MONTGOMERY, Alabama -- In a new report, the Southern Poverty Law Center claims there's been a "tremendous increase" in the number of militia and anti-government groups in the United States inspired by the national discussion of gun control.
The Montgomery-based organization said hate groups motivated in part by the immigration reform movement and the election and re-election of President Barack Obama are also prevalent.
There are now more than 1,360 "radical antigovernment groups" -- including 321 militias -- in the country, the SPLC says in a letter it sent to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday, and in a related report. According to the SPLC, that's an increase from 2008, when there were only 149-such groups.
"This latest count exceeds the high-water mark of the 1990s by more than 500," SPLC President J. Richard Cohen wrote in the organization's letter. "During that decade, the growth in the radical antigovernment movement was fueled in large part by anger over the passage of the Brady Bill in 1993 and the enactment of the assault weapons ban in 1994. Now that gun control is again being hotly debated, we are seeing a repeat of that anger, and it is likely to continue to swell the ranks of antigovernment groups."
The number of hate groups the SPLC has identified in the U.S. has actually decreased from last year's high of 1,018 groups. There are now 1,007 hate groups in the U.S., according to the report.
The SPLC has identified 30 hate groups in several categories in Alabama, and placed them on a map that can be viewed here.
In Cohen's letter, which is addressed to DHS Sec. Janet Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the organization refers to the Oklahoma City bombing. Cohen notes that bombing occurred six months after SPLC issued a similar warning to former Attorney General Janet Reno.
"As in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now also are seeing ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised to take their guns."
Cohen urged Napolitano and Holder to "take a fresh look" at the issue of funding for countering radical antigovernmental groups.
The SPLC has seen some controversy over the way it labels hate groups in recent years. In 2010, some conservatives were angered when the organization listed the Family Research Council as an anti-gay hate group. Many anti-immigration groups are also listed, alongside neo-Nazis, neo-confederates, Ku Klux Klan-affiliated groups, and anti-gay organizations.
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Re: DHS new Terror Warning: "We are now focused on Americans taking up arms"
There are now more than 1,360 "radical antigovernment groups" -- including 321 militias -- in the country, the SPLC says in a letter it sent to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday, and in a related report. According to the SPLC, that's an increase from 2008, when there were only 149-such groups.
And some of these have literally THOUSANDS of members now.
Funny, that... "hate groups"? Not on your life. They don't HATE anyone, in fact they are making it LOUD AND CLEAR, they are not religious groups, they aren't "white only" groups, they don't "Hate anyone", they are "militia groups that love their freedom".
The truth is the SPLC is the terrorist group and they ought to be shut down. Period.
Libertatem Prius!
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Re: DHS new Terror Warning: "We are now focused on Americans taking up arms"
What he is REALLY railing against is "president authorizing drone attacks on Americans IN COUNTRY"....
Rand Paul launches talking filibuster against John Brennan
Posted by Ed O'Keefe and Aaron Blake on March 6, 2013 at 1:37 pm
Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) talking filibuster against John Brennan’s nomination as CIA director is gaining supporters, and it’s now a bipartisan effort.
Paul began speaking just before noon Wednesday on the Senate floor in opposition to Brennan’s nomination, saying that he planned to speak “for the next few hours” in a rare talking filibuster.
Watch live video from the Senate floor below:
Paul, who strongly opposes the Brennan nomination and the Obama administration’s use of unmanned aerial drones, became the first senator to make use of the procedural tactic in more than two years and the first to do so since the Senate approved a bipartisan rules reform package in January.
Paul has since been joined in his symbollic effort by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.). He has also gotten some bipartisan support from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.).
“I will speak until I can no longer speak,” Paul said. “I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”
Paul began his filibuster at 11:47 a.m. Eastern time. At the start if the 1 p.m. hour, he was the only senator on the floor. Just 30 people watched from the Senate gallery above while a few security guards, stenographers and Senate pages held their appointed spots on the floor. In the rafters, a man responsible for operating the Senate television cameras was seen reading a newspaper.
But after more than three hours, Paul got some help. Lee joined the filibuster at 2:57 p.m. and Cruz at 3:08 p.m. The three senators began taking turns talking, with Lee and Cruz alternately asking Paul questions. Moran joined at 3:28 p.m., and Wyden jumped in in the filibuster’s fifth hour, at 3:53 p.m.
Paul’s comments from the Senate floor come as he’s raised objections in recent weeks. Paul first threatened to filibuster the Brennan nomination in late February, when he sent a letter to administration officials asking whether the U.S. government would ever use a drone strike to kill an American on U.S. soil.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. responded to Paul’s inquiry Monday, saying the administration has “no intention” of carrying out drone strikes on suspected terrorists in the United States, but could use them in response to “an extraordinary circumstance” such as a major terrorist attack.
Paul called Holder’s refusal to rule out drone strikes within the United States “more than frightening.”
On Wednesday, Paul elaborated on his concerns: “When I asked the president, can you kill an American on American soil, it should have been an easy answer. It’s an easy question. It should have been a resounding, an unequivocal, ‘No.’ The president’s response? He hasn’t killed anyone yet. We’re supposed to be comforted by that.”
Wyden agreed in part with Paul’s filibuster: “The point that the senator has made this afternoon is a (sic) issue that I and others have asked of the attorney general of some time, and we haven’t been able to get an answer.”
Paul noted that he has voted for Obama’s previous Cabinet nominees, including Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and suggested his cause was not partisan.
“I have allowed the president to pick his political appointees,” Paul said. “But I will not sit quietly and let him shred the Constitution. … I would be here if it were a Republican president doing this. Really the great irony of this is that President Obama’s opinion on this is an extension of George Bush’s opinion.”
Paul also said that he was “alarmed” at the lack of definition over who can be targeted by drone strikes. He suggested that many college campuses in the 1960s were full of people who might have been considered enemies of the state.
“Are you going to drop … a Hellfire missile on Jane Fonda?” Paul asked.
By the 2 p.m. hour, Paul said he would continue to speak as long as he can, but he admitted: “Ultimately, I can’t win. There’s not enough votes.”
Brennan has gained the support of some Republican senators, even as others want to hold up his nomination in hopes of getting more answers from the White House on the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. His nomination easily cleared the Senate Intelligence Committee this week, suggesting he would have the 60 votes required to end Paul’s filibuster and bring the nomination to a vote.
Any senator can opt to hold the floor to speak on any matter, but the practice of speaking for hours on end is rare, especially in the modern-day Senate where the chamber’s rules are used more often to block legislation or to hold show votes on trivial matters.
Paul’s talking filibuster is the first conducted by a senator since December 2010, when Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) held the Senate floor for more than eight hours in opposition to Obama’s proposed tax-cut plan.
The longest filibuster in the Senate was Sen. Strom Thurmond’s (D-S.C.) 24-hour filibuster against the 1957 Civil Rights Act (Thurmond later became a Republican). Two other senators — Sens. Alphonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) and Wayne Morse (I-Ore.) — have also filibustered for more than 20 hours.
Cruz, shortly after joining the filibuster, compared Paul to another famous filibusterer, Jimmy Stewart’s character in the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
“You’re standing here like a modern-day ‘Mr. Smith Goes To Washington,’” Cruz said. “You must surely be making Jimmy Stewart smile.”
Libertatem Prius!
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UPDATE: Glenn Beck discussed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s report on radical “patriot” groups on his show on TheBlaze TV Wednesday. Watch below:
Today’s report by the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) claiming that anti-government, radical “patriot” groups are on the rise has sparked an avalanche of “I Told You So” comments from the left. There’s also been a great deal of consternation among conservatives, especially as regards to the SPLC’s assertion that concern over gun rights is a mark of “patriot” groups, and the persistent terminological position of the SPLC that the groups in question count as “far right.”
To be sure, the group’s report is worded in a bizarre fashion, and includes several passages that could be easily denounced as partisan. This one in particular sticks out:
Even before the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, gun and ammunition sales shot up in the wake of the re-election of the country’s first black president, the result of shrill conspiracy theories about Obama’s secret plans to confiscate Americans’ guns. When the killings actually did spark gun control efforts that clearly had not been in the Obama administration’s plans, the reaction on the political right was so harsh that it seemed to border on hysteria.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) proposed a law that would nullify any executive gun control actions by Obama, accusing the president of having a “king complex.” U.S. Rep. Trey Radel (R-Fla.) said the president could be impeached for those actions. State lawmakers in Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee proposed laws that sought to prevent federal gun control from applying to their states.
Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who sued the Clinton administration over the Brady Bill’s imposition of background checks on gun buyers, claimed that of 200 sheriffs he’d met with, most “have said they would lay down their lives first rather than allow any more federal control.” Matt Barber of the anti-gay Liberty Counsel said he feared that the nation, which he described as already on the brink of civil unrest, was headed for “a second civil war.” “Freedom ends. Tyranny begins,” tweeted Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes. “Get ready,” TeaParty.org said. “Right now government gun grabbing plans are being covertly organized.”
Those reading this passage could easily be led to think that any Republican who agrees with Rand Paul or Fox News about the prospect of “tyranny” overtaking gun rights is, by the SPLC’s definition, an extremist “Patriot.” Certainly it is plausible that the SPLC means to impugn figures such as Senator Paul or Fox News’ Todd Starnes by showing them expressing sentiments associated with such a group, but as to whether either of these men (or the legislators/officials mentioned above) are actually meant to be seen as members of the “patriot” movement? That is far less clear.
To try to understand what the SPLC report actually means, we took a look at their other literature so as to understand what they mean by extremist “patriot” groups, who counts, and why. The answers we found may surprise you.
What is the “patriot” movement?
Contrary to what you might think the “patriot” movement as defined by the SPLC does not refer to every person who self-identifies as a patriot, or as patriotic. Rather, it applies to a very specific sect of people who might be more accurately characterized as militant conspiracy theorists with a survivalist streak. From the SPLC’s definition:
Generally, Patriot groups define themselves as opposed to the “New World Order,” engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines. Antigovernment groups do not necessarily advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, though some have. Many warn of impending government violence or the need to prepare for a coming revolution. Many antigovernment groups are not racist.
Some public figures who SPLC associates with the “patriot” movement include former Constitution Party Presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin, radio host Alex Jones and Joseph Farah, publisher of WorldNetDaily. Other, more mainstream Tea Party figures like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, etc don’t even have profiles on SPLC’s website, and their names are not mentioned in the article on the Patriot movement (though some are mentioned in separate articles as mainstream sources of inspiration for extremists, if not extremists themselves). Indeed, the closest SPLC gets to impugning any of the above figures directly through the “patriot” movement is in this passage on that movement’s beliefs about Agenda 21:
A particularly prominent conspiracy in the antigovernment movement is that the United Nations, which is usually seen as spearheading the “New World Order,” is imposing a global plan, called Agenda 21, to take away citizens’ property rights. There is a UN program with that name to develop sustainable communities across the globe. Agenda 21 was agreed to by political leaders from dozens of countries, including the first President Bush. But in typical fashion, these antigovernment activists have twisted it into a global conspiracy.
Still, the definition of a member of the “patriot” movement invokes more than simple patriotism or conservative beliefs. According to SPLC, it requires a belief in a conspiracy theory concerning the “New World Order.” This may describe some conservatives, but it is not an inherently conservative belief. Peter Joseph, author of the Zeitgeist conspiracy theory, pretty clearly identifies as being on the left, and yet he believes the New World Order exists, albeit he refuses to use the term, and conceptualizes it differently from other figures:
As to the definition of “patriots” as right-wing, or part of the hard-right, SPLC’s definition of who is on the “right” is rather unconventional. For instance, they describe the New Black Panther Party as part of the “Radical Right” in spite of the fact that conservatives revile the group. What this suggests is that when the SPLC uses these loaded terms, they are either unintentionally using terminology in a different way from most people, or intentionally using terms that will spur controversy, without actually meaning what their critics assume.
Who counts as a “patriot?”
To get a greater sense of the SPLC’s idea of who the “patriot” movement is, we took a look at their list of organizations that count as “patriot” organizations, issued with their report saying the list had grown. While many of the groups we found did not surprise us – most of them are state or local entities, with citizen militias being vastly overrepresented – one or two inclusions and omissions were surprising.
Firstly, despite the SPLC’s thinly veiled guilt by association in their report, which ties mainstream Tea Party figures like Rand Paul to “patriot” ideology, the list of organizations who count as “patriot” groups includes no national Tea Party organizations. In fact, only two local “Tea Parties” make the list, those being the Berks County Tea Party in Pennsylvania, and the Southeast Valley Tea Party Patriots in Arizona. Both of thesegroups are listed on the Tea Party Patriots website, but the popular group Tea Party Patriots itself is not listed, suggesting that something specific is involved with these two particular local entities, rather than with Tea Partiers as a whole. To find out what, we took a look at the two groups’ websites.
The Berks County Tea Party Patriots’ website is a fairly nondescript affair, but one thing sticks out that might have set the SPLC’s teeth on edge – specifically, the existence of something called the “Sheriff Brigade.”
What this refers to exactly is unclear, though given that another section of the site links to nullification documents submitted on behalf of this entity, it seems fairly clear what caused the “patriots” label to be applied in this case: specifically, unconventional theories about Federal power, and a semi-paramilitary orientation implied by the “Sheriff Brigade.”
As to the Southeast Valley Tea Party Patriots, their website offers precious few clues at first glance. Indeed, the only trace of conspiratorial thinking we could find was a series of workshops on “ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT” that were apparently held earlier this year. From the group’s “Education” page:
The Schedule of Educational Presentations:
Jan. 4 – The Federalist & Anti-Federalists – Part 3 (final)
Jan. 11 – Gun Control, Safety & the 2nd. Amendment
Jan. 18 – Speaker: Ann Tracy, PHD. Drug Awareness – How the gov’t. is classifying certain medications and then reduces your liberty.
Jan. 25 – ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT – It’s Origins – Part 1
Feb. 1 – Speaker : Mr. Tom Jenney, AZ Director for Americans for Prosperity – AZ Budget and Taxes
Feb. 8 – Crisis in Egypt
Feb. 15 – ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT – Part 2 -
In this case, the conspiracy theory is probably what got the tag of being a “patriot” group.
As to the other groups represented as “patriot” organizations, they almost all appear to count either because they have paramilitary elements (as in the case of the Oath Keepers) or because they traffic in libertarian theories supporting nullification and/or more extensive forms of states’ rights law than are previously permitted. Probably the most mainstream group represented in this latter category is the Tenth Amendment Center, which focuses almost entirely on issues of state sovereignty, though their site appears to not include any mention of conspiracy theories, which raises the question of why they were included.
Still, most of the groups involved have either trafficked in some form of discredited conspiracy theory (the John Birch Society, ********), encourage paramilitary resistance to the government (the Oath Keepers, militias), or invoke constitutional theories not presently recognized by the court system. In other words, the definition is fairly consistent with who is on the list.
Who cares?
However, this in itself raises an important issue: Why is the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group dedicated (in its own words) to “fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society,” doing researching groups like this? The obvious answer would be that these groups tend to correlate with hate group membership, or that their members are violent enough that it makes no difference, or that the groups are criminal. However, the SPLC’s own definition of “Patriot” groups undercuts precisely that argument. Consider these passages (emphasis added):
Antigovernment groups do not necessarily advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, though some have. Many warn of impending government violence or the need to prepare for a coming revolution. Many antigovernment groups are not racist.[...]
The sovereign citizens movement is rooted in racism and anti-Semitism, though most sovereigns, many of whom are African American, are unaware of their beliefs’ origins. In the early 1980s, the sovereign citizens movement attracted primarily white supremacists and anti-Semites, mainly because sovereign theories originated in groups that saw Jews as working behind the scenes to manipulate financial institutions and control the government. Most early sovereigns, and some of those who are still on the scene, believed that being white was a prerequisite to becoming a sovereign citizen. They argued that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed citizenship to African Americans and everyone else born on U.S. soil, also made black Americans permanently subject to federal and state governments, unlike themselves.
The problem should be obvious – if these groups aren’t necessarily racist, criminal, or even violent, why is the SPLC treating them as equivalent to hate groups? Indeed, what is it, apart from arguably believing in controversial ideas, that makes such groups objectionable at all? There is no obvious answer, but it appears that the SPLC regards antigovernment thinking as itself a flaw on par with (though perhaps not quite equal to) racism, sexism or homophobia. Calls to the SPLC about this apparent belief have gone unanswered. This passage from today’s report, however, strongly implies it:
Polling after the election showed how broad antipathy toward President Obama remained in a deeply polarized America. A Public Policy Poll survey found that 49% of all Republicans believed that ACORN — a community organizing group that went belly up in 2010 after attacks from the far right — had stolen the election from Mitt Romney. A quarter of GOP members in the same poll favored secession. A January 2013 poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind project found that 36% of all Americans still don’t believe Obama is a citizen, despite the 2011 release of the president’s “long-form” birth certificate.
As they did in 2008 and 2009, groups on the radical right clearly benefited from that antipathy. “Since Obama’s first term, our numbers have doubled and now we’re headed to a second term, it’s going to triple,” one Virginia Klansman told WTVR-TV in Richmond. Daniel Miller, president of the secessionist Texas National Movement, said that his membership shot up 400% after Obama’s re-election. White News Now, a website run by white supremacist Jamie Kelso, said that it had had “an incredible year” in the run-up to the vote, reaching more people than ever.
However, there is an upside, which is that while the SPLC’s report does target conspiracy theorists and militants explicitly, it is not meant as an attack on all conservatives, libertarians, or indeed on the vast majority of those who identify as being on the political right. It is, rather, simply a list of admittedly fringe groups with fringe beliefs who may be eccentric, but as of yet are not demonstrably dangerous, and whose beliefs do not represent a majority of Americans, whatever the SPLC’s report might imply.
The most dangerous thing about the SPLC’s report, therefore, is not their findings, but rather the fact that, in associating this fringe group with mainstream figures and a particular political ideology, it seeks to tar them with the same brush.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
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We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
The Southern Poverty Law Center sent an alarming letter to the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security warning of “far right” extremist terrorist groups that the far-left organization says are on the rise. Beware the militias!
Today, we are releasing our latest report on the state of hate and extremism in the nation. The report documents that the number of militias and radical antigovernment groups grew from 149 in 2008 to 1,360 in 2012. This latest count exceeds the high-water mark of the 1990s by more than 500. During that decade, the growth in the radical antigovernment movement was fueled in large part by anger over the passage of the Brady Bill in 1993 and the enactment of the assault weapons ban in 1994. Now that gun control is again being hotly debated, we are seeing a repeat of that anger, and it is likely to continue to swell the ranks of antigovernment groups.
It isn’t just antigovernment groups, but hate groups, too!
Our report also documents that hate groups remain at record highs. The expansion of hate groups began not in 2008 but in 2000 as a reaction to the country’s changing demographics. Now that comprehensive immigration reform is poised in the view of some to legitimize those demographic changes, the backlash that we’ve seen over the last decade may accelerate as well. A recent study sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, it should be noted, found that criminal violence was associated with a significant percentage of far-right hate groups. See Steven M. Chermak, Joshua D. Freilich, Michael Suttmoeller, The Organizational Dynamics of Far-Right Hate Groups in the United States at 2, DHS, Dec. 2011.
But don’t just take their word for it.
Our data as well as that of independent researchers reflects that the country has seen an increase in right-wing domestic terrorism as the number of hate and antigovernment groups has increased in recent years. A new study by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, for example, found that right-wing violence in the 2000-2011 period surpassed that of the 1990s by a factor of four. See Arie Perliger, Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right, Combating Terrorism Center, Jan. 15, 2013. A report by the Congressional Research Service found that domestic terrorists have orchestrated more than two-dozen incidents since 9/11. See Jerome P. Bjelopera, The Domestic Terrorist Threat: Background and Issues for Congress, CRS, May 15, 2012. The data we’ve collected reflects a significant uptick in racist crimes and terrorist plots in the last four years. See SPLC, Terror from the Right: Plots, Conspiracies and Racist Rampages since Oklahoma City (2013).
After Perliger’s report was released there were questions as to why they didn’t study the violent tendencies of far-left groups, but as far as I can tell there was no response.
None of this is new for the SPLC, they’ve been doing this for years. They even labeled Robert Stacy McCain a hate group.
Jesse Walker of Reason magazine has observed that the SPLC “would paint a box of Wheaties as an extremist threat if it thought that would help it raise funds.” And Rick Barber has called the SPLC “an extremist wolf in ‘watchdog’ clothing.”
The SPLC has now spent an entire decade warning America against the hate-menace of Robert Stacy McCain. And obviously the recent election results — and 5 million hits — are evidence that the menace is growing.
Today the blogosphere, tomorrow the world!
I’m sure the SPLC believes that every American who voted for Mitt Romney in the last election is part of a hate group or right wing militia. Unfortunately, the loons running our government listen to these idiots, and the media is more than happy to report on their findings. But they fail to note what I previously pointed out:
As always with the left, they project their true shortcomings, inadequacies, and downright diabolical tendencies on those they wish to defeat.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
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We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
By Timothy P. Carney March 6, 2013 | Modified: March 6, 2013 at 6:25 pm
Sen. Rand Paul just offered to end his filibuster and allow a vote on CIA nominee John Brennan if he could get a vote tomorrow on a non-binding resolution regarding drone killing of US citizens on US soil. But Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin objected to allowing a vote on the resolution. So Paul resumed speaking.
Paul's resolution said it was the sense of the Senate that "the use of drones to execute or target American citizens on American soil who pose no imminent threat clearly violates Constitutional rights" of due process.
Throughout his first six hours, Sen. Paul painted a dire picture of what a President could do with the power to kill by drone non-combatant US citizens who have never been charged or given a chance to defend themselves. "I don't want the President deciding whether or not I'm guilty," Paul said
President Obama plans to use military drones in the skies over the United States to assassinate journalists, patriots and critics of his administration. That's the inescapable conclusion from the emerging pattern of evidence now publicly available -- keep reading for details.
Front and center in this pattern of evidence is the 16-page memo that was just released by Obama's lawyers in the Department of Justice. This memo puts forth a "legal justification" for the President to order the drone assassination of any American citizen he names -- anytime, anywhere, for any reason. This new power claimed by the President has no basis in federal law or the Constitution. It is an invented power of absolute tyranny that puts the power to decide who lives and who dies in the hands of one man. This document essentially legalizes the President acting as a serial murderer.
It is claimed that the purpose of this new power to simply name any American the President doesn't like and immediately have them struck by a Hellfire missile launched from a drone is designed to "protect America." Yet the 16-page memo that claims to justify all this was intentionally written to include Americans on U.S. soil as potential targets.
As Judge Andrew Napolitano explained just a few days ago on Fox News:
"This 16-page white paper is written so vaguely that the logic from it could... permit the President to kill Americans here in the United States."
That's the whole point, actually. If Americans on U.S. soil were to be excluded from such drone assassinations, such language would have been made readily apparent in the memo. But no such language is found in the memo. In fact, the tone of the document quite clearly states that the President has the authority to order drone killings of U.S. citizens anywhere in the world, under any circumstances.
This legal manipulation even has U.S. Senators worried. Democrat Senator Patrick J Leahy and Senator Charles Grassley sent a letter to Obama on Friday, stating, "The deliberate killing of a United States citizen pursuant to a targeted operation authorized or aided by our government raises significant constitutional and legal concerns."
That's the understatement of the year.
U.S. Senators are trying to create an "oversight committee" so that a few of them are part of the illegal, unconstitutional decision process of which Americans the U.S. government should murder next. As Kurt Nimmo reports with ********.com:
Feinstein has proposed "legislation to ensure that drone strikes are carried out in a manner consistent with our values, and the proposal to create an analogue of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review the conduct of such strikes," in other words a secret tribunal that will hand down kill orders for Americans the government believes are "suspected militants."
If drones are to be unleashed under the values of Feinstein -- an outright traitor to the nation and a serial violator of the U.S. Constitution -- then God help us all. Remember, Feinstein is the Senator who has already said she wants all Americans to turn all their guns in. She literally wants the entire U.S. civilian population disarmed so that government has all the weapons, including drones which Feinstein wants flying over U.S. cities, ready to strike named American citizens at any moment.
The American "battlefield" doctrine and the NDAA
In defending the drone assassination powers of the President, you might hear language used that says drones will "only be used on the battlefield." That seems to imply they will only be used in the Middle East, right?
Wrong. The USA has been legally defined as the new "battlefield" by the NDAA. That's the National Defense Authorization Act which also allows for the arrest and indefinite detention of American citizens without trial, without legal representation and even without them ever being charged.
The USA is the new "battlefield," and when you combine the NDAA and the DOJ's new drone killing justification memo, you now have the claimed legal framework for any American on U.S. soil to be arrested, detained, tortured or blown to bits without warning and without even a single shred of evidence being presented against him.
Yes, this is America today. Right now. You are living under a military dictatorship and most of you don't even realize it yet. Even liberals and progressives are starting to wake up to Obama's tyranny, by the way. On Democracy Now, Daniel Ellsberg recently described Obama's actions as a "systematic assault on the Constitution."
Who are the terrorists?
Of course, anyone who raises these points will be immediately dismissed with the claim that all this new power in the hands of the President will only be used "against terrorists."
Okay, then who are the terrorists, exactly? It turns out they are YOU!
As Judge Napolitano recently explained:
The [Janet Napolitano DHS] memorandum said that people who are pro-life, people who believe in the right to keep and bear arms, returning veterans, people who think the government is too big and the IRS is too powerful, could be characterized as domestic terrorists. That could characterize two-thirds of the country. (Click here to see related video.)
1) The NDAA legalized the federal government arresting, detaining and torturing American citizens if they were classified as "terrorists."
2) The DOJ drone-killing memo legalized the President murdering anyone he names by simply claiming they might be associated with "terrorists."
3) The DHS announces that anyone who isn't an absolutely Big Government boot-licker and Obama worshipper IS A TERRORIST.
And there you have it: The full circle of justification to use military drone strikes against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. Simply call them terrorists, and the rest of the legal framework backs you up.
I repeat: All that is necessary to justify the murder of American citizens without trial is labeling them "terrorists" even with no evidence to support such a claim. The drone killings require no evidence. They only require the signature of one man.
Who is likely on the drone strike target list in the USA
So who is most likely to be assassinated by President Obama once drone strikes are fully unleashed in the USA?
• Journalists.
• Political opponents.
• Anti-government protesters. (One Hellfire missile takes 'em all out.)
• Online activists.
• Veterans.
• Gun owners and gun shops.
• Constitutionalists and libertarians.
Drone strikes are completely silent because the Hellfire missiles arrive faster than the speed of sound. You don't even hear the missile until after the explosion. The blast radius of a Hellfire missile is 15 - 20 meters, and everything inside that radius is completely obliterated. This is more than enough to destroy entire homes, apartments and office buildings, not to mention vehicles and even light bunkers.
World Net Daily editor Joseph Farah actually voiced his concern about Obama being reelected, saying that he believed Obama would "kill journalists" if he won a second term. Farah is not being paranoid. He's right on the money with where this is going. Click here to read his article published right before the 2012 election.
Drones are weapons of tyranny
In the history of America, rifles are the weapons of liberty, and in any war limited to just rifles and similar weapons, the People will always achieve victory over tyranny.
But tyrannies tend to rise up when specialized, highly-complex weapons come onto the scene, creating an imbalance of military power that suppresses the People. Drones are that new weapon: There is virtually no citizen defense against drones, and drones can strike targets anyone in the country with zero warning. You do not get called to appear in court, you do not get arrested, and you do not receive a warning. You're simply murdered by the U.S. President without warning and without a trial. That's the new America.
The cover story: Drone strikes that actually take out the homes of Obama's political enemies can even be explained away as "bombings" using conventional explosives. A convenient cover story can keep drones out of the news, even while drone strikes are taking out journalists, activists and critics of the criminal Obama regime.
You might wonder, then, what is the strategy for defending against drones? It all comes down to men with rifles raiding drone airfields and taking them over. Once again, rifles become the single most important tool of resistance in the face of tyranny, which is exactly why the government is right now desperately seeking to register and confiscate all rifles in the hands of U.S. citizens. The MQ-1C Warrior drone has an operational range of 675 miles, meaning that drone airfields must be relatively close to intended targets. The airfields are the weak link, and this is what Americans must take back if drone mass murder is unleashed against American citizens (by any president, now or in the future).
There are also some high-tech defenses against drones. Iran appears to have hacked a drone by feeding it false GPS signals, guiding it to land on an Iranian runway where it was then taken into custody by the government there. This sort of GPS hacking appears to be relatively simple to accomplish, but the technique has never been proven in an actual military conflict.
Another defense against drones is to stay on the move. Don't hole up in fixed locations for long periods of time. Drone strikes are only effective if the intended target's location is known with certainty. In a resistance war against a tyrannical government, resistance forces will of course remain very mobile and unpredictable in their locations and movements. This will cause the government to waste lots of Hellfire missiles blowing up empty houses and likely killing the wrong people.
Every drone strike against U.S. targets will, of course, enrage the population even further, resulting in yet another mass wave of recruitment into the resistance. The more Americans Obama (or another president) kills with drones, the more powerful the resistance becomes. This spiral continues until there is either a violent armed overthrow of the government or the entire resistance movement is mass murdered by the government itself. In the case of the latter, that's how we end up with Hitler, Stalin, Mao and other dictatorial tyrants who assume power in the aftermath of blood running in the streets.
Stop being so naive -- this is happening NOW!
If you think any of this seems outlandish, you aren't paying attention. The 16-page drone assassination memo has already been published. The NDAA is federal law. The DHS memos are real. All of us who question government, who own firearms, and who believe in the Bill of Rights have already been named terrorists.
The stage is being set to wage an all-out war with the American people. That's the reason DHS has purchased 1.6 billion rounds of ammo. It's the reason DHS is buying 7,000 full-auto assault rifles. All these weapons and ammo are for exclusive use inside the United States of America, on U.S. soil.
This is why thousands of bulletproof roadside checkpoints have been purchased by DHS. It's why steel cable dividers are being installed on highways, so that you can't turn around when approaching a TSA checkpoint. This is why talk of shooting gun owners is openly tolerated and even encouraged in the mainstream media and on social networks.
We are witnessing a full-on ramping up toward total war with the American people. This war will be caused (false-flagged) by the government itself, and it will be waged on U.S. soil, using drone assassinations, nationwide gun confiscation, FEMA camps and of course a declaration of Martial Law to justify it all.
The end game is a complete takeover of America by socialist / communist / fascist forces and the outright abolition of liberties and firearms in the hands of citizens. America is scheduled for termination, and people like Obama have been placed in power precisely because he can fool enough people for a sufficient amount of time to get this plan underway without popular resistance. Obama is seductive and hypnotic, so his followers will think he's helping America even while he's actually destroying it by design.
Drones are terminators in the sky, controlled by one man -- a tyrant who sits in the Oval Office and respects no boundaries of either the Constitution or federal law. He makes law up as he goes along, betraying his oath of office and violating the very tenants of justice upon which this country was founded.
Obama is a traitor to America and a danger to us all. For the sake of America's future, he must be impeached, thrown out of office and replaced with a President who actually upholds the Constitution and respects the laws of the land.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
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We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
The deer stand was one of Zack Tutweiler’s best thinking places. The rain had masked the sound of his climbing up the tree’s nailed-on steps and into the plywood box an hour before dawn. The blind’s roof sheltered him from the rain. For as long as seventeen-year-old Zack had been allowed to go hunting by himself, the blind had been a place he could go without being hassled for choosing solitude. He brought home enough meat that no-body bitched about his disappearing with his compound bow into the forest. Now there was nobody left to bitch at him for anything. He was the last one still living at the end of Bear Trail Road, the last inhabitant of their refuge from the world.
The Tutweilers had hidden very well, but not well enough. The troubles of the world had sought them out in spite of their preparation, their camouflage and their faith. All the praying in the world had not prevented the flu from choking the life out of his twin sisters Becky and Annie last winter, the winter of the hurricane floods and the great earthquakes. Becky had died first and Annie a day later, both drowning in their own lung fluids. Zack and his family had prayed continuously, to no effect.
And praying hadn’t stopped the raging infection from killing his eleven-year-old brother Sammy last September. He’d gashed his knee with a hatchet while helping to trim the branches off their winter firewood. The most powerful antibiotics in their family medicine chest couldn’t stop that infection, and poor Sammy had died in horrible pain. Zack had helped teach Sam how to use the ax, but he had not taught him well enough. And now his little brother was buried in the cold ground forever.
After Sammy died, the praying had stopped, even Mom’s praying. This was some months after Mom had run out of her blue pills, the ones for her depression. These days when pills ran out, they ran out for good.
All along Mom had been waiting for the Rapture and praying for the Rapture, and in the end it was all for nothing. “We sure got the tribulation,” she’d often say, “But when, oh when, are we getting the blessed Rapture?” It wasn’t long after Sam died that she took the baby up to the bridge. “Rapturecide” is how Zack often thought of it.
Dad said she must have had an accident, probably baby Sarah had slipped and Mom had tried to save her, the river all swollen and running fast…but in his heart Zack had never believed this. He didn’t know if Dad believed it either, but he’d never challenged his father on the issue. It would have brought nothing but pain, and pain they already had to overflowing. They found Mom stuck in the rushes along the bank, but they never did find little Sarah. Dad said it had to have been an accident, but even he didn’t sound convinced.
But Zack knew what had happened, in his mind he knew. It was Rapturecide. He’d heard the term whispered at the swap market, at the crossroads town of Walnut, Mississippi, a half-hour bike ride away.
Sometimes whole families had gone that way, in their exhausted desperation challenging God to put up or shut up, once and for all. If they were not among the chosen, selected to fly up to heaven and avoid the tribulations, then who was? They were true believers, and God had forsaken them. Zack didn’t believe in the Rapture business, but he knew that many others did. When their deepest belief was finally shattered and crushed, the life quickly went out of them.
Zack had a clear mental picture of their final moments, gleaned from a thousand imaginings. Mom standing on the low steel trestle of the railroad bridge over the Little Hatchie, clutching baby Sarah to her heart. The dark creek running high and swift on the floods just beneath her feet. Staring heavenward through the clouds and making the final leap for everlasting glory. Giving God one last chance to carry them up on angels’ wings, to relieve them of their unending earthly travails. This was on the tenth of October, after it had rained for forty straight days. Mom had hardly spoken a word in weeks, not since little Sammy died, and she hadn’t smiled in even longer. And then she carried baby Sarah down to the river, in the never-ending rain. One of the few remaining bridges around, and it was her launch pad to heaven, according to Zack’s reckoning.
So if God was watching, He’d flat missed His chance to perform a miracle. Or maybe not, maybe God had snatched up their eternal souls anyway, because of her great demonstration of faith in Him. Maybe God had simply allowed their mortal bodies to fall into the swift current. Zack often wondered about this point: was faith alone enough to cancel out the sin of suicide? Mom just couldn’t bear living anymore.
It was too hard, much too hard, especially after losing Becky and Annie and Sammy—and after running out of her blue pills.
Their lives had been hard before the hurricane floods and the earthquakes, but Dad had prepared them well, moving the family from Tupelo up to the Holly Springs National Forest near the Tennessee line. Moved them from the city to the hidden dead-end Bear Trail Road, to the cinder block house he’d built with his own strong hands. Dad was a survivalist even before the crash, before the Greater Depression had set in.
He’d had foresight; he’d been one of the few mad Noahs who had seen the great flood tide of misery coming, back when there was hardly an unhappy cloud to be seen in the then perpetually blue Mississippi sky.
Against every friend’s recommendation and well-meant word of family advice, they’d left their comfortable home in Tupelo and moved to their own five acres on the uppermost edge of Mississippi, backed right against the National Forest. They had water from their own well, they had firewood and chickens and enough stored rice and beans to last for years. Even after the dollar crashed to nothing, they hadn’t starved. They could survive, even without electricity from the power grid this last year, since the quakes. They had hidden from the looters, robbers, and gang rapers after the quakes, they had survived all of the visible dangers, but Bear Trail Road was not hidden from the epidemics. Their refuge was not hidden from infections that no antibiotics could defeat. And Bear Trail Road was certainly not hidden from the affliction of despair, not when the flooding Little Hatchie River whispered its siren song to Mom’s beaten-down soul.
Then it was just the two of them, father and son, and even then they could survive. They had buried all of the rest of the family, had shed rivers of tears, but quitting was not in Dad’s vocabulary. Zack had grown up hearing that and he knew it was true. Dad would never quit—Dad was the rock. His father prayed, but he didn’t believe in the Rapture, and he would not hasten his way to joining his family on the Other Side. Father and son would continue to struggle, they would push on, and they would survive.
They would emerge intact on the other side of the long emergency, if it were in any way possible. Zack was nearly eighteen, almost “of age,” Dad had said. Zack Tutweiler would find a girl to marry, and the family would not die. Tutweilers had survived wild Indians, the Civil War, the Spanish flu and the Great Depression, and they had not yet been pushed out of Mississippi. Tutweilers had fought in every American war, but enough of their men had returned to Mississippi to carry on the name down through the generations. They were people who knew when to lay low and when to push back and when to fight with animal ferocity.
Quitting was not in their vocabulary, which is why Dad clung to the threadbare belief that Mom had gone into the river to save baby Sarah.
And so it had been only the two of them these last months, until a week ago. Dad had gone out after midnight. He had people to meet over the state line in Tennessee, trading partners who couldn’t come to the swap markets in Walnut or Corinth. Sometimes Zack accompanied him on these walks, but more often not.
When Dad went out alone, Zack stayed up waiting, although he pretended to be asleep when Dad slipped out of the house. But that last time he’d heard a single echoing bang, and his father had not returned.
He didn’t find his father—what was left of him—until the middle of the next day. He was in the National Forest a mile northwest of their home, almost on the border. His father had been blown to pieces, his powerful body shattered. Even his shotgun had been blasted into a bent piece of junk. Zack hid in the woods near the human fragments of his father, shaking, crying, and wondering what to do next. He also found pieces of rocket casing and what was probably part of a rocket tail fin knifed into a tree near the body.
His father had been killed by one of those little missiles that dropped down from the unseen drones. He knew of them from his dad, who had heard of them from the men he met in Tennessee. He’d never imagined his father would be killed by one, not in Mississippi.
So now Zack was the last of the Mississippi Tutweilers, who the Indians and the Yankees and the Spanish flu couldn’t kill off. The end of the line. He’d sometimes considered following Mom and Sarah into the Little Hatchie, but even in death his father’s voice was stronger: Tutweilers don’t quit. They might get knocked down, but they always get back up. But what was the point of remaining in Mississippi now? The men who had killed his father were in Tennessee, he thought. This was why Zack was up in the deer stand on Christmas morning, thinking, watching the first hint of false dawn appear above the treetops, where the dead power lines cut a swath through the forest leading up into Tennessee.
Now was the time the deer moved. Night fog hung low over the ground. Sometimes he’d see antlers before he’d even see a deer, but more often the bucks pushed the does out ahead: no dummies they.
Well, a doe would serve him just fine, he could trade the fresh meat to the Mississippi Guard soldiers stationed at Walnut. His eyes strained to see down the game trails that ran in the brushy terrain beneath the hanging power lines, beneath his deer stand of green-painted plywood. It didn’t need to be camouflaged. Deer weren’t made to think about odd shapes, like the square green box nailed to the branches twenty feet above their trail.
Movement in the shroud of mist attracted his eye. Most of his face was hidden behind the square shooting hole in the south side of the blind. He saw the tan-gray color of a deer, moving cautiously in the underbrush, pausing, and moving again. Zack silently shifted to one knee and brought his compound bow up, an arrow ready, his right hand gripping the string’s trigger release.
The shifting tawny shape slowly emerged through the ground fog, but it soon became apparent that it was not a deer at all—it was a man. A man coming up one of the game trails, northbound. A man with a pack on his back, a man wearing the camouflage uniform of the Army, a matching wide-brimmed hat concealing his face. Zack shrank away from the shooting port and put his eye to one of the peepholes.
Deer would not pay attention to a plywood box suspended from a tree, but a soldier would. The solitary soldier could be a point man. He could be a few yards ahead of a squad or a platoon, probing for booby traps or ambushers.
But as Zack peered at him, he noticed some things that didn’t fit. The man had no rifle or machine gun; in one hand he held a pistol. No point man would come this way armed with only a pistol. But the lone man was wearing the new camouflage pattern uniform of the Mississippi Guard and the United States Army, and it was forbidden on pain of death for civilians to wear it. So the man was a member of the Guard, or he was an Army soldier—or had been.
The drone that had dropped a rocket on his father had been fired by such men. His father was out after curfew, of that there was no doubt. And he was carrying an illegal pump-action shotgun. The government had, he guessed, every legal justification to blow him up with a rocket for violating those two laws. That’s the way the world worked under martial law. Zack understood this, but it didn’t make him feel any better about it.
This soldier was alone, Zack finally decided. He was one of the soldiers who helped to fly the drones, who dropped the missiles on the curfew violators. Men like him had dropped the missile on his father. Was he out checking the results of another missile drop, like the one that had killed his father? No. Alone and armed only with a pistol, he was more likely either a spy or a deserter. He could be a military spy from Tennessee, on his way back to make a report. Maybe he was even one of the foreign “peacekeepers” in an American uniform.
The man paused for a solid minute, looking in all directions, and stared up at the boxy deer blind. Zack knew it must be clearly outlined against the pale dawn sky. But the man had no heat-sensing infrared scope, so Zack trusted that he was invisible in his box—as long as he remained motionless and made no sound.
Finally, the man looked around in a wide circle and continued walking a few steps at a time, passing less than thirty feet away, directly in front of the blind. Zack slowly shifted to another peephole in the long side of the blind, and he saw the man going away now, walking north up the game trail below the power lines, with brush and saplings and bushes up to his shoulders. It was winter and the shrubs were mostly without leaves, so he could easily see the soldier through them.
Without thinking, operating on automatic, Zack twisted around in the box and rose to a one-knee crouch, his compact bow rasping against the interior plywood, almost but not quite silent. The arrow was nocked into the string, his trigger release was ready in his right hand. He rose to a crouch and took aim through the square cutout on the north side of the box. He took in a breath and held it, drew back the seventy-pound pull string, and put the glowing orange plastic bead sight on the man’s back as he reached full draw. The compound bow’s wheels rolled to a stop, held for a moment—and then he let fly…
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. ."
We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a group who regularly attacks patriotic Americans by masquerading as a civil rights group, is compiling lists and conducting surveillance on what it calls “patriots”, “survivalists”, and “conspiracy theorists”. Even more disturbing, is the access this group has to the Obama administration’s Department of Justice.
In a report prepared for U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is asking the Federal Government to create a new inter-agency task force which will be dedicated to tracking and taking down conspiracy theorists, survivalists, “Patriot groups” and the “American radical right”.
The Government Supported Attack Group, who is actively creating lists and conducting surveillance on Americans, says the following people need to be tracked by the Federal Government.
Those who talk about, or believe in Conspiracy Theories.
Those who talk about or believe in Agenda 21 — a United Nations sustainability plan that was signed by President George H.W. Bush and is part of a plan to impose socialism on America and strip away private property rights.
Those who believe that the government is poised to take their guns.
Those who believe the President is trying to impose Socialism on the American people.
Those who call themselves Survivalist or belong to Patriot Groups.
Right-wing groups like the Tea Party, the Constitution Party, the Oath Keepers, or other “conspiracy-oriented Patriot groups”
The report was written by J. Richard Cohen, President of the SPLC and a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism Working Group.
The fact that our government entertains the thoughts of a raving madman is a testament to how far this country has fallen from its founding doctrines. How a person who labels patriotic Americans as a terrorist threat is allowed to work with the federal government, especially at a time when the DHS is in the middle of so many Spying & Drone Scandals, is a complete mystery that should scare the hell out of every American in this country.
We have a government who is declaring war on the thoughts, opinions and principles that founded this country. When a man who declares Patriots to be a “terrorist group” is allowed such high level access to our leaders, there is something seriously wrong with our system.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. ."
We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
Print Article Send a Tip by Joel B. Pollak 11 Mar 2013, 5:00 AM PDT 819post a commentRep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a member of the Democratic Party’s leadership in the House of Representatives, suggested to Jason Mattera at a Feb. 13 women’s rights rally that plans for an assault weapons ban and private-sales background checks were only the beginning of a broader gun control agenda extending to handguns as well.
Schakowsky evidently did not recognize Mattera, a conservative video journalist and senior investigative reporter for Talk Radio Network, who infamously confronted Vice President Joe Biden in the Capitol. (Mattera introduced himself to Schakowsky by name but did not indicate that he was filming or that he is conservative.) She spoke to Mattera as if he were a fellow gun control enthusiast--and Mattera played along, eliciting answers about Schakowsky’s enthusiasm for gun control.
“We want everything on the table,” Schakowsky told Mattera. “This is a moment of opportunity. There’s no question about it.” One poignant exchange was as follows:
Schakowsky: We’re on a roll now, and I think we’ve got to take the--you know, we’re gonna push as hard as we can and as far as we can. Mattera: So the assault weapons ban is just the beginning? Schakowsky: Oh absolutely. I mean, I’m against handguns. We have, in Illinois, the Council Against Handgun... something [Violence]. Yeah, I’m a member of that. So, absolutely.
In another exchange, Schakowsky proposed allowances for states and municipalities to ban guns--though such laws have been repeatedly rejected by the Supreme Court:
Mattera: We’ll never get a handgun ban with the Second Amendment as stated. Schakowsky: I don’t know. I don’t know that we can’t. And there may be an allowance, once again, for communities--I have communities in my district that prohibited handguns within their borders. The rights of municipalities and states to view that as a sensible way to keep people safe--I don’t think it’s precluded.
When Mattera asked why legislators were not pressing for a handgun ban, given that most murders are committed with handguns, Schakowsky replied: “Because we’re not going to be able to win that. Not now.” She went on to explain why background checks were a useful interim policy, arguing that they would “address any kind of weapon.”
Schakowsky’s remarks about plans for broader gun control are not the first time she has revealed the long-term goal behind short-term policy debates. She has a tendency to do so when speaking to apparently sympathetic audiences. In 2009, she told a crowd that the goal of Obamacare would be to “put the private insurance industry out of business.”
Officially, Democrats--including Schakowsky--hew to the party line as laid down by the president, which pledges support for the Second Amendment and for gun ownership in rural communities where hunting and shooting are viewed as traditional pastimes. Gun owners fear that the Sandy Hook-inspired gun control measures before Congress--none of which would have stopped the mass shooting at Sandy Hook--are a prelude to broader regulations, including the banning of handguns and the eventual registration and confiscation of firearms, despite earnest assurances by Democrats to the contrary.
The Democratic Party has taken a hard line on guns recently, with President Obama’s strategist, David Axelrod, joining New York mayor Michael Bloomberg in backing gun control enthusiast Robin Kelly over former Rep. Debbie Halvorson, who has an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, in the recent primary to replace former Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. of Illinois. Kelly has promised to be a “leader” in “banning guns.”
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. ."
We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
Armored Personnel Carriers in Baghdad. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Denver Post, on February 15th, ran an Associated Press article entitled Homeland Security aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo, so far to little notice. It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. As reported elsewhere, some of this purchase order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war, along with a frightening amount specialized for snipers. Also reported elsewhere, at the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month. Therefore 1.6 billion rounds would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years. In America.
Add to this perplexing outré purchase of ammo, DHS now is showing off its acquisition of heavily armored personnel carriers, repatriated from the Iraqi and Afghani theaters of operation. As observed by “paramilblogger” Ken Jorgustin last September:
[T]he Department of Homeland Security is apparently taking delivery (apparently through the Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico VA, via the manufacturer – Navistar Defense LLC) of an undetermined number of the recently retrofitted 2,717 ‘Mine Resistant Protected’ MaxxPro MRAP vehicles for service on the streets of the United States.”
These MRAP’s ARE BEING SEEN ON U.S. STREETS all across America by verified observers with photos, videos, and descriptions.”
Regardless of the exact number of MRAP’s being delivered to DHS (and evidently some to POLICE via DHS, as has been observed), why would they need such over-the-top vehicles on U.S. streets to withstand IEDs, mine blasts, and 50 caliber hits to bullet-proof glass? In a war zone… yes, definitely. Let’s protect our men and women. On the streets of America… ?”
…
“They all have gun ports… Gun Ports? In the theater of war, yes. On the streets of America…?
Seriously, why would DHS need such a vehicle on our streets?”
Why indeed? It is utterly inconceivable that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is planning a coup d’etat against President Obama, and the Congress, to install herself as Supreme Ruler of the United States of America. There, however, are real signs that the Department bureaucrats are running amok. About 20 years ago this columnist worked, for two years, in the U.S. Department of Energy’s general counsel’s office in its procurement and finance division. And is wise to the ways. The answer to “why would DHS need such a vehicle?” almost certainly is this: it’s a cool toy and these (reportedly) million dollar toys are being recycled, without much of a impact on the DHS budget. So… why not?
Why, indeed, should the federal government not be deploying armored personnel carriers and stockpiling enough ammo for a 20-year war in the homeland? Because it’s wrong in every way. President Obama has an opportunity, now, to live up to some of his rhetoric by helping the federal government set a noble example in a matter very close to his heart (and that of his Progressive base), one not inimical to the Bill of Rights: gun control. The federal government can (for a nice change) begin practicing what it preaches by controlling itself.
Remember the Sequester? The president is claiming its budget cuts will inconvenience travelers by squeezing essential services provided by the (opulently armed and stylishly uniformed) DHS. Quality ammunition is not cheap. (Of course, news reports that DHS is about to spend $50 million on new uniforms suggests a certain cavalier attitude toward government frugality.)
Spending money this way is beyond absurd well into perverse. According to the AP story a DHS spokesperson justifies this acquisition to “help the government get a low price for a big purchase.” Peggy Dixon, spokeswoman for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center: “The training center and others like it run by the Homeland Security Department use as many as 15 million rounds every year, mostly on shooting ranges and in training exercises.”
At 15 million rounds (which, in itself, is pretty extraordinary and sounds more like fun target-shooting-at-taxpayer-expense than a sensible training exercise) … that’s a stockpile that would last DHS over a century. To claim that it’s to “get a low price” for a ridiculously wasteful amount is an argument that could only fool a career civil servant.
Meanwhile, Senator Diane Feinstein, with the support of President Obama, is attempting to ban 100 capacity magazine clips. Doing a little apples-to-oranges comparison, here, 1.6 billion rounds is … 16 million times more objectionable.
Mr. Obama has a long history of disdain toward gun ownership. According to Prof. John Lott, in Debacle, a book he co-authored with iconic conservative strategist Grover Norquist,
“When I was first introduced to Obama (when both worked at the University of ChicagoLaw School, where Lott was famous for his analysis of firearms possession), he said, ‘Oh, you’re the gun guy.’
I responded: ‘Yes, I guess so.’
’I don’t believe that people should own guns,’ Obama
replied.
I then replied that it might be fun to have lunch and talk about that statement some time.
He simply grimaced and turned away. …
Unlike other liberal academics who usually enjoyed discussing opposing ideas, Obama showed disdain.”
Mr. Obama? Where’s the disdain now? Cancelling, or at minimum, drastically scaling back — by 90% or even 99%, the DHS order for ammo, and its receipt and deployment of armored personnel carriers, would be a “fourfer.”
The federal government would set an example of restraint in the matter of weaponry.
It would reduce the deficit without squeezing essential services.
It would do both in a way that was palatable to liberals and conservatives, slightly depolarizing America.
It would somewhat defuse, by the government making itself less armed-to-the-teeth, the anxiety of those who mistrust the benevolence of the federales.
If Obama doesn’t show any leadership on this matter it’s an opportunity for Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, to summon Secretary Napolitano over for a little national conversation. Madame Secretary? Buying 1.6 billion rounds of ammo and deploying armored personnel carriers runs contrary, in every way, to what “homeland security” really means. Discuss.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
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We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
Re: DHS new Terror Warning: "We are now focused on Americans taking up arms"
Hate to say it, but a LOT of people are calling this "Conspiracy Theory"... when it's pretty damned obvious it's true.
Those people are Liberals who are calling foul because they like to put everyone in a box, and I'm fucking tired of being put in a box. I want it investigated and I've written senators and congressassholes about it, and I want to emphasize this... I HAVE NOT HAVE ONE RESPONSE ON THIS SUBJECT FROM ANYONE! Not one fucking response, NOT EVEN A FORM LETTER thanking me for taking the time to write. I HAVE BEEN IGNORED on this.
Libertatem Prius!
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On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted details of a no bid contract with weapons manufacturer Sig Sauer, worth $4.5 million over the next five years.
The contract is identical to the one DHS announced last week with Heckler & Koch.
Both contracts are for $900,000 worth of "replacement parts" a year, for weapons used by DHS agents.
While it is hard to imagine how or why a domestic agency could anticipate firing their weapons enough over the next five years to need $1.8 million annually in replacement parts, the DHS documents clearly state their need to "stock sufficient quantities of parts needed to fulfill the quantities of parts anticipated to be ordered."
In April 2012, DHS purchased $143,000 worth of submachine guns from Heckler & Koch.
Of course, this comes on the heels of the news that DHS is purchasing2,717 'Mine Resistant Protected' vehicles for urban use.
In light of the Obama administration's push for gun-grabbing legislation, a flurry of "multi-agency training drills" inside our cities and towns, the dismissal of several well-respected military leaders and the purchase of urban tanks, along with 2 billion rounds of ammunition...one need not be a conspiracy theorist to be genuinely concerned about the imminent threat to our freedoms, as well as to our very lives.
Re: DHS new Terror Warning: "We are now focused on Americans taking up arms"
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
They passed a mag ban last night, the asshole governor in the State of Colorado is about to sign the bill. I'm glad I've decided to leave the state, cuz I don't want to stay around for the bloodshed he's going to cause.
Libertatem Prius!
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Re: DHS new Terror Warning: "We are now focused on Americans taking up arms"
Nice, you're a criminal now(or soon) and the full force of the government can come and haul you away. If that's not the time to draw your line in the sand, there will never be anything that would push you over.
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
Re: DHS new Terror Warning: "We are now focused on Americans taking up arms"
Oh, the old law enforcement loophole then?
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
Re: DHS new Terror Warning: "We are now focused on Americans taking up arms"
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