The War on Guns: Kasich's Problem

The War on Guns: Kasich's Problem

Pro Libertate: Sheriff Glenn Palmer and the "Scouring of the Shire"

Pro Libertate: Sheriff Glenn Palmer and the "Scouring of the Shire"

Ham-Handed Arrest at Pediatric Clinic Highlights Official War on the Powerless

h/t Wirecuter

Forget that "war on cops." Unaffordable penalties, incompetent courts, and heavy-handed tactics are all evidence of an official assault on regular Americans.

 The cops raided my wife's pediatric practice looking for a fugitive, last week.

Actually, let's put the word "fugitive" in quotes. The story is an eye-opening tale in itself. It's also a glimpse at how business-as-usual in courts and cop shops around the country screws with people's lives and alienates the public from those who are allegedly their protectors.
My wife, Dr. Wendy Tuccille, was on her way to the office in Cottonwood, Arizona, when her phone rang. Frantic staff called to tell her that the clinic's parking lot was full of cops, there to arrest one of her employees, C.H. (it's a small town so we'll stick with her initials), on an outstanding warrant.

When my wife arrived she found a gaggle of cops—12 to 15 she told me, some in battle jammies—in plain view at the rear corner of the building. The parking lot was full of police vehicles, in sight of families and children arriving to be seen and treated.
"Who's in charge here?" she asked, demanding that they move the Fallujah reenactment out of view.
"We were already in the process of moving the vehicles at this time," Cottonwood Detective Sergeant Tod Moore insisted in a statement to me. "It should be noted only 1 marked police unit was in the main parking lot area of the business." (The clinic's staff dispute that point.) Moore also claimed that only 10 officers were present. They included three detectives dressed in civilian clothes—and tactical vests—who arrived to initiate the arrest, joined by seven additional officers, including SWAT members, who transported another suspect with them on the trip to deliver the arrest warrant that the detectives hadn't brought along.
C.H.'s crime? It was an eight-year-old "amended charge of 28-1381A1 DUI to the Slightest Degree," according to Court Clerk and Associate Magistrate Anna M. Kirton. Kirton signed C.H.'s release order after my wife paid $1,300 to spare her employee 26 days in jail. More accurately, C.H. was arrested for making only partial payment of the fines and fees she'd been assessed, and for missing a court appointment that she never knew about.
"I was young and stupid," C.H. told me about the day in 2008 when her 21-year-old self was pulled over for a broken license plate light. She and her friends had open beer bottles in the car, and a marijuana pipe that C.H. claims wasn't hers, but which ended up in her purse. The original arrest, then, was for open containers and "drug paraphernalia," which was pled down to an even lesser charge.
After a night in jail, C.H. went to court, only to discover that there was no record of her arrest or charge to face, so she was sent home.
Years later, she was pulled over again and arrested on the original charge after the court got its paperwork in order. As Kirton told me, "On January 19, 2011, the Defendant entered into a plea with the State. She plead guilty to an amended charge of 28-1381A1 DUI to the Slightest Degree, (13-3415A was dismissed per the plea).  She was sentenced to the mandatory minimum sentence required by law in the State of Arizona. Part of this sentence included fines and fees totaling $2005.00."
Actually, that was all of the sentence—provided she made her payments.
That's where things get a bit fuzzy. C.H. tells me she thought she paid in full. The court says otherwise. C.H. got married at that time, so things may have fallen through the cracks in the confusion. Court records show an official notice to C.H. returned because of a bad address on September 24, 2012 and a failure to appear recorded against her the next day. A warrant for her arrest was issued a week later.
The "bad address" in the court files is C.H.'s mother's house. It was the first place the police looked for her last week, so they have it accurately recorded somewhere as the place to find her. That house stopped being her official mailing address sometime last year, but it remains a convenient place to contact her—it was her mom who told police about C.H.'s job.
For whatever reason, the court notice of a command appearance never reached C.H., she remained unaware that the county thought she still owed $1,300, and last week a small army showed up to collect.
For all of its drama, the arrest was nothing special, in itself—just part of a regular bureaucratic spring cleaning. In response to my (very pointed) query, Detective Sergeant Moore wrote, "a Verde Valley Wide Warrant Sweep was conducted by members of the Cottonwood Police Department to include SWAT Members, Yavapai County Sheriff's Office, PANT [Partners Against Narcotics Trafficking], GIITEM [Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission], Camp Verde Marshall's Office, Clarkdale Police Department, US Marshall's Office and HSI [Homeland Security Investigations]. The purpose of this sweep was to try and reduce the large number of outstanding warrants currently held by the numerous agencies listed."
But why the small army? (Neither the U.S.Marshals Service nor Homeland Security responded to queries by press time.)
"The teams were tasked to apprehend people who had a variety [of] offenses," Cottonwood Patrol Division Commander Jody Makuch said in an email. "While we cannot predict the behavior of the people who fail to meet their obligations, we do have to be prepared for a worst case scenario to protect the public and the officers."
They had a quota to meet, so they went with one-size-fits-all.


Read the rest here

The War on Guns: No Justice, No Peace?

The War on Guns: No Justice, No Peace?



 

The War on Guns: Inquiries About Mike

The War on Guns: Inquiries About Mike

Europe Courting Godfather Erdogan

 Some key excerpts..

• Erdogan has boasted that he is proud of boldly blackmailing EU leaders into paying him protection money.
• Erdogan's threats were almost criminally sinister: "... the EU will be confronted with more than a dead boy on the shores of Turkey. There will be 10,000 or 15,000. How will you deal with that?"
• According to the agreement, 80 million Turkish citizens will have visa-free access to the European Union.
• The nightmare scenario for a desperate EU is that no matter how much it bows to extortionist demands from Turkey, the migrant crisis will continue to grow. Even if Turkey closes down all migrant routes from Turkey into Europe, refugees could take new routes through North Africa or the Caucasus.
• Meanwhile, 800,000 migrants are currently on Libyan territory waiting to cross the Mediterranean, according to French Defense Minister Jean-Yves le Drian.
  
   "We can open the doors to Greece and Bulgaria anytime and we can put the refugees on buses ... So how will you deal with refugees if you don't get a deal? Kill the refugees?" This was the question Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in true mafia style, asked European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on November 16, 2015 in a closed meeting in Antalya, Turkey, where the three met after the G20 summit."
  
  

 "Contrary to the views of the EU and the Obama Administration, Erdogan is not a democrat, and never has been. He has dedicated his career to transforming secular, ‎European-oriented Turkey into an Islamist state, and has repeatedly rejected Western attempts to portray his rule as an example of "moderate Islam." He ‎says that such a concept is "ugly and offensive; there is no moderate Islam. Islam is Islam."

Read the rest @ The Gatestone Institute here

Court ruling allows police to stop and question anyone within 100 miles of border

image credit: ACLU

The United States Border Patrol operates 71 traffic checkpoints, including 33 permanent traffic checkpoints, near the southern border of the United States. Also, there are a number of Border Patrol checkpoints in the northern border states (New York or Maine), within 100 miles from the Canadian border. Close to 200 million Americans live within the 100-mile interior checkpoint zone.

Things are about to get much worse, expect to see more checkpoints across the U.S. after the recent Rynearson v. The U.S. ruling.

Below are two excerpts taken from page 5 of the Appeals Court ruling...

"Border patrol agents at interior checkpoints may stop a vehicle, refer it to a secondary inspection area, request production of documents from the vehicle’s occupants, and question the occupants about their citizenship. The purpose of the stop is limited to ascertaining the occupants’ citizenship status." 

“The permissible duration of an immigrant checkpoint stop is therefore the time reasonably necessary to determine the citizenship status of the persons stopped.”

Court allows police to stop and question anyone without suspicion of any wrongdoing.

"In contrast, the Supreme Court has granted agents at immigration checkpoints the right to stop and question a vehicle’s occupants regarding their citizenship without reasonable suspicion of any wrongdoing. That grant of authority is readily distinguishable from the authority granted by Terry."

The Supreme Court has concluded that “all that is required of the vehicle’s occupants is a response to a brief question or two and possibly the production of a document evidencing a right to be in the United States.”

New Hampshire Senate Bill 382 will let DHS/CBP arrest motorists.

For purposes of this section, “a certified federal law enforcement officer” means a federal law enforcement officer who:

"Is employed as a law enforcement officer of the federal government as a specialagent or border patrol agent of the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection."

Fyi, many northern states already allow DHS/CBP to arrest motorists...

"Other states that share a border with Canada already have legislation in place that is similar to SB382, Senator Jeff Woodburn said."

In 2010, Richard Rynearson started recording his interactions with the CBP because he was tired of being hassled at checkpoints. CBP/DHS asked Rynearson for his ID which he provided, but he declined to roll down his window all the way and declined to get out of his car He repeatedly asked if he was free to go and, if not, why he was being detained. Which further angered the CBP agents, see the video below.

Rynearson's Border Patrol Incident

This is only Part 1 of Rynearson's CBP incident.

Court says, refusing to answer a cops unlawful questions is "unorthodox."

"The facts indicate that Rynearson generally asserted his right against unlawful searches and seizures while the agents had difficulty determining how to respond to his unorthodox tactics."

This is truly disturbing, the Appeals Court claimed his tactics were unorthodox because he asserted his rights!

Court says, standing up for ones Constitutional rights is not clearly established!

"We have not discovered nor been shown any authority supporting Rynearson’s claim that the constitutional rights he chose to stand on were clearly established. Accordingly, we conclude that these governmental officials, at worst, made reasonable but mistaken judgments when presented with an unusually uncooperative person, unusual at least in the facts described in any of the caselaw."

In other words, the DOJ thinks that everyone should answer a cops unlawful questions.

A lone judge, Jennifer Walker dissented...

Moreover, while he provided the information needed to prove his citizenship, Rynearson explained several times that he would not indulge the officers’ commands when he thought that they exceeded the limited scope of the immigration checkpoint inquiry. Standing on one’s rights is not an “unorthodox tactic.” It is a venerable American tradition.

"Firm assertions of one’s rights are far from “unorthodox” in a Republic that insists constitutional rights are worth insisting upon and that tasks the courts with protecting those rights Walker said."

What can Americans expect when they're pulled over by police in the future?

"Border Patrol agents routinely ignore or misunderstand the limits of their legal authority in the course of individual stops, resulting in violations of the constitutional rights of innocent people."

"Since 2010, 46 people have been killed by border agents by use-of-force and coercion. Many more have been brutally beaten. No CBP agent has been held accountable since January 2010, even in some of the most egregious cases."

For more info. about DHS/Police abuse click, here, here & here.

This ruling gives cops free reign to conduct warrantless searches of anyone's vehicle and tells Americans they're expected to comply with police and ignore our Constitution!

Does anyone still think America is the land of the free?
source

LAPD warns citizens that police can’t protect them during an emergency

Are you prepared to defend yourself?
In another sign of growing unease among law enforcement and other government-related authorities, that in times of trouble the civil society is liable to break down completely, Los Angeles police officers recently told a news team at a local CBS affiliate that in the event of an “emergency” – code for societal breakdown – there won’t be enough officers to protect everyone and everything.

“The citizens need to know they need to be able to protect themselves because if they call 911, we can’t guarantee we’re going to get there in time to help you,” Police Protective League President, Jamie McBride told the local network.

Too few patrol cars in West Los Angeles

He also said that on a recent morning, between 5:30 and 10am, there were only three patrol cars (six officers) assigned to the West LA Division – to protect more than 200,000 people in a 65-mile square radius.
“West Los Angeles, at the minimum, should have seven patrol units, two-man units working,” McBride said.
That is still only 14 cops for a couple hundred thousand people – hardly a match for a mob.
That serious lack of police presence is not a comfort to most Los Angelenos who are aware of just how dire the situation is, and that includes West LA resident David Doucette, who has two small boys at home.
“I want to make sure they’re going to show up not 45 minutes later but within 10 minutes,” Doucette told the affiliate, adding that while he routinely sees police patrolling the area, he would not mind seeing more of them.
“I do see a lot of the cruisers around, see a lot of the SUVs around. So there’s definitely a presence on the west side,” he said.
But apparently at times anyway, that presence may be a mile wide and an inch deep – a dangerous façade that would be exposed in moments should something major occur (like maybe one of those famous California earthquakes).
As expected, LAPD officials would not respond on camera, but one police official – Capt. Andrew Neiman – said that the patrol figures cited by the Police Protective League were not right.

Need for backup patrol

The liaison went on to note that crime fighting units including the Metro division, domestic violence division and community-based policing, all have added personnel to back up patrol units should they need assistance.
But the police union countered that the LAPD should put responding to citizens in need atop their list, and that enough overtime should be allocated to cover the costs of boosting minimum staffing levels in case of an emergency.

Citizens should start protecting themselves

What, however, will citizens do in the meantime? California has some of the toughest gun control laws in the country, so arming up – while still possible – isn’t an option for everyone.
That said, police around the country who have come to the realization that they simply cannot be everywhere at once – and would be quickly overwhelmed in a societal collapse-type of scenario, have been advising the citizens they serve to do more to protect themselves.

Outspoken among them is Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke who, in a 2013 radio ad anti-gun advocates called “controversial,” advised local residents to buy firearms because “calling 911” might not be good enough.
In the ad, Clarke told residents that personal protection and safety was no longer a spectator sport: “I need you in the game.”
“With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option,” Clarke said.
“You could beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back.”
Other county sheriffs and chiefs of police have advised residents similarly. Ulster County, New York, Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum, in the wake of the jihadi attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., wrote on his Facebook page, “In light of recent events that have occurred in the United States and around the world I want to encourage citizens of Ulster County who are licensed to carry a firearm to PLEASE DO SO.”
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Sparks31 @ Casa Giardino di REDACTED: Reality

Sparks31 @ Casa Giardino di REDACTED: Reality: This is an AR-15: It's a handy, accurate little carbine in .223 Remington/5.56mm NATO.  Good out to 200 yards, maybe 500 yards if you...

Idaho: Governor Otter Signs Permitless Carry Legislation!

This afternoon, March 25, 2016, Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter (R) signed Senate Bill 1389, NRA-endorsed permitless carry legislation.  On July 1, 2016, Idaho will become the eighth state to recognize a law-abiding adult’s ability to possess a concealed handgun for self-defense without government-mandated permitting and fees.

SB 1389 will positively affect law-abiding gun owners in the following ways:

• ​SB 1389 ensures that the existing and long-standing concealed weapon license (CWL) exemption applicable “outside the limits or confines of any city” only protects the rights of law-abiding individuals.
• ​SB 1389 exempts law-abiding Idahoans, who are twenty-one years of age or older, from having to obtain a CWL in order to carry a concealed handgun for self-defense within city limits.
• ​SB 1389 provides a mechanism for well-trained, law-abiding individuals who are eighteen years of age or older to obtain a CWL.

SB 1389 recognizes a law-abiding adult’s unconditional Right to Keep and Bear Arms for self-defense in the manner he or she chooses.  Self-defense situations are difficult, if not impossible, to anticipate.  Accordingly, a law-abiding adult’s right to defend themselves in such situations should not be conditioned by government-mandated time delays and taxes.

Please contact Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter and thank him for his support for your Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Your NRA-ILA would also like to thank Lt. Governor Brad Little for his vocal support of this important legislation.

Snoopers’ Charter Reveals Extent of UK Gun Owner Surveillance; Provides Warning for Americans

 Via NRA-ILA

 
It is often pointed out that UK government officials treat George Orwell’s “1984” less like the dire warning it was intended to be, and more as an instruction manual. Further evidence of this was provided this week when an astute member of the UK shooting community brought attention to an admission that UK intelligence agencies are using centralized records of UK firearm owners in their efforts to target “terrorists.”

An article featured on the blog UK Shooting News points to the initial draft of the Investigatory Powers Bill, a controversial and wide-ranging piece of government surveillance legislation derisively known in the UK as the Snoopers’ Charter. The legislation was given a second reading in Parliament on March 15.

Among the many provisions UK privacy advocates have taken issue with, the draft legislation gives the government authorization to force telecommunications companies to retain and make available an individual’s communications records for 12 months, engage in the bulk interception of private communications data, and provides loose legal thresholds for conducting surveillance. This is of significant interest to Americans, as the ACLU has pointed out that the UK’s growing surveillance state is a threat to our civil liberties as well.

Part of the legislation involves the acquisition and use of Bulk Personal Datasets, or BPDs. As described by the draft legislation document, BPDs are “sets of personal information about a large number of individuals, the majority of whom will not be of any interest to the security and intelligence agencies. The datasets are held on electronic systems for the purposes of analysis in the security and intelligence agencies.” 

To justify the use of BPD’s, the document shared the following case study:

BPD Case Study: Preventing Access to Firearms

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 and the more recent shootings in Copenhagen and Paris in 2015, highlight the risk posed from terrorists gaining access to firearms. To help manage the risk of UK based subjects of interest accessing firearms, the intelligence agencies match data about individuals assessed to have access to firearms with records of known terrorists. To achieve this, the security and intelligence agencies acquired the details of all these individuals, even though the majority will not be involved in terrorism and therefore will not be of direct intelligence interest. This allowed the matching to be undertaken at scale and pace, and more comprehensively than individual requests could ever achieve. Completing such activities enabled the intelligence agencies to manage the associated risks to the public.

While this document does not make clear the specific means by which the UK government “assessed” that an individual has access to firearms, certain avenues are available to the government given the UK’s stringent gun control regime. A separate government fact sheet on the Investigatory Powers Bill notes, “Lists of people who have a passport or a licensed firearm are good examples of a BPD – they includes a large amount of personal information, the majority of which will relate to people who are not of security or intelligence interest.” In the UK, a firearms certificate, obtained through an onerous application process, is required to own any rifle. In order to own a shotgun a prospective owner must acquire a moderately-easier-to-obtain shotgun certificate.

However, the author of the UK Shooting News piece suggests that the government’s BPD’s on those with access to firearms could go beyond certificate holders. The author notes:

All new members of Home Office approved rifle clubs have their personal details – name, address, telephone number, and so on – transmitted to the police by the club. This data transmission is a condition of clubs securing Home Office approval, which is a legal status that allows non-firearm certificate holders to handle firearms and shoot at club events.

The Home Office requires that the personal information of members of rifle clubs, even those that do not personally own firearms, are filed with the police. This is made clear in a government guidance leaflet titled, “Approval of rifle and muzzle-loading pistol clubs,” which states, “the club will inform the police of any application for membership, giving the applicant’s name and address, and of the outcome of any application.”

It’s unlikely that centralized databases for use by the intelligence services for ceaseless surveillance and unfettered data analytics experiments were what UK gun owners or most lawmakers were contemplating when the UK’s firearm licensing scheme was enacted in 1968. However, this creeping Orwellian violation of firearm owner privacy should stand as yet another example of why NRA and American gun owners guard our privacy so jealously.

NRA has continuously worked with our allies in Congress to enact statutory protections making clear that the federal government may not maintain centralized records of guns or gun owners. For instance, the landmark Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986 made clear that the government may not promulgate a rule or regulation under the Gun Control Act of 1968 that would bring about “any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions.” Similar statutory protections prohibit the federal government from using the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System to compile data on guns or gun owners. When the National Security Administration’s mass surveillance regime threatened to circumvent these protections, NRA supported a lawsuit challenging the agency’s methods.

These protections have become increasingly important in recent years, as unfortunately, the notion of targeting gun owners for additional government scrutiny isn’t relegated to the British Isles. A 2009 U.S. Department of Homeland Security “Reference Aid,” titled, “Domestic Extremism Lexicon,” warned government officials of “A rightwing extremist movement” whose “Members oppose most federal and state laws, regulations, and authority (particularly firearms laws and regulations).” Another DHS document from 2009, titled, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” noted “heightened interest in legislation for tighter firearms restrictions and returning military veterans… may be invigorating rightwing extremist activity.”

This administration’s suspicious posture towards gun owners and the federal government’s ever-increasing surveillance capabilities mean that working to ensure gun owner privacy is an important task requiring the engagement of all law-abiding gun owners. NRA will continue to work to preserve gun owner privacy, lest Americans be subjected to the demeaning and repressive tactics with which our UK counterparts are all too familiar.

Another Reason to Remove All Endangered Species Act Protection From Wolves

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - State wildlife officials said they’ve never seen anything like it: A pack of wolves killed 19 elk at a western Wyoming feeding ground and didn’t even bother to eat.
They pointed to the kill as an example of the need to let the state rather than the federal government manage wolves.

 I've been trying to tell people since the late 90's that wolves do this all the time-I've been stalked by the wolf-huggers,had my e-mail acct hacked by them,and had to get restraining orders against several of them who found my home address. 
I've seen this shit in person,many times. It's usually one elk,a cow/calf pair,or a pregnant cow- that means both cow and calf are killed and left to rot.
I've watched several of these kills for weeks-the wolves never returned,never ate even a single bite-they just killed the elk or deer,and left it there.
Most of the time scavengers ate the dead animals-hawks,crows,eagles,coyotes,foxes,saw a wolverine once eating from a wolf killed mule deer.
Point it out in comments on any website- and you get called a liar,redneck,told you just made it up because you hate wolves,been told I would be able to shoot an elk if I got off my ass and hiked more than 5 minutes from the truck-by clueless dolts who have no idea how elk are hunted in the northern Rockies.
I saw most of the wolf kills more than two days by horseback from the nearest road, where we set up our base camp-it was usually another day's hike on foot from there where I started finding wolf kills.




The Wyoming Game and Fish Department can do little to prevent such kills as long as wolves remain federally protected and not under state control, Game and Fish Regional Director John Lund said Friday.
“With the management authority, that would allow us to address isolated issues like this or in other areas where wolves are having an impact on elk herds,” Lund said.
Environmental groups that sued to restore endangered species protection for wolves in Wyoming in 2014 contend that if Game and Fish had control, wolves would be the species at risk. The groups believe Wyoming would allow wolves to be shot on sight in most of the state.
Representatives of Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council, two of the groups that sued, didn’t return messages Friday

Here's a prime example of the type of people who make up these animal "rights" groups... 
" Only an uncivilized, marginally developed genitalia, morally, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially deficient person, with criminal and sadistic tendencies, who prays on innocence and the voiceless, would consider beating his bodies to the punch by such senseless murder. Obviously, he could not beat his bodies to the punch by maybe finding a cure for Cancer, or feeding the hungry or, helping the needy because he just does not have what it takes to be a man. Shame on him and shame on all who take advantage of their privilege of being part of the mother nature, by killing, raping and maiming animals. And of course, back to the under developed genitalia and having no guts, they can't do it with bare hands and they resort to high power riffles. These are the same people that if they could get away with raping the children and their mothers and even fathers, they would. I bet this Robert BOY has molested a child sometime in his life!"

vitriol from animal "rights" whackos


The killing happened Tuesday night or early Wednesday at McNeel feedground near Bondurant, one of 22 western Wyoming feedgrounds where state wildlife managers put out grass and alfalfa hay to help elk survive the winter. Seventeen of the elk killed were calves born last year.
Wolves eat a lot of large prey, averaging as many as 22 ungulates - elk, antelope, deer or moose - a year. And wolves often kill without eating their prey. But Game and Fish has never documented wolves killing so many elk without eating the animals, Lund said.
“It’s extremely rare in that severity,” he said.
Game and Fish says wolves have killed as many as 75 elk at the McNeel feedground this winter - so many that agency division chief Brian Nesvik wrote to a top federal wolf management official on Feb. 1 asking what could be done.
The lawsuit by environmental groups doesn’t permit many options, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regional wolf coordinator Mike Jimenez wrote back.
“Even if we had authority to move wolves, it is likely that translocated wolves would return to the area within a short time period,” he wrote.
One western Wyoming hunting guide expressed anguish that wolves are taking such a toll on game after being reintroduced to the Yellowstone region in the mid-1990s.
source

NRA Rewrites Fairy Tales, Puts Guns in the Hands of Classic Characters

 They're pissing off the Brady bunch,so at least  the NRA is doing something right...

The National Rifle Association has added a new twist to classic fairy tales: arming protagonists with guns.

NRA Family, the group's family-oriented website, has so far published updates to two classic tales, the most recent one last week: "Hansel and Gretel (Have Guns).” The pro-gun group said the revised stories show what would have happened if those fairy tale characters had weapons.

But the revisionist take on some of well-known children's favorites, which appear online, are drawing complaints from gun-control advocacy groups that call the altered tales a disturbingly depraved marketing campaign.

"The NRA continues to stoop to new lows in the hopes of shoving guns into America's youngest hands," Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said today. "It must now advertise deadly weapons to kids by perverting childhood classics with no regard whatsoever for the real life carnage happening every day. To be frank, it's pathetic." 

 Dan,you are clueless, you are misinformed,you are a hoplophobe,and you have no freakin clue what the NRA actually does. Hey Dan-who teaches gun safety nation wide? 

It sure as hell ain't the Brady bunch-if you're all so damn worried about gun deaths,and "gun violence"-both of which are at 40+ year LOWS,by the way-despite the astronomical increase in firearms purchased-many of which were/are purchased by first time gun owners-then why doesn't the Brady bunch offer gun safety classes?

The NRA said the stories, written by Amelia Hamilton, whom the NRA calls a “conservative blogger” and “lifelong writer and patriot,” are part of an effort to promote responsible firearm use by children. The accident prevention program it oversees has helped teach more than 28 million kids about how to stay safe if they find a gun, according to the NRA's website.

"Most of us probably grew up having fairy tales read to us as we drifted off to sleep,” the NRA said in an editor’s note announcing the series earlier this year. “But how many times have you thought back and realized just how, well, grim some of them are?"

The NRA released a new version of the Brothers Grimm "Hansel and Gretel" last week after publishing an update to "Little Red Riding Hood" in January.

At no point in either story do the protagonists fire their weapons at the fictional villains, but guns are portrayed as key to keeping them safe.

In the NRA's version of "Hansel and Gretel," the pair are shown hunting for deer and other wildlife when they discover an evil witch's house. They then proceed to free a pair of boys held captive by her, guns at the ready.

"The hinges gave a groan and the sound of the witch's snoring stopped," one passage reads. "Gretel got her rifle ready, but lowered it again when the snoring resumed."

A witch kidnaps the siblings in the original version, though they ultimately flee and live happily ever after, with no guns in sight.

An unarmed young girl and her grandmother similarly escape the belly of the Big Bad Wolf in the Brothers Grimm version of "Little Red Riding Hood.”

In the update to "Little Red Riding Hood," however, there is a series of gun-toting events. One passage gives the showdown with the Big Bad Wolf a new twist.

"Those big ears heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun's safety being clicked off," the NRA version reads. "Those big eyes looked down and saw that grandma had a scattergun aimed right at him."

Grandma is able to hold the wolf at gunpoint while Little Red Riding Hood ties up the beast before a huntsman takes away the animal.

"As they slowly began to feel calm, Red got her grandmother chicken soup and a cup of tea," according to the NRA tale. "They sat in companionable silence, happy in the security that comes with knowing they could defend themselves."

source 

Unanimous pro-Second-Amendment stun gun decision from the Supreme Court

Via The Volokh Conspiracy

 By Eugene Volokh


In Commonwealth v. Caetano, the Massachusetts high court upheld Massachusetts’ total ban on stun gun possession. Yesterday’s Caetano v. Massachusetts decision from the Supreme Court reversed that Massachusetts decision and sent the case back to the Massachusetts court for further review (presumably to consider, for instance, whether the ban may still be justified by some sufficiently important government interest):

The Court has held that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,” and that this “Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States.” In this case, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Massachusetts law prohibiting the possession of stun guns after examining “whether a stun gun is the type of weapon contemplated by Congress in 1789 as being protected by the Second Amendment.”
The court offered three explanations to support its holding that the Second Amendment does not extend to stun guns. First, the court explained that stun guns are not protected because they “were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment.” This is inconsistent with D.C. v. Heller‘s clear statement that the Second Amendment “extends … to … arms … that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”
The court next asked whether stun guns are “dangerous per se at common law and unusual,” in an attempt to apply one “important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms,” Heller; see ibid. (referring to “the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’”). In so doing, the court concluded that stun guns are “unusual” because they are “a thoroughly modern invention.” By equating “unusual” with “in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment,” the court’s second explanation is the same as the first; it is inconsistent with Heller for the same reason.
Finally, the court used “a contemporary lens” and found “nothing in the record to suggest that [stun guns] are readily adaptable to use in the military.” But Heller rejected the proposition “that only those weapons useful in warfare are protected.”
For these three reasons, the explanation the Massachusetts court offered for upholding the law contradicts this Court’s precedent. Consequently, the petition for a writ of certiorari and the motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis are granted. The judgment of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

A few thoughts (note that I co-filed an friend-of-the-court brief supporting review in this case):
1. This is a unanimous decision, unlike the court’s earlier Second Amendment cases — D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago — which were 5-4. I doubt that Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, who were in the dissent in McDonald, are reconciled to those cases; I suspect they would be willing to overrule them if they had five votes to do so. But in this case, they were willing to accept them as given.
2. It was also a decision handed down without oral argument and without full briefing on the merits. (The parties filed a petition for certiorari, a brief in opposition, and a reply brief, but those formally dealt just with the question whether the court should hear the case.) The court thus seemed to view this as a very easy case.
3. The summary reversal also helps explain why the justices reversed only the Massachusetts high court’s conclusion that stun guns were definitionally excluded from Second Amendment protection: Whether the stun gun ban may still be justified is a more complicated question, which many justices may hesitate to resolve without oral argument and full briefing; and those justices might have thought that there’s no need to devote such resources to the case now, since the matter might go away if the Massachusetts high court on remand holds in Caetano’s favor.
4. Caetano’s petition and our amicus brief argued that there was a split between the reasoning of this decision and the Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision in State v. DeCiccio (which held that the Second Amendment protects dirks and police batons), as well as between this decision and the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision in State v. Yanna, which struck down the Michigan stun gun ban. But the majority mentioned neither case, and Justice Samuel Alito’s concurrence in the judgment mentioned only Yanna, and that just in passing. The justices thus didn’t seem interested in the presence of this sort of disagreement among lower courts, though the presence of such a disagreement is often seen as a very important factor in the Supreme Court’s deciding whether to grant review. The justices just seemed to think the reasoning of the decision was plainly wrong, and that was reason enough to reverse — something the justices very rarely do (at least setting aside cases where a state government lost below).

Read the rest  here

***Feeding Your Tribe Class II+III Details ***

Class II+III

 This is just a rough outline of what will be covered...

Class I covered the basics and sanitation. Class II will be almost entirely focused on grid down cooking.
Almost all cooking will be done over an open fire,we may use some charcoal for the “practice” cooking session,as it’s much easier to regulate temperature of a charcoal fire.
Most of what we cook will feature the big 3 of long term food storage-beans,rice and pasta.
We’ll make some desserts using dehydrated fruits,and some soups/stews using dehydrated veggies,some chili using dried beans and canned tomato product.
We’ll do some baking over an open fire,with and without using a dutch oven.
We’ll make bisquits and cornbread over the fire,in cast iron skillets,along with some flour and some corn tortillas from scratch.
I will provide one or a couple of smokers,and we’ll smoke a few different meats,at least one kind of fish.
Class III
To be able to cover all the material,it would be easiest,and best to do class II and class III on a Sat and Sunday.
Class III will include finding and filtering safe drinking/cooking water,making a smoker from materials available in the field,how to make a fish trap,how to make a trotline,how to filet fish,discussion on field dressing/butchering wild game,and methods of preserving the meat and fish.
We’ll cook meats and fish over a fire without using a grill of any kind-or foil.
Since people could run into situations where they have nothing except what’s carried in their packs-we’ll cook using only canteen cups and mess kits-(except I’m bringing a coffee pot-that’s a requirement). You can carry a coffee pot on the outside of your pack,I’ve done it a bunch of times on hunting trips. In any real situation,no I would not take a coffee pot.

I’ll go over various foods that can be carried in a pack-other than MRE’s/Mountain House-that will provide enough calories and nutrition. I’ve carried 10 days worth of food in a pack in the northern Rockies on elk hunts-not heavy,not hard to do.
This would be done about an hour from where class I was held-on a fairly large tract of undeveloped private property-closest town is…

Learn the procedures and techniques to safely feed your tribe  under    any conditions-and provide proper nutrition needed,as people will be under stress and healthy,great tasting food not only boosts morale,it helps your tribe fight off diseases,and keeps everyone in top physical and   mental shape.
You can send one member of your tribe to take the course,and they can relay the information to the rest of your group.Your team,tribe,group,clan whatever you call them can’t survive for long eating MRE’s,beans and rice-learn how to keep everyone well fed, good food keeps everyone mentally and physically healthy,fewer people will succumb to colds,flu and other diseases that will run rampant in any long term grid down scenario.
One of the things that people often do not consider important is feeding your tribe,group,clan,team ,etc. as a group.
Cooking for large groups of people is not like having a backyard BBQ,or a holiday meal at your aunt Millie’s house.
There’s procedures you have to follow-just like anything else,there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things.
Do things the wrong way,and everyone you just fed will be grabbing the TP and running to the nearest toilet-or to the woods for the next 24-48hours.
I spent over 20 years as a professional chef,I was the executive chef at private country clubs and first class hotels.
I also cooked for an outfitter on backcountry elk hunts,cooking for the hunters, the guides,and the rest of the staff way back in the mountains,it was usually a 2 day horseback ride to get to camp.
I spent a couple years working fishing boats out of Wanchese N.C. and working for the fish companies on the docks unloading boats and cutting fish.
I am offering a series of 3 classes on cooking for large groups of people,both under “normal” conditions,and in SHTF
events with no power,and no natural gas to operate stoves and ovens.
I’ve taught cooking classes in the past-my boss at the time volunteered me to teach the class,at the request of the hotel’s general manager.
I’ m going to use the same methods I used back then,except rather than a 3 day series of classes,I’m going to condense the three days of classes into a one day class.
I will do a series of three classes,each one building on the previous class material,so the classes have to be taken in order,you have to have completed the first class to be able to take the second class an so on.
If there is interest in more advanced classes-I will offer those as well.
Here’s the description of what I will cover in the first class…
Cooking For Large Groups
Class #1-The Basics
This class will be required before taking subsequent classes.
As of now,I have 3 classes that I plan to offer,with each building on the previous class.
The classes will be one day classes that are the condensed version of 3 day course.
Students will receive quite a large amount of info via e-mail,which includes a series of videos that will be sent to each student as an e-mail attachment. There will also be some additional videos online.
*I’m not satisfied with the quality of the videos I’ve made so far,working on getting a better tripod for the camera,and better lighting for the room I’m using to make the videos. If I can not get the video quality to where I’m satisfied with it,I’ll go over that material via e-mails to those taking the classes.
There will also be printed materials distributed to each student on the day of the class that will include material that we will not have the time to cover during class,but that I feel is important for people to know.
There will be a number of recipes included that are my own personal recipes from my years of running kitchens.
I will cover cooking under “normal”conditions,as well as under grid down conditions,to include how to set up a field kitchen.
There will be a “hands on” part of the class,and students will cook our lunch and dinner for the day.
The food is included in class price,as are all the online,e-mail,and printed materials,and a thermometer for each student,as cooking,holding and serving temperatures are critical to insuring a safe meal.
I will provide beverages-coffee,tea,sodas.
Class sizes will be limited to 16 people,any more than that,and the kitchen I have the use of is simply not big enough.
Cost for the class is $125.00.
I just can not make it any lower,and that is a more than fair price for the amount of material,and instruction I will provide. I’ll have 60+ hours into putting together the material for the class,not counting the videos-so this first class is getting a great deal!
A deposit on class fees must be paid no later than 2 weeks prior to class,unless you have worked out a barter deal with me.(see below)
Deposit is $75.00,the remainder is due no later than 3 days before the class,so I know how much food to buy for the class.
I am also willing to barter-I’ll accept silver bars or coins at the Kitco spot silver price day of class,muzzleloding stuff I’l accept in trade-unopened plastic bottles of Triple7 powder,either FFG or FFFG, 240 grain Hornady XTP bullets in .44 or .45 caliber,230 grain Hornady lead roundnosed bullets in .45 caliber-(I’vegot more than enough sabots),quality hunting or tactical kives,fishing gear,20”crossbow bolts,31” aluminun arrow shafts suitable for a 55-70# draw compound bow with a mild cam, NAP 125 grain broadheads.
I can’t accept barter items from everyone taking the class,so if you want to barter-contact me ASAP.
Contact me via e-mail-(gamegetterII@yahoo.com)-and we can most likely work something out.
Anyone planning on taking all 3 classes can also contact me via e-mail,and I’ll knock something off of the total cost for you.
I spent a bit over 20 years as the executive chef, running the kitchens in mostly hotels and private country clubs in Ohio,with some additional experience cooking for an outfitter on backcountry elk hunts in Montana and Colorado,and on fishing boats based out of Wanchese N.C.
There may be another guy with similar experience assisting me in teaching the class-he will be there if he can,depends on what’s going on that day at the restaurant he works at.
If there is enough interest,I can offer more advanced classes after the first three.
As of now,I plan to offer the classes in order,then start over and do the same again.
Material to be covered in Class #1-The Basics
The following is a rough outline of what I will teach in Class #1
Hand washing and the right soaps to use.
Proper sanitation/disinfecting of pots,pans,utensils,kitchen equipment and surfaces.
Proper pot,pan,utensil wash/rinse/sanitization.
Knife sharpening and the correct way to use a chef’s or cooks knife,and other kitchen knives.
The various cooking methods-broil, bake,braise,saute,etc.
Common kitchen weights and measures,use of each.
Basic food prep of vegetables used in cooking.
Intro to the various stocks,soups and sauces.
Mirepoix
Roux and other binding agents.
Fats and oils used in cooking.
Cooking,holding and serving foods safely.
Cuts of meats and what each is best used for.
Cooking rice and pastas.
Cooking beans.
Cooking vegetables and potatoes.
Intro to baking breads,bisquits,cornbreads.
Roasting meats and poultry.
Cooking fish and seafood.
Intro into baking cakes,pies,brownies,cookies,etc.
Proper food storage methods
Meal planning and prep.
I’ll go over the various ways to set up a field kitchen,and do all of the above in a grid-down scenario.
Class #2 will be focused on grid down cooking,and will involve planning meals,doing the prep work,cooking meals over a fire,how to make the fire,and set up your “kitchen” near the fire,and all the food safety during prep,cooking,holding at the right temperature,and serving the meals.
I’ll announce class #2 about 6 weeks prior to the date of the class.
Classes will be held in Sagamore Hills Ohio
Class #1 the basics,was held on Saturday March 12th at 9am-5pm

Anyone interested,please contact me via
gamegetterII@yahoo.com
Or-
starvinlarry@gmail.com
Read.
Learn.
Train.
Do more PT!

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Youmerica

Youmerica

November 2016 Depends on One Man. It Is Not Trump.

h/t Wirecutter

James Comey.

Ring a bell?
He is the head of the FBI. We read on the FBI’s site:

On September 4, 2013, James B. Comey was sworn in as the seventh Director of the FBI.A Yonkers, New York native, James Comey graduated from the College of William & Mary and the University of Chicago Law School. Following law school, Comey served as an assistant United States attorney for both the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of Virginia. Comey returned to New York to become the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. In 2003, he became the deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Comey left DOJ in 2005 to serve as general counsel and senior vice president at defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Five years later, he joined Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based investment fund, as its general counsel.

He knows how the Department of Justice works.
If he decides that Hillary Clinton committed acts that endangered the security of the United States, he can submit this evidence to the Attorney General.
This places a very hot potato in Loretta Lynch’s lap. She will drop it into President Obama’s lap within 24 hours.
If Obama does nothing, Comey waits 30 days. Then he calls a press conference.
Goodbye, Hillary. Hello . . .
This depends on when he does this.
If he does it before the Democrats’ convention, Sanders will win the nomination. If he does it after the convention, the Republican will win the election. That probably means Trump.
Comey knows how the political game is played. He knows that, as of today, he holds all the cards. He is not holding aces over eights. He is holding four aces.
All he needs to do is say nothing for 30 days after he hands the file to Lynch — no threats. Just silence.
If she swears him to secrecy, he can assure her that he will stay silent. Then he breaks his word. After all, it’s government.
I assume that he will play ball with Lynch. He sounds like an establishment man to me. Wikipedia reports: “Comey is a registered Republican who donated to U.S. Senator John McCain’s campaign in the 2008 presidential election and to Governor Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2012 presidential election.” He does not sound like a Trump supporter. But what if he thinks she is guilty? What if he faces a cover-up of silence? He is a lawyer. If he thinks Obama is stiffing the FBI for political reasons, he may decide to do what bureaucrats do: defend his agency’s turf.
What if he waits until December, after she is elected, but before she takes the oath of office? That would create the greatest foul-up in American political history.
She would have zero legitimacy from that time forward. She would reject all calls for her to testify. She would claim executive privilege.
Does the word “Watergate” ring a bell?
He has leverage on a scale that no bureaucrat ever has. Hoover had leverage, but not on this scale. The issue is public: the security of her emails. Comey risks nothing if he goes public after about a 30-day delay.
After the press conference, if Obama fires him, Hillary is toast. So is Obama’s legacy.
If Obama tells Lynch to stall until January 20, Clinton II’s presidency is toast. Obama probably escapes intact.
If Comey deep-sixes the findings, the political dance goes on.
Will he deep-six it? I don’t know. It depends on his sense of justice.
From Gary North’s site  here

Elites Link Anti-Government Thought to Mental Illness, Lay Groundwork for Incarceration

Conclusion: This attack on dissent is serious. Educate your family and friends about what’s going on. Do not be fooled by their propaganda, but beware of the risks of speaking out too freely.

Believe in conspiracy theories? You’re probably a narcissist: People who doubt the moon landings are more likely to be selfish and attention-seeking … Psychologists from the University of Kent carried out three online studies … -UK Daily Mail

We are seeing an increasing number of academic studies analyzing the psychology behind “conspiracy theorists” and those who question government propaganda. The idea being that people who don’t trust government may be mentally ill.
These analyses are published in prominent publications in the UK and are building a “scientific” literature revolving psychological dysfunction and “conspiracy theory.”
More:

Do you think the moon-landings were faked, vaccines are a plot for mind control, or that shadowy government agencies are keeping alien technology locked up in hidden bunkers?
If so, chances are you’re a narcissist with low self-esteem, according to psychologists. In the internet age conspiracy theories can incubate in quiet corners of the web, but it may be psychological predispositions of believers which keep them alive, rather than cold hard facts.

The article goes on to explain that researchers at the University of Kent have used online studies  from hundreds of people to generate the study’s conclusions.
The findings appeared in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science with the suggestion that those who adopt conspiracy theories have “outwardly inflated self-confidence” but may be “overcompensating for a lack of belief in themselves.”
The article mentions a previous study conducted by Oxford’s Dr. David Robert Grimes.
From what we’ve written on this study:

Grimes had the idea that mathematics could prove or disprove certain conspiracy theories. A physicist, he “developed a mathematical equation to derive the truth of conspiracy theories,” according to the Christian Science Monitor …
Grimes calculated that the moon landing and climate change conspiracies “would require about 400,000 secret-keepers each, the unsafe vaccination conspiracy would involve 22,000 people, and the cancer cure conspiracy would involve over 710,000 people.”  Even with the utmost secrecy, Grimes reports, his equations show within four years the conspiracies would be exposed nonetheless.

At the time, we commented on Grimes’s apparent “earnestness” in struggling to “understand how people can even engage in conspiratorial thinking to begin with.” We made this comment in relationship to yet a third article on the psychology of conspiracy.
This commentary appeared in the Guardian and, as we pointed out, “argued against conspiratorial thinking based on a new book, Suspicious Minds … written by Rob Brotherton.”

Basically, the idea is that people are naturally prone to conspiracy theories because of the way their brains have evolved. “Identifying patterns and being sensitive to possible threats,” the article explains, “is what has helped us survive in a world where nature often is out to get you.”
Brotherton explains in the article that he decided that the best way to present his thesis was to avoid confronting conspiracy theories head on. Instead, he wanted to explain how people adopted such theories for psychological reasons.
“I wanted to take a different approach, to sidestep the whole issue of whether the theories are true or false and come at it from the perspective of psychology. The intentionality bias, the proportionality bias, confirmation bias. We have these quirks built into our minds that can lead us to believe weird things without realising that’s why we believe them.”

So here we have three explanations of conspiracy theories presented by major publications in less than three month’s time. And, who knows, perhaps there were more.
In the conclusion to our Grimes’ analysis, we noted that: “It looks as if a more powerful and disciplined program may be underway. Something to ponder along with a further moderation of certain public declarations.”
By “public declarations” we meant those of individuals prone to mentioning conspiracy theories in non-appropriate contexts. As it turns out, we anticipated the current news cycle only by a couple of months.
Just this week, in fact, Attorney General Loretta Lynch attended a Senate Judiciary Hearing and acknowledged discussions at the Department of Justice of taking civil action against “climate change deniers.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) questioned her on the issue and drew comparisons between such deniers and the tobacco industry that claimed for decades that the tobacco was not proven to cause ill health.
The Clinton administration eventually brought a successful civil suit against Big Tobacco. And Whitehouse suggested that civil or criminal charges might be brought against “anti-warmists.”
The forces of intolerance are gathering in the US, just as overseas.
We have urged in the past that people pay close attention to these growing trends. By turning statements of opinion into a psychological condition they are trying to discredit anyone who speaks out against the government.
In the Soviet Union, people who spoke out against government policies were often placed in mental asylums. At the time, concerned citizens in the West protested such incarcerations as barbaric abuses. Yet now, if our supposition is correct, these practices are about to expand in the West as well.
Conclusion: This attack on dissent is serious. Educate your family and friends about what’s going on. Do not be fooled by their propaganda, but beware of the risks of speaking out too freely.

source

Accepted Recommendations of the United Nations by the Current Obama Administration

Accepted Recommendations of the United Nations by the Current Obama Administration

America’s Gestapo: The FBI’s Reign of Terror

 Via John Whitehead @ The Rutherford Institute

“We want no Gestapo or secret police. The FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail. J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him.”—President Harry S. Truman

“Don’t Be a Puppet” is the message the FBI is sending young Americans.
As part of the government’s so-called ongoing war on terror, the nation’s de facto secret police force is now recruiting students and teachers to spy on each other and report anyone who appears to have the potential to be “anti-government” or “extremist.”
Using the terms “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably, the government continues to add to its growing list of characteristics that could distinguish an individual as a potential domestic terrorist.
For instance, you might be a domestic terrorist in the eyes of the FBI (and its network of snitches) if you:

• express libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)
• exhibit Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership)
• read survivalist literature, including apocalyptic fictional books
• show signs of self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)
• fear an economic collapse
• buy gold and barter items
• subscribe to religious views concerning the book of Revelation
• voice fears about Big Brother or big government
• expound about constitutional rights and civil liberties
• believe in a New World Order conspiracy

Despite its well-publicized efforts to train students, teachers, police officers, hairdressers, store clerks, etc., into government eyes and ears, the FBI isn’t relying on a nation of snitches to carry out its domestic spying.
There’s no need.
The nation’s largest law enforcement agency rivals the NSA in resources, technology, intelligence, and power. Yet while the NSA has repeatedly come under fire for its domestic spying programs, the FBI has continued to operate its subversive and clearly unconstitutional programs with little significant oversight or push-back from the public, Congress or the courts. Just recently, for example, a secret court gave the agency the green light to quietly change its privacy rules for accessing NSA data on Americans’ international communications.
Indeed, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the FBI has become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be easily corrupted and abused.
When and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America.
Owing largely to the influence and power of the FBI, the United States—once a nation that abided by the rule of law and held the government accountable for its actions—has steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided, a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance.
The FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property.
And that’s just based on what we know.
Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government; recruiting high school students to spy on and report fellow students who show signs of being future terrorists; or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.
The FBI was established in 1908 as a small task force assigned to deal with specific domestic crimes. Initially quite limited in its abilities to investigate so-called domestic crimes, the FBI has been transformed into a mammoth federal policing and surveillance agency. Unfortunately, whatever minimal restrictions kept the FBI’s surveillance activities within the bounds of the law all but disappeared in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The USA Patriot Act gave the FBI and other intelligence agencies carte blanche authority in investigating Americans suspected of being anti-government.
As the FBI’s powers have grown, its abuses have mounted.
The FBI continues to monitor Americans engaged in lawful First Amendment activities.
COINTELPRO, the FBI program created to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and neutralize” groups and individuals the government considers politically objectionable, was aimed not so much at the criminal element but at those who challenged the status quo—namely, those expressing anti-government sentiments such as Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon. It continues to this day, albeit in other guises.
The FBI has become a master in the art of entrapment.
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks the FBI has not only targeted vulnerable individuals but has also lured them into fake terror plots while actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons and motivation to carry out the plots—entrapment—and then jailing them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions.”
FBI agents are among the nation’s most notorious lawbreakers.
In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then “solve” them, the FBI also gives certain informants permission to break the law, “including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies,” in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts. USA Today estimates that agents have authorized criminals to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day. Some of these informants are getting paid astronomical sums: one particularly unsavory fellow, later arrested for attempting to run over a police officer, was actually paid $85,000 for his help laying the trap for an entrapment scheme.
The FBI’s powers, expanded after 9/11, have given its agents carte blanche access to Americans’ most personal information.
The agency’s National Security Letters, one of the many illicit powers authorized by the USA Patriot Act, allows the FBI to secretly demand that banks, phone companies, and other businesses provide them with customer information and not disclose the demands. An internal audit of the agency found that the FBI practice of issuing tens of thousands of NSLs every year for sensitive information such as phone and financial records, often in non-emergency cases, is riddled with widespread violations.
The FBI’s spying capabilities are on a par with the NSA.
The FBI’s surveillance technology boasts an invasive collection of spy tools ranging from Stingray devices that can track the location of cell phones to Triggerfish devices which allow agents to eavesdrop on phone calls.  In one case, the FBI actually managed to remotely reprogram a “suspect’s” wireless internet card so that it would send “real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI.”
The FBI’s hacking powers have gotten downright devious.
FBI agents not only have the ability to hack into any computer, anywhere in the world, but they can also control that computer and all its stored information, download its digital contents, switch its camera or microphone on or off and even control other computers in its network. Given the breadth of the agency’s powers, the showdown between Apple and the FBI over customer privacy appears to be more spectacle than substance.
James Comey, current director of the FBI, knows enough to say all the right things about the need to abide by the Constitution, all the while his agency routinely discards it. Comey argues that the government’s powers shouldn’t be limited, especially when it comes to carrying out surveillance on American citizens. Comey continues to lobby Congress and the White House to force technology companies such as Apple and Google to keep providing the government with backdoor access to Americans’ cell phones.
The FBI’s reach is more invasive than ever.
This is largely due to the agency’s nearly unlimited resources (its minimum budget alone in fiscal year 2015 was $8.3 billion), the government's vast arsenal of technology, the interconnectedness of government intelligence agencies, and information sharing through fusion centers—data collecting intelligence agencies spread throughout the country that constantly monitor communications (including those of American citizens), everything from internet activity and web searches to text messages, phone calls and emails.
Today, the FBI employs more than 35,000 individuals and operates more than 56 field offices in major cities across the U.S., as well as 400 resident agencies in smaller towns, and more than 50 international offices. In addition to their “data campus,” which houses more than 96 million sets of fingerprints from across the United States and elsewhere, the FBI is also, according to The Washington Post, “building a vast repository controlled by people who work in a top-secret vault on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington. This one stores the profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime. What they have done is appear to be acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.”
If there’s one word to describe the FBI’s covert tactics, it’s creepy.
The agency’s biometric database has grown to massive proportions, the largest in the world, encompassing everything from fingerprints, palm, face and iris scans to DNA, and is being increasingly shared between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in an effort to target potential criminals long before they ever commit a crime.
This is what’s known as pre-crime.
If it were just about fighting the “bad guys,” that would be one thing. But as countless documents make clear, the FBI has no qualms about using its extensive powers in order to blackmail politicians, spy on celebrities and high-ranking government officials, and intimidate dissidents of all stripes.
It’s an old tactic, used effectively by former authoritarian regimes.
In fact, as historian Robert Gellately documents, the Nazi police state was repeatedly touted as a model for other nations to follow, so much so that Hoover actually sent one of his right-hand men, Edmund Patrick Coffey, to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany’s secret police. As Gellately noted, “[A]fter five years of Hitler’s dictatorship, the Nazi police had won the FBI’s seal of approval.”
Indeed, so impressed was the FBI with the Nazi order that, as the New York Times revealed, in the decades after World War II, the FBI, along with other government agencies, aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis, including some of Hitler’s highest henchmen, brought them to America, hired them on as spies and informants, and then carried out a massive cover-up campaign to ensure that their true identities and ties to Hitler’s holocaust machine would remain unknown. Moreover, anyone who dared to blow the whistle on the FBI’s illicit Nazi ties found himself spied upon, intimidated, harassed and labeled a threat to national security.
So not only have American taxpayers been paying to keep ex-Nazis on the government payroll for decades but we’ve been subjected to the very same tactics used by the Third Reich: surveillance, militarized police, overcriminalization, and a government mindset that views itself as operating outside the bounds of the law.
This is how freedom falls, and tyrants come to power.
The similarities between the American police state and past totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany grow more pronounced with each passing day.
Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. These are the hallmarks of every authoritarian regime from the Roman Empire to modern-day America.
Yet it’s the secret police—tasked with silencing dissidents, ensuring compliance, and maintaining a climate of fear—who sound the death knell for freedom in every age.

source

Review of Class I of the Feeding Your Tribe Now and During a SHTF Event Series of Classes

Via e-mail,from Jacob,who attended Saturday's class.

Class I – The Basics, review

We ended up having six people attend the class, as two had an emergency and had to cancel last minute.  I drove 3 hours to attend – others came from much further away.  One couple gave up a day of their vacation to attend the class. With such a small class, we had the opportunity to see more than just what was on the class schedule.  We had a wide range of cooking experience amongst the class – some had little experience cooking, while others were accomplished home cooks or had catering jobs in the past.  The purpose of the first class was to cover the basics – proper food safety and how to make soups/stews and simple recipes for large groups, using typical kitchen equipment.  Next class is more about food prep in an austere environment.

 I have a background in the food industry, so I expected most of this class to be a dry review for me before class 2 and 3.  Larry provided us with study materials over email in the days leading up to the class, so we didn’t have to spend much time talking through the hand-washing/cleaning and sanitizing/cross-contamination topics of food safety and were able to spend more time cooking.  We ate A LOT!  Larry and his team already had the lunch meal started when we arrived, and he walked us through the prep work that had already been done and the finishing process for the meal.  The class was on the hook for making dinner.  Several points kept coming up throughout the class:  you need good food and enough of it during a crisis (2 thousand calories doesn’t cut it – try 4 to 5 thousand for stressful situations), fat is good – it makes you feel full longer and is high-calorie, luke-warm food is NOT safe (even less so after several hours), don’t waste food and time making fancy/extravagant dishes – reuse the scraps/peelings/bones to flavor soups, plan meals ahead so leftover parts from today will be part of tomorrow’s meal, and all the cookbooks and videos in the world won’t do any good if you don’t get in the kitchen/in the woods and PRACTICE!  If you don’t have simple dishes that all work together and make large portions, you’re wasting time and energy that you won’t have when things go bad.

I felt the class was worth the cost and the drive, and plan to attend the next two classes.  I heard likewise from others in the class.  While we all shared meals together and talked about different things, one phrase kept coming to mind:  “Meatspace, baby!”. 

Thanks to Larry for a great class and to all that attended with me.  It was great to meet other like-minded folks who are making it a priority to get out and learn skills. See you at the next class!