The Best Story I've Heard About January 6

Today, I saw the best thing I've read about January 6th, the dawning day of American political prisoners and the operation that created them, thanks to Mike Myles at 90 Miles From Tyranny.  

Ashli Babbit wasn't the only woman who was killed that day, but Ashli's killing was so obviously a horrible overreaction by Lt. Byrd who shot her, that her military service and life story have made her the one everyone thinks of first.  She was not a life-threatening risk to Lt. Byrd.  There was also a woman named Roseanne Boyland who died in the capital.  As it is, you'd be hard pressed to find the truth about anything done, anybody killed, and the thousands of years of prison time given to protestors.  I've tried to look up details on these cases but the media saturation with stories made to tell the official party line is making getting details practically impossible. 

From X (Twitter) account InvestigateJ6.

I saw a video of this some months ago, and it looked like that description, that the police beat her to death.  I saw the other people trying to resuscitate her.  The official cause of death was "accidental overdose of amphetamines," but she was known to have come off a drug habit and was trying to help others overcome their addictions.  

Of course, there were also men who died on January 6th; I've seen the names Kevin Greeson and Benjamin Phillips, but the official narrative is that they died of heart failure - cardiovascular disease.  As a general rule, nobody cares about white men dying other than their families, so since they weren't wearing fur and horns or caught stealing Nancy Pelosi's desk, it'll be hard to find anything else about them. 

A big thanks to Tom Fitton and Judicial watch for starting the suit on Ashli Babbit's family's behalf.

EDIT Jan. 7 at 1340 EST to add:  Vivek Ramaswamy might have won the war of words on Jan.6, tweeting on the 6th about Ray Epps and adding the hashtag, #EntrapmentDay.  Note that on the 6th, DC U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves made it clear that the DOJ is now going to target Americans who were around the Capitol on J6 but did not enter the building.  Anyone who happened to be "around" the Capitol?  Would you define "around" Mr. U.S. Attorney?  A hundred yards?  A hundred miles? 

I Underestimated Just How Stupid the BATF Can Be

Last August, when I wrote my comments to the BATF NPRM 2021-R05 on frames and receivers, I emphasized that they said they were going to clear up the definition of "readily converted" but did nothing remotely of the sort. In every single place where they could have clarified it, they refused to do so.  I told them they could substitute the word convenient and it would seem to cover what they were trying to do.  Of course, they didn't define convenient, either.  

The whole NPRM, at least as related to Privately Made Firearms, could be summed up in a cliche'.  I concluded my comment to the rule with:

In a now famous 1964 Supreme court ruling, Justice Potter Stewart declared, “I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it” (Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 US 184).  The Bureau has moved the definition of pornography into Privately Made Firearms.

You have to do better.

In my comments here on the blog, I was a little more prosaic, spending more time on the ruling being aimed at making the whole process less convenient.  I said.

This turns the question into how inconvenient does ATF want the process to be?  Is it acceptable to order the frame from Polymer80 and the parts to complete it from Midway USA?  Do we need to order the internal parts as one part per vendor; buying from 10 or 20 vendors instead of just one?  How about if between every step we have to go run around the block?  What's that, ATF?  Between every step we need to crawl across Death Valley on our hands and knees? 

Conveniently packaged is just as nebulous a concept as readily converted.  We should get precise, repeatable definitions.  Instead, for everything we get the crutch of tyrants everywhere: we'll know it when we see it, because we're the experts. 

Like the headline says, I underestimated just how stupid they could or would be.  In a story that didn't get much coverage, the BATF this week served a Cease and Desist order on a supplier of uncompleted frames called JSD Supply in the Philadelphia area.  Reality came up between my hypothetical examples of ordering the frame from Polymer80 and the parts to complete from Midway USA or requiring us to buy parts from 10 or 20 different suppliers.  

The order originated from the ATF’s Philadelphia field office. It stated that JSD Supply could not sell both unfinished frames and firearms parts to the same person no matter if they were purchased at different times. If JSD Supply sold a frame to someone, then the customer comes back to the site and buys a gun part; then, according to the ATF, the company sold the customer a complete firearm without a federal firearms license (FFL) in violation of the Gun Control Act (GCA).  [Bold Added:  SiG]

They're saying we can buy all of the parts to complete a frame from one supplier as long as we didn't buy the frame from the same company, but in no case can a company that sells a frame EVER, AT ANY TIME sell that person the rest of the parts.  While the article doesn't use those words, the ATF doesn't say in anything they've said about this case that there's a waiting period after which the company can sell both the frame and the parts.

Furthermore, the ATF maintains this has nothing to do with NPRM 2021-R05.  

The ATF claims this action is independent of the new rule change that was unveiled last month during a White House Rose Garden ceremony and is due to go into effect this August. The order claimed it has always been Illegal under the GCA to sell parts and frames to the same person even if the transactions were separate. 

It has always been illegal, but just now, in May of '22 have we decided to enforce this law?  Yeah, right.  Made up, pulled out of the depths of their asses.  They have the Fed.gov's infinite checkbook.  A small business like JSD Supply has a budget they need to stay within.  They have the entire Fed.gov military to call for backup.  JSD has exactly none.      

Like me, you might have heard of JSD Supply as the target of an NBC TV attack. A New York-based reporter named Vaughn Hillyard went to a gun show outside of Philadelphia and purchased two unfinished kits.  After he bought the two kits from the JSD Supply booth, he ambushed JSD Supply owner Jordan Vinroe in the parking lot for an interview. As is virtually always the case, the interview was selectively edited to smear Vinroe.

This is where the story turns to whether NBC News committed felonies.  After the interview, Hillyard took the two kits to the PA AG’s Office, where employees finished the kits for him.  If a frame and parts kit isn't a firearm, but a buyer has someone else complete it (turn it into a firearm) for them, that's illegal.  If the frame and parts kits are firearms, then Hillyard transferred a gun to the Attorney General to complete it for him.  Plus, it appears Hillyard broke the law as a New York State resident buying a firearm in Pennsylvania without transferring it back to New York through an FFL on both ends.   

Of course, you know the chances of a mainstream media agency or their reporter being charged with a crime they committed are pretty much "zero point zero" - to quote Dean Vernon Wormer.  

One of the arguments over whether they were going to clarify their positions on what constitutes being readily converted was that they can't tell us where the line is because in replacement for today's 80% frames would instantly be "79% frames" - or 70, 60 or whatever.  They don't want people to know what's illegal because they want to redefine "illegal" to fit the whims of whomever is in charge.  Which is what's happening now. 

It looks to me like the Defense Distributed idea of a way to make functional receivers out of square aluminum bars - "Zero Percent Lowers" - won't be affected.  They aren't selling frames, they're selling CNC milling machines which you can use to make lowers or anything else in its work envelope.  Put in a square bar of aluminum and make a frame.  If they sell you a parts kit (I haven't even looked to see if they do that), they're like a business that just sells parts kits.  The impact will be bigger on the companies that sell both frames and parts.  Those places will need to track who bought what, and when they bought it.

Yeah, it's Homer with a drill!  OK, he's working on a camera and not an AR Lower, but last August I referred to the difference between a skilled machinist and Homer with a cordless drill, and found this picture. Even though the drill has a cord.

 

 

About that Justice for J6 Thing

You know, that super scary “Justice for J6” rally in DC that was supposed to be Insurrection 2.0, possibly even worse than January 6th itself?  That's the rally that pretty much everyone with any sense looked at and said, "it's a trap!" like Admiral Ackbar himself? 

It was pretty much two or three uniformed and undercover cops per protestor and turned into a fest for the meme writers.  A good start is on Townhall.com, in a piece by Matt Vespa.   There's a photo of a bunch of guys who have almost identical outfits on that is the subject of most of them and I'll reproduce just one here because I laughed most at this one:

From Twitter account The Right to Bear Memes. 

Go check 'em out. 

 

Saying, "That's the Most Stupid Thing I've Ever Seen" is Not a Challenge

A week ago, I saw the story of man being arrested while out alone on a paddleboard, nowhere near another person, for violating social distancing rules.  He might have come within 25 feet of a pier.  And so, because a lifeguard ordered him off the water and he either didn't know, didn't hear or just didn't comply, police boats were scrambled to arrest him.  In which the police had to violate social distancing to get close enough to touch him for coming within a couple of hundred feet of a pier. 

Seriously, when we say, “that's the most stupid thing I've ever seen”, the police have got to stop saying, “hold my beer.”

Take Wednesday night services at Temple Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi.  As they've been doing, they were holding services over Low Power FM radio.  The churchgoers were in their cars, listening to the teaching on the radio when police arrived and ordered everyone to leave.  Those who questioned that were handed $500 fines.  That story link is from theBlaze, linked to the Delta Democrat-Times.

Lee Gordon — a 23-year member of the church as well as a representative for the Washington County Board of Supervisors — told the Democrat-Times the church has been using a low-power FM frequency to broadcast sermons in the parking lot for the last three weeks.

"The preacher is in the church at the pulpit, and we are streaming the service live as well," Gordon added to the paper. "But a lot of our membership is elderly and [lacks access to streaming technology]."

Gordon told the Democrat-Times he and his wife were among those gathered in the church parking lot — and figured they all were abiding by the coronavirus social distancing guidelines given they were in their cars with the windows rolled up.

But that wasn't the case — and they paid for it.

Gordon told the paper he and his wife were both issued $500 tickets.

I should note that Mr. Gordon said the police "were respectful and just doing their job. They asked us to leave first, and those who stayed got a ticket."  

(Bad quality screen capture from YouTube, posted on The Blaze)  The article explains the sole occupant of that car is a retired nurse.  Clearly the only person within 6 feet of that vehicle is the officer giving out tickets.

The arguments are just as inane as you'd think.  The Mayor of Greenville says “It's all about trying to save lives,” and “gatherings of 10 or more people have been banned in the city for more than three weeks,” but it's hard for me to grasp why having several cars with people in them constitutes a public gathering.  Perhaps if the cars were door to door with the windows open, you could violate six feet social distance, but everyone says they had their windows up.  (I don't know about Greenville, Mississippi, but around here you'd have your windows up, your car idling and your air conditioner on!)  

Despite getting the $500 fine, County Board of Supervisors member Mr. Gordon says,

"There's 25 cars 200 yards away all in the same place at the Sonic Drive-In. What we're doing endangers nobody," he said.

Frankly, that makes it sound to me like the Mayor got his panties in a bunch because he thought the church was defying him.  

Red Flag Laws and Mistaken Identity - Happens in Florida

This story didn't make the two local papers or any other local source I see, so we go to the AmmoLand newsletter today.  A St. Cloud (Florida) man had his firearms confiscated and his rights revoked because he has the same name as someone else.

Last Wednesday, Jonathan Carpenter of Osceola County, Florida was sitting at home when a mail carrier knocked on his front door.

The postal carrier had Carpenter signed for a certified letter from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Carpenter signed for it, but he was confused because he was not expecting anything from the state. He quickly opened it and was floored.

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services was notifying him that they have suspended his concealed handgun permit.

“On or about August 12th, 2019 in Osceola County, Florida, an injunction was entered restraining you from acts of domestic violence or acts of repeat violations,” the notice read.

Carpenter was shocked and confused.  What seems to have happened next is he dove right into the hornet's nest.  An innocent man who believes in the goodness and fairness of the system would do that.

Figuring it was a mistake, Carpenter called the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to clear things up since he has never committed domestic violence against anyone. The representative told him he had to get a form from the Clerk of the Courts saying that there weren't any actions against him.

Of course they did.  When he went to the Clerk of the Courts, he was told there was an injunction against a Jonathon Edward Carpenter - a resident of a different address.  Carpenter told the agent he was not that person, had never lived at that address and had never been accused of any domestic violence.  That person directed him to the Osceola County Sheriff's office to clear things up.  Still thinking the state was just confused rather than malevolent, he went to the Sheriff's office.  He thought he could clear things up.

Not quite.

The Sheriff’s office supplied Carpenter with a copy of the injunction. In the statement, the plaintiff stated that she rented a room out to a “Jonathan Edward Carpenter” and his girlfriend. She alleged that this Carpenter was a drug dealer who broke her furniture and sold her belongings without her permission. He had a gun, and she feared for her life. She was not sure if the firearm was legal or not.

Carpenter had never met the woman in question and never lived at the address listed in the restraining order. Moreover, other than being white, he looked nothing like the man the terrorized the woman.

The man in question is 5'8. Carpenter is 5'11. The alleged drug dealer is 110lbs. Carpenter is over 200. The man has black hair. Carpenter is completely bald. Last but not least, the man in question is covered in tattoos, and Carpenter only has a few.

It was apparent that the police had the wrong man, but Carpenter was in for his biggest shock yet. The Sheriff’s office told Carpenter he had to surrender his guns. Carpenter never even had as much as a hearing, yet he was losing his rights.

And this is where the system springs its "trap"; more accurately, this is where the system shows it  doesn't care the least little bit that they have the right person, they just "got someone".   It's where the reputation for putting innocent people in jail (or worse) comes from.  The Osceola County Sheriff's Office doesn't think the obvious differences in appearances and histories between the man in front of them and the accused is enough for them to say, "oops, they sent the letter to the wrong dude.  Sorry.  No hard feelings."  They should be saying, "here's a few bucks for your trouble"; instead, this is going to cost Carpenter a lot of money to get back property and a life he should have never been deprived of.

And this is why we hate Red Flag Laws, aka Extreme Protection Orders. Guilty until proven innocent.  No due process.  No protections.  Just a stupid mistake causes innocent people financial ruin to put their lives back.

How did it come to be? According to the AmmoLand news,

A police officer I spoke to off the record thinks that the courts ran a check for a Jonathan Edward Carpenter with a concealed carry permit. Although he could not tell me for sure, he thinks that is what happened in this particular case. He did say that this is a common practice.

Seems very plausible that the abomination passed last year would automate this.  A warrant for someone on domestic abuse gets filed and it automatically generates a check to see if that name is associated with a CWFL; if it is, the Red Flag is automatically thrown.  

Meanwhile, Carpenter has to wait until August 27th to begin the legal proceedings to get his guns back. 

Civil Asset Forfeiture - And the Beat Goes On

In the last few years, the opposition to the practice of civil asset forfeiture across the country has been rising.  The Institute for Justice has cataloged how the states have responded.  Note that some states appear in more than one grouping.  Much more detail at the IJ link. 

• Three states—North Carolina, New Mexico and Nebraska—have abolished civil forfeiture entirely.
• 29 states and the District of Columbia have reformed their civil forfeiture laws
• Fifteen states now require a criminal conviction for most or all forfeiture cases and a sixteenth, Utah, forbids forfeiture for cases where the claimants are found not guilty and are acquitted.
• Sixteen states and the District of Columbia require the government to bear the burden of proof for innocent-owner claims
• Nineteen states and the District of Columbia instituted new reporting requirements for seizure and forfeiture activity
• Finally, seven states and the District of Columbia have passed anti-circumvention legislation to close the equitable-sharing loophole.

This despite the president and his former attorney general Sessions vocally endorsing asset forfeiture.

Despite these reforms, the beat goes on.  Asset forfeiture is still happening, and local TV WALB in Lowndes County, Georgia tells the story of a what seems to be a routine traffic stop that resulted in the seizure of over $500,000 in Georgia last week.  H/T to the Foundation for Economic Education - FEE. 

Two Colombian men were headed south on I-75 when deputies noticed them driving erratically and pulled them over.

“In and out of lanes, just moving over the line, actually slowed down, got a very slow limit of speed on interstate, actually thought the driver might be impaired," said Paulk.

Sheriff Paulk said deputies reported that the men appeared to be very nervous, so they called in K-9s to check the car.

“The dogs, they’ll also alert on a large quantity of money like that, not just cause it’s money but because it has drugs attached to it," said Paulk.

How did they decide it was drug money and could be confiscated?

“All of it is wrapped the same way they wrap cocaine, the same rubber bands, the same style of wrapping. So, when you see that you know where that money’s derived from," said Paulk.

Sounds like a rock solid case to me!  I mean it used the same rubber bands!  I say, "rock solid case" deliberately tongue in cheek because "case" implies actual due process.  With asset forfeiture in several states, actual charges of criminal violation and resulting conviction are required. Georgia is not one of these states.

There isn't much to this story besides this allegation.  Personally, if I had to be carrying half a million dollars in cash, I'd be nervous about the prospect of being pulled over for nothing and the money seized.

Of course, the lack of criminal charges and proper due process is what most of us who are opposed to asset forfeiture are complaining about, just as many of us complain about "red flag laws" depriving gun owners of property with no due process, not even a hearing with defendant present, and often charging them for the return of their property.  In so many of these asset grabs they never even file charges.  They just see money so they take it. 

According to a Department of Justice Inspector General report, between 2007 and 2017, the DEA alone seized $3.2 billion from individuals who were not charged with a crime. Cash seizures without charges made up 81 percent of the funds analyzed in that report.

Beyond the DEA, law enforcement agencies around the country generate millions of dollars per year through civil asset forfeiture and are often allowed to keep or sell the property they confiscate. Utah police seized $2.1 million in 2017, and an overwhelming majority of the cases—96 percent—were drug-related, reflecting the widespread ramifications of the decades-long War on Drugs (proponents of civil asset forfeiture have claimed the practice is a key tool in the costly, ineffective policy).

I've been writing about civil asset forfeiture over the life of this blog (example).  Nothing would make me happier than see it disappear.  

(source - judging by the maps on the wall, probably not Lowndes county, Georgia)

How Many People Has the TSA Gotten Killed?

Last Friday, those of you who get the newsletters from Ammo.com received a link to a story on the TSA.  That story, combined with the post from ASM286 on Borepatch today, about the Lesson of Manchester got me thinking.

One version of the Law of Unintended Consequences says that no matter how good the intent, or indeed the actual construction of a program, there are always unintended consequences.  They may be hidden or they may be slap-your-face obvious but they are always there.

An undeniable aspect of the TSA's Airport Security Theater of the Mind is that it's annoying; something that people put up with simply because they have to.  That leads to an unintended consequence: people will say "I'm not putting up with that for a trip that's an easy drive" and will drive to their destination instead of flying.  Driving is more dangerous than flying, statistically.  Using that information, some researchers have concluded in a 2005 journal article that

We find that driving fatalities increased significantly following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an event which prompted many travelers to substitute less-safe surface transportation for safer air transportation. After controlling for time trends, weather, road conditions, and other factors, we attribute an increase of 242 driving fatalities per month to additional road travel undertaken in response to 9/11. In total, our results suggest that at least 1,200 additional driving deaths are attributable to the effect of 9/11. We also provide evidence that is consistent with the 9/11 effect on road fatalities weakening over time as drivers return to flying. Our results show that the public response to terrorist threats can create unintended consequences that rival the attacks themselves in severity. [Bold added - SiG]

242 fatalities per month??  Depending on exact model and carrier, a Boeing 737 might carry between 85 and 200 people.  The reaction to the TSA causing 242 fatalities could be the equivalent of two or three fully loaded 737s crashing and killing everyone on board every month.  

Unfortunately, that's a snapshot study so while we can think it has gotten worse in the 12 years since 2005, we don't have real numbers.  They say that drivers were returning to flying, but we also hear air travel is increasing so perhaps those two trends offset each other.  If the number of 242/month has stayed constant, we're talking on the order of 3000 people dying from the TSA itself.  9/11 itself officially claimed 2996 lives, so it's possible that the TSA has killed as many people as the terrorists themselves. 

The TSA would say it's not their fault that those people died.  The fault lies with the people who decided to drive rather than go into the loving care of the TSA and airline reaccommodation.  I'm going to reference IMAO on this, from a completely unrelated topic. 

And that’s how government rolls: burn down your house, then blame you for choosing not to continue dwelling on the ash heap.

But if you do decide to face Uncle Pervy of the TSA, there's another unintended consequence: the TSA is completely, horribly ineffective at what it's supposed to be doing.   It's the worst kind of security kabuki. 

During covert tests conducted by the DHS in 2015, TSA agents failed to detect guns and fake explosives 95 percent of the time. In one test, an undercover DHS agent was stopped and received an "enhanced" pat-down search after setting off a metal detector, but the TSA screener failed to detect the fake bomb taped to the agent’s back.

If the BATF is the "F Troop" of federal law enforcement, they finally have someone to feel superior to.  Clever Hans, the horse that was famous for knowing arithmetic almost 120 years ago, could look down on the rank and file TSA.

A 95% failure to detect bombs and other contraband, of course, means that if someone suffering Sudden Jihadi Syndrome had actually tried to sneak a bomb onto a plane, there's a 95% chance they would have succeeded.  If there had been two trying on the same day at different airports, it's a virtual certainty that one would have succeeded with only 1/4% chance of them both being found.  If a duplicate of Operation Bojinka happened with one suicide bomber at each of 10 different airports on one day... well, you can complete that sentence. 

Still, that all might well pale in comparison to the biggest unintended consequence: the kind of mass murder the TSA could facilitate even if they caught everything they should catch - as ASM286 points out over at Borepatch's.  It doesn't require the TSA to mess up at all, just do what they do with the crowd in the airport. 

The lesson of Manchester is you don't need to get on a plane, into a secure area, or past a search.

Think about that the next time you're standing in the cattle chutes with your shoes in your hand hoping you don't get selected for extra screening. All those people in line with you haven't been screened yet either. That rolling suitcase the next guy has could be his underwear and socks for a week or it could be another nail bomb like the one at Manchester.

 (Source: Click Orlando)
While problems like that remain, private security employed at various airports around the country has been tested and found to be better at their jobs than the TSA. 

Private screeners at SPP airports (Screening Partnership Program) have proven themselves to be more efficient and more effective than the TSA. A report by a House oversight committee in 2013 found that private screeners at San Francisco International Airport were much better at detecting prohibited items than TSA screeners at LAX, and wait times were shorter. As a result of the report, calls are growing in Congress to abolish the TSA and return to private screening companies.

Having flown out of one of those SPP airports, abolishing the TSA and going back to private contractors is a move I could get behind.

The Deep State Hit Job On Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn

It has been interesting to watch the news unfolding today detailing what appears to be nothing short of a hit job, a political career assassination, against Lt. General Michael Flynn by members of the Deep State.

The story several people seem to be quoting is the Washington Free Beacon's Adam Credo's article, alleging that the classified information was leaked to the press by Obama appointees in the CIA determined to preserve the Iran nuclear giveaway program deal.

The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump's national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources in and out of the White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media.

The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes—the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber—included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn's credibility, multiple sources revealed.

A "secret, months-long campaign" means these agencies have been plotting to take him down since well before the inauguration.  Gen. Flynn was known as a critic of the Iran deal, and of the CIA for so badly bungling the management of the Mideast in the wake of the wind down in Iraq.  The Blaze adds:

Flynn was one of the most vociferous critics of the Iran Deal and ridding him from Trump’s administration helps the cause to keep the agreement in place, despite repeated statements by Trump that he would dismantle what he called, “the worst deal ever negotiated.”

The whole thing seems to go back to secret aspects of the Iranian deal, and the Deep State's desire to keep them secret.  They were scared Flynn was going to somehow let those secrets out.

A third source who serves as a congressional adviser and was involved in the 2015 fight over the Iran deal told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration feared that Flynn would expose the secret agreements with Iran.

"The Obama administration knew that Flynn was going to release the secret documents around the Iran deal, which would blow up their myth that it was a good deal that rolled back Iran," the source said. "So in December the Obama NSC started going to work with their favorite reporters, selectively leaking damaging and incomplete information about Flynn."

The laughable New York Times, living up to my version of their motto; "all the news we feel fit to make up",  tried to imply that the leak of information was to let the media know that Trump was colluding with the Russians during the election (yawn) but even the intelligence report put down that lie. The Times left out this important sentence.

The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.

The most in-depth coverage seems to be from Patrick Poole at PJ Media (whom I've already quoted), and specifically gets into the legalities of what these "intelligence community" people did.  

House Intel Committee Chairman Devin Nunes is demanding to know why Flynn's conversations were being wiretapped. As one of the congressional "Big 8," if there were a covert program targeting Flynn, he would be one of the few to know:

“Any intelligence agency cannot listen to Americans’ phone calls,” Nunes told reporters Tuesday night. “If there’s inadvertent collection that you know is overseas there’s a whole process in place for that.”
...
“So in this case it would be General Flynn and then how did that happen. Then if they did that, then how does all that get out to the public which is another leak of classified information,” Nunes added. “I’m pretty sure the FBI didn’t have a warrant on Michael Flynn.” [bold in the original - SiG]

and

Here's Eli Lake at Bloomberg:

There is another component to this story as well -- as Trump himself just tweeted. It's very rare that reporters are ever told about government-monitored communications of U.S. citizens, let alone senior U.S. officials. The last story like this to hit Washington was in 2009 when Jeff Stein, then of CQ, reported on intercepted phone calls between a senior Aipac lobbyist and Jane Harman, who at the time was a Democratic member of Congress.

Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do.

Trump famously said he intended to drain the swamp.  This swamp is filled with 12' long gators and they're fighting back.  The intelligence agencies and other political hacks are putting on a shameful display of insider politics at its worst.  While most commentators have talked about this for what it is, I heard Jason Buttrill on the Blaze, a former member of the intelligence community, talking like they just did the country a tremendous favor, but it sure doesn't sound that way to me.  It sounds like the intelligence community is trying to destroy the administration as John Robb talked about two months ago.  Apparently, it all centers on Obama appointees to the agencies trying to maintain what they view as their legacy.  Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Adviser for the Obama administration at the time, said that they viewed the Iran Deal as the Obamacare of his second term, meaning it was just as important to his presidential legacy.

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn testifies during a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Maybe This Is Too "Inside Florida" ...

I heard a little of the long diatribe from Baltimore's State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby announcement that she's indicting six officers in the death that the city is ablaze over.  It seemed very political with her statement about "I [will] work to deliver justice on behalf of this young man".  If she had said "I will work to deliver justice", that would have been politically neutral; saying what she did implies that there was a gross injustice against him, and it doesn't seem to me that's proper for a prosecutor to say.  We expect a prosecutor to think they have a case, but they shouldn't be too political. 

Maybe this is too "inside Florida", but my first thought was, "Angela Corey?  Is that you?" 

Corey's name may be familiar to non-Floridians who are gun culture folks.  She's the prosecutor who zealously went after George Zimmerman, wasting tons of taxpayer money on a case that very few people thought she had any chance of winning.  It was widely considered pure politics, just trolling for stupid voters, but it wasn't the only anti-gunner prosecution she ran.

It's all just parts in a play.  All the rent-a-mob protesters, from Malik Zulu Shabazz to the Crips and Bloods, whoever went from Ferguson to Baltimore, and will move on to the next city, wherever that may be.  You hear the same comment from locals in both cities: those guy aren't from around here.  They were flown in to Baltimore.  What's the game?  As Al Sharpton said today, federalize local police forces.  To fulfill Obama's statement that we need "a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as our military.  And to get rid of those stupid, annoying little states rights and give all powers to the Fed.gov. 

If you're old enough, you'll remember the riots during the "long, hot, summers" of the 1960s.  Here we are again.

Wisconsin's Organized Lawfare Raids

Wisconsin, the cradle of progressive politics, has lessons to teach us all about the horrors of the merger of state and unions.  Ed Morrisey at Hot Air summarizes the story, with links to David French's in-depth report of the terror of Wisconsin’s “John Doe” raids in a new report for National Review (you should RTWT):

Cindy Archer, one of the lead architects of Wisconsin’s Act 10 — also called the “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill,” it limited public-employee benefits and altered collective-bargaining rules for public-employee unions — was jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking. The entire house — the windows and walls — was shaking.

She looked outside to see up to a dozen police officers, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram.
...
“I begged and begged, ‘Please don’t shoot my dogs, please don’t shoot my dogs, just don’t shoot my dogs.’ I couldn’t get them to stop barking, and I couldn’t get them outside quick enough. I saw a gun and barking dogs. I was scared and knew this was a bad mix.”

Others noted by David French in that National Review article also participated in conservative politics and policy development, all of whom got raided in exactly the same manner — warned not to talk about it, warned not to get a lawyer, all while the government confiscated their papers and computers.  How can this be legal?

How does something like this start?  Politics.  How else?

In 2009, officials from the office of the Milwaukee County executive contacted the office of the Milwaukee district attorney, headed by John Chisholm, to investigate the disappearance of $11,242.24 from the Milwaukee chapter of the Order of the Purple Heart. The matter was routine, with witnesses willing and able to testify against the principal suspect, a man named Kevin Kavanaugh.

What followed, however, was anything but routine. Chisholm failed to act promptly on the report, and when he did act, he refused to conduct a conventional criminal investigation but instead petitioned, in May 2010, to open a “John Doe” investigation, a proceeding under Wisconsin law that permits Wisconsin officials to conduct extensive investigations while keeping the target’s identity secret (hence the designation “John Doe”).

John Doe investigations alter typical criminal procedure in two important ways: First, they remove grand juries from the investigative process, replacing the ordinary citizens of a grand jury with a supervising judge. Second, they can include strict secrecy requirements not just on the prosecution but also on the targets of the investigation...

Why would Chisholm seek such broad powers to investigate a year-old embezzlement claim with a known suspect? Because the Milwaukee County executive, Scott Walker, had by that time become the leading Republican candidate for governor. District Attorney Chisholm was a Democrat, a very partisan Democrat.

Of course, this was the point: to intimidate conservatives into not speaking, not organizing into a real political movement.  Wisconsin Club for Growth head Eric O'Keefe found that affiliates were cancelling meetings and refusing to talk with him.  They understandably thought being affiliated with someone who had gone through such investigation might lead to getting the early morning battering ram raids themselves.  O'Keefe had to abandon fundraising for the Club because he could no longer guarantee to donors that their identities would remain confidential, could not (due to the Secrecy Order) explain to potential donors the nature of the investigation, could not assuage donors’ fears that they might become targets themselves, and could not assure donors that their money would go to fund advocacy rather than legal expenses. As O'Keefe later said, "The process is the punishment".

In international law, the Western world has become familiar with a concept called “lawfare,” a process whereby rogue regimes or organizations abuse legal doctrines and processes to accomplish through sheer harassment and attrition what can’t be accomplished through legitimate diplomatic means. The Palestinian Authority and its defenders have become adept at lawfare, putting Israel under increasing pressure before the U.N. and other international bodies.

The John Doe investigations are a form of domestic lawfare, and our constitutional system is ill equipped to handle it. 

In the coming days, thanks to the gyrocopter idiot, you'll be hearing a lot of talk about campaign finance.  I've written many times that I think the role of money in politics is overblown: it's an easy excuse for rotten campaign managers or rotten candidates and we routinely see the underfunded candidate win.  The counter to that is the argument that big money controls everything.  I've already heard the arguments that Hildebeest has got "2.5 billion dollars" and will win.  The basis for the horrors people went through was the idea that money in politics is a greater evil than a government empowered to shut down political speech. 

The John Doe law in Wisconsin shows exactly why government intervention in political speech is worse than any corruption it attempts to prevent. The use of force in Wisconsin got applied to one side exclusively, and intended to shut down conservatives before they could exercise their legitimate political power. It’s even more egregious than the IRS targeting of conservatives between 2009-2013, but it’s the same kind of abuse of power, and it leverages the same kind of campaign-finance reform statutes that give government at state and federal levels entrée to control political speech.

(generic stock-ish photo of police seizing computers, as happened to so many conservatives in Wisconsin - from Metronews.ca)

It's Not Your Money - Feds Put Currency Control In Place

This story has been floating around for a few days, now, but I don't see much coverage of it.  According to The Sovereign Man blog by Simon Black, the DOJ has instituted cash controls that require banks to notify them if anyone withdraws as little as $5000 cash in one transaction.

Assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell gave a speech in which he urged banks to “alert law enforcement authorities about the problem” so that police can “seize the funds” or at least “initiate an investigation”.

As Black highlights, according to the handbook for the Federal Financial Institution Examination Council, such suspicious activity includes, “Transactions conducted or attempted by, at, or through the bank (or an affiliate) and aggregating $5,000 or more…”

Imagine going to your local bank to get some cash; for a specific purchase or just because you want to have some cash on hand.  You tell the teller that you’d like to withdraw $5,000 from your account. She hesitates nervously and wants to know why.

You try to politely let her know that that’s none of the bank’s business as it’s your money.

The teller disappears for a few minutes, leaving you waiting.

When she returns she tells you that you can collect your money in a few days as they don’t have it on hand at the moment.

Slightly irritated because of the inconvenience, you head home.

But as you pull into your driveway later there’s an unexpected surprise waiting for you: two police officers would like to have a word with you about your intended withdrawal earlier…

How do you know you live in a police state?  That's a pretty good working definition right there.

With today's prices $5000 isn't an extreme amount of cash.  I've had plumbing damage to my house that cost more than that to repair (leak from a dishwasher in the kitchen that required stripping to bare concrete and rebuilding).  Maybe you want to buy a used car, or pay your plumber for a major fix in cash.  Sure, most people use a credit card or check for that, but shouldn't that be your choice? 

According to Black, federal regulations REQUIRE banks to file ‘suspicious activity reports’ or SARs on their customers. The thing is, it’s not optional.  Banks have minimum quotas of SARs they need to fill out and submit to the federal government.  If they don’t file enough SARs, they can be fined. They can lose their banking charter. And yes, bank executives and directors can even be imprisoned for noncompliance. So they have strong incentives to fill out SARs on anyone at any time.

SHTFPlan.com adds some more essential details.  He ties it to the horror of civil forfeiture, which I've written about several times here (for example), Confessions of a Street Pharmacist has, The Daily Sheeple and a lot of other people as well.  They conclude with:

It’s a sad state of affairs when law-abiding American citizens now have to worry about how to hide their money where the bankers and police can’t find it. When travelling or keeping money at home consider the Shovel and Maneuver for Hiding Gold, Guns and Other Assets:

With the central reserve banks causing all sorts of distortions in the market, there's lots of talk about the negative interest rates spreading from bonds to banks - the ECB itself went to negative interest a year ago.  People are understandably uneasy about leaving money in places where it can get stolen confiscated.  The central banks need control of every bit of currency in the world and the governments want control of every person in the world, so they're only too happy to comply.   

(from SHTFPlan)

A Stopped Clock Is Right More Often Than Eric Holder

The stopped clock is right twice a day; Holder may be right for the first time in his tenure as AG.  H/T to Market Ticker.  Holder has issued a ruling to limit civil forfeiture, where police departments have been incentivized to seize property and cash from anyone they find convenient. 

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without proving that a crime occurred.

 Denninger continues

This will not stop all civil forfeiture, but it will stop nearly all of it.

States can certainly continue to try to proceed with their programs under state laws, but the "Equitable Sharing" program made it very easy and thus cheap to administer -- and also gave the states a wide degree of immunity from being hammered in the courts with civil suits, since the underlying action was federal.

I've written about civil forfeiture incidents here before, and it's not a new problem.  It goes back to drug laws first passed in 1970, when Congress allowed police to seize aircraft, boats and other property used to transport narcotics or bought by drug lords with ill-gotten gains.  Like all laws useful to the police state, it has expanded over the years.  As I wrote a couple of years ago:

Around Daytona, Florida, in the 1990s, sheriff Bob Vogel was notorious for stopping cars on I-95.  If you had cash, you must be a drug dealer, so the cash was seized.  Drivers were virtually never charged with a crime, guilt was therefore never proven and the police made over $8 Million dollars for a department fund.

This pattern has expanded and been used repeatedly all over the country.  My previous article featured a story of the laws being used to sue an inanimate object. 

This town’s police department is conniving with the federal government to circumvent Massachusetts law — which is less permissive than federal law — to seize his livelihood and retirement asset. In the lawsuit titled United States of America v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts, the government is suing an inanimate object, the motel Caswell’s father built in 1955.

But the stories can go on endlessly.  The WaPo article reports that since 2008, more than 55,000 civil forfeitures have been used to seize cash and property worth $3 billion from people whom are rarely if ever charged with crime.  The usual approach would be to seize cash if it appeared it was from a small business or individual, because they would be least likely to afford a legal staff that would be a threat to the states, then drag the cases out and run up legal bills until the victim went bankrupt trying to get their money back.  Case in point:

That includes people such as Mandrel Stuart, who was stopped in 2012 by Fairfax County police, detained without charges, handcuffed and stripped of $17,550 in cash that was to be used for equipment and supplies for his barbecue restaurant in Staunton, Va. He eventually hired a lawyer, and a jury gave him his money back in 2013. But he lost his restaurant while fighting the government, because he had no working capital.

Of course, the police departments see a threat to their undocumented funding efforts and are upset:

“It seems like a continual barrage against police,” said John W. Thompson, interim executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association. “I’m not saying there’s no wrongdoing, but there is wrongdoing in everything.”  

Read that last sentence again.  Sounds like Otter in Animal House.  "The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests - we did.  But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals"  This whole thing sounds like organized crime to me.  If you have something valuable and don't seem to have the legal force to protect it, the state is taking it.

So why would that despicable little troll Holder do this now?  Has he become sensitive to his legacy, and wants to be known for doing something right?   If so, this is a good candidate because it seems that there is no political base that likes civil forfeiture.  Left or right, I've never heard anyone say it's a wonderful thing.  Maybe statists think so, but I've never come across them saying it.

Although it burns my mouth to say this, I have to acknowledge that Holder did something right.  I always heard that while it's not strictly true, if something happens less than 5% of the time, it's probably a random event.  They used to say "even a blind pig finds a few acorns". 

(from)  By the way... did you know there's an entire "Eric Holder looks like sloth" meme out there? 

My $.02 - The Good and the Ugly

The election is over.  Control of the Legislative Branch of this Broken Republic goes completely to the Stupid Party, leaving the Evil Party in control of just the Executive Branch, and it's hydra-like network of regulatory branches.  Cut off one head, kill one branch (as if...), and two more spring up to take its place.

One of the themes of this blog is the Over Regulated State.  All I'm hearing from the newly elected "Leaders" is talk about the big things they're going to do; in my mind, it would be better if they spent the next two years throwing out every piece of legislation the administration passed. For each page of federal law passed, it has been generalized that 10 regulations are created.  The Code of Federal Regulations is so complex that lawyer Harvey Silvergate points out that every adult in the country probably commits three felonies a day.  The Heritage Foundation estimates that compliance with the increasing number of regulations sucks billions of dollars out of the US economy, with Obama's administration the most regulatory in history.

For the last five years, the president has aggressively exploited regulation to get his way. In fact, the Obama administration is very likely the most regulatory in history, issuing 157 new major rules at a cost to Americans approaching $73 billion annually.

On the good side, a favorite of mine, Mia Love from Utah, was elected to the US Congress.  A black American woman of Haitian descent with an inspiring life story (and one who will show you her citizenship papers), she is a well spoken advocate for free enterprise and self-reliance.  I first wrote about her when she became widely known after a great speech at the 2012 RNC - and the hypocritical leftists slandered her insanely.   We all know that conservatives and Tea Party voters are not the misogynistic racists that the left has been painting forever; these are the people who elected Mia, Tim Scott from South Carolina, Elise Stefanik, the youngest woman ever elected to the House of Representatives.  Maybe this will start to be recognized by the Media? Not a chance.  But it's being noticed where it counts, among the people.

On the other hand, that disgusting pile of corruption in Colorado, Governor Hickenlooper got re-elected.  So he takes Bloomberg's money, tramples on the rights of law abiding Coloradans, and pays nothing.  The people of Washington approved I-594, the law that redefines transfers in terribly oppressive ways, creating a statewide gun registry in the process.  And not 24 hours after winning, announced they were going after more anti-gun regulations.  Most of my readers are also gunnies, but for those that aren't, "transfer" is a very specific legal term in firearms: the transfer of ownership and responsibility for the firearm.  Until this law, a transfer was thought to be permanent; essentially just a sale.  Sold under the usual lie that criminals use "gun show loophole" and private sales to get their guns, 594 makes every personal sale need to go through a background check and registration.  That's bad enough, but 594 goes even further and makes a transfer out of something as trivial as loaning a gun to friend for a class or even at the range to shoot a magazine to see if they like it.  Every simple act like that becomes a transfer under 594, requiring a trip to a gun store to fill out paperwork (it's unclear to me whether or not this is the ATF form 4173, and a NICS check), and I'm sure paying the gun shop to do so - there is a use tax that goes to the state, too.  The Vote No on 594 group that sprang up to oppose this writes:

• There is NO general loan exemption for family members or friends, even in the presence of the owner!
• You couldn’t loan your sister-in-law a firearm for self protection!
• You couldn’t loan your adult sons shotguns to go hunting!
• A person could “gift” a firearm to a family member but could NOT loan or sell it to her!

I've read that if you were to go on a business trip and leave your guns at home with your family, it can be argued you need to do a transfer for every gun, complete with trip to the gun shop.  When you come back from your business trip, you'll need to transfer them back to yourself!

There were other good things and bad.  At best, we are still a Broken Republic.  Guys like Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and the new crop including Mia Love, Tim Scott, and Tom Cotton, are all saying the right things and (at least in the case of the first three) trying to do the right things.    Going through the thousands of pages of Obamacare, Dodd-Frank and the other major turds passed in the last six years to repeal them, including going through the places where tendrils of these laws extend is not glamorous or sexy (part of Obamacare was written into the TARP law, a full year before the real Obamacare passed).  But it needs to be done.

The Police State Can't Exist Without...

I think it's an obviously true statement that the police state can't exist without the full cooperation of the judicial branch.  If the judicial branch would start restricting things like Civil Forfeiture, those would start to go away.  If they would start getting involved in the excessive use of SWAT raids and the increasing rise of warrior cops, that would decrease. 

With that in mind, it's interesting to read about the Supreme Court's refusal to hear a case this session which had the potential to restrain what seems to me (and IANAL) to be an egregious violation of civil rights.  Perhaps the most unique aspect of this is that the dissent against the judgement was filed by conservatives Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and statist Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

The case is called Jones vs. The United States, and centers around a trio of drug dealers: Joseph Jones, Desmond Thurston, and Antwuan Ball.  The three were tried for distributing cocaine and also conspiracy to distribute drugs (I have to assume this is another example of prosecutors stacking charges so they can be sure to get a conviction).  The jury convicted them of the lesser charge of distributing, but acquitted them of the conspiracy charge, which brings a harsher sentence.  Here's where it goes bizarre in my view: the judge then, despite the acquittal, sentenced them to that harsher sentence from conspiracy. 

Got that?  They were sentenced for a crime a jury had found them not guilty of!  The Supreme Court, refused to hear the case.  It seems to set the absurd precedent of someone being charged with a crime, tried by jury, declared not guilty, but then being put in prison regardless of the jury trial's outcome. Why bother with the show trial? 

The dissent in pdf format is here, and the important part is on pages 14-16.  Justice Scalia says, in my words, that the court has previously ruled that this sort of sentencing based on a judge's determination of fact is illegal and must be put aside, but they had always promised to clarify the law when an appropriate case got to the court.

We thus left for another day the question whether the Sixth Amendment is violated when courts impose sentences that, but for a judge-found fact, would be reversed for substantive unreasonableness. 551U.S., at 353; see also id., at 366 (Stevens, J., joined in
part by GINSBURG, J., concurring)  (“Such a hypothetical case should be decided if and when it arises”)...

Then Justice Scalia goes on to say...

This has gone on long enough. The present petition presents the nonhypothetical case the Court claimed to have been waiting for. And it is a particularly appealing case, because not only did no jury convict these defendants of the offense the sentencing judge thought them guilty of, but a jury acquitted them of that offense.

A dissenting opinion, even from the supreme court, is just that.  It's an opinion written on paper that has no effect on how laws are prosecuted or not.  They left in place the apparatus of the police state, that anyone tried of a crime and found innocent may still be subject to a harsh penalty on the whim of the judge. 

Many of us are voting for judges right now.  If only we could find where they stand on issues like this!

Opie? Opie??

Put down the stick, Opie.  (Eric Allie at Townhall). 

Gun Owners Aren't The Only Domestic Terrorists

H/T to Oleg for a link to Joe Huffman's blog, "It's Not Just Gun Owners Who Are Considered Terrorists".

The root of it all is an article on Zerohedge: "Spying is Meant to Crush Citizen's Dissent, Not Catch Terrorists".  Definitely worth a read.  It's thick with links and background information, and it's really depressing to say this, but I don't think there's really anything new and surprising in there. 

The opportunity those in power have to characterise political opponents as “national security threats” or even “terrorists” has repeatedly proven irresistible. In the past decade, the government, in an echo of Hoover’s FBI, has formally so designated environmental activists, broad swaths of anti-government rightwing groups, anti-war activists, and associations organised around Palestinian rights. Some individuals within those broad categories may deserve the designation, but undoubtedly most do not, guilty only of holding opposing political views. Yet such groups are routinely targeted for surveillance by the NSA and its partners.  [Note: Of those groups, how many have actually carried out terrorist acts on American soil besides the environmental activists?  SiG]

One document from the Snowden files, dated 3 October 2012, chillingly underscores the point. It revealed that the agency has been monitoring the online activities of individuals it believes express “radical” ideas and who have a “radicalising” influence on others.
***
The NSA explicitly states that none of the targeted individuals is a member of a terrorist organisation or involved in any terror plots. Instead, their crime is the views they express, which are deemed “radical“, a term that warrants pervasive surveillance and destructive campaigns to “exploit vulnerabilities”.

Among the information collected about the individuals, at least one of whom is a “US person”, are details of their online sex activities and “online promiscuity” – the porn sites they visit and surreptitious sex chats with women who are not their wives. The agency discusses ways to exploit this information to destroy their reputations and credibility.

Government thinks anyone who doesn't fall over in adoration of them is a terrorist?  Check.  Obama claims power even Hitler and Stalin never claimed?  Check.  Hitler?  Stalin?  What a couple of pikers.   Former NSA official says, “We are now in a police state“.  Check.  Yawn...obvious to anyone with eyes to see. 

As Bill Whittle so eloquently put it, "I'm no longer surprised at all the things I'm no longer surprised by". 

QoTD - Bundy Ranch Edition

From Dana Loesch of the Blaze, as a guest on Megyn Kelly's show (H/T ENDO):

If these cattle were people and they were here illegally.. the department of justice would be running guns to them and the department of homeland security would be driving by with free government phones and EBT cards, but now that they’re cattle they are actually rounding them up and killing them.

Me, I've been pondering that Fed.gov can put hundreds of heavily armed BLM agents on the ground over a rent dispute, with drones high above, helicopters at mid-level, and snipers on the hills, but they can't get off their asses to do a frackin' thing while an ambassador gets raped, mutilated alive and murdered, and two years later there is no official responsibility for how he got hung out to be killed (as if we don't know who it was)  and nobody has had so much as a bad performance review, or a letter left in their personnel file. 

Count me among the folks thinking this is far from over.  I think this whole exercise has been the equivalent of driving a humvee through Falujah to draw fire and see where the insurgents are.  They did this to see what kind of response it gets, monitor communications capabilities among the militia, look at logistics issues, deployments, and the reconnaissance they could get on what sort of resistance to expect.  FWIW, Oathkeepers is reporting that various insiders tell them the BLM is planning a raid on the Bundy home. 

Not only is the BLM not actually backing off of Cliven Bundy, Sheriff Richard Mack of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association has revealed stunning information: on Ben Swann’s radio program, Mack said that he has received intelligence from multiple, credible sources inside the BLM and the Las Vegas Metro that there is “no question” that the federal government is planning a raid on the Bundy home and the homes of their children who live on the property.

As Sheriff Mack says in that interview, it's hard to imagine such a raid being accomplished without bloodshed.  

(source)
As Yogi Berra said, "it ain't over til it's over"... and this one ain't over.

Is This Where Sniping In the III Community Comes From?

While at Harvard in 2008, before becoming Obama's Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein co-authored a paper on how the government should handle conspiracy theories.  He suggested government agents or their allies "cognitively infiltrate" conspiracy theorist groups by joining "chat rooms, online social networks or even real-space groups" and influencing the conversation.  They went so far as to suggest the government "formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech."  The Chinese government does this today, with the "50-cent party", so-named because of the fee they get for each positive, pro-party/government posting they make.  Hey, any good communist policy is a natural for the Obamanoids, right?

How this would work in practice would be that these government employees would be paid to find people who spout "conspiracy theories", and they would comment there.  Consider blogs in the liberty sphere; there's no doubt that a Big Government guy like Sunstein would believe that anyone who values personal liberty is a conspiracy theorist and potential terrorist who should be targeted (I don't think I'm going out on much of a limb here is attributing this belief to Sunstein).  They could post blog comments disagreeing with aspects of the stories on the blog, trying to break the credibility of the reports, and the trustworthiness of the story. 

It can now be confirmed that this is actually going on.  At least in the UK, in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, and reported by Glen Greenwald, formerly of the Guardian and now with FirstLook.org.   I urge everyone to read that piece, and see the formerly very classified documents detailing how the UK's GCHQ has given life to Cass Sunstein's wet dream of making disagreement with the government go away by "nudging"  everyone's behavior.  (And does it seem just a little too convenient that Bamster put Sunstein in charge of the oversight committee looking at whether or not the NSA has been "doing us wrong"? )

Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four  classified  GCHQ  documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking  “Five Eyes” alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations.”  

By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse “hacktivists” of using, the use of “honey traps” (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.

Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums.

Now that we know for sure it's going on (as if we doubted), perhaps some of the bickering in the III-per community needs to be looked at as tactics being used against us.  I'm sure I'm way too small potatoes for them to care about dropping by here, but think of the big guys.  I personally think I've seen this sort of thing happening on some big commercial sites, like the Blaze or PJ Media.  Have you ever noticed how quickly comments about anything veer from the subject at hand to straight political diatribe, or ad hominem attacks on the people involved?   

(Cass Sunstein) 
I'm not suggesting there aren't real and legitimate disagreements between members of the Liberty / III-per movement, and I don't want to imply any dissent indicates the commenter is a stooge.  These things always happen.  But we have a government regulator who has admitted in open press that he wants to do this, even going as far as false flag operations, and now it turns out to be verified that it is actively going on.  It would be silly to think it can't be happening here, too.  Plus, having an argument with a troll has a whole new meaning when the troll is getting paid to argue with you, doesn't it?