Be Careful What You Wish For

I have to admit that I've gotten caught up in singing the praises of all the "patriot" sheriffs popping up lately.

One of my favorite bloggers and liberty watchdogs has posted on the topic and I have to give him his props for a splash of cold water in my face.
 

“I will not enforce an unconstitutional law against any citizen of Smith County,” insisted Sheriff Larry Smith. The sheriff wants his constituents to believe that he would refuse to participate in a federally mandated gun grab, or permit one to be carried out by federal officials within his jurisdiction. Yet ten days before Smith offered that assurance, his office had taken part in an early-morning SWAT rampage throughout East Texas in which 73 warrants were served as part of the federal government’s patently unconstitutional war on drugs.

 

During a December 2011 campaign debate, Smith said that he wanted to “invest more resources” – that is, redirect wealth plundered from the productive – into a “Drug Task Force,” and insisted that under his administration the Sheriff’s Office would embrace a “Task Force mentality” in dealing with law enforcement issues. 

 

The problem with the mindset Sheriff Smith was extoling should become obvious once it’s understood that the German term for “task force” is einsatzgruppe. By their actions many multi-jurisdictional task forces in contemporary America are increasingly faithful to their historic pedigree. 

 

Smith’s devotion to narcotics task forces might be the residue of his early law enforcement career, which included two years as a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration – an agency that could be considered the mentally deficient stepchild of the CIA, which is the world’s largest narcotics syndicate. 

 

Twenty years ago, an ATF einsatzgruppe launched a murderous raid against an isolated religious group at Mt. Carmel outside Waco. The warrant they were enforcing was clotted with falsehoods. The investigation that produced it was haphazard. Its target, Vernon Howell -- aka David Koresh -- was suspected of trivial violations of federal firearms regulations, and had indicated his eagerness to cooperate with ATF investigators to clear the record. 

 

If an arrest were to be carried out – and one was neither necessary, nor justified – it could have been performed during one of Koresh’s frequent solitary jogging expeditions, or one of his routine visits to town. Instead, the ATF – seeking a dramatic, high-profile enforcement action to generate headlines for the scandal-plagued agency – staged a paramilitary assault on the religious sanctuary. They did so even though the raiders had lost the element of surprise, and when they arrived at Mt. Carmel they opened fire on the building despite the fact that an unarmed Koresh had confronted the stormtroopers with his hands up, pleading for them not to shoot.

 

Four ATF agents were killed during that Sunday morning raid. Their deaths were utterly unnecessary, and entirely well-deserved: They were attempting to murder innocent people, and the would-be victims acted within their rights in using deadly force to defend their homes against that assault. The criminal clique that had sent the ATF to attack the Davidians sent a larger contingent to lay siege to their residence, and eventually arranged for the holocaust that annihilated 76 people, including seventeen small children.

 

 

Like most gun owners in Eastern Texas, Smith can remember where he was the morning of April 19, 1993, when the Mt. Carmel refuge went up in flames. He was on the scene as an agent of the ATF, which he had joined in 1989. Smith believes that the initial ATF raid on the Davidians was justified, and that the entire operation was at least a partial success. It’s doubtful that his assessment is shared by many gun owners in his jurisdiction.

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You can read the rest here.

Fred Reed is not laughing this time

I love Fred Reed's writing.  He is sarcastic, contrarian, curmudgeonly and usually hilarious.  In his latest piece he is sober, straight-forward and, I think, worried.

The Eye of Sauron

People speak of the onrush of the police state. I think that many do not understand how fast it comes, or how thorough it will be.

The political framework falls rapidly into place. Few or no safeguards exist, and probably few are possible. A growing authoritarianism rapidly erodes what protections we had. The courts allow random searches of passengers of trains and subways without probable cause. Warrantless tapping of personal communications is rampant, or done with secret warrants from a secret federal judge. TSA has Viper squads that stop cars at random for searches. In many places it is against the law to video the police, who everywhere become more militarized and less accountable. For practical purposes, citizens have no recourse.

At a higher level of generality, America is no longer a democracy. If you think this a rash assertion, ask yourself whether you have the slightest influence over policies that matter to you. Suppose that you want to end the wars, shrink the military, end affirmative action, genuinely change education, or reform a hostile and unworkable bureaucracy. Who do you vote for? Important policies are made in faceless bureaucracies immune to public influence. National politics employs a sort of political price-fixing, in which you are permitted to choose among a number on indistinguishable candidates and told that you are having an election.

Please read it all.

Pharaoh he sits in his tower of steel...

There was a time when court houses seemed to be designed as temples of Justice.

No more.

Here we have the Montgomery County Maryland Judicial Center.

More than anything, it seems it would have been at home in Moscow during the 1950s; the very best of Soviet Architecture--both imposing and bland.

They seemed to have picked the highest ground in the area. It towers over the city and it stands out on the horizon from every direction like a medieval castle, ensuring all and sundry know who is in charge.

The difference, among other things, is castles did not bristle with antennae. I'm sure both the Soviets and the feudal lords would envy such advancements.

And if it weren't already large enough, here in the Great Recession they've still managed to fund an expansion.

I can only wonder how much of the money is coming from the Department of Homeland Security?

Sleep well, peasants, your wise overlords are more powerful than ever and ever vigilant against the threats surrounding them: you and me.

Things I've Found, August 6, 2012

Wausau WI Police Dep't. Calls Out Its MRAP Armored Military Vehicle After Drive By Shooting

Note: I don't think we're in Kansas anymore. (No, we all live in Wisconsin now.)

The signs of the police state now enveloping the people of the United States are all around us. From the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act to the NDAA s.1867 to endless Executive signing orders, the threat to our liberties has never been greater. And the source of most of these threats is not an external enemy, it's our own government...

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Japans remembers Hiroshima bombing

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Watch what happens when Guns are banned in Australia

Note: "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." ~Thomas Jefferson

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IT'S A MATTER OF TRUST - PART ONE

Note: How many times do we have to be told?

The fact that 86% of American adults have never heard of Jamie Dimon should suffice as proof regarding the all-encompassing level of ignorance in this country. As the world staggers under the unbearable weight of debt built up over decades, to fund a fantasyland dream of McMansions, luxury automobiles, iGadgets, 3D HDTVs, exotic vacations, bling, government provided pensions, free healthcare that makes us sicker, welfare for the needy and the greedy, free education that makes us dumber, and endless wars of choice, the realization that this debt financed Ponzi scheme was nothing but a handful of pixie dust sprinkled by corrupt politicians and criminal bankers across the globe is beginning to set in.

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Kevin Spacey amazing imitation

Note: I LOLed

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NY State: Standard Chartered Hid $250 Billion in Iran Deals

Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the state's department of financial services, said Standard Chartered Bank reaped hundreds of millions of dollars of fees by scheming with Iran's government to hide roughly 60,000 transactions over nearly a decade.

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Chemotherapy can backfire and boost cancer growth: study

Note: Isn't this what the "quacks" have been saying all along?

Cancer-busting chemotherapy can cause damage to healthy cells which triggers them to secrete a protein that sustains tumour growth and resistance to further treatment, a study said Sunday.

Researchers in the United States made the "completely unexpected" finding while seeking to explain why cancer cells are so resilient inside the human body when they are easy to kill in the lab....

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India Blackout & Knight Algo: US-India CYBER WAR Over Iranian Oil Purchases in GOLD

Note: At least as believable as the official story.

India is a leader in software engineering. This sector represents more than two millions direct jobs and 4 to 6 million indirect jobs. Bangalore, called Silicon City, is the Mecca of Indian IT. A $76 billions business in 2010, aiming $225 B in 2020. Indian companies engineered a great part of American Banks' trading programs.

Two days after a cyber-attack against the Indian nuclear power plants, one of the biggest players in Wall Street's electronic trading, Knight Capital Corp., saw its trading software create chaos in the ratings of 140 shares on NYSE. I bet your hot dog against my lamb curry, that Knight's software has been "made in India".

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For the Children er... Juveniles

This is from a very good article.

FBI rescues teens like GW liberated Iraqis.

Many kids run away because they must. There are plenty of abusive homes out there with kids being victimized. With legal work closed off to them, with them on the streets, hungry and afraid, they turn to what will earn them the most money in the shortest period of time. If the government really wanted to “rescue” these teens why not reform the laws that restrict them from finding legal employment? Instead, they turn them into criminals as their only means of survival and then they “rescue” them and incarcerate them in what is nothing more than glorified prisons.

I am sure the FBI sees this operation as an example of good government. I see it differently. This is just another example of how government helps create tragic problems for people and then uses its heavy hand to smash those people for having the problems the government helped create. Many of these kids were victims before they went on the streets and they chose the streets as their “best” alternative. The government’s answer is prison for them instead.

Turning the practitioners of non-violent vices into criminals is unlikely to be very helpful to them. That these teens now have criminal records will hinder any attempt to avoid prostitution. When they are eventually released from the juvenile prisons, their arrest record will make it harder to find legitimate employment. That may force them back into the only profession they know; one where an arrest record is the norm. How that helps these kids, I don’t know.

The reality is that many kids have to leave home. This will remain true for the rest of human existence. Some families are too toxic and the kids who escape them are making the best choice they can. Our bureaucratic labor laws, however, have closed the escape portals for these kids. Legal work is almost impossible to find on a full-time basis and that means the teen, who must leave home, has little option but to seek illegal work. If we want to help these kids we should be giving them more options, not turning them into prisoners with arrest records.

Read the rest...

Pro Libertate: Stormtroopin'

William N. Grigg: Coming-out party for the Homeland Security State'

In March 2007, the RNC in St. Paul was designated a National Security Special Event (NSSE). Shortly thereafter, the Ramsey County Sheriff's Department began hiring and deploying infiltrators. According to Sheriff Bob Fletcher, his department, working through the local Joint Terrorism Task Force, was involved in a nation-wide effort to track down and keep suspected protesters under surveillance.

Ramsey County's Special Investigations Unit has an interesting relationship with the federal government. It was the chief local federal subcontractor for the crack-down on dissent during the RNC. But it was also being investigated by the FBI for corruption. And in one of those bits of historical symmetry one would find implausible in a novel, those two developments intersected in the days immediately prior to the RNC. More...