Category Archives: Your Papers Please

U Of M: Cone Of Silence For DFLers?

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So last Wednesday, the entire State Legislature attended a “Policy Conference” at the U of M.

Check out the notice.  It’s “closed to the public”.

Inquiries to the U’s public relations contact were – is this surprising to anyone? – not returned.

This follows close on the heels of an event in September at the U with Governor Dayton; Dayton’s performance appeared addled – but the U of M didn’t videotape the speech (citing “expense”), and the media in attendance embargoed their own video of Dayton’s performance.

I’m not as clear on open meeting laws as I should be, but I have to wonder: has the U become a handy place for the DFL to skirt open meeting laws?

 

No una oportunidad, los Republicanos

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The GOP’s new motto on immigration reform?  Yo quiero pander…to all sides of the debate:

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Politico that he’s open to giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship in exchange for a temporary moratorium on all legal immigration while they “assimilate.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a longtime proponent of reform, said legalization should be paired with the repeal of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. And Republican House Speaker John Boehner told reporters on Friday that he would not commit to including a path to citizenship in his immigration reform efforts…

Juan Hernandez, a Texas-based Republican political consultant who served as Sen. John McCain’s director of Hispanic outreach in 2008, said whatever the potential disagreements, congressmen should start hammering out a deal now.

“Should it be with two, three or four steps? That’s fine. Let’s negotiate. But let’s starting taking the first steps immediately,” Hernandez said. “We may not find a political moment again in which at least I see everyone saying it’s time for immigration reform.”

The cries that demographics equal destiny for an eventual GOP shift to the left on all issues pertaining to immigration reform have been shouted for some time.  And in the wake of a narrow popular vote re-election for Barack Obama, carried in part by a 44% margin of victory among Latino voters, the cries have renewed with vigor.  Even some in the conservative intelligentsia have backed a 2007-esque immigration reform stance, including Sean Hannity and Charles Krauthammer.

But would backing amnesty, a path to citizenship, however the GOP wishes to define such legislation, really give the GOP any electoral edge?  Republicans have gained nothing among African-American voters despite the GOP’s critical role in civil rights legislation.  Yet pollsters love to mention Bush’s 44% showing among Latinos in 2004 and equally enjoy pointing out 65% of all voters (including 3 out of 4 Latinos) support some opportunity at citizenship for illegal immigrants.  Of course, Bush’s Latino support was greatly inflated and was more likely around 38%.  And last, but not least, is the data suggesting that immigration from Latin American countries may be actually reversing.

That last part is critical because Latino attitudes towards immigration reform vary depending on whether they were born here or immigrated.  While 42% of all Latino voters called immigration reform their number one issue, only 32% of U.S. born Latinos agreed compared to 54% who were foreign born.  Financially stable ($80k+ incomes) Latinos and those who are second generation are less likely to focus on immigration reform or support carte blanche amnesty.  Those who called Spanish their first language were far more interested in immigration reform than those who said English was their primary language.  The greater integrated recent immigrants had become, the less interested they were in immigration concerns.

Republicans focus on Latinos when speaking about immigration reform ignores a number of other demographic groups who have more at stake in any immigration conversation.  Asians are now the largest block of recent immigrants, surpassing Hispanic migration.  And as a voting block, Asian-Americans voted by similar margins to Latinos for Obama.  Where are the breathless newspaper column inches declaring the GOP must court Asian-Americans?

Republican outreach to minority groups has been a priority mothballed election cycle after election cycle.  If an election where nearly 13 million fewer voters showed up prompts the GOP to finally engage demographics they’ve thus far all but ignored, then great.  But if Republicans try and out liberal liberals on issues like immigration reform, they will continue to find no real opportunities for political gain.

ADDENDUM: Rachel Campos-Duffy at National Review hits the nail on the head of the broader challengers standing between Republicans and Latino voters:

Hispanics come to America for the American Dream. They are “trabajadores,” and you would be hard pressed to find an American farmer, contractor, or restaurant owner who would not testify to their work ethic. Unfortunately, the communities in which they live and work are teeming with liberal activists: farm and service-industry labor unions, well-intentioned community-based social services providers and more radical and racially motivated Latino groups such as La Raza, LULAC, and Mecha. In addition, the curricula their kids encounter in public schools are either hostile or silent on the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and ideas that are the foundation of conservative thinking. All of these activist groups and institutions have a common ideology and an affinity for big and centralized government, and of course, entitlements. They go out of their way to sign folks up and to begin the cycle of government dependency. Once hooked to the IV of government handouts, a steady drip of ideology, and a heavy dose of raunchy pop culture, the once vibrant American Dreams and traditional family values of Hispanics drift into a slow, deep coma.

Nobody Died At Watergate

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Yesterday, the President invoked “executive privilege” in order to cover up his administration’s involvement in a plan to slander America’s law-abiding gun owners, which went awry and ended in the death of a Federal agent.

IBD’s editorial board has had enough

President Obama’s contempt for the rule of law hit a new low when, on the eve of a vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, he granted his AG’s 11th-hour request to hide sought-after documents on Operation Fast and Furious under the cover of executive privilege.

“I write now to inform you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the relevant post-Feb. 4, 2011, documents,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole says in a letter that GOP Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa received just before Wednesday’s hearing and vote, a letter that apparently was not mentioned in a last-minute meeting between Issa and Holder Tuesday night.

Or maybe it wasn’t the 11th hour at all, but just a long-planned final gambit in the cover-up of who made the decisions in a federally sponsored effort to provide Mexican drug cartels with sophisticated American firearms and who is ultimately responsible for the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry with these weapons?

Remember – Fast and Furious didn’t attack terrorism.  It didn’t even attack the narcotraficantes that have made Northern Mexico more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan, even Chicago.

It was a government financed effort to smear America’s firearms industry and law-abiding gun owners, in pursuit of Obama’s goal to try to reverse the slide in this nation’s gun control laws.

No more.

Executive privilege, as Issa noted in his opening remarks, can only be asserted when it involves direct presidential decision-making and communications. It cannot be invoked, legally, to prevent others in the chain of command from explaining their actions or responding to requests for information on their decisions in which the president is not involved.

And the Administration has been lying to Congress, and the people (over half of whom the program attempted to slander) the entire time:

Back in February 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ron Welch, in response to the investigations by Rep. Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Fast and Furious gun-”walking” program run out of ATF’s Phoenix office, wrote a letter stating that the “allegation that ATF ‘sanctioned’ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons … is false.”

Later, Deputy Attorney General Cole, in another letter to Congress, wrote: “Facts have come to light during the course of this investigation that indicate the Feb. 4 letter contains inaccuracies.” In other words, the Department of Justice lied to Congress. The cover-up continues with the invocation of executive privilege.

IBD’s editorial writers have reached their conclusion:

Fast and Furious has become worse than Watergate. No one died at Watergate. Just what is in those documents that Obama and Holder so desperately want to hide? Brian Terry’s family and the American people deserve answers.

Well, this was supposed to be the most transparent administration in  history.

Rhetorical question:  can you imagine what would have happened had George W. Bush spent federal money to smear, say, ACORN or Common Cause or the Violence Policy Center?

The Public Fraud

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The First Amendment protects free speech (as well as the press, assembly, and worship provided that the subject isn’t contraception).

But it has limits.

Fraud is not free speech.  You need to speak to commit fraud – “Hey, you have money in Nigeria, and we need $1,000 in legal fees to get it for you!”, right?  But it’s illegal.

It’s not illegal, in most cases, to lie.  There is the odd exception – the Stolen Valor Act which, by the way, makes me uncomfortable; I’d rather have a group of Green Berets set an impersonator straight than some federal prosecutor.    In most other cases, it’s not illegal.

Indeed, in some cases it’s encouraged, even among public servants.  The Supreme Court has said it’s OK for cops and prosecutors to lie to suspects to get information out of them.  That’s acceptable, generally, although it’s led to the odd miscarriage of justice.

But I think there should be a great, shining exception to “freedom of speech”.  Officers of the court should not be able to lie about the law, to their constituents.

There are only two explanations for Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom so grossly misstated the potential effects of the “Stand Your Ground” bill, vetoed yesterday by Governor Dayton.

He Doesn’t Know Any Better And, Like The Strib “Editorial Board”, Just Wrote What He Was Told.  If he’s that ignorant of the laws he’s supposed to enforce, he should not be a County Attorney.

Or…

He Actively Misrepresented The Law To An Audience Including His Constituents. With the goal of influencing public policy (the bill was then in committee), Backstrom wrote an op-ed (not for the first time, mind you) that actively and knowingly tried to mislead the public by lying about the consequences of a law.

I don’t know the legal definition of fraud – and I don’t have to, to still be able to say “this sort of behavior on the part of a court official defrauds and actively disinforms the public, toward a political end”.

And while there never will be, there oughtta be a law.

 

A Brief Interruption To The Sunday Routine

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I rarely post on Sundays.

But I had to break the silence to point out that yesterday, the Strib ran an editorial about Rep. Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill that was distinguished by having not one solitary true assertion in it.

Not one.

As egregious as the Strib editors’ assaults against fact (on behalf of the DFL) have always been, I can not recall one in the past that not only so grossly buggers fact in pursuit of supporting the DFL’s agenda, to say nothing of being so morally, ethically and factually void to a physical absolute.

Tomorrow morning at 6AM here on Shot In The Dark.

Too Much Of Everything

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What are the big lessons of this story?

The Department of Justice is under fire for taking the bold step of sending armed agents into the factories of Gibson Guitar in Nashville and Memphis to seize what it believes to be illegal wood.

Via press release from Gibson: “The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.”

The story – by Ben Howe at RedState – notes that this isn’t the first time Gibson has been raided by “federal agents with automatic weapons” over abstruse definitions of what wood is legal.

Bear in mind that the wood in question in both raids was certified legal by an industry self-regulation group. No matter; in come the automatic weapons and the pencil-necked Assistant US Attorneys.

So the lessons are what?

  1. We Have Too Many Regulations: Our bureaucracy has metastasized far beyond any level needed to ensure health and safety and adherence to rational laws.  It exists, like most Campaign Finance Boards and gun laws, to create criminals where there were none before.   This seems to be the case here; the Feds haven’t proved their case from the last raid, a few years back, whose results are still being knocked around in federal court.  This raid seems, to Howe, to be a way of stalling a defeat in the first case.
  2. We Have Too Many Regulators: They have to justify their existence somehow. More than that, they need to guard their turf; the wood industry, especially as re the music industry, has been regulating itself; how many customer bases are as PC as musicians (outside country-western, anyway)?
  3. The Feds Have Too Many Gun and SWAT Teams:  They sent a SWAT team to raid a guitar factory.  Not a crack house.  Not a Zeta stronghold in the Arizona mountains (perish the freaking though).  This is not a surprise, really; ever since the Clinton Administration, the federal government has been arming the bureaucracy; where once the Feds would depend on local SWAT teams to provide the armed muscle for the rare events it was needed, today that Feds have thousands of armed agents outside the FBI and the Marshalls, to say nothing of the military.  Where once the FBI might have something akin to a SWAT team, today the Department of Customs, the Marshalls, even the Department of Education have their own heavily-armed paramilitary units.   I would joke that the National Endowment for the Humanities has a SWAT team – but I’m afraid that someone would chime in with a link to a story about NEH commandos fast-roping in from a helicopter to serve a no-knock summons.
Cutting regulations?  Hell – it’s time to start disarming government.

Democrats: “Americans Are Eggs; We Are The Chefs”

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As we’ve been showing this past week on this blog, Governor Dayton has been using poor Minnesotans as an anvil on which to try to hammer the GOP, intentionally ratcheting up the pain to them of a possible government shutdown.

It’s part of a great liberal liberal tradition; individuals can, and if need be must, be sacrified to “the greater good” (which, to modern progressives, means “liberals retaining power”).

Perhaps you’ve heard – the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has been busted running a “sting” that only stung Americans.

Operation Gunwalker – aka “Fast and Furious” –  has unravelled, with allegations that at very best, it was an incompetently-run operation which allowed thousands of guns to go, untraceably but with tacit, undercover government blessing, to Mexico.  Guns involved in Gunwalker are alleged to have been involved in the death of at least one Border Patrol agent.

And that’s the best that can be said about it.  Because…

The most damning revelations coming out of the hearings on Operation Fast and Furious held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are the unmistakable indications that the program was never designed to succeed as a law enforcement operation at all.

The fact that failed as law-enforcement is bad enough.  It gets worse:

A quartet of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agents and supervisors turned into whistleblowers to bring the operation down, but only after U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in the Arizona desert. Two of the weapons recovered at the scene of Terry’s murder were traced to the operation.

Bear in mind that every single weapon was bought by a known “straw buyer” under surveillance from the ATF; every single weapon was brought to, and across the border, where it vanished from ATF surveillance.

No, really:

ATF agents testifying in front of the House Oversight Committee could not explain how the operation was supposed to succeed when their surveillance efforts stopped at the border and interdiction was never an option.

ATF Agent John Dodson, testifying in front of the committee, said that in his entire law enforcement career, he had “never been involved in or even heard of an operation in which law enforcement officers let guns walk.” He continued: “I cannot begin to think of how the risk of letting guns fall into the hands of known criminals could possibly advance any legitimate law enforcement interest.”

Note that the entire gun rights movement – the NRA, the GOA, GOCRA, every single one of us – favors keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

But why would the government do this?  Emphasis added:

The obvious answer is that Gunwalker’s objective was never intended to be a “legitimate law enforcement interest.” Instead, it appears that ATF Acting Director Ken Melson and Department of Justice senior executives specifically created an operation that was designed from the outset to arm Mexican narco-terrorists and increase violence substantially along both sides of the Southwest border.

Success was measured not by the number of criminals being incarcerated, but by the number of weapons transiting the border and the violence those weapons caused…At the same time in 2009 that federal law enforcement agencies (the ATF, the DOJ, and presumably Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security) were creating the operation that led to the executive branch being the largest gun smuggler in the Southwest, the president’s team was crafting the rhetoric to sell the crisis they were creating.

On television, in various news outlets, and even in a joint appearance with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama pushed the 90 percent lie, implying that 90% of the guns recovered in Mexican cartel violence came from U.S. gun shops.

Like Dayton here in Minnesota, Obama and his administration cynically created a crisis to advance their “progressive” political goals.

It’s the stuff of conspiracy theories – except the evidence is right there, in the words from the ATF whistle blowers.

Unlike Dayton (so far), Obama’s perfidy has claimed the life of a US public servant.

This is worse than Iran-Contra, which never killed any Americans.   Indeed, if the allegations are true, it may be the worst abuse of government power I can remember – because with its complete lack of law-enforcement value, it is intended solely to infringe on the human rights of millions of law-abiding Americans, by way of killing hundreds of Mexicans and one unwitting US cop.

If it were a Republican plan, it would be front-page news.

Progressivism will kill you – literally – if it needs to to meet its goals.

Some Problems Solve Themselves

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Chuckles Schumer demands a “Do Not Ride” list for Amtrak

Sen. Charles Schumer is calling for better rail security now that the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound has turned up plans to attack trains in the U.S.

“Anyone, even a member of al-Qaida could purchase a train ticket and board an Amtrak train without so much as a question asked,” Schumer said. “So that’s why I’m calling for the creation of an Amtrak no ride list. That would take the secure flight program and apply it to Amtrak trains.”

Of course, except for the tiny fragment of America living in the congested mid-Atlantic strip, Amtrak is largely on Amerca’s “do not ride” list.  Amtrak is an epic money pit.

In vast swathes of the US, terrorists would be the only person on an Amtrak train.

This should really help!

A Good Cause

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Joel Rosenberg is holding a Legal Defense Fund fundraising dinner tonight:

Location: Chanhassen AmericInn conference room. Donations can be made at the door, or by contributing to the Legal Defense Fund either by mail or in person at any Wells Fargo location, in or out of Minnesota.

It’ll feature photographer and Second Amendment activist – and yes, he combines the two – Oleg Volk:

Oleg Volk will be both speaking and giving a photo presentation*.

Joel will be attending but, on advice of counsel, won’t be discussing pending legal matters.

All profits, after the room and the food are paid for, will go to the Legal Defense Fund. (Oleg and all of the servers — Joel, Felicia, Judy, Rachel, and friends — are donating their time, of course.) Attending registrations are limited to 40 people — the Fire Marshall insists — so please sign up in advance, if you can.

Note: the Legal Defense Fund is not a registered charity, and contributions are not tax-deductible. Alas.

Volk’s an interesting guy, and I hope you can make it.  I have family stuff tonight, but I’ll be donating via other means…

First We’ll Get The Law-Abiding Ones

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Georgia cop considers a concealed carry advocacy bumpersticker “probable cause” for turning a speeding stop into a pat-down.

The second thing the officer asked me, after asking for my license, was if I had any firearms. I responded that I was choosing to exercise my right to remain silent on that question. That answer prompted the officer to have me get out of the car for a pat down. The officer told me that the reason for his question (about firearms) was because I had a “right to carry” sticker on my car. Yes, he actually said that. It’s a sticker for Georgia Carry.org (GCO) Although the audio isn’t 100% clear for that part, you can clearly hear him reference the sticker when talking to me and to another officer. Additionally, it appeared as if “back up” had been called, because there were 3 police right cars behind me and two more across the street. In the end, I got a ticket for speeding and for not having a working light bulb over my license plate.

The state; terrorizing dissent into submission for 5,000 years.

Justice. Almost.

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Governor Christie of New Jersey has commuted Brian Aitkin’s sentence:

Brian Aitken, who was convicted of illegally possessing two handguns he had legally purchased in Colorado, will be out of prison in time for Christmas.Gov. Chris Christie commuted Aitken’s sentence Monday, from seven years to time served, according to an order signed by the governor. It was Christie’s first commutation since taking office almost a year ago.

“We are overjoyed at the news,” his younger brother Robert Aitken said in an e-mail. “It’s been an extremely emotional time and we all had our own doubts at one time or another I’m sure. I was hoping for the best but preparing for the worst — for this to be the first battle of a long war to get him out of jail.”

We wrote at some depth about this case last week.   It was as gross a miscarriage of justice as I’ve personally seen.

Still, there is room for improvement.  It was a commutation, not a pardon, so Aitkin still has the conviction on his record.   I have no idea how he needs to go about clearing his record and getting exonerataed for this shameful abuse of judicial power.

But that’s what real justice would require.

Well, that and putting that scumbag former “Judge” James Morley in jail.  Morley refused to allow the jury to consider the relevant federal laws that would have gotten Aitken acquitted, or gotten the entire case dismissed.  Morley, like all such globs of semi-human pus, should be put cuffed and hauled off – preferably with great violence or at least humiliation - to rot in jail for every single day he stole from Mr. Aitken’s life.   Plus one.

That would be justice.

Do You Remember…

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…when “government gathering information about Americans” was an existential threat to democracy?

Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.

The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation’s history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The government’s goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.

Either do the Democrats.

Look for an avalance of “paranoid wingnut” stories coming soon to a major media near you.

Merry Christmas, Crisis Is Over!

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The financial crisis is over!  Our bank system is sound!

Seriously!

The FDIC has nothing better to do than harass banks that display Christian seasonal imagery!

Federal Reserve examiners come every four years to make sure banks are complying with a long list of regulations. The examiners came to Perkins last week. And the team from Kansas City deemed a Bible verse of the day, crosses on the teller’s counter and buttons that say “Merry Christmas, God With Us.” were inappropriate. The Bible verse of the day on the bank’s Internet site also had to be taken down.

“I don’t think there should be a problem with them displaying whatever religious symbols they want to display,” said Amy Weierman, a Perkins resident.

Specifically, the feds believed, the symbols violated the discouragement clause of Regulation B of the bank regulations. According to the clause, “…the use of words, symbols, models and other forms of communication … express, imply or suggest a discriminatory preference or policy of exclusion.”

Of course, now that the Feds and, soon, the UN will be regulating what goes on the Internet, I’m sure I’ll have to start wishing people a happy freaking “Festivus” before too long.

Update

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Joel Rosenberg got arrested yesterday while at Minneapolis City Hall.

The Strib has the story – relating the same story we did earlier (parts I, II and III) – and then yesterday’s “incidence”,  sort of:

On Wednesday, Rosenberg was booked into the county jail on charges of possession of a dangerous weapon in a courthouse, a felony, and contempt of court, a misdemeanor.

City Hall is part of the courthouse complex because it houses conciliation court on the third floor, the charges say. A sign posted in the hallway that connects City Hall with the county Government Center states that weapons are prohibited by district court order.

Rosenberg was being held in jail Wednesday night in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Rosenberg, of course, contents that the county’s “court order” barring guns in the hands of legally-permitted carriers from county courts conflicts with state law.

His court appearance is scheduled 1:30 this afternoon.

He Said, Sarge Said, Part III

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Here’s Part III of Joel Rosenberg’s side of his encounter with Minneapolis Police sergeant Bill Palmer last month.

The incident was the subject of a fairly egregious bit of lousy reporting by the City Pages, among others.

———-

Part Two: The Contempt of Court that Joel Didn’t Commit

By Joel Rosenberg

And so, we finally arrive at the point of this particular part of the exercise, where we get to the crimes that Bill Palmer committed when he lunged at me, took my gun without authority, acting under color of law and authority, and only gave it back — and only let me continue to examine the public data that he, as MPD Data Practices Officer, had invited me to Tim Dolan’s office to examine — when I submitted to his unlawful order to remove it from City Hall.

And, let’s once again, look at the law, as it’s written, with some emphasis added.

609.27 COERCION.

Subdivision 1. Acts constituting. Whoever orally or in writing makes any of the following threats and thereby causes another against the other’s will to do any act or forbear doing a lawful act is guilty of coercion and may be sentenced as provided in subdivision 2:

(1) a threat to unlawfully inflict bodily harm upon, or hold in confinement, the person threatened or another, when robbery or attempt to rob is not committed thereby; or

(2) a threat to unlawfully inflict damage to the property of the person threatened or another; or

(3) a threat to unlawfully injure a trade, business, profession, or calling; or

(4) a threat to expose a secret or deformity, publish a defamatory statement, or otherwise to expose any person to disgrace or ridicule; or

(5) a threat to make or cause to be made a criminal charge, whether true or false; provided, that a warning of the consequences of a future violation of law given in good faith by a peace officer or prosecuting attorney to any person shall not be deemed a threat for the purposes of this section.

Subd. 2.Sentence.

Whoever violates subdivision 1 may be sentenced as follows:

(1) to imprisonment for not more than 90 days or to payment of a fine of not more than $1,000, or both if neither the pecuniary gain received by the violator nor the loss suffered by the person threatened or another as a result of the threat exceeds $300, or the benefits received or harm sustained are not susceptible of pecuniary measurement; or

(2) to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both, if such pecuniary gain or loss is more than $300 but less than $2,500; or

(3) to imprisonment for not more than ten years or to payment of a fine of not more than $20,000, or both, if such pecuniary gain or loss is $2,500, or more.

History: 1963 c 753 art 1 s 609.27; 1971 c 23 s 40; 1977 c 355 s 7; 1983 c 359 s 87; 1984 c 628 art 3 s 11; 1986 c 444; 2004 c 228 art 1 s 72

609.43 MISCONDUCT OF PUBLIC OFFICER OR EMPLOYEE.

A public officer or employee who does any of the following, for which no other sentence is specifically provided by law, may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both:

(1) intentionally fails or refuses to perform a known mandatory, nondiscretionary, ministerial duty of the office or employment within the time or in the manner required by law; or

(2) in the capacity of such officer or employee, does an act knowing it is in excess of lawful authority or knowing it is forbidden by law to be done in that capacity; or

(3) under pretense or color of official authority intentionally and unlawfully injures another in the other’s person, property, or rights; or

(4) in the capacity of such officer or employee, makes a return, certificate, official report, or other like document having knowledge it is false in any material respect.

History: 1963 c 753 art 1 s 609.43; 1984 c 628 art 3 s 11; 1986 c 444

Lets review the bidding, shall we?

Palmer threatened to arrest me if I didn’t leave. He had no right to arrest me; none at all, regardless of his interpretation of the court order. (I’ll get to that in a minute.) Doesn’t matter what the judge’s interpretation of the court order is, either, for the same reason. It’s null and void, and WOULD BE constitutionally overbroad with regard to the Minneapolis City Hall, if it applied to City Hall at all.

It doesn’t. I’ll get back to that again.

Whoever orally … makes any of the following threats and thereby causes another against the other’s will to do any act or forbear doing a lawful act is guilty of coercion….

a threat to unlawfully…hold in confinement…. (that’s the threat of arrest that Palmer made, repeatedly. Let’s keep going) a threat to make or cause to be made a criminal charge

609.43 Misconduct of a public officer …

A public officer or employee …. does an act knowing it is in excess of lawful authority… or intentionally and unlawfully injures another in the other’s rights…

Which is why Palmer’s lawyered up.

One last, minor thing. “But wait, you say; there was a court order for Minneapolis City Hall at 300 South Fifth Street. It might be questionable, but until the courts determine that it’s invalid, you have to abide by it, Joel. That court order, just as it was written, was effective on that date — Craig Steiner, the head of Minneapolis Data Practices, told you so.”

And I’ve shared with you a copy of that court order, which was, arguably (not very, but a weak argument could be made) effective on that date for 300 South Fifth Street, Minneapolis City Hall.

Let’s take Bill Palmer’s word for it that he was familiar with this court order. He’d read it, he studied it, and by God he was going to enforce it. He was going to grab me, to threaten me to compel me not to carry at 300 South Fifth Street.

The address of Minneapolis City Hall, though, is at 350 South 5th Street. It says so, right on their official web page.

Hell, you can ask Bill Palmer that. He should know. He works there. At 350th South 5th Street.

Ask him, but remember, he does have the right to remain silent. He had that right in Tim Dolan’s office, too. He had the right to remain silent; he had the right to keep his hands to himself; he had the right to not engage in coercion or misconduct. He had every right to not grab my property — and no right whatsoever to take it, without my permission — at all. He had no right to hold it as a hostage to my compliance to his unlawful demands.

He had the right to not commit any crime at all.

He did not, however, have the ability.

Too bad that you can’t find a City Attorney around when you need one to draw up a summons and warrant, isn’t it?

Susan Seigel, Minneapolis City Attorney: please have one of your prosecutors draw up papers and charge the son of a bitch?

Thanks in advance.

More on this story coming up, I have a hunch, this week.

He Said, Sarge Said, Part II

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A few weeks ago, I ran the first part of a three-part series by Joel Rosenberg regarding his confrontation with Minneapolis Police sergeant Bill Palmer.

The confrontation was captured on video.

The City Pages tittered about the story, but really didn’t understand it.

Here’s Part II.  Part III follows later today.

Part Two: The Contempt of Court that Joel Didn’t Commit

By Joel Rosenberg

When last we left our heroes, we were about to take a look at the court order that poor Bill Palmer couldn’t find, and which he pretended to be trying to enforce. He knew better, which is why he didn’t arrest me.

Here it is:

———-WHEREAS it is the court’s responsibility to ensure the proper, safe, and orderly administratio nof justice throughout Hennepin County coutr facilities, and

WHEREAS the Court has a weapons policy in place since July 12, 1995 that prohibits any firearm or other weapons from being taken into a courtroom or the environs of any other juvenile justice or other court facility witin Hennepin County except under certain conditions described below,

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that all persons, exept as provided in this Order, are prohibited form having weapons on their person or in their possession in Hennepin County court facilities, regardless of whether or not they have a firearms permit, and

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that persons entering Hennepin County court facilities may be subject to screening for weapons upon entry; anyone refusing to submit to such searches shall be refused admission, and

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that all weapons, including but not limited to firearms and any related ammunition, stun guns, taser weapons, and replica or toy guns shall be removed form said persons before they are allowed to proceed further into the court facility and

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this order shall not apply to licensed peace officers or federally authorized law enforcement agents in the performance of their official duties. Only law enforcement personnel empowered by law to carry weapons may enter a court facility with a weapon. The peace officer exception to the Order shall not apply to officers present in court as private parties, support persons, or to provide testimony not required by their job duties, and

IT IS FURTHE RORDERED that weapons be used as an exhibit in an official proceeding may be taking into a courtroom or any other court facility only fter they have been checked for safety by the Hennepin County Sheriff or HSeriff’s designee, e sealed in a transparent vinyl tape envelope or otherwise be secured to ensure security during the proceedings by a peace offier in the performance of official duties, and

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Hennepin County Court facilities include:

1. Hennepin Government Center

300 South Sixth Street, Minneapolis

2. Minneapolis City Hall,

300 Wouth Fifth Street, Minneapolis

3. District Court Division II – Brookdale

6125 Shingle Creek Parkway, Brooklyn Center

4. Disrict Court Division III – Ridgedale,

12601 Ridgedale Drive, Minnetonka

5. District Court Division IV – Southdale

7009 York Drive, Edina

6. Hennepin County Public Safety Facility

401 South Fourth Avenue, Minneapolis

7. Hennepin County Family Justice Center

110 South Fourth Street, Minneapolis

8. Hennepin County Juvenile Justice Center

626 South Sixth Street, Minneapolis

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that any person violating this Order shall be suejct to being held in contempt of court and may be subject to a jail sentence.

This Order is effective immediately.

Date: 9/28/08

———-

Interesting, isn’t it? The judge appears to have decided that Minneapolis City Hall is part of the Hennepin County Court complex.

How’s that work? Can the judge decide that a radius of a thousand miles from his bench is part of the court complex? How about fifty? How about the McDonald’s across the street? How about Minneapolis City Hall?

Well, there’s actually just a touch of logic to that — there are courtrooms in City Hall. They’re not used all that often, I understand, but when they are being used by a judge for official county business, the order would clearly apply.

But the rest of it? Nah. It’s what’s called “unconstitutionally broad.” Ask your favorite law professor; I’ve asked more than one of mine.

Here’s what one said:

“This covers entire buildings where courtrooms and court office space are only a portion, often small and temporary, of the entire facility. A good example is the Minneapolis city hall. This order is OVERBROAD [his emphasis. JR].”

In practice, the order is enforced, almost all the time, perfectly legitimately, by the HCSO: outside the security zone of the courthouse, no problem; permit holders come and go, carrying if they please as they do whatever business they have with the courts. Before going into the zone, the permit holder disarms, and stores his weapons somewhere — typically, out in the car.

Easy, peasy.

Also in practice: Tim Dolan and the badged bullies of the MPD have been using their willfully false “interpretation” of the order to bully permit holders into not carrying anywhere in city hall. But they don’t *dare* actually arrest somebody who has, like me, given notice (covering the felony issue, even if you believe that, say, the janitor’s closet in City Hall is a courtroom).

Why? Because they know that the order, being overboard, is utterly unenforceable.

And if they try to enforce it?

That’s for the last chapter: The Crimes Bill Palmer Committed.

Later today – where Palmer allegedly messed up.

He Said, Sarge Said, Part I

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The other day, we ran the video of Joel Rosenberg’s encounter with Minneapolis Police sergeant Bill Palmer, along with some derisive catcalls at the City Pages’ “coverage” of the incident.

Joel is, I should add for those who don’t follow science fiction literature or Second Amendment law, both a science fiction writer and the author of the definitive concealed carry bibles for both Minnesota and Missouri (?). 

Among many other things.

The following is Part I of Joel’s account of his encounter with Sergeant Palmer.

———-
The Palmer Fiasco:  Part One:  Why Joel Isn’t A Criminal

By Joel Rosenberg

A few preparatory matters…

The Palmer Fiasco is only a small part of what’s going on. I could get into the malicious, false arrest of my wife the dismissal of the charges, once she and her lawyer made it clear that they weren’t interested in a plea, but her complete and total exoneration; and, last weekend, the reinstatement of the charges against her. I could get into the data practices requests I’ve been making, and Bill Palmer’s unlawful demand for money before he started to do his job. I could get into the connection to http://gangstrikefarce.com, and how I told Jesse Garcia of the Minneapolis Police Department that I had been working on a book on that, before I ran into a much, much bigger story.

But I’ll save that for another time, and just point whoever’s interested to http://familymatterii.com. There’s a lot going on. Leave it at that, for now.

In order to understand the crimes that Bill Palmer committed—that’s crimes, plural—you have to know a little law, both in statute, and in practice.

[Continued after the jump]

Continue reading →

The Real Enemy

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Homeland Security, as this new video from MNMajority shows, knows who that real enemy is.

Know your place, peasants!

It is not to question your betters!

It is not to gainsay the job Barack “Bitter Gun-Clinging Jesus Freaks” has done!  It is not to question the work of Janet “It’s The Religious Right We Really Need To Worry About” Napolitano!  It is not to criticize the work of Mark Ritchie!  It is not to hold your media accountable for not holding this state’s power elite accountable!

It is to pay for a Better Minnesota and USA!

Now Do Your Job!

At Least They Can Get The Amateurs

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Next time you’re standing barefoot in the TSA line getting a rectal probe and watching them toss your toothpaste and shampoo, just remember – the system sort of barely works, if everything goes right and everyone is lucky as hell:

The Obama administration played down the fact that Shahzad, a U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, made it aboard the plane. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wouldn’t talk about it, other than to say Customs officials prevented the plane from taking off. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the security system has fallback procedures in place for times like this, and they worked.

And Attorney General Eric Holder said he “was never in any fear that we were in danger of losing him.”

But it seemed clear the airline either never saw or ignored key information that would kept Shahzad off the plane, a fact that dampened what was otherwise hailed as a fast, successful law enforcement operation.

I’m going to start a website where people can find when Dutch documentary filmmakers are travelling, and on which flight.

But thank heavens for small favors; Secretary Napolitano didn’t order her investigators to drop the search for Taliban sympathizers to focus on the NRA.

Arizona, A to Z

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I can’t honestly say I have a coherent, consistent opinion about Arizona’s immigration law yet.

On the one hand, there can be no more repugnant thought to a citizen of a free society than the idea of police wandering around going “your papers, please?”. 

On the other hand, that’s not what the Arizona law is about.  According to actual lawyer Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci, who actually has some background in Arizona law, and who noted in my comment section yesterday:

Reasonable suspicion, I think, pertains to searches after an arrest has been effected. The example here being: a cop pulls a guy over for speeding and when the perp opens the car door window, pot smoke billows out. The cop then has reasonable suspicion that there may be pot in the car and can search it without a warrant.

That distinction (if I’m correct) is key to the critical language in the blurb you quote from 11-1051, “Lawful contact”. That term is not defined in Arizona Revised Statutes. However, given the context, I think it may mean a search or arrest pursuant to probable cause. Meaning that the mandate for cops to make a “reasonable effort” to ascertain a person’s immigration status (based on a “reasonable suspicion” of illegality) only kicks in if the person is stopped or arrsted for the violation of some other law.

That said, if I’m wrong and “lawful contact” means merely a cop ambling up to some browish dude with an accent and saying “hey, how ya’ doin’? Papers please,” then this law is repulsive, and proably unconstitutional.

If my interpretation is correct, then a lot of people are getting their panties in a wad over nothing.

To the best of my knowledge, the Arizona law does not mean law enforcment will be driving down the street rounding up brown-looking people who don’t have IDs on them. 

As many proponents of the Arizona law note, the law just reiterates federal law, as it is supposed to be enforced (but isn’t).  I’m no lawyer.  I don’t know. 

On the third hand, there are a lot of people who dont’ really care if you know the real truth or not.  To our nation’s media and current political elites, disinformation is just fine.  Christina Cordova at  ”MNSpeak” is part of the disinformation, whether as a producer, a consumer, or both:

A new Arizona law makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally, and requires local law enforcement to ask for papers from anyone they reasonably suspect is in the country illegally — in other words, anyone that “looks” like they “may” not be… a “white” American. Hmm…

If someone can show me the “racial dragnet” portion of this law, please speak up.

On the third-and-a-half hand, we all know that there are cops who will made their collars first and bother with “reasonable” this and “probable” that later, and pretty much assume that nobody’s got the money to fight City Hall anyway.  And that’s usually a fair bet; I know of not a few situations where the police have trampled over ostensible constitutional rights, knowing that the victims weren’t going to be able to do anything about it on their budgets anyway. 

On the fourth hand, that’s a separate issue.  The fact that some cops give ten miles per hour of leeway over the posted speed limit, and some give none at all, doesn’t invalidate the speed limit law.   We need to keep our cops accountable.

On the fifth hand, more enforcement is only part of the answer to the narcotraficante problem.  The “War On Drugs” is a failure by every possible moral, ethical and practical measure.  We need to end it.

On the sixth hand, until we do end it, we have to deal with the hand we’re dealt.  It’d be far better to keep illegal immigrants on the other side of the border.  Perhaps it’s time to abandon the farce of the “open, unfortified border”, and screw the whole idea of a “fence”, and move the Army down there.

On the seventh hand, barring a major commitment in fence-building or a major redeployment of the Armhy, our border is utterly permeable.  And cops in Arizona – and all along the border – are facing an awful situation.  It’s not just would-be landscapers and fry cooks coming across the border.  Once low-crime Phoenix is awash in narcotraficante crime these days.  Trafficers from across the border are causing all kinds of mayhem, and killing not a few innocent Americans who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.  And the feds are apparently doing nothing useful, and the mainstream media are pretending there is no story, largely because they ideologically support open borders.  Hey, news anchors need cheap nannies too.

On the eighth hand, the illegal immigration problem predates the drug war in Mexico by quite a bit.  The current drug war and the longstanding illegal immigration problem tie into the fact that Mexico is a failed, socialist state, while the US, so far, isn’t.  The open border has allowed Mexico’s failed socialist government to put off its day of reckoning with its own people.

On the ninth hand, to a big chunk of our nation’s political and media elite, the idea of separating ourselves from a neighbor’s failure – even for both country’s mutual good – is noxious.  America is guilty, they think, for much of the hemisphere’s dysfunction, one way or the other.  The whole “the world is one” conceit isn’t just idle talk to them.

And as part of exercising that conceit, there is an epic slander underway.  It’s of a piece with the slander of all dissent that our political aned media elites are engaged in, in which all dissent on any subject is called “racist”, “violent” and otherwise depraved. 

Part of that campaign is the deliberate blurring of the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.  You will never see a lefty commentator, from Christina Cordova to Chris Coleman, use the word “illegal” immigrant when talking about the subject of the law; they never qualify the term “immigrant”, to the point of lying (Coleman’s little squib yesterday about the law affecting his sainted Irish grandmother, who would no doubt kick his ass if she saw the way he was torturing context; every good Irish Catholic gramma knows a lie by omission is a lie just the same).

On the tenth hand, I know of not one single conservative, anywhere, who actually favors clamping down on legal immigration.  “Build a high fence, and a wide gate”, most of us say. 

On the eleventh hand, the media would rather cover peckerwoods waving shotguns from the backs of their pickup trucks, a la “Reno 911″‘s classic “Minutemen” episode, than the actual facts.

So with eleven hands raised, where does that leave us?

Make sure the law is constitutional – as in, “actually follows the law”, as opposed to “makes my white-liberal-guilty heart droop”.

The Well-Defamed Militia, Part II

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The greatest fear of a genuine conservative is government inflicting too much power on society.  The greatest fear of a genuine liberal is that government lacks the size and power to govern society.

Hold those thoughts.  We’ll come back to them.

———-

There are a lot of reasons to distrust government.  The least of them is that nothing guarantees it will ever be able to help you when you need it.

It’s happened.  Katrina, of course, was a debacle.  Before that?  It took only a videotaped beating and an unpopular “innocent” verdict to turn one of our major cities into a war zone – one from which government withdrew, leaving the citizens to the mercy of the mob and to their own devices.

And the most inspiring scene from that entire miserable episode was that of Korean shop owners, armed with their own rifles and shotguns, patrolling their storefronts and rooflines, bringing order to anarchy.  As stores burned all around them, they and their property remained safe – because when government couldn’t safeguard them, they did it for themselves. 

I saw that, and I damn near cried.  It was beautiful – the silhouette of an American citizen with a rifle, doing what big, stupid government can’t, drawing the metaphorical line in the sand and saying “You, evil, shall not pass”, and facing down the mob, and on their little corner or in front of their little store, winning.

They were the militia.

Not the idiot nutslaps in Michigan who are serving as the media and left’s current boogeymen on the subject.

Indeed, we all are.  That’s the law.  The Second Amendment says so – boiled down to 21st century parlance, it says “since freedom needs to be defended, the people shall have the right to own guns, and use them”.   Heller declared that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” means “you and me, the law-abiding citizens”.   God willing, McDonald will say “and it means the same thing in ever corner, nook and cranny of the union”.    It is the duty of every law-abiding citizen who pays more than lip service to liberty to own a gun and be proficient with it.

Now, go back to that first section.  The great difference between liberals and conservatives is the question “who’s in charge”. 

Last year during the Tea Parties, much of the media and about half the nation  got the victorian vapours over a few reports that Tea Partiers had brought firearms to the rallies.   And it was instructive to see peoples’ reactions to the news that nobody got arrested, because in the jurisdictions involved, it was perfectly legal.

About half the country rolled their heads in horror; “what if someone had shot somebody?”  Some even suggested that the possibility that one of these law-abiding armed citizens would step out of line was cause to restict the Second Amendment.

The other half went “Well, duh!”.  They know that the law-abiding citizen is a law-abiding citizen, whether he’s carrying a wrist rocket or an M14 or a flamethrower for that matter.  Our rights, they know, front and center in the heart of their soul, are not dependent on what our dumbest neighbors might do!.

To the liberal, a citizen who believes society is a free association of equals who consent to be governed, and who believe that consent must be earned, and who arms himself to reinforce the point, is threatening; “who governs him?”, the liberal asks.  The conservative responds “Unless I’ve actually broken a law?  I do!”.   That defies the liberal’s vision for what “society” is.

Tough.

The Well-Defamed Militia

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The arrests of nine “[insert inflammatory catchphrase here]“ “Christian Militia” members in Michigan have focused America’s attention the American media and those who still pay attention to it on the “problem” of “militias” which, by the way, have been shrinking since their heyday in the 1970s through early 1990s.

During the 90s, “militias” became the Democrat boogeyman, after a number of well-publicized and very ugly incidents; the Medina shootout, the Ruby Ridge massacre, and of course the Oklahoma City bombing.  Under fire during his first term before his epic setback in the ’94 elections, the Clinton Administration sought to distract the nation with a huge, sinister, conspiratorial internal enemy, the “militia movement”; the 1994 Crime Bill, larded with civil rights violations that dwarfed much of what had the left up in arms during the Bush administration, was at least partly in response to this huge “movement”…

…that, except for the actions of Timothy McVeigh (who, says the government, was not acting as part of a huge shadowy conspiracy), had almost no affect on crime or any other area of life in the US – certainly not as compared to the “war on drugs”, which was a product of a perfect storm of social engineering from both the right (“drugs are bad”) and the left (decades of welfare dependence and warehousing the poor in the inner city).

At any rate, even though the numbers of people involved in the lefty boogeyman version of “militias” was never big, and has dropped since the nineties, the image that the left propagates – paunchy, hate-clogged, drawling,  white rednecks in camouflage with AK-47s – is a control panel full of hot buttons for the left, purpose-designed to scare – is back, for the moment at least, bigger and badder than ever. 

Because with a Tea Party afoot across the land and the President’s poll numbers falling faster than Hillary Duff’s career bell curve, there are lots of center-to-left voters to be scared back into line.

And fear’s first cousin is ignorance.  I’m getting deja vu all over again from the comments, the blog posts, the talk show calls; the left is duly frightened of the great, unwashed horde (and the tiny, unconvicted band that was the excuse for the left to declare “militias” the boogeyman of the month again). 

It reminds me of something I wrote two years ago about the 25th anniversary of the Medina Shootout, and Hollywood’s reflections on all those crazy people between the Hudson and the Sierra Madre:

But the Hollywood take on the area, and the locals, was bemusingly warped.  Part of it was the Central Casting version of small-town people; although North Dakota is a place where you can hear the Fargo accent (”Yah, sure, you betcha”) in a hundred little main street cafes and bars, the show had the local farmers speaking with cornpone Arklahoma drawls.  The locals, to Hollywood, were out of Gomer Pyle or, given the sinistry of the subject matter, maybe Deliverance. 

Worse?  While there was support for Kahl (and even more criticism of the Feds’ heavy-handedness, arrogance, and occasional contempt for due process in the way they carried out the manhunt in the immediate wake of the shootout), Manhunt in the Dakotas showed something that was almost an active guerilla movement, with rocks and shots aimed at passing police cars, threats, Gross (and Larry Hunt as “Chief Walters”, a composite and sympathetic Jamestown police chief) being harrassed while driving in the countryside, and – in the movie’s climactic scene – the two walking, nervous, down “Jamestown”’s main street as the “local radio station” played the pro-Kahl song (with a cheery intro from the DJ), both of them keenly aware of the hateful gazes of the locals (by now all of them seemingly Kahl-sympathizers) boring through them both, as if they were fully-bedsheeted Klansmen scurrying through Compton.

It was nonsense, of course – and, like the “militia” mania that served to distract parts of America from Bill Clinton’s foibles, and is being rolled out now to distract us from Obama’s economy, and scare “moderates” into line behind The One, it’s a cynical lie.

More tomorow.

Janet Napolitano: Keeping Us Safe From Captain Hutaree

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Now, again, kids, don’t be violent.  We’re going to get rid of this administration – or at least neuter it – at the polls.  There’s no need for all sorts of foamy-mouthed Kossing, here.

I say that because, naturally, if I don’t someone will accuse me of grabbing Grampa’s Garand and heading into the north woods, ready to shoot at revenooers.

At any rate, yay for federal law enforcement and all, and goodnesss knows that’s going to come out at trial, but if the news reports are any indication, Big Sis has just “protected” us from the Keystone Militia:

 

In an indictment unsealed Monday, prosecutors said the group began military-style training in the Michigan woods in 2008, learning how to shoot guns and make and set off bombs.

Shooting guns?  You mean, like 50% of the American people do?

David Brian Stone, 44, of Clayton, Mich., and one of his sons were identified as the ringleaders of the group. Stone, who was known as “Captain Hutaree,” organized the group in paramilitary fashion and members were assigned secret names, prosecutors said. Ranks ranged from “radoks” to “gunners,” according to the group’s Web site.

I’m going to guess they had a secret handshake, to help them tell who was the mole, too.

Prosecutors said Stone had identified certain law enforcement officers near his home as potential targets. He and other members discussed setting off bombs at a police funeral, using a fake 911 call to lure an officer to his death, killing an officer after a traffic stop, or attacking the family of an officer, according to the indictment.

Now, when I first read that bit – that the “militia” planned to draw law enforcement into a huge ambush – I thought “this could have been a serious bunch of people”.  That’s a classic asymmetric tactic.

Why, in the hands of a ruthless, competent insurgency…

After such attacks, the group allegedly planned to retreat to “rally points” protected by trip-wired explosives for a violent standoff with the law.

…oh.  Never mind.

No confirmation on whether they planned to paint huge targets on their foreheads, or go into action with central lines already inserted for the lethal injections.

Hutaree says on its Web site its name means “Christian warrior” and describes the word as part of a secret language that few are privileged to know.

Secret languages.

Oddball internal rituals and ranks.

Inscrutably bobbleheaded strategy.

Janet Napolitano just rounded up the Scientologists.

Of course, this is no laughing matter; threatening to “levy war” is a big deal.

And it’s even less a laughing matter that our government feels the need to make a huge splash over Captain Hutaree and his Christian Avengers at a time when Congress’ Democratic Caucus is actively slandering dissenters with an overwrought, and curiously coordinated, campaign of finding “violence” and “threats” and “racism” under every rock (for which, somehow, no indictments exist; also evidence, other than the kind of thing every dogcatcher and sports reporter in America gets as part of the job).

Fearless prediction:  Look for a brow-furrowing “investigation” of “militias” by Ann Curry.

Stat.

UPDATE: Let me be clear, here.  The Hutarees seem to have been amateurs – but amateurism is no defense when it comes to charges of conspiracy to murder anyone, much less cops.  The Fort Dix Six were amateurs, and they’re in jail – justifiably so.  Major Hassan (and every other mass-murderer, for that matter) was an amateur, but that doesn’t make his victims any less dead.

My beef isn’t with the FBI or the Feds for investigating or arresting them. 

It’s with the media and the Dems (pardon the redundancy), which seem to be using this episode as part of an ongoing smear of all right-wing dissent.  Last night the local news ran a report about “the militia and Hate Groups in the Twin Cities”; it focused on a doughy guy in a house in Apple Valley who ran a white-supremacist online bookstore.  

And it’s with the Southern Guilt By Association Poverty Law Center being taken seriously as a source on the subject again.  It’s Janet Napolitano’s watchlist, and hordes of semi-literate leftybloggers chanting “Avalance of Violence!  Avalanche of Violence!” like a bunch of demented macaws.

It’s that there are so many smears, happening in so brief a time, so closely tied to an epochal, divisive political event.

That’s the beef.