to force a fart through the wall of a class 5 hurricane.

Technologyreview.com:

“A plan to map the activity of entire brain regions down to the level of individual neurons got its official nod from the White House on Tuesday when President Obama announced his budget will request $100 million in funding for the project in 2014.”

Sequestration in 2013 appears to be a precursor for ‘Requestration’ in 2014. How do you explain trying to save money this year while simultaneously requesting further funding for the following fiscal year? Perhaps they should hold off on the brain mapping program until such a time as somebody at the federal level of government exhibits the potential for possessing one.

Drones…drones and more drones, the unmanned aerial assault unit of the U.S. government, is no stranger to the press, or to the people in this country. Drones have been approved by the Obama administration to carry out everything from surveillance to ‘precision attacks’ against suspected terrorist cells anywhere on the planet. Mr. Obama doesn’t just want to ‘fly the friendly skies’ while jet setting his family to vacations wherever they have the desire to go, he wants to control them. Air superiority is often thought to shift the tide of war and establish a victor. Obama makes no bones about using these unmanned aerial assault weapons as if they were his personal property.

As with anything of this nature which comes under scrutiny, Obama and his henchmen have offered every excuse imaginable to justify the use of drones, both as a weapon of war and as one of increased unwarranted surveillance. Here are a couple of news clippings that shed a little light on the subject of drones, how they are used and where they may be headed.

Snipped:

“A trove of leaked classified reports has confirmed what many had suspected – US drone kills in Pakistan are not the precision strikes against top-level al-Qaeda terrorists they are portrayed as by the Obama administration.

Instead, many of the attacks are aimed at suspected low-level tribal militants, who may pose no direct danger to the United States – and for many there appears to be little evidence to justify the assassinations.”

Currently these drones are being deployed under the supervision of the CIA. The CIA as you may already know is supposed to be an intelligence gathering group. How comfortable do you feel with their ability to amass relevant information supporting the necessity for using drones to secure our freedom from terrorists?

What is more revealing is the Obama administration’s attempt to deflect negative media attention to the current policy regarding the use of drones.

Snipped:

“The CIA could soon lose its power to pulverize suspected terrorists overseas with unmanned drones: United States President Barack Obama is reportedly close to transferring the intelligence agency’s drone program to the Department of Defense.”

WHEW!!! I don’t know about you, but ‘crisis resolved,’ in my opinion. The DOD is in charge of all Armed Forces. They may allow more congressional oversight, but they are going to be getting the same bad intelligence reports the CIA dreams up to use the drones.

Snipped:

“The American public is questioning the morality and utility of drone operations while also pushing for greater accountability and transparency. In an apparent response to its critics, the Obama Administration is apparently debating whether to transfer control over the drone-based targeted killing operations from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to the Department of Defense (DoD).

Ultimately, as many of the recent editorials note, any shift in the operational authority over drone strikes from the CIA to the DoD may have little practical effect.”

A classic example of deflecting negative attention on drones and what they are truly being used for, while simultaneously moving on to other subjects of apparent immediate interest such as North Korea. How can we trust our government to be honest with us regarding the use of drones in American airspace when we can’t even rely on them to be in the same ball park as honesty with what they have been doing abroad?

Here’s the recent turn of events from the international news scene. Can North Korea launch a nuclear missile? Yes it can. No it can’t. Well it could…but. Now this wouldn’t be so disconcerting if it were coming from various uninformed news agencies around the world, but it is coming from our own ‘experts’ in the intelligence gathering community. For weeks leading up to this point the concern over North Korea and its nuclear capabilities has been labeled nothing more than annual rhetoric. Now, almost overnight, we learn that a leaked document from the DIA indicates that North Korea does indeed have the possible capability to launch a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile. To make matters worse they seem all too ready to make good on their threats of launching a missile at any time.

Foxnews.com:

“North Korea reportedly warned Japan that Tokyo would be the first target should the country decide to play its nuclear card.
The warning is reportedly in response to Tokyo’s standing orders to destroy any missile heading towards the nation, according to Korean Central News Agency.
Japan has deployed PAC-3 missile interceptor units around Tokyo to protect its capital and is taking North Korea’s rhetoric seriously.”

As tensions mount with each new report coming out of North Korea the international community is left with the undesirable aspect of waiting to see how things unfold. Countries around the world are watching with a wary eye to see just how unstable Kim Jong Un may be. A missile launch of any kind, even the test firing of a rocket, is bound to set into motion a chain of events that will lead to catastrophic annihilation of North Korea and other countries within the region.

Nation.time.com:

“DIA assesses with moderate confidence the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles. However, the reliability will be low.

It would be inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested, developed or demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced in the passage.”

Now I do not claim to be a thermonuclear rocket scientist by any means, but I did pay attention in history class. Nuclear weapons, the last time they were used on a human population, could by today’s standards be considered very low on the reliability list. Those same less than reliable nuclear weapons were delivered by aircraft and caused enormous death and destruction. A nuclear detonation of any kind has serious implications whether it is a reliable weapon or not.

Washingtonpost.com:

“U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday that they believe North Korea’s rhetoric represents an effort by the country’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, to show he is firmly in control, and should not be construed as a genuine appetite for war. They cautioned, however, that discerning the young leader’s intentions is difficult. Kim took power in December 2011 after the death of his father, and U.S. officials have limited evidence to assess his thinking.”

I cannot speak for everyone else but personally I would prefer they just come out and make an accurate and honest statement such as:

Maybe Kim Jong Un is blowing more smoke than any of his predecessors, then again maybe he isn’t, we just don’t know.

It wouldn’t shore up my confidence in our governments abilities to assess our adversaries but it sure would cut down on the amount of reading one has to endure to get to the bottom of things. This North Korea nuclear nightmare scenario needs to come to an immediate end. If we can find the world’s Hide & Seek Champion after a decade long search and kill, transport and dispose of his body in under an hour, then I am fairly certain we have the tools to infiltrate and decapitate the leader of the DRPK.

As if President Obama hasn’t done enough to overreach the power of his position it now appears evident he plans to push for the acceptance of a new nominee for placement in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. This is something we all need to pay close attention to. The court in question is considered to be dominated by conservatives which in turn pose a serious problem for President Obama. If he is successful in his attempts to persuade senators from both parties to confirm his nominee it could signal a shift that would allow him an easier path to promote his 2nd term agendas.

President Obama has shown his complete disregard for the U.S. Constitution by signing several executive orders that grant his position or that of the federal government more power to infringe on the rights of citizens throughout the country. This recent push for acceptance of his nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals is just his latest effort to try and manipulate the judicial branch of the federal government to fall in line with the issues he has received opposition to.

Washingtonpost.com:

“The effort reflects a new White House effort to tilt in its favor the conservative-dominated U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is one notch below the Supreme Court and considers many challenges to executive actions.”

President Obama appears to adhere to the age old adage; “If at first you don’t succeed, over reach your authority until you do.” Okay, so maybe that’s paraphrasing a bit but you get the idea. He has been unsuccessful at pushing through certain legislation, such as stricter gun control laws, so rather than accept defeat Obama makes it obvious he has no dignity by trying to circumvent a system that has been in place for over two centuries.

Washingtonpost.com:

“The push to win approval for Sri Srinivasan, the principal deputy solicitor general, has taken on greater urgency because Obama was forced late last month to withdraw his initial nominee to fill one of the court’s vacancies, New York City prosecutor Caitlin Halligan, in the face of a Republican filibuster.

Giving liberals a greater say on the D.C. Circuit is important for Obama as he looks for ways to circumvent the Republican-led House and a polarized Senate on a number of policy fronts through executive order and other administrative procedures.”

President Obama continues to exhibit his desire to abolish the U.S. Constitution and everything it stands for. His dissatisfaction with being denied the ability to pass laws without approval from the Senate or House can easily be identified through the actions he has taken since occupying the top seat in federal government.

Never before in the history of our country have we witnessed one man’s abhorrent desire to establish a new form of government to rule over us with. We the people can no longer sit idly by and allow events to take place in Washington D.C. which could affect us all. Our voices are the only ones that matter. If we do not exercise our right to issue a grievance against the policies President Obama wants to write into law our future generations are going to be left with a new frontier, and it won’t consist of interplanetary exploration. As our forefathers before us stood in the face of tyranny, so must we for the benefit of our future generations.

It seems as though every day the newspapers carry stories about states passing local legislation to protect the 2nd Amendment in the event the federal government passes stricter gun control laws or ratifies Agenda 21.

Escalating fears over Agenda 21 have caused several individuals to begin preparing for a worst case scenario on several “sustainable development” fronts. It appears as if more and more states are now listening to their concerned citizens and introducing and voting on laws to prevent more power being absorbed by the federal government. The 2nd Amendment is but one of the issues Agenda 21 is viewed as being harmful to. The residents of Tennessee no longer have to worry about the federal government coming to take the guns of law abiding citizens within that state.

Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) spearheaded Resolution 17 in an effort to ensure citizens of Tennessee were protected against infringement by the federal government of their inalienable rights.

Chattahoogan.com:

“Senate Resolution 17 passed the Tennessee Senate Thursday by a vote of 26-0. The resolution “addresses the concern of many legislators and Tennesseans across the state, fearing the federal government is poised to restrict or abolish the right of the people to keep and bear firearms and ammunition,” officials said.”

Not only has Tennessee introduced and voted on a bill to protect the 2nd Amendment rights of their state residents, they did so without one single vote being cast opposing the resolution. Perhaps other states should adopt similar legislation and see how their elected officials vote on the subject.

Chattahoogan.com:

“The resolution expresses the intention of the Senate “to utilize all the legal resources of the state to judicially challenge any effort by the federal government to restrict or abolish the right of the people to keep and bear firearms or ammunition.”

While Resolution 17 does not completely thwart the efforts of the federal government to enact stricter gun control measures on the national level, it does establish a protocol for what steps the Tennessee Senate takes if the federal government attempts to circumvent the 2nd Amendment rights of citizens living there.

Tnreport.com:

“Senate Resolution 17 is the constitutional way to address executive orders and acts of Congress that attempt to violate the 2nd Amendment.” Based on the rule of law, this action takes our disputes to the courts.”

While it remains to be seen how effective this resolution will be should the federal government enact stricter gun control laws that abolish 2nd Amendment rights, it is a step in the right direction. If more states would publicly announce their intentions to stand up for their citizens, then their elected representatives and senators at the federal level would have to side with their states or be subjected to showing their true colors. The 2nd Amendment is the only right that protects us from the horrors of repetitive history. When a citizenry is stripped of their rights to own firearms they are at an enormous disadvantage to prevent tyranny or dictatorial forms of government from establishing a stronghold. Contact your state senators today and insist on them taking action to protect 2nd Amendment rights. Even if you do not believe in owning a weapon your neighbor might. They may be the ‘first responder’ that saves your life should you come under attack by a criminal entity.

Things are beginning to heat up on Capitol Hill in regards to bringing stricter gun control measures to the floor of the U.S. Senate, with members from both the Republican and Democratic parties choosing sides on the issue. The ban on assault weapons, at least at the federal level, has for the most part been relegated to secondary status by those wishing to enforce stricter gun control laws. The new cry on Capitol Hill is for increased universal background checks. The problem with this policy is the same as with any other measure mentioned that entails restrictive 2nd Amendment concerns. Universal background checks will nullify the ability of criminals to get their hands on guns, at least according to supporters and proponents of this procedure. The truth of the matter is: CRIMINALS DO NOT FOLLOW LAWS. Restrictive measures on the 2nd Amendment will only affect those that are LAW-ABIDING citizens.

Gun control enthusiasts always overlook the fact that those committing these heinous crimes while using assault style weapons are not law abiding citizens. In other words the majority of instances in which an individual goes on a rampage involve guns that were obtained ILLEGALLY. Universal background checks will do nothing to thwart the efforts of criminals as they will find their guns on the black market or by stealing them from individuals that own them LEGALLY. Criminals do not walk into firearms selling environments and attempt to purchase a gun. If they did then the universal background checks would work. They don’t so all universal background checks are going to do is provide the federal government with more information on law abiding gun owners. Arguments from both sides regarding implementing universal background checks seem to be out of touch with reality

MSNBC.com:

“I don’t understand it,” Arizona Senator John McCain said on Sunday’s Face the Nation. “The purpose of the United States senate is to debate and to vote and to let the people know where we stand.”

The first part of Sen. McCain’s statement indicates his unwillingness to accept the obvious. He doesn’t understand it because for whatever reason he believes passing this legislation will somehow cause criminals to cease their illegal ways of obtaining guns and submitting to universal background checks. The second part of his statement is entirely true. The U.S. Senate was not formed to act in the interest of ‘the people’ but rather to act in the interest of the state they represent. My question to Senator McCain would be, “what don’t you understand?” If criminals are NOT going to follow laws now, what makes him think any new legislation will change their outlook or habits?

The NRA and opponents to stricter gun control legislation in the form of universal background checks have a different theory about what this type of governmental interference would entail.

Huffingtonpost.com:

“The National Rifle Association (NRA) has long fueled a conspiratorial fear that any kind of record keeping is always the first step in the government’s clandestine plan to create a national registry of guns and, ultimately, total civilian disarmament.”

Again, the thinking here is somewhat twisted. Yes a national registry of gun owners would provide the federal government and its agencies with intimate detailed information on which LAW ABIDING citizens owned guns. It would not however include the same information for individuals that obtained their firearms illegally.

Look at gun control laws in the same light as legal drinking age laws. Do legal age laws prevent underage citizens from obtaining alcohol? Absolutely not. Why? Because underage citizens that want to drink will find some way of getting the alcohol. They will find someone else to buy it for them, try to shoplift or steal it, or use whatever means necessary to get it. It may cause a slight delay in their plans but eventually they will prevail. When you think about it, everything the policy makers do not want the younger generation to get their hands on, they get their hands on, alcohol, tobacco, firearms and pornography to name a few and yet these same lawmakers continue to inform us how effective these gun control measures will be and how much safer we will be. Hell, Prohibition couldn’t even stop the manufacturing and sale of alcohol, yet universal background checks are going to put an enormous dent in the amount of gun violence witnessed in this country. Talk about having your eyes wide shut!

There has been a lot of confusing and conflicting news about North Korea lately. Half of the news stories carry dark messages of doom from the new untested leader Kim Jong Un. The other halves of the stories recite ‘expert opinions’ that look to dispel the rhetoric as nothing out of the ordinary. It can be mind boggling to say the least. You can literally spend hours surfing the internet reading stories about the instability in the region and troop movements on both sides of the DMZ. You can also read dozens of articles on why North Korea and Kim Jong Un won’t push the big bomb launching button. Confusing matters further is the pre-emptive strike policy America has for dealing with terrorism and its refrain from using it. Concerned citizens following the unfolding of events are left to develop their own theories on what could take place. Will North Korea continue to entrench the region in a war-like atmosphere, or is this all a ploy by Kim Jong Un to cement his status as a leader worthy of guiding his country and its citizens into the future.

Chicagotribune.com:

“South Korea said on Wednesday there was “very high” probability that North Korea, engaged in weeks of threats of war, would launch a medium-range missile at any time as a show of strength despite diplomatic efforts to soften its position.”

Despite this claim other reports coming out of Seoul, South Korea indicate that the citizens of that country are continuing to conduct business as normal and view the threats from North Korea as nothing more than international posturing to entice concessions from members of the global community.

Rawstory.com:

“I still don’t find any of the latest North Korean rhetoric that shocking. It’s perfectly predictable,” said Joel Wit, a former State Department official who was in charge of implementing the 1994 energy agreement…“The difference this time is that they have nuclear weapons,” said Wit, now a scholar at Columbia University.”

As you can see even comments from the same individual can be quite confusing. On one hand Mr. Wit sees these actions by North Korea as “perfectly predictable,” yet in the following sentence he notes the difference this time around is that “they have nuclear weapons.” That’s a pretty big difference in any battle plan. It brings North Korea closer to leveling the playing field as far as weapons of war are concerned and it tips the scales of balance slightly in their favor with the intentions of their new leader yet to be determined.

Associated Press:

“Locklear said Kim Jong Un has adopted pages from the playbook used by his father, Kim Jong Il, but his approach differs in a significant way. Kim Jong Un’s father, as well as his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, made sure they had “off ramps” that gave them a way to exit a confrontation, particularly if the U.S. and its allies were willing to offer concessions. Kim Jong Un, Locklear said, appears not to have given himself channels that would help him ratchet down the tensions.”

A new untested leader in North Korea with nuclear capabilities that were previously unavailable and the absence of communication channels to stifle the mounting tensions in the region cannot logically be explained away as “perfectly predictable.” The banter from both sides does nothing to assuage the fears of those following the headlines and wondering when this waiting game with North Korea will finally come to an end.

It seems as if there is no shortage of news surrounding the 1st Amendment. We read new stories all the time involving Supreme Court rulings and rights violations cases stemming from the interpretation of the 1st Amendment. Who does it protect? What institute has the authority to determine how the language is interpreted? Can states overrule the federal judicial system and government and enact their own laws regarding the 1st Amendment? It would appear as though the politicians of North Carolina seem to think that a state does have the right to enact laws which appear to abolish some of the rights protected under the 1st Amendment.

A recent news story coming out of North Carolina reports that two senatorial policy makers in that state have introduced a bill indicating the state does not recognize the power or rulings of the federal court system.

NBCnews.com:

“The bill says that federal courts do not have the power to decide what is constitutional, and says the state does not recognize federal court rulings that prohibit North Carolina and its schools from favoring a religion…The bill does not specify a religion.”

The 1st Amendment protects our rights individually to choose to follow whichever religion(s) each of us has developed a belief system in. North Carolina looks to rescind this right and establish a favored religion, yet they confuse matters by not stipulating which religion that might be. One has to wonder if they aren’t trying to install a church run state thereby subjecting citizens to a single set of religious tenets to live by. As there are dozens of religious organizations to choose from wouldn’t a state enacting a policy of this nature be considered offensive to those it does not include?

NBCnews.com:

“One professor of politics called the measure “the verge of being neo-secessionist,” and another said it was reminiscent of how Southern states objected to the Supreme Court’s 1954 integration of public schools.

North Carolina scholars also cast doubt on the bill.

“It has elements of not being American,” Gary Freeze, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College, told The Salisbury Post. “I think it goes far beyond religion and frankly doesn’t have a lot to do with North Carolina or tradition.”

Another professor at the college, Michael Bitzer, told the newspaper that the bill is based on discredited legal theory that the states can declare themselves exempt from federal law.”

Chances are very slim that a bill of this nature is going to pass in the State House and Senate. The simple fact that it was introduced by elected political officials should give citizens in the state of North Carolina plenty to think about when the next election process rolls around. If you are a resident of North Carolina and wish to protect your 1st Amendment rights, then perhaps it is time to let those elected officials know their efforts were unappreciated by removing them from office as soon as possible. This is what happens when we elect people that allow power to go to their heads.

There has been a spike in interest in learning bitcoin currency basics recently. With the economic turmoil of Cyprus still fresh on the minds of the international community people around the globe are looking for other ways to begin securing their financial assets. The bitcoin currency has actually been around since 2009. As is often the case with new internet technologies there is ongoing debate over whether or not bitcoin currency is a viable solution for solving the world’s economic shortfalls.

We have quite a few economic experts claiming there will be an economic collapse of global proportions in our future. As concerned citizens it would be prudent for all of us to begin thinking of every possible solution to solving the problem, or preventing it from having as damaging an effect on us personally. The bitcoin currency may be just such a solution.

Washingtonpost.com:

“Bitcoins are a virtual currency in which new coins are created by a slow, complex computer process known as “mining.” Once a person acquires a Bitcoin, he or she can trade it online to anyone who will accept it as payment for goods or services. Right now, a single Bitcoin is worth about $140 in U.S. dollars, though that value fluctuates. There are 11 million Bitcoins now in existence, and once 22 million have been created, all mining will effectively cease. The currency isn’t regulated by any central bank.”

In laymen’s terms individuals wanting to obtain bitcoin currency normally do so by allowing available space on their computers to be used for mining. Once they have mined enough information it is compensated for with bitcoin currency.

Felix Salmon:

“Bitcoins were designed to be – and, in many ways, are – the perfect digital currency: they’re frictionless, anonymous, and cryptographically astonishingly secure. For anybody who’s ever suffered the incompetence of a bank, or bristled at the fees involved in just spending money, either domestically or abroad – that is to say, for all of us – the promise of bitcoin is the holy grail of payments. Especially since, to all intents and purposes, bitcoins are invisible to law enforcement and the taxman.”

Sounds as if bitcoin currency provides us all with an opportunity to earn money the way it was supposed to be earned, free from illegal taxation. Not everyone feels the same way about bitcoin currency and its overall potential.

Timothy Lee of Forbes:

“Bitcoin is extremely resistant to government regulation, a factor boosters cite as an argument in its favor. For this reason, Bitcoin has gained a loyal following among those who engage in legally dubious activities such as drug dealing and gambling. As the technology matures and becomes more widely known, more and more people who want to avoid government scrutiny are likely to adopt it. At some point, federal law enforcement agencies may conclude that Bitcoin is a giant money-laundering machine and look for ways to shut it down.”

What happens with the future of bitcoin currency remains to be seen. One of the best recommendations being suggested is to treat bitcoin currency much like you would a gambling adventure. If you are considering investing in bitcoin currency, then proceed with caution. Start small, invest in a single unit, if it turns out to be a financial windfall, then so much the better. Should the bitcoin currency market fail or become obstructed by federal governments, then the loss will not be too harsh to bear.

By now we are all familiar with the daily news coming out of Washington D.C. regarding our treasured 2nd Amendment. The political pundits are still wrangling over stricter gun control laws, debating the language of the Feinstein in the hopes of solving 2nd Amendment issues once and for all. While our elected state officials continue to pose and posture, fight and argue, it would appear as though several pockets of civilization are taking action one their own for the same purpose of solving 2nd Amendment issues.

In what appears to be a direct slap in the face message to the federal government small towns and cities are beginning to hold local and regional meetings to pass legislation for their communities that stipulate all residents within their jurisdiction must purchase and own a weapon for personal protection. These communities believe this is the only way of solving 2nd Amendment issues once and for all.

Yahoo News:

“If you think gun control legislation hasn’t moved in this country since the Newtown shooting, think again. There’s been plenty of activity in the states, even though no gun legislation has passed through Congress. And while states that passed tougher restrictions on gun ownership receive plenty of attention, several states have moved in the opposite direction.”

The states seem just as divided as their representatives in Washington, some of them supporting stricter gun control laws, thereby stepping in line with what the federal government would like to see nationwide. Other states are either relaxing gun control laws or expanding them in direct opposition to the federal government’s plan to disarm law abiding citizens. If you ask me those that are expanding gun laws are doing more in the form of solving 2nd Amendment issues than those that are trying to subvert the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms.

Yahoo News:

“Backers of a newly adopted ordinance requiring gun ownership in a small north Georgia town acknowledge they were largely seeking to make a point about gun rights.
The ordinance in the city of Nelson — population 1,300 — was approved Monday night and goes into effect in 10 days. However, it contains no penalties and exempts anyone who objects, convicted felons and those with certain mental and physical disabilities.”

Not only are they making a point about gun rights they are proactively seeking a sound and logical solution to solving 2nd Amendment issues. Statistical data in other cities where similar legislation has been passed indicates a drastic reduction in crime rate, significantly less than the state or national average. One such town is Kennesaw, Ga. with a population of just over 30,000.

Rense.com:

“Kennesaw Historical Society president Robert Jones said following the law’s passage, the crime rate dropped 89 percent in the city, compared to the modest 10 percent drop statewide.
“It did drop after it was passed,” he said. “After it initially dropped, it has stayed at the same low level for the past 16 years.”

It would seem as if this would be a shining example of how properly solving 2nd Amendment issues results in the lower crime rates that the federal government seems destined to achieve. Have you considered taking an active role in your community to introduce the same type of local legislation? Tell us what actions you are taking in your city regarding solving 2nd Amendment issues for the members in your community.

Finally, the answer we have all been frantically searching has arrived, and from the DHS itself no less. I don’t know about you folks but this recent announcement sure does settle my concerns about the DHS spying on Americans. It goes without saying that any explanation offered by a government mouthpiece should be taken with a grain of salt. A few shots of tequila and a wedge of lemon wouldn’t hurt either, especially if you plan on believing anything they have to offer.

With the recent passing of laws that enable the federal government to launch drones over American airspace and the establishment of fusion centers all over the national landscape it has left many of us wondering who they are interested in looking at. We have all been concerned with the DHS spying on Americans through the use of various means and now we have the proof.

Snipped:

“In trying to clear up the ‘misconceptions’ about the conduct of fusion centers, Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis simply confirmed Americans’ fears: the center does in fact spy on Americans – but only on those who are suspected to be ‘anti-government’.”

So the DHS spying on Americans doesn’t involve any American citizens, just those suspected of being anti-government, that’s a relief. Forgive me if I am reading too much into this article, but wouldn’t anti-government Americans include everyone not currently sucking up a seat in a political position? I know I have voiced many of my concerns about local, state and federal forms of government. Does this mean I am anti-government? Not by my definition, since the majority of my complaints happen to be directed at politicians who pervert the Constitution to serve their misguided anti-government agendas. Read the entire issue here.

Snipped:

“(CNN) — The number of American “patriot” extremist groups has reached a record level, according to a new study, and experts are warning of a wave of anti-government violence.”

Notice how the media is portraying “patriot” groups as extremist in nature, sort of broadens the horizons for what falls under the definition of anti-government doesn’t it. Are you satisfied that your name isn’t on a federal fusion center watch dog list? Me neither. The DHS spying on Americans initiative places us all under the microscope.

Snipped:

“A report released Tuesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center counted 1,360 “patriot” extremist groups in 2012 — up by 7% from 2011. The study defines patriot groups as anti-government militias driven by their fear that authorities will strip them of their guns and liberties.”

Let me put this as bluntly as I can without being overtly offensive. If those idiots in D.C. weren’t passing laws to strip us of our liberties and rights to own guns we wouldn’t have to live in fear of being subjected to a tyrannical form of dictatorship. They make the laws and then accuse us of being the culprits.
Snipped:

“…the DHS has released documents listing Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who support gun rights, who oppose the Federal Reserve, oppose illegal immigration and oppose abortion as “domestic extremists” and terrorists.”

According to that definition it would be safe to assume that many of us are on several federal watch dog lists. I guess if you want to avoid being subjected to the DHS spying on Americans you should consider rolling over and exposing yourself for a proper probing. The biggest anti-government extremist groups in this country aren’t even being targeted by these fusion centers!

Have you been following the news lately regarding the DHS and Fusion Centers? Have you figured it out for yourself or would you like to hear a sound logical theory for a change? It’s no secret that the DHS has spent millions of dollars stockpiling billions of rounds of ammunition. It is also no secret that they will be using more and more drones over American airspace to conduct surveillance of “anti-government” groups. What remains a mystery to those unwilling to open their eyes is what they intend to use this equipment for.

If you listen to the language applied to the answers government officials spout off when asked about the intended use of these materials, then you are likely to lull yourself to sleep in the security blanket excuse program the federal government has developed to wash away your fears regarding DHS and Fusion Centers.

Rt.com:
“We are seeing the fourth straight year of really explosive growth on the part of anti-government patriot groups and militias,” Mark Potok, senior fellow at the SPLC, told Mother Jones. “That’s 913 percent in growth. We’ve never seen that kind of growth in any group we cover.”

Whoa there Nellie! Weren’t DHS and Fusion Centers information gathering and sharing facilities supposed to assist the federal government in thwarting the efforts of foreign terrorists? It would seem, at least from the statement above, that the new and primary focus of fusion centers is to spy on “anti-government patriot groups and militias.” How in the hell can you be anti-government and patriotic in the same sentence? Isn’t a patriot someone with the burning desire for the best type of government for the citizenry? So how can they be anti-government groups? They can’t, but the need to label them as such is also revealed in the clipping above.

When you cannot realistically compile relevant data on foreign terrorists you have to develop identities that fit the definition, regardless of how loosely you define terrorism. The DHS and Fusion Centers witnessed a 913% increase in growth among patriot groups. Sounds like a healthy target pool. Read the last line; “we’ve never seen that kind of growth in any group we cover.” There’s no masking it now, this includes Al Qaeda and any other foreign terrorist cells or groups. They are amassing information on innocent civilians of their own country. Who does that? The same people stockpiling ammo in case of civil unrest, that’s who.

Rt.com:
“Of the 386 unclassified HIRs that DHS eventually published over the 13-month period reviewed by the Subcommittee investigation, a review found close to 300 of them had no discernible connection to terrorists, terrorist plots or threats.”

Almost 78% of the intelligence gathering conducted by the DHS and Fusion Centers isn’t even connected to stopping or thwarting the global war on terrorism launched under the Bush Administration and continued under the Obama Regime. There is no hidden agenda here. When you are stockpiling enough ammo to shoot every single citizen at least five times and the abundance of information you are gathering relates to “anti-government patriot groups,” a sound logical explanation would be that the government is becoming afraid of the people they have made unhappy through corrupt practices and they call us paranoid.

It is an understandable need for an agency such as the DHS to acquire ammunition. Several of the internal agencies under the umbrella of the DHS are considered law enforcement entities so it stands to reason that they would need a small quantity of ammunition to conduct their tasks on a daily basis. What is not understandable, and remains to be deflected, dodged or addressed from an unreasonable perspective is why the DHS would need to stockpile millions upon millions of hollow point rounds. The answers spewing forth from DHS mouth pieces appear to be offered as part of a security blanket coverage program for the uneducated.

The DHS is currently stockpiling more ammunition than would be necessary to fight major war against a foreign adversary and yet they are still unable to accurately explain their intentions for using these rounds. Concerns have been mounting all across the board with many concerned citizens and politicians wanting to know exactly what the DHS plans on doing with all of that ammunition, especially with the Obama administrations push for stricter gun control laws. It is even more troubling and perplexing considering the sequestration policies of the same Obama administration, which do not appear to be fixing anything according to plan. Maybe a few short sentences from one of Obama’s 2008 campaign speeches will shed some light on this subject.

Obama:

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

Why on Earth would we need a civilian security force armed to the teeth with the same weapons and armaments as our federal Armed Forces? Perhaps it is because the soldiers that make up our current Armed Forces will not invade American cities and place their civilian countrymen at risk.

Fosters.com:

“To put things in perspective, this DHS purchase is enough bullets to fight the war in Iraq for 27 years, or enough bullets to shoot every American citizen five times. When questioned recently, a DHS official claimed the bullets were bought in bulk to save money and were for training purposes only. However, hollow point bullets are very expensive in ammo terms, and it is highly unusual to use such bullets for target practice.”

Anyone that is familiar with weapons can tell you that they NEVER use hollow points for target practice. It doesn’t make sound financial sense no matter what type of spin you put on it, saving money by buying in bulk or issuing it for training exercises. There has to be another reason behind this stockpiling of ammunition by the DHS.

Fosters.com:

“Law Enforcement Targets Inc. (LET)… began selling targets designed to ’desensitize the shooter’ to ’nontraditional threat targets,’…These targets included very pregnant women, children and other civilians in home, playground or other neighborhood settings; all holding guns…LET apologized for the company’s ‘No More Hesitation’ products and removed them from its website. In its apology, LET insisted these heinous civilian targets weren’t the company’s ideas but that this product line was originally requested and designed by the purchaser, DHS.”

Targets designed to desensitize shooters with regards to nontraditional threats in conjunction with enormous acquisitions of hollow point ammunition by the DHS and the push for stricter gun control all adds up to one thing; a repetition in history.

Constitutionalistnc.tripod.com:
“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let’s not have any native militia or native police….”

The DHS is already making a run on the ammunition ensuring there will be a supply shortage for civilian citizens. The federal government wants us all to give up our guns without a fight. What could possibly be on the horizon?

Reports coming out of the Korean Peninsula announced today the North Korean border closing has caused the international community to take a closer look into the region. Many in the area believe that the political regime under control of Kim Jong Un is sending a more threatening message indicating just how far they are willing to go to receive the recognition they feel they deserve. Kim Jong Un has made it clear that any negotiations will not involve the dismantling of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

The North Korean border closing, if allowed to continue, could have serious economic impacts on both Koreas. The joint industrial complex situated in Kaesong employs a mix of workers from both countries. This move is seen by many as a sign that the possibility of establishing a peaceful resolution to the escalated tensions on the Korean peninsula is all but impossible.

Nytimes.com:

“North Korea blocked South Koreans on Wednesday from crossing the heavily armed border to a jointly operated industrial park, raising doubt about the future of the last remaining major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.”

For weeks now the U.S. federal government has taken a lackadaisical approach to the escalating tensions in the region. Regardless of what statements have been issued or what actions were taken our policy makers seemed to think it was all hot air and horse manure. Several senior officials indicated this type of rhetoric has been an annual event in opposition to joint U.S./South Korean military exercises and there really was no cause for concern. Will they view the North Korean border closing in the same light?

CBSnews.com:

“Pyongyang is angry over annual U.S.-South Korean military drills and a new round of U.N. sanctions that followed its Feb. 12 nuclear test, the country’s third. Analysts see a full-scale North Korean attack as unlikely and say the threats are more likely efforts to provoke softer policies toward Pyongyang from a new government in Seoul, to win diplomatic talks with Washington that could get the North more aid, and to solidify the young North Korean leader’s image and military credentials at home.”

The North Korean border closing seems to indicate that Kim Jong Un is more than willing to back up his words with actions that will have ramifications on the Korean peninsula. It may be true that the young leader of the DRPK is looking to cement his status among his military peers. What also appears to be evident is that Kim Jong Un is slightly less stable than his predecessor and is not as concerned with image as he is with establishing a state of war in the region.

Nytimes.com:

“The North Koreans want the international community to feed their people, fuel their factories and fill their bank accounts,” the official said. “If North Korea were a self-sufficient enterprise, we would have a much bigger problem on our hands.”

Even with the North Korean border closing some still view it as an idle threat that warrants recognition but not reaction. Will he back down or will we once again enter a war supporting South Korea? The next few days will determine just how far Kim Jong Un is willing to go to get his message across that he means business.

It really doesn’t matter which side of the Agenda 21 fence you happen to sit on. The sustainable development policies presented by the United Nations, aim to restructure civilized societies, while posing as necessary ventures to prevent poverty and help the environment. Several individual states, such as Arizona, have recently passed legislation that will ban adopting or implementing any of the declarations contained in the Agenda 21 scheme.

Opposition to Agenda 21 has increased exponentially over the last decade. There appears to be an increased level of awareness here in America as to how destructive and damaging it would be for our country to jump on the Agenda 21 program and submit to their demands. To get a better feel for what many believe Agenda 21 actually is, here is an excerpt from Survivalist Magazine that explains the overall purpose of this United Nations drive for international sustainability.

From Survivalist:

“There are many organizations operating under United Nations that are involved in the implementation of UN Agenda 21 across the globe. Under the noble mantra of saving the Earth, the United Nations wants to change the way we eat, live, learn, communicate and move by controlling the economy, the environment, our health, and private property in the name of social equity (social justice). The ultimate goal is to have a one-world government under the aegis of the United Nations, controlled by a handful of individuals.”

As we can clearly see, if this information is even remotely accurate it leads one to believe that we are being set up to fall into some form of international internment. I cannot speak for anyone else on this matter but personally I am not willing to abide by the decisions of a few elitists that think they know best and deserve the best cut of pie. The federal government is intrusive enough as it is. Compliance with Agenda 21 will be nothing short of a global climate for communism.

From thenewamerican.com:

“While UN proponents have tried to downplay the seriousness of the international scheme, the global body offers a concise summary on its website. “Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts (sic) on the environment,” the UN admits on its website, sparking suspicions from analysts who point out that virtually every aspect of human existence has some “impact” on the “environment.” The UN even claims carbon dioxide — a gas exhaled by everyone on earth — is a “pollutant” in need of a global CO2 regulation regime.”

Global population reduction, massive land grabs, stricter governmental control over the aspects of our everyday lives, reduced consumption of resources and stricter gun control laws are all part of the Agenda 21 plot. Now unless I am mistaken I believe the last time tyranny of this sort set foot on Earth several members of my family, grandfathers, uncles and cousins all got together and fought the regime and freed the slaves from their death camp cells. We do not need international governing bodies to dictate how we live. International policies that do not support our way of life here in America should be opposed and we as citizens should take action to ensure they are.

The fact that this country was founded by immigrants cannot be disputed. There were tribal Native Americans roaming the continent however until the influx of colonists arrived on America’s shores the landscape remained unsettled. Some 200+ years later, due to ineffective immigration laws and lax border security our country has been inundated with illegal immigrants. This has enticed Obama to seek new illegal immigration policies.

As if the economic climate of our country wasn’t in bad enough shape, now we must contend with the fact that Obama wants to allow more immigrants to remain here even though they got here illegally. Unemployment rates are still at unacceptable levels across the entire nation. When you take this into consideration with the amount of illegal immigration our country is crippled with you can begin to see the damaging effects.

From About.com:

“Ten million illegal immigrants live in the US, according to estimates by academic and government agencies, although Bear-Stearns investment firm analysts claim that the US illegal immigrant population “may be as high as 20 million people.”

The latest statistics for the population of the U.S. indicates there are 313,000,000+ people living here. Unemployment rates are hovering at 7.7%. 10-20 million illegal immigrants represent 3-6% of our population, or between 39-78% of the unemployment rate. If those that got here through illegal immigration were to be shipped back home there would be an overwhelming abundance of jobs available to legal U.S. citizens.

From ABC News:

“The president has repeatedly said that he would propose his own immigration bill should negotiations in Congress grind to a halt. But Obama refused to say that he would take such action even if the lawmakers fail to introduce a bill in April.”

As we have already witnessed Obama’s penchant for overstepping his legal boundaries by signing other Executive Orders and bills that go against the grain of democracy, the question isn’t: “Will illegal immigration reform laws be passed?” The real question is: “When will illegal immigration reform laws be passed?”

From About.com:

“Illegal immigration into the United States is a highly profitable proposition for both employers and the U.S. government, and it also benefits Mexico, which is the largest source country of undocumented immigrants into the US.”

Of course it is profitable. Employers reap the benefits of low cost labor. They do not have to pay minimum wages to those that are here through illegal immigration practices. Low labor costs equal higher profit margins. Mexico gets rid of the citizens they do not want within their borders. The U.S. government profits through the Social Security System. Illegal immigration allows employers to ‘verify’ false identification papers, hire illegal aliens and tax their paychecks accordingly for Social Security. While illegal immigrants pay into the system, they cannot withdraw from it.

Obama’s stance on illegal immigration reform laws appears to represent a ‘get it done or I will’ attitude that is both cavalier and corrupted. We can ill afford to absorb an additional 10-20 million people without balancing the national debt and even then it should be considered moderately as opposed to an open free for all format.

The new hot topic being tossed around by major news reporting agencies is the threat of nuclear war posed by North Korea. It is no secret that the communist regime controlled by Kim Jong Un has issues with international sanctions and the U.S. in general, or at least according to what these agencies are reporting. With all that is going on in this country we need to ask ourselves how factual the reports coming out of the North Korea actually are. Better yet we need to ask ourselves how serious our own Obamanation regime wants the threat to be taken.

There has been a lot of talk as of late about enormous DHS ammunition purchases, armor plated vehicles for domestic use, stricter gun control laws, the use of drones to patrol American airspace and FEMA Camps. When you add the possibility of a nuclear threat from North Korea to the mix one has to wonder if the threat is for real, or just a tool the federal government plans on using to establish Martial Law.

From CBS News:

“North Korea’s military warned Tuesday that its artillery and rocket forces are at their highest-level combat posture in the latest in a string of bellicose threats aimed at South Korea and the United States.”

What troubles me is our own federal government’s handling of the situation. Pre-emptive strikes have been the mantra of the federal government against our country’s non-nuclear threats and yet they sit idly by waiting for the unstable government of North Korea to push the big button. It almost makes you wonder if our government wants it to happen. A nuclear strike on domestic American soil would be just the thing the federal government would need in order to send DHS troops into American streets to secure Martial Law and enact stricter gun control while simultaneously herding millions of Americans into FEMA friendly “Residential Relocation Centers.”

From WSJ News:

“American defense officials are vowing additional displays of advanced U.S. military might as they continue joint maneuvers with South Korea in the midst of growing tensions on the Korean peninsula.”

Why on Earth would our government feel it is necessary to demonstrate our military might? Considering the instability of North Korea and its political powers that be, would these tactics not entice Kim Jong Un to make good on his threats of nuclear war?

From WSJ News:

“Although the use of U.S. heavy bombers risks provoking the North into a dangerous miscalculation, U.S. officials believe the joint exercises with South Korea ultimately will have a stabilizing effect.

A key unanswered question, one U.S. official said, is how much risk Mr. Kim was willing to take to show “he’s a tough guy.”

Let me get this straight, we went to war with Iraq because it was believed that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD’s, which were NEVER found, and yet we are going to sit idly by and wait to see if demonstrations of superior firepower are going to stabilize the situation with North Korea? All things considered, China’s response included, a nuclear launch by North Korea could help pave the way for many of the Agenda 21 policies international governments want to enact.

To read more information concerning Agenda 21, FEMA Camps and Martial Law visit the subscription page for Survivalist. Physical print issues are sold out however digital copies are still available.

What in the wide world of America is going on here? Is it too much to ask to wake up one morning, turn on the TV, radio or computer, browse the current events section of the daily news and see that someone isn’t being targeted for some sort of rights violation? What happened to the core principles our framers had in mind when they set forth the documents that would protect us from the same form of tyranny they fled? How hard is it to enforce the 4th Amendment appropriately?

As if it isn’t bad enough worrying about the Big Brother complex of federal government, it seems that more and more local and state police agencies are adopting a bastard step-child role to stomp on the protective measures offered under the Constitution and Bill of Rights. How aware are you of what the 4th Amendment provides you? Here is the language of the 4th Amendment in its entirety:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and 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.” http://civilliberty.about.com/od/lawenforcementterrorism/p/4th_amendment.htm

Let’s break this down into laymen’s terms for those that may be misguided or misinformed by a local, state or federal police agency. Your 4th Amendment rights are yours to keep or relinquish; it is completely up to you. Do you know how to handle yourself when being approached by a police officer? Do you know your rights as a pedestrian, vehicle operator, vehicle passenger, home owner or house guest? Are you aware that under protection of the 4th Amendment you are NOT required to consent to a search when asked?

“In Weeks v. United States (1914), the Supreme Court established what has been known as the exclusionary rule. The exclusionary rule states that evidence obtained through unconstitutional means is inadmissible in court and cannot be used as part of the prosecution’s case. Before Weeks, law enforcement officials could violate the Fourth Amendment without being punished for it, secure the evidence, and use it at trial. The exclusionary rule establishes consequences for violating a suspect’s Fourth Amendment rights.” http://civilliberty.about.com/od/lawenforcementterrorism/p/4th_amendment.htm

Police officers are servants to the communities they are assigned; they are NOT the rulers of the citizens some of them make themselves out to be. You are under NO obligation to submit to a search of any of your property or personal being without a warrant. This includes bogus “stop and frisk” procedures implemented by police agencies. It also includes being stopped in a vehicle or being approached at home.

You need to be aware of what the 4th Amendment affords you as a legal citizen of the United States. You have the right to keep your doors and windows closed and to refrain from unwarranted advances by police officers trying to order you to act in direct contrast to your rights. If they are going to search you, your car, your house or any of your belongings make them do the legwork. Insist that they obtain a search warrant indicating what is to be searched and where it is to be searched for, even if you have NOTHING to hide. Consenting to an unwarranted search relieves the police agency of any legal responsibilities protected under the 4th Amendment and eliminates your rights to issue a grievance in a court of law. The following video is food for thought.

FEMA Camps are such a hot topic in the news and internet forums these days. Concerned citizens all over the country have documented home videos and feeds pilfered from other websites on video file sharing forums all over the internet. There are many that fear the existence of FEMA Camps, coupled with vague descriptions and unexplained intentions at the federal level of government, paint a very dismal picture of the future in America.

What are these things and who are they intended for? Let’s skip all the beautification efforts tossed at us by federal government agencies such as DHS and FEMA itself. They often describe these institutes as “Residential Relocation Centers,” or “Civilian Resettlement Centers.” They duck around questions requesting information on who has the authority to use them and for what purpose. It is part of the brainwashing campaign we have all become more accustomed to. Where can we find useful, documented evidence describing the true intentions behind the construction of these FEMA Camp establishments? By taking a look at FM 3-39.40, a link to download this document can be found at http://publicintelligence.net/restricted-u-s-army-internment-and-resettlement-operations-manual/

“Field manual (FM) 3-39.40 is aligned with FM 3-39, the military police keystone FM. FM 3-39.40 provides guidance for commanders and staffs on internment and resettlement (I/R) operations. This manual addresses I/R operations across the spectrum of conflict, specifically the doctrinal paradigm shift from traditional enemy prisoner of war (EPW) operations to the broader and more inclusive requirements of detainee operations.”

This is the Preface for the existence of I/R (Interment/Resettlement) facilities a.k.a. FEMA Camps. It makes no bones about the shift of focus from foreign enemy combatants to detainees. Who would these detainees be if not foreign enemies? FEMA Camps for discontented US citizens seems to be the theme here.

“It describes the doctrinal foundation, principles, and processes that military police and other elements will employ when dealing with I/R populations. As part of internment, these populations include U.S. military prisoners, and multiple categories of detainees (civilian internees [CIs], retained personnel [RP], and enemy combatants), while resettlement operations are focused on multiple categories of dislocated civilians (DCs).”

That is found in the 2nd paragraph of the Field Manual. Civilian internees, retained personnel, enemy combatants and multiple categories of dislocated civilians all find room to share a shelter at a FEMA Camp under this document. Since the first paragraph details a shift from enemy POW’s, the case can be made that the enemy combatants listed in the 2nd paragraph must be of a domestic nature (those with opposing views of federal government perhaps). But surely this being a Field Manual for the U.S. Army it applies to I/R facilities abroad not here on American soil…right?

“2-39. Civil support is the DOD support to U.S. civil authorities for domestic emergencies, and for designated law enforcement and other activities. (JP 3-28) Civil support includes operations that address the consequences of natural or man-made disasters, accidents, terrorist attacks and incidents in the U.S. and its territories.”

Does this mean that are own sons and daughters serving in one of the Armed Forces is going to come round us up and cart us off to an I/R establishment in the near future? Surely the same troops we support are not going to be the ones going door to door under the direction of a federal agency to detain civilian citizens and transport them to FEMA Camps, they wouldn’t stand for it would they? The truth is; they don’t have to. The federal government has already considered the possibility that current enlistees would join the ranks of those revolting against interment in a FEMA Camp and has taken the necessary steps to eliminate that aspect from the equation. Watch the video below and download the document for yourself. In my opinion it couldn’t be clearer if they simply said; “We are going to do away with democracy and the Republic, implement the “world we want” theme of Agenda 21 and those that rebel will be dealt with accordingly.” FEMA Camps are for real. If/when they are opened for business remains to be seen. Civil unrest appears to be on the cusp in this country. We may become more familiar with FEMA Camps quicker than we would like, especially if we continue to roll over and let them scratch our bellies.

Are you as tired of hearing the incessant ramblings of a few misinterpreting politicians assaulting the rights provided to us under the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution as I am? How many times since our forefathers penned the Bill of Rights has the 2nd Amendment come under attack? The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. Ever since this date the language and intended meaning of the language contained in the original document has been at the center of a centuries long debate.

It seems that every time we have a tragedy involving guns political opponents of the 2nd Amendment are quick to jump on the bandwagon and twist the event to support their efforts to circumnavigate the Constitution and subject us all to greater potential for predation.

Take a look at how mass media handles stories they distribute regarding citizens and their usage of guns. When tragedy strikes and somebody in society slips off their cheese or goes on a murder spree using guns, the coverage of the event is overplayed on the airwaves and across the front page of every major news media resource. We are force fed information reflecting how dangerous it is to continue allowing average citizens the “right to keep and bear arms,” which has always been, and should continue to be, protected under the 2nd Amendment.

“President Obama, who has seen by his count four large-scale shootings in his first term as president, suggested that his administration would take action towards more gun control. In his speech at a vigil in Newtown, he asked, “Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/did-the-sandy-hook-shooting-prove-the-need-for-more-gun-control

Read the question posed by Obama again. Did it sink in? Did he just use the tragedy at Sandy Hook as a tool to promote stricter gun control? What does “the price of our freedom” have to do with the acts of one law BREAKING citizen who by most accounts was thought to have Asperger’s Syndrome?

“Asperger syndrome (AS) is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), one of a distinct group of complex neurodevelopment disorders characterized by social impairment, communication difficulties, and restrictive, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior.

Studies of children with Asperger syndrome suggest that their problems with socialization and communication continue into adulthood. Some of these children develop additional psychiatric symptoms and disorders in adolescence and adulthood.”
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/asperger/detail_asperger.htm#217993080

Obama and his supporters would have you believe that the acts of the one are indicative of what can be expected by the many, that law BREAKING citizenry involved in gun violence represent the base mentality of ALL gun owners in general. They fail to mention that the weapons used to commit this cowardly and heinous crime were obtained illegally, even though it was reported by several agencies.

“The 20-year-old man who massacred at least 26 people in Newtown, Connecticut Friday was brandishing at least three heavy-duty firearms, all of which were registered to his mother, several news organizations reported.” Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ct-school-shooter-made-combat-weapon-article-1.1220431#ixzz2OUXDqhWG

“Nancy Lanza, whose gun collection was raided by her son Adam for Friday’s massacre at Sandy Hook school…” Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/nancy-lanza-collected-guns-2012-12#ixzz2OUXXeRjg

“Registered” to his mother and “raided” by him. NO background check needed. NO permit to file for. NO laws to be concerned with.

Now I may get some backlash for the following video but it makes some seriously significant points regarding our beloved 2nd Amendment. It should also serve as a precursor for what “We the People” look for in the fabric of our future politicians. The time to put the 2nd Amendment debate to rest is upon us.

And so it begins. It isn’t bad enough that politicians that have never set foot on a battlefield in a country where the population has been oppressed by a dictatorial form of government are so quick to jump on the “stricter gun laws” band wagon. It is even more concerning and perplexing when misinformation campaigns are submitted by former members of the Armed Forces. The 2nd Amendment is the keystone of the Constitution. Without this caveat in place all other “rights” and “freedoms” become non-existent. This has been documented throughout the history of man.

When a nation disarms its citizenry it is a precursor for atrocities, human rights violations and holocaustic events to take place. The “right to keep and bear arms” is a protective policy period! It is there to prevent a power vacuum in which political entities are not required to have checks and balances in place to keep them from enslaving an entire population. Giving up your 2nd Amendment rights, whether you use them or not, is tantamount to signing your own death certificate. In a recent article I came across a former brother in arms who penned a piece for publication titled: “Forget the 2nd Amendment.” Needless to say I was appalled that a former member of the military came to such conclusions.

“…the central problem is that bearing arms is not a fundamental human right…or even a fundamental collective right…(the 2nd Amendment) was a reflection by politicians two hundred years ago of what would be appropriate for America in the society of that time.”

Really, so if it isn’t a fundamental human right then exactly who were guns manufactured for 200 years ago?

“There were significant collective dangers…Foreign invasions were not unlikely…Indian wars were still going on…potential slave rebellions threatened wide areas of the country…many people depended on hunting as a food source…frontier attacks by wild animals were often a daily threat.”

The statements above were offered by the original author of the article in support of needing to “forget” the 2nd Amendment. Are not many of these same concerns relevant today? Are we to believe that we no longer need to be able to “keep and bear arms” in modern society to prevent foreign invasion, prevent enslavement of people, to hunt for food or for self-defense when being attacked by a frontier animal or other predatory individuals? He wants us to “forget” the 2nd Amendment ever existed yet supplies us with the very fuel required to consider it viable for inclusion now, today, in modern society.

“The bottom line is clear: the Second Amendment was a political response to the security situation two centuries ago. Even if it were well worded, even if we knew exactly what the drafters had in mind, it could not provide meaningful guidance for our modern society.”

I agree with the first five words of the statement above. The bottom line is indeed clear. Without the 2nd Amendment in place protecting our rights as law abiding citizens to “keep and bear arms,” we are doomed for a repetitive lesson in history.

Show me one example where American fighting men and women engaged in war with a country for unwarranted reasons. Every battle in every war that our country’s Armed forces have taken part has either involved an aggressive attack on American soil against American citizens or it has involved removing a dictatorship that had previously stripped the citizenry of arms and subsequently occupied the power vacuum to implement their own desires. The only logical reason for “forgetting” the 2nd Amendment is if you are comfortable and complacent in your trust of the government and its ability to protect you from foreign adversaries as well as from itself!

You can read the article in its entirety and formulate your own opinions at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-corcoran/second-amendment_b_2950263.html Keep in mind that you do not have to be a gun owner to appreciate the 2nd Amendment, you just have to appreciate the ability of others to secure your liberty and freedom if such a situation arises where it is called for.

“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union…” is about the only part of the opening sentence most people can recite regarding The Constitution, without having a copy of the document available to them, which is tragic to say the least. How can we begin to take back America if we don’t know what it is we are fighting for?

When it comes to reciting any part of the Declaration of Independence most citizens can’t even call to mind much more of the language than “…Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” which when you think about it makes each of them uneducated about the laws that were set forth by our forefathers which are still supposed to govern us today.

When we read the language of the 2nd paragraph of the Declaration of Independence it seems as if it was included by our founding fathers to instruct us on the courses of action to take in our present era.

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html”

Translation: Citizens, once treated unfairly and unjustly over a long period of time, become brain washed to the point of blind acceptance and lack the tools, knowledge and intestinal fortitude to stand up and rock the boat or right the ship.

The dangers of inactivity can be witnessed throughout the political arena at every level of government. Politicians have their own agenda and it does not involve looking out for their fellow man. They twist the truth and misinterpret these documents to support their own misguided and often illegal activities.

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html”

Translation: When the current form of government, by which American citizens are ruled, acts in such a way as to provide for themselves at the sacrifice of their constituents it is the direct responsibility and duty of each affected individual to stand in the face of such tyranny and replace the current established governing body with a new form of leadership that will secure the rights they were given well into the future.

It should be noted that the translations are my own as I understand the language presented in the Declaration. Unlike current political office holders my interpretation is simple and concise just as I believe our founding fathers intended. They didn’t include clauses in either of these documents which allowed for future politicians to read into them and extract different meanings. These papers were put in place to explain the actions of the colonists to the King and his court of Great Britain which they had left behind and further wanted to distance themselves from.

It seems that some 200+ years after the signing of said documents we find ourselves at a crucial crossroads. We have allowed the elected officials in Washington, D.C. to twist the very fabric of meaning associated with all of the historic papers issued forth by our founding fathers to their own wills and interests for far too long. The video below is a wake-up call for everyone that considers themselves a patriot. It is from the recent past but has messages that hold meaning for every U.S. citizen here and abroad.

Stricter gun control issues are on the table again down at D.C. headquarters brought about by one of the most ill-informed mentally incapable politicians on the planet Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Her apparent lack of education and understanding regarding her duties as a U.S. Senator aside, this denizen of the dimly lit areas of intelligence wants LAW ABIDING citizens to line up like ‘sheeple’ and willingly hand over their weapons without so much as making a peep. The Obama administration has announced that Barack himself is supporting efforts to enact the stricter gun control measures presented by aforementioned Senator in direct contrast to the our rights protected under the 2nd Amendment.

This has become such a hot topic that it has caused heated debates both in meetings between Senators as well as between residential neighbors across the expanse of this great land of ours and what is the basis for their theory that stricter gun controls are necessary? It will take more guns of the street and make it harder for criminals to get them. This is like saying that banning fast food chains will solve the obesity epidemic in this country because overweight people won’t be able to eat as much unhealthy food. It makes absolutely NO sense and NONE of the evidence they present in support of their theory holds any water.

“The truth is that the United States of America is a constitutional republic…our representatives are required to work within the framework of our constitution…So when Senator Feinstein or President Obama talk about taking your guns, you need to think about something. Are they honoring their sworn oath to uphold the constitution?”

Here is the ABSOLUTE truth they are neglecting to mention when they discuss coming after our guns. Criminals do NOT purchase the weapons they use to commit crimes from a law abiding establishment, NOR do they make it known that they have weapons to begin with. Yes, there are law abiding citizens that on occasion, lose their mental faculties and “flip out” with a weapon in hand, but this is NOT the norm, it is the rare event that sees a legal gun owner slip over the edge and fall off the deep end.

“This country was built on the right to bear arms…Without guns in this country, all other amendments become null and void, simply because “We the People” will lose our power of enforcement.”

Everywhere you look, concerned citizens are discussing the 2nd Amendment and the possibilities of a federally mandated crackdown to confiscate them. The majority of these conversations are sugar coated or have coded language within them for fear that the author of the post or topic will be singled out and placed on a watchdog list of some government agency. I was fortunate enough to receive an email the other day with an attachment for a post that holds no punches and minces no words when describing the individual’s right to bear arms.

“Our framers were very clear on this. If my government comes to take my guns, they are violating one of my constitutional rights that is covered by the 2nd amendment…It is not my right, at that point, but my responsibility to respond in the name of liberty…If they come for our guns then it is our constitutional right to put them six feet under.”

To read the article and the above quotes in their entirety visit http://dcclothesline.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/if-they-come-for-your-guns-do-you-have-a-responsibility-to-fight/

While none of us want things to get to the point of CWII (Civil War II) there may come a time when what few true patriots we have left will need to rise to the occasion and secure our freedoms at all costs. Are you willing to be led to the slaughter or will you be standing next to your fellow countrymen to overthrow the same form of government our founding fathers left behind when they ventured to find the New World?

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One day after the Movie Theater Massacre in Aurora, Colorado, police in Anaheim, California shot a fleeing man in the head, allowed him to die while shooing away eyewitnesses — and then compounded the atrocity by calling in a riot squad that assaulted neighborhood protesters with rubber bullets, pepper rounds, and an attack dog.

Manuel “Stomper” Diaz was one of three young men who fled when approached by officers the afternoon of July 21. Although he was unarmed, Diaz was shot in the head. Private video of the aftermath of the shooting shows officers ignoring the mortally wounded Diaz — who, as one frantic witness shouted, was still alive — while they push back eyewitness and string up crime-scene tape. None of the officers rendered medical aid, and no effort was made to contact paramedics.

Diaz was the seventh resident of the neighborhood to be killed by police this year. That fact, coupled with the aggressive indifference displayed by the police, inspired a small spontaneous protest — which, in turn, prompted the predictable over-reaction by the police department.

Cell phone video of the police assault shows a wall of officers in riot gear directing “non-lethal” fire at a group of unarmed and terrified civilians — including several small children, who were shielded by a man who appeared to be their father. Another officer unleashed a police dog, which immediately attacked a stroller containing an infant. A bystander who interposed himself — and was mauled by the dog for doing so — probably saved the child’s life.

Those acts, in which private citizens protected the innocent from criminal violence at the hands of the State’s armed servants, were just as heroic as those of the three men in Aurora who died protecting their girlfriends during the shooting rampage.

Local news accounts, which retailed the department’s version of events, described the crowd as “unruly” and the protest as a “near-riot” in which angry citizens “encircled” the officers and “began throwing things, including bottles and possibly rocks, at them,” in the words of a Los Angeles Times report.The police also claimed that “several fires” had been started in trashcans. None of those claims have been been corroborated by video evidence or eyewitnesses. Nor have the police explained why the police approached Diaz and the other two young men, or why the unarmed Diaz was shot in the head.

Although they were studiously unconcerned for the live of Diaz, the police were very concerned about information management: Their initial reaction to the shooting was to push back potential witnesses — especially those carrying cell phones and other cameras — away from the victim. Following the assault on the protesters, the police offered to buy videos taken by witnesses. To their considerable credit, neighborhood residents did what they could to document the incident, and resisted police efforts to bribe and intimidate them.

In the wake of the Aurora massacre, the public has been encouraged to believe that because of private gun ownership, every public gathering place can be transformed into the scene of a massacre. The Anaheim police rampage illustrates how quickly the State’s armed enforcement caste — which, according to “gun control” activists, should have a monopoly on firearms — can turn any neighborhood into an urban war zone.

See the video here.

As if performing  a tribute to the masked terrorist who is the film’s chief antagonist, 24-year-old Aurora, Colorado resident James Holmes allegedly carried out an armed rampage at the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises, leaving at least a dozen people dead and more than 50 wounded. One of the victims was a three-month-old infant.

Holmes, a former Ph.D. student in neuroscience at the University of Colorado, reportedly  purchased a ticket to the film, left the theater after the movie began, and returned wearing a gas mask and riot gear – what some described as a “full SWAT uniform.” Armed with four firearms, Holmes was described as setting off a gas grenade and then shooting as panicked movie patrons dove for cover or ran for the exits. After surrendering to police outside the theater, Holmes informed investigators that his residence – part of an apartment complex reserved for students, patients, and staff at the University of Colorado Medical Center — was rigged with explosives.

“People were running everywhere, running on top of me, like kicking me, jumping over me. And there were bodies on the ground,” recalled eyewitness Christopher Ramos. “I froze up. I was scared. I honestly thought I was going to die.”

At first, Ramos recounted, he thought Holmes might be involved in a promotional stunt associated with the film, which depicts a terrorist rampage led by an enigmatic, hyper-violent criminal named Bane. The story includes an armed assault on the stock exchange of the fictional Gotham City, followed by an even more horrifying series of bombings that paralyze the city and leave it cut off from the rest of the country. New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelley announced that as a precautionary measure against possible copycat attacks, his department would provide enhanced security at theaters showing the film.

The Dark Knight Rises is the capstone to the highly acclaimed trilogy that resurrected the Batman film franchise. Director Christopher Nolan, widely regarded as a gifted and provocative filmmaker, has described the film as a “war movie,” one that unabashedly addresses class conflict and institutional corruption. Partisan pundits have attempted to shoehorn the movie into the pre-fabricated categories that have been superimposed on contemporary politics.

Noting the incidental similarity between the villain’s name and Mitt Romney’s Bain venture capitalist firm, Rush Limbaugh denounced Nolan for creating a Democratic Party agitprop film. Salon critic Andrew O’Hehir manages to outbid Limbaugh’s foolishness by describing the movie as an “evil” and “fascistic” masterpiece:

It’s no exaggeration to say that the “Dark Knight” universe is fascistic (and I’m not name-calling or claiming that Nolan has Nazi sympathies). It’s simply a fact. Nolan’s screenplay (co-written with his brother, Jonathan Nolan, and based on a story developed with David S. Goyer) simply pushes the Batman legend to its logical extreme, as a vision of human history understood as a struggle between superior individual wills, a tale of symbolic heroism and sacrifice set against the hopeless corruption of society. Maybe it’s an oversimplification to say that that’s the purest form of the ideology that was bequeathed from Richard Wagner to Nietzsche to Adolf Hitler, but not by much. Whether you think Nolan is endorsing or condemning that idea, or straddling the fence with a smirk on his face, is very much up to you.

O’Hehir’s view of the film was obscured by the dense thicket of undergraduate-level collectivist sophistries in which he has chosen to live. Nolan’s story did not extol the supposed virtues of the Leader Principle – in which lesser beings are fused into the collective instrument of a superior will. Bruce Wayne was a flawed but irrepressible noble hero whose individualistic crusade was meant to encourage others to find and act on the best impulses within each of them.

In crafting the screenplay (along with his brother, Jonathan), Christopher Nolan said that Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities was an important touchstone for The Dark Knight Rises. He also referred to the influence of legendary director David Lean. One throw-away line in the movie resonates with Lean’s adaptation of Dr. Zhivago.

In the aftermath of Bane’s revolution in Gotham, one character – examining a plundered dwelling – muses:  “This used to be somebody’s home.”

“Now it’s everybody’s home,” another character brightly replies.

This exchange calls to mind a conversation in Dr. Zhivago between two Communist Party functionaries in the aftermath of the October Revolution. As they help themselves to a home that has been seized from a wealthy family, the Communists defend the confiscation as a triumph of the “people”; after all, they insist, “it’s only just.”

Bane’s assault on Gotham was an example of what the French Revolutionaries and their ideological offspring call “The Propaganda of the Deed” – a conspicuous act of violence intended to shatter the status quo and catalyze revolutionary change. Immediately after demolishing much of Gotham City, Bane – backed by a mercenary army – imposes martial law and revolutionary “justice.”

It’s tempting to think that in addition to Dickens and Lean, the Nolan Brothers might have drawn inspiration from Carlos Marighella’s Mini-Manual for the Urban Guerrilla, which provided tactical guidance for generations of terrorists. (Interestingly, the Nolans compared Bane to Argentine Marxist mass-murderer Che Guevara.)

The purpose of terrorism, explained Marighella, is to “to intensify repression,” resulting in draconian measures that “make life unbearable” for the subject population. When faced with “revolutionary violence,” government will eagerly resort to “police roundups, house searches, arrests of innocent people [that] make life in the city unbearable…. ” Rejecting the “so-called political solution,” the urban guerrilla must become more aggressive and violent, resorting without letup to sabotage, terrorism, expropriations, assaults, kidnappings, and executions, heightening the disastrous situation in which the government must act….”

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, a millionaire Marxist publishing magnate, published Marighella’s tract and gave it wide international circulation. He concisely summarized Marighella’s strategy as the use of relentless violence against the innocent in order to provoke an “authoritarian turn to the right” – the imposition of dictatorial measures and the consolidation of power by a State apparatus that will fall into the hands of the revolutionaries.

Bane’s tactics in The Dark Knight Rises could be described as an adaptation of the Marighella/Feltrinelli playbook. Tragically, it’s entirely possible that the massacre in Aurora – whatever the shooter’s motive might have been – will serve as “propaganda of the deed” in the service of people pursuing authoritarian measures regarding individual firearms ownership and other indispensable liberties.

Read more here.

Police in China destroy confiscated "illegal" firearms

The Obama administration’s announced plans to sign a UN “small arms” treaty on July 27 has triggered concerns that the pact would be used to undermine the individual right to armed self-defense. Forbes magazine notes that 130 Republican congressmen sent a letter to Mr. Obama protesting that the draft treaty is inimical to the “fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms” and also represents a significant threat to “our national security, foreign policy, and economic interests.”

For more than a decade, the UN has been quietly promoting measures to combat what it calls the “small arms crisis” – which is the ownership of firearms by anyone other than government-controlled military and police agencies. From the world body’s perspective, individual ownership of firearms is impermissible and should be banned by both international treaties and national laws. This was made clear in a 2001 UN-produced propaganda film entitled Armed to the Teeth.

“For its first fifty years, the United Nations focused its disarmament efforts on addressing the proliferation of nuclear weapons,” observed the film’s narrator. At the beginning of the 21^st century, the UN redirected its attention to the “illegal” possession of small arms by civilians. Armed to the Teeth unambiguously defined “legal” weapons as those “used by armies and police forces to protect us.” Civilian-owned weapons, on the other hand, were described as “illegitimate” and supposedly  ”bring insecurity, pain, suffering and devastation.”

Only through a global crackdown on civilian arms ownership and the empowerment of the UN, insisted the narrator, “can genocide as happened in Rwanda be prevented.” But that mass political murder was carried out by government-aligned Hutu tribal militias against a targeted ethnic population – the Tutsis – who had been disarmed with the help of UN “peacekeeping” forces under the supervision of future UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Annan, who had been warned of the impending slaughter weeks in advance by Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian officer in charge of the UN mission in Rwanda, actually prevented UN “peacekeepers” from disarming the government-organized militias that carried out the bloodshed.

Rwanda was a laboratory-quality specimen of the UN’s formula for “human security” at work: The national government’s military and police were given a monopoly on force, and the disarmed civilian population was told to rely on the goodwill of their rulers and promises made on behalf of the “international community.” The result was the systematic slaughter of at least 800,000 people – and as many as 1.1 million – over a period of 104 days by a government that was then occupying a seat on the UN Security Council.

Rather than underscoring the need for universal civilian disarmament, the Rwandan genocide illustrated the lethal consequences of embracing the UN’s “human security” model. Yet the world body and its allies continue to flog the idea that firearms are miraculously purged of their demonic qualities when wielded by the exalted agents of State power.

The Armed to the Teeth video shows American schoolchildren participating in a UN-approved indoctrination session, where they are trained to evangelize on behalf of civilian disarmament. “Stop selling guns,” one young boy declares to the interviewer. “Only policemen should have guns.” “I would just stop making guns all of a sudden and then just have the government prohibit guns from everybody,” adds a young girl. Part of the indoctrination involves the recitation of a pledge “never to touch a weapon.”

While the proposed UN “small arms” treaty is fraught with potential trouble, it doesn’t represent anything new. The incremental disarmament of the civilian population, and the creation of a militarized national “internal security” force, has been an official policy objective of the U.S. government for more than a half-century.

The 1961 State Department document entitled Freedom from War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World (also known as State Department Document 7277)  outlined a three-stage program through which the United Nations would be “progressively strengthened in order to improve its capacity to assure international security and the peaceful settlement of disputes.” All national governments – including our own — would be required to provide military personnel and assets to empower the UN, which — as British author Simon Tisdall reminds us, was always intended to be a “war-fighting machine,” rather than a forum for peaceful resolution of disputes.

In the domestic realm, “Freedom from War” dictates that each national government maintain a centralized, militarized “internal security force.” In the intervening decades, many American critics of the UN have speculated that this element of the 7277 program mandated the eventual occupation of the country by Blue Helmet-wearing foreign troops. What has actually happened is that American police forces have been transformed into a domestic army of occupation in the service of a UN-administered program of “global drug prohibition.”

The framework for global prohibition, interestingly, was also unveiled in 1961 — the UN’s Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. As a recent report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy (a body that includes several former high-ranking UN functionaries, including Kofi Annan) points out that the UN and the U.S. government, working through the International Narcotics Control Board, “have worked … to ensure that all countries adopt the same rigid approach to drug policy – the same laws, and the same tough approach to law enforcement.”

This was described as a campaign to create a “drug-free” world — just as the “Freedom from War” proposal was allegedly intended to abolish international military conflict. In practice, of course, both of those initiatives were actually intended to consolidate the power of a permanent international Power Elite, as well as to expand its ability to regiment and plunder productive society.

It was in the mid-1980s that the federal government began the practice of confiscating money and property as narcotics “proceeds” through civil asset forfeiture. Washington effectively globalized that practice through Article V of the 1988 Vienna Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, which dictates that signatory nations “adopt such measures as may be necessary to enable confiscation” of money and property designated as “proceeds” of the narcotics trade.

The U.S. government has eagerly tutored other countries in the use of “non-conviction-based” confiscation — that is, seizure of property from people never found guilty of a crime.

All of this did exactly nothing to mitigate the problem of drug addiction, let alone put an end to it. More than fifty years after the UN called for a “drug-free world,” the narcotics trade is the world’s largest cash business. According to Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN’s Office of Drugs and Crime, during the 2008 global financial meltdown, laundered proceeds from drug trafficking kept the international banking system liquid until the official counterfeiters at the Federal Reserve could take over.

The UN-centered “war on drugs” dramatically accelerated the militarization of domestic law enforcement while amplifying the profits enjoyed by both the private sector criminals who distribute narcotics and the immeasurably more vicious criminals in the world of international banking.  This should be kept in mind when the UN and its allies insist that international gun control is necessary in order to combat the scourge of “transnational criminal syndicates”: The criminal gangs invoked by the UN’s gun grabbers are actually their business partners and allies in a war being waged against the rights and property of law-abiding people everywhere.

Sandra Cortez, born in Chicago sixty-eight years ago, has never set foot outside the United States – yet she discovered, through an error in her credit report, that her name is permanently inscribed in a terrorist “watch list.”

Cortez has no criminal record, and an exemplary credit history. In March 2005, Cortez – who at the time was living in Denver, Colorado – attempted to buy a vehicle from the John Elway Subaru dealership.

“I thought I would be driving my new car back to work after lunch,” Cortez recalled. “I couldn’t imagine what would happen next.”

Despite the fact that Cortez had a 761 credit score and money for a down-payment, the dealership’s manager balked at the sale after running Cortez’s credit history through the TransUnion credit rating service. Rather than closing the deal on the $18,000 Subaru Forrester, the manager – his face drawn into a “stern look” – assailed the puzzled woman with a series of “strange questions”: “Were you born in the United States? Have you always lived in the U.S.? When is the last time you left the country?”

TransUnion had notified the dealership that Cortez’s name was on the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control list owing to its resemblance to a “specially designated individual” from Colombia named Sandra Cortez Quintera.

This was obviously a coincidence involving a very common Latino name (it’s akin to the incidental similarity between, say, a U.S.-born woman named Margaret Lindsay, and an Irish terrorism suspect named Maggie Lindsay O’Reilly). However, under the so-called USA PATRIOT Act, businesses such as the John Elway Subaru dealership in Denver face draconian fines and prison sentences for extending credit to anyone suspected of terrorist connections (unless, of course, they are connected to terrorist groups currently favored by Washington, such as the Iranian Islamo-Marxist cult called the MEK).  Rather than selling Cortez the car, the dealership detained her at the office while it consulted with the FBI.

Eventually, Cortez was able to buy the car, and the dealership – which had been caught in the same vise – offered a sincere and extravagant apology. When she contacted TransUnion, the agency insisted that the notifications had been removed from her file. Nonetheless, in June 2006, the red flags appeared when Cortez attempted to rent an apartment. In fact, the notifications materialize every time Cortez has to conduct business that involves credit.

In a 2010 ruling, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals noted that “the alerts often reduced Cortez to tears. The alerts also caused Cortez to lose weight and they interfered with her ability to sleep to such an extent that she resorted to medication.”

Following a lengthy legal struggle, Cortez was awarded $750,000 in damages by a jury. The government arbitrarily reduced that award to $150,000, and then stole roughly a third of that in taxes. Most infuriating is the fact that the Regime still refuses to take Cortez’s name off the list.

“Most people think if you pay your bills on time, you will be OK in the credit world,” observes Cortez, who now resides in La Mesa, California. “But that’s not how it always works. And sometimes, the mistakes can be paralyzing” – especially when they are made by entirely unaccountable people who treat the rest of us like inmates in a prison society.

Read more here.

“There is just one place that can light my face — Gary, Indiana,” crooned con man Harold Hill in The Music Man — cheerfully oblivious to the knowledge that the idyllic Midwestern town that once abounded in opportunity would one day become a blighted urban “hellhole.”

“Once the center of the country’s booming steel industry and known as the City of the Century, Gary, Indiana now lies in ruins as a sad example of American industrial decline,” reports the Daily Mail of London. “Founded in 1906 by the US Steel Corporation, Gary’s heyday was in the post-war boom of the 1950s when almost 200,000 people lived and worked in the bustling city, 25 miles from Chicago. As the American manufacturing sector contracted, Gary’s population fell by over 50 percent and no one now uses the once-bustling train stations, churches and auditoriums that are now decaying as they are left to the elements.”

Decades ago, Gary epitomized the Midwestern ideal — an economically progressive town large enough to attract big-city amenities and culture, while preserving the mores and habits associated with small-town living. Tragically, the former boomtown has degenerated into one of the most dangerous cities in the region; its churches, cultural centers, and public buildings are vacant and decaying, and grass is growing in empty streets.

Author James Howard Kunstler, who chronicles what he calls the “Long Emergency” brought on by “converging crises” in energy, industry, and the economy, offers a grim eulogy on the basis of a recent visit to Gary:

Between the ghostly remnants of factories stood a score of small cities and  neighborhoods where the immigrants settled five generations ago. A lot of it was foreclosed and shuttered. They were places of such stunning, relentless dreariness that you felt depressed just imagining how depressed the remaining denizens of these endless blocks of run-down shoebox houses must feel. Judging from the frequency of taquerias in the 1950s-vintage strip-malls, one inferred that the old Eastern European population had been lately supplanted by a new wave of Mexicans. They had inherited an infrastructure for daily life that was utterly devoid of conscious artistry when it was new, and now had the special patina of supernatural rot over it that only comes from materials not found in nature disintegrating in surprising and unexpected ways, sometimes even sublimely, like the sheen of an oil slick on water at a certain angle to the sun. There was a Chernobyl-like grandeur to it, as of the longed-for end of something enormous that hadn’t worked out well.

Writing at the Economic Collapse Blog, Michael Snyder lists Gary at the top of a dismal roster of “12 Hellholes” that typify what America has become in the wake of the housing bubble’s collapse.

“This is what happens when industry leaves and there are no jobs,” Snyder writes. “Gary has become a wasteland and there is essentially no hope for a turnaround.”

As the economic crisis deepens, more cities are succumbing across the country — Detroit, Flint, Stockton, West Philadelphia, Camden…. The roster will continue to grow.

Read more here.

Thanks to a state Supreme Court ruling effectively disposing of the need for prosecutors to prove criminal intent, the Florida state government can continue imprisoning people for possessing substances they didn’t know were illegal.

Florida is one of two states afflicted with drug possession statutes that don’t require the government to prove criminal intent. The statute permits defendants to offer an affirmative defense of “unwitting possession” – which means that the defendant, not the state, has the burden of proof.  The state Supreme Court, ruling the recent case of Florida v. Adkins, has rejected a challenge to that statute filed on behalf of dozens of defendants awaiting trial on drug possession charges.

“There is no constitutional right to possess contraband,” insisted Justice Charles Canady in the majority opinion. “Nor is there a protected right to be ignorant of the nature of the property in one’s possession.”

Like most rulings of this kind, Canady’s opinion begins with the totalitarian premise that the powers exercised by government are presumptively constitutional – and that it is the actions of the individual that must be justified. This inverts the American perspective on law, in which government can exercise only those powers explicitly delegated to it in the applicable constitution (state or federal).

Since the repeal of the 18^th Amendment, there has been no constitutional provision authorizing the federal government to regulate the possession or consumption of mood-altering substances. The Florida state constitution is similarly devoid of such provisions. Thus there is no constitutional authority for Florida officials to prosecute people for possession of such substances.

Even if the Florida state government had the authority to criminalize drug possession, the statute dealt with in this ruling would be illegitimate because it doesn’t require the state to prove the existence of mens rea – malicious intent on the part of the accused.

In order for an act to be a crime, it must involve the deliberate violation of a clear and intelligible statute by an act that inflicts injury to another person. Individual drug consumption – although unwise – doesn’t injure anybody else; as a victimless act, it cannot be construed as a crime. The same is true of mere possession of narcotics, which – as the Florida statute acknowledges – doesn’t even necessarily involve criminal intent.

Under the Florida v. Adkins ruling, however, people can be convicted of a supposed crime on the basis of mere physical proximity to contraband they didn’t know was on their property or among their personal effects.

In his dissent, Justice James E.C. Perry points out that the standard embraced by the court would permit the prosecution and imprisonment of “a letter carrier who delivers a package containing unprescribed Adderall; a roommate who is unaware that the person who shares his apartment has hidden illegal drugs in the common areas of the home; a mother who carries a prescription pill bottle in her purse, unaware that the pills have been substituted for illegally obtained drugs by her teenage daughter, who placed them in the bottle to avoid detection … a driver who rents a car in which a past passenger accidentally dropped a baggie of marijuana under the seat; a traveler who mistakenly retrieves from a luggage carousel a bag identical to her own containing Oxycodone; a helpful college student who drives a carload of a friend’s possessions to the friend’s new apartment, unaware that a stash of heroin is tucked within those possessions; [or] an ex-wife who is framed by an ex-husband who planted cocaine in her home in an effort to get the upper hand in a bitter custody dispute.”

The majority opinion blithely dismissed these possibilities – at least some of which have been validated through actual court experience – by insisting that the statute’s “affirmative defense” provision addresses the rights of the defendant. As Justice Perry observes, this violates common law principles — traceable to ancient Roman law — by forcing the defendant to overcome a presumption of guilt:

“Under the majority’s decision … the innocent will from the start be presumed guilty. The innocent will be deprived of their right to simply deny the charges and hold the State to its burden of proving them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The innocent will instead be forced to assert an affirmative defense, whereupon the possession of a controlled substance, whether actual or constructive, shall give rise to a permissive presumption that the possessor knew of the illicit nature of the substance….. The innocent will then have no realistic choice but to shoulder the burden of proof and present evidence to overcome that presumption…. The innocent will then hear their jury instructed on the permissive presumption that they knew of the illicit nature of the substance in question.”

The statute upheld in the Adkins ruling is involved in roughly one third of all felony charges in Palm Beach County. Peter Antonacci, State Attorney for Palm Beach County, expressed relief over the ruling. “It would have been a substantial mess if had gone the other way,” he told the Palm Beach Post, in apparent ignorance of his implicit admission that his office is responsible for imprisoning a great number of people who had done nothing to harm anybody else.

Read the Adkins ruling here.

Addressing a partisan crowd during a campaign stop  in Roanoke, Virginia, President Obama hymned the praises of government as the provider of all good things, while rebuking business owners for their supposedly misplaced belief that they “build” wealth as individuals:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

In Obama’s collectivist reading of U.S. history, it was through government intervention – not individual initiative – that “we created the middle class.”

“We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people,” he insisted. “You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.”

Like most people of his ideological bent, Obama either cannot or will not distinguish between society – which is created through peaceful commerce and other forms of private cooperation – and the state – an anti-social artifact built on conquest, coercion, and confiscation of wealth. Government produces nothing; it is an exercise in pure consumption and, usually, the destruction of capital. As Nietzsche famously said, everything the State has is stolen.

Barack Obama – whose brow has never been moistened by the sweat of honest labor — knows literally nothing about creating wealth and value. As a politician, however, Obama is deeply committed to “community organizing” – that is, the creation of government-focused coalitions devoted to the forcible redistribution of the wealth created through the exertions of private producers.

Speaking as a state legislator in a 2001 radio interview, Obama distinguished between his variety of “community organizing” and the work of civil rights activists in the 1950s and 1960s. The earlier efforts, he pointed out approvingly, sought to overcome the “negative” concept of liberties – that is, freedom from state control and protection against abusive of individual rights by government agents — but was too wedded to the idea of pursuing its social revolution through the courts.

As Obama pointed out, “the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and the more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society…. [O]ne of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which to bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.” (Emphasis added.)

As a paladin of the parasite class, Obama characterizes his tax policies as a matter of “ask[ing] for the wealthy to pay a little bit more” – as if an official demand backed by armed government agents were akin to Oliver Twist’s plaintive request for a second helping of porridge, and that the shake-down needed to fund Washington’s redistributive designs would only apply to the “wealthy.”

Read more here.

With every day providing new — and infuriating — examples of indefensible criminal violence by law enforcement officers, many Americans are beginning to perceive their local police as a army of occupation, rather than a group of sworn peace officers committed to the defense of individual liberty and property rights.

Is that perception accurate? Has police violence escalated in recent years — or is there something innately wrong with government police agencies?

In a brief but comprehensive interview with radio host Scott Horton, Republic magazine managing editor William N. Grigg examines the history of the paramilitary organizations called “police departments,” discusses the problematic aspects of America’s British-derived law enforcement apparatus, and reviews some of the reasons why formerly civilian police agencies have become militarized.

The interview touches on the recent SWAT raid against a teenage girl and her grandmother in Evansville, Indiana, which was staged in response to anonymous on-line comments critical of the local police. The program also deals with the striking similarities between contemporary militarized law enforcement and the mafia — such as the quasi-official code of silence that protects corrupt and abusive police officers, and dictates retaliation against conscientious officers who insist on putting the truth ahead of tribal loyalty. (Some of those comparisons reflect better on the Mob, unfortunately.)

Listen to the interview here.

In a letter to the London Daily Telegraph – and a foreshadowing of America under “Obamacare” — six British physicians have blown the whistle on a systematic effort within the National Health Service to hasten the death of elderly patients in order to free up bed space.

“The Liverpool Care Pathway [LCP], which got its name as it was developed at the Royal Liverpool Hospital in the 1990s, withholds fluids and drugs in a patient’s final days and is used with 29 percent of hospital patients at the end of their lives,” observes the Telegraph. “The practice is backed by the Department of Health. But the six experts told the Daily Telegraph that in the elderly, natural death was more often free of pain and distress. The group warned that not all doctors were acquiring the correct consent from patients and are failing to ask about what they wanted while they were still able to decide.”

Understandably, this has prompted many patients to carry “a card stating that they do not want this `pathway’ treatment in the last days of their lives,” continues the report. Apparently, the default assumption is that active euthanasia will ensue — unless an elderly patient explicitly and repeatedly asks not to be hastened along the path to the hereafter.

“If you are cynical about it, as I am, you can see it as a cost-cutting measure, if you don’t want your beds to be filled with old people,” commented an astringently disapproving Dr. Gillian Craig, former vice-chairman of the Medical Ethics Alliance.

Since long-term chronic care for the elderly will soon become the largest factor in increasing health care costs, government-managed health systems will be increasingly hard-pressed to deal with the problem of so-called “bed blockers.” Critics of the 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board created by the Obamacare measure predict that it will become, in effect, a health care rationing soviet, withholding treatment from people seen to be an unsuitable investment of “public” resources. This is how the LCP is being used in England’s government-operated National Health Service.

More than a century ago, British novelist Anthony Trollope explored the subject of euthanasia in a prescient cautionary novel entitled The Fixed Period. Set in the island of Britannula near New Zealand, the story focused on a social experiment enacted by the local legislature entitled the “Fixed Period,” in which all citizens would be enrolled in a beautiful and relaxing rest home called the Necropolis at age 67, where they will enjoy one year of pleasant, care-free living before being painlessly put to death. In this way, insisted John Neverbend, President of Britanulla, the island’s society would be spared the suffering, expense, and burden attendant to old age.

As it happens, the first person affected by the Fixed Period ordinance is Gabriel Crasweller, a prominent and wealthy landowner who is also a close friend of President Neverbend. As the time comes to dispatch his friend to his terminal destination, President Neverbend begins to doubt the wisdom of the Fixed Period – but the youth-dominated legislature insists on carrying out its noble experience, notwithstanding the reluctance of its supposed beneficiaries.

Just as Crasweller is about to be carted off to the Necropolis, a British gunship arrives and asserts control over the breakaway British province and puts an end to Neverbend’s reign – and the Fixed Period initiative.

Ironically, the guns of the British government are being used to institute a “Fixed Period”-style system of medical triage, rather than abolish it – and a similar state of affairs may soon prevail here in the United States.

Read more here.

Here’s how the institutionalized theft called “civil asset forfeiture” works in Washington, D.C.: If the police steal your car, you may eventually get it back – if you’re willing to pay ransom for the privilege of letting a judge decide if the thieves get to keep it permanently.

TheNewspaper.com reports that D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Jeremy Bank stopped Virginia resident  Frederick Simms  on May 29, 2011 for supposedly making an illegal right turn on Martin Luther King Boulevard. In keeping with the standard script, Banks lied by claiming that he smelled the aroma of marijuana. A search of the car revealed a handgun. Simms was arrested and his car impounded.

With the help of a public defender, the 22-year-old Simms was acquitted of all charges last December 7. However, the D.C. municipal government – which has one of the most flexible and abusive “civil asset forfeiture” statues in the American soyuz – retained possession of the 2007 Saturn Aura XE in the hope of permanently confiscating it through a forfeiture action.

Following his acquittal, Simms was told that he would have to pay a $1200 fee in order to file a court challenge against the seizure of his automobile. Spokesmen for the criminal clique that had stolen his car didn’t bother to tell Simms that he could apply for a reduction or waiver of the “bond.” After learning that this was possible, Simms attempted to apply for a waiver, and was told that he would have to get the application notarized and provide three years of tax returns. After doing so, Simms was informed that his waiver was denied, and the bond – essentially, a ransom demand for an amount he would lose if the thieves ratified their theft of his car – would be reduced to $800.

“I cannot afford to pay $800 to try to get my car back,” Simms explained in a court filing. “All of the money I make from my wages … goes to transportation, rent, daycare, utilities, groceries, car insurance, and the $360 a month I pay on the car loan….”

On May 1, Simms filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the District, which responded by beginning forfeiture proceedings the following month – more than a year after the initial traffic stop. In a preliminary hearing, one of the lawyers representing the D.C. criminal clique observed that the forfeiture proceeding (that is, the process of ratifying the theft) might take about a year. This would mean Simms would be deprived of the use of a car on which he was still making loan and insurance payments. In the meantime, sniffed the mob lawyer, Simms would just have to make use of “public” transportation.

Federal District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan  ruled that it was an “irreparable harm” for the district to keep Simms’s car. However, he required that the innocent motorist pay a $1000 forfeiture bond – that is, a ransom to get back the car the police had stolen from him until a judge decides whether the thieves can keep it.

Read the ruling here.

Beating a tiny, handcuffed, pregnant woman is an appropriate use of force, according to San Antonio Police Chief William McManus.

On July 4, a San Antonio police officer spotted Destiny Rios walking on a city street and asked her name. After discovering an active warrant for prostitution, the officer attempted to arrest Rios. Two other officers arrived, handcuffed her, and threw her to the ground, where one of them struck the screaming woman at least nine times.

Rios is 5’1’’ and weighs 126 pounds. She is also pregnant. Eyewitness Lorezno Rios (no relation), who captured the assault on video, recalled: “All I heard was her yelling to get off me. I heard her yell `I’m pregnant. She was already cuffed and they started to beat her.”

Chief McManus insists that there was nothing amiss in the behavior of his officers. Beating a prone, tiny and handcuffed woman is justified, he said, “in order to get her to comply.”

“Size makes no difference,” maintained McManus, who declined to watch the citizen video of the assault. “It’s the amount of fight in the person.” Apparently there’s enough “fight” in a 5’1”, 126-pound pregnant woman to pose a significant threat to three large, armed police officers – at least by McManus’s calculations.

This is at least the third recent high-profile case of police abusing a pregnant woman.

Earlier this year in Georgia’s DeKalb County, Raven Dozier – who was roughly nine months pregnant – was kicked in the stomach by Officer Jarad Wheeler and then arrested for “obstruction.”

At the time, Raven was actually trying to help police officers during a domestic dispute between her brother and his estranged girlfriend. After a brief confrontation, the police tasered Raven’s unarmed brother. Several officers then swarmed him and began to beat him.

“He’s on the ground!” screamed Dozier. “You don’t need to do that!”

“Shut the f**k up!” snarled one of the officers. When Dozier continued to protest, Officer Wheeler strode up to her and kicked her in the stomach with sufficient force to open a door.

For about fifteen minutes, the DeKalb County officers conferred with a supervisor outside the house — within earshot of Raven’s brother, who was sitting, handcuffed, in the back of a police car.

“He kicked a pregnant woman,” one of the officers reported.

“You’ve got to charge her with something,” another replied.

After that discussion, several officers re-entered the home, where Dozier was on a couch trying to regain her composure.

Affecting concern for Dozier’s welfare, one of officers asked if they could take a picture of the traumatized mother and asked her to put on pair of shoes and step outside the house for a moment to talk with the supervisor.

As soon as Raven had crossed the threshold of her home, she was placed under arrest for “obstruction.”

Displaying uncommon good sense, the intake officer at DeKalb County Jail refused to book Dozier. Instead he sent her to a nearby hospital, where the expectant mother passed a small amount of blood and amniotic fluid. . A photograph of Raven taken after Wheeler’s assault displayed a huge bruise across Dozier’s abdomen. Two weeks later she gave birth to a son she named Levii by way of an emergency C-section.

In his official report of the incident, Wheeler did what police in such circumstances always do: He lied, claiming that he was dealing with an “aggressive” woman and that he used “a front push kick to the abdomen, as [I] was taught to do at the academy.” It was only after he arrested this “aggressive” woman that he supposedly noticed her condition.

“Her condition was obvious to everyone,” observes Dozier’s attorney, Mark Bullman (who is a retired police officer). “She had gained seventy pounds in this pregnancy. The incident took place in a well-lit area, and she had spent a great deal of time standing alongside the police officers, attempting to calm her brother down and resolve the situation.”

In June, Chicago resident Tiffany Rent, who was eight months pregnant, was tasered by a police officer during a dispute over a parking ticket. She had briefly parked in a handicapped-only space while her fiancé, Joseph Hobbs, went into a Walgreen’s store to buy batteries.

A cop who arrived on the scene wrote Rent a ticket, which the woman angrily tore to shreds. The officer then started to write a second citation for littering and demanded to know the woman’s name. She angrily refused to comply and got behind the wheel of the SUV. The officer shot her with his Taser, and then arrested Hobbs when he tried to intervene in defense of his fiancé and their unborn child. Both Hobbs and Rent were charged with misdemeanors.

Police superintendent Garry McCarthy characterized the officer’s Taser attack as a justified use of force to prevent what he called “an escape” by a suspect. A more honest characterization of the episode would be summary punishment for “contempt of cop,” as opposed to the necessary arrest of an actual criminal.

All three of these incidents involved women who were either entirely innocent (in the case of Raven Dozier) or suspected of non-violent offenses. Police actions of this kind in a foreign country would be condemned in a State Department human rights report. In the supposed Land of the Free they’re considered entirely appropriate.

Read more here.

If Ron Paul wins a plurality of delegates in Nebraska, his name would be placed in nomination during the Tampa convention this August. This prospect terrifies the Romney campaign, which is riding the weakest and least convincing prospective GOP nominee since Bob Dole in 1996 – or perhaps even Wendell Willkie in 1940. With the Paul insurgency still gathering strength, the GOP establishment is engaging in a full-spectrum assault – including unvarnished fraud, illegal intimidation tactics, and undisguised threats of violence – in an effort to suppress dissent.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC offers an overview of the repressive tactics undertaken by the GOP nomenklatura

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, former commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan, demands the re-instatement of conscription so that next time Washington commits itself to a needless foreign war “every town, every city [will be] at risk.”

“I think we ought to have a draft. I think if a nation goes to war, it shouldn’t be solely be represented by a profession-al force, because it gets to be unrepresentative of the population,” McChrystal during a session of the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival. “I think if a nation goes to war, every town, every city needs to be at risk. You make that decision and everybody has skin in the game.”

Of course, when those who presume to rule us decide to go to war, they don’t have any “skin” in the game; instead, they are gambling with the lives of other people.

“This was the first time in recent years that a high-profile officer has broken ranks to argue that the all-volunteer force is not necessarily good for the country or the military,” exulted Thomas Ricks of a neo-con think-tank called the Center for a New American Security in a New York Times op-ed column. “Unlike Europeans, Americans still seem determined to maintain a serious military force, so we need to think about how to pay for it and staff it by creating a draft that is better and more equitable than the Vietnam-era conscription system”:

A revived draft, including both males and females, should include three options for new conscripts coming out of high school. Some could choose 18 months of military service with low pay but excellent post-service benefits, including free college tuition. These conscripts would not be deployed but could perform tasks currently outsourced a great cost to the Pentagon: paperwork, painting barracks, mowing lawns, driving generals around, and generally doing lower-skilled tasks so professional soldiers don’t have to. If they want to stay, they could move into the professional force and receive weapons training, higher pay and better benefits.

Those who don’t want to serve in the arm could perform civilian national service for a slightly longer period and equally low pay – teaching in low-income areas, cleaning parks, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, or aiding the elderly, After two years, they would receive similar benefits like tuition aid.

In words that suppurate scorn, Ricks addresses “liberatarians who object to a draft”: “Those who declined to help Uncle Sam would in return pledge to ask nothing from him – no Medicare, no subsidized college loans and no mortgage guarantees. Those who want minimal government can have it.”

That arrangement would be perfectly satisfactory to those of us who understand the principle of self-ownership – as long as the government makes no demands of us in terms of the institutionalized theft called “taxation.” Obviously, Ricks – like other totalitarians of his ilk – doesn’t approve of the idea that we would be permitted to keep everything that we earn. Thus he assumes that those who refuse to become conscripts would still be tax slaves, and be deprived of the right to reclaim any of our stolen wealth in the form of government-provided “benefits.”

What Ricks is describing is the enactment of the eighth plank of the Communist Manifesto, which decrees the “equal liability of all to labor” in “industrial armies” controlled by the State. It is also a recapitulation of similar proposals made by numerous Establishment-connected pundits and think tank habitués in recent years. A very similar approach is found in the plan proferred in Foreign Policy magazine by retired U.S. Army Colonel William L. Hauser, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and naval veteran Jerome Slater of the State University of New York, Buffalo.

The program envisioned by Hauser and Slater would “combine a revived military draft with a broader public-service program as already practiced in some European states — a `domestic Peace Corps.’” They would permit draftees “to choose between military and nonmilitary service” — that is, to select their preferred form of servitude — at least initially. Given that providing additional military manpower is the entire point of the proposal, the domestic service “option” would probably last just long enough to get the measure enacted by Congress.

Discussing what they consider the ancillary benefits of military slavery, Hauser and Slater list what they consider “a number of positive social consequences.” For instance: “Conscription will enable the forces to reflect the full spectrum of American pluralism, in terms of both socioeconomic classes and racial/ethnic groups. It is unacceptable that less than 1 percent of the country’s eligible population serves in the armed forces, with almost no war-relevant sacrifice being asked from the rest of society. It ought to be axiomatic that the hardships and dangers of military service be more widely shared.”
What’s really going on here, as the incomparable investigative reporter Anne Williamson has pointed out, is the quiet implementation of a deal that would use American youngsters as human collateral for the foreign loans that fuel Washington’s demented imperial foreign policy.

“In his misbegotten quest for empire, George W. Bush faces two potentially decisive shortages – money and soldiers,” wrote Williamson in early 2005. “The deficits in boots and dollars are becoming acute…. But it is America’s Blanche DuBois economy, whose debt levels – public and private – have gone parabolic, that threatens the entire imperial enterprise. Without the ready funds normally forthcoming from the Treasury bill market … the president would have to rely upon a highly-indebted population that simultaneously has no savings and yet retains great expectations of the public purse. Clearly such a people cannot carry the imperial standard. At least, not alone they can’t.”

With the Empire going bankrupt, the liquidation sale is already quietly underway. Seizing young people to use as human “capital” — both as imperial coffin-stuffers, and drones of the domestic redistribution machinery – is the logical next step:

Thanks to the enterprising left, a palatable framework of “universal service” is evolving, in which all of America’s young people will be registered for national service and, drawing on personal information gleaned from the giant government data bases now being built, will be assigned to community service, combat service, or homeland defense. The kicker may be a requirement of completed service before access to higher education and government financing for it will be granted. It is not improbable to see a “deal” over Social Security reform on the horizon, i.e. in exchange for reduced benefits and an increase in the retirement age Boomer seniors will be guaranteed the services of [conscripted] “community brigades” for home care.

The system outlined by both Ricks and the duo of Hauser and Slater is all but indistinguishable from the one predicted by Williamson: A dystopia in which the Regime claims unqualified ownership of everybody living under its rule, and disposes of their lives as it sees fit.

Read more here.

Drone operators training at New Mexico’s Holloman Air Force Base use civilian automobiles to practice surveillance techniques, according to a recent report in the New York Times Magazine.

The bleak, stony desert terrain in that part of New Mexico offers a suitable training group for drone operators who will fly Predator and Reaper UAVs in Afghanistan. “When I visited the base earlier this year with a small group of reporters, we were taken into a command post where a large flat-screen television was broadcasting a video feed from a drone flying overhead,” recalls reporter Mark Mazzetti. “It took a few seconds to figure out exactly what we were looking at. A white S.U.V. traveling along a highway adjacent to the base came into the cross hairs in the center of the screen and was tracked as it headed south along the desert road. When the S.U.V. drove out of the picture, the drone began following another car.”

“Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?” one incredulous reporter inquired. An Air Force officer “responded that this was only a training mission, and then the group was quickly hustled out of the room,” recounted Mazzetti.

The domestic use of drones for “humanitarian assistance and homeland security” missions will soon undergo a radical expansion with the help of private-sector “subject-matter experts,” reports WorldNetDaily.

Citing a “Sources Sought” document – that is, a pitch for services from private sector contractors – WND explains:  “In order to `facilitate the safe expansion’ of the Obama administration’s domestic drone deployment, the U.S. Air Force Safety Center, or AFSC, will outsource to industry the assembling of this expert crew….”

With surveillance drones taking to the skies over America, the Feds are radically ramping up their electronic surveillance efforts as well. According to the New York Times: “In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations, and other information in the course of investigations…. AT&T alone now responds to an average of more than 700 requests a day, with about 230 of them regarded as emergencies that do not require the normal court orders and subpoena.”

In most cases, carriers require a formal warrant or subpoena. However, “in cases that law enforcement officials deem an emergency, a less formal request is often enough” – whether or not it meets constitutional standards. The ever-escalating surveillance demands from law enforcement agencies has led some carriers to outsource the job to outside providers. To their considerable credit, TracFone refuses to yield to law enforcement demands that it provide cell phone information without a warrant.

The Homeland Security State has also pressured Internet search providers, including Google, into providing “an index of the Web information on users’ searches,” observes retired Judge Andrew Napolitano in his new book It is Dangerous to the Right when the Government is Wrong. Google attempted to stave off this intrusion, but lost its court case.

In April 2010, “Google launched a `Government Request Tool,’ detailing the requests of worldwide governments to take down content, or to turn over information, related to the uses of its search engine, YouTube, and its blogging software,” continues Judge Napolitano. The U.S. Government’s removal demands are roughly twenty times the number filed by the government of post-Soviet Russia – and its demands for user information are more than 100 times greater than those issued by the country that gave us the KGB.

Read more here.

Newt Gingrich — self-anointed “teacher of civilization,” self-appointed futurist, serial adulterer, campaign deadbeat, and implacable proponent of foreign war — reently visited Paris to confer his benediction on the so-called People’s Mujahadin (MEK), an exiled Iranian terrorist group that has murdered American citizens and was an ally of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.

Gingrich, who never neglected an opportunity to upbraid Barack Obama for “bowing” before various foreign heads of state, was captured on camera bowing before Maryam Rajavi, the “principal leader” of the MEK cult — which is still officially listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist group, despite a high-pressure lobbying effort by a host of influential current and former policy makers.

“[Gingrich] praised Rajavi and her work several times in his speech, which he delivered as the prominent exile stood at his side,” observes Max Fisher of The Atlantic. “Before the speech, as he neared the end of a long line of attendees who stood in the rain to shake his hand, he turned to face Rajavi, smiled, and at approximately 1:02 minutes into the above video, folded at the waist and bowed solemnly. Rajavi, clothed head-to-toe in green, handed him a bouquet of flowers as the crowd cheered.”

In his July 21, 2010 statement on the “Ground Zero Mosque,” Gingrich insisted that hat the supposed “mega-mosque” would be seen by Islamists as a “symbol of Islamic conquest.”

“America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization,” pontificated Gingrich.  “Sadly, too many of our elites are the willing apologists for those who would destroy them if they could. No mosque. No self deception. No surrender. The time to take a stand is now – at this site on this issue.”

Two years later, the stalwart anti-Jihad activist who published those words would curtsy in front of the leader of an authentic Islamo-Marxist terrorist group.

See the video here.

When New Hampshire Governor John Lynch signed HB 146 into law on June 18, the Granite State became the first in the nation to enact a measure explicitly recognizing and protecting the indispensable right of jury nullification.

New Hampshire’s jury nullification law reads, in relevant part: “In all criminal proceedings the court shall permit the defense to inform the jury of its right to judge the facts and the application of the law in relation to the facts in controversy.”

There is nothing novel about the principle and practice of jury nullification, which dictates that citizen 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). At the time of the American founding it was well and widely understood that the power of citizen juries – both grand and petit – was plenary, and that their chief function was to force the government to prove its case against a defendant – and the validity of the law in question.

In contemporary America, however, trial by jury has been all but abolished in practice. Reviewing recent Supreme Court rulings, legal commentator Adam Liptak of the New York Times observes that in its just-completed term, the High Court “has turned its attention away from criminal trials, which are vanishingly rare, and toward the real world of criminal justice, in which plea bargains are the norm and harsh sentences commonplace.” (Emphasis added.)

The fact that the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers, which is supposedly sacrosanct, has become all but extinct illustrates the extent to which the U.S. “justice” system has become Sovietized.

After the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, the jury system — which had been established under Czar Alexander II in 1864 — was abolished and replaced with “People’s Courts” composed of a judge and a panel of two to six Party-appointed “assessors” who heard all of the evidence and decided all questions of both fact and law. The assessors “became known as `nodders’ for simply nodding in agreement with the judge,” wrote federal Judge John C. Coughenour in an article published by the Seattle University Law Review. “People’s assessors virtually always agreed with judges; acquittals were virtually nonexistent…. [U]nlike our adversarial system, the Soviet inquisitorial criminal justice system neither prioritized nor emphasized the rights of individual defendants, but instead paid homage to the interests of the state.”

One very telling measure of the Regime’s fear of citizen juries – especially those informed of their right to nullify unjust laws – is found in the efforts expended by prosecutors to prevent cases from going to trial.

In his 1998 book (co-written with Lawrence M. Stratton) The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts points out that “the vast majority of felony cases are settled with a plea bargain….” Many, perhaps most, “felonies” today involve no offenses against persons or property, no criminal intent, and are usually a product of an opportunistic prosecutor’s malicious creativity in confecting a criminal offense.

It is common for prosecutors to multiply charges as a way of terrorizing an innocent defendant into accepting a plea. Very rarely do we see a defendant with the means to defend himself in such circumstances. For the average citizen who finds himself targeted by an ambitious prosecutor, a plea bargain usually seems like the only relatively palatable alternative to the expense of a trial and the possibility of a long time in prison. At the bargaining table, “I’m all in” for the prosecutor means that, should he lose, he would sacrifice a little prestige, with the taxpayers absorbing all of the expenses; the defendant stands to lose everything and faces the prospect of utter ruin.

This is why so many innocent people are willing to deal. For the State, the most attractive feature of such arrangements is the fact that it keeps such cases away from juries. And we’re left with a “justice” apparatus that functions, in the words of legal scholar John Langbein, like “the ancient system of judicial torture,” which relied on self-incrimination through duress, rather than conviction on the basis of sound evidence.

Some recent developments offer encouraging signs that New Hampshire’s new law is part of a growing public trend toward jury nullification.

Police found Houston resident Israel Rangel in possession of less than a gram of cocaine – an amount equivalent to roughly half a sugar packet. He was arrested and charged with felony narcotics possession. When prosecutors vetted potential jurors, they found that 50 of the 130 candidates said they would not vote to convict someone accused of possessing such a tiny amount of cocaine.

The jury eventually acquitted Rangel of the charge. Lou Ellen Wheeler, who served on the jury, later said that the evidence against him was weak. But as defense attorney Todd Dupont pointed out, other jurors made it clear “they weren’t going to make somebody a felon and ruin their lives over a gram of cocaine.”

Prosecutor Julian Ramirez insisted that even though the amount involved was minuscule, possession of cocaine is a crime because “It’s the law.” However, it is the for the jury – not the trial judge, and certainly not the prosecutor – to define the law, even if this specific verdict merely reflected the poverty of a particular criminal case.

This is at least the second time a conscientious jury has nullified a foolish drug prosecution. Two years ago a Montana jury refused to convict a man for marijuana possession. Hopefully this kind of principled rebellion will become a nationwide epidemic.

Learn more about jury nullification here.

Read the text of New Hampshire’s jury nullification law here.

After allowing institutional corruption to flourish on their watch, supervisors in charge of the Austin, Texas ITIN processing center in Austin, Texas are being audited by their superiors. However, none of them confront the prospect of imprisonment, impoverishment, or – for that matter – unemployment as the result of their criminal misconduct.

Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) are used in filing tax returns and claiming refunds. Howard Antelis, a tax examiner at the Austin facility, told NBC affiliate WTHR that the ITIN system is rife with abuse and fraud.

“We were being told by upper management to ignore fraud, to assign ITIN numbers and … pay out refunds to people who are lying,” Antelis testifies. “It’s a license to steal when you allow that.”

Actually, everything the IRS does is an exercise of a government-issued license to steal. What triggered Antelis’s whistleblower impulse was not the rampant theft and abuse that define the IRS’s mission of plundering the productive, but rather its institutional indifference regarding fraudulent claims filed by those who receive the pilfered largesse. His must be a selective conscience if it is only offended by the sight of the IRS giving out stolen money to the “undeserving,” rather than the role played by the agency in stealing that money in the first place.

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 will 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 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.”

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 [sic for “always”] 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, it 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.”

The criminals in charge of the agency often employ extortion and other forms of intimidation against their own colleagues.

“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.”

Although Mr. Antelis is to be commended for condemning the corruption he has witnessed, his moral rehabilitation will be inadequate until and unless he repudiates the organ of state terrorism that employs him and joins the effort to abolish it.

Read more here.

Andy Griffith, who passed away at the age of 83 on July 3, was a universally beloved and multi-faceted entertainer best known as the firm but easy-going Sheriff Andy Taylor and the avuncular defense attorney Ben Matlock. It’s worthy of note that in a career spanning six decades that included scores of film and television roles, stand-up comedy, and a very successful run as a gospel singer, he is best remembered for two characters who were devoted to protecting the innocent — and upholding individual rights.

Sheriff Taylor’s genial sobriety provided a backdrop for the manic antics of his comically self-deluded deputy, Barney Fife, but it was a disposition entirely suited to his calling. When the occasion demanded it, Andy Taylor could be very stern and forceful in the defense of person and property. Unlike his deputy and many — perhaps most — contemporary police officers and sheriffs, however, Sheriff Andy never looked for an excuse to throw his weight around. He was never happier than when his jail was empty, his town was quiet, and the inhabitants of Mayberry were able to pursue their business on their own terms.

“Law and order” conservatives  claim both Sheriff Andy and the fictional North Carolina town Mayberry as icons of their ideal America — emblems of a simpler time before the police were supposedly shackled by criminal-coddling liberals on the Supreme Court. That depiction is difficult to reconcile with the most memorable scene from the TV series, in which Sheriff Andy patiently explains the concept of Due Process — including the Fourth Amendment and attorney-client privilege — to his earnest but misguided son Opie, who had surreptitiously recorded an incriminating jailhouse conversation.

“Opie, I can’t listen to that — I’m not permitted,” Andy tells his son. “Now, I told you about eavesdropping –”

“But this is different,” Opie insists.

“Yes — it’s worse,” Andy replies. “You overheard a conversation that was supposed to be private…. You bugged a conversation between a lawyer and his client. Now ,that’s violating one of the most sacred rights of privacy. ”

A puzzled Opie blurts, “But if it helps the law –”

“Opie, the law can’t use this kind of `help,’” Andy explains. “Whether a man is guilty or innocent, we have to find that out by due process of law.”

For many who live in a society characterized by rapidly eroding public institutions and rapidly degenerating personal morals, Mayberry offers a wistful glimpse at a country that was never fully realized, but how we truly wished to see ourselves. In an era dominated by a metastasizing Homeland Security State in which law enforcement personnel are typically illiterate, bullying cowards whose attitude toward individual rights ranges from torpid indifference to militant hostility, Sheriff Andy embodies the archaic but inspiring ideal of a peace officer — someone devoted to protecting the innocent, rather than imposing the will of the political class.

Law enforcers are plentiful. Peace officers, however, are a vanishingly rare breed.

As someone commented shortly after news broke of Andy Griffith’s passing: Andy Griffith died today — but Sheriff Andy was buried a long time ago.

See the video from “The Andy Griffith Show” here.

Houston resident Eddie Darnell Bassett has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for possession of cough syrup found in his vehicle during a traffic stop. Lexington, Texas resident James Anderson, whose car was searched during a traffic stop for an expired registration tag, was more fortunate: A gratuitous charge of “possession of a dangerous substance” – in his case, a bottle of ibuprofen – was dismissed by a judge.

Bassett, who was stopped for speeding, made the mistake of telling a Texas State Trooper that he had been smoking marijuana earlier in the day, thereby providing “probable cause” for a search. Although no evidence of marijuana use was found in the vehicle, the officer spotted a plastic Coke bottle containing a red, viscous residue, which he “believed to be codeine cough syrup,” reports the Palestine Herald.

Although Bassett initially described the substance as dishwashing liquid, a forensic analysis revealed that it was indeed cough syrup. Bassett was convicted of illegally possessing cough syrup without a prescription – and received an enhanced sentence because of a prior felony involving “essentially the same thing,” explained the assistant district attorney.

Anderson, who was stopped by a police officer in tiny Manor, Texas, was told to exit the car in order to fill out paperwork – a familiar gambit by revenue-obsessed enforcement officers seeking an opportunity to search a vehicle.

“As I stepped out of the vehicle I said, `I do not consent to a search,’ because I know my constitutional rights, and he had no reason to search me,” Anderson explained to ABC affiliate KVUE. “I had nothing to hide; I was just exercising my rights.”

Manor PD spokesperson Sgt. Ryan Phipps insists that “at a certain point within an investigation, you do not have the right to refuse a search” – and that this “point” was reached when a drug-sniffing dog supposedly “alerted” to something in Anderson’s vehicle. Given that narcotics dogs are trained and prompted to “alert” at anything, and that their handlers are trained to fabricate “probable cause” during every traffic stop, the standard Phipps describes effectively nullifies the Fourth Amendment.

Anderson, who suffered knee and back injuries while serving in the Army, had two bottles of ibuprofen, one of which had “the prescription label scraped off” –which was described as a violation of Texas law. The search also turned up a concealed weapon for which Anderson had a valid permit.

“That is where this drug became a dangerous drug without a prescription,” Phipps maintained. “Then the weapon was found, and that all ties together. You can operate a vehicle with a weapon in the car, but the second you are in violation of a crime or another criminal offense other than traffic, then that makes the possession or transporting of that weapon illegal.”

Anderson was handcuffed and stuffed into the unventilated and practically airless back seat of a squad car, where he passed out from heat prostration. While he was detained and unconscious, one of the arresting officers stole $150 from his wallet. After the contrived charges against him were dismissed, Anderson filed an official complaint with the Manor Police Department.

Read more here – and here.

In conducting this year’s annual Chicago gun “turn-in,” the police networked with dozens of local churches – counting on local shepherds to play the role of Judas Goats in the civilian disarmament drive.

“Using the lure of $100 gift cards, the Chicago Police Department is encouraging people to get guns out of their homes and turn them in this Saturday, during the annual gun turn-in program,” reported the local CBS affiliate. First Deputy Superintendent Alfonza Wysinger explained how the gun turn-in would operate:

No questions asked…. Just show up at the church, and hand over the weapons to the CPD officer that will be there, and get your $100 gift card. So we strongly suggest that people come out that have weapons lying around the house, or weapons, maybe,  that they don’t necessarily want in their house. This is a chance to get some money for their weapon, and get another dangerous weapon on the street.

Embedded in that observation is the assumption that guns are “dangerous” only when they’re possessed by people other than government-licensed officials. Like similar “buy-back” programs elsewhere, the Chicago event was essentially a taxpayer subsidy for petty criminals, who were able to get cash for stolen firearms – or simply to get rid of old weapons they no longer considered suitable.

"Disarmament," a sculpture in front of the UN Headquarters Building depicting a civilian-issue handgun with its barrel twisted into a knot.

For promoters of citizen disarmament, the real scandal was the fact that a pro-firearms group called Guns Save Lives was able to turn in old, rusty firearms and BB guns and use the money obtained – more than $6,000 — to fund a summer camp to teach gun safety to teenagers.

Putting money in the pockets of street criminals is perfectly all right – but the thought of law-abiding citizens using that money to teach youngsters the essentials of responsible firearms ownership was simply unconscionable in the eyes of the local police.

“We host the gun turn-in event on an annual basis to encourage residents to turn in their guns so we can take guns off the street, and it’s unfortunate that this group is abusing a program intended to increase the safety of our communities,” lamented police spokeswoman Melissa Stratton to the Chicago Sun-Times.

The role played by Chicago-area clergy in the most recent disarmament drive is akin to a Department of Homeland Security initiative unveiled several years ago in which   ”Clergy Response Teams” were comissioned to preach the gospel of unconditional submission to the State during emergencies.

“Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that,” reported KSLA News 12 of Shreveport, Louisiana.  In the event of a natural disaster or similar emergency, “the clergy would help the government with potentially their biggest problem – us,” continued the report.

“If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie `The Siege,’ easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that’s exactly what the ‘Clergy Response Team’ helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina. Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff’s Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team’s mission, `the primary thing that we say to anybody is, “let’s cooperate and get this thing over with and then we’ll settle the differences once the crisis is over.”‘” (Emphasis added.)

“For the clergy team,” concluded the report, “one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the Bible itself, specifically Romans 13.” As paraphrased by Dr. Tuberville, the message of that chapter is that “government’s established by the Lord”; what he misses is that the text teaches that the sole legitimate function of political government, which is subordinate to God’s law, is to protect the innocent against lawless violence – not to leave them disarmed and helpless in the face of those who purvey such violence.

In a ruling written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court — the same entity that acknowledged in 1819 that the “power to tax is the power to destroy” –has ruled that the federal government can use the taxing power to compel its subjects to participate in a government-run corporatist health care system.

During a 2009 interview with the obsequious George Stephanopolos, President Obama said that he “absolutely reject[s] the notion” that the federal health care mandate is a tax increase. This morning, the Court, in a 5-4 ruling written by nominal conservative Chief Justice Roberts, rejected the Obama administration’s argument that the Constitution’s Commerce Clause permits an individual health care mandate; however, the Court also claimed that it could impose such a directive by means of a direct un-apportioned tax (which is not authorized by the Constitution – see Article I section 2, clause 3 — and thus is expressly forbidden by it, as if that mattered anymore).

“Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness,” wrote Roberts, deploying the tactical disingenuousness such people always display whenever they ratify a federal power grab. This feigned humility was used to cloak an unambiguous lie: The measure Roberts describes is a direct un-apportioned tax, which, as we’ve seen, is explicitly forbidden by the Constitution.

In the opinion he wrote on behalf of the four dissenting justices, Antonin Scalia described the Obamacare individual mandate, and the powers arrogated by Washington to enforce it, as a “blatant violation of the constitutional structure,” irrespective of the conceptual framework used to justify it.

Scalia pointed out that with respect to the constitutional power “to tax and spend for the general welfare,” the High Court “has long since expanded that beyond … taxing and spending for those aspects of the general welfare that were within the Federal Government’s enumerated powers” to the point that it now effectively manages practically every aspect of the lives of U.S. citizens – and has absorbed all of the powers and functions once reserved to the states. The gravamen of this case, Scalia insists, is not whether the mandate can be justified on grounds other than the Commerce Clause, but whether there are any identifiable limits on the exercise of federal power:

What is absolutely clear, affirmed by the text of the 1789 Constitution, by the Tenth Amendment ratified in 1791, and by innumerable cases of ours in the 220 years since, is that there are structural limits upon federal power—upon what it can prescribe with respect to private conduct, and upon what it can impose upon the sovereign States. Whatever may be the conceptual limits upon the Commerce Clause and upon the power to tax and spend, they cannot be such as will enable the Federal Government to regulate all private conduct and to com­pel the States to function as administrators of federal programs.

The Obamacare statute “exceeds federal power both in mandating the purchase of health insurance and in deny­ing non-consenting States all Medicaid funding,” Scalia concludes. “These parts of the Act are central to its design and operation, and all the Act’s other provisions would not have been enacted without them. In our view it must follow that the entire statute is inoperative.”

Roberts’ ruling is applied Leninism – a pragmatic way of justifying the government’s intention to exercise “power without limit, resting directly on force.” Money and time are essentially the same thing; one earns money by investing his time – an irreplaceable and finite quantity – in commerce or labor. Through taxation the State steals life incrementally, rather than destroying it outright.

In his decision, Chief Justice Roberts has placed the High Court’s imprimatur on the proposition that the regime ruling us can steal our lives incrementally in order to force each of us to participate in a health care program that will regulate every aspect of the lives that remain – and either kill or imprison those of us who refuse to participate.

Read the ruling here.

Minneapolis resident Zachary King committed no crime, and did nothing to provoke the police — yet a thugscrum of roughly a half-dozen of Minneapolis’s “Finest” threw him to the ground, beat him severely, and then jailed him without charge because one of them saw that he was carrying a licensed handgun.

King, who has a concealed carry permit, was walking to his car in downtown Minneapolis the evening of Father’s Day when an officer noticed a bulge in King’s waistband.

“I have my conceal and carry, and it’s my gun,” King recounted to local CBS affiliate WCCO. “And soon as I said that he grabbed me by my neck, slammed me against the wall, snatched my gun out the holster, started waving it in the air saying ‘gun, gun, gun.’”

Within seconds, King was surrounded by a mob of armed tax-feeders.

Despite the fact that he had done nothing to provoke anybody’s suspicion, or exhibited any behavior that could be classified as “contempt of cop,” he continues, “four other officers just came and slammed me on my face, one of the officers had me by my head just banging it on the sidewalk.”

This apparently isn’t the first time King has been abused by the Minneapolis Police: Last April he was arrested and jailed without charge after making a video record of an incident of police abuse.

Read more here.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the central provision of Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 immigration law – the so-called “show your papers” aspect — while dismissing other elements of the measure as “pre-empted by federal law.”

Politico summarizes:

All eight justices who ruled on the case voted to allow the mandatory immigration-check requirement to go into effect. They split on three other disputed provisions of the law, with a majority of the justices ruling that each of those parts of the law could not be enforced because they intruded improperly into a policy sphere reserved to the federal government.

According to the SCOTUSblog, the Court’s ruling struck down three pillars of the Arizona law:

• State Law Crime of Being In The Country Illegally. Although federal law already makes it illegal for someone to be in the country without proper authorization, Section 3 of the Arizona statute also makes it a state crime, subject to additional fines and possible imprisonment. The Court held that this provision was preempted and cannot be enforced. The Court held that Congress has left no room for states to regulate in this field, even to implement the federal prohibition.
• Ban on Working In The State. Section 5(C) of the statute also makes it a state crime for undocumented immigrants from applying for a job or working in the state. It is also held preempted as imposing an obstacle to the federal regulatory system. Because Congress obviously chose not make working in the country without proper authorization a federal crime, states cannot enact additional criminal penalties Congress decided not to impose.
• Warrantless Arrest Of Individuals Believed To Have Committed A Deportable Crime. Section 6 of the statute authorizes state law enforcement officials to arrest without a warrant any individual otherwise lawfully in the country, if law enforcement officials have probable cause to believe the individual has committed a deportable offense. The Court held that this provision is preempted. Whether and when to arrest someone for being unlawfully in the country is a question solely for the federal government.

The stated purpose of SB 1070 is to “discourage and deter the unlawful entry and presence of aliens” within the U.S.  The measure specifies that in the course of any “lawful contact” between a law enforcement officer and a citizen, the officer can check on the individual’s immigration status – and that the latter is subject to arrest is he cannot satisfy a “reasonable suspicion” that he is in the country without official permission.

The potential complications of the measure were illustrated in the April 22, 2010 arrest of an Arizona resident who identified himself as Abdon (he didn’t disclose his surname) after he pulled his truck into a weigh station. As his vehicle was being inspected, Abdon was asked by an official to display proof of legal residency. He promptly handed over a valid Arizona commercial driving license; he also supplied his Social Security number and additional personal details.

For some reason this was considered insufficient, and Abdon ended up being cuffed and hauled away to an ICE detention facility while his wife — who was dragged out of work — was dispatched to their home to retrieve Abdon’s birth certificate and other documents.

The unfortunate truck driver’s birth certificate listed his birthplace as Fresno, California. This means that he had an unassailable claim to being a “native-born United States citizen.” He had complied with every demand made of him at the weigh station, and did nothing to suggest that he harbored criminal intent of any kind.

The only source of the “reasonable suspicion” that led to Abdon’s arrest was his visible ethnicity.  Critics of SB 1070 asserted that this is the standard under which American citizens (particularly, but not exclusively, of Latino ancestry) could now be harassed and arrested under the Arizona statute.

In its ruling the Supreme Court emphasized that while it has upheld the identity check aspect of the law, its application will be subject to extraordinary scrutiny – and that only federal officials could make arrests in the absence of criminal charges. This actually entrenches a serious constitutional error.

Defenders of the measure – and similar laws enacted in other states – insist that it is necessary for state and local police to enforce immigration measures because the federal government has been lax in doing so. The Supreme Court, on the other hand, maintains that most immigration enforcement resides entirely within the realm of federal authority. Both the defenders of SB 1070 and the High Court get the constitutional question exactly wrong: While the Constitution does require Congress to set a uniform national standard of naturalization, it doesn’t give the central government any authority regarding immigration enforcement.

In its 1837 ruling New York v. Miln, the Supreme Court observed that an immigration law enacted by that state’s legislature constituted an “exercise of a power which rightfully belonged to the state.” Subsequent rulings –such as Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) and the Passenger Cases (1849) described immigration as falling under one of the “numerous and indefinite” powers reserved to the separate states.

Writing in the Passenger Cases, Chief Justice Roger Taney observed that the congressional power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization “has nothing to do with the admission or rejection of aliens, nor with immigration, but with the rights of citizenship. Its sole object was to prevent one State from forcing upon all the others, and upon the general government, persons as citizens whom they were unwilling to admit as such.”

Whatever one’s perspective regarding the benefits or burdens of immigration, the matter is one assigned by the Constitution to the states – which means that the High Court’s ruling on SB 1070 is a victory only for those who want to consolidate police power in the federal government.

Read more here.

Until recently, Carol Price was an employee of the Transportation Security Administration. As a member of the TSA’s blue-shirted legion of gropers, Price enjoyed plenary immunity to touch air travelers in any way she chose. When passing through airport security at Southwest Florida International Airport on April 20, Price was on the receiving end of the treatment her agency routinely inflicts on the public, and she didn’t like it at all.

After enduring an act of public molestation in which a TSA agent palpated her chest and inner thighs, Price demanded to see a supervisor. Understandably angry and offended, Price performed the same procedure on the TSA supervisor. The supervisor herself was outraged by the assault, and demanded that Price not touch her – a perfectly understandable demand mere citizens aren’t permitted to make.

Price was arrested and charged with battery and resisting an officer. She is not the first to face prosecution for doing to a TSA screener as that agency’s employees routinely do to us.

In 2004, 62-year-old Appleton, Wisconsin resident Phyllis Dintenfass was selected for “secondary screening” at the Outagamie County Airport when something she wore set off the metal detector at the Outagamie County Regional Airport. Mrs. Dintenfass put up no resistance as TSA supervisor Anita Gostisha used an electronic “wand” to scan for metal objects. But she understandably rebelled when Gostisha used the back of her hands to check the area beneath Dintenfass’s breasts.  According to Dintenfass, her reaction was to mimic the unwanted and uninvited physical contact while exclaiming, “How would you like it if I did that to you?”

Gostisha’s version of the event, predictably, was melodramatic and self-serving. She claimed that the middle-aged woman — described by all who knew her as mild and not prone to violence – “slammed her against the wall.” Leaving aside the fact that this would be an entirely justified response to a sexual assault, Gostisha’s version was disputed by her victim and not corroborated by any other witnesses.

However, since Gostisha is a member of the Regime’s punitive caste, her person — unlike that of her victim — is sacred. Accordingly, Dintenfass was arrested and charged with “assaulting” a federal official. She was found guilty of that purported crime and sentenced to a year of probation and 100 hours of “community service.”

Victorious federal prosecutor Tim Funnell insisted that Mrs. Dintenfass “punished Anita Gostisha for doing her job.” U.S. Attorney Steven Bispukic piled on, protesting that TSA officers, who perform a “vital function,” are “entitled to protection from assault” — that is, they’re entitled to “protection” from the same treatment they inflict on their betters. It’s difficult to find a better illustration of the principle that government is simply a criminal syndicate that has achieved impunity.

At the time Mrs. Dintenfass was molested in Appleton, the treatment she endured was exceptional. Eight years later, it is quite commonplace as an alternative to being irradiated by the TSA’s porno-scanners. TSA functionaries are now instructed to use open hands and fingers “to go over one’s body, including the genital area and breasts,” in the words of a protest letter filed a couple of years ago on behalf of a group of airline pilots disgusted with the expanded checkpoint ritual.

The charges filed against Carol Price, and the official persecution of the rightly aggrieved Phyllis Dintenfass, demonstrate beyond rebuttal that each time a TSA drone places hands on a captive air traveler, he is committing an act of criminal assault.

Read more here.

Roger Clemens, one of the most dominant pitchers in Major League Baseball, has been acquitted of charges that he lied to Congress during 2008 testimony in which he denied using steroids or human growth hormones. Federal prosecutors twice tried to convict Clemens of the supposed offense; their first attempt ended in a mistrial. If Clemens had been found guilty of all charges, he faced the prospect of up to 30 years in prison.

The seven-time Cy Young Ward winner, who compiled 354 career strikeouts, was the most dominant pitcher of his era and is widely regarded as a future Hall of Famer (since he retired in 2007, he becomes eligible for consideration this year). His late-career achievements were marred by accusations that he – like nominal Home Run King Barry Bonds – had used illicit steroids and hormone therapy to hold the effects of aging in abeyance.

In 2008, Clemens was questioned by Congress about those allegations. This was a matter dealing with Major League Baseball’s internal personnel policies, which are outside Congress’s constitutional authority. Clemens categorically denied the use of banned substances. His testimony was contradicted by a former trainer and a former teammate.

If Clemens used steroids, he was a cheater – not a criminal. Congress has no mandate to preserve the competitive purity of Major League Baseball, and even less competence to do so. Absent physical evidence, it was impossible to prosecute Clemens for violations of drug laws. So the Feds attempted to imprison him for the supposed crime of lying to Congress about a matter over which it has no authority.

In their pursuit of Barry Bonds, federal prosecutors were successful in wringing from a jury a single conviction on a charge of “obstructing justice” – an odd verdict, given that the prosecution was not able to convince the same jury that the investigation Bonds supposedly obstructed involved actual criminal behavior. Bonds, who was sentenced to 30 days of house arrest, has appealed his conviction.

It seems pretty clear that Bonds adulterated the competitive ethos of Major League Baseball, and undermined the credibility of its statistical records. Once again, these are offenses beyond the purview of the Federal Government, which commits crimes of violence and fraud every picosecond of every day.

Bonds was a hugely talented athlete who was devoured by vanity. As portrayed in the book Game of Shadows by Mark Fairnaru-Wada and Lance Williams, Bonds — who was a Cooperstown-bound, three-time MVP in 1998 — succumbed to pathological jealousy as that year’s home-run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa monopolized the attention of the fans and media. We’ve subsequently learned that both McGwire and Sosa, like scores of other stars, were using performance-enhancing drugs. This was something the invertebrates running the corporatist MLB establishment were willing to allow in order to rebuild fan interest following The Year Without a World Series (1994).

Prior to 1998, Bonds — like his late father Bobby, and his godfather, the immortal Willie Mays — was a multi-dimensional player blessed with a wiry build. But at 33 he was confronting career mortality. Although he had “never used anything more performance-enhancing than a protein shake from the health food store,” write Fainaru-Wada and Williams, Bonds made a calculated decision to become a “juicer.” With the help of steroids obtained through an outfit called the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO), Bonds up-armored his musculature: Where he had been a sleek speedster with consistent power, he became a one-dimensional dreadnought, which was exactly what the MLB corporate culture of the time demanded.

“Of the five best offensive seasons in Bonds’s career, four came after he was thirty-five years old,” note Fairnaru-Wada and Williams. This in itself is not remarkable: Of Henry Aaron’s 755 career home runs, roughly one-third came after he had reached that age, which is near-geriatric in baseball terms. Bonds’a late-career improvement, however, was unprecedented. Prior to 2001, when he hit 73 home runs, Bonds had never hit more than 49 in a season. Additionally, he was 38 years old in 2002 when he won his first batting title, hitting .370.

“Henry Aaron never hit 50 home runs in a season, so you’re going to tell me that [Bonds] is a greater hitter than Henry Aaron?” mused Reggie Jackson in reaction to Bonds’s twilight power surge. “There is no way you can outperform Aaron and Ruth and Mays at that level.”

Clearly, concluded Jackson, “somebody is guilty of taking steroids.” That is to say that Bonds’ career stats were debased by his inflated physique.

To get some sense of where Bonds stands when his stats are adjusted for physique inflation, consider the following. In 1927, Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs accounted for 14 percent of the American League’s total that year. To duplicate that single-season feat, Bonds would have to hit about 340 home runs–or a little less than five times the number of those in his record-setting year.

Performance-enhancing substances were pervasive in MLB clubhouses, but with the game being re-engineered around long-ball pyrotechnics, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig wasn’t inclined to press the matter. It can thus be said that baseball found its economic salvation in statistical inflation. This sort of thing came naturally to Selig, who, as commentator Matt Welch points out, “spent his term helping owners soak taxpayers for more than $5 billion in baseball welfare” through stadium subsidies.

There is a certain symmetry at work here. Babe Ruth’s Major League career began in 1914, just months after the Federal Reserve Act and the Income Tax were inflicted on the American economy. In due course, the gang responsible for those abominations created the IRS, which would eventually employ the bilious little twit named Jeff Novitzky – a frustrated wanna-be jock who eventually spearheaded the federal investigation of Bonds.

Major League Baseball’s statistical inflation has done no tangible harm to anyone. The monetary debasement practiced by the Regime Novitzky served so faithfully has literally resulted in widespread death and destitution. So, naturally, Barry Bonds may be headed for prison despite the fact that the Feds couldn’t prove that he had actually committed a definable criminal offense. However, the bovine specimens who composed the jury, not wanting to injure the feelings of the prosecutors, gave them a consolation prize by ruling that Bonds had somehow committed some unspecified form of “obstruction.” Fortunately for Clemens, his jury behaved more sensibly.

Let’s not forget that the same “Justice” Department that so zealously sought to imprison Roger Clemens for “misleading” Congress is headed by a figure – Attorney General Eric Holder – who has diligently obstructed and misled congressional efforts to investigate the ATF’s “Fast and Furious” operation, in which the Feds deliberately permitted high-performance firearms to be provided to Mexican drug cartels. That operation led to the death of hundreds of people, including a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Read more here.

Richard Klementovich, the 42-year-old Clifton, New Jersey police officer who barricaded himself in the home of his ex-wife in nearby Doylestown and turned a quiet neighborhood into a free-fire zone, was apparently attempting to commit “suicide by cop.” An admitted steroid user, Klementovich – who was paid $114, 560 in 2011 — described himself as angry “at this job and law enforcement. And it’s them who I will take out my anger on.”

“They will do the job I couldn’t and take my life,” wrote the 14-year law enforcement veteran in a June 16 e-mail to his ex-wife wife, Jill Majors. “I hope whomever comes to our house is ready to die tomorrow because I will be Jill…. Tell the police I have a surprise for them, this is the way I want to die.” When police arrived at the home, they found a manila envelope containing a note in which Klementovich said that he had scoped rifles, a cache of 2,000 rounds of ammunition, and that he “was ready to die.”

After Klementovich fired on police vehicles, several SWAT teams and emergency response units converged on the scene. Local residents were ordered to seek shelter in a nearby police facility or in their basements. Despite the deployment of paramilitary operators and heavy weaponry – including a tank-like vehicle – the standoff ended in anti-climactic fashion. Displaying uncommon restraint, the police allowed one of their own to surrender to a negotiator and leave the home of “his own free will,” reports NJ.com.

Prior to June 17, Klementovich was part of New Jersey’s tax-subsidized elite: He reportedly was paid $114,560 in 2011, at least some of which was used to feed his steroid addiction — which most likely would have led to a prison term had he been a Mundane (or common citizen).

Steroid use – including the attendant psychological syndrome called “Roid Rage” is quite commonplace among cops. “Officer Jimmy,” an anonymous active-duty police officer, told Men’s Health magazine that “Steroid use is very pervasive in law enforcement. I’d say, of the cops I know, 20 percent to 25 percent of them are using” steroids. “Jimmy,” who became a police officer in 2000, is a good representative of the “dominate-intimidate” mindset that defines contemporary law enforcement. He believes – or at least believed at one time – that police are under-utilizing an important tool: “What law enforcement needs is a little testosterone. Every cop should do a [steroid] cycle a year.”

A March 2004 pamphlet published by the DEA’s “Office of Diversion Control” underscores the reasons why steroids are so attractive to the likes of “Officer Jimmy”: “The idea of enhanced physical strength and endurance provides one with `the invincible mentality’ when performing law enforcement duties.”

If Klementovich had snapped and committed an act of violence against an innocent person while on duty, he most likely would be on “administrative leave” – that is, paid vacation – while his police union provided him with expensive legal help and unqualified support. The fact that he was able to walk away from the standoff, rather than being killed in a full-force military onslaught, is itself an illustration of the privileged position Klementovich continues to occupy: If he had been a mere Mundane, he would almost certainly be dead.

The siege in Clifton underscores another important and largely ignored point – namely, the asininity of the assumption that police officers, unlike Mundanes, can be entrusted with firearms. One of the tenets of the civilian disarmament catechism is that the same guns that are unacceptably dangerous when owned by private citizens are transmuted into instruments of civic amity when wielded by the State’s enforcement caste. Klementovich’s rampage is just the latest of numerous incidents demonstrating that the police are actually the most dangerous element of society.

Read more here.

Entrepreneur and musician James Tebeau, whose Camp Zoe concert venue was one of Shannon County, Missouri’s largest employers, has accepted a plea agreement in which he will forfeit his 350 acre property and serve a prison sentence for “maintaining a drug-involved premises.”

Tebeau played bass in an ensemble called the Schwag Band and hosted a number of concert events including the annual “Schwagstock” festival. The agreement stipulates that Tebeau neither participated in drug sales, nor did he profit from them. Yet he faces a prison term of two and a half years and the loss of his property.

According to the Feds, Tebeau’s crime was to permit the sale of marijuana, LSD and mushrooms, while instructing employees to evict people who sold heroin, cocaine, crack, meth, and nitrous oxide. However, the same can be said of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, which abetted the sale of many controlled substances for four years following an August 2006 arrest of two people at the camp for selling hallucinogenic mushrooms. Over that four-year period, informants employed by the State Police conducted hundreds of undercover purchases, including many of the hard drugs Tebeau was seeking to ban from his premises.

The “Justice” Department’s press release (which was reproduced nearly verbatim by the few media outlets that covered the story) made a point of noting that Tebeau “was aware that the term `schwag’ was a slang term for low-grade marijuana and he purposely adopted that name for his music festivals and band.” If this is evidence of evil intent, the Feds should begin criminal proceedings against the Doobie Brothers and the management of any venue where that classic rock band performs.

At about 7:30 a.m. on November 1, 2010 – a few hours after the finale of the annual “Spookstock” music festival — a multi-jurisdictional task force invaded Camp Zoe. According to one eyewitness, “Every letter of the alphabet was represented…. There were people from the DEA, the IRS, the Highway Patrol, from Homeland Security, the local police and country Sheriff’s Office. There was a group from the Rolla Police Department, which is two counties away from here.”

One camp staffer was briefly stopped by police on nearby Highway 19 as he was driving his children to school. He was separated from his wife and children at the point of an M-16 rifle. The detainee was taken into the camp and briefly questioned before being released.

Camp Zoe was placed under lock-down while the raiders rummaged through every corner of the campground, intimidating staff and visitors and seizing personal items (including cash). As this was going on another federal contingent was dispatched to clean out the personal and business accounts of Jimmy Tebeau, the musician and entrepreneur who owns and operates the campground.

The Feds “just siphoned away all of his money, and then filed a civil asset forfeiture lawsuit seeking to seize his property,” protests attorney Dan Viets, who has volunteered to represent Tebeau. “This would mean that he wouldn’t have the money needed to fight the seizure in court.” The Feds clearly sought to confiscate Camp Zoe from the beginning, and they took exceptional care to guarantee that Tebeau couldn’t mount an effective defense of his property.

One indigestibly ironic aspect of this story is the fact that Tebeau’s case was heard in before a federal court in Cape Girardeau, Missouri before U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh. Judge Limbaugh’s famous cousin, GOP radio mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh, who was caught “doctor shopping” in service of an addiction to Oxycontin – a prescription painkiller described by one DEA official as stronger than heroin. Rather than going to prison, Limbaugh paid Palm Beach County $30,000 to defray the costs of the investigation and agreed to undergo 18 months of physician-assisted therapy.

Rush Limbaugh’s net worth is estimated to be in excess of $400 million, and his annual income more $30 million. He owns several homes and a number of private aircraft. He was certainly a ripe target for prosecution and “asset forfeiture” – or he would have been, had he been a commoner like Jimmy Tebeau, rather than the politically connected grandson of retired federal Judge Rush Hudson Limbaugh Sr., whose name is affixed to the courthouse where the entertainer’s cousin consummated the theft of Tebeau’s business and property.

Go here for details and background about the Federal theft of Camp Zoe.

More than a year after a Pima County, Arizona SWAT team murdered former Marine Jose Guerena in his Tucson living room, five people – including two of Guerena’s brothers – have been indicted on 29 charges arising from alleged involvement in a marijuana smuggling ring.

No evidence of drug smuggling or other illegal activity was found at Jose Guerena’s home during the fatal May 5, 2011 raid. The indictment mentions that the SWAT team found body armor, several guns (including a rifle), a dozen cell phones, and a cap embossed with the U.S. Border Patrol logo. None of the weapons was described as “illegal.” Nor is it a crime for a private citizen to own body armor (nor is it surprising to find it in the home of a combat veteran of multiple tours in Iraq). Guerena, who was working the graveyard shift at a local copper mine, had expressed an interest in joining the Border Patrol.

Capt. Christopher Nanos, head of the criminal investigations division for the Pima County Sheriff’s Office, insists that despite the lack of compelling evidence against him, Jose Guerena was a criminal: “Although he was a former Marine, it doesn’t mean that he was out there doing what we expect good Marines to do.”

Guerena was gunned down in his own home without the benefit of a trial.

“There is absolutely no reason to name Jose Guerena in the indictment other than a poorly veiled attempt to disparage him, his wife and children,” commented Christopher Scileppi, the attorney representing Jose’s widow Vanessa and their two small sons. “This, after the police barged into their home with apparent little regard or care for human life, shooting wildly with handguns and a high-powered ballistic rifle more than seventy times mere feet away from Mrs. Guerena and their 4-year-old boy.”

Jose had just fallen asleep after his graveyard shift at a local copper mine when 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.

An autopsy later discovered that none of the wounds suffered by Jose was immediately life-threatening. Despite the fact that the SWAT team included at least one field medic, the raiders refused to carry out their legal and moral duty to render medical aid, allowing Jose to bleed to death over the course of roughly an hour. Those actions constitute second degree criminal homicide under Arizona state law.

The assault on Jose’s home was one of three paramilitary raids staged on the morning of May 5, 2011. Despite the supposed urgency of the investigation, no arrests were made that morning, or for months thereafter.

That the SWAT raids constituted an exercise in overkill was made clear on March 8 – ten months later – when the Pima County Sheriff’s Office  conducted an uneventful arrest of three of those now indicted for narcotics offenses. On that morning, 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 Pima County sheriff’s deputies — attired in regular clothes — who had obtained a conventional search warrant.

Although carried out by what amounts to a death squad, rather than by means of a remote-controlled, missile-equipped drone, the extra-judicial killing of Jose Guerena by the Pima County SWAT team bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the Obama administration’s “targeted killings” of U.S. citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, neither of whom was ever charged with a crime.

Read more here.

Two years before endorsing their preferred candidate, Mitt Romney, future Senator Rand Paul denounced the Goldman Sachs banking conglomerate and the hyper-elitist Bilderberg cabal in a brief video interview for the activist group We Are Change.

As a New York Times profile noted last January, Romney’s personal and political fortunes have long been wedded to Goldman Sachs — memorably characterized by investigative journalist Matt Taibbi as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity”:

When Mr. Romney became governor of Massachusetts, his blind trust gave Goldman much of his wealth to manage, a fortune now estimated to be as much as $250 million.

And as Mr. Romney mounts his second bid for the presidency, Goldman is coming through again: Its employees have contributed at least $367,000 to his campaign, making the firm Mr. Romney’s largest single source of campaign money through the end of September.

No other company is so closely intertwined with Mr. Romney’s public and private lives except Bain [Capital] itself.

Since the October Revolution of 200 — when the Congress, under threat of martial law, enacted the Wall Street bailout — Goldman Sachs has effectively taken over the United States Treasury Department. They embody nearly everything that Ron Paul has opposed. The same is true of the Bilderberg Group.

According to a report published by the Guardian of London, numerous eyewitnesses saw Romney participate in this year’s Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Virginia.  “Romney’s office initially refused to confirm or deny his attendance as Bilderberg is `not public,’” wrote Guardian correspondent Charlie Skelton. “His people later said it wasn’t him.”

“Will Mitt Romney follow in the august footsteps of Clinton, Cameron and Blair to have attended Bilderberg and then shortly become leader?” continued Skelton. “Four years ago, Senator Obama shook off his press detail and nipped (many think) into Bilderberg. This exact same hotel. Did Romney have to get down on one knee in front of David Rockefeller? This sounds flippant, but it’s a serious question: has Bilderberg switched allegiance? Are they going to toss away Obama after just one term?”

Whether or not Romney was in attendance at this year’s Bilderberg assembly, his nearly infinite pliability and undisguised enthusiasm for crony capitalism make him a nearly ideal choice for the elitists who were there.

As previously reported by Republic, Romney used a secret meeting with Massachusetts power players during his 2002 gubernatorial campaign to tout his ability to attract plundered largesse on behalf of the politically connected.

“I’m a big believer in getting money where the money is,” explained Mitt Romney to political supporters during his 2002 campaign for Governor of Massachusetts. “And the money is in Washington…. I’ve learned from my Olympic experience that if you have people who really understand how Washington works, and have personal associations there, you can get money to build economic opportunities.”

“We actually received over $410 million from the federal government for the Olympic Games,” boasted Romney in his speech, which was covertly recorded by an employee and provided earlier this year to ABC News. “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….”

Those were the candid words of the man who was described by Rand Paul — in comments directed to Tea Party activists and others demanding an end to government plunder and profligacy — is “right there with us.”

See Rand Paul’s We Are Change interview here.

(Sold Out!) What Is a Crime?, America’s Hunger Games: Spectator Sports and the Cult of the State, Corporate Social Responsibility: Why Private Industry Keeps Telling Us to Go Green, Death Squad in Tucson: The Killing of Jose Guerena, A Martyr to the Divorce Regime: Driven to Suicide by the Family Court System, Edgar Steele: Political Prisoner, Tilting at Winmill: Idaho’s Quixotic and Corrupt — Federal District Judge, Hard Times at Lockdown High, The Persecution of Jeremy Hill, Kids-for-Cash: Juvenile Injustice in Pennsylvania, Maryanne Godboldo’s Victory: Resistance Isn’t Futile, Jose Padilla and the Sovietization of American Law, The Natural Order of Law Kritarchy, Policing vs. Law Enforcement, If You See Something, Say Something: Stalinism Comes to America, The SPLC Smearbund and the Homeland Security State, Using the Public for SWAT Target Practice and more!

To the visible delight of a smirking Sean Hannity, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) endorsed Mitt Romney’s presidential bid in a June 7 Fox News interview.

Admitting that his father, constitutional purist Ron Paul, was his “first pick,” Senator Paul dutifully recited the Party Line, insisting that the highest priority should be to defeat Barack Obama in November.

As Sen. Paul noted, his father has a “legion of young followers” who have been drawn to him because of the congressman’s unyielding commitment to his principles – individual liberty, sound money, non-intervention in foreign affairs. The Senator did what he could to present Romney – a stranger to principle – in the most favorable light.

Referring to a recent private meeting with the former Massachusetts Governor, Sen. Paul suggested that Romney was “right there with us” on “many issues that are important to me, important to my dad, and important to many of his followers” – such as protecting the freedom of the internet and “greater transparency” at the Federal Reserve. Of course, Romney has a well-deserved reputation as a human mood ring, whose positions and priorities change according to the company he keeps and the constituency to which he is pandering.

The chief reason Ron Paul’s insurgent campaign has earned the unalloyed hostility of the GOP elite is his principled opposition to the vaunted “Bipartisan Foreign Policy Consensus.” He has opposed the undeclared aggressive wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan and elsewhere. He has likewise distinguished himself by his opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act, the NDAA, the institutionalization of torture as an interrogation method, summary assassination of suspected terrorists and “militants” by presidential decree, and the so-called “war on terror” in general. He is also emphatically opposed to aggressive military action against Iran.

Romney, by way of contrast, has supported the ongoing wars, endorsed the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran, applauded the use of torture and indefinite detention – at one point calling to “double Gitmo.”

In trying to make the case for Mitt Romney’s foreign policy perspective, the best Rand Paul could do was to promise that he would not be “reckless” or “rash”, that he has “mature attitudes toward foreign policy,” and that he agreed that war is not something to “rush into willy-nilly.”

Some GOP-aligned pundits predicted that Rand Paul’s endorsement of Romney would help shepherd his father’s followers back into the Establishment’s fold. However, the initial reaction to Rand’s endorsement – judging from comments in social networking sites – has been overwhelmingly negative.

On the same day his son endorsed Romney, Ron Paul – receiving his now-expected “rock star welcome” – addressed the Texas Republican State Convention in Fort Worth. The father displayed not a whit of his son’s willingness to compromise in the interest of “party unity,” according to a Washington Times report:

[begins]

Congressman Paul prefaced his remarks by saying that he had been asked to speak on uniting the party and balancing the budget. Not a strange request given the fact that his fiscal conservatism is almost as well known as the fact that dissension within the Republican Party primarily emanates from the ideas he has championed.

But Paul made it clear that he wasn’t going to play ball, or shall we call it what it is – politics.

His speech was a virtual litany of the positions that have defined his candidacy, and there was no hint of compromise. Instead, he said, “Unity is important but what do we unify behind? No Child Left Behind? What about uniting around principle, around the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence?”

During the long war for Scottish independence, the English throne was occupied first by King Edward I and then by his effeminate son Edward II. Robert the Bruce, who fought against both of them, eventually defeating the army of Edward II at Bannockburn, said that he was more afraid of “the dead king’s bones than of the living heir.” Although the moral roles are reversed, the Power Elite could well make the same comparison between Ron Paul and his son and supposed political heir.

See the video of Rand Paul’s Romney endorsement here.

Following an armed robbery at a local Wells Fargo bank, police in Aurora, Colorado arrested everyone in the vicinity until the suspect was found. This action amounted to limited-scale martial law.

Believing that the alleged robber was stopped a nearby red light, the police barricaded that section of the street – which could be considered a reasonable tactic. However, they dragged more than forty people from their vehicles, handcuffed them, and held them for more than four hours – which is not.

Drivers and passengers “were handcuffed, then were told what was going on and were asked for permission to search the car,” recalled Officer Frank Fania. “They all granted permission, and once nothing was found in their cars, they were un-handcuffed.”

Why was it supposedly necessary to handcuff people before asking permission? If the detention was justified, why did the police bother to ask for permission?

“At least 15 cars were corralled,” reported Denver’s CBS affiliate. “Some had small children, shaken by the show of force. Aurora resident Peter Castillo said police didn’t explain what they were looking for when he was pulled from his car”: “I was a little bit scared… I was a little concerned. Honestly, I was kind of making sure that they understood that we were being made to be safe.”

Read more here.

Following an armed robbery at a local Wells Fargo bank, police in Aurora, Colorado arrested everyone in the vicinity until the suspect was found. This action amounted to limited-scale martial law.

Believing that the alleged robber was stopped a nearby red light, the police barricaded that section of the street – which could be considered a reasonable tactic. However, they dragged more than forty people from their vehicles, handcuffed them, and held them for more than four hours – which is not.

Drivers and passengers “were handcuffed, then were told what was going on and were asked for permission to search the car,” recalled Officer Frank Fania. “They all granted permission, and once nothing was found in their cars, they were un-handcuffed.”

Why was it supposedly necessary to handcuff people before asking permission? If the detention was justified, why did the police bother to ask for permission?

Fania insisted that the mass arrests were necessary and justified because it was a “unique” situation. Actually, this was done not to protect the public but in the interest of “officer safety.” This is the same reason why the police force in Colorado Springs, roughly 70 miles south of Aurora,  are using military-grade SWAT gear to carry out routine patrol functions.

Similarly skewed priorities are visible in jurisdictions across the country. Because of semantic games played by police and prosecutors, citizens are increasingly unsure of their status when they are accosted by police: Are they under arrest, or subject to “investigatory detention”?  If the citizen isn’t formally under arrest, is he free to leave? Can police draw their guns and threaten a citizen with lethal force if he is not formally under arrest? That last question has been addressed in a recent ruling by Louisiana’s Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, which held that those circumstances do not constitute a formal arrest – at least when the legitimacy of that arrest is questioned by the defendant.

On June 8, 2010, Robert Carter of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana parked outside a convenience store. Acting on a tip from a snitch that Carter would soon arrive at the location to conduct a drug deal, two undercover detectives had kept the lot under surveillance. After Carter parker his car, the detectives used their unmarked vehicles to cut off his escape and approached him with guns drawn.

In a panic, Carter threw his car into reverse, severely damaging the unmarked car behind him.

During his bench trial, Carter claimed that the arrival of two armed strangers – one of whom admitted in testimony that they didn’t clearly identify themselves as police – made him fear for his life. (Carter’s credibility as a witness and father is undermined by the fact that when he fled from his car he abandoned his two-year-old son in the vehicle.)

After being convicted of felony malicious property damage, Carter – a second offender – was sentenced to 20 years in prison. On appeal, Carter insisted that the arrest was unlawful.

Incredibly, the appeals court ruled that what it called an “investigative detention” is not an arrest – while insisting that Carter had no right to leave what the trial judge called “the arrested place [where] he’s supposed to remain.”

While Carter’s criminal history and his cravenness regarding his son’s safety — make him an unsympathetic figure, this ruling has ominous implications for any encounter between police officers and citizens: Apparently, cops are permitted to detain any citizen at gunpoint without such an action qualifying as an “arrest” – and therefore being subject to the restrictions imposed in the Fourth and Fifth amendments.

Complicating the matter even further is an appeals court ruling in Idaho claiming that any citizen who cooperates with a police officer in such circumstances effectively waives his protection against self-incrimination, because he supposedly has the option of simply ignoring the armed stranger.

Christopher Randle and a female friend were in a parked car with the engine running when a police officer tapped on the driver’s side window. When Randle opened the door, the officer spied two open beer cans between the passenger and driver’s seats. Randle was arrested for felony DUI.

Randle appealed, correctly observing that the officer had no probable cause to search the vehicle. The trial court ruled that the search was consensual, and thus not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. That ruling was upheld on February 6, 2011 by the Idaho Court of Appeals.

“By approaching Randle’s vehicle in the parking lot and tapping on the window, the officer did not restrict Randle’s liberty to ignore the officer’s presence and go about his business,” wrote Judge John Melanson.

Randle’s counsel pointed out that this “could have provoked the officer to take aggressive actions,” thereby forcing Randle “to engage in some form of combat with the officer to protect his privacy interests.” This would have meant, at best, additional criminal charges – or, at worst, being killed. The Court of Appeals simply ignored those concerns, just as it assumes that police are free to ignore constitutional limits.

Court rulings on questions of this kind are a tangled skein of self-contradictions intended to grant maximum latitude to the police while preserving the pretense that the Bill of Rights still exists. Police in Aurora, Colorado simply decided to cut the Gordian Knot by dispensing with the pretense that citizens have any rights the police are required to respect.

Read more here.

The freedom movement lost a champion on June 4 with the passing, at age 62, of Tommy Cryer, a constitutional attorney from Shreveport, Louisiana who defeated the IRS in federal court.

“Tom was an inspiration and friend. I will miss him and know that we will carry him and his many contributions in each of our hearts as we continue his work.” – George Shepherd, Publisher Republic Magazine

Here’s more about Tom and his story:

A few months after graduating with honors from Louisiana State University (LSU) Law School in 1973, Cryer served as a special adviser and draftsman at the Louisiana Constitutional Convention. Two years later he opened a legal practice that extended into several fields of civil and criminal law. He also argued several cases before the state supreme court. In recognition of his distinguished achievements, Cryer was inducted into the LSU Law School Hall of Fame in 1987.

In June, 1994, Tom had a life-changing encounter with a man who made a provocative claim: He insisted that the Internal Revenue Code did not make him liable to pay income tax. Intrigued but skeptical, Cryer devoted his first-class legal mind to the task of debunking that claim. Instead, his research documented that there is no income tax liability relative to American citizens.

Cryer, who had a great deal to lose, was presented with a dilemma: Should he put his head down and pretend not to know the truth, or honor his oath to support and defend the rule of law and the Constitution? At some considerable personal cost, Cryer chose the patriot’s path.

It became clear to Cryer that the US government, through a deliberate fraud of unprecedented dimensions, is stealing trillions of dollars from honest, hard-working Americans, and using this stolen wealth to expand its reach far beyond its intended role. The perpetrators of that fraud are using the sweat and labor of Americans to destroy their country.

To establish legal standing, Cryer stopped filing and paying income tax UNLESS and UNTIL the government could show him it had the legal right to demand he do either. He was charged with two counts of tax evasion, which charges were later reduced to two counts of failure to file.

On July 9, 2007, Cryer was put on trial in Federal District Court in Shreveport. In presenting his defense, he learned first-hand how far tyranny has advanced within the US government — even into the courtrooms. The judge, acting as an undisguised ally of the prosecution, violated the canons of judicial conduct, the laws of evidence, and principles of due process by forbidding Tom to present any physical evidence or material facts. He also attempted to hamper Cryer’s testimony, in which he described the evidence he had accumulated demonstrating that he did not have any income tax liability — and that the law, as written, does not say with the IRS tells them it says.

Despite the judge’s successful effort to prevent Cryer from presenting material evidence to bolster his case, the jury found his testimony credible and convincing. Following only a few hours of deliberation, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty on both counts.

Following his victory in federal court, Cryer filed a civil rights lawsuit against the U.S. Government. He also founded Truth Attack, an educational organization devoted to educating the American people about the crimes the IRS has committed against the American people since 1913.

Joe Banister, a former IRS Criminal Investigation Division Special Agent who has become one of the agency’s most outspoken and effective critics, was also singled out for vindictive prosecution by the federal government, and prevailed in court at substantial personal cost. At the time of Cryer’s death, he and Banister were organizing a campaign involving a group of experienced, capable attorneys — “people who had been in the arena,” in Banister’s words — who could educate the public about the fundamentally fraudulent nature of the tax collection system.

“Tom and I came to understand that it’s all about your intention, or what is called the `willfulness’ component of the law,” Banister explains. “Because the law is so complex — it’s designed to be all but unintelligible — people have a difficult time understading that they really have no duty or liability regarding the income tax. We wanted to help people understand that this system isn’t being opposed by `evil, greedy lawbreakers,’ as the IRS insists, but by intelligent and principled people of good conscience.”

“Tom would often ask me, `How do we wake people up? Where are the other Joe Banisters in the system?’ We really believed that through our efforts we could inform the public and perhaps even stir the conscience of that small number of people in government — whether it’s one percent, or a fraction of a percent — who could be led to embrace and defend the truth.”

While Tom Cryer is no longer among us, that effort will continue.

The memorial service will take place Thursday, June 7, at Centuries Memorial Funeral Home
GET DIRECTIONS

The viewing will take place at 9:00 a.m. with the ceremony following at 10:00.

The family requests that in lieu of flowers, a donation be sent to the Shriner’s Children’s Hospital.

SEND A DONATION

Those interested in making personal donations to the family should send them to:

Betty Woodard
3415 Seminole Dr
Shreveport, LA 71107

Tom Cryer The Plan

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIC8d0hf-Ug[/youtube]

U.S Income Tax is a fraud(Tom Cryer)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4nb62cAM3Q[/youtube]

“It’s a shame that we must remember the joy and value that others add to our lives only after we’ve lost them. I ask that you remember Tom and our other fallen brothers and sisters now by
taking a few minutes to tell someone close or somebody that has been an inspiration to you, how much you appreciate them.” – George Shepherd

Let every hero taken from us during our campaign for what is right, only strengthen our resolve and unite us.

Special Thanks goes to our editorial team (Will Grigg & Brian Roberts) for helping prepare this message.

In spite of “Nazi”-style police state tactics employed on behalf of the state’s Republican establishment, Ron Paul captured a majority of delegates at Louisiana’s state GOP convention on June 2.

After being feloniously assaulted by a thugscrum of four Shreveport Police Officers, Henry Herford – the duly elected chairman of the Louisiana State GOP nominating convention – was hospitalized for a dislocated prosthetic hip. In keeping with standard procedure, the uniformed assailants filed spurious charges against the victim.

“They arrested me for … resisting arrest, and they never said I was under arrest,” Hereford commented after being released from the hospital. “And [they said] I didn’t leave when they told me to leave – but I never was told to leave.”

Herford, who underwent a CAT scan on his hip and received a painkiller injection, didn’t sign his arrest papers.

“I can’t sign anything while I’m on a narcotic, and I told the police that,” he explained.

During the convention, Doug Wead recounts, “Louisiana GOP officials ignored the vast majority of duly elected delegates and attempted to use illegally adopted rules to deny Ron Paul supporters an opportunity to attend the Republican National Convention in Tampa.”

Alex Helwig, a Ron Paul delegate and Chairman of the Rules Committee, made a formal motion to remove the chair. In a fashion reminiscent of a third world dictatorship, Helwig was seized by Shreveport Police and removed from the room. During his brief detention, Helwig suffered several broken fingers – a punishment favored by Mussolini’s Blackshirts – and when he returned to the event he walked with the aid of a cane.

Notwithstanding the literally terroristic tactics employed by the Pelican State’s GOP establishment, Ron Paul’s campaign won a majority of the Louisiana delegates to the national convention in Tampa.

Asked what he thought of the Shreveport Police, Herford replied: “They’re Nazis.” That assessment is underscored not only by the criminal violence he and Helwig suffered at the hands of the Shreveport PD, but also by the municipal government’s totalitarian view of the powers exercised by its armed enforcement personnel.

In 2009, Shreveport Mayor Cedric Glover, in a recorded phone call with Robert Baillilo, a motorist and licensed gun owner who called to complain about treatment he’d received by the police, declared that any time a citizen is stopped by an officer, “Your rights … have been suspended.” This includes not only the freedom of movement, but also “Your right to be able to hold on to your weapon and say whether [you] have a weapon or not” — as well as the right to retain possession of that weapon, should the officer decide to confiscate it from you.

Should you choose not to answer the question, or answer it in the negative, the officer could still choose, “in the interest of officer safety, to secure you in a safe position” — this most likely means outside the car with your hands cuffed behind your back — “and then do an appropriate inspection of your vehicle.”

The phrase “appropriate inspection” is more honestly rendered “Unconstitutional warrantless search.”

If the police officer then discovers a firearm or other weapon in the car, the driver “would be guilty or potentially guilty of even a more severe offense” than whatever he had allegedly done to precipitate the traffic stop, insisted Mayor Glover. Police officers, according to Glover, are invested with “a power that the President of the United States does not have … and that is the ability to be able to suspend your rights.”

This is “one of the things that I say to each and every one of the police officers who graduates from the Shreveport Police Academy since I’ve been mayor.” Fortunately for the public, one supposes, Mr. Glover remembers the lesson that Peter Parker learned from his kindly and sagacious uncle Ben — that is, with great power comes great responsibility. “You have to understand there is a great deal of power that is vested within … the law enforcement personnel of this country,” Glover insists. “It’s why there is a great deal of responsibility that has to go along with it.”

Mr. Baillio had called to complain about a  traffic stop in which an SPD officer, who– before dealing with any other matter of business — asked if Baillio had a firearm, then seized it from him.

Louisiana law recognizes the right of the state’s residents to carry loaded weapons in their vehicles, and Baillio has a state-issued concealed carry permit. According to Baillio’s account, he was cordial and polite when he was stopped after supposedly neglecting to use a turn signal. That this was almost certainly a pretext stop is illustrated by the fact that Baillio never received a ticket. Supplemental evidence is offered by the fact that the conversation between the officer and Baillio focused entirely on the issue of gun ownership, including a question about Baillio’s membership in the National Rifle Association.

In his telephone chat with Glover, Baillio — who was persistent but unfailingly polite — pointed out that he “answered the [officer's] question honestly and he disarmed me.”

“Which would be appropriate and proper action, sir,” replied Glover. “The fact that you gave the correct answer — it simply means that you did what you were supposed to do and that is to give that weapon to the police officer so he could appropriately place it in a place where it would be no threat to you, to him, or to anyone in the general public.”

“Well, you know, he still had a gun,” observed Baillio, hoping to underscore the fact that guns — as objects, rather than actors — do not pose a “threat” in and of themselves. “How is he –”

“Because he’s a police officer,” interjected Glover before he could finish the question. “As I’ve just related to you, that police officer has powers, sir, that you do not have” (Emphasis added).

The American premise is that all government is a creation of the sovereign people, and the creation cannot have “powers” greater than the creator. The doctrine spouted by the elephantine bureaucrat  who represents Shreveport’s municipal political caste is derived from Mussolini’s totalitarian formula: “Everything within the State; nothing outside the State; nothing against the State.”

See the video interview with Henry Herford here.

The secretive meeting of the Bilderberg oligarchy in Chantilly, Virginia has attracted the ire of activists from both the Tea Party and Occupy movements, notes the Guardian of London.

A crowd described as numbering in the “hundreds” and consisting of “a mix of Ron Paul supporters, members of the 9/11 truth movement and a smattering of Occupy protesters” gathered outside the Westfield Marriott to denounce the Power Elite conclave, which includes top-echelon international figures from the realms of politics, academia, the media, and finance. Although the atmosphere was convivial – with even some of the police assigned to provide security cracking the occasional smile – the protesters spared no sympathy for those who came to participate in the cabal’s deliberations, erupting in jeers and boos “each time a vehicle suspected of carrying Bilderberg attendees entered or exited the property.”

The composition of the crowd defied the scripted narrative that sets “conservative” Tea Party activists and “leftist” Occupy protesters against each other. One protested interviewed by the British paper, Chris McCarron, “stood outside the fence surrounding the Marriott with a 99% flag, an overt nod to the Occupy movement”:

For McCarron, who participated in Occupy protests in Colorado, the motivation for attending the rally was simple: “A shadowy group of rich people gathering together, making their plans for the world; I’m not going to sit on my ass and let them do it. They’re gonna hear my voice.”

McCarton hoped the movements could find common ground and come together.

“It was funny, earlier today me and a Tea Party guy, we threw our arms over each other like ‘Hey, here we are, we’re working together on this.”

“We’re all kind of protesting the same thing, just different segments of it,” he said. “Whenever we can we should get together.”

The Bilderberg meetings are more than just high-level retreats for policy wonks and bureaucrats. As the Guardian noted in a separate report, in 2008 “then-senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton paid a flying visit to Bilderberg (aka ‘an event in northern Virginia’), after shaking off the press pack during the Democratic presidential campaign….Bill Clinton was introduced to the political big league at Bilderberg 1991. The man who introduced him was Vernon Jordan, a lawyer, civil rights activist and currently board member of Lazard investment bank. Speaking last year about the occasion, Jordan recalls: `In 1991, I took Bill Clinton to the Bilderberg meetings in Baden Baden, Germany. Bilderberg meetings have been going on since 1954, sort of the North-American / European Alliance.’”

The Bilderberg meetings could be considered the most important annual assembly of the international Power Elite — the people who control the system of international finance, dictate the ground rules of electoral politics, define the parameters of “respectable” public debate, orchestrate wars, and otherwise presume to define the future for us. This is why it’s encouraging to see at least some street-level activists ignoring Elite-defined political labels and joining forces to oppose and expose the Bilderberg machinations.

Read more here.

For decades, the annual Bilderberg assembly has gathered representatives of the world’s elite – in politics, finance, media, and academe – to confer over the state of the world in luxurious settings. This year’s Bilderberg confab is underway in Chantilly, Virginia, which means that the enigmatic gathering takes place under U.S. jurisdiction. Nominal U.S. citizens – such as the execrable Henry Kissinger, as well as several prospective Republican vice presidential nominees — who take part in the event are therefore liable to felony prosecution under the Logan Act.

Enacted during the single term of President John Adams, the Logan Act was one of several constitutionally dubious measures inspired by concerns over foreign subversion of the American political system. It is kindred to the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts, which prompted Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to compose the “Kentucky and Virginia Resolves” – documents setting forth the duty of states to “interpose” on behalf of their citizens when the federal government invades their constitutionally protected rights.

Whatever its merits, the Logan Act has never been repealed. It can – and should – be applied to self-appointed “global citizens” of American birth who participate in elitist meetings designed to undermine what remains of American independence and, more importantly, the individual liberties of Americans.

Leave it to the much-maligned RT news service to underscore the importance of this fact:

Under the Logan Act … American citizens cannot negotiate with foreign officials without the authorization of the country. According to the text of the Logan Act of 1799, “Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

Read more here.

As the White House publicly acknowledging the existence of a presidential “kill list” for potential targets of drone-fired missiles, law enforcement and “security” agencies are moving quickly to assimilate automated killing technologies – creating a Skynet-style automated killing apparatus  in the name of “officer safety.”

Development is underway on a new generation of drones equipped with artificial intelligence capabilities that would allow them what the Economist calls “a high degree of operational autonomy including—if legal and ethical questions can be resolved—the ability to shoot to kill.” Pending the advent of such quasi-autonomous murder machines, remote-piloted airborne surveillance and strike vehicles are increasingly popular with risk-aversive police and security functionaries who prefer to engage “bad guys” at a safe and comfortable distance, irrespective of the risks this entails for unprivileged civilians who happen to be within the kill radius.

“As military, law enforcement, and first responder agencies around the world seek to reduce the danger their personnel face, more research and development is being focused on UAV and robot design and training,” reports the Homeland Security News Wire. “The proliferation of UAVs … will see demand for the vital services they offer continue into the next decade. This demand will be accompanied by a requirement for more skilled UAV pilots and sensor operators, and as UAV operator training becomes more formalized, governments will be looking to invest heavily in the creation of suitable UAV operator simulation and training systems.”

A similar dynamic is seen regarding the “battlefield” on which contemporary law enforcement operations occur: “[F]irst responder-type robot markets are poised to achieve significant growth as the next generation robots systems provide a way to improve law enforcement services delivery….Homeland security and police need to target terrorists and protect civilians in order to get their job done effectively, but this needs to be done while putting as few of their own personnel at risk as possible. Robots help in this task by sending machines instead of homeland security or police into dangerous places.”

Actually, the operational framework for drone warfare is built on the assumption that physical proximity to “terrorists” or “terrorist activity” nullifies any need to discriminate between “militants” and non-combatants: Any civilian of any age within the strike radius of a targeted “militant” is considered a combatant, and that status can only be revised posthumously by intelligence officials whose self-interest dictates the denial of civilian “collateral damage.”

Beginning in 2009, President Barack Obama has radically expanded the use of drones in lethal missions, killing uncounted hundreds of men, women, and children – including the summary executions of three U.S. citizens, one of them a 16-year-old boy who was desperately looking for his estranged father.

Mr. Obama, a self-described “community organizer” with a deep background in cultural Marxism, has used unabashedly collectivist principles to justify what can only be described as mass murder. According to a detailed report published (with the Obama administration’s obvious cooperation) by the May 29, 2012 New York Times, Obama has given specific approval for the extra-judicial execution of everyone mentioned “on an expanding `kill list’…..” That list includes high school-age youngsters in Yemen who are accused of unspecified “ties” to al-Qaeda – an “organization” that has only fifty known members, nearly all of whom live in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

All that is necessary to be considered a legitimate target for a drone-fired missile is physical proximity to someone considered a “militant.” Obama’s perspective, notes the Times, “counts all military-age males in the strike zone as combatants … unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” This standard permits immediate liquidation of such people, who might then be exonerated after the fact. The operating assumption is that “people in an area of known terrorist activity … are probably up to no good,” explains the Times.

This would include people like a young girl named Fatima, who was killed in a May 2010 Hellfire missile attack in North Waziristan – one of several wives and children who died in a strike on a purported al-Qaeda operative named Saeed al-Masri. The administration defended the “collateral” deaths of al-Masri’s own children, insisting that he had assumed responsibility by choosing to bring his family with him to the region. However, Fatima – like many of the other victims – was not related to al-Masri; she simply happened to be in the area when the drones arrived and killed everybody within a certain radius. The same lethal fate befell hundreds of others who have been killed in drone strikes that have targeted funerals, or follow-up drone attacks that targeted first responders who arrived to rescue victims of a primary strike.

All of these acts of state-sanctioned murder received the explicit approval of Mr. Obama. This was often done on the recommendation of the man who acts as Beria to Obama’s Stalin — John Brennan, the Obama administration’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, who has been designated as the head of the administration’s secretive drone strike “death panel,” according to an AP report.

The construction of America’s automated killing apparatus is a proudly “bi-partisan” affair, with leaders of both communitarian parties collaborating in its construction. As the New York Times points out, after offering token criticism of the predecessor administration, Obama “preserved three major policies – rendition [kidnapping and torture by the CIA, with cooperation from KGB-trained foreign intelligence services], military commissions, and indefinite detention”; in fact, he has embedded the torture apparatus and radically expanded the practice of extra-judicial liquidation by presidential decree.

Even as Republican political operatives condemn Obama for public consumption, the party’s leadership fully embraces the “industrial killing machine” his regime has perfected – and seeks to expand its powers and its domestic application. One suitable example was provided by Virginia’s Republican Governor Bob McDonnell, a former U.S. Army Lt. Colonel, who said in an interview with a local radio station that it would be “great” to have drones plying the skies above the Old Dominion State, owing to their successful operations in foreign battlefields.

As Detroit’s economic implosion accelerates, the municipal government is preparing to shut down roughly half of the city’s streetlights in what has been described as an effort to “nudge them into a smaller living space.”

A Bloomberg News Service Report offers additional details regarding this exercise in population management through withdrawal of civic services:

[Shutting down street lights] would leave sparsely populated swaths unlit in a community of 713,000 that covers more area than Boston, Buffalo and San Francisco combined. Vacant property and parks account for 37 square miles (96 square kilometers), according to city planners.

“You have to identify those neighborhoods where you want to concentrate your population,” said Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer. “We’re not going to light distressed areas like we light other areas.”

Note the use of the term “concentrate” with reference to population management. What Detroit’s city government proposes is distant but unambiguous kindred to the “re-concentration” areas used by Spanish and British colonial administrators in such places as Cuba, the Philippines, and South Africa at the turn of the 20^th Century – a practice that led to the modern concept of the “concentration camp.”

Once the showcase of America’s industrial might and economic promise, Detroit has become an economic moonscape and a harbinger of our dystopian future. Its economic elite subsists on subsidies; its public institutions are incurably cankered with corruption; its general population is mired in grave and deepening poverty, and the foreseeable future is an unbroken future of economic misery.

More than half the city’s population lives below the poverty level; unemployment hovers near 30 percent, and grass is literally growing in the streets of some neighborhoods. Over the past three years, unburied bodies have accumulated in the county morgue because nobody has sufficient funds for interment or cremation.

In October 2009, tens of thousands of desperate Detroit residents besieged the Cobo Center in the hope of receiving housing assistance vouchers provided by the federal government. Within less than three minutes, 25,000 applications were filled out for 3,500 available vouchers.

Amid the scuffles, tramplings, death threats, and other incidental violence could be found a telling illustration of how the fraudulent monetary system replicates itself. The Detroit News reports:

“After the applications ran out, some scam artists were selling photocopies of the originals for $20 each. They were doing a brisk business, even though the white original forms state clearly on the bottom: `Do not duplicate — Must Submit Original Application.’ Volunteers from the city of Detroit Planning and Development Department eventually handed out yellow photocopies themselves.”

Apart from subsidized fraud, the only growth industry in Detroit is mayhem-based “reality” television, which capitalizes on the crime and tumult arising from the city’s social disintegration. The effort to turn former Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans into what  Detroit News columnist Charlie LeDuff called a “reality TV” star led directly to the unnecessary death of 7-year-old Aiyanna Jones in a SWAT raid being filmed for an A&E television series.

“Television executives around the country have been shown what is known in television parlance as the `sizzle reel’ of Chief Evans himself, a video compilation of Detroit’s top cop trying to take back the streets,” wrote LeDuff, who saw that footage shortly before the May 2010 killing of Aiyana Jones. “It is part of a pitch for a full-blown television series.” Warren’s proposed series would have been just one of several TV series being produced in the Detroit area: “Spike TV featured the Detroit bureau of the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008. A&E is taping a season of `Parking Wars’ here; production on a series about the Fire Department wrapped late last year. Even Animal Planet is in on the deal with `Animal Cops Detroit.’”

Chief Evans’ “reality” show pitch began with the uniformed bureaucrat “gripping a semi-automatic rifle, standing in front of crumbling Michigan Central Depot, staring down a camera and declaring that he’ll do whatever it takes to take his city back from crime. The camera will tag along with Warren Evans as he goes on house raids, smokes cigars with his underlings and recalls words to live by told to him by his mother.”

This helped explain why the A&E camera crew went along on the SRT raid that killed Aiyana Jones, and why the Department chose to stage a midnight “Shock and Awe” operation rather than quietly bringing in the shooting suspect: That child was killed because the Detroit PD wanted to boost Chief Evans’s Q Score.

Chief Evans was forced to resign, and Joseph Weekley, the SRT operator who shot and killed Aiyana Jones, has been charged with manslaughter. Meanwhile, the culture of institutionalized law enforcement corruption continues to flourish in and around Detroit.

Over the past decade, municipal authorities in Detroit and its suburbs have used the police to carry out widespread armed robbery under the guise of “asset forfeiture.” 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 (that is, 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. 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 uniformed banditti seized in 2001.

Give Sgt. Dave Schreiner, who headed Canton Township’s forfeiture unit, credit for his candor in describing this officially sanctioned crime wave: “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.”

Armed robbery by police is considered appropriate – until the robbers get just a touch too greedy. 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.

As Republic has previously noted, Detroit-area law enforcement officers are too busy plundering the law-abiding population to protect them from the depredations of private sector criminals. This is why citizens have sought the aid of private security contractors, such as the Threat Management Group and Recon Security – or simply join the exodus that has left large swathes of the city uninhabited and, soon, unlit.

Read more here.

Darth Brennan: Meet the Obama Regime's Execution Czar, John Brennan

John Brennan, the Obama administration’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, has been designated as the head of the administration’s secretive drone strike “death panel,” according to the AP.

“White House counter-terror chief John Brennan has seized the lead in choosing which terrorists will be targeted for drone attacks or raids, establishing a new procedure for both military and CIA targets, reported the wire service. “The effort concentrates power over the use of lethal U.S. force outside war zones within one small team at the White House.”

This creates what can only be called an unaccountable “death panel” — a tiny, unaccountable clique, anonymous except for Brennan, who select targets for summary execution by way of a drone-fired missile or special forces hit team.

Civil liberties pundit and former litigator Glenn Greenwald observes that this arrangement will make effectively Brennan “the sole arbiter of life and death, the unchecked judge, jury and executioner of whomever he wants dead” — subject to presidential imprimatur:

Needless to say, all of this takes place in total secrecy, with no legal framework and no oversight of any kind. Indeed, even after they had Brennan publicly defend the CIA drone program, the Obama administration continue to insist in federal court that the program is too secretive even to confirm its existence. It’s just a tiny cadre of National Security State officials who decide, in the dark, whom they want dead, and then — once the President signs off — it is done.

As chief of staff to former CIA director George Tenet during the George W. Bush administration, Brennan was a vociferous advocate of official kidnapping (formally called “extraordinary rendition”), torture (or “enhanced interrogation,” as described by its practitioners), and totalitarian surveillance of telecommunications. More recently, he delivered an exceptionally dishonest public defense of the assassination-by-drone initiative, insisting — without providing any relevant details or documentation — that it is “ethical” and “legal” t0 carry out summary extra-judicial murders of targeted individuals with presidential approval.

Brennan is a full-service totalitarian; if the word retains any meaning, he can properly be described as a fascist, a proponent of illimitable power concentrated in the executive branch to be used at the discretion of the Dear Leader (or his designated underlings).

The ascent of Brennan to the position of de facto Murder Czar comes as local police agencies — as predicted by Republic months ago — are looking to upgrade surveillance drones to become fully functional weapons platforms. That process is beginning with the same Houston-area Sheriff’s Office profiled in this space last October:

Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Texas told The Daily that his department is considering using rubber bullets and tear gas on its drone.

“Those are things that law enforcement utilizes day in and day out and in certain situations it might be advantageous to have this type of system on the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle),” McDaniel told The Daily….

Deputy McDaniel has a very interesting — and quite disturbing — view of his agency’s role if he seriously believes that tear gas and rubber bullets “are things that law enforcement utilizes day in and day out,” a perspective one wouldn’t expect from a constitutional peace officer, but one that’s entirely appropriate for a warden in a prison society.

See RT’s video report on Brennan’s appointment here.

Chandler, Arizona resident Karl “Jack” Frost, who was arrested on suspicion of false imprisonment after attempting a “citizen’s arrest” on a jogger for using a bicycle lane, describes himself as haunted by “demons” from his 14 years as a British police officer.

On the morning of May 16, Frost, 47, was riding his bicycle in nearby Gilbert when he encountered 52-year-old Kevin Thompson, who was jogging in the bike lane. Frost claims that Thompson pushed him and nearly caused him to fall from his bike. Frost, on the other hand, claims that when he moved aside to let  Frost pass, the bicyclist attempted to run him down; his account is supported by at least one eyewitness.

Frost, who was several inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than Thompson, pursued the jogger, seized him, and shouted “Citizen’s arrest!” He then called 911 to demand that an officer come and take the supposed offender into custody. While on the phone with the police dispatcher, Frost physically restrained the jogger, barraging him with profane abuse and insisting that he was “under arrest” and couldn’t leave.  When the police arrived, it was Frost who was taken to jail and charged with unlawful imprisonment.

All citizens have the authority to arrest a criminal suspect – that is, to restrain him by force to prevent him from either committing a crime or fleeing the scene.  Since Thompson’s alleged lane violation was a civil offense, he wasn’t subject to arrest. Frost appeared to believe that he was entitled to seize Thompson and hold him, and the arrest was justified because Thompson “assaulted” him by trying to escape – in other words, that resisting a spurious citizen’s arrest is itself a crime. This reflects a habit of mind Frost acquired as a police officer.

Frost, a British expatriate, claims that before his 14 years as a police officer – nine of which involved participation in a SWAT team for the Metropolitan Police – he served in the British Special Air Service. According to the Phoenix New Times, Frost told a Gilbert PD investigator that “he had been trained his entire life to meet conflict with violence, which was creating a problem now that he was a civilian… Karl said he `struggled with inner demons’ over his ability to enforce laws as he used to.”

There are at least two critical disclosures in Frost’s account. First of all, he was trained to be a law enforcer – a violent, armed emissary of the political state – rather than a peace officer committed to the protection of life and property. Second, his law enforcement background left him with a lingering addiction to power – and made him a danger to others.

In an ironically appropriate fashion, British expat Frost embodies the case against government police agencies, of which the Met – his former employer – was the prototype. When English Home Secretary Robert Peel (the former military governor of occupied Ireland) proposed creation of the Metropolitan Police in 1829, populist parliamentarian William Cobbett, warned that the police, although apparently harmless at the time, would be the vanguard of a country-wide army of occupation. It only took a few years for Cobbett’s warning to be vindicated.

“Tyranny always comes by slow degrees,” Cobbett observed in an 1833 speech in Parliament, “and nothing could tend to illustrate that fact [better] than the history of police in this country.” Less than a generation earlier, Cobbett pointed out, the very term “police” was “completely new among us.” Now, owing to Peel’s innovations, London was now overrun with “Blue Locusts” – “a police with numbered collars and embroidered cuffs, a body of men as regular as the King’s service, as fit for domestic war as the redcoats were for foreign war.”

If Frost were still wearing a government-issued costume, he would be able give those “inner demons” free rein at the expense of those less privileged than himself.

Read more here.

Less than a month after the ceremonial retirement of the Space Shuttle prototype Enterprise, the Space X team successfully launched an unmanned Dragon 9 capsule into orbit –thereby marking another milestone in the privatization of space exploration. The solar-powered Dragon 9 vehicle is scheduled to rendezvous with the International Space Station on May 25.

“Today marks the beginning of a new era in exploration; a private company has launched a spacecraft to the International Space Station that will attempt to dock there for the first time,” declared NASA administrator Charles Bolden, who – being a member of the tax-consuming class – couldn’t resist poaching credit on behalf of the government. Extolling what he called “President Obama’s leadership” – thereby making the required ritual invocation to the Dear Leader – Bolden claimed that the government is “handing off to the private sector our transportation to the International Space Station so that NASA can focus on what we do best — exploring even deeper into our solar system, with missions to an asteroid and Mars on the horizon.”

What NASA actually does best, of course, is to deliver antiquated technology at unprecedented prices, while siphoning away resources from the productive sector that could have been used to expand both the commercial use and scientific exploration of space. During the past decade, while NASA has suffered a series of embarrassing high-profile failures, the Space X consortium has made dramatic advances in space technology – in efforts that were funded entirely by private investors.

The “new era” of private spaceflight actually began eight years ago.

On August 22, 2004, pilot Brian Binnie piloted SpaceShipOne, a privately constructed reusable spacecraft, to an altitude of 71 miles. Thiswas SpaceShipOne’s second voyage within a week, thereby earning the $10 million “X Prize” for the spacecraft’s development team, headed by aviation pioneer Burt Rutan.

“Today we have made history,” exulted X Prize Foundation co-founder Peter Diamandis as he awarded the prize to Rutan’s team. “Today we go to the stars. You have raised a tide that will bring billions of dollars into the industry…. We will begin a new era of spaceflight.”

Hoisted aloft over California’s Mojave Desert by a turbojet mothership called the White Knight, SpaceShipOne made a total of three sub-orbital jaunts: one in June 2004, two more the following August. The light but sophisticated one-man craft was propelled by a mixture of nitrous oxide and rubber, a combination yielding thousands of pounds of thrust. The first flight on June 21 pierced the 62-mile limit that is internationally recognized as the threshold of Outer Space. The craft improved its performances in each of its subsequent flights, the third of which easily surpassed the previous altitude record of 67 miles set by the military’s X-15 spacecraft in 1963.

During the first two flights, pilot Mike Melvill – who earned immortality by becoming the world’s first commercial astronaut — experienced, and dealt with, various in-flight emergencies, including wind shear, a jammed tail control, and unexpected rolls. Rutan’s team was able to analyze and correct those problems quickly and effectively.

SpaceShipOne’s success offered a striking contrast to the disasters and delays that plagued NASA. In 2003, the Columbia space shuttle, a 21-year-old relic that was essentially obsolete during its first mission in 1981, disintegrated during re-entry, killing its five-man, two-woman crew. The Shuttle, which was as of 1981 became NASA’s last man-rated launch system, was taken out of service for the following two years. This forced inaction was damaging because the Shuttle was expected to play a critical role in construction of the International Space Station (ISS)–which itself has been mired in cost overruns, production delays, and design troubles.

In 2003, while the private SpaceShipOne was soaring triumphantly into space, NASA’s much-hyped Genesis probe crashed ingloriously to Earth in southern Utah. The probe, which cost taxpayers $260 million, had been sent to collect samples of the “solar wind” — highly charged particles emitted by the sun that, according to mission specialists, would help scientists decipher clues to our solar system’s origins.

NASA planned to retrieve the probe by sending helicopters to snag its parachute line as the capsule gently plummeted toward the earth. But this elegant plan was rendered moot because four “gravity switches,” delicate instruments intended to trigger the craft’s parachute, had been installed backward. This was not an error on the part of an inattentive technician; as Scientific American pointed out, the alignment of the faulty gravity switches was “a simple design error that went undetected despite many layers of review.”

“One of the questions we have to answer,” commented Michael Ryschkewitsch, head of NASA’s Genesis Mishap Investigation Board, is “how did we not catch this?” Cynics might observe that NASA’s Mishap Investigation Board has had plenty of experience tardily catching critical details after hundreds of millions have been spent–on the myopically mis-designed Hubble Space Telescope, the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander, and the orbital money pit called the International Space Station.

Originally proposed by President Ronald Reagan 20 years ago as “Space Station Freedom,” the ISS was conceived as a grand orbital city of the sort depicted in the science fiction visions of Arthur C. Clarke. It was initially conceived as a permanent outpost devoted to research and commercial production (such as the manufacture of perfect ball bearings and the development of pharmaceuticals). It would also serve as a launch platform for spacecraft headed to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

Nearly 20 years ago, Congress appropriated $13 billion for the ISS, which was scaled down and repackaged as a glorious joint venture between the U.S. and Russia. In the intervening years, “costs … soared while ambitions faded,” noted William Tucker of The American Enterprise. “When completed, the ISS will hold six astronauts. The two in residence now spend 85 percent of their time on construction and maintenance. In essence, the U.S. is spending billions so that two astronauts can build a space shed.”

When federal agencies have “unlimited resources” to work with, failure generally doesn’t mean an end to funding, as it would for private research and exploration ventures. This may be why mishap management, not exploration, is now NASA’s primary mission (apart from promoting eco-totalitarian propaganda regarding “Climate Change” and similar political delusions). Burt Rutan and other private aerospace pioneers have grander visions –a “Golden Age of Space Flight” akin to the “Golden Age” of aviation that blossomed following the Wright Brothers’ December 1903 heavier-than-air flight.

“I absolutely have to develop a space tourism system that is at least 100 times safer than anything that has flown man into space, and probably significantly more than that,” declared Rutan after receiving the X Prize. British airline mogul Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic and the newly created Virgin Galactic, shares that ambition. At the completion of SpaceShipOne’s third mission, Branson announced a deal to license the technology to build a fleet of commercial spacecraft. According to Branson, it could be possible to fly 3,000 people into space on private craft within five years.

In fact, using the “Golden Age” of aviation as a model, the “Golden Age of Space Flight” should have arrived long ago. Greg Maryniak of the X Prize Foundation points out that prior to World War I, the progress of civil aviation was spurred by prizes and competitions sponsored by private interests. In pursuit of those private awards, aviators (with the French leading the pack) set and broke records for distance, duration, and speed. It was in pursuit of a $250,000 prize offered by French expatriate Raymond Orteig that Charles Lindbergh, a gifted college dropout with little formal flight training, but a wealth of barnstorming experience, piloted the Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris in 1927.

In 2001, as humanity marked the fourth decade of the age of manned space exploration, “fewer than 500 men and women have experienced space flight,” comments Maryniak. “Two nations, the United States and Russia, have demonstrated the ability to fly people into space”–a list that has been expanded to include Communist China. Prior to the advent of the private SpaceShipOne, a total of three manned space vehicle systems were in use.

By contrast,” continues Maryniak, “almost 200 makes of aircraft were available worldwide by 1912, nine years after the Wright brothers’ … first flight and the year the U.S. government first appropriated money for military aviation. Between 1908 and 1910 approximately 1,000 new pilots were trained worldwide. By 1910 there were 70 different power plants available to aircraft designers.” Once again, this all took place without government intervention or direction of any kind.

“The fundamental difference between early aviation and early space flight is that the public acquired the expectation that space was the sole province of governments,” he concludes. Indeed, the government’s spectacular, and frequent, failures reinforce that monopoly on space flight.

“The perception that all space [travel and exploration] has to be expensive is difficult to change because businesses and investors look to the federal government, NASA, and the aerospace industry for almost everything to do with space,” notes investment adviser David Livingston. “In addition, the public is constantly reminded by the government and the media just how expensive and risky space is, especially with failed NASA missions to Mars, Shuttle [disasters], and … ISS cost overruns.”

In fact, NASA actually sabotaged an effort by a private consortium, the MIR Group, to rescue and privatize the aging and decrepit Soviet/Russian space station. In 2000, as the MIR space station began to lose altitude, RSC Energia, the Russian firm that produces that nation’s rockets and space hardware, entered into an agreement with a group of American investors to create MIR Corp. The venture was “formed specifically to exploit the commercial markets MIR could support, including passenger travel,” recalls attorney James E. Dunstan, head of the Space Law Group.

A lease agreement was worked out, and one MIR rescue mission was undertaken –funded entirely by private investors. But NASA withheld an export permit for a key piece of hardware needed to supply the ailing, aging station with electricity –until after the Russian Space Agency, increasingly dependent on NASA for subsidies, decided to bring down the space station. As author Richard Klerkx pointed out in his book Lost in Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age: “NASA did everything it could to frustrate the Americans’ effort [to rescue and privatize MIR]. It doesn’t like private competition in its domain.”

As demonstrated by its shameless obstructionism regarding the MIR Group, NASA’s prime directive is institutional self-preservation, rather than promoting space exploration. But this is to be expected, given that NASA is an appendage of the Leviathan State.

As economist Bob Murphy observes, “the free market is perfectly capable of funding space exploration. Remember that the government can’t produce anything on its own; whatever money it spends is ultimately stolen from taxpayers.” In a very real sense, NASA’s signature accomplishment, the Apollo moon mission, actually impeded technological and intellectual progress by channeling money and resources into a government-decreed enterprise, rather than allowing them to flow to private sector visionaries and investors who may very well have accomplished the same feat much more efficiently and for a fraction of the cost.

“Several years ago,” recalls Murphy, “I predicted to my bemused brother that before I died, I would stand on the Moon. If the government would just get out of the way, my prediction will easily come true.”

Read more here.

Frank Roder of Winfield Park, New Jersey, who lost his Jeep but saved his son, is among the growing number of Americans who have learned that no matter how bad things get, we can count on the police to make matters worse.

Roden took his son to a nearby river to feed the ducks. The SUV came to a stop on a steep embankment, and Roder’s impatient 5-year-old son jumped out and started sprinting toward a ledge that was about 35 feet above the river.

Roder immediately leaped out of the SUV and chased down his son just a few feet from the edge. If he had taken so much as a second to set the parking brake, his son almost certainly would have plunged to his death. Instead, his Jeep Cherokee went tumbling over the edge and embedded itself in the river.

“When something like that happens so fast, I could give a rat’s a** about the car,” Roder later told the local Fox affiliate.

As in so many other tragic situations, the police soon arrived and immediately made matters worse. After briefly chatting with Roder — who was still clinging to his son — one officer issued the traumatized father two tickets, one for failure to produce his insurance card, which was in the glove compartment of his ruined vehicle, and another for failure to set his parking brake.

The officious jerk who wrote the tickets chastised Roder for not setting the brake. He also said that if Roder’s child had fallen into the river instead of the Jeep, Roder would have been arrested for child endangerment.

The Union County Police Department describes itself as  “a pro-active law enforcement agency …  provid[ing] a full spectrum of law enforcement and protection services…. Our police department’s foremost responsibility is providing for the general health, safety and welfare of all our residents within the territorial boundaries of the County of Union.”

This is a lie, of course: The “foremost responsibility” of that department — like every other of its kind — is to enforce the will of the political clique that employs it at the expense of the productive population.

Union County Police Chief Daniel Vaniska admitted to Fox News that his officers “have some discretion about when and when not to write a ticket,” but insisted that he couldn’t “second-guess” his officer’s opportunistic act of mulcting a father who had chosen to save his son and lose his SUV, rather than complying with a government edict at the expense of his child’s life.

“It probably could have gone either way,” Vaniska maintained. “I can’t comment on the discretionary practices of an officer, but certainly, the fellow will have an opportunity to tell his story in court.”

What a generous concession: Unlike Vaniska and the rest of his tax-fattened department, Roden actually works for a living, and will have to set aside productive time in order to deal with the extortion notes he was handed by one of Vaniska’s underlings.

Roden’s court date is May 30. Hopefully he will challenge the tickets in order to give public exposure to the uniformed, tax-gathering cretin who took advantage of his near-tragedy.

Seven members of the street gang unit for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have been suspended for alleged involvement in an officially sanctioned street gang calling themselves the “Jump-Out Boys.” Members of this hyper-violent clique reportedly display matching gang tattoos celebrating police shootings.

A document describing the group’s recruiting standards and code of conduct “explains that deputies earn admission into the group through the endorsement of members,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Members earn a special tattoo, described as “an oversized skull with a wide, toothy grimace and glowing red eyes,” wearing a bandana imprinted with OSS, a reference to Operation Safe Streets….” After the gang member is involved in a shooting, the tattoo is modified by the addition of a plume of smoke rising from a revolver grasped in a bony hand – an embellishment compared by one department source to a celebratory “high five.”

The Jump-Out Boys aren’t the only police gang operating within the LASCD. The “3,000 Boys” are another group of tattooed deputies who communicate through three-finger gang hand signals. Members of this group are deputies assigned to the 3000 block of the Men’s Central Jail; they “earn their ink” – that is, are awarded with tattoos – as a reward for breaking an inmate’s bones.

For years, inmates have complained about “horrific” conditions in the 3000 Block. Those protests were consistently dismissed as ACLU grievance-mongering — until members of that officially sanctioned prison gang assaulted fellow officers during a Christmas party at L.A.’s Quiet Cannon banquet hall in December 2010.

A comment that was interpreted as a “diss” provoked seven of the 3,000 Boys to swarm and pummel two other deputies. A female officer who tried to intervene was punched in the face. “This was not mutual combat, this was not one-on-one,” related an attorney for the victims. “This was a beat-down.”

One of the participants in that assault was fired; six others were subject to various forms of “discipline.” None of them was brought up on criminal charges. A lawsuit filed by the victims accused LA Sheriff Lee Baca of fomenting a culture of “lawlessness” among the deputies working as jail guards — an accusation made by two of Baca’s own deputies.

If the victims had been Mundanes – that is, common citizens who don’t belong to the State’s punitive caste – it’s likely that the rampage would have gone unpunished. This was demonstrated in the case of bar bouncer Chris Barton, who had a run-in with Deputy David Ortega, a member of the 3,000 Boys.

Barton was attempting to clear out the Slidebar in Fullerton at closing time. Many of the customers probably grumbled, but nearly all of them left. Three uncooperative males lingered at a table, conspicuously ignoring Barton’s instruction that they leave so the business could comply with applicable local ordinances.

One of the loiterers arrogantly informed Barton that “he’s a cop, and it doesn’t matter what we say or what [the] laws are,” the bouncer recalled in a television interview. “He’s a police officer, and if he wants to do something, he can do it.”

In keeping with the “Come at me, Bro” attitude of common street thugs, Ortega tried to provoke Barton by spitting on him three times. Somehow, Barton and his staff managed to get Ortega and his buddies out of the bar, but the threats continued to depart the intoxicated deputy’s skull cave. First he told Barton that the 3,000 Boys would “take care” of him. Then he said that Barton would be beaten severely and left to die in a pool of his own blood. Finally, Ortega made an explicit death threat.

“At that time he decides to say he’s going to shoot us,” Barton recalled. “So he reaches behind his back like he’s going for a gun. That’s when [I] and another bouncer tackle him.”

Ortega was arrested and charged with four counts — assault, battery, fighting, and making a terroristic threat. All but one charge was dismissed. Ortega was sentenced to a trivial term of probation, and demoted within the department. As of May 4, 2011, reported KTLA, Ortega was “still working in the Men’s Central Jail.”

Membership in a police gang is a time-honored tradition in Los Angeles. Witness the fact that Paul Tanaka, the current Los Angeles Assistant Sheriff, is a veteran of the notorious Lynwood Vikings police gang. Tanaka “was tattooed as a member of the Vikings while a young deputy in 1987 — a year before he was named in a wrongful-death lawsuit stemming from the shooting of a young Korean man,” reported the Los Angeles Times in 1999. “The department eventually settled for close to $1 million.”

At the police station in Lynwood, the Vikings were notorious for adolescent pranks — such as shooting a dog and tying its carcass to the commander’s squad car, or decorating various surfaces with human feces. They displayed a similarly playful touch in dealing out unwarranted violence toward local residents. In 1989, Capt. Bert Cueva, a “no-nonsense” commander with the executive disposition of Dirty Harry, was sent to Lynwood to clean out the gang infestation.

When Cueva started to transfer Vikings to other precincts, these hard-core veterans of the unforgiving streets resorted to the tactics often employed by the ACLU attorneys they revile: The filed a discrimination lawsuit, which lead to an out-of-court settlement and Cueva’s inglorious retirement in 1992.

What this means is that the gangsters embedded in the LACSD have been permitted to flourish for at least twenty years.

In 1996, tax victims in Los Angeles were forced to underwrite a $9 million settlement arising out of civil claims filed by victims of Viking-related violence. By that time, the perpetrators had been dispersed throughout the LAPD and the LA Sheriff’s Office, where many — Tanaka most prominently — now have leadership positions. This would certainly help explain the culture of “lawlessness” described in the Quiet Cannon lawsuit.

“You keep your mouth shut and obey the code of silence,” explained former Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Osborne, who had been invited to join the secretive Vikings society, in 1999. “Any illegal acts you witness by other deputies, you don’t say anything. If you’re asked, you say, `I didn’t see nothing.’” Osborne and his wife, who was also a deputy, retired in 1996. Mrs. Osborne violated that code by accusing her training officer, Jeffrey Jones, of evidence tampering. At about the same time Jones — who eventually pleaded no contest to felony charges — was arraigned, the Osbornes and their two children were terrorized by a drive-by shooting at their home.

It’s worth pondering the possibility that this punitive drive-by targeting a whistle-blower might have been carried out as a gang initiation, and commemorated in a gang tattoo.

Read more here.

Bernice, Oklahoma has a population of about 500 people. Unfortunately, some of them have given themselves the title of “government,” thereby claiming permission to steal from the others – and from anyone who happens to wander into their area of influence.

Bernice is bisected by Highway 85A. Although the town doesn’t have a stoplight, the speed limit suddenly drops from 55 to 45 miles per hour — which means it has become one of the country’s most notorious speed traps.

Oklahoma State law limits speeding tickets to $50 – unless a municipality follows a detailed and confusing set of rules concerning the publication of traffic ordinances. Since 1977, Bernice’s municipal government has not published its ordinances as required by state law. It has also charged as much as $545 for an individual ticket.

An audit by the state government documented that over the past five years, it collected more than $300,000 in ticket revenue, kicking back about $5500 a month to deputies from nearby the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office who were contracted to write the citations.

Weaving a seamless web of persiflage in an official memo, David E. Jones, the bar-certified sophist retained as Bernice town attorney, insisted that even though the cabal that employs him “did not follow the strict technical requires for publication [of the traffic ordinance], the public clearly had constructive notice of the existence of the Bernice Penal Code….”

Stated in less opaque language, Jones is claiming that the town’s status as a notorious speed trap constituted legal “notice” of the practice. Buttressed with this spurious and self-serving assessment, the town’s trustees voted on May 14, not to grant refunds to victims of the illegal ticket scheme, thereby laying claim to more than $100,000 in illegally collected revenue. At least several thousand dollars of that illegally harvested ticket revenue wound up in the coffers of Mayor Bill Raven. The Mayor, who owns Bill’s Trucking, has sold several vehicles to the city. Furthermore, Bill’s Trucking has been mysteriously exempt from the city’s “occupation tax” for at least the past two tax years.

Bernice’s ruling political clique has ruled that local citizens have no right to participate in town council meetings. That policy has been modified to permit citizens a total of three minutes to address the council – as long as their comments are restricted “to agenda items only.” It’s highly doubtful that the council’s agenda would include discussion of official embezzlement and highway robbery.

Every political government begins as an undisguised criminal syndicate, and continues to behave as such after conferring “authority” on itself to do so in the name of the “law.” This process was described long ago by St. Augustine in The City of God:

A gang is a group of men under the command of a leader, bound by a compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention. If this villainy wins so many recruits from the ranks of the demoralized that it acquires territory, establishes a base, captures cities and subdues peoples, it then openly arrogates to itself the title of `kingdom,’ which is conferred on it in the eyes of the world, not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of impunity.

Every speed trap harkens back to the origins of the institutionalized theft called “taxation,” which began as a form of extortion practiced by self-appointed sovereigns against those seeking to travel through a domain claimed by the ruler. In a scholarly essay entitled “Tenting, Toll, and Taxing” published by the Western Political Quarterly in 1966, Dr. Hugh Nibley pointed out that this practice was eventually applied to anybody who was born and lived within the ruler’s claimed jurisdiction, on the assumption that such people were intruders and trespassers by virtue of their very existence.

The very tem “tax” refers to a physical challenge to travelers in the form of a tap on the shield performed by the ruler’s revenue-gatherers: This was essentially an ultimatum to pay the demanded toll, or to engage in combat. Nibley notes that “failure to pay implies willingness to fight and vice versa…. [T]he word tax in its many contexts always retains the basic idea of a charge brought against an intruder; to be taxed always implies an element of trespass, and the paying of a tax always has the flavor of appeasement.” The tax is “a token of submission for the luxury of remaining in one’s possessions without a fight.”

“Taxes are viewed … as a personal insult and an affront to the sacredness of property,” Nibley summarizes.  “That is exactly what they are, and what they were originally meant to be.”

Like political governments everywhere, the squalid junta in charge of Bernice, Oklahoma is simply living down to its loathsome pedigree.

Read more here.

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.

As a child living in Brazil, future Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin – along with his family – was targeted by a gang that specialized in kidnapping wealthy people for extravagant ransom; now he is being driven into exile by an extortion threat from an even more ruthless criminal gang – the United States Government

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.

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.”

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.

After Daniel Chong was arrested in a federal drug raid, he wasn’t taken to Gitmo. Instead, the Feds thoughtfully arranged to bring Gitmo to him, nearly torturing him to death in the process.

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.”

Facing the loss of their business through the institutionalized theft called “eminent domain,” Norfolk, Virginia residents Bob Wilson and Kelly Dickinson erected a large protest sign on their property – and now face threats of fines of $1,000 a day for publicizing their plight.

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.

Calhan, Colorado resident David Goss, who was shot in the stomach by El Paso County Deputy Sheriff Jeff Shulz after he had order the intruder to leave, faces a four-year prison sentence. Goss, who was tasered and shot in the abdomen at close range, was convicted of second-degree assault, menacing, disarming an officer, attempting to disarm an officer, and obstructing justice.

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.

The experience of Daniel Chong, a senior at the University of California-San Diego who was imprisoned by the DEA for five days without food, water, or toilet facilities, tidily encapsulates nearly everything that is wrong with the murderous fraud called the “War on Drugs.”

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.

Barack Obama, who claims the authority to order the execution or indefinite military detention of any U.S. citizen he considers a terrorist, has issued a “Law Day USA 2012” proclamation piously professing his undying devotion to due process:

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.

By threatening to cut off water and related utility services to residents who don’t pay traffic tickets, the political clique ruling Las Cruces, New Mexico offered a compelling illustration of the innate — and inexhaustible — malevolence of the social artifact called “government.”

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.)

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.

Luke Rudkowski has done it again! His latest video as I have happily named “One word answer, Why are you here at Occupy Wall Street?”, exposes the mindset of both sides attending/working. We have heard the news of peaceful people being beaten and arrested for not complying with law enforcement.

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.

This is just crazy! Never would I think there would be real truth on any main steam media outlet, but it has happened. Alessio Rastani said on live BBC news the most know secrect in the world “Goldman Rules the world”.

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.

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

http://www.facebook.com/LukeWeAreChange

http://www.twitter.com/LukeRudkowski

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 ONE: RUN FOR OFFICE. How to run an effective campaign, inexpensively! Devise tactics to get into the media and turn out voters on a dime. Featuring campaign expert Barry Sheets.

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.

27 Prolific Speakers! Including: Sheriff Richard Mack, Tom DeWeese, Tom Woods, Amanda Teegarden, Michael Shaw, Dr, Michael Coffman, Michael Chapman, Dr. Jeff Marrongelle, Scott Tips-JD, Steve Hempfling, Tom Cryer, Mark Lerner, Marc Morano, Mark Mix, Dan Byfield, Dr. Jane Orient, Beverly Eakman, Larry Pratt, Sam Bushman, Gary Franchi & George Shepherd.

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!

27 Prolific Speakers! Including: G. Edward Griffin, Tom DeWeese, Amanda Teegarden, Michael Shaw, Dr, Michael Coffman, Allen Quist, Michael Chapman, Dr. Jeff Marrongelle, Scott Tips-JD, Jim Robinson, Mark Lerner, Marc Morano, Chuck Baldwin, Mark Mix, Rep. Charles Key, Dan Byfield, Dr. Jane Orient, Catherine Bleish, Patrick Wood, Rep. Sam Rohrer, Larry Pratt, Judith McGeary, Sen. Randy Brodgon, Bob Schultz, John Stadtmiller, Gary Franchi & George Shepherd.

Topics include: Agenda 21, Sustainable Development, 2nd Amendment Issues, Real ID, Boimetrics, Health & Wellness, Government Corruption, the New Media and More!

Your instructor Peymon Mottahedeh, had his formal higher education in Economics & Finance before practicing as a financial planner for over 6 years. Thereafter, he further studied the Federal Reserve Banking System form the freedom seeker/patriot standpoint and learned things that his economics classes had not taught him.

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!

Time to Awaken the Sleeping Giant, The High Cost of Not Having Control, Fraud-Racketeering-Embezzlement and Extortion: The Business of Government, Federal Reserve: The Heart of Darkness, Property Taxes: An Invisible Prison, The Apocalypse Profiteers, Federal “Asset Liquidation”, Preparing for Hard Times, Asset Protections Mine Fields, Be a Rebel – Not an Outlaw, Liberation for Personal Debt Slavery, The Prison Industrial Complex, The American Dream: Waking to a Nightmare, A Lobby for Everything, The Real Roots of Poverty and More.

Mark Schmidter’s Pre-Trial Interview With Orlando Channel 6 News

Presidential Candidate Ron Paul’s first television ad of the 2012 campaign highlights his role as the national leader of the strong opposition movement against raising the country’s debt ceiling.

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.

Author Joe Plummer does a tremendous job in explaining the Federal Reserve System and how it was created by those that are robbing Americans of their wealth and and freedom. Plummer explains things in simple terms that are easy to understand and that help the reader piece together a puzzle that includes the world’s banking elite, the CFR, bailouts, depressions and recessions to uncover the web of lies that have taken the world to the brink of economic failure.

“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

I was very impressed with the concept for this video by Luke Rudkowski. It is a telling look into the mindset of the general public and gives a unique perspective on freedom and life. I thought you might enjoy it! I hope you do…

If you do enjoy it or are inspired by the message, please forward it on to others and/or post a link on Facebook, Twitter or RTR.org.

Illegitimate Mortgages, The Rise and Fall of Empires, 10 Tips For Traffic Court, CAFR- Trillions on the Books They Don’t Want You to Know About, The Government Hoax, A Collusion of Power: The Systematic Destruction of Free Speech, TSA and New Body Scanner, A Rogue Agency and the Thunderous Roar of Revolution, PayPal: A Fair Weather Friend, the Republic Mini Product Directory and More.

Air Date: 11/18/2010

Is there a “grand conspiracy” taking over the “Late Great USA”? This “conspiracy theorist” has already awoken to the “conspiracy”. Have no doubt, ultimately IT IS US. I’ve ‘kicked the tires’ endlessly here not unlike the Apostle Thomas. Call it conceit or condescension or whatever but I can see ‘THEM’ a mile away. And so can you, if you care to. Although a minority, I’m certainly not the only one.

Air Date: 10/28/2010

Gary Franchi and George Shepherd have a honest discussion about elections in America and the options of the people.

Air Date: 10/14/2010

Seduced by silver at the tender age of 11, David Morgan started investing in the stock market while still a teenager. A precious metals aficionado armed with degrees in finance and economics as well as engineering, he created the Silver-Investor.com website and originated The Morgan Report, a monthly that covers economic news, overall financial health of the global economy, currency problems ahead and reasons for investing in precious metals.

David considers himself a big-picture macro-economist whose main job as education—educating people about honest money and the benefits of a sound financial system—and his second job as teaching people to be patient and have conviction in their investment holdings. A dynamic, much-in-demand speaker all over the globe, David’s educational mission also makes him a prolific author having penned “Get the Skinny on Silver Investing” available as an e-book or through Amazon.com. As publisher of The Morgan Report, he has appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, and BNN in Canada. He has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Futures Magazine, The Gold Report and numerous other publications.

Additionally, he provides the public a tremendous amount of information by radio and writes often in the public domain. You are encouraged to sign up for his free publication which starts you off with the Ten Rules of Silver Investing where he was published almost a decade ago after being recognized as one of the top authorities in the arena of Silver Investing.

Air Date: 10/07/2010

Panel members will be appearing live from Richmond, where they will be attending the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Convention upcoming on Oct. 8-9. With the theme, “The Constitution Still Matters,” the Convention will be held at the Greater Richmond Convention Center and is sponsored by the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation, a statewide federation of local, non-partisan Tea Party and Patriot groups.

Panelists include Sonnie Johnson, President of the Frederick Douglass Foundation of Virginia; Jamie Radtke, Chairman of the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation; and Larry O’Connor, Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart.tv. The event will be hosted and moderated by corporate sponsor Andrew Badolato, the founder and CEO of the E3 Corporation, and Stephen Bannon, an award-winning filmmaker of such critically acclaimed movies as Generation Zeron ,Fire From the Heartland, and Battle for America. Complete panelist and moderator biographies appear below.

Panel:

Sonnie Johnson is the President of the Frederick Douglass Foundation of Virginia, a public policy and educational organization. Sonnie* holds a degree in communications.

Jamie Radtke – Chairman of the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation, She has been involved in grassroots activism for over 15 years. Jamie worked for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Chairman Helms and in Governor Allen’s administration. Jamie has also worked as Chief Strategist for various political campaigns. Jamie has spent the last 6 years challenging rogue Republicans who have chosen the expansion of government above the freedoms and rights of the people. Jamie Radtke has a Bachelors in Political Science from Liberty University and a Masters of Public Policy from The College of William & Mary.

Larry O’Connor is Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart.tv. He is also a regular contributor to Big Hollywood, Big Government and Big Journalism. He has a nightly Internet radio program on *Blog Talk Radio<http://www.blogtalkradio.com/stage-right>. Before becoming a conservative agitator he worked on Broadway and in Los Angeles in the theatre industry. Larry hosts  ”The Stage Right Show” every weeknight at 9PM Pacific. The Stage Right Show features the news of the day from the center-right perspective and highlights the top stories found at Big Hollywood, Big Government and Big Journalism.

Hosts/Moderators:

Stephen Bannon – Host – Stephen Bannon is an award-winning filmmaker of such critically acclaimed movies as In The Face of Evil, The Last 600 Meters, Titus Andronicus, and *Generation Zero*.  One of the co-founders of the National Tea Party Federation, Stephen served as a Surface Warfare Officer in the United States Navy, with 4 years of sea duty onboard the destroyer U.S.S. Paul F. Foster (DD964) with the Pacific Fleet. Stephen served as Special Assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations in the Pentagon and was awarded the Navy Expeditionary Medal for service in the Persian Gulf in 1979 and 1980. A graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Stephen also holds a Masters Degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University with honor, as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School with honors.  Mr. Bannon lives in Laguna Beach , CA and has a daughter attending The United States Military Academy at West Point.

Andrew Badolato – Host and Corporate Sponsor – Andrew Badolato is the founder and CEO of the E3 Corporation.  E3 is developing new business models that rebuild and restore America’s small businesses, manufacturing base and localized economies.  With over 22 years of experience, Andrew has been a co- founder and/or early stage investor in 23 plus companies that have raised over $1billion in private equity and obtained an aggregate high market capitalization of over $29 billion. He was the founder, President and Director of MILCOM Technologies, successfully licensing over $1.6 billion of research and development from Lockheed Martin. Andrew was VP Corporate Finance of St James, and the founder and initial seed round investors of Inktomi, a company that obtained a $20 billion public market valuation. Andrew was also the founding President and Director of SinoFresh HealthCare, Inc and launched the company’s lead product, SinoFresh™ Nasal, Oral & Sinus Care, to a national distribution contract. Andrew is a cofounder of The Renewable Corporation and Managing Director of White Knights & Vultures LLC. Andrew is a member of the Tea Party Federation. He graduated from St. Thomas of Villanova University in Miami, FL, with a Bachelors of Arts in Business.

Air Date: 09/23/2010

Stopping the dominate criminal minority by waking up my brothers and sisters to their personal power through peaceful non-compliance and accountability. We all share this planet, and it is time to stop allowing such inequality. There is more than enough to go around. The privately owned federal reserve cartel needs to be closed, and corporations must clean up their “externalities” and not be classified as persons. Money no longer spent on war, but on Peace & Prosperity for All. POWER TO THE PEOPLE THROUGH PEACEFUL UNITY!

Air Date: 09/16/2010

Dr. Laura Thompson is the CEO and founder of the Southern California Institute of Clinical Nutrition based in Carlsbad, California. Dr. Thompson received her Ph.D. in Nutrition and Human behavior from Ryokan College in Los Angeles, California, studied naturopathy and iridology with Dr. Bernard Jensen, and culinary arts at the Paris American Academy in Paris, France. She is board certified in Naturopathic Endocrinology through the American Naturopathic Medical Association and has taken over 1,000 men and women through natural hormone programs.

Air Date: 09/09/2010

Prof. Karl West is the current President of the International Academy of Lymphology. He is also a pioneer of Cellular Ecology etc. He is passionate about bringing these subjects out of obscurity. As a consequence of struggling to revolutionize the “health” care field into something that empowers the patient rather than just the practitioners he has become an avid student of the rare and revolutionary related subjects that lead to positive world transformation. He shares a number of very profound insights with his guests on this program.

Air Date: 09/02/2010

What is the significance of the current Tea Party movement? How did it get started? Where is it going from here? What are some cautions as this grassroots movement continues to gather steam?

Panelist Stephen Bannon discussed the significance of the current Tea Party movement, the state of the Republican and Democratic Party, and Governor Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and the upcoming November election.

Panelist David Webb also discussed many hot topics and issues pertaining to the Tea Party.

The panelists also talked about the economic issues, including how the consolidation of product and service providers made possible by Wall Street has enabled a large transfer of wealth and separation of the classes.

Panelist Andy Badolato explained how to develop new business models and policies to stimulate entrepreneurship and reinvigorate small businesses. As the founder and CEO of the E3 Corporation, Mr. Badolato is currently developing new business models that restore America’s small businesses, manufacturing base and localized economies; as Mr. Badolato says, “It’s about Main Street, not Wall Street.”

ABOUT THE PANELIST:

Stephen Bannon

Stephen Bannon is an award-winning filmmaker of such critically acclaimed movies as In The Face of Evil, The Last 600 Meters, Titus Andronicus, and Generation Zero. One of the co-founders of the National Tea Party Federation, Mr. Bannon served as a Surface Warfare Officer in the United States Navy, with four years of sea duty onboard the destroyer U.S.S. Paul F. Foster (DD964) with the Pacific Fleet. Mr. Bannon served as Special Assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations in the Pentagon and was awarded the Navy Expeditionary Medal for service in the Persian Gulf in 1979 and 1980. A graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Mr. Bannon also holds a Masters Degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University with honor as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School with honors. Mr. Bannon lives in Laguna Beach , CA and has a daughter attending The United States Military Academy at West Point .

David Webb

David Webb is the host of The Grinder on AM 970 New York City. Mr. Webb has a distinguished history with over 20 years of entertaining and informing the public. Mr. Webb has appeared on the FOX News Network and has been featured on radio, TV and in print, nationally and internationally. Mr. Webb is a contributing editor to FamilySecurityMatters.org, American Solutions, and the fill-in host for Andrew Wilkow on SIRIUS Patriot 144 and XM America Right 166. Active in politics on the local and national level, David co-founded TeaParty365 in New York City, a non-partisan, non-profit advocacy group for fiscal responsibility. He is also the co-founder of the Black Forum, Black Republican Forum and American Forum Series. Mr. Webb also has consulted for the Coalition For A Secure Drivers License and for political campaigns from municipal to gubernatorial.

Andy Badolato

Andy Badolato is the founder and CEO of the E3 Corporation. E3 is developing new business models that rebuild and restore America’s small businesses, manufacturing base and localized economies. Mr. Badolato has 22 yrs experience in Venture Capital, Technology Transfer, M&A transactions, Mezzanine and Public equity financings; and the creation, business development, and oversight of public and private companies. Mr. Badolato has been a co- founder and or early stage investor in 23 plus companies that have raised over one billion in private equity and obtained an aggregate high market capitalization of over 29 billion dollars. He was the founder, President and Director of MILCOM Technologies successfully licensing over 1.6 billion dollars of research and development from Lockheed Martin. MILCOM, a leader in commercializing technologies that originate in the defense industry, has launched thirteen companies that have obtained over 600 million dollars in venture capital. In 2000, two companies that Mr. Badolato co-founded were given awards for job creation and technology growth by IT Florida, a state advocacy group that oversees Florida based corporate technology development. Mr. Badolato was VP Corporate finance of St James, the founder and initial seed round investors of Inktomi, a company that obtained a 20 billion dollar public market valuation. As the founding President and Director of SinoFresh HealthCare, Inc, a developer and marketer of innovative therapies to treat inflammatory and infectious diseases of the upper respiratory system, Mr. Badolato successfully launched the company’s lead product, SinoFresh(TM) Nasal, Oral & Sinus Care, to a national distribution contract making it available in over 20,000 retail outlets nationwide. Mr. Badolato is a cofounder of The Renewable Corporation. He also is Managing Director of White Knights & Vultures LLC., a Venture Capital and corporate M&A consulting firm. Mr. Badolato graduated from St. Thomas of Villanova University in Miami, Florida, with a Bachelors of Arts in Business. www.andybadolato.com or www.facebook.com/andy.badolato

Air Date: 08/26/2010

Dr Bill Deagle MD is a Prolife M.D. physician. He has been a board certified Family Medicine Specialist, board eligible Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and has practiced Internal Medicine, Medico-legal, Anti-Aging Medicine, and Environmental Toxicology. Currently he is a media liaison activist and teacher for the American Academy of AntiAging Medicine and the American Academy of Environmental Medicine.

Dr Bill has been in private practice for 25 + years, and has worked as a contract physician with companies working with the US Government on NORAD, US Space Command, Advanced CRAY Supercomputers, Large Array and EMP Proof Microchips, and many other projects such as exit examiner for the Special Operations Chemical Munitions Team of the US Military for the OKC Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing in 1995, Operation Top Off and Dark Winter with FEMA and FBI and State and Federal Hazardous Materials and Biowarfare War Games 1997.

The NUTRIMEDICAL REPORT and CLAYandIRON Show has a wide array of experts interviewed on Geopolitics, Antiaging, Health and Wellness, Prolife, Spiritual, Messianic, Christian, Military, Above Government Space and Warfare Technologies, Constitutional, Legal JurisDictionary Militia, and Ancient Archeology and Science to name but a few.

Hour Two of the three hour show from 2 to 5 PM CST, Mondays to Fridays and 8 to 11 PM CST Sunday’s Encore best of the week shows is broadcast nationally across America and worldwide. Listen and discover new natural wellness nutraceuticals and technologies to heal the body, restore function, and slow and reverse aging from custom designs by Dr Bill and other personally selected nutritional supplements companies that represent the best in the world gathered through extensive research. Call in questions are welcome throughout the show to the studio to 800-259-5791.

To Order Securely online and sign up for our Free Nutrimedical Newsletter go to NutriMedical.com or CLAYandIRON.com. You also may call in your order or questions at 888-212-8871.

Air Date: 08/19/2010

Framed inventor Paul Pantone was finally released from the Utah State (Mental) Hospital on May 12, 2009 thanks to relentless pressure from Paul’s GEET Friends world wide.

Paul is currently residing outside the state of Utah. His mind and spirit are intact. He is cheerfully recovering from the physical damages inflicted on him and is finally receiving treatment for the hepatitis C he was exposed to over 3 years ago at the Utah State Hospital.

Visit GEET: www.geetinternational.com

JUST RELEASED: Divided We Stand… United We Fall, Continental Congress Remembered, The First Continental Congress, Setting the Stage for Continental Congress 2009, Continental Congress Delegate Remarks, Instructions to Congress and the States, Civic Actions: What They Mean to You, Illegitimate Mortgages… The Ultimate Irony of The Real Estate Meltdown, The Tax Awareness Effect, Can I Borrow $100,000? Tea Party Says, NO!, Do We Need to Replace the Income Tax with a Fair Tax?, True Currency: Texas Takes the Lead, Delegate Remarks and More.

Air Date: 07/29/2010

Jon Rappoport has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, Jon has published articles on medical fraud, politics, alternative health, and sports in LA Weekly, CBS Healthwatch, Spin, Stern, and other magazines and newspapers in the US and Europe.

He is the is author of several books, including The Secret Behind Secret Societies and The Magic Agent (a novel).

Jon is the author of a new course for home schoolers, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS. He can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com His work can be found at his site, www.nomorefakenews.com

Air Date: 07/22/2010

Since I have been defrocked and my education and labor history
“sanitized” as a hated whistle-blower in my profession, I am always
reticent about stating my Curriculum Vitae or experience on paper
because my fellows-now-enemies have used it to refute and claim I am a liar.

So rather than being a Human and Animal Pathologist (which is why I was
able to identify these poisoning cases in the first place), I am instead
labeled as a Pathological Liar. Cute huh!

So the best I dare state on paper is that I have personal life
experience including human and animal pathology, then I let my spoken or
printed knowledge support itself — and that works better than a
death-obtained “sheepskin” hanging on mahogany paneled walls and
convincing you of man made credentials and covering the lying words of
the wolf who owns it!

Air Date: 07/15/2010

Well-known author of three #1 national Christian bestsellers, including the landmark bestselling book, Dark Secrets of the New Age, Texe Marrs has also written over 42 other books for such major publishers as Simon & Schuster, John Wiley, Prentice Hall/Arco, Stein & Day, and Dow Jones-Irwin. His books have sold over two million copies and have been published in many foreign languages, including Turkey, Greece, Romania, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. His books have been featured as main selections of the Christian Book Club, the Conservative Book Club, and the Computer and Electronics Book Clubs.

Texe Marrs was assistant professor of aerospace studies, teaching American Defense Policy, strategic weapons systems, and related subjects at the University of Texas at Austin from 1977 to 1982. He has also taught international affairs, political science, and psychology for two other universities. A graduate Summa Cum Laude from Park University, Kansas City, Missouri, he earned his Master’s degree at North Carolina State University.

As a career USAF officer (now retired), he commanded communications-electronics and engineering units. He holds a number of military decorations, including the Vietnam Service Medal and the Presidential Unit Citation., and served in Germany, Italy, and throughout Asia. He was chosen Airman of the Year while serving in Korat Air Base, Thailand.

President of Power of Prophecy Ministries and RiverCrest Publishing in Austin, Texas, Texe Marrs is a frequent guest on radio and TV talk shows throughout the U.S.A. and Canada in response to the public’s search for greater insight into Bible prophecy, secret societies, politics, and world affairs. His latest books are Codex Magica: Secret Signs, Mysterious Symbols, and Hidden Codes of the Illuminati, Mysterious Monuments: Encyclopedia of Secret Illuminati Designs, Masonic Architecture, and Occult Places and the highly acclaimed Conspiracy World: a Truthteller’s Compendium of Eye-Opening Revelations and Forbidden Knowledge.

In addition to his many books, Texe Marrs has produced over 20 bestselling video documentaries. Texe Marrs’ monthly newsletter is distributed to tens of thousands of subscribers around the world. His radio program, Power of Prophecy, is beamed to over 125 nations around the globe.

Air Date: 07/08/2010

Dr Bill Deagle MD is a Prolife M.D. physician. He has been a board certified Family Medicine Specialist, board eligible Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and has practiced Internal Medicine, Medico-legal, Anti-Aging Medicine, and Environmental Toxicology. Currently he is a media liaison activist and teacher for the American Academy of AntiAging Medicine and the American Academy of Environmental Medicine.

Dr Bill has been in private practice for 25 + years, and has worked as a contract physician with companies working with the US Government on NORAD, US Space Command, Advanced CRAY Supercomputers, Large Array and EMP Proof Microchips, and many other projects such as exit examiner for the Special Operations Chemical Munitions Team of the US Military for the OKC Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing in 1995, Operation Top Off and Dark Winter with FEMA and FBI and State and Federal Hazardous Materials and Biowarfare War Games 1997.

The NUTRIMEDICAL REPORT and CLAYandIRON Show has a wide array of experts interviewed on Geopolitics, Antiaging, Health and Wellness, Prolife, Spiritual, Messianic, Christian, Military, Above Government Space and Warfare Technologies, Constitutional, Legal JurisDictionary Militia, and Ancient Archeology and Science to name but a few.

Hour Two of the three hour show from 2 to 5 PM CST, Mondays to Fridays and 8 to 11 PM CST Sunday’s Encore best of the week shows is broadcast nationally across America and worldwide. Listen and discover new natural wellness nutraceuticals and technologies to heal the body, restore function, and slow and reverse aging from custom designs by Dr Bill and other personally selected nutritional supplements companies that represent the best in the world gathered through extensive research. Call in questions are welcome throughout the show to the studio to 800-259-5791.

To Order Securely online and sign up for our Free Nutrimedical Newsletter go to NutriMedical.com or CLAYandIRON.com. You also may call in your order or questions at 888-212-8871.

Air Date: 07/01/2010

Walter Reddy is a Son of the American Revolution (SAR) and has been a Constitutional Activist since 1970. Starting in 1970, he succeeded in collecting petitions which called for a Constitutional amendment, giving 18 year olds the right to vote, the 26th Amendment.

In 1993, he collaborated with a group of 10 Constitutional activists that lobbied Hawaii legislators and got them to introduce and pass a 10th Amendment resolution. Within 2 years, more than 22 States followed with similar legislation.

In 1994, Walter and other patriots converged on the Philadelphia, PA State Capital and successfully lobbied State legislators to stop the calling for a Constitutional Convention that would seek to replace the U.S. Constitution with a U.N.”New States Constitution”.

Later in 1994, after moving to Orange County, NY, he teamed up with a County legislator to draft legislation revitalizing the Orange County Militia. That work was stopped after the media’s demonetization of the word “militia” and their alleged involvement in the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City.

In 1996, he produced and hosted two television programs, one covered the Oklahoma City bombing – with guest Brig. General Ben Partin exposing how and where bombs were placed inside the federal building that blew the building from the inside out, the truck bomb only doing superficial damage. The question is, did Tim McVey and Terry Nichols have access to place bombs inside the federal building? The official version has never made that claim.

The second show covered Votescam: the stealing of America – with guest James Collier the author of this pioneering, documentary book on vote fraud.

In Feb. 2007 Walter met Ron Paul at the New Hampshire Free State Project’s Liberty Forum and became a passionate grassroots activist in his Presidential campaign. Ron Paul is the Father of today’s Tea Party movement, having raised an historic 6 million dollars that day Dec.16, 2007 (the anniversary of the original BostonTeaParty.) Walter joined Ron’s son Rand Paul and a few hundred fellow patriots to celebrate that day at Faneuil Hall, (the Cradle of Liberty) Boston,MA. for the BostonTeaParty07.

On Independence day, July 4, 2008, Walter founded the Committees of Safety organization, which hosted last year’s historic BostonTea Party event and will again host this year’s event on 12-12-09 at Faneuil Hall, Boston, MA.

On April 19, 2009 Committees of Safety hosted their second event after a 2 month battle to get the permit for the official staging area at Lexington Green, Lexington, MA. The purpose of our Rally at Lexington was to explain the need for re-vitalizing the Militia of the several States and to honor and commemorate the courage of the 50 well organized Lexington Militiamen that “Stood their Ground” and refused to throw down their Arms when illegally ordered by the 800 British military troops. A British officer fired and “The Shot heard around the World” began America’s War of Independence.

Air Date: 06/24/2010

Angela Keaton is the development director at Antiwar.com, the Web’s leading source of antiwar news, views, and activities and the producer of the Scott Horton Show for Antiwar Radio. She has served on the Libertarian National Committee and as executive director of the Libertarian Party of California. From 1999 to 2005, Keaton hosted “The Liberated Space,” the libertarian talk and news show on the controversial KOOP 91.7 FM, Austin, Texas. She holds a J.D. and M.A. from the University of Florida. As a board member of both Outright Libertarians and the Ladies of Liberty Alliance, Keaton focuses on GBTL and women’s issues from an anarcho-capitalist perspective.

Air Date: 06/17/2010

From 1955 until 1975, Jim Tucker held a number of newspaper positions, including Sports Editor of the Northern Virginia Sun, Managing Editor of the Daily Tifton Gazette in Georgia, Managing Editor of the Radford (Va.) Daily News, Copy Editor of the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch; Night Editor of the Washington Daily News in Washington, D.C., Managing Editor of the Martinsville (Va.) Bulletin and News Editor of the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal.

In May 1975, Jim came to Liberty Lobby in Washington, D.C. There, the mission was to create a weekly newspaper, the Spotlight, which was killed by corrupt courts in 2000. Since then, Jim has been with American Free Press, which was created by generous Spotlight readers who wanted the gag lifted. AFP is one of the leading maverick, independent grass-roots media voices that has declared all-out war on the elite-controlled Big Media Monopoly in America and around the globe, and for the last decade, Jim has been an integral part of that effort.

It was in 1975 at Liberty Lobby that Jim first learned about the Bilderbergs. In addition to his ongoing contributions to AFP, Jim has traveled the globe and tenaciously pursued this dangerous cabal ever since he learned about their existence and their sinister agendas against the world. Some of these exploits have more recently been documented in the Independent Film Channel 2009 release of the documentary film NEW WORLD ORDER and TruTV’s CONSPIRACY THEORY with Jesse Ventura. For more information on American Free Press, visit www.americanfreepress.net.

Air Date: 06/16/2010

H. Michael Sweeney is an investigative author/consultant, specializing in New World Order crimes and personal privacy/security matters to include Political Control Technology (PCT). Sweeney is best known for his non-fiction Professional Paranoid series on these topics and the four-volume Fatal Rebirth series, a historical and future look at the NWO via “The Unified Conspiracy Theory.” This 10-year, 1,500 footnote project examines the military-industrial-intelligence-media complex (MIIM) and resulted in a 1999 screenplay depicting the downing the WTC by passenger jets and resulting Middle-East Oil Wars. Subsequently, Mr. Sweeney claims to have personally thwarted Gas Station Tasking described by President Bush as a counter-terrorism victory, in addition to possibly derailing a bio-weapons attack some months later.

Mr. Sweeney offers a suite of consulting and direct intervention services to persons targeted by groups in ways beyond their ability to defend against. A FREE Helps Kit is available on request (pppbooks@comcast.net), as well as a sample newsletter on PCT. Mr. Sweeney is currently seeking to establish The Free Will Society to help targeted individuals, and NeVir Spies!, an ultra-secure email solution for persons needing more secure and more flexible email alternatives. He also has written a sci-fi trilogy with its own screenplay. For more information, visit www.proparanoidpress.com.

Air Date: 06/15/2010

I’ve been a practicing Architect for 20 years and have designed numerous fire-proofed steel-framed buildings. More recently I’ve performed construction administration services for a new $120M high school campus including a $10M steel-framed gymnasium; managing construction documentation of a mixed use urban project with 1.2M sq. ft. of retail and 320,000 sq.ft. of high-rise office space – altogether about 1,200 tons of steel framing.

Personal 9/11 Statement:
The WTC Twin Towers and Building #7 appear to have been brought down not by jet impacts and/or fires as we have been led to believe – but by controlled demolition with explosives. The evidence noted on AE911Truth.org and other excellent websites is “prima facie” and will, with the increasing public awareness and demand for the truth, result in a new truly independent investigation with subpeona power. A/E’s must now become leaders for 9/11 Truth – Join Us!

Air Date: 06/10/2010

For over a decade, prior to his retirement, Dr. Monteith led a delegation of physicians from Santa Cruz County to the House of Delegates of the California Medical Association. For 10 years he led the battle within organized medicine in California to address the AIDS epidemic as a medical issue rather than a civil rights issue. As a result of his experiences trying to implement an effective medical approach to the HIV epidemic, he wrote the book, “AIDS:The Unnecessary Epidemic”, the widely circulated pamphlet, “To Deceive a Nation”, and more recently, “A Nation Deceived and Betrayed.” Supported by physicians across our nation, his public health approach to the HIV epidemic was eventually accepted by the California Medical Association.

Unfortunately, powerful forces continue to oppose the dictates of doctors. Dr Monteith currently spends five hours daily on talk radio in California. He writes extensively, and lectures on geopolitics. He has spent 30 years researching the causes for America’s spiritual and moral decline.

Air Date: 06/09/2010

Born in Ohio and raised on a farm, Steve Hempfling learned about individual rights and the U.S. Constitution from his father who was active at preserving freedom. His father was in a coalition trying to stop “unbacked” paper currency from being issued during the John F. Kennedy Presidency. Steve Hempfling has a degree in electronic engineering and has worked at Texas Instruments and in the “Silicon Valley,” located in California. In 1985, he helped found Free Enterprise Society along with Verl Speer and George Hill. He put his money where his mouth was and challenged the IRS to prove it had a law to require Americans to file income tax returns. That was 27 years ago. Today, Steve Hempfling is the current Director of Free Enterprise Society ( www.welcome.freeenterprisesociety.com).

And the IRS….well they still have not proven that anyone is required to file and pay an income tax.

Air Date: 06/08/2010

White Crow grew up among the Native American Cultures and learned their ways of Healing, Rites of Passage and living in balance with the Earth. He has been a practicing Shaman for over 30 years, and some of his students would even go so far as to say that he has been teaching since he was a child.

In addition to Associates Degree in Computer Programming and two years study in Psychology/Social Work graduating with highest honors, White Crow has studied Natural Medicine and Martial Arts for the past 40+ years. He teaches Meditation and Guided Visualization Classes and counseled on Family Crisis Intervention and Suicide Hotlines.

For the past 20 years, he has been looking at many unusual events involving the government, the space program, extra-terrestrials and global warming. Since then, he has given talks on Global Warming, UFO’s, Extra-terrestrials and Paranormal Phenomena, Secret Societies, Global Governments and cover-ups, as well as the 2012 Controversy.

His talks on UFO activity and extra-terrestrials and their possible agendas has awoken many people from their slumber, as has his talks on government cover-ups and the global control by the power elite. White Crow has a saying: “You’re either in the know or you’re one of the sheep; and he wants to wake the Sheep up.”

For more info, visit www.williamwhitecrow.com. And, to contact White Crow directly, email him at williamwhitecrow@yahoo.com.

Air Date: 06/03/2010

There’s no doubt about it—Michael Collins Piper is one of the Israeli lobby’s primary targets today. Once described as “The American Voltaire,” Michael Collins Piper is truly the author the Israeli lobby loves to hate. Repeatedly attacked by propagandists for Israel, Piper is undaunted, despite the fact that his life was threatened by Irv Rubin, violent leader of the terrorist Jewish Defense League. Once, after discovering a wiretap on his telephone, Piper noted wryly, “The Vatican didn’t put that wiretap there.”

Sourcing much of his writing from his library of some 10,000 volumes—including many rare works—Piper is a regular contributor to American Free Press, the Washington-based national weekly, and the historical journal, The Barnes Review. One media critic hailed Piper as one of the top 25 best writers on the Internet. In 2006, Piper began hosting a nightly radio commentary on the Republic Broadcasting Network at www.republicbroadcasting.org.

Piper was the only journalist to dare to assert that the Oklahoma City bombing was a Mossad “false flag” operation aimed at implicating Saddam Hussein—a scheme derailed by U.S. investigators who rejected Israel’s machinations, opting instead for another “lone nut” cover-up. Piper’s pioneering work on Israel’s role in 9-11 has been echoed by truth-seekers and damned by defenders of Israel for its accuracy.

Piper can be contacted by e-mail at piperm2@lycos.com, or by writing: Michael Collins Piper, P.O.Box 15728, Washington, D.C. 20003, or by calling 1-202-544-5977.

Air Date: 06/02/2010

Dr. Michael S. Coffman received his BS in Forestry and MS in Biology at Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff, Arizona and his Ph.D. in Forest Science at the University of Idaho at Moscow in 1966, 1967, and 1970 respectively. Since then, he has become a respected scientist and ecologist who has been involved in ecosystem research for over twenty-five years in both academia and industry. He taught courses and conducted research in forest ecology and forest community dynamics for ten years at Michigan Technological University, a leading forestry school in the Midwest.

Until 1992, Dr. Coffman was a manager for Champion International, a leading forest and paper products company in the United States. In this, as well as other related responsibilities, he was responsible for millions of dollars of research on global warming and became intimately involved in such national and international issues. During this time, he was a spokesperson for the Paper Industry for the media.

Dr. Coffman is currently President of Environmental Perspectives, Inc. (EPI). He provides professional guidance and training in defining environmental problems and conflicts, and he is developing solutions to specific issues, including the hidden dangers of international treaties and agreements that threaten our Constitutional protections, especially property rights. He played a key role in stopping the ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity (Biodiversity Treaty) in the U.S. Senate one hour before the ratification vote.

He has written four books exposing the environmentalist phenomenon. He has also produced numerous videos, the most recent are two in which numerous scientists explain why global warming cannot be caused by man. To find out more about Dr. Coffman or his publications, go to www.discerningtoday.org/dr__michael_coffman.htm. For his most recent power-packed DVD on global warming, go to www.discerningtoday.org/unstoppable_global_warming.htm

Air Date: 06/01/2010

Ron MacDonald is a Vietnam Veteran who’s spent the last 25 years studying law. His key interests are Fundamental Principles and Inherent Rights from which all other law arises. He has watched in dismay as unalienable Rights have been reduced to mere privileges. His overriding interest is for fellow citizens to be free of government tyranny. This ongoing interest and concern led to his co-authoring THEY OWN IT ALL, INCLUDING YOU: By Means Of Toxic Currency with Dr. Robert Rowen, MD. For more information on their ongoing efforts and their organization, visit www.newpeopleorder.com.

Air Date: 05/27/2010

Upon being introduced to the subject of UFOs and government cover-ups in the early 1990′s, Brian began avidly researching these and related topics himself. Shortly thereafter, the esoteric teachings in the FLOWER OF LIFE information played a major role in his search for the “big picture.” His ongoing exposure to various alternative books, seminars and documentaries on UFOs, Conspiracies and Hidden Agendas confirmed for him that things are truly not what they seem on planet Earth. To help spread the word, Brian became proactive and began co-writing articles on UFOs and “meta-topics” for the BERKELEY PSYCHIC READER, and he volunteered for several UFO & Paranormal organizations, including the INTERNATIONAL UFO CONGRESS and the BAY AREA UFO EXPO.

In 2001, Brian produced his first CONSPIRACY CON to analyze and expose real conspiracies and hidden agendas, and he has organized successful and empowering conspiracy events every year since. In 2004 and 2007, he wrote articles on conspiracies for UFO MAGAZINE, and more recently he contributed to both the FREE AMERICAN MAGAZINE and CONSPIRA-ZINE. In 2005, he participated in the UFO Panel at the NEW LIVING EXPO in San Francisco, and he has been interviewed on many radio programs and appeared on THE UFO CONNECTION and TECHNOLOGY TRENDS local TV shows. In addition to his role as Executive Producer of CONSPIRACY CON, Brian was also the Associate Producer for the BAY AREA UFO EXPO from 2001 to 2007, assisting in event planning, promotion and tape/DVD distribution, along with comic contributions at many of this event’s banquets. He can currently be reached at (925) 449-6844 (NEW) or conspiracy.con@sbcglobal.net.

Air Date: 05/25/2010

Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz is an internationally known authority in the overlapping fields of public health, behavioral science, emerging diseases, and natural healing.

Dr. Horowitz received his doctorate from Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in 1977. As a student and faculty member at Tufts, he taught medical and dental histology, graduated with honors, and was awarded a research fellowship in behavioral science at the University of Rochester.

He later earned a Master of Public Health degree from Harvard University focused on behavioral science and media persuasion technologies, and a Master of Arts degree in health education/counseling psychology from Beacon College, all before joining the research faculty at Harvard School of Dental Medicine to study psychosocial factors in oral health and disease prevention.

Air Date: 03/24/2010

Jeffrey M. Smith, author of the #1 GMO bestseller Seeds of Deception, and Genetic Roulette, presents shocking evidence why genetically modified crops may lead to health and environmental catastrophes, and what we can do about it.

Air Date: 03/19/2010

Carolyn Dean MD ND has been on the forefront of the natural medicine revolution for over 30 years. She graduated from Dalhousie Medical School in 1978, holds a medical license in California, and is a graduate of the Ontario Naturopathic College, now the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine in Toronto. Dr. Dean is the author/coauthor of 19 health books (print and eBooks) including The Magnesium Miracle, IBS for Dummies, IBS Cookbook for Dummies, Future Health Now Encyclopedia, Death by Modern Medicine, Everything Alzheimers, and Hormone Balance. Dr. Dean has a free newsletter and a membership online wellness program called Future Health Now! Find out more at www.drcarolyndean.com. See her magnesium videos at: www.nutritionalmagnesium.org and find out about yeast overgrowth at: www.yeastconnection.com. Dr. Dean is also available to assist individuals with all types of illness at any stage or degree of severity through her Telephone Wellness Consulting practice.

Air Date: 03/16/2010

Robert Scott Bell tackles the tough issues and shows no fear when confronting government and corporate bullies who would stand in the way of health freedom. You will be amazed by the amount of information about healing that is kept secret from you and what you can do to learn more about it.

Robert Scott Bell is a homeopathic practitioner with a passion for health and healing unmatched by anybody on radio. He personally overcame numerous chronic diseases using natural healing principles and has dedicated his life to revealing the healing power within all of us. He served as Board Member for the American Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists (AAHP) 1999-2001.

Air Date: 03/11/2010

Scott Tips received his Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1976, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris from 1976-1977, and obtained his Juris Doctorate degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) in 1980, where he was the Managing Editor of the California Law Review. He is currently Editor of Health Freedom News as well as acting Treasurer on the Board of the National Health Federation where you can see the Declaration of Health Freedom Rights that provides the backbone to his work.

Air Date: 03/09/2010

Jonathan W. Emord is one of the nation’s leading free speech attorneys. He has defeated the Food and Drug Administration a remarkable six times in federal court, more times than any other attorney in American history. New York radio talk show host Bernard Owens calls Emord “the FDA Dragonslayer.” The Cancer Control Society calls him “the Freedom Man” who has helped “win and preserve our great civil rights to life, to liberty, and to health freedoms.” Emory University Professor of Law and Economics Joanna M. Shepherd salutes Emord’s “tremendous experience in litigating against regulatory agencies” and his “unique insights” on defending free speech rights. Congressman Ron Paul says “[a]ll freedom-loving Americans are in debt to Jonathan Emord for his courtroom [victories]” and calls him “a hero of the health freedom revolution.” Formerly an attorney in the Reagan Administration’s Federal Communications Commission, Emord has practiced constitutional and administrative law in Washington, D.C. for the past twenty-five years. He is routinely consulted by industry, Congress, and the media on regulatory issues that affect liberty and property. He is the author of four critically acclaimed books: Freedom, Technology and the First Amendment (1991); The Ultimate Price (2007); The Rise of Tyranny (2008); and Global Censorship of Health Information (2010).

Air Date: 03/03/2010

Prof. Karl West is the current President of the International Academy of Lymphology. He is also a pioneer of Cellular Ecology etc. He is passionate about bringing these subjects out of obscurity. As a consequence of struggling to revolutionize the “health” care field into something that empowers the patient rather than just the practitioners he has become an avid student of the rare and revolutionary related subjects that lead to positive world transformation. He shares a number of very profound insights with his guests on this program.

Air Date: 03/02/2010

Hollie Greenwood is a certified nutrition consultant, certified personal chef and owner of Real Cooking — a sustainably-operated business based with offices in Santa Monica, California and Missoula, Montana. Hollie became interested in how and why food influences health at a young age. With this passion, she created a business to help individuals and families with the tools needed to transition from eating processed foods to whole foods. Created in 2004, Real Cooking has always been a unique business, in that it offers holistic nutritional consulting, personal chef services, kitchen clean-outs, guided grocery shopping and farmer’s market tours, cooking instruction and custom meal plans all under one roof.

Hollie obtained a Master’s of Science degree in Holistic Nutrition with high honors from Hawthorn University and her personal chef certification from the Culinary Classroom in Los Angeles, CA. She is currently a member of the National Association of Nutrition Professionals, the Community Food and Agriculture Coalition, the Sustainable Business Council, the Montana Organic Association and is co-chapter leader for the Weston A. Price Foundation in Missoula, MT.

In her spare time she can be found connecting farmers and consumers to the Real Food Buying Club that she helped establish in Missoula to make quality, locally-grown food affordable and available to everyone. She is also in the process of starting a “garden club” in Montana which will serve to teach people how to plant, grow, care for, store and cook their own food. Her vision is to empower citizens to become completely self-sufficient by maintaining control over their own food supply.

Air Date:02/25/2010

Jon Rappoport has been working as an investigative reporter for 20 years. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, Jon has written articles on politics, health, medical fraud, and the arts for LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, CBS Healthwatch, Stern, In These Times. He has hosted radio series in Los Angeles and Las Vegas on politics and health. Jon has given lectures and seminars all over the world on the question, Who Really Runs the Planet? He is the author of seven books, including AIDS INC. and The Secret Behind Secret Societies. These days, operating from a new website, www.insolutions.info, Jon remains on the cutting edge of breaking news and its deeper meanings. His recent work on the Swine Flu Pandemic has blown the doors off the lies promoted by the US government and the World Health Organization. Jon’s acute insights and his comedic cuts at the Establishment have made him a very busy man.

As a speaker, he is in great demand.

Air Date: 02/24/2010

OPDC is the largest retail-approved raw organic dairy product producer in North America. Its founder, Mark McAfee, is regarded by many in the industry as a foremost expert in raw milk safety, raw dairy products marketing and raw dairy technology. Mark is known for his industry leadership, political activism and dairy transparency. Mark was the first milk producer to ever post sensitive bacteria count numbers on a website for the world to see.

Mark was awarded the 2005 Weston A Price 2005 National Raw Milk Activist Award in Washington DC at the WAP national convention. Additionally, Mark was also the keynote speaker and addressed more than 1000 members of the WAP Foundation in recognition of his dedication and raw milk leadership and activism. In September 2006 Mark addressed more than one thousand attendees at the international Slow Foods Conference held in Melbourne Australia as the key note speaker on raw milk issues.

Most recently Mark has focused on creating a “compelling educational wave of interest” in raw milk by emphasizing the importance of the medical aspects of drinking raw milk and its healing effects on those with asthma. Mark also helped found the RAWUSA.ORG raw milk production standards. RAW USA.ORG was developed to assist raw milk producers in producing safe raw milk in order to educate consumers about these living and enlivened safe foods.

Air Date: 02/23/2010

Dave Wellington has been in the freedom movement since 1981. Started doing freedom movement related paralegal work in 1989, including working behind the scenes in getting some favorable published court decisions, even including recovering real estate after the IRS claimed to have ‘sold’ it. Have been working in association with groups like Freedom Law School since mid 1990′s.

Air Date: 02/19/2010

Freedom Above Fortune was founded by Joseph R. (Joe) Banister, a former IRS Criminal Investigation Division Special Agent who learned of serious constitutional questions relating to the federal income tax and the federal banking and monetary systems. Mr. Banister’s expertise in the fields of accounting, finance, taxation, and law enforcement enabled him to not only understand these issues but realize that he could play a role in bringing the issues into the public arena for analysis and debate.

Air Date: 02/18/2010

Orly Taitz is an Orange County, California-based dentist and lawyer who is a leading figure in the “birther” movement, which challenges whether Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen eligible to serve as President of the United States. She also promotes a number of other conspiracy theories both related and unrelated to Obama.

Air Date: 02/17/2010

After struggling and wandering in darkness for several years with my own tooth cavities and my daughter’s case of severe tooth cavities. I finally gathered the wisdom to heal cavities in an effective way using food. I am proud to share the knowledge of my success with you. I wrote Cure Tooth Decay the book, and this web site because I want you to know how you can improve your health, and stop cavities by eating special foods.

Air Date: 02/16/2010

Dr O’Shea is well known for his meticulously researched and uncompromising book on the risks and limitations of vaccines, THE SANCTITY OF HUMAN BLOOD: VACCINATION IS NOT IMMUNIZATION. A must read for every new parent and parent to be.

Air Date: 02/15/2010

SALLY FALLON MORELL is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, with Mary G. Enig, PhD as co-author. This thought -provoking book contains a surprising message: saturated fat and cholesterol are not enemies but play vital roles in human biochemistry.

Fallon Morell is the founding president of the non- profit Weston A. Price Foundation, and editor of Wise Traditions, the Foundation’s quarterly journal; she is also the founder of A Campaign for Real Milk, which promotes access to clean, whole raw milk from pasture-fed cows.

She is also the author of Eat Fat Lose Fat, also with Mary G. Enig, PhD.

Air Date: 02/12/2010

Born in Ohio and raised on a farm, Steve Hempfling learned about individual rights and the U.S. Constitution from his father who was active at preserving freedom. His father was in a coalition trying to stop “unbacked” paper currency from being issued during the John F. Kennedy Presidency. Steve Hempfling has a degree in electronic engineering and has worked at Texas Instruments and in the “Silicon Valley,” located in California. In 1985, he helped found Free Enterprise Society along with Verl Speer and George Hill. He put his money where his mouth was and challenged the IRS to prove it had a law to require Americans to file income tax returns. That was 27 years ago. Today, Steve Hempfling is the current Director of Free Enterprise Society ( www.welcome.freeenterprisesociety.com).

And the IRS….well they still have not proven that anyone is required to file and pay an income tax.

Air Date:02/11/2010

Gary Franchi, Jr. is an avant-garde filmmaker, television host, Managing Editor of Republic Magazine, national grassroots organizer, and is the successor to the late Hollywood Producer Aaron Russo (Trading Places, The Rose) as the National Director of RestoreTheRepublic.com.

RestoreTheRepublic.com is the legacy group formed in response to the success of Russo’s “America: Freedom to Fascism” and was later singled out by Ron Paul for bringing tens of thousands of new patriots into the Ron Paul Presidential Campaign and the Ron Paul Revolution.

In 2008, Gary co-hosted the pre-Tea-Party Revolution March in Washington, DC that was attended by 15,000 revolutionaries. He has recently produced a new documentary film with award winning director William Lewis about detention centers and the loss of liberty in America titled “Camp FEMA”. You can watch Gary as he hosts the popular weekly show, The Reality Report, on Freedom.TV.

Air Date: 02/10/2010

Dr. Nancy Appleton has told this story many times, but she is a sugarholic. Years of sneaking sugary snacks only to work it off on the tennis courts led to sickness and allergy as her constant companions. Despite everything the doctors tried she didn’t get better, until…

…she asked the question, “What am I doing to make myself sick?”

Thus began an odyssey of research, lecturing and writing in an attempt to bring her discoveries of homeostasis and mineral relationships based on the works of Walter B. Cannon, MD and Melvin Page, DDS to everyone who is sick and needs help. Naturally, this meant that her BS in Health and Nutrition from UCLA wasn’t enough of a degree to be believed. This led to a PhD in Health Services from Walden University.

Dr. Appleton has written 5 books that are available here: Lick the Sugar Habit, The Curse of Louis Pasteur, Healthy Bones, Lick the Sugar Habit Sugar Counter and Stopping Inflammation. She is also the creator of the Body Monitor Test Kit, an easy at-home tool for testing for homeostasis available at this site. She has retired from her nutrition counseling practice in Los Angeles but continues to write, lecture and broadcast on health subjects. Otherwise, she lives quietly in San Diego.

The Security & Prosperity Partnership, North American Union: Global Elite Bide Their Time, A Nation in Decline, Update: Real ID, Understanding the Enemy, Congress Resolution S.416, The NAFTA Superhighway: Where the End of the Road Begins, America’s Growing Surveillance Society and More…

Get Your Limited Edition Copies Now! SHIPS IMMEDIATELY!!! Get Your Copies and Get Active.

Air Date: 02/09/2010

One of America’s leading Monetary Activists with 28 years of research, study and communication on the monetary system and its effect on people. Accomplished Presenter-Byron has presided over 1000 lectures concerning the monetary system and has been qualified courts as a monetary expert in courts in North Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri. Byron has promoted Money Reform on both the Federal and state level.

In 1991 and 1992, with the help of 2 other men, Byron hand delivered a written request to the all the members of the United States Congress, written in bill, called THE MONEY REFORM ACT, to reform our money system so that money would be created as wealth to the people based on the production of the people. Rather then have the banks create all the money as interest bearing debt owed to the banking system, as is done now. In 1993, under the leadership of Devvy Kidd over 4,000 people hand delivered to Washington DC a petition for the Money Reform Act, and other things, signed by just under 2 million people.

In 1995, Byron started to develop a program that would change the way money is put into circulation that could be implemented on the state level. Byron then worked to have a bill introduced in the Minnesota legislature that would create money based on wealth produced by the people rather then have the banks create all the money as interest bearing debt owed to the banking system, as is done now. The bill received hearing in both the house and senate in 2007.

Air Date: 02/08/2010

Kim Thompson had a very physical childhood including a great deal of dance and then martial arts. In early adulthood, a vehicle accident left her with ten years of low back and neck pain. She tried the usual rounds of health professionals with no results. When regular Yoga practice finally brought relief, she became committed to studying and exploring movement and bodywork.

Kim has completed trainings in Yoga, Feldenkrais®, Bones for Life®, Sounder Sleep™, CranioSacral Therapy, and more. She blends these movement and bodywork modalities to meet the needs of her students and clients.

Air Date: 02/04/2010

Walter Burien, since 1998 has diligently worked for you bringing forward into the light of day what you need to know about the collective scope of government finance and investments held. Operating funds are needed now. Government is not funding me to do what I do, in fact several from within government have taken much from me over the last ten years.

Several friends and spectators have pitched in since 1998 to assist CAFR1 in its efforts. “That is why CAFR1 is still standing today”. If you can assist with direct operating funds, Please call 928 445-3532 A.S.A.P. .I know for a fact, one (1) person can make all of the difference in the world for a positive outcome! That one person may even be you. My genuine and valid request is made of you this day: 04/27/09.

Please do a Google search for “Government Wealth” You will get over fifty-five million hits now with the CAFR1.com website and the CAFR1 video “The Biggest Game in Town” being the first two hits. This was possible because of the supporters of CAFR1 that have stepped forward. PLEASE assist CAFR1 if you can. Exposing nests of scorpions for visibility to the public is dangerous. (Scorpions don’t like it when you show others where and how they nest) Thank You – WJB

Air Date: 02/03/2010

Raised on a farm near Lake Charles, Louisiana, one of seven children. Attended McNeese State University where graduated in upper end of class with multiple majors in only three years.

Put self through both college and law school, graduating cum laude with a Juris Doctor from LSU Law School in 1973 and was inducted into the Order of The Coif, the world’s most prestigious honorary society for legal scholars and practitioners.

Served in U.S. Army in the Adjutant General Corps, discharged honorably as a Captain.

Has made new law by winning a number of landmark cases and was inducted into the LSU Law School’s Hall of Fame after only 14 years of practice.

Has been practicing for last 36 years as a trial and appellate lawyer and is still practicing in Shreveport, Louisiana, where his practice now focuses on tax issues.

In 1993 discovered that there is no law imposing liability for the income tax upon working Americans and spent two years investigating and exploring the reason for that omission and the means employed to create the illusion of liability.

After challenging the IRS with its misrepresentation of the law and misapplication of the income tax he was indicted for tax evasion. After a trial a jury returned a not guilty verdict, acquitting him of all counts.

Founder of Truth Attack, an organization of patriots and coalition of genuine freedom movement organizations with the goal of putting the government back in its box . . . one tentacle at a time.

Webinar Coverage:

Discussion of Truth Attack, its formation, mission and its general plan of action to restore our Constitutionally limited republic, reinstate the sovereignty of our states and reclaim liberty for the American citizen.

Discussion of the primary issues regarding the income tax law, including who is liable, what is income and whether the federal government’s power of taxation extends to our exercising our right to earn a living through our own labor.

Discussion of Truth Attack’s “mini-sems” as fundraising and membership drive tool for freedom oriented groups, local, regional and national.

Discussion of Operation Stop Thief III, what it is, how one can register and what it will accomplish.

Air Date: 02/02/2010

How to protect yourself from an organization who doesn’t want to follow the law and put you in jail for giving them too much information.

Imagine what would happen if you received a letter from the notorious IRS? Doesn’t it make your heart jump? The IRS is probably one of the most fearful organizations within the U.S. Government, perhaps because it plays a part in everyone’s lives.

It almost seems that the IRS writes its own laws and cannot be held accountable for its actions. The truth is, the IRS does have procedures and Congress enacted laws that they must follow. The most unfortunate part is that they don’t follow their own written procedures and continuously bend the laws when they can get away with it.

Air Date: 01/28/2010

I am a master architect and patriot. I have designed many homes and remodels in the Lake Tahoe area. I currently live in Idaho. With lots of spare time due to the economic collapse I began studying the truths about this whole system we live in. About three years ago I began researching and simply could not quit investigating further and further into the truths about the power structure of the world, our banking system, the media, wars, IRS, taxes, etc. This is what drove my curiosity and ultimately why I joined the Liberty Wealth Club approximately a year ago. Since then I have learned more and more eye opening truths that actually promote more truth, more freedom, and more money.

I realized in joining Liberty Wealth Club that I could now educate people and give them correct knowledge about their money, and who they really are in the commercial world. This knowledge is given in a way that empowers the people and gives them the opportunity to earn money, protect themselves and really change their lives for the better. We are part of the solution not part of the problem.

Air Date: 01/27/2010

Anita Untersee is the owner of Heartland Emergency, a long term storable food company, specializing in freeze dry food the ultimate storable food with an incredible 30 year shelf life. She is a frequent guest on The Power Hour and other radio shows and political activist.

After nearly 20 years in Los Angeles working in commercial film production, Anita and her husband returned to their roots and moved to their country retreat outside of Austin, Texas. They are “off grid” with a solar system, wood burning stove and windmill. Being self reliant is a top priority for them. This spring they are planting their first herb and heirloom vegetable garden.

They are also in production on a documentary about the current political situation and look forward to a spring release date.

Air Date: 01/26/2010

Stopping the dominate criminal minority by waking up my brothers and sisters to their personal power through peaceful non-compliance and accountability. We all share this planet, and it is time to stop allowing such inequality. There is more than enough to go around. The privately owned federal reserve cartel needs to be closed, and corporations must clean up their “externalities” and not be classified as persons. Money no longer spent on war, but on Peace & Prosperity for All. POWER TO THE PEOPLE THROUGH PEACEFUL UNITY!

Air Date: 01/21/2010

www.americansrestoringamerica.com

Air Date: 01/20/2010

www.americansrestoringamerica.com

Air Date: 01/19/2010

www.americansrestoringamerica.com

Air Date: 01/14/2010

Barbara Starfield, a physician and health services researcher, is university distinguished professor and professor of health policy and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University. She is internationally known for her work in primary care; her books, Primary Care: Concept, Evaluation, and Policy and Primary Care: Balancing Health Needs, Services, and Technology, are widely recognized as the seminal works in the field. She has been instrumental in leading projects to develop important methodological tools, including the Primary Care Assessment Tool, the CHIP tools (to assess adolescent and child health status), and the Johns Hopkins Adjusted Clinical Groups (ACGs) for assessment of diagnosed morbidity burdens reflecting degrees of co-morbidity. She was the co-founder and first president of the International Society for Equity in Health, a scientific organization devoted to furthering knowledge about the determinants of inequity in health and ways to eliminate them. Her work thus focuses on quality of care, health status assessment, primary care evaluation, and equity in health. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and has been on its governing council, and has been a member ofthe National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and many other government and professional committees and groups. She has a BA from Swarthmore College, an MD from the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, and an MPH from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.

Air Date: 01/13/2010

A former investment banker (Registered Financial Principal with the N.A.S.D. and a Broker/Dealer. Securities Underwriter, Real Estate Developer, Insurance Broker and Publisher. A frequent guest on radio and TV talk shows. He is Publisher of “Handbook for the New Paradigm” written by the ET’s. Each attendee will receive a complimentary copy. He is President of Global Insights, Inc. George Green has spoken to 1000s of people through his lectures and has appeared on numerous talk shows and TV shows telling his story.

Air Date: 01/12/2010

The Government has sued Bill Benson seeking an injunction prohibiting him from “falsely” telling people the 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution was not ratified and therefore they are not required to file an income tax return. The Government contends it is entitled to an injunction because Benson is promoting an abusive tax shelter, conduct made subject to penalty per 26 U.S.C. Section 6700.

In 1894 Congress passed an income tax act very similar to the current income tax law. That law was challenged on the basis that a tax on income is a direct tax, the United States Constitution requires direct taxes to be apportioned, and the act passed by Congress was not apportioned. The United States Supreme Court agreed and held the income tax act was unconstitutional.

Air Date: 01/07/2010

Igor Milevskiy is the founder of Top Score Enterprises, a liberty oriented company. Igor has over 10 years experience in the credit and finance industry, and has one main goal, and that’s to help others achieve true financial Freedom! with the experience he’s acquired, and he hopes to accomplish this by educating clients on how to quickly break free from credit card and loan debt as well as solve various mortgage problems, allowing you to keep your money for yourself so that you can use it to prepare for what’s inevitably going to result in the destruction of the US Dollar.

With Real unemployment close to 20% and rising, cost of living increasing, homes foreclosing and bankruptcies surging, there’s not much time left to prepare, that is why we’re having this webinar, to get honest and valuable information out to as many people as possible, while there is still a chance take the right steps toward financial freedom.

Air Date: 01/06/2010

Big John has been a practicing homesteader and survivalist since 1991, beginning in the mountains of Montana, but now resides in the black oak forest of southeast Kansas. He has built a self-efficient homestead and lives a simple life based on Henry David Thoreau’s classic books – Civil Disobedience and Walden.

Air Date: 01/05/2010

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny is the founder OsteoMed II, an integrative medicine clinic located near Cleveland, Ohio which focuses on women’s health, elimination of chronic pain and a unique method for asthma and allergy relief. Patients from 38 states and 9 countries have regained health through methods applied at OsteoMed.

Dr. Tenpenny is a writer, a published author of two books, “Saying No to Vaccines” and “FOWL! Bird flu, it’s not what you think.” She speaks at conferences here and abroad, has produced several educational DVDs and is an international consultant, serving on many national and international advisory boards.

She is known for her ability to present complex, scientifically researched information, including the hazards of vaccination, concepts rarely portrayed by conventional medicine.

Air Date: 12/31/2009

Texas is a Nation that was established by Declaration of Rights, The Texas Constitution of 1836, and many battles including: the Alamo, the Goliad Massacre, the ultimate defeat of Santa Anna, and a treaty giving the Texas land “to the people forever”.

The Constitution declared Texas a republic with a republican form of government. Essential to such form of government is personal responsibility, personal freedom, mutual respect of others’ rights, private ownership of property, common law, and government that exists to serve the interest of the people; a government which is directly answerable to the people, and is forbidden from creating “statutes and color of law” that deprive its citizens of their property.

Air Date: 12/30/2009

Frosty Wooldridge possesses a unique view of the world, cultures and families that he obtained bicycling 100,000 miles around the globe and across six continents in the past 25 years. He has written hundreds of articles on a regular basis for 16 national and 2 international magazines. He has had hundreds of editorials published in top national newspapers including the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, the Albany Herald and Christian Science Monitor.

Frosty wrote a column, “Crystal desert Continent”, for a major newspaper in Colorado while living in Antarctica. His book, “Handbook for Touring Bicyclists” by Falcon Press is available nationwide. His book “Strike Three! Take Your Base” by the Brookfield Reader was published in January, 2002. His bicycle books include “The Greatest Bicycle Adventures in the World,” a compilation of bicycle adventures on six continents. His latest book, “Antarctica: an Extreme Encounter” was published in 2007.

Air Date: 12/29/2009

Author/speaker and former sheriff Richard Mack has served in a wide variety of roles over the course of his nearly twenty year career in law enforcement, which began in Provo, Utah.

Mack began his career with the Provo Police Department as a parking enforcement cadet while attending BYU. A couple of years later he became a full-time officer and was soon promoted to Corporal, Sergeant, and Detective. His most traumatic experience there was a one-year assignment as an undercover narcotics agent. After nearly 11 years at Provo PD, Mack decided to return to his childhood turf in Arizona and run for Graham County Sheriff. His campaign took off and he was elected in 1988.

He was sheriff for two terms until 1997. He was named Elected Official of the Year by the Arizona-New Mexico Coalition of Counties in 1994, received the NRA Law Officer of the Year, inducted into the NRA Hall of Fame, 1995 Cicero Award, Samuel Adams Leadership Award from the Local Sovereignty Coalition, and Gun Owners of America Defender of the Second Amendment Award.

During his tenure, federal officers informed the sheriffs of the state that they would be required to enforce the so-called “Brady Bill” and run background checks at their expense under the law. In 1994, Mack and six other sheriffs from across the country, challenged the constitutionality of the Brady Bill and ultimately, fought it all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where they won a monumental decision for freedom.

Air Date: 12/24/2009

Joe McNeil entered into broadcasting in 2001 when he built his own local radio station. Prior to broadcasting in his local area he spent several years attending and giving lectures on a wide range of topics in several states trying to inform the American people of what was taking place in their governments both at state and federal levels. Joe was very aware of the effects of NAFTA in the early 90′s and tried to explain to all who would listen the end result. As time went on he watched the country begin to change in the ways they were conducting commerce. Today there is no reason to ask any questions, now he can tell you that America has made the transition from being an Independent nation to a dependent nation. Joe spent twenty years dealing in commerce and transportation across America and Canada, he now spends his time on the air covering common sense issues that people don’t seem to get. WHO’s NEXT is about what the American people are facing and why they are suffering at the hands of the ones they thought were protecting them! For a different point of view listen to what Joe has to say on his radio program WHO’s NEXT?

Air Date: 12/23/2009

Seduced by silver at the tender age of 11, David Morgan started investing in the stock market while still a teenager. A precious metals aficionado armed with degrees in finance and economics as well as engineering, he created the Silver-Investor.com website and originated The Morgan Report, a monthly that covers economic news, overall financial health of the global economy, currency problems ahead and reasons for investing in precious metals.

David considers himself a big-picture macro-economist whose main job as education—educating people about honest money and the benefits of a sound financial system—and his second job as teaching people to be patient and have conviction in their investment holdings. A dynamic, much-in-demand speaker all over the globe, David’s educational mission also makes him a prolific author having penned “Get the Skinny on Silver Investing” available as an e-book or through Amazon.com. As publisher of The Morgan Report, he has appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, and BNN in Canada. He has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Futures Magazine, The Gold Report and numerous other publications.

Additionally, he provides the public a tremendous amount of information by radio and writes often in the public domain. You are encouraged to sign up for his free publication which starts you off with the Ten Rules of Silver Investing where he was published almost a decade ago after being recognized as one of the top authorities in the arena of Silver Investing.

Air Date: 12/22/2009

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