DHS malfeasance undermines national security and public safety.
The pace at which events occur often makes it all but impossible to keep pace. This is particularly true where the multi-faceted immigration crisis is concerned.
While much attention is paid to the abject lack of security of the U.S./Mexican border, there are many other failings of the immigration system that often go unreported and ignored by the mainstream media and our politicians. I have repeatedly noted that while I am a firm supporter of the need to construct an effective wall/barrier along the southern border, there are many other elements of the immigration system that are no less important. I have therefore come to compare the wall along the border with a wing on an airplane. Without its wing an airplane won’t fly, however, a wing by itself goes nowhere.
That troubling report included the following excerpt:
In a scathing letter to Trump, exclusively obtained by Fox News, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) said CBP’s “noncompliance with the law has allowed subjects subsequently accused of violent crimes, including homicide and sexual assault, to elude detection even when detained multiple times by CBP or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”
The OSC told the White House that it was taking the “strongest possible step” to “rebuke the agency’s failure to comply with the law,” as well as its “unreasonable” attempts to defend its own conduct.
Under the law, CBP was required to collect DNA from individuals in its custody, to be run against FBI violent-crimes databases. The procedure is separate from DNA collection designed to establish familial relationships among migrants at the border.
Aliens who were released by this demonstration of nonfeasance and, indeed, malfeasance, have committed more violent crimes, thereby claiming more innocent victims.
As I noted during my interview, bad guys use changes in identity the way a chameleon uses changes in coloration, to hide in plain sight among its intended victims.
Everyone associates the arrest of suspects with the fingerprinting and photographing of those who are arrested as a means of determining their true identities and to make certain that their fingerprints are retained for future reference. Currently DNA is also used as a means of identifying those who are taken into custody for the same reason.
Fingerprints, photographs and DNA all constitute biometrics.
The law that mandated that ICE and CBP use DNA to properly identify aliens who are taken into custody, was enacted back in 2005. During the Obama administration, Secretary Janet Napolitano asked the Attorney General to waive this important requirement claiming a lack of resources. Not surprisingly, the Attorney General complied.
Incredibly, nothing has apparently changed under the Trump administration and, as a consequence, hundreds of thousands of aliens who should have undergone DNA screening did not during the Obama administration and during the current administration.
The issue of the consequence of the failure of immigration law enforcement to effectively use biometrics is not new. In fact, we can look back to the particularly egregious case of Ángel Maturino Reséndiz-Ramirez aka the “Railway Killer” as noted in this excerpt in a Wikipedia article about him:
Murders and methodology
By illegally jumping on and off trains within and across Mexico, Canada and the United States, generally crossing borders illegally, Reséndiz was able to evade authorities for a considerable time. United States government records show that he had been deported to Mexico at least four times since first entering the U.S. in 1973.[4]
Reséndiz killed at least 15 people[5] with rocks, a pickaxe, and other blunt objects, mainly in their homes. After each murder, he would linger in the homes for a while, mainly to eat; he took sentimental items and laid out the victims’ driver’s licenses to learn about their lives. He stole jewelry and other items and gave them to his wife and mother, who lived in Rodeo, Durango, Mexico. Much of the jewelry was sold or melted down. Some of the items that were removed from the homes were returned by his wife and mother after his surrender. Money, however, was sometimes left at the scene. He raped some of his female victims; however, rape served as a secondary intent. Most of his victims were found covered with a blanket or otherwise obscured from immediate view.
Reséndiz-Ramirez had been in Border Patrol custody at least four times, was deported back to Mexico, illegally reentered and killed more innocent people.
He was eventually identified as the cold-blooded murderer of at least 15 people, put on trial and found guilty. He was subsequently executed but his execution did not bring any of his victims back to life. The families of those victims will never be the same.
Back then immigration law enforcement personnel did not transmit fingerprints electronically but usually by mail! All too often we would arrest an illegal alien, mail out the fingerprints and then, weeks later, receive a response that the alien was wanted for serious crimes. Of course, by then he/she had been deported or released.
During my first Congressional hearing, on May 20, 1997 before the House Immigration Subcommittee on the topic of Visa Fraud And Immigration Benefits Application Fraud when I was asked about a common problem I encountered in my positions as Immigration Inspector, Immigration Adjudications Officer and Special Agent, I replied that one of the biggest challenges was to uncover the true identities of those whom we interacted with and that imposters were a huge issue. Within a year the former INS began implementing electronic fingerprinting, but on a limited scale.
Here we are approaching the 18th anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The 9/11 Commission was clear in its finding that the key method of entry and embedding for terrorists was immigration fraud and identity fraud.
Yet we are now finding out that DNA technology which is a tremendously valuable tool that could enhance national security and public safety has been all but ignored by elements of the Department of Homeland Security or, as I came to refer to it when it was first created, the Department of Homeland Surrender.
It is completely unacceptable that CBP and ICE failed in its most fundamental mission: to protect America and Americans from aliens who pose a threat to national security and/or public safety.
Immigration enforcement personnel should learn from the mistakes of the past. However, as the famed playwright George Bernard Shaw lamented, “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
The Trump administration must act swiftly and decisively to plug this gaping hole in the immigration system.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Michael Cutlerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMichael Cutler2019-08-28 04:49:262019-08-28 05:05:16Failing to use required DNA technology to identify criminal aliens
There are two broad categories of lies that could be referred to as crimes of commission and crimes of omission.
The crime of commission is when facts are blatantly misrepresented, while the crime of omission involves leaving out relevant information, for example, when statements are taken out of context or relevant information is left out of the report.
These tactics have become commonplace and routine particularly when the mainstream media reports on the Trump administration and also when it reports on issues pertaining to immigration.
When the Trump administration promulgates policies that impact immigration, synergy kicks in and the truth is likely nowhere to be found.
Over a century ago a popular expression, the streets are paved with gold, drew immigrants to the United States who were determined to strike it rich in America. When they got here they found that the streets were paved, not with gold, but with cobblestones that came from the cargo holds of ships that used those cobblestones as ballast.
Back then the cargo holds of the merchant ships that arrived at America’s ports were filled with cobblestones that served as ballast to keep those ships stable on the voyage to the United States. Once here, those stones were off-loaded and all sorts of products that were made in America replaced the cobblestones in the cargo holds of those ships that returned to their original ports with merchandise to be sold.
The cobblestones were used to pave the roads of the port cities.
Nevertheless the immigrants who came to America worked hard and earned a living and built their futures in our nation. None of them expected, nor received a “free ride.”
You could say that rather than being paved with gold, the streets were paved with blood, sweat and tears of the immigrants.
With their new-found freedom to worship and to pursue their dreams, many succeeded in building successful and happy lives in the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration unveiled a sweeping rule on Monday that would limit legal immigration by denying visas and permanent residency to hundreds of thousands of people for being too poor
That article also included this excerpt:
The 837-page rule could be the most drastic of all the Trump administration’s policies targeting the legal immigration system, experts have said. Advocates for immigrants have criticized the plan as an effort to cut legal immigration without going through Congress to change U.S. law.
The new rule is derived from the Immigration Act of 1882, which allows the U.S. government to deny a visa to anyone likely to become a “public charge.”
That last paragraph creates the utterly false impression that President Trump had to dig back to law books published 137 years ago to find legal justification for invoking the concept of public charge to prevent aliens on public assistance from receiving lawful immigrant status.
In reality, while the notion of public charge was first codified in 1882, it has persisted in all subsequent rewrites of America’s immigration laws and, in fact, is still an element of the current Immigration and Nationality Act.
The claim that Trump’s public charge policies would deny entry to aliens who are poor is false. This concern does not deny entry to aliens who are poor. Historically many immigrants who were destitute have come to the United States. However, they worked their way up the economic ladder to create the American Dream for themselves, their families and ultimately, for America.
The issue is not whether or not an alien seeking to enter the U.S. is poor but if that alien has the physical capabilities and skills and/or education to work and be self-sufficient in the United States.
In fact, Ellis Island was run by Public Health officials along with immigration officials. Public Health officials had two concerns- that the arriving immigrants were not suffering from dangerous communicable diseases that could create a deadly epidemic and that the arriving immigrants were mentally and physically capable of working and supporting themselves and, perhaps, their families.
My earlier article, “The Left’s Immigration Con Game”, referenced the extraordinary documentary, “Forgotten Ellis Island”, that chronicles the true story about Ellis Island, and the story is not particularly pretty or romantic and runs contrary to the bogus mythology told by the immigration anarchists of today.
“This rule change is a direct attack on communities of color and their families and furthers this administration’s desire to make this country work primarily for the wealthy and white,” said Antionette Dozier, senior attorney at the Western Center on Law and Poverty. “Our immigration system cannot be based on the racial animosities of this administration or whether or not people are wealthy.”
Once again, the Left is resorting to “Lawfare”, filing lawsuits to achieve political objectives.
The quote that appears in the CNBC article noted above from Western Center on Law and Poverty was quick to invoke race. Let us also be clear that race, religion and/or ethnicity play absolutely no role in determining whether or not to admit aliens into the United States.
The grounds for determining admissibility of aliens into the United States is codified in a section of the current Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S. Code § 1182.
Among the categories of aliens who are excludible are aliens who suffer dangerous communicable diseases, serious mental illness, are criminals, spies, terrorists, human rights violators, fugitives from justice, aliens who had been previously deported (removed) from the United States and aliens who have committed fraud in their applications for visas and/or immigration benefits.
Additionally, it establishes that aliens are inadmissible (excludible) if they are likely to become public charges.
This is how the current Immigration and Nationality Act unambiguously lays out the entire issue of public charge:
(4) Public charge
(A) In general
Any alien who, in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the Attorney General at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible.
(B) Factors to be taken into account
(i) In determining whether an alien is inadmissible under this paragraph, the consular officer or the Attorney General shall at a minimum consider the alien’s–
(I) age;
(II) health;
(III) family status;
(IV) assets, resources, and financial status; and
(V) education and skills.
(ii) In addition to the factors under clause (i), the consular officer or the Attorney General may also consider any affidavit of support under section 1183a of this title for purposes of exclusion under this paragraph.
The media has accused President Trump of wanting to separate families. In point of fact, family members may provide an affidavit of support wherein they guarantee that they will provide financial assistance to their family members who seek to immigrate to the United States. This would help to unite families not divide them.
The issue is not about dividing families or denying poor people an opportunity to immigrate to the United States, but to protect the financial solvency of the United States, an issue of increasing concern as the national debt continues to soar into the stratosphere, by simply enforcing existing laws.
I must remind you that the imposition of American policies to address public charge laws is not new, but has a long-established history that goes back 137 years.
It is clear that the United States is unable to secure its borders. Billions of humans around the world live below the poverty line. If the United States was to permit all of the world’s poor to come to America with the expectation of receiving free healthcare, free education, housing subsidies and other such free benefits, our nation would implode.
As it is, our national debt has soared into the stratosphere and continues its upward trajectory.
The time has come for the Radical Left to be reminded of one of their favorite chants, the one that deals with “sustainability!”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Michael Cutlerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMichael Cutler2019-08-27 09:56:152019-08-27 09:58:22The Inconvenient Truth about Public Charge Provisions of Immigration Laws
It has been some time since I last wrote about Antifa, the self-proclaimed anarchists/communists who have adopted violent tactics to attack anyone not agreeing with their political agenda, which is nothing less than to subvert and overthrow the government of the United states. Their tactics are well recorded on film, everything from Berkeley, to attacking conservative writer Andy Ngo, to the recent confrontation in Portland, Oregon, and much more.
They are anti-capitalists, anti-religion (particularly Christianity), but they are also very organized. The scary part is they are misguided, armed, and view themselves as international terrorists, a true recipe for disaster. Interestingly, aside from former VP Joe Biden, I am told all of the other Democrat presidential candidates have yet to condemn Antifa and, as such, it is presumed they are soliciting the support of the group which is considered far-left and sympathetic to Democrat causes. In contrast, the Trump administration has openly condemned the group.
Recently, Republican Congressmen introduced resolutions to declare Antifa a terrorist organization. In the Senate, Sen. Bill Cassidy, M.D. (LA) and Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) introduced Senate Resolution 279 (July 18, 2019). One week later, Rep. Brian K. Fitzpatrick (PA-1) introduced House Resolution 525 (July 25, 2019) based on the language contained in the Senate version. The Senate version was referred to the Judiciary Committee for review, and the House version has moved to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. It will be interesting to see how these two bills progress through the two chambers, and if anyone opposes them.
Two people have already voiced their displeasure with the proposed legislation. The first is Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union, who told The Washington Post she opposes labeling groups as domestic terrorists, seeing it as a threat to the freedoms embodied in the First Amendment. The second person, Rep Debra Haaland (NM-D) claims Antifa represents “peaceful protesters” trying to “safeguard their city.” I have trouble with this in lieu of the recent developments in Portland where the Antifa protesters came to provoke a confrontation.
Should the legislation pass, this will mean Antifa can be treated as any other terrorist group and subject to prosecution under the Patriot Act. Some suggest this is too extreme, that they are just misled kids who don’t comprehend the legalities of their actions. Their behavior though is reminiscent of the Gestapo which came to power in 1933 in Nazi Germany. The biggest difference between the two groups is the Gestapo was an arm of the government, but not so with Antifa. Nonetheless, their tactics were similar in they both attacked anyone who did not conform to their ideology.
You may think classifying Antifa as a terrorist organization is a no-brainer, that everyone would like to be rid of them. Not so fast. It has become a political football for the Democrats who do not want to alienate this far-left group of voters. Yes, I think they deplore the actual violence they create, but they are looking to groups like Antifa to loudly strong-arm and neutralize groups on the right, just as the Gestapo’s “goon squads” did in Germany. Likewise, they may be sharpening their skills for political intimidation at the voting precincts. So, do not look for any significant action to pass on Antifa until after the 2020 elections, if at all. It is not in the best interests of the Democrats to do so at this time.
By the way, I find it interesting the “Anti-Fascists” (hence the origin of their name), still do not know what a fascist is. Rather, they should just look in the mirror.
David Carlin: We are witnessing a cultural revolution as atheists and liberals work to destroy Christianity and replace it with a God-less worldview.
In July, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo created something called the “Commission on Unalienable Rights,” the purpose of which is to “provide the Secretary of State advice and recommendations concerning international human rights matters” along with “fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.”
The chair of the commission is Mary Ann Glendon, one of America’s leading Catholic intellectuals. She is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. What’s more, she was Pompeo’s mentor when he was a student at Harvard Law School.
Many people on the political left have objected to the creation of this commission. The expression “natural law” makes them nervous, as does the fact that an out-and-out Catholic like Glendon is its chair.
I myself am very pleased, because I hope it may serve, at least in some small way, to check the astonishing proliferation of “fundamental human rights” that we have seen in the United States in recent decades. The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized a right to abortion (Roe v. Wade), a right to homosexual sodomy (Lawrence v. Texas), and a right to same-sex “marriage” (Obergefell v. Hodges). In the future, if this trend continues, it will probably recognize a right to euthanasia. And God only knows what else.
Those on the political Left have figured out a way of enacting their agenda while bypassing the democratic process. You like X and you want it to be the law of the land. But you can’t get X through Congress or state legislatures. So you decide that X is a fundamental human right, a right that cannot be negated by popular majorities.
And then you go to the U.S. Supreme Court. And if you’re lucky the Court will have a majority of liberal justices on it, and they will agree with you. And since, according to the liberal view, all fundamental human rights are implicitly contained in the U.S. Constitution (they are alluded to in the Ninth Amendment), X now becomes a Constitutional right.
If you object that you cannot find X in the Constitution, despite having read that document very carefully, you will be told that we have a “living Constitution” and that only out-of-date right-wingers read the Constitution literally.
If you reply that Justice Antonin Scalia once said, “The Constitution says what it says, and it doesn’t say something else,” you will be told that while Scalia was a fine fellow (since he was a friend of the saintly Ruth Bader Ginsburg), he was nonetheless an out-of-date right-winger whose originalism was as worthwhile as Confederate money.
The Declaration of Independence not only had a list of natural rights (equality, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness). It also had an epistemology of moral knowledge. It held that the reality of these rights was self-evident.
Now if this is our standard (let’s call it the Jefferson standard), if we say that if X is to count as a fundamental human right, X will have to be self-evidently such, then our newer rights – the “rights” to abortion, to homosexual sodomy, to same-sex “marriage,” or to euthanasia – are not rights at all; for they are far, far from self-evident. If they were self-evident rights, there would be an almost universal consensus on them.
If we were to use the Jefferson standard, only if almost every American agreed that X is a fundamental human right would the Supreme Court declare that X, despite not being mentioned in the Constitution, is one of those unenumerated rights alluded to in the Ninth Amendment.
But if we are not to use the Jefferson standard when deciding what is, and what is not, a fundamental human right, what standard are we to use? Apparently, nothing better than a majority vote of the Supreme Court. If five justices say that X is a fundamental right, X is a fundamental human right.
Now that’s just fine for many people on the political Left. For they can then multiply “fundamental human rights” and hope that their multiplications will be ratified by at least five “living Constitution” members of the Supreme Court. But for the rest of us, for people who like to think that we are living in a democratic republic that operates within the framework of a Constitution that was intended by its makers to be read literally, this potentially unlimited multiplication of fundamental rights is a disaster.
And for Christians too it’s a disaster – at least for old-fashioned Christians, who subscribe to the faith and morals of the early Church, e.g., orthodox Catholics and Evangelical Protestants. For the leftist list of fundamental human rights contains items that are quite incompatible with Christianity.
And so, when the Supreme Court declares that, for example, abortion, homosexual sodomy, same-sex “marriage,” and euthanasia are fundamental rights, it is by very clear implication also declaring that Christianity is the enemy of human rights.
We are, as I see things, in the middle of a great but slow-moving cultural revolution in the United States, as atheists and their near-atheist fellow-travelers (including religiously liberal Protestants and Catholics) attempt to destroy the traditional Christian ethic and worldview and replace it with a God-less ethic and worldview.
So far, the atheist coalition seems to be winning. Their advance, supported by the mainstream media, the entertainment industry, our leading universities, and the Democratic Party, looks unstoppable. And one of the great instruments of this advance is the idea that the leftist agenda can be enacted by the un-democratic “discovery” of more and more fundamental human rights.
Can the Glendon commission stop this advance? Probably not. But perhaps it can slow it down, giving Christians more time in which to rally their troops and fight back. In any case, the work of the commission, and the atheistic reaction to it, will be absolutely essential to watch.
“We believe this is one of the largest cases of its kind in U.S. history.” – US Attorney Nick Hanna
The FBI announced this week that over a dozen were under arrest in the U.S. and efforts were being made to find additional co-conspirators around the world in fraud schemes involving at least 32 victims.
Justice charges 80 in massive online fraud case linked to Nigerian defendants
The Department of Justice on Thursday unsealed a 252-count federal indictment charging 80 defendants, many of whom are Nigerian nationals, with conspiring to steal millions of dollars through online scams.
The indictment was unsealed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California and was made public shortly afterauthorities arrested 14 of the defendants across the United States, with 11 of these defendants apprehended in the Los Angeles region.The majority of the defendants are outside the country, with many likely in Nigeria.
The defendants involved in the case were charged with attempting to defraud individuals of millions of dollars through the use of business email compromise (BEC) and online romance scams, in addition to other schemes meant to target the elderly.
The investigation is being led by the FBI, with each of the defendants charged with “conspiracy to commit fraud, conspiracy to launder money, and aggravated identity theft,” according to Justice Department. Some defendants also face fraud and money laundering charges.
U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna described the scams used by the defendants during a press conference on Thursday, saying that “fraud networks now target individuals and businesses alike.”
“In the BEC scams, the fraudsters will often hack a company’s email system, impersonate company personnel, and direct payments to bank accounts that funnel money back to the fraudsters in Nigeria,” Hanna said. “In the romance scams, victims think they are developing a dating relationship, when in fact they are just being tricked into sending money to the fraudsters.”
Hanna added that “we believe this is one of the largest cases of its kind in U.S. history.”
Paul Delacourt, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said during the same press conference that losses involved in this case for victims total around $10 million. He said defendants attempted to obtain $40 million from victims.
There were at least 32 victims in the case, from the United States and other countries including Japan, the United Kingdom, Lebanon, Ukraine, China, Mexico, Germany, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Delacourt said the case began in 2016 after one individual was victimized by the defendants. The two main defendants in the case are Nigerian citizens Valentine Iro and Chukwudi Christogunus Igbokwe.
And, don’t miss the Stars and Stripes story about how some of the crooks pretended to be US military personnel when they scammed hundreds of thousands from lonely women.
I know you are shaking your head and wondering who in their right mind would be so foolish to send money to a stranger they met on the internet. Well, as we have heard in previous posts on Nigerian romance scammers, these Nigerian creeps are skilled actors and preying on vulnerable and lonely people seems to come naturally to them.
Keep an eye on your elderly friends and family members and don’t let them fall for these despicable scams.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Ann Corcoranhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAnn Corcoran2019-08-23 06:51:122019-08-27 07:55:35Nigerians Arrested by FBI for Scamming Millions from Elderly and Vulnerable Women
JUDICIAL WATCH VICTORY: FEDERAL COURT ORDERS MARYLAND TO PRODUCE VOTER REGISTRATION LIST DATA TO JUDICIAL WATCH
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that a federal court has ordered the State of Maryland to produce voter list data for Montgomery County, the state’s biggest county.The court ruling comes in the Judicial Watch lawsuit filed July 18, 2017, against Montgomery County and the Maryland State Boards of Elections under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Baltimore Division (Judicial Watch vs. Linda H. Lamone, et al. (No. 1:17-cv-02006)). The decision follows NVRA-related Judicial Watch successes in California and Kentucky that could lead to removal of up to 1.85 million inactive voters from voter registration lists. The NVRA requires states to take reasonable steps to clean up its voting rolls and to make documents about its voter list maintenance practices available to anyone who asks.
Judicial Watch had sought the Maryland voter list data after discovering that there were more registered voters in Montgomery County than citizens over the age of 18 who could register.
[….]
The dispute over the voter registration list arose from an April 11, 2017, notice letter sent to Maryland election officials, in which Judicial Watch explained Montgomery County had an impossibly high registration rate. The letter threatened a lawsuit if the problems with Montgomery County’s voter rolls were not fixed. The letter also requested access to Montgomery County voter registration lists in order to evaluate the efficacy of any “programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of Maryland’s official eligible voter lists during the past 2 years.”
Democrat Maryland officials, in response, attacked and smeared Judicial Watch by suggesting it was an agent of Russia.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Ann Corcoranhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAnn Corcoran2019-08-21 07:49:352019-08-21 07:51:41Judicial Watch Major Court Victory: Montgomery County, Maryland Must Clean up Voter Rolls!
We first reported in late July that Texas businessman Ed Butowsky filed a lawsuit where he outed reporter Ellen Ratner as his source for information on Seth Rich. The DNC operative was murdered in the summer of 2016 in Washington DC. His murder was never solved. According to the lawsuit Seth Rich provided WikiLeaks the DNC emails before the 2016 election, not Russia.
This totally destroys the FBI and Mueller’s claims that Russians hacked the DNC to obtain these emails.
Butowsky claims in his lawsuit:
Ms. Rattner said Mr. Assange told her that Seth Rich and his brother, Aaron, were responsible for releasing the DNC emails to Wikileaks. Ms. Rattner said Mr. Assange wanted the information relayed to Seth’s parents, as it might explain the motive for Seth’s murder.
On November 9 2016 Ellen Ratner admitted publicly that she met with Julian Assange for three hours the Saturday before the 2016 election. According to Ratner, Julian Assange told her the leaks were not from the Russians, they were from an internal source from the Hillary Campaign.
Please read the rest at GW linked at the top.
Also, the clip of Assange talking to Hannity about the reward pretty much nails it for me.
I have somewhere the interview with Assange by Hannity, where Julian specifically states that he is offering reward for information leading to the killer of Seth Rich by name, because he wants to protect his sources. But he does not directly say Seth Rich was his source on the DNC email leaks. Seth Rich did have access to that material however.
Once I find that clip, and I know I have it somewhere, I will restore it and add it to this post.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Vlad Tepes Bloghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngVlad Tepes Blog2019-08-20 16:33:262019-11-17 07:36:50His Name Was Seth Rich! [Videos]
The TAPS Act is not the solution to gun violence many members of Congress are professing it to be. The unlimited and arbitrary authority this Act bestows upon an unaccountable bureaucracy of 24 people, combined with the language of double-speak and contradictions creating loopholes allowing completely unsupervised and unchecked authority, is reminiscent of the Sedition Act of 1798.
The TAPS Act will create a brand new bureaucracy under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security. A non-elected bureaucrat will be authorized by Congress to appoint 23 other non-elected bureaucrats to “identify individuals who are exhibiting patterns of concerning behavior” and then to “manage” those Americans.
The sole purpose of this bureaucracy of 24 will be to create State and federal behavioral policing body ruling over the perceived behavior of the American people — a KGB-style agency not only monitoring the behavior of Americans, but also functioning as judge, jury, and executioner.
This Act mandates the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish a Joint Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management Task Force: a 24 member bureaucracy consisting of one government employee (level GS-15 or above) and 23 people from non-governmental organizations of the Secretary’s choosing. Not a single member of this 24 person bureaucracy will be elected by the people, therefore the people will retain no control whatsoever over the actions or activity of this newly created bureaucracy that will possess, by Congressional consent, an enormous amount of arbitrary and unchecked power over the people (see §4(a)).
The sole purpose of this task force is “identifying individuals who are exhibiting patterns of concerning behavior” and create a power to control those people on a federal and local level (§3(2)). This Act contains no clear definition of “concerning behavior.” As a matter of fact, the Act relies upon the Task Force (24 non-elected bureaucrats) to first define “concerning behavior” and then empower the “monitors” tasked with “identifying individuals” that exhibit that behavior.
According to (§3(2)(a)) no actual criminal act must take place to invoke the power this bureaucracy creates. A Federal or State agent must only believe an individual is “interested” in committing their definition of “concerning behavior” to summon this new and undefined power to action. The DHS will then be “empowered” to implement these arbitrary rules with no acknowledgement of any of the rights of the people.
To take the legal-eeze off it, this is intended to create a registry of people who may commit crimes at some unspecified and unknown time in the future. This registry will then be used to begin a step-by-step usurpation of their individual rights, from the assumption of innocence and due process to the 1st and 2nd Amendments and more.
Once a State or federal gent has identified an American believed to be interested in some kind of concerning behavior, §3(2)(b) authorizes the bureaucracy to empower these agents to investigate and gather information from multiple sources (sources remain undefined in this Act) on this individual American to find “articulable facts” supporting whether this person is truly exhibiting an “interest” in committing “concerning behavior.”
The 4th Amendment requires the government to obtain a warrant based upon probable cause (not articulable facts), supported by oath or affirmation, particularly describing the places to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. Under the 4 th Amendment, it is impossible for this Task Force to empower any government agent to do what Congress has authorized it to do. But the Act makes no mention of the 4 th Amendment or the government’s requirement to respect and secure the rights of the people. According to §3(2)(c) of this Act, after the bureaucracy has compiled its “articulable facts” by circumventing the 4th Amendment’s requirements on government, the bureaucracy is now empower an government agent to “manage” the threat of “concerning behavior.” There is no definition within the Act for the word “manage.” However, the “Powers of the Task Force” are defined in §4(f) as follows:
“Any member of the Task Force may, if authorized by the Task Force, take any action which the Task Force is authorized to take by this section.”
While there are no guidelines created by Congress on how this bureaucracy is supposed to define “manage” or “identify” the behavior of Americans, §2 of the Act establishes that the Task Force will create its own “guidelines and best practices” in order to devise a “national standard” of action. Therefore, it seems indisputable through §2 and §4(f) that any member of the Task Force can take any action it chooses as long the Task Force will establish the guidelines and practices for such action. The only limit of a government agent and the agency as a whole, rests solely upon the whim of the individual bureaucrat and the bureaucracy to limit itself. There’s not a lot of history suggesting that would happen.
No Real Congressional Oversight
Congress retains no real authority to check, balance, limit, modify, or control the exercise of power created by this bureaucracy. The only requirement for this new bureaucracy is to operate as the behavioral police in America and after one year the Secretary (the GS-15 government employee) will submit a report to Congress telling Congress what they have been doing for the past year. The Act then requires DHS to report to Congress once a year every subsequent year on how the guidelines are working, not as a check and balance.
A deceived member of Congress may attempt to assert that the only authority of the bureaucracy is to make “suggestions to Congress” as to what the proper course of action should be. However, that assertion can be seen as pure error by reading §3(2)(c) of this Act.
A deceived member of Congress may believe that this federal bureaucracy will have no power over the State and local police powers. However §8 of this Act establishes that federal grant money will be given to local jurisdictions which will undeniably establish the power for this Bureaucracy to control local and State authorities once they accept that money. So just as with the Department of Education and so many other federal agencies, if the States submit to federal authority, they’ll get the money. Most to all States will. (Surely the American people recognize this sleight of hand by now!)
A deceived Supreme Court, upon legal challenge, will likely fail to recognize this Act to be vague and full of self-defining authority for a non-elected bureaucracy. SCOTUS has long held great deference to federal agencies and their agents to define their own authority and procedures when Congress leaves holes in the laws.
The Constitution delegates no authority to Congress to fund, recommend, or create a behavioral police for the people. The writing of this Act and the Act’s website proves that every co-sponsor of this Bill knows this as fact! First, the Act makes no mention of due process, the rights of the people, nor any reliance upon or limit established by the Constitution of the United States.
Secondly, if you go to the Bill’s website and click on the hyperlink “Constitutional Authority Statement” the link takes you back to a copy of the Bill text, with no statement of authority whatsoever. The Constitution is not what the foundation for this Act, but fear of guns on the left and fear of terrorists on the right.
So, with the passage of this Act, Congress will create a new bureaucracy who will be empowered to create its own guidelines and procedures on how it will operate; and to define, identify, and enforce government control upon its self-defined “concerning behavior” of individuals in America — complete autonomous, arbitrary, self-defined authority resting in the hands of bureaucrats elected by no one, and controlled by no one.
This Act, on its face, violates the 4th , 5th , 6th , and 8th Amendments. But as in every arbitrary law, the whole truth of its offense to the rights of the people cannot be fully known until the law is put into action. If this Act is used as some members of Congress profess, it is highly likely that execution of this Act will violate large swaths of the Constitution — including the 1st , 2nd , 4th , 5th , 6th , 7th , 8th , 9th , and 10th Amendments. Constitution and the rights of the people be damned, the bureaucrats will have their power under the illusion of keeping people safe — always the justification for taking away rights.
Members of Congress are championing this Bill as the “be all and end all” solution to gun violence in America, yet the Bill does not even once mention the words “gun” or “ammunition.” It should be clear now that the TAPS Act is not about gun control at all, it is about people control. It will target any American who voices, types, or indicates a thought toward questioning government policy, people, or power. (See the FBI Memo defining and identifying the “new” standard for domestic terrorist.)
How any politician who professes a knowledge of the Constitution or professes a love for America, her people, and their rights could ever back this insidious piece of legislation is completely beyond my comprehension. And as Patrick Henry said in 1788: “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.”
It’s time for the American people to hold these pretend patriots suspect and tell them to change their vote or change their vocation.
If any person, including members of Congress would like to discuss this with me, my door is open. My website: KrisAnneHall.com.
ABOUT KRISANNE HALL
KrisAnne Hall is a former biochemist, Russian linguist for the US Army, and former prosecutor for the State of Florida. KrisAnne also practiced First Amendment Law for a prominent Florida non-profit Law firm. KrisAnne now travels the country teaching the foundational principles of Liberty and our Constitutional Republic. KrisAnne is the author of 6 books on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, she also has an internationally popular radio and television show and her books and classes have been featured on C-SPAN TV. KrisAnne can be found at www.KrisAnneHall.com.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Bill Finlayhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngBill Finlay2019-08-20 06:56:562019-08-20 07:10:51VIDEO: Red Flag Red Flags
In the freest nation in the world, our system of government and our very liberty depend on free and fair elections. Whether they’re selecting a mayor or the president of the United States, every American must be able to trust the process, or the democratic system itself breaks down.
When someone commits voter fraud, the process is no longer fair, everyone’s vote gets diluted, and in some cases, election results are changed.
Contrary to the claims of many on the left, voter fraud is a very real problem. As the Supreme Court noted when it upheld Indiana’s voter ID law, flagrant examples of voter fraud have been documented throughout this nation’s history.
The National Commission on Federal Election Reform has said that in many close elections, fraud can absolutely change the outcome. Cases of local elections getting overturned because of fraud have occurred in New Jersey, Indiana, and other states.
Although hundreds of people have been convicted in recent years, voter fraud often goes undetected. And even when it’s discovered, overburdened prosecutors rarely prioritize these cases.
Fraudsters can steal votes and change election outcomes in several ways, including: voting in someone else’s name, registering in multiple locations to vote multiple times in the same election, voting even though they’re not eligible because they’re felons or noncitizens, or paying or intimidating people to vote for certain candidates.
Unfortunately, many on the left are attempting to make election fraud easier by fighting laws that require an ID to vote. They’ve pushed to get noncitizens and jailed inmates to vote. And they’ve sued states that have tried to purge their voter rolls of people registered in multiple states.
How can we fix the problem?
Since states control much of the electoral process, they must pass laws requiring government-issued IDs to vote. That ensures people aren’t stealing others’ identities and their right to vote.
States should join voter registration cross-check programs to identify voters registered in multiple places. One cross-check program has identified hundreds of thousands of potential duplicate registrations across 30 states as well as evidence of illegal double voting.
States should also compare voter rolls with government records to identify convicted felons and noncitizens who should be removed from the rolls. And the federal government should cooperate with these efforts and make Department of Homeland Security and other databases available to state officials.
Preserving this great experiment that is America depends on having free and fair elections where all Americans can trust the process and the results.
Something as critical as election integrity can’t be left to a simple honor system. One of the most important roles of government is to safeguard the electoral process and ensure that every voter’s right to cast a ballot is protected. That not only protects our right to vote; that’s how we protect the future of our very republic.
Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative. Read his research. Twitter: @HvonSpakovsky.
Dear Readers:
With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.
However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.
If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.
This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.
We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2019-08-20 06:24:552019-08-20 06:26:29VIDEO: How We Can Safeguard Our Election Process
It’s been brewing for a while now, and yesterday, the sins of the homosexualist hierarchy officially caught up to them.
In New York state, the Child Victim’s Act went into effect, and the vultures have now swept in to begin picking over the dying body of the Church as hundreds of lawsuits worth hundreds of millions of dollars — perhaps even billions — were filed throughout the state’s seven dioceses.
Church Militant, you will recall, led all Catholic media last year during the “Summer of Shame” saying this was bound to happen — and now it has.
States all over the country are now suspending their statutes of limitations and opening up a one-year window for any victims of past sexual abuse to sue the Church, and on the very first day, literally hundreds of lawsuits were filed; and yesterday was just day one of the year — 364 more to go.
In courthouses all over the state, lawyers lined up in the halls beginning at midnight to get their clients’ lawsuits filed. In many places, the atmosphere was almost circus-like.
And why wouldn’t it be? From the attorneys’ perspectives, a massive, huge payday is waiting down the road and potential bankruptcy for multiple dioceses, as Buffalo’s lying bishop, Richard Malone, even stated publicly days before.
The bishops in New York fought like hell to prevent this law from being passed, with Cdl. Timothy Dolan leading the way.
In fact, the flashpoint of the story yesterday happened right on the steps of his cathedral, St. Patrick’s on 5th Avenue, which was fitting since it was here where it was all concentrated last year as news broke that former Cdl. Theodore McCarrick had been accused of sexually abusing a minor right inside this very cathedral.
That case then caused James Grein to come public, and at the Silence Stops Now rally last November in Baltimore, which Church Militant was proud to be a sponsor of, Grein step forward into the glare of cameras and announced that he had been an 18-year sexual abuse victim of the corrupt cleric.
In a moment of poetic justice, Grein stood with his lawyer right in front of the cathedral and together they began a process which may very well bring the archdiocese of New York to its knees.
It was a moment of vindication for Grein and hundreds if not thousands of victims of abuse — mostly male — at the hands of corrupt clergy.
And Grein’s point about this now presents a moment to get to the bottom of how all this came to be is what has corrupt homosexual members of the hierarchy most concerned — and if not, it should.
So many of the bishops and members of the establishment, for decades, have covered up this filth for so long and used the mechanism and machinery of the Church to hide behind and even destroy victims — that open court is now the only way to force the truth into the light of day.
This is the moment that the weak, head-in-the-sand Catholics can no longer deny, as the secular press has grabbed hold of this story and is now running with it, much like they did with the original story back in 2002 in Boston.
This has come about because of the infiltration of homosexual men into the Catholic priesthood, some of whom, certainly not all, but some of whom raped altar boys, thousands and thousands of altar boys.
Their homosexual buddies who had moved up the ranks to become bishops covered up and lied for them, bullied and intimidated victims and sat by with false platitudes as many young men killed themselves, unable to bear the psychological torture.
Lying prelates like Blase Cupich and Joseph Tobin continue to deny that homosexuality had anything to do with it, with Cupich even manipulating last February’s sex summit in Rome to deliberately avoid the discussion.
When all this became much more public last summer, many Catholics somewhat naively hoped that this would finally be the moment where the Church could be cleaned up, the hierarchy held to account for their sins and gross negligence.
But in the intervening year, what has become blindingly clear is that the gay corrupt mafia, as archbishop Viganò calls them, has dug its heels in even further and doubled down on the lies and cover-up, some bishops shredding documents at a furious pace.
The rampant homosexuality in the Church among clergy is now completely exposed, and still, the hierarchy does nothing about it.
Their respective dioceses simply avoid the entire affair saying once they left, there’s nothing they could do.
How about conducting some deep-dive forensic analysis of how this could happen — what was their formation, what’s the current formation? But no, that won’t happen because the men in charge support all this.
Homosexualist clerical kingpin himself James Martin is protected and promoted all over the country by dozens of these wicked men in miters, the same men who lied and covered up all this sin, and a couple hundred others of the mitered class say nothing, implicating themselves in the sin.
Here in Detroit, a disgraced archbishop who had to step down in St. Paul-Minneapolis is allowed to return to his home archdiocese and concelebrate Mass at the seminary as though nothing happened — the same seminary, as rector, former seminarians report he used to hit on them.
These are but a tiny, tiny sampling of what has become the status quo in the clerical ranks, something Abp. Viganò last year himself said, and has been proven true point by point.
And yet, the greedy homosexualist prelates still do not learn, as Dolan and his archdiocese have actually sued their 32 insurance companies who refuse to pay any settlements these hundreds of lawsuits are going to produce.
Their position: You liars and cover-up artists are the ones who let this go on for decades, and you even lied to us about what you did. We are not paying for your sins.
That’s a tough case to argue against.
Dolan and other bishops around the country are now in a position to have to begin doling out millions in legal fees to force their insurance companies to pay what will likely be hundreds and hundreds of millions in settlements.
After their final years are spent in all these civil courts, they very well will find themselves moving down the hall to the bankruptcy courts.
And yet, in the midst of this scandalous turn of affairs, not one, not a single sitting ordinary has stepped forward and owned this filth, saying we are guilty of now laying bare the entire patrimony of the Church, in addition to participation in what may very well be the largest sexual abuse cover-up in the world — not one.
And yet, they will put on the happy face of willing participants and wanting to see justice done and victims protected — blah blah blah.
Don’t believe them — not for a single minute.
They are products of decades-old system, a system which rewarded and advanced lying, thieving homosexual men.
They played the game their entire careers; they danced to this music as they climbed their way up the ladders, but now, the music has come to a screeching halt.
What a horrible legacy these men will have left when their corpses are rotting their graves in a few short years: tens of millions of souls having abandoned the one true faith; 7 out of every 10 rejecting the central teaching of the Real Presence; thousands and thousands of altar boys raped and abused; thousands of vocations destroyed; liturgy made into a side-show.
And now, the very patrimony of the Church, what millions of poor immigrant Catholics scraped and saved for decades to hand over for the work of the Church, all to be gobbled in court judgments and scattered to the four winds.
The lying, corrupt hierarchy, never missing a chance to virtue signal, can’t stop babbling on about immigrants.
What about the millions of immigrants who came here and used their sweat and toil and money to build up the Church in Her work of holiness?
Since they will not bow to the will of God and correct their ways, God is now forcing the situation, as He has always done when the leaders go astray.
In a couple of months, the state of New Jersey Child Victim’s Act goes into effect. The rampage through the Church is about to shift into high gear.
Pray for the restoration; pray that these wicked, lying prelates repent, that they have their eyes opened or that God will close them forever.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Church Militanthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngChurch Militant2019-08-19 18:17:072019-08-19 18:18:28The Vortex — The Day of Reckoning Has Arrived
LibertyFellowshipMT published an outstanding 18 minute video (below) of an open letter delivered by Dr. Chuck Baldwin the leader of Liberty Fellowship located in Montana on Sunday, March 17, 2019 during a service. You know he is a good guy because the ultra leftist Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled him a “God and Guns” pastor and leader of an “apocalyptic mission” and “anti-government Patriot movement”.
Note: SPLC is infamous for placing many conservative and tea party affiliated groups on their domestic terrorist list and providing it to govt. agencies including the DOD’s Center for Counter Terrorism. Is it any wonder that POTUS and his supporters were targets for the left leaning intelligence community under Obama.
The video/open letter addresses the great dangers of “Red Flag” gun confiscation law Senate Bill 7 (Extreme Risk Protection Order and Violence Prevention Act of 2019) sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and co-sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Senator Dick Blumenthal (D-Conn).
Senate Bill 7 violates every American’s right to Due Process under the 5th and 14th Amendments.
Red Flag ex parte orders are not based on probable cause but the absurdly low standard of “reasonable cause” for obtaining an ex parte order which can result in a seizure on the same day the Court issues followed by a Hearing within 14 days. Not only that it is based on the low standard of “preponderance of evidence or reasonable suspicion” and not “beyond reasonable doubt.” Among the many loosely defined criteria for issuance includes reckless storage – (which could mean a gun on night stand or at bedside). It also shifts the burden of proof to gun owner (e.g. gun owner must prove he is not a threat) which ignores the legal precedent of innocent until proven guilty.
If you don’t have time to listen to whole thing (which I recommend) then skip to middle and listen from 9 minute mark on.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Royal A. Brown IIIhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngRoyal A. Brown III2019-08-19 07:32:282019-08-19 17:40:05VIDEO ON RED FLAG LAWS: An Open Letter to our Legislators, Judges and Lawmen
Levi Strauss ( 1 – Liberal) is the world’s largest seller of jeans. They make billions of dollars off of Middle America’s desire to wear comfortable, affordable jeans in many walks of life – and this past March, they made even more money when they used Middle America’s jean purchases to become publicly traded.
However, they hate Middle America’s values. Their July 2019 investor report bragged about promoting left-leaning LGBT values, climate change activism, and gun control. They rank a paltry “1” on the 2ndVote scale, indicating that they are a full-tilt liberal activist organization.
This is especially true on guns. In September 2018, Levi’s donated one million dollars to gun control, partnered with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown Business Leaders for Gun Safety, doubled employee matches to Levi’s new Safer Tomorrow Fund, and paid employees for up to five hours per month of gun control activism. They also launched a Get Out The Vote campaign in 2018.
It’s time to show Levi’s who’s in charge – not Wall Street, but Main Street. Middle America giveth, and Middle America taketh away. You can and must show Levi’s that their violation of customer values and shareholder ethics is unacceptable.
Second, contact Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh through LinkedIn or email him at cbergh@levi.com. Let him know that you’ll be sending your jeans money to any firm but Levi’s.
Third, spread the word on social media. Our friends at the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project held Levi’s accountable at their shareholders’ meeting this summer. The National Rifle Association is likewise not backing down from this leftist pressure. Tell your social media audience that 2ndVote, the National Center, and the National Rifle Association won’t stop fighting for your Second Amendment rights, and neither will you.
Fourth, please donate to 2ndVote. We are sending a letter to Bergh on September 1, a year after he led Levi’s into the gun control activism camp. We plan to include all donors who want their names in the letter. If you would like to personally tell Bergh about your decision to shop elsewhere, send us an email at info@2ndVote.com.
For almost a year, Levi’s has dedicated itself to using your money to violate your values. Let them know you’re watching.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png002ndvote .comhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png2ndvote .com2019-08-17 18:03:092019-08-19 17:39:27Levi’s loves to take Middle America’s money…and use it to take your guns
The Associated Pressreports Congress is seriously considering red flag gun laws.
These laws, also called “extreme risk protection orders,” allow courts to issue orders allowing law enforcement to seize firearms from people who’ve committed no crime but are believed to be a danger to themselves or others.
President Trump has signaled his backing of bipartisan Senate legislation sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
“We must make sure that those judged to pose a grave risk to public safety do not have access to firearms and that if they do those firearms can be taken through rapid due process,” Trump said in a White House speech.
Red flag laws have garnered support from several conservative intellectuals, as well, including David French of National Review and Ben Shapiro.
Here are seven reasons red flag laws should be opposed, particularly at the federal level.
1. There’s No Evidence Red Flag Laws Reduce Gun Violence
Most people haven’t heard of red flag laws until recently—if they have at all—but they aren’t new.
Connecticut enacted the nation’s first red flag law in 1999, followed by Indiana (2005). This means social scientists have had decades to analyze the effectiveness of these laws. And what did they find?
“The evidence,” The New York Times recently reported, “for whether extreme risk protection orders work to prevent gun violence is inconclusive, according to a study by the RAND Corporation on the effectiveness of gun safety measures.”
The Washington Postreports that California’s red flag went basically unused for two years after its passage in 2016. Washington, D.C.’s law has gone entirely unused. Other states, such as Florida and Maryland, have gone the other direction, seizing hundreds of firearms from gun-owners. Yet it’s unclear if these actions stopped a shooting.
With additional states passing red flag laws, researchers will soon have much more data to analyze. But before passing expansive federal legislation that infringes on civil liberties, lawmakers should have clear and compelling empirical evidence that red flag laws actually do what they are intended to do.
2. Congress Lacks the Authority
The Founding Fathers clearly enumerated the powers of the federal government in the Constitution. Among the powers granted in Article I, Section 8 are “the power to coin money, to regulate commerce, to declare war, to raise and maintain armed forces, and to establish a Post Office.”
Regulating firearms is not among the powers listed in the Constitution (though this has not always stopped lawmakers from regulating them). In fact, the document expressly forbids the federal government from doing so, stating in the Second Amendment that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
3. We Have Federalism
Unlike the federal government, whose powers, James Madison noted, are “few and defined,” states possess powers that “are numerous and indefinite.”
Indeed, 17 states and the District of Columbia already have red flag laws, and many more states are in the process of adding them. This shows that the people and their representatives are fully capable of passing such laws if they choose. If red flag laws are deemed desirable, this is the appropriate place to pursue such laws, assuming they pass constitutional muster. But do they?
4. Red Flag Laws Violate Due Process
The Constitution mandates that no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
Seizing the property of individuals who have been convicted of no crime violates this provision. Gun control advocates claim due process is not violated because people whose firearms are taken can appeal to courts to reclaim their property. However, as economist Raheem Williams has observed, “this backward process would imply that the Second Amendment is a privilege, not a right.”
Depriving individuals of a clearly established, constitutionally-guaranteed right in the absence of criminal charges or trial is an affront to civil liberties.
5. Red Flag Laws Could Lead to More Violence
In 2018, two Maryland police officers shot and killed 61-year-old Gary Willis in his own house after waking him at 5:17 a.m. The officers, who were not harmed during the shooting, had been ordered to remove guns from his home under the state’s red flag law, which had gone into effect one month prior to the shooting.
While red flag laws are designed to reduce violence, it’s possible they could do the opposite by creating confrontations between law enforcement and gun owners like Willis, especially as the enforcement of red flag laws expands.
6. It’s Not Just the “Mentally Ill” and Grave Threats Who Are Flagged
In theory, red flag laws are supposed to target individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others. In practice, they can work quite differently.
In a 14-page analysis, the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island explained that few people understand just how expansive the state’s red flag law is.
“It is worth emphasizing that while a seeming urgent need for [the law] derives from recent egregious and deadly mass shootings, [the law’s] reach goes far beyond any efforts to address such extraordinary incidents,” the authors said.
“As written, a person could be subject to an extreme risk protective order (ERPO) without ever having committed, or even having threatened to commit, an act of violence with a firearm.”Though comprehensive information is thin, and laws differ from state to state, anecdotal evidence suggests Rhode Island’s law is not unique. A University of Central Florida student, for example, was hauled into proceedings and received a year-long RPO (risk protection order) for saying “stupid” things on Reddit following a mass shooting, even though the student had no criminal history and didn’t own a firearm. (The student also was falsely portrayed as a “ticking time bomb” by police, Jacub Sullum reports.) Another man, Reason reports, was slapped with an RPO for criticizing teenage gun control activists online and sharing a picture of an AR-15 rifle he had built.
Individuals who find themselves involved in these proceedings often have no clear constitutional right to counsel, civil libertarians point out.
7. They’re Basically Pre-Crime
As I’ve previously observed, red flag laws are essentially a form of pre-crime, a theme explored in the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report, based on a 1956 Philip K. Dick novel.
I’m not the only writer to make the connection. In an article that appeared in Salon, Travis Dunn linked red flag laws “to the science fiction scenario of The Minority Report, in which precognitive police try to stop crimes before they’re committed.”
If this sounds far-fetched, consider that the president recently called upon social media companies to collaborate with the Department of Justice to catch “red flags” using algorithmic technology.
The idea that governments can prevent crimes before they occur may sound like sci-fi fantasy (which it is), but the threat such ideas pose to civil liberties is quite real.
Compromising civil liberties and property rights to prevent acts of violence that have yet to occur are policies more suited for dystopian thrillers—and police states—than a free society.
It’s clear that laws of this magnitude should not be passed as an emotional or political response to an event, even a tragic one.
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has appeared in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Washington Times.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2019-08-17 17:49:232019-08-19 17:41:007 Reasons to Oppose Red Flag Guns Laws
“The Constitution shall never be construed… to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” – Samuel Adams
“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” – Thomas Jefferson
“The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.” – Noah Webster
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed.” Noah Webster
We’ve all heard it before: the Second Amendment was never meant for citizens to have the sort of guns available today – it was just for hunting! Bull hockey, it was written to protect the right to shoot at tyrants and their agents when they have stolen liberty or property from the people. By that same logic the First Amendment doesn’t apply to the internet (which didn’t exist at the time) so kiss your free speech rights online goodbye! We’ve already seen massive censorship.
Then there’s the “it was only implied for a militia” argument. Another crock.
There’s a certain level of irony in liberals claiming that the second amendment was only implied for a militia. Any time a militia group does spring up they’re quickly denounced by the left including much of the neo-con establishment right.
Even National Review has had at least nine articles supporting various gun control laws. They advocated everything from universal background checks to Red Flag laws. By now people should understand that William F. Buckley and Irving Kristol were the two men who changed the old right conservative Republican Party into this new neo-con Trotskyite left leaning cabal who will not stand up for our God given rights in the Constitution.
They tell us we don’t need guns, and I say, “The hell we don’t!”
El Paso, Texas – Dayton, Ohio
Call me cynical, or donning a tinfoil hat, but these shootings seem planned and coincidentally appear just at the right time for use by politicians who go to the extremes against firearms, including President Trump and his closest “advisors.” Let’s pray he backs away from all of this and keeps his promises to the American people.
Notice that after Congressman Steve Scalise was shot and nearly died at a Republican baseball game, there was not a scintilla of outrage for gun control by the left.
The manifesto written by the 21-year-old El Paso shooter who killed 20 and injured 26, was a leftist screed. Patrick Crusius’s “My Life Page” was changed by progressive pinkos from Democrat to Republican as reported by Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit. Crusius was a soulless video game player, just as President Trump stated. His crime might be described as one of nihilism, the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless, an ideology of despair that has motivated rootless young men toward violent crimes throughout human history.
A person willing to kill innocents and be killed by the police while doing so surely would have no qualms about violating a state or federal law that prohibited the general ownership of the weapon he was about to use.
New Laws Are Lies
There are enough laws on the books. There’s not a single new law that would change anything. First Trump agreed to ban bump stocks, a stupid argument if there ever was one. By labeling bump stocks “machine guns,” the ATF effectively changed their classification under the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA) and made them illegal under the 1968 Gun Control Act (GCA), a move which retroactively criminalizes their purchase and ownership. By the way, the 1968 GCA was taken from Adolph Hitler’s gun ban.
If Trump signs any new laws, this will drive a huge wedge between him and his supporters. True, there is no one else to vote for, but Trump supporters will not go out in droves as they did in 2016, which could give the election to the Democratic Socialists. If the President backs down on his promises, he will lose…and the left wants our guns, they want them out of our hands, and when the movie, The Hunt, becomes reality even though it’s now been pulled, we won’t have any way of firing back.
Our God given freedoms are codified by our Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution. Pressures are being applied on all Republican politicians to again bend to the socialists’ desires to eliminate firearms, especially by Ivanka Trump. Stupid deals with these enemies of freedom have been made in the past, and every single time, Republicans have lost. Why? Because most of them do not represent us or Constitutional conservatism; they are part of the same globalist establishment as the Democratic Socialists.
Gun Free Zones and Joe Biden
Gun Free Zones are killing fields. Whenever there is a shooting, the socialist democrats propose gun control; but when someone is raped or murdered by an illegal alien, the same people never demand border control! This law has effectively turned schools into shooting galleries for deranged lunatics.
Research from the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that 98 percent of all public mass shootings that occurred between 1950 and July 10, 2016, happened in gun-free zones. Responding to this research, USA Today contributor Erich Pratt recently opined, “No wonder that 81% of police officers support arming teachers and principals, so that the real first responders — the potential victims — can protect the children.”
As of early 2018, educators in 33 states may not arm themselves to protect their students. Nor may schools in these 33 states even hire armed security guards. Our children are literally sitting ducks. This in turn means one and only one thing, as recently noted by conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh, “Everybody that wants to shoot up a school knows that they are going to be the only one armed.”
Exactly. And if you scroll back through history, you’ll find that the reason this situation exists is because of Joe Biden who introduced the Gun-Free School Zones Act in 1990. Out of fairness, though, it should be noted that then New World Order President George H.W. Bush signed it into law after it passed the Democrat-led House and Senate.
Bush, a Republican, was no Second Amendment champion throughout his time in office. When he could have stood up for gun rights, Bush kowtowed to anti-gun pressure and signed this bill into law.
Nearly three decades later, Republican governors have made up ground by passing pro-gun legislation like Constitutional Carry.
However, this case is another reminder that just because a politician is a Republican does not guarantee that they will be a pro-gun champion.
Assault Weapon Bans
John Lott, President of Crime Prevention Research Center was interviewed on Mark Levin’s radio program and explained the three gun control bills now up by both Democratic Socialists and neo-con Trotskyite Republicans. They are Assault Weapon Bans, Universal Background Checks and Red Flag Laws.
John Lott says they’re banning guns based on how they look rather than how they function. The idiots in Congress have no clue of what they’re doing. So, you can have a semi-automatic hunting rifle, which fires the same bullets with the same rapidity doing the same damage as a gun that looks like an M-16, but it’s not a weapon that militaries around the world would use. The inside guts of it, which civilians have, is the same as any small caliber hunting rifle. The vast majority of semi-automatic rifles in the United States are owned by people who own guns. Banning guns on their looks when other guns operate the same way is pure stupidity.
The original assault weapons ban which Senator Feinstein and her staff got passed, was by flipping through pages of catalogues on assault weapons and marking off different names of guns simply by how they looked. Even people paid by the Clinton administration couldn’t find any benefit of this insane law. There was actually a small drop in the states where the assault weapon ban was dropped versus the states where it was not. The original Feinstein ban expired in 2004.
Universal Background Checks
Now they want background checks on the private transfer of firearms, which means going to a licensed dealer and having them do the background check. In Washington DC you’d have to pay the dealer $125.00 to do the background check, and that’s per firearm. Another monetary leeching of the gun owners. According to John Lott of Crime Prevention Research Center, there have been no mass murders this century by anyone who privately purchased a firearm. The vast majority of firearms are purchased through dealers where there is already a background check via the National Instant Background Check Systems (NICS).
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 was launched by the FBI on November 30, 1998 and mandated NICS. It is used by Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) to instantly determine whether a prospective buyer is eligible to buy firearms. Before ringing up the sale, cashiers call in a check to the FBI or to other designated agencies to ensure that each customer does not have a criminal record or isn’t otherwise ineligible to make a purchase. More than 230 million such checks have been made, leading to more than 1.3 million denials. NICS is located at the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
Red Flag Laws
A red flag law is a politically divided gun control law that permits police or family members to petition a state court to order the temporary removal of firearms from a person who may present a danger to others or themselves without due process and facing their accusers in a court of law.
Again, these laws, also called “extreme risk protection orders,” allow courts to issue orders allowing law enforcement to seize firearms from people who’ve committed no crime but are believed to be a danger to themselves or others.
President Trump has signaled his backing of bipartisan Senate legislation sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). This is very dangerous. Any extreme leftist neighbor who decides they don’t like you, can report that you own firearms and are acting in a way that could harm someone. Whether true or not, you could lose your ability to own firearms. President Trump in one tweet shows why ‘red flag’ laws are so very dangerous.
The Red Flag Laws virtually have nothing to do with mental health. There are 17 states which have this law now and only one of them even mentions the term “mental health” in it. The basic notion is that they’re trying to predict whether someone will commit a crime or harm themselves. This reminds me of the Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report where the government would predict someone’s future crimes and arrest the person before the behavior.
Already on the books is a 72-hour hold (Baker Act) on someone who has psychiatric problems and has been reported. However, what the Red Flag law wants to do is to get rid of some of the restrictions from the Baker Act. With the Baker Act, you have psychiatric experts evaluate the person and make a decision, but with Red Flag laws there are no psychiatric experts making a decision.
First you have a complaint and it varies across states, some states friends can do it, some states relatives can do it…police, or in Colorado, anyone can do it. A judge basically looks at a piece of paper that summarizes the complaint, then in a short period of time depending on the state, the police will go in and take the firearms. They’ll have a hearing in a couple weeks, but the problem is there’s no legal representation automatically provided to the targeted person. The prosecutors basically act as lawyers for the person making the complaint.
Red Flag laws are totally unconstitutional, the very presumption of innocence and the due process of law requirement of demonstrable fault as a precondition to punishment or sanctions prohibits the loss of liberty. Recently we’ve seen the presumption of innocence turned upside down with Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation and the spurious investigation of our President for nearly three years.
Nevertheless, the American left has diligently tried to punish people and deprive us of liberty on the basis of what might happen in the future. The Soviets used psychiatric testimony to predict criminal behavior which we condemned in the 80s, but now our President seems to want it here. In America, we do not punish a person or deprive anyone of liberty on the basis of a fear of what the person might do.
This is a “turn in your conservative neighbor” law, and is a massive danger to freedom.
Conclusion
Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin said, “In a nation where over the last 50 years we’ve aborted 60 million unborn babies, and we have multiple states with medically assisted suicide being provided by physicians at both ends of the life spectrum, we’re losing the value for life that we once historically had. Firearms are not the problem; the problem is our culture of death.”
Fifty years ago, children didn’t walk into schools with firearms and shoot their fellow classmates. In fact, the high school I went to in Park Ridge, Illinois had an underground shooting range and a Rifle Club. There were pickup trucks in the parking lot with gun racks on the back and the rifles in plain view. Kids brought their rifles on the bus with them, they kept them in their cars, most of which were unlocked. We were never exposed to what today’s children are exposed to at a very young age. The problems with our culture are systemic, and day by day they are growing worse.
It’s easy to blame the tools used in these killings so as to part American citizens from their own self-defense, but the real cultural issues are far more complex and are rarely discussed. It’s the morality, and what’s the cause of this morality? We have driven God out of the public arena.
George Washington said in his Farewell Address that it is religion that sustains morality. If you undermine religion, you’ll undermine morality.
That is precisely what has happened to America. Beginning with a whole series of misguided Supreme Court decisions, religious influence in society, especially Christian, was restricted more and more. By the 1960s, God was effectively kicked out of the public schools along with prayer and the Ten Commandments.
When we had God in the classrooms, there was no need for armed guards in the hallways.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Kelleigh Nelsonhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngKelleigh Nelson2019-08-17 06:04:142019-08-19 17:41:45Socialists Chip Away at the Second Amendment
