Category: Bureaucraps

They were only brought to keep him out of office, and they failed.

DOJ to Drop Trump Cases.

Word is trickling out that the DOJ will fire Special Counsel Jack Smith and drop both of the federal cases against Trump soon.

MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian said “What’s interesting here is that the DOJ is moving to end them even before he takes office, citing the longstanding DOJ policy that sitting presidents can’t be prosecuted. And there were some thought that maybe special counsel Jack Smith was going to sprint through the finish line, was going to work up until the last day, force Trump to fire him, wait till a new Attorney General was appointed. But that does not appear to be the thinking inside the department. The thinking is that these cases can’t go forward.”

CNN’s Paula Reid said that Smith is in talks with the Biden Justice Dept’s Office of Legal Counsel to figure out how to “wind down” the cases.

FoxNews also reported that Jack Smith is on the way out, and the cases will be dropped soon, and ABC announced the same.

So far, this news only applies to the two federal cases, the classified documents case in Florida and the J6 case in DC. However, former AG Bill Barr has urged all of the state prosecutors to also “respect the people’s decision and dismiss the cases against President Trump now.”

Ending the Jack Smith prosecutions the day after the election is an absolute admission that these were political show trials- and now the show's over cry more, libs

Trump won in Pennsylvania, which made it impossible for Harris to win the election.
Why did he win?
The Amish vote that the Republicans went out for.
Overzealous state bureaucraps, mostly demoncraps, went and did it to themselves.

Amish turn out for Pennsylvania vote in ‘unprecedented numbers’

Republicans could see a boost in Pennsylvania from a demographic rarely seen at the polls: the Amish.

The state’s famed “Pennsylvania Dutch” registered to vote in “unprecedented numbers” in response to a January federal raid on a local raw milk farm in Bird in Hand, Pa., a source familiar with the situation told The Post.

The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture stormed Amos Miller’s farm Jan. 4 after reports of illnesses in children linked to raw dairy products purchased there, according to the local media outlet Lancaster Farming.

The Amish community saw the move as an overzealous reach by the government and was planning to vote for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose party favors less government intervention.

“That was the impetus for them to say, ‘We need to participate,’ ” the source said of local Amish voters. “This is about neighbors helping neighbors.”

The Amish community rallied around Miller, who cited his religious beliefs as a reason for not adhering to Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

“If you think about Amish people and their connection to nature, I mean, some of these people work in the fields barefoot to be closer to the earth,” the source told The Post.

Actual numbers of Amish voters were unclear as of Tuesday night, though horse-and-buggy rigs were seen at polling locations in photographs from the region.

James Woods

Physicists in 1900 basically accepted the Newtonian model of the universe. The only troubling anomaly was that Mercury, as it came into view in its journey around the sun, appeared to be in the “wrong” place. How was this possible? After much discussion brilliant scientists concluded that it “appeared” to be closer to the sun because the sun’s gravity was bending light rays reflecting off of Mercury on their way to earth.

This defied all the “settled science” embraced by classical physicists. It was to them heresy essentially, because by implication it would mean that energy and matter were interchangeable. Indeed a young physicist named Albert Einstein created the most famous equation in history, formulating that exact relationship: e=mc(squared).

The longwinded point I’m trying to make is that throughout history the most minor anomalies are often windows into a completely different understanding of the world.

Which brings me to my point.

This event where armed officers took a pet squirrel from an individual in New York opens a Pandora’s box of the horrors of leftist tyranny. The facts of the incident are disturbing enough: an anonymous instigator over 1000 miles away reported a humble man who had rescued a wounded squirrel and made a pet of him for years.

The informer’s motives in doing so can only be guessed, but the owner of the pet had made the horrific mistake in today’s America of supporting conservative thought. A cadre of armed officials got a search warrant, rummaged through the man’s property for five hours, illegally questioned his wife about her immigrant status, ultimately seizing the pet and killing it without giving the owner any recourse to save its life.

Now let’s take a look at the universe in which this macabre horrid little leftist “comedy” took place. In a nation overrun by tens of millions of illegal aliens, crushed by rampant crime and gang warfare, enduring a $35 trillion deficit, soul-crushing inflation, a culture of infanticide and child mutilation, sexual dysphoria, and insanity, and waging illegal lawfare against candidates of another party, New York State spent a full day killing a squirrel, that had been a harmless pet cherished by its owner for literally years.

The event in and of itself was just an act of petty cruelty. As a window into a larger universe, however, it is a fissure in the mantle of our world, signaling a cataclysmic eruption that may well end this nation. The tsunami of rage coming from ordinary and loving individuals was quite frankly astonishing.

Has America in the hands of the lunatic left become a powder keg about to explode? Will the power-hungry Democrats and their media minions spew enough hatred that even the most gentile among us will finally say ENOUGH? Does 87,000 newly minted and armed IRS agents offer you comfort or fill you with terror?

Are you sick of this yet?

Has J. Edgar Hoover’s Spy Program Been Resurrected?
The Bureau Apparently Now Targets MAGA Activists

Although the legacy media has buried the story, it turns out that over the last several years the Federal Bureau of Investigation has resurrected a hated and unconstitutional spying program once directed by the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. His program, called the COINTELPRO program, targeted Americans who committed no crime, but simply sought to express their political views.

Former President Richard Nixon directed Hoover to aggressively infiltrate and disrupt many political movements in the late ‘60’s and ‘70’s. This included the Vietnam War activists, the Rev. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders. They even spied on environmentalists, women’s rights groups and animal rights activists.

According to an exclusive Newsweek expose that was published three weeks ago, it now appears the ghosts of Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover were resurrected by the Biden administration with a new expanded government spying and infiltration program based on political views. The FBI apparently redefined extremism to include those whom the administration determined hold unacceptable political views.

We now learn that during the Biden administration, the Bureau changed its domestic violence definitions from the “furtherance of ideological agendas” to “furtherance of political and/or social agendas.” They report that it was a “gigantic departure for the Bureau.”

As Newsweek explained, “For the first time extremist groups worthy of surveillance and even infiltration could be so labeled because of their politics.” The FBI’s main target: Trump MAGA activists.

A review by its investigative reporters of previously unpublished FBI documents shows, “nearly two-thirds of the FBI’s current investigations are focused on Trump supporters and others suspected of violating what the FBI calls “anti-riot” laws.”

Although I’m not a MAGA activist, I personally abhor any government spying program against its citizens. In fact, I was a plaintiff in a 1970’s leftwing legal lawsuit against the COINTELPRO program. The United States Supreme Court ruled in the case, called Hobson vs. Wilson, that the federal government’s political surveillance program was unconstitutional.

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FPC Pushes Forward In Post Office Gun Ban Challenge

The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) has filed a motion for summary judgment in its case pending before a U.S. District Court in Texas challenging the Post Office gun ban.

The lawsuit FPC v. Garland challenges federal gun control laws prohibiting firearm possession, storage and carry at United States Post Offices and related properties, including post office parking lots. The plaintiffs are two law-abiding citizens licensed to carry in Texas and two non-profit membership associations—FPC and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF).

Brandon Combs, FPC president, said the lawsuit is one in a long line of challenges designed to restore Second Amendment rights.

“Your right to carry weapons for armed self-defense does not end at the Post Office,” Combs said in a release announcing the action. “We look forward to eliminating this immoral ban and further restoring the People’s right and ability to protect themselves in public.”
In its motion for summary judgment, plaintiffs argue that the post office gun ban fails both of the standards set by the Supreme Court in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen
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Cynical Publius

I’ve had a number of people ask me what I think happened that caused our senior military leadership to go from being the most respected institution in America to being a bunch of banana republic narcissistic self-serving politicos.

There are so many ways to answer that, but I think the answer lies in some cultural shifts that have taken place over the past 30 years that made officers think they are woke politicians instead of steely-eyed warriors (and what happened to the senior officers drifted into the senior NCO ranks like an infection).

To wit:

1. The promotion of the concept of “interagency.”

After 9/11, a huge amount of emphasis was placed on better coordination between the DoD and other federal departments like State and the CIA. The idea was simply to produce better coordination across domains. But instead of the State Department becoming more like the DoD, the DoD started thinking like the State Department.

Historically (pre-1990s) there was a healthy tension between State and the DoD. Turning our senior officers into wannabe State Department grandees who get invited to Georgetown cocktail parties destroyed that tension and wrecked the warrior ethos of the military. (Although not “high ranking,” Alexander “Chow Thief” Vindman is a stellar example of this phenomenon.)

2. We sent our promising O-5s and O-6s to advanced degree-producing programs at Ivy League universities and made advanced degrees a key promotion criteria.

Think Dave Petraeus. The idea of the “warrior scholar” is nice in the abstract, but in reality what we did was infect our senior leaders with the woke mind virus.

3. The service academies and War Colleges tried to be like Ivy League universities and built a civilian cadre of professors who think and act like a Harvard scholar.

The result is the same as #2, except because the service academies are involved the woke mind virus starts at the very most junior officer levels with cadets at West Point, the Air Force Academy and Annapolis.

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How to fix these cultural issues?

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Navy Says 26 Ships Affected by Faulty Welds at Newport News Shipyard in Virginia.

More than two dozen Navy ships — including three that are currently in service — received faulty welds at the Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard in Newport News, Virginia, the service’s top civilian leader told lawmakers last week.

In a letter to Congress dated Oct. 3, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said that poor welds were found on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington as well as the attack submarines USS Hyman G. Rickover and USS New Jersey. In addition, the welding issues were identified on 23 more ships — a mix of new construction, ships in maintenance and aircraft carriers undergoing refueling.

The existence of faulty welds became public nearly two weeks ago when USNI News, citing a Navy memo, reported that the sea service was told by Huntington Ingalls, or HII, that workers did not follow proper techniques on some joints in noncritical areas and that early indications suggested that some of the issues were intentional.

Del Toro said that he became aware of the issue on Sept. 24, just days before the details became public.

A week later, the House Armed Services Committee formally demanded answers from the Navy in a letter to Del Toro where they asked for a briefing from the Navy leader by this Friday.

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Expert Panel Analysis of Supreme Court Arguments in Garland v. VanDerStok.

As promised, SNW commentator and legal wiz LKB convened an all-star expert panel last night. The topic was yesterday’s oral arguments in the Supreme Court in the matter of Garland v. VanDerStock. That’s the case challenging the ATF’s unilateral redefinition of what constitutes a firearm under the narrowly-worded language of the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Joining LKB were Independent Institute fellow Steven Halbrook, California Rifle & Pistol Association President Chuck Michel and NRA-ILA Director of Constitutional Studies Joseph Greenlee. These are three legal minds who have been working in the pro-2A space for decades and whose views on the matter at hand before the Court actually mean something.

This video will not only give you 33 well worthwhile minutes of analysis of the VanDerStok arguments, but the participants also look into their crystal balls to anticipate what other significant Second Amendment cases are headed the Supreme Court’s way in the near future. Enjoy.

wretchardthecat

The key to renewal is repentance, the acknowledgement of error. Yet that acceptance is almost impossible to those who grew up on the belief they are better than everyone else, who have justified their power over others upon that undoubted superiority.

The normal person learns more from failure than success. But the already perfect man lacks the capacity to learn anything from defeat other than to conclude that someone failed him.

Usually it is we the public who have failed them. Taxes will increase and regulations redoubled until everyone is doing his fair share. Notice that the concept that they actually work for us has completely disappeared in the shuffle.

The trope that Communists make subordinates report while standing on a trap door over a shark tank is a joke, but only just.

“You know the penalty for failure. Comrade”

Biden’s agency bosses say Americans have ‘too much freedom’
The ‘swamp’ thinks you have it too good.

In an unusual look at federal agency managers, most believe Americans have too much freedom, and they back President Joe Biden‘s efforts to impose 

The bosses of federal agencies were asked in a new Napolitan Institute survey about the “individual freedom” Americans have, and 51% said they have “somewhat” to “far too much freedom.”

But just 16% of voters agreed and 57% believe the government has too much control over their lives.

Democratic “swamp” managers felt the country has too much freedom at the highest levels in the survey, at 68%. Among Republican federal agency chiefs, just 33% agreed.

But the partisan bureaucrats were more in agreement when it came to choosing who is best at deciding if new regulations are needed, found the polling outfit headed by Scott Rasmussen.

Said the analysis shared with Secrets on Friday, “Fifty-four percent (54%) of government managers say that if, after carefully researching an important issue, they determine that a regulation is needed, yet voters overwhelmingly oppose it, they should follow their research and issue the regulation anyway. This includes 49% of Republican government managers and 60% of Democrats,” it said.

Unlike Democrats and Republicans in America, and even on Capitol Hill, partisans that work in the swamp generally think like the other, according to Napolitan’s latest poll of America’s 1% elitists.

“On many topics, there is a disturbing level of bi-partisan agreement among federal government managers. Fifty-three percent (53%) of Republican government managers and 48% of Democrats believe the federal government should be allowed to censor speech that is posted on social media platforms. Forty-three percent (43%) of ‘Elites’ and just 16% of voters share this view. Seventy-four percent of Republican government managers and 79% of Democrats favor banning private ownership of guns. This view is shared by 77% of ‘Elites,’ but just 36% of voters,” said the analysis.

In his polling of elites, Rasmussen has found a stunning gap with Middle Americans, which could be a danger sign considering the outsize effect of elites, especially in the media.

Rasmussen said, “The ‘Elite’ 1% wield a tremendous amount of institutional power but are wildly out of touch with the nation they want to rule. Over the years they have built institutions and mechanisms of regulatory power that are immune to the checks and balances of elections. Worse still, these same ‘Elites’ own, operate, and control a large majority of media outlets, blocking out the true voice of the American people and broadcasting their own out of touch viewpoints.”

That’s because the Chief was in violation of State Law.

Florida police chief learns hard lesson, un-bans guns and ammo
Okeechobee police chief receiving criticism from across the country.

by Lee Williams

Donald C. Hagan, the Chief of the Okeechobee, Florida Police Department, doesn’t appear to be enjoying his time on the national stage.

Hagan had to take some time off, his spokesman said Monday, because he is receiving personal attacks from across the country. As reported Monday, Hagan rocketed to infamy for signing an illegal city ordinance that banned firearm and ammunition sales as well as firearm possession just days before Hurricane Helene made landfall.

“The chief is not in,” a police receptionist said Tuesday morning. She directed calls to Okeechobee Police Major Bettye Taylor, who issued a statement Monday trying to clarify and explain her boss’ actions. Instead, it only muddied the waters.

“The Emergency Ordinance commenced immediately upon the declaration by the Police Chief and was thereafter terminated by the Police Chief on or about 9:51 pm on the same date it was issued.

The Emergency Ordinance was terminated for two primary reasons. One is that, fortunately, Hurricane Helene did not have a substantial impact on the City and its residents.

Secondly, a provision prohibiting the sale of firearms and ammunition was inadvertently included in the Emergency Ordinance. Upon discovering this, the City and Police Chief acted expeditiously to terminate the Emergency Ordinance,” Major Taylor wrote.

In other words, the part of the ordinance that banned the sale of guns and ammunition and prohibited firearm possession in public by anyone other than law enforcement or members of the military, was “inadvertently included” in the ordinance.

As you can imagine, neither Major Taylor nor her boss returned calls or emails Tuesday seeking to clarify how or why they banned guns and ammo sales inadvertently.

In her statement, Taylor also sought to reassure the town’s residents — as well as the legions of law-abiding gun owners who are following the story across the country — that the ban caused no harm.

“At no time did the City, or the Police Chief, contemplate, nor take any action, to prohibit, confiscate or otherwise regulate firearms or ammunition,” she wrote.

This, however, is not exactly true. The ordinance the chief signed clearly prohibited the “sale of, or offer to sell, with or without compensation, any ammunition or gun or other firearm of any size or description. The intentional display, by or in any store or shop, of any ammunition or gun or other firearm of any size or description. The intentional possession in a public place of a firearm by any person, except a duly authorized law enforcement official or any person in military service acing in the official performance of their duty.”

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BLUF
The States’ Brief ends with the truism that policy concerns can’t trump statutory text. “Left with little in the way of textual support, many of ATF’s amici argue that this Court should depart from the statute’s plain meaning because excluding ‘ghost guns’ from the GCA’s scope would purportedly have dire consequences.” But that’s a matter for Congress, not the agency or the Court.

Second Amendment Roundup: Follow ATF into a Political Briar Patch?

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next week, on October 8, in Garland v. VanDerStok, the challenge to the radical expansion of the regulatory definition of “firearm” in the Gun Control Act (GCA). Neither Congress nor the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ever touched that statutory definition passed by Congress in 1968. And both left the non-controversial regulatory definition of “firearm frame or receiver” undisturbed since 1968. But suddenly in 2022 ATF promulgated a Final Rule redefining those terms to include materials, tools, and information that a person with knowledge and skill can use to fabricate a firearm or a frame or receiver.

One of the most hard-hitting amici briefs filed in support of the challengers to the regulation is the brief of the States of West Virginia and 26 other States. ATF, the brief argues, “is a political briar patch because of its rulemaking authority.” That characterization is from a law review article with the parodistic title “Almost Heaven, West Virginia?: The Country Road to Take Firearm Regulation Back Home to Congress and the States.” That play on words brings together John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” with the major question doctrine set forth in West Virginia v. EPA, 142 S. Ct. 2587 (2022). If that rule of law applies to anything, it applies to ATF’s recent the regulatory rampage.

Given the political volatility of the “gun control” issue, Congress has historically been torn between constituents who support the Second Amendment and those who wish to criminalize various forms of acquisition and possession of firearms. Because that the issue is a “major question,” Congress writes gun statutes carefully and narrowly in a manner that leaves nothing to chance. As the States’ Brief says:

Given the sensitivity of this work, one might at least expect ATF to tread carefully before purporting to regulate in unexpected and aggressive new ways. But recently, it hasn’t. ATF has instead seemed determined to stretch the words found in statutes like the GCA and NFA [National Firearm Act] to reach conduct never anticipated by the lawmakers who passed them. This case, concerning ATF’s efforts to regulate gun kits and other forms of private firearms assembly under the guise of calling them “frames or receivers” subject to the GCA, is just the latest example of that effort.

This is not the first, and it won’t be the last, overreach by ATF. As the States’ Brief continues, “many of the Amici States here have been compelled to step in and sue ATF multiple times over the past few years just to return the agency to its actual area of authority.” Thus, “when the Court encounters another ATF regulation offering a purportedly creative solution to a long-standing problem, it should be wary.”

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