Category: Bureaucraps

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.

Biden signs order prioritizing ‘environmental justice’

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order that would create the White House Office of Environmental Justice.

The White House said it wants to ensure that poverty, race and ethnic status do not lead to worse exposure to pollution and environmental harm. Biden tried to draw a contrast between his agenda and that of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. GOP lawmakers have called for less regulation of oil production to lower energy prices, while the Biden administration says the GOP policies would give benefits to highly profitable oil companies and surrender the renewable energy sector to the Chinese.

“Environmental justice will be the mission of the entire government woven directly into how we work with state, local, tribal and territorial governments,” Biden said in remarks at the White House.

The order tells executive branch agencies to use data and scientific research to understand how pollution hurts people’s health, so that work can be done to limit any damage. Under the order, executive agencies would be required to inform nearby communities if toxic substances were released from a federal facility.

As part of the announcement, Vice President Kamala Harris is separately traveling to Miami, Florida, to announce $562 million to help protect communities against the impacts of climate change.

The EPA last year formed its own Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, merging three existing EPA programs to oversee a portion of Democrats’ $60 billion investment in environmental justice initiatives created by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

The order puts more pressure on federal agencies — and the White House itself — to deliver on promises the Biden administration has made to clean up the environment in communities of color and poor communities and prepare them for the effects of climate change.

The administration has had mixed results in fulfilling this promise. There has been unprecedented spending on environmental and climate justice issues. But there have also been disagreements over how to gauge which communities are most in need of the funding and the administration’s greenlighting of controversial drilling projects as Republicans have criticized Biden for high gasoline prices.

Texas Coordinates With ATF to Share Income of Residents for Warrantless Monitoring

Texas secretly gives its citizens’ incomes to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Documents show this has led to at least one person being monitored by the feds without a warrant through the federal gun background check system. The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) told The Epoch Times that it has written contracts with ATF  for “sharing income information” for criminal investigations. The revelation may lead to oversight by the legislature.
Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican, is”deeply troubled” about this coordination with the state’s unemployment agency and federal government.
“My office will be looking into whether the Texas Workforce Commission is assisting the ATF in the Biden Administration’s mission to violate the constitutional rights of law-abiding Texans,” Cain told The Epoch Times after reviewing the emails obtained by Gun Owners of America (GOA) as part of its ongoing FOIA lawsuit.
This is the third part in an exclusive Epoch Times series on the ATF giving information on innocent suspects to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for daily monitoring through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The FBI uses NICS as a database of people who are prohibited from possessing or buying guns.

Texan’s Income Exposed

In the documents, an ATF agent emailed the FBI that a person suspected of straw purchasing or firearms trafficking needed to be put into the gun background check database. The agent wrote that “per TWC,” the man’s “reported wage earnings with the State of Texas do not appear to supply the financial means to afford the firearms purchased.”
The ATF agent requested on Dec. 28, 2020, that the Texan’s gun purchases be monitored daily for 90 days. However, as previously reported, the FBI wrote to ATF that its agents could request an extension of the monitoring for as long as they wanted.
Texas’s role in the program was uncovered in the ATF’s ninth production of documents to GOA as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. The 42 pages are more heavily redacted than the previous ones given to GOA. There are seven pages of blacked-out information before the source of the income of the person in Texas is shown as TWC.
“One would think that a pro-gun state like Texas would not be handing over gun owners’ confidential financial information to the federal government without a warrant or likely even without probable cause,” Rob Olson, an attorney for GOA, told The Epoch Times.

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‘Not a Firearms Expert’: Biden’s ATF Chief Admits He Can’t Define What an ‘Assault Weapon’ is

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Director Steve Dettelbach was unable to define the term “assault weapon” during his agency’s Tuesday budget request hearing before a House Appropriations subcommittee.

Dettelbach told Republican Texas Rep. Jake Ellzey that he had expressed support for passing an assault weapons ban in Ohio during his unsuccessful 2018 campaign to become the state’s attorney general, noting that the Biden administration endorses instituting “an assault weapons ban.” Ellzey asked Dettelbach to define an “assault weapon” in 15 seconds.

“I’ll go shorter than that, because honestly, if Congress wishes to take that up, I think Congress would have to do the work, but we would be there to provide technical assistance,” Dettelbach said. “I, unlike you, am not a firearms expert to the same extent as you maybe, but we have people at ATF who can talk about velocity of firearms, what damage different kinds of firearms cause, so that whatever determination you chose to make would be an informed one.”

Ellzey had said he has some expertise in weaponry and self-defense weapons, citing his status as a military veteran and 20-year gun owner. The Senate confirmed Dettelbach to lead the ATF in July, despite 15 state attorneys general arguing he would “merely rubber stamp” Biden’s “partisan anti-gun platform.”

NSSF APPLAUDS MISSISSIPPI GOVERNOR SIGNING SECOND AMENDMENT FINANCIAL PRIVACY ACT

NSSF®, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, praises South Dakota’s Gov. Kristi Noem for signing an Executive Order prohibiting state agencies from entering into contracts with corporate banks that discriminate against the firearm industry.

Governor Noem’s order will prevent “woke” corporate banks with discriminatory policies against firearm industry members from collecting taxpayer dollars through South Dakota state contracts. Simply put, South Dakotans will choose to do business with those companies that do not discriminate based on an industry these corporate banks may not like or with which they disagree.

“Governor Noem’s Executive Order is a significant bulwark against the ‘woke’ discrimination that threatened firearm businesses in South Dakota,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “South Dakotan’s tax dollars will be protected from being used to fund gun control efforts by these corporate banks that benefit from state contracts while denying essential services to firearm-related business simply because they are politically-disfavored by Wall Street. Governor Noem’s order is clear. The Second Amendment isn’t for sale in South Dakota.”

Gov. Noem’s order will require corporate banks and financial service providers with $100 billion in total assets seeking contracts valued at $100,000 or greater to certify that they hold no discriminatory policies against firearm industry businesses. Contracts that are certified and later discovered to be out of compliance with the Executive Order will be subject to cancellation.

‘RED-PILLED:’ FBI docs label people who use term as extremists.

The documents were obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Heritage Foundation. They show the agency has glossaries that flag the terms as a sign that the user may be associated with “Involuntary Celibate Violent Extremism” or “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism.” The documents say that “While most incels do not engage in violence,” some have been involved in “at least five lethal attacks in the United States and Canada.”

I’m not Catholic, but if the bureaucraps can get away with this, what other denominations will they try this on?

Weaponization Committee: FBI Targeted ‘Mainline’ Catholic Churches to Develop ‘Sources’ Against Parishioners

We’ve seen a lot of concerning things about the effort to weaponize the government to control the political agenda.

But perhaps one of the most concerning pieces of information dropped on Monday with word that the FBI was trying to develop “sources” within Christian and Catholic churches to “combat domestic terrorism,” in what looks like an effort to have people spying and reporting on their fellow parishioners.

The House Weaponization Committee just released a letter about internal documents showing this FBI effort. According to the letter, the FBI was targeting “mainline Catholic parishes,” looking into them for “source development,” according to Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH).

In addition, according to Jordan, the FBI expressed interest in “leverag[ing] existing sources and/or initiating [ing] Type 5 Assessments to develop new sources with the placement and access.” And, in another example, the agency cited a desire to sensitize religious congregations “to the warning signs of radicalization and enlist their assistance to serve as suspicious activity tripwires.”

“Based on the limited information produced by the FBI to the Committee, we now know that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis, and that the FBI proposed that its agents engage in outreach to Catholic parishes to develop sources among the clergy and church leadership to inform on Americans practicing their faith,” Jordan wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Monday.

 

Jordan also dropped a subpoena on the FBI for related documents that they have failed to turn over, despite requests.

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Biden Bans 53% of Americans From Buying Cars
The new poor will be anyone who can’t afford an electric car.

The New York Times reported that the Biden administration will abuse EPA regulations to eliminate most real car sales by 2030. The plan is to force 67% of car sales to be electric by 2032. Most Americans won’t be able to afford them, but they’ll have no other options.

Even the cheapest electric cars, which are still far more expensive than their real car counterparts and are just one battery problem away from turning into mostly unusable junk, are out of the price range of the majority of Americans who need an income of $80,000 to make an EV auto loan work. That’s fine in Washington D.C. where the median income of $83,567 is the highest in the nation, but will entirely price much of the country out of the new car market.

53% of Americans earn less than $75,000. Some of the 16% who earn from $50,000 to $75,000 may be able to make an electric vehicle purchase work if they squeeze, cut back on food and clothes for the kids, but the remaining 37% will be completely locked out. And, unable to own a car, they’ll have even bigger monthly payments or, with no transportation, be unable to work.

The new poor will be anyone who can’t afford an electric car. And that’s 53% of Americans.

This isn’t class warfare: it’s class genocide. The Biden administration is moving to reserve car ownership privileges for the Tesla class while eliminating working class ownership and the social mobility and the economic possibilities that come with it under the guise of environmentalism.

Steadily raising emissions standards has pushed the price of a new car toward $50,000. Obama’s emissions standards raised the cost by thousands of dollars, and California, as one of the largest markets in the country, further distorted costs for car buyers nationwide. Prices rose steadily and, when combined with runaway inflationary government spending, shot up wildly.

The average cost of a non-luxury car last year nearly hit $45,000. Since people only have so much money to spend, sales also dropped by 9% and millions fewer cars were sold. Even as America’s population has continued growing, its car sales have been falling.

Who is going to be shut out of Biden’s new banned car market?

The median income of 47 of the 52 states fall below the amount needed to buy an electric car.

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Applause.

Missouri officials refuse to work with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, saying all federal ‘so-called’ gun laws are unconstitutional

Missouri officials in one county have refused to work with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, claiming that the government agency is unconstitutional.

Six top elected officials in Camden County signed a letter to the ATF saying as much, according to the NPR affiliate KCUR 89.3.

“Under the Anti-Commandeering Doctrine, Camden County was the first county in Missouri, and possibly in the country, to pass an ordinance prohibiting any county employee from assisting your unconstitutional agency in violating the rights of our citizens,” Ike Skelton, the county’s presiding commissioner, said in the letter.

The population of the county is roughly 43,700, according to the latest Census figures.

The officials cited the state’s Second Amendment Preservation Act as grounds to refuse to cooperate, KCUR reported. Last month, a federal judge struck down the 2021 law, which prohibited local police from enforcing federal gun laws, calling it “invalid, null, void, and of no effect.”

Two of Skelton’s colleagues — Jeff Green, a Camden County attorney, and Tony Helms, the county sheriff — and Kendra Hicks, the county treasurer, also signed the letter, KCUR reported.

Skelton, Helms, and Hicks did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on Sunday.

Skelton told KCUR he and his fellow officials were in “lockstep with this thought process.”

“Any and all federal firearms laws, so-called laws, in my opinion, and many others’ opinion, are unconstitutional,” Skelton told KCUR.

The ATF was attempting to get zoning information to process applications for four individuals trying to open gun shops in the county, the outlet reported. John Ham, the public-information officer for the ATF’s Kansas City Field Division, told KCUR that the bureau is trying to help civilians open gun stores, not prevent them from doing so.

“We use that information to put people in business, not to take people out of business,” Ham told KCUR, adding that he had never seen a county refuse to provide such information, which is required to open new gun businesses.

Ham did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

In a comment to Insider, Erik Longnecker, the public-affairs deputy chief of the ATF, said: “ATF will continue to follow federal law when issuing licenses, regulating the firearms industry, and protecting our communities from violent gun crime.”

New Court Case Challenges Unconstitutional FFL Requirement to Sell Guns
Basing arguments on the recent Bruen court decision, a new court case in Pennsylvania challenges the entire concept of requiring an FFL to sell firearms.

A court case out of Pennsylvania is calling into question whether the law requiring those in the business of selling firearms to have a federal firearms license (FFL) is constitutional, considering the new criteria set down by the U.S. Supreme Court in last year’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen case.

And despite the fact that being in the business of selling firearms has required an FFL for as long as most of us can remember, any court faithfully applying the two-prong standard as prescribed in Bruen just might not see this one the government’s way.

The case revolves around Amish dairy farmer Reuben King from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who has been charged with dealing in firearms without a license. According to court papers, agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) purchased five firearms from King at his farm between October 2019 and March 2020. After being sent a letter informing him that he couldn’t be selling firearms without a license, King sold four firearms to undercover state troopers in late 2021 and 2022. ATF later arrested King and confiscated 615 firearms.

Rather than arguing that King didn’t sell the firearms, King’s attorney, Joshua Prince, is instead arguing that King doesn’t need an FFL to sell guns because the FFL requirement itself is unconstitutional.

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Where’s The Manifesto?

My home city of Nashville has been in a virtual non-stop uproar since the tragic murders of six people, three of them 9-year-old children, at The Covenant School on March 27.

This has been ineffably sad for the family and friends of the victims, who are victims themselves, their grief often overwhelmed in a city, indeed a country, now so politicized that our common humanity seems some distant memory from a long ago Jimmy Stewart movie one sees only at Christmas.

Lost too in all this is any sense of what really happened that Monday or why it happened.

Distraction reigns. The last few days have been arguably the mother of all distractions when, as reported here at The Epoch Times and virtually everywhere, riots or protests (depending on how you see them) broke out in front and within the Tennessee State Assembly.

The rioters/protestors were largely high school students, bent on gun control, instigated, at least in part, by three members of the assembly, two of whom have now been expelled for their behavior.

Unfortunately for the local GOP and Republicans everywhere, the two expelled, deservedly or not, happened to be black, naturally providing a propaganda opportunity for our resident White House “civil rights activist” and ally of former Sen. Robert Byrd (D-N.C.) who once informed us “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

Meanwhile, the tragic murders are being used inevitably as a battering ram for gun control that has never been shown to work and for red flag laws that can work, but not in the way intended.

Which brings me to the missing “manifesto.”

In the immediate aftermath of the murders the police informed us the obviously emotionally disturbed shooter was transgendered, something that was ratified by the video of the killings at the Christian school showing the female-by-birth Audrey Hale dressed entirely like a macho terrorist.

Further, they told us she had left behind documents and a manifesto, explaining her actions.

Then, as if by magic, we heard no more of the word transgendered in any of its forms, from the media or anywhere, nor, almost simultaneously, anything of the manifesto, except that it had been handed to the FBI for review.

Regarding the media, it isn’t just CBS, widely known to have decreed the word “transgender” should be omitted in coverage of the crime but almost all of the MSM. NPR, recently labeled “state-affiliated” on Twitter, does not mention the word in its recent update on the crime, nor does it apply a pronoun of any sort—male, female, or “they”—when referring to the shooter. This must be a new form of asexual reporting.

As for the FBI, no word so far on when they will release the manifesto, in original or redacted form.

Sound familiar?

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No, Congress has not banned bump stocks, but they have banned machineguns made after May 1986 for possession by us mere mortals, and one of the federal law’s definitions of a MG is :“any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun.”
What the bureaucraps at ATF did was hang their regulatory hat on that, but to do so, they inventively redefined what ‘by a single function of the trigger‘ means.
That’s part of what this case is all about; How much power do bureaucraps have to regulate and how must the court defer to that power.

With Only Minutes To Spare Biden Administration Appeals Bump Stock Case to SCOTUS

AUSTIN, TX – On Thursday, April 6th, 2023 at 10:30 pm, With only minutes to spare, the DOJ filed Petition for A Writ of Certiorari.

The DOJ is also asking for a stay against the Circuit Court’s ruling until the United States Supreme Court can decide whether to grant certiorari. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals en banc ruled 13-3 in favor of Cargill. The court remanded the case back to the District Court to rule in favor of Cargill and issue appropriate relief on 01-06-2023.

“By ruling 13-3 in our favor, the Fifth Circuit reinforced the principle that the laws are to be written by Congress, not federal administrators. And if the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, we are confident that it will uphold the Fifth Circuit’s decision,” says Michael Cargill.

Under our constitutional system, Congress makes the laws, not the Department of Justice or the ATF.

Congress has banned “machine guns” but it has not banned bump stocks. Agencies like DOJ and ATF can’t just assume the power to rewrite the law, or our constitutional system and separation of powers with checks and balances will disappear.

For years, the ATF said that bump stocks were not machine guns under the law. Now it is saying the opposite, which means that hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Americans who relied on the ATF’s approval of bump stocks are suddenly felons. That’s not how the law in America should work.

Whether to ban bump stocks is a question—and a responsibility—that lies with Congress, not agencies like DOJ and the ATF. If agencies take over that decision, our government is no longer accountable to the people.

Neither the President nor the Department of Justice can act by executive fiat to change the law. Congress—and only Congress—can convert lawful activity into unlawful activity. But Congress has not banned bump stocks, so the ATF’s rule violates the Constitution.

Garland, et al. v. Cargill Writ of Certiorari – Biden Administration Appeals Bump Stock Case to SCOTUS

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History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. ― George Orwell, 1984

DOJ Finally Finds a Church Attack It Doesn’t Like

After years of virtually ignoring attacks on churches, synagogues, and pro-life pregnancy centers, the DOJ has finally found a case worth prosecuting—a Molotov cocktail attack on a so-called “church” preparing to host a drag queen story hour.

From the criminal complaint:

On Saturday, March 25, 2023, the Community Church of Chesterland (“CCC”), located at 11984 Caves Road, Chesterland, Ohio, reported to Chester Township Police that the church had been damaged by what appeared to be Molotov cocktails during the night.

During the same time, a sign on CCC’s property was damaged. CCC believes the acts were perpetrated in response to the church’s planned hosting of two drag show events on April 1, 2023.

Open source searches revealed that individuals plan to be present and armed en masse at the events to protest. Representatives of CCC reported that they received hate mail and messages containing non-specific threats of protest and violence against the drag events.

Before we continue, let me make a couple of things abundantly clear. First, I don’t condone violence from the left or right. At all. The attack on CCC was terrorism and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Protest peacefully all you want, but once you cross the line into violence, you deserve what you get and I have no sympathy for you.

Second, the CCC, affiliated with the United Church of Christ, is not a Christian church in any meaningful sense of the word. From a Q&A section of their website:

Are your services a Christian service?

While our church is aligned with the United Church of Christ denomination, we welcome people of all beliefs and traditions. Our worship services include traditions and practices you might not find in other churches, including dance, poetry, Broadway songs, and more. Christian hymns and spirituals are sung alongside blues, country, global, and pop music.

The website is littered with rainbow flags, language about inclusive worship and its commitment to social justice, and vague references to spirituality. It eschews the tenets of biblical Christianity in favor of “personal expression” and feelings.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, here’s some background on the story:

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CDC team got sick while investigating health risks from Ohio toxic train derailment.

A team of seven US government investigators fell ill while studying the health impacts of the February derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals through East Palestine, Ohio, according to the CDC.

The group, including members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, were going house-to-house surveying town residents near contaminated areas when they began feeling symptoms including sore throats, headaches, coughing and nausea. The group spent a day working from their hotel, before their symptoms quickly resolved, the agency told CNN.

“Symptoms resolved for most team members later the same afternoon, and everyone resumed work on survey data collection within 24 hours. Impacted team members have not reported ongoing health effects,” a CDC spokesperson told the network.

The public health agency did not initially disclose the team getting sick to the public.

Two contractors working on the derailment for the EPA also reported health symptoms after working in an area with strong odors, CNN reported. The agency said that none of the other more than 100 EPA employees on the scene reported any issues.

More than half of the people in a state survey reported headaches, anxiety, couching, fatigue, and irritated skin after the derailment, according to research released Friday from the Ohio Department of Health.

Officials have said the water and air in East Palestine is safe to consume, despite rampant conspiracies online that following the crash and subsequent decision to conduct a controlled burn of some of the chemicals that were spilled.

On Friday, governor Mike DeWine’s office confirmed 1,900 feet of railroad track at the crash site will be removed to allow for the excavation and removal of contaminated soil, and said testing at 157 private wells showed no contaminated water.

As The Independent reported, public health experts say long-term testing is needed in East Palestine to monitor the potential health effects of exposure to the toxic materials transported by the train that derailed.

“Byproducts from the burn could be very toxic and we don’t know yet know what they are,” Dr Erin Haynes, professor of preventive medicine and environmental health at the University of Kentucky told The Independent. “They have probably settled onto the soil. They’re in the homes on surfaces and they could be in the waterways in the sediments…We do not know the long-term consequences of that exposure.”

Biden, ATF gaslighting the public about ‘rogue’ gun dealers
Biden trying to change public perception of gun dealers he’s forcing out of business.

by Lee Williams

Joe Biden, his weaponized ATF and their sycophants in the legacy media launched an elaborate campaign this week to change the public’s perception of the thousands of federally licensed gun dealers in the country, whom Biden desperately wants to put out of business.

It is classic gaslighting, but it should not come as any surprise. Biden declared war on guns and gun dealers just months after taking office, and he foreshadowed his latest move earlier this month.

In an Executive Order issued March 14, Joe Biden promised to “provide the public and policymakers with more information regarding federally licensed firearms dealers who are violating the law.”

The problem for Biden is that gun dealers aren’t violating the law. They’re making minor clerical errors, but that isn’t stopping the most anti-gun president in modern history from trying to create a new narrative.

“Gun dealers violating federal law put us all at risk by increasing the likelihood that firearms will fall into dangerous hands,” Biden’s executive order states. “The President is directing the Attorney General to publicly release, to the fullest extent permissible by law, ATF records from the inspection of firearms dealers cited for violation of federal firearm laws.”

As if on cue, the ATF just released the names of nearly 100 gun shops it has put out of business by revoking their Federal Firearms Licenses, or FFLs, on a website page titled: Enhanced Regulatory Enforcement Policy.

ATF strongly implies that the revocations resulted from five serious violations of the Gun Control Act (GCA), specifically:

  • Refusal to allow an IOI to conduct an inspection
  • Transferring a firearm to a prohibited person
  • Failing to conduct a required background check
  • Falsifying records
  • Failing to respond to a trace request

However, the ATF points out that the actual reason for the revocations may include but are “not limited to, the above list.” That is a massive understatement, since the real reasons for the majority of recent FFL revocations are far less serious. They are, in fact, minor clerical errors, which the ATF now considers willful violations of its self-written rules rather than simple mistakes, because of its zero-tolerance policy that Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland announced in June 2021.

In other words, Biden and the ATF strongly imply that the scores of gun dealers whose shops they’ve shuttered transferred firearms to prohibited persons or failed to run background checks or barred an ATF inspector from entering their shop. But that is certainly not the case.

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Rick Scott Wants to Take $80B From IRS to Fund Armed Officers in Schools After Nashville Shooting

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., is urging Congress to reroute the billions of dollars earmarked for the Internal Revenue Service in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act into money to hire armed officers for academic campuses across the country, in the wake of a mass shooting at a Nashville elementary school earlier this week.

“The tragedy in Nashville made clear that more must be done to keep our schools safe,” Scott said Thursday. “Washington spends money on all sorts of wasteful ideas and the massive expansion of the IRS is a prime example of that.”

He was referencing the $80 billion allocated toward the IRS that will be used to hire tens of thousands of employees over a 10-year period.

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Thank God this hack never made it to a set on the Supreme Court. After he’s done being a bureaucrap, it’s likely he’ll slide off into some partnership deal at a D.C. or NYC law firm and disappear off the scene.

Attorney General Garland: Too early to call Nashville shooting a hate crime

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Tuesday that it’s too early for the Justice Department to say whether the shooting at a Christian school in Nashville should be considered a hate crime.

Mr. Garland said the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are looking at the incident in cooperation with local authorities.

“We are certainly working full-time with them to try to determine what the motive is, and motive determines whether it’s a hate crime,” the attorney general said in testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

His answers came in response to Sen. John Kennedy, Louisiana Republican, who wanted to know if the Justice Department would open a hate crimes investigation even though the shooting suspect is dead.

Local authorities say Audrey Hale killed three adults and three children at The Covenant School, which is associated with the Presbyterian Church.

Authorities said the 28-year-old Hale was a former student and seemed to have targeted the school, though the children and adults killed were chosen randomly. Nashville’s police chief said the shooter was transgender.

Police shot and killed Hale roughly 14 minutes after the first 911 call about the incident.

The IRS Makes a Strange House Call on Matt Taibbi

An agent shows up at the home of the Twitter files journalist who testified before Congress.

Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, talks to witness Matt Taibbi, left, at the conclusion of a House Judiciary on March 9.
PHOTO: MANUEL BALCE CENETA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Democrats are denouncing the House GOP investigation into the weaponization of government, but maybe that’s because Republicans are getting somewhere. That includes new evidence that the Internal Revenue Service may be targeting a journalist who testified before the weaponization committee.House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter Monday to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seeking an explanation for why journalist Matt Taibbi received an unannounced home visit from an IRS agent. We’ve seen the letter, and both the circumstances and timing of the IRS focus on this journalist raise serious questions.

Mr. Taibbi has provoked the ire of Democrats and other journalists for his role in researching Twitter records and then releasing internal communications from the social-media giant that expose its censorship and its contacts with government officials. This effort has already inspired government bullying, with Chair Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission targeting new Twitter owner Elon Musk and demanding the company “identify all journalists” granted access to the Twitter files.
Now Mr. Taibbi has told Mr. Jordan’s committee that an IRS agent showed up at his personal residence in New Jersey on March 9. That happens to be the same day Mr. Taibbi testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government about what he learned about Twitter. The taxman left a note instructing Mr. Taibbi to call the IRS four days later. Mr. Taibbi was told in a call with the agent that both his 2018 and 2021 tax returns had been rejected owing to concerns over identity theft.
Mr. Taibbi has provided the committee with documentation showing his 2018 return had been electronically accepted, and he says the IRS never notified him or his accountants of a problem after he filed that 2018 return more than four-and-a-half years ago.
He says the IRS initially rejected his 2021 return, which he later refiled, and it was rejected again—even though Mr. Taibbi says his accountants refiled it with an IRS-provided pin number. Mr. Taibbi notes that in neither case was the issue “monetary,” and that the IRS owes him a “considerable” sum.
The bigger question is when did the IRS start to dispatch agents for surprise house calls? Typically when the IRS challenges some part of a tax return, it sends a dunning letter. Or it might seek more information from the taxpayer or tax preparer. If the IRS wants to audit a return, it schedules a meeting at the agent’s office. It doesn’t drop by unannounced.
The curious timing of this visit, on the heels of the FTC demand that Twitter turn over names of journalists, raises questions about potential intimidation, and Mr. Jordan is right to want to see documents and communications relating to the Taibbi visit.
The fear of many Americans is that, flush with its new $80 billion in funding from Congress, the IRS will unleash its fearsome power against political opponents. Mr. Taibbi deserves to know why the agency decided to pursue him with a very strange house call.

An ignoramus of a diversity hire decides to opt out. I’d like to think the other ones would too, but as they’d be getting a lifetime appointment to the federal bench – as reliable political rubber stamps – you know they’ll be told not to.

FAA Nominee Phil Washington Withdraws His Nomination

Phil Washington, Joe Biden’s embattled nominee to head the Federal Aviation Administration, has withdrawn his nomination, sources told Reuters Saturday evening.

One of the sources, a White House official, told Reuters that “an onslaught of unfounded Republican attacks on Mr Washington’s service and experience irresponsibly delayed this process, threatened unnecessary procedural hurdles on the Senate floor, and ultimately have led him to withdraw his nomination today.”

Reuters’ piece went on to describe issues with Washington, a veteran, not having a waiver “from rules requiring civilian leadership to head the FAA” and questions about Washington’s competency and experience as obstacles, as well as a threat by Republicans to “use parliamentary tactics to object to Washington’s lack of a waiver.”

They didn’t refer to Washington’s miserable performance when questioned by Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) in which he went 0-for-7 on aviation policy, though.