Category: Bureaucraps

The Founders Knew About and Had No Problem with ‘Stabilizing Braces’

U.S.A. —  “Borchardt Lowe. #1062, cased w/ accessories,” the placard for the historical arm on display at April’s NRA Annual Meeting in Indianapolis read. “Borchardts were customarily sold as a cased ensemble that included a shoulder stock with attached holster, a cheekpiece, four matching magazines…”

“Designed by Hugo Borchardt and manufactured by Ludwig Lowe of Berlin between 1893 and 1899, the Borchardt was the first successful automatic pistol design,” a description from Rock Island Auction Company explains. “The distinctive Borchardt design features a toggle action, centrally located trigger, grip and eight-round magazine and detachable wooden stock that attaches to a lug on the rear of the pistol receiver.”

Not being a collector of older firearms, curios, or relics, or even passingly informed on them, this was new to me. And for those who might balk at the word “automatic,” friend and firearms designer Len Savage of Historic Arms, LLC helped clear that up in a report on AR-15 sales actually predating the M16 being issued to military units.

“In 1968 firearms industry terminology ‘automatic rifle’ means the same as ‘auto-loading rifle,’ i.e., a rifle that loads itself for the next shot,” Savage recalled. “Even in 1979-1980 when I took my hunters’ safety course the State of Michigan used the two terms interchangeably throughout the course.”

Back to the Borchardt, seeing a semiauto and a pistol with an attachable stock from the Nineteenth Century being accepted at the time without hysteria makes it fair to wonder what all the outrage is about today, and the answer, of course, is that it’s all being drummed up for effect. Still, I wondered, with the current ridiculous overreach by ATF to issue a rule banning stabilizing braces because they can act like an extension that when shouldered somehow magically transitions a handgun into a short-barrel rifle, what could we learn from history that might be useful in fighting back such unconstitutional power grabs?

In light of the Bruen decision, where “text, history, and tradition” of the Second Amendment at the time it was written is what informs us as to what the Founders understood the right to protect, I couldn’t turn to the Borchardt – that would play right into the hands of the gun prohibitionists, who, unable to identify Founding-Era infringements have tried turning to later laws, including post-Civil War edicts intended to keep freed blacks disarmed.

The question to be answered: Was there a counterpart at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified?

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Today It’s Your Gas Stove, Tomorrow It’s Your Dishwasher.

“Don’t worry about the dishwasher,” our host told us as we checked out the house where my wife and I were staying in the south of France several years ago. “It’s more than two years old.” I had no idea why I needed to worry about this or any other dishwasher, but I was about to find out.

The year was 2017, and new EU regulations had gone into effect, effectively crippling the dishwashers people had long depended on to clean their dishes. A cleaning machine that cleans is a radical idea, I’m sure, to radical EU regulators. Our host had remodeled his kitchen barely in time to install a machine made the year before the new EU rules regarding water and energy use went into effect. The new washers use so little water and energy that EU truth-in-labeling laws ought to prevent manufacturers from calling these overpriced beasts “dishwashers.”

“Dishwetters” might be more accurate. Or perhaps more accurate still would be “Dishmoisteners.”

If it’s a choice between an appliance that’s been over-regulated to the point that consumers have to pay far more than they used to for a dishwasher that does far less than it should or them standing in front of the sink for 30 minutes every night after dinner, singing, “Tonight we’re gonna scrub like it’s 1929,” then Brussels has already made the choice for them: If you want to buy a dishwasher, you’re still going to have to hand-wash those dishes before they go into the machine.

Here’s where Presidentish Joe Biden steps up to say: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, Jacque.

In yet another notorious Friday afternoon news dump, Biden’s Department of Energy proposed new efficiency rules for dishwashers sold in the U.S.

If the proposed regulations go into effect — and there’s no doubt that the enviro-cabal running the White House is in favor — water use would be reduced by a third on some standard-sized machines, and energy use would be reduced by more than a quarter.

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BLUF
Liberals pretend to change the world but all they do is increase their power. They do not move the goal posts; they change the game. One minute they are feminists who are slamming the stereotypes of women. The next minute they are trannies who claim that acting like a stereotypical woman makes you a woman.

It is exhausting as well as confusing. Which is their strategy.

Keeping us confused

Tranny rights. Black lives matter. Support Ukraine. It seems every day leftist fascists are throwing something new at us. Their latest cause is Youth Attracted People — pedophiles. The left puts real Americans constantly on the defensive. We are forever back on our heels in the battle between right and wrong. This is deliberate, for as Sun Tzu said in The Art of War 2,500 years ago, “The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”

I call this fascism because that is what it is, the use by the government of business to control the people. That the media is in bed with the government — which is run by unelected and unfireable Civil Service lifers — is unassailable.

The media sells this. The largest media conglomerate in the world — Disney — is run by the Gay Mafia in Hollywood. I don’t mean the CEO is gay, I just mean he bends over for them, as it were, and does their bidding. He is suing Florida because gays hate the state. They killed Anita Bryant’s career 40 years ago. Now they seek to destroy Ron DeSantis and the entire state.

As Saul Alinsky observed, “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” Gays have used fear excellently to multiply their power through intimidation and exaggeration.

If you were surprised that Murdoch fired Tucker Carlson, then you have not paid attention. When he sold most of Fox to Disney four years ago, he became its largest individual shareholder. I don’t know if that is still true, but I do know he has made nary a protest against Disney supporting transgender teachers grooming children as young as 5.

The corruption of Western media is not limited to the USA.

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HHS Xavier Becerra makes play to destroy 2nd Amendment

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra reportedly called gun violence, in the aftermath of an Atlanta shooting, a “public health crisis” — a label the left has been trying to affix for some time so as to sidestep the Constitution and put the Second Amendment in the hands of medical bureaucrats to control.

‘Cause they did such a great job with COVID mitigation. Right?

“[W]e learned the tragic news that Amy St. Pierre, an HHS colleague at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was the victim of a senseless shooting in Atlanta,” Becerra said in a statement reported by The Hill.

Police arrested a suspect in the shooting that left St. Pierre dead and four others injured.

And Becerra then added this, as The Hill reported: “We are still trying to process this heart-breaking news. But there is no escaping that gun violence is tearing the American family apart and has become a public health crisis.”

A mental health crisis — yes.

A spiritual crisis — yes.

But public health is a very politicized term that was used by the government — that is used by the government — to declare the sort of emergencies that give the government the necessary justification to seize individual liberties. The coronavirus was declared a public health emergency by both federal and state health officials, after which Big Pharma was given a streamlined pass to produce experimental vaccines under an emergency-use authorization that President Joe Biden and his band of merry medical bureaucrats then forced into the arms of American citizens, bypassing that old-time gold standard of “my body, my choice” by citing “public health emergency.”

Now apply the same scenario to the Second Amendment.

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Watch: Kennedy Stumps Biden Official on $50 Trillion Cost to Fight Climate Change: ‘You Don’t Know, Do You?’

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., left one Biden administration official without words Wednesday when he pressed him to answer one simple question: How much would spending $50 trillion in American taxpayer money to become carbon-neutral lower global temperatures?

“If we spend $50 trillion to become carbon-neutral by 2050 in the United States of America, how much is that going to reduce world temperatures?” Kennedy asked Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing.

Turk appeared unable to provide a specific number, and instead began arguing that the U.S. needed to do everything it could to reduce carbon emissions before being interrupted by Kennedy pressing for an answer to the question.

FBI Caught Spying on Virginia Catholic Church

Democrat President Joe Biden’s FBI has been caught spying on a Catholic Church in Virginia, according to reports.

The spying revelation comes after Slay News previously reported that the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) have been targeting traditional Catholics.

In February, it emerged that the FBI sent out a memo warning agents of the dangerous “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology” that was gaining popularity in the country.

The memo was posted at UncoverDC.com by former FBI special agent Kyle Seraphin.

Seraphin last year was suspended indefinitely from the FBI without pay after stepping forward as a whistleblower. He alleged that the FBI is trying to hide how many man-hours they used on the Jan. 6 investigation.

Before his suspension, Seraphin had worked at the FBI’s Richmond office for six years.

Now new information has revealed that the FBI is infiltrating Catholic churches. Two parishioners at a Latin Mass Catholic church in rural Northern Virginia say they witnessed suspicious activity from what looked like FBI vehicles in February. The sighting was a month after the FBI’s Richmond office published the now-rescinded internal memo focused on “radical-traditional Catholics.”

The FBI’s Washington, D.C. office, which monitors the church’s area, denied any knowledge of such activity in a statement to The Daily Signal.

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Jordan Opens Probe Into US Marshals Being Told to Avoid Arresting Protesters at Supreme Court Justices’ Homes

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is spearheading an investigation into why the U.S. Marshals Service was instructed to “avoid” arresting protesters camped outside a Supreme Court justices’ private residence, “despite the actions clearly violating federal law.”

In March, Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., presented the U.S. Marshals Service training protocol during a congressional hearing that revealed guards were told to refrain from arresting protesters at Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home after the leaked Dobbs decision sparked outrage from pro-abortion activists. During the hearing, Britt shared the protocol with Attorney General Merrick Garland, but he claimed to have never seen the slides before.

The Marshals parked outside Kavanaugh’s home were reportedly told to “avoid, unless absolutely necessary, criminal enforcement action involving the protest or protesters, particularly on public space,” prompting Jordan to launch a probe into the directives.

“The training materials provided to the U.S. Marshals strongly suggest that the Biden Administration is continuing to weaponize federal law enforcement agencies for partisan purposes,” Jordan wrote in a letter to U.S. Marshals Service Director Ronald L. Davis, first obtained by The Hill, after Britt’s discovery.

“While authorities apprehended the man who intended to do harm to Justice Kavanaugh, we are aware of no other arrests or charges for agitators demonstrating outside of the justices’ homes—despite the actions clearly violating federal law,” Jordan continued, as he seeks to address the lack of arrests.

Jordan also called out the lack of arrests in an interview with Fox News Radio Wednesday, stating that it is a “crime to protest in front of a judge’s home.”

“It’s actually a crime to protest in front of a judge’s home with the intent to change a decision, to impact a pending matter in front of the court. And obviously, that’s what they were doing after the leak came out,” the Ohio congressman said, referring to the protests and demonstrations that occurred after a leak of the Dobbs decision last May.

“That’s why I think the leak came out… to create this whole atmosphere. And of course, we know where it ended up. It ended up with an assassination threat and attempt on Justice Kavanaugh,” Jordan said.

“So we’ve received information that suggests that, it’s what we put in the letter, that there may have been instructions from the Attorney General to, hey, whatever you do, only as a last resort. But that’s in direct contradiction of the law, of the statute. So that’s a concern,” he said. “And we want to get some answers to that, and a host of other things. It seems like we’ve been investigating all kinds of things because so many these agencies have been turned on the American people.”

Jordan’s investigation comes just days after Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and 10 Senate Republicans announced upcoming legislation that seeks to increase maximum prison sentences for anyone who attempts to influence Supreme Court justice decisions.

“The Protecting Our Supreme Court Justices Act will deter intimidation of our Justices and send a message that the Biden administration has refused to send: Justices must be allowed to do their jobs without fearing for the safety of themselves or their families,” Blackburn told Fox News Digital.

Judge rules Kim Gardner will go to trial on seven counts of neglect of her duties

In February there was a tragic story out of St. Louis. A teen named Janae Edmondson was downtown as part of a high school volleyball tournament that she was participating in. Afterwards she and her family were crossing the street when a car driven by 21-year-old Daniel Riley came speeding through town. Riley flipped the car and crushed Janae Edmondson’s legs. She survived but both of her legs had to be amputated.

At the time of the crash, driver Daniel Riley was out on bond for a robbery that took place in 2020 but he still hadn’t been tried. The really unbelievable part was that Riley had remained out on bond even though he’d violated the terms more than 50 times. The prosecutor’s office in this case was run by Kim Gardner. Her office immediately offered an excuse for why Riley hadn’t been tried in three years. But the first explanation offered turned out to be false.

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This could affect how the courts rule on any bureaucrap regulatory schemes

Supreme Court will consider major case on power of federal regulatory agencies.

Nearly 40 years ago, in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court ruled that courts should defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute as long as that interpretation is reasonable. On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to reconsider its ruling in Chevron.

The question comes to the court in a case brought by a group of commercial fishing companies. They challenged a rule issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service that requires the fishing industry to pay for the costs of observers who monitor compliance with fishery management plans.

Relying on Chevron, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the companies’ challenge to the rule. Judge Judith Rogers explained that although federal fishery law makes clear that the government can require fishing boats to carry monitors, it does not specifically address who must pay for the monitors. Because the NMFS’s interpretation of federal fishery law as authorizing industry-funded monitors was a reasonable one, Rogers concluded, the court should defer to that interpretation.

The fishing companies came to the Supreme Court in November, asking the justices both to weigh in on their challenge to the rule and to overrule Chevron (or, the petition suggested, clarify that when a law does not address “controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute,” there is no ambiguity in the statute, and therefore no deference is required). After considering the case at five consecutive conferences, the justices agreed to take up only the second question, on the Chevron doctrine.

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IRS Plans to Hire Gun-Carrying Agents In All 50 States to Harass Hard-Working Americans

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans to place special gun-carrying agents in all 50 U.S. states.

According to the agency’s website, the Criminal Investigation (CI) division is looking for IRS employees authorized by law to carry and use firearms, which are responsible for investigating financial crimes, money laundering, tax-related identity theft, and terrorist financing efforts.

The “major duties” listed for the position say that agents will be trained to “follow the money” and prosecute any financial crimes.

“No matter what the source, all income earned, both legal and illegal, has the potential of becoming involved in crimes which fall within the investigative jurisdiction of the IRS Criminal Investigation. Because of the expertise required to conduct these complex financial investigations, IRS Special Agents are considered the premier financial investigators for the Federal government,” the website reads.

Additionally, agents must carry a gun and be prepared to protect themselves from physical attacks without any warning. The description for the role also cautions that the agent may face life-threatening situations forcing them to use a firearm.

Special agents with the CI division must also be able to pass pre-employment medical and tax exams and be “willing and able to participate in arrests, execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments.”

The website indicates that would-be agents must remain physically fit to respond to life-threatening situations while on the clock.

The job posting lists 360 vacancies in 249 locations nationwide — at least one in each state.

The IRS faced heavy criticism last year when after Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $80 billion in increased funding for the IRS for over a decade during a recession at a time when inflation was well over nine percent. The agency also announced that it would add at least 87,000 agents to the force to harass hard-working Americans.

Jim Jordan Subpoenas Three Federal Agencies for Docs on Censorship

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan on Friday issued subpoenas to officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) seeking materials connected to his committee’s investigation of alleged collusion between the government and private companies to censor speech.

“The Twitter Files and other public reporting have exposed how the federal government has pressured and colluded with Big Tech and other intermediaries to censor certain viewpoints in ways that undermine First Amendment principles,” reads a press release from the Ohio Republican.

Jordan issued letters to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, CISA Director Jen Easterly, and GEC Special Envoy and Coordinator James Rubin.

“The Committee on the Judiciary is conducting oversight of how and the extent to which the Executive Branch has coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech,” read all of the letters. “To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the Executive Branch’s ability to work with social media platforms and other
companies to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the Committee on the Judiciary must first understand how and to what extent the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.”

“To this end, we have asked for communications between the [agency], private companies, and other third-party groups such as nonprofit organizations, in addition to other information. Your response without compulsory process has, to date, been
inadequate,” they further read.

All three letters noted that the Committee previously sought the voluntary cooperation of each agency before pointing the recipients to the attached subpoenas compelling cooperation.

The subpoenas come as part of a broader effort by House Republicans to investigate the Biden administration.

FDA Says ‘Vaccines Do Not Require Demonstration of the Prevention of Infection or Transmission.’

The now years-long Public Health™ campaign continues to reinvent the definition of “vaccine” in the service of accommodating Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA injections. These shots utilize the genetic manipulation of cells to produce spike proteins rather than introducing an inactivated sample of the virus to induce an adaptive immune response — the mechanism of every vaccine in recorded history.

The Animal Farm pigs did the same trick when they rewrote the Seven Commandments in the dark of night to excuse their abhorrent behavior.

“Vaccines do not require demonstration of the prevention of infection or transmission,” according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official Dr. Peter Marks in a newly released memo.

Via Epoch Times:

Marks was writing as he rejected nearly all recommendations from a group of experts that advised the FDA to update the labels for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

Vaccines are traditionally known as drugs that prevent an illness. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for years said a vaccine is a product that “produces immunity” while vaccination is an injection of an infectious organism “in order to prevent the disease.” The agency changed its definitions after people correctly noted that COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent infection.

The FDA letter came as a response to a January 2023 petition from the Coalition Advocating for Adequately Labeled Medicines to force the mRNA COVID shot manufacturers to “amend current product labeling” to reflect the reality that the shots do not stop transmission, infection, or confer herd immunity — all of which Americans were propagandized to believe by NIAID head Anthony Fauci, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, corporate media talking heads, and President Brandon himself.

 

This brand of scientific revisionism is not new for anyone who has been paying attention over the past three years.

In September 2021, the CDC, the FDA’s partner in crime, quietly adjusted the definition of “vaccine,” reported The Miami Herald:

Social media is calling bluff on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for modifying its definition of the words “vaccine” and “vaccination” on its website.

Before the change, the definition for “vaccination” read, “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection.”

Obviously, had the American population been treated to the truth about the COVID-19 shots from the start — that they don’t prevent anyone from getting sick or getting others sick (which was the entire Public Health™ justification for mandates) — they wouldn’t have rolled up their sleeves at nearly the same rate.

Biden Establishes ‘Interagency Task Force With Senior Government Officials’ to Stop ‘Islamophobia’

Old Joe Biden’s ghostwriters issued a statement Thursday to congratulate Muslims on Eid al-Fitr, the feast marking the end of the fasting-by-day-and-gorging-by-night month of Ramadan. Predictably, it was anodyne and obsequious in the extreme, with Biden celebrating how Muslims “decorate their homes, give gifts to loved ones, wear new clothes, and visit family and friends.” The faux president is made to add: “I am moved by the generosity that is shown from families that can provide food and give charity to those in need through Zakat-al-Fitr.” In the course of all this flattery, Biden’s writer drops in a serious note: there is now a U.S. government task force dedicated to fighting “Islamophobia.”

The statement quickly shifts from telling us how wonderful it is that Muslims wear new clothes and visit family and friends to depicting Muslims as victims: “Eid al-Fitr marks the completion of a holy month dedicated to devotion, charity, and reflection—a time when we also remember Muslim communities around the world that are enduring conflict, poverty, hunger, and disease, and those that are displaced from their homes.” That served to set up the big announcement. Biden’s ghostwriter continued: “As we celebrate our blessings this Eid, let us also recommit ourselves to the timeless work of building peace and standing up for the rights and dignity of all people.” When the White House writers start depicting Old Joe babbling about peace and human rights, you know something bad is coming.

Doing this work for peace and human dignity will apparently require new restrictions on speech: “My Administration is also committed to addressing all forms of hate, including Islamophobia. This is why I established an interagency task force with senior government officials to tackle this and related challenges and encourage every American to build a more inclusive nation.” Good, because Lord knows we aren’t “inclusive” enough yet. Every last person in the world doesn’t live here on the taxpayer dime yet, so there is a long way to go.

Meanwhile, exactly what pressing need is this interagency task force designed to address? Are Muslims in the U.S. really subjected to such widespread discrimination and harassment that the feds need to step in? The record shows otherwise. FBI hate crime statistics show that Muslims are rarely targeted in hate crimes, which far more often victimize Jews and others. In fact, anti-Muslim hate crimes actually declined by 42% from 2020 to 2021. But those facts don’t fit the narrative that Muslims face widespread discrimination and harassment in the United States, and so the facts have to take a back seat.

And how is the new “interagency task force with senior government officials” going to “tackle” “Islamophobia”? No doubt we will now be inundated with taxpayer-funded material about how wonderful Islam is. In the nature of things, however, there will still be human disputes, and some of them will involve Muslims. Now that “Islamophobia” has been established as targeted by the government, these disputes will all be ascribed to “Islamophobia” and offered as evidence of how urgently needed this “interagency task force” really is. The “Islamophobia” task force will therefore likely enjoy ever-increasing budgets. That’s how government agencies work: they have to justify their existence, so they keep having to find more and more of the thing they’re supposed to be stamping out.

Related: Ilhan Omar Takes Aim at the REAL Problem Facing America Today

Most importantly, since the Biden regime is now officially committed to efforts to convince us of the wonderfulness of Islam, it is not likely to look kindly upon critics of the religion, including opponents of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. Will the interagency task force make any efforts to protect the right of Americans to oppose jihad terror and Sharia oppression? Will it be careful to distinguish such criticism from the alleged hatred that this task force is supposed to be combating, or will it act upon the assumption that any and all criticism of Islam, and even of jihad terror, subjects Muslims to “hate” and must accordingly be silenced?

Since the Left has been insisting that opposition to jihad violence is “hate” ever since 9/11, my money is on the latter. But this is a preposterous claim that, if followed logically (which of course it never will be, as this “Islamophobia” business is fundamentally illogical), would preclude any criticism of anything as possibly leading to “hate” and violence. In practice, it will preclude all criticism of anything the Left favors. And the freedom of speech will be eroded even further.

End the FBI Blackmail:

AP reported, “Former Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum is on trial in federal court on charges of corruption and lying to the FBI, facing a potentially long prison sentence if convicted of multiple wire fraud counts and conspiracy.”

Paragraph 4 said, “Prosecutors also say Gillum lied about his interactions with undercover FBI agents posing as developers who paid for a 2016 trip he and his brother took to New York, which included a ticket to the hit Broadway show Hamilton. Gillum is accused of falsely telling the FBI later that he never received anything from these undercover ‘developers’ and that his brother provided the Broadway ticket.

2016?

The FBI created a sting on a politician and held off prosecution for 7 years. Not only that but the FBI lied to him and then charged him with lying to the FBI. What a piece of blackmail the FBI would have held over a governor — if Gillum had been elected.

In this case, the FBI had evidence of what it now calls a crime in 2018 when Gillum almost became governor. No bust was made. The FBI — which has the ability to leak like a colander — said nothing to the press.

Imagine what power the bureau would have had in Florida if it could hold this over the head of a governor. Maybe it does. Who knows what dirt the FBI has in its files? The FBI tried to get Martin Luther King to kill himself once the bureau learned of his illicit affairs.

FDR created the FBI in 1935 from a previous Bureau of Investigation created when his cousin Teddy was president in 1908. From the beginning, its director J. Edgar Hoover manipulated the press like the Silly Putty the Fourth Estate devolved into.

Various radio and TV shows over the years billed as being from the files of the FBI have promoted the agency as a collection of men (and now women) dedicated to enforcing the law and protecting honest citizens. I call it Efrem Zimbalism.

The reality is far from that. Long after Prohibition ended, the mafia thrived under Hoover, who denied the existence of the Cosa Nostra. But the FBI kept files on Elvis, Mickey Dolenz and the Kingsmen, a garage band.

Classic Rock reported last August, “In the winter of 1963, a team of FBI agents spent their days hunched over portable record players, struggling to decode a message that threatened the morality of America’s youth.

“It wasn’t from the Russians or Castro, but a band of Portland teenagers called the Kingsmen. And the song was Louie Louie.

“‘J. Edgar Hoover felt we were corrupting the moral fiber of America’s youth,’ Mike Mitchell, guitarist and founding member of The Kingsmen, told me in 2016. ‘The FBI guys came to our shows, and they’d stand next to the speakers to see if we were singing anything off-color. It was a different time.’

“‘Louie Louie was kept out of the Number One spot on the charts by the Singing Nun,’ Kingsmen keyboardist Don Gallucci told me with a laugh. ‘That ought to tell you the mentality of the country back then. I thought, ‘Gee, I know the lyrics. What’s the deal?’ It never occurred to me how repressed teenagers were sexually. They were hearing all this stuff in the song. The genie was getting out of the bottle.’

“The world’s most infamous party song jumped out of the bottle in 1956. Penned by L.A. songwriter Richard Berry, the sailor’s lament had the singer pouring out his lovelorn heart to a bartender, Louie, over the girl he left across the ocean. The lyric’s sweet Calypso air includes couplets like ‘On the ship I dream she there / I smell the rose in her hair.’”

Louie Louie and the Singing Nun were chart-toppers in 1963. No wonder we had Beatlemania the next year.

As silly as the FBI was in the 1960s, it turned seditious in the 1970s. Nixon was re-elected in the first 49-state landslide in the nation’s history in 1972. But he made the mistake of passing Mark Felt over as Hoover’s successor.

Felt used the power of the FBI to push Watergate, which put forth the narrative that a president should not spy on his political opponents. In less than two years, the FBI and Congress forced Nixon to resign, negating the results of that election.

And 44 years later, Barack Hussein Obama used the FBI to spy on President Donald John Trump.

But it is setting crimes up — entrapment — that threatens our republic most. The FBI apparently decides who is a criminal, sets them up and then busts them.

Consider the Whitmer Kidnapping Plot.

C.J. Ciaramella reported in October, “The sort of informant-led investigation that resulted in the arrests of the Wolverine Watchmen is largely due to the rollback of Watergate-era restrictions on the FBI following 9/11. The Whitmer case wasn’t just a poorly conceived investigation; it was the direct result of a strategic internal policy change that allowed the FBI to begin targeting people who had done nothing illegal in order to prosecute the war on terror.

“In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft amended the attorney general guidelines to expand the investigative techniques the FBI could use during preliminary inquiries.

“In 2008, Attorney General Michael Mukasey again broadened the FBI’s power to investigate people absent any evidence that they were involved in a crime, something that would have been illegal prior to 9/11. The new guidelines also specifically allowed the FBI to consider religious affiliation and ethnicity when selecting targets, although those couldn’t be the sole criteria to justify threat assessments. The FBI argued that its manual forbade racial profiling, but if you were looking for young men with ties to the Somali extremist group al-Shabab, for example, Somali immigrant communities would be the natural place to start.

“This made way for a substantial shift in agency strategy and tactics, argues Michael German, the former undercover agent. ‘You actually had to have articulable facts that provided a reasonable indication of criminal activity,’ German says of the pre-9/11 FBI.

“The new rules reflected the national security apparatus’ biggest fear: not organized terrorist cells embedded in the U.S. but individuals radicalized and recruited through the internet or other propaganda, the so-called lone wolves.”

Crime prevention is not an appropriate use of government and police powers because it provides the state police the opportunity to frame people for crimes.

And to blackmail politicians.