Category: Bureaucraps

As Hurricane Bears Down on Florida, Biden Shows Just How Petty He Can Be

Joe Biden is certainly a petty little man.

Florida is under the gun with Hurricane Ian bearing down. If there was ever a time to put aside politics and pettiness it would be now when everyone should be pulling together to help out in a critical situation that could put the lives of people in Florida in danger.

But as the media inquired about what Biden and the White House were doing in regard to the hurricane, one thing stood out — that Biden had found time to call three of the mayors in the affected areas, yet he hadn’t personally called Gov. Ron DeSantis when you would normally talk with the governor and ask what he needed.

FEMA Director Deanne Criswell indicated her team had been in contact with the governor’s team but that Biden had not called DeSantis personally.

Reporters tried to plumb the question as to why since that’s such normal procedure, but Criswell wasn’t for offering any explanation.

Breitbart correspondent noted this was not normal, even for Biden, that in the past Biden has always spoken personally to the governors during hurricanes and natural disasters.

 

Indeed, during Biden’s remarks this afternoon speaking about the hurricane, he said that he spoke with the mayors of St. Petersburg, Tampa, and Clearwater, “I told each one of them, whatever they need contact me directly.” Again, seeming to go right around DeSantis.

So how juvenile is that? And these are the “adults back in charge”? They’re not even pretending to have a good excuse for Biden avoiding talking to him. If anything, DeSantis should not want to talk to Biden, given how Biden has demonized Republicans. But DeSantis is not a child and puts his state first.

Whether Joe Biden likes it or not, he can’t avoid that DeSantis would wipe the floor with him if they were opponents in 2024. Biden knows that and it looks like it’s getting to him. When you care more about your own personal ego than Americans and the job that you’re supposed to be doing, that’s shameful.

Why Fauci Became a Bobblehead. 

In my charming little village in Westchester County, there is a charming little gift shop. And in the shop’s charming little window stands a display of bobblehead dolls. Unlike, say, an Elvis Presley doll, or figurines depicting the cast of Friends, these dolls aren’t meant to be seen in the spirit of knowing irony. They are more like religious icons: ritual objects of liberal veneration.

The dolls include the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who has been posthumously reinvented as an avatar of legalistic Grrl Power. Next to her wobbles the head of Vice President Kamala Harris, a figure whose elevation to secular sainthood appears a bit premature. Above those stands Dr. Anthony Fauci, the uncontested exemplar of all that is true and noble in today’s liberal pantheon. (Did I mention it is a very liberal town? Did I need to?) I imagine the shop’s customers bringing home their Fauci bobbleheads and placing them in positions of honor in their otherwise tchotchke-free homes. Henceforth, all who enter those households will be expected to stop and genuflect before Good Saint Anthony.

None of this is healthy. A secular domestic shrine is no place for a scientist. For that matter, it’s no place for a Supreme Court justice. (About Vice President Harris, the less said, the better.) But such is the state of our national ideological logjam. On the left, Fauci has become an object of quasi-religious devotion. On the right, he is reviled as the all-powerful enabler of a quasi-totalitarian state. (“Fauci Lied, People Died,” reads one of the many anti-Fauci T-shirts available online.)

Both sides are wrong. Anthony Fauci is not some uniquely brilliant scientist whose edicts must be obeyed without question. Nor is he the evil genius who single-handedly engineered the unprecedented restrictions on our freedoms that we’ve suffered during the Covid-19 pandemic. Does Fauci embody arrogance and overreach? Absolutely. But the problem is not the man; it’s built into the structure of our public health system. Fauci could be replaced tomorrow, and those problems would remain. In fact, given Fauci’s plan to retire by the end of this year, I’ve no doubt that the next occupant of his chair will eventually develop the same excesses and failings.

Fauci is the product of a public health establishment that has placed far too much power in the hands of a single person. The agency Fauci leads, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, remains fairly obscure to most Americans. Unlike the acronyms for the Food and Drug Administration or the Centers for Disease Control, the letters “NIAID” don’t exactly roll off the tongue. But Fauci’s post at NIAID is quite unusual among high-level government officialdom. NIAID’s director operates with nearly total independence from political supervision or oversight.

It wasn’t always this way. Fauci’s name first became known to the public during the grim early years of AIDS. The then-young doctor was vilified (often unfairly) by AIDS activists who said he wasn’t doing enough to fight the mysterious scourge. In reality, at that time Fauci and NIAID had less power to steer medical research and very limited ability to influence public behavior. But Fauci did reveal a predilection that would come to full flower during the Covid crisis: the willingness to peddle white lies he believed would nudge the public toward proper behavior. As the Manhattan Institute’s John Tierney has noted, Fauci promoted the idea that AIDS could be spread through “routine close contact.” That was intended to send the message that everyone was at risk and a “heterosexual breakout” could occur any day. It wasn’t true. What’s more, all the evidence there was at the time made clear that it wasn’t true. The feared breakout never happened. But boosting AIDS paranoia helped boost funding. And a panicked public, Fauci must have reasoned, would be a more pliable public.

Even so, Fauci and his agency didn’t attain their full power until after 9/11. In the months after the Twin Towers fell, a series of still-mysterious anthrax attacks killed five Americans. Bush asked his vice president, Dick Cheney, to come up with a response. Cheney decided to put NIAID in charge of defending the U.S. from both bio-attacks and pandemics of natural origin. “With the stroke of Cheney’s pen, all United States biodefence efforts, classified or unclassified, were placed under the aegis of Anthony Fauci,” writes Ashley Rindsberg at Unherd. But, unlike, say, the director of the National Institutes of Health (Fauci’s nominal boss), the head of NIAID is not a political appointee. He can be fired only through a long, byzantine process. This situation is typical for mid-level bureaucrats, but it is highly unusual for the leader of such a powerful agency. (The head of the CDC—another agency whose powers have greatly expanded—also falls into this curious category.) Under Cheney’s plan, “Fauci now had a virtual carte blanche to not merely approve but design and run the kind of research projects he sought,” Rindsberg writes, “and could do so with no oversight structure above him.”

Looking back to those post-9/11 days, we can see why the Bush administration thought this was a good idea. In fact, any time the nation faces a grave threat, people tend to want a wise, incorruptible czar in charge—someone empowered to act decisively while floating above petty political concerns. But it is never a good idea to put government officials beyond the reach of political oversight, and Fauci’s career shows why. Over time, such officials accumulate too much power and become too accustomed to having the last word. Those who work in the political sphere need to grapple with trade-offs, acknowledge criticisms, and hammer out compromises. But an all-powerful czar can ignore skeptics and focus exclusively on the crisis at hand.

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Lawrence Solomon: Finally it’s safe for the whistleblowers of corrupted climate science to speak out
The greatest scientific fraud of the century will be laid bare, along with its corrupt enablers in government, academia, industry and the media

Whistleblowers at the U.S. government’s official keeper of the global warming stats, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), claim their agency doctored temperature data to hide the fact that global temperatures plateaued almost 20 years ago.
Can the whistleblowers be believed in this claim, originally made in 2015? And in the further claim that NOAA then rushed this doctored data into print in time for the UN’s Paris global warming summit of world leaders, to dupe any doubters that the planet was in fact overheated?

Of course the whistleblowers can be believed, and not just because NOAA repeatedly stonewalled inquiries, even failing to comply with a congressional subpoena. No one paying attention can have any doubt that the governmental global warming enterprise has been a fraud. It’s been lies from the start, starting with the very mandate of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which astonishingly ruled out factors like the sun as being worthy of investigation.

Among those astonished was the Danish delegation to the IPCC. It discovered at one of the IPCC’s early meetings a quarter-century ago that its scientists could not present their study, newly published in the prestigious journal Science, showing a remarkable correlation between global warming and solar activity. To their further astonishment, to squelch dissent the IPCC cabal set out to destroy the reputation of its chief author, falsely accusing him of fabricating data.

Whistleblowers now know they will no longer be silenced.

Dissenters from the climate change orthodoxy soon learned that, if they refused to recant, they stood to lose their jobs, their funding, and their reputations. They also learned the corollary: to get hired, to get funded, to get promoted, they needed to produce the science the authorities wanted. Governments annually spent billions of dollars on climate change research, virtually all of it commissioned to prove that the science was settled — that man-made climate change represented an existential threat to the planet.

None of the billions spent on research amounted to anything — none of the models proved reliable, none of the predictions were borne out, none of the expected effects materialized. The Arctic ice cap hasn’t disappeared, polar bear populations haven’t declined, hurricanes haven’t become more common, malaria hasn’t spread, temperatures haven’t continued to climb. What did materialize was fraud after fraud.

Climategate — the 2009 revelations of hacked emails showing scientists labouring to manipulate data and cover their tracks — was followed by Climategate 2.0 (a second damning batch of hacked emails), by Amazongate (the revelation that the IPCC’s claim of coming devastation in the Amazon was based on non-peer-reviewed research by WWF eco-activists), Glaciergate (here the IPCC relied on speculation in a popular magazine) and other scandals.

The mega-fraud was the assertion that the science was settled, which the IPCC trumpeted with claims that 2,500 scientists from around the world endorsed its findings. Except those 2,500 — a number that was soon inflated to 3,000 and then 4,000 — didn’t endorse anything. They merely reviewed some of the studies heaved into the IPCC’s maw, many of them giving the research the thumbs down.

Likewise, a much heralded claim that 97 per cent of scientists believed the planet was overheating came from a 2008 master’s thesis by a student at the University of Illinois who obtained her results by conducting a survey of 10,257 earth scientists, then discarding the views of all but 77 of them. Of those 77 scientists, 75 thought humans contributed to climate change.  The ratio 75/77 produced the 97-per-cent figure that global warming activists then touted.

In fact, major surveys show that scientists in the tens of thousands do not believe that global warming represents a threat. With the departure of president Obama and his administration, which had blocked independent investigations from being pursued, whistleblowers in greater numbers will now dare to come forward, knowing they will no longer be silenced.

One of them is Dr. John Bates, a recently retired principal scientist at NOAA, who described how his agency manipulated data to manufacture a non-existent increase in global temperatures.  In a press release last week, U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith thanked “Dr. John Bates for courageously stepping forward to tell the truth about NOAA’s senior officials playing fast and loose with the data in order to meet a politically predetermined conclusion.” This week a second press release from the same committee indicated that NOAA will be brought to account.

The blizzard of lies from NOAA and other corrupted agencies will soon be outed in excruciating detail. The greatest scientific fraud of the century will thus be laid bare, along with its craven and corrupt enablers in government, academia, industry and the media.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based environmental group.

San Francisco’s Newly Passed Surveillance Plan Allows Police to Access Private Cameras Without Warrant

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved on Tuesday a plan that would allow police to access private security cameras without a warrant.

The board voted 7-4 to approve Democratic Mayor London Breed’s plan which allows police to access up to 24 hours of live outdoor video footage from private surveillance cameras without a warrant as long as the camera owner gives police permission, according to SF Gate. To access video footage without a warrant, police must be either responding to a life-threatening emergency, conducting a criminal investigation with written approval from a captain or higher-ranking official, or deciding how to deploy officers to a large public event, according to the report.

Breed said the legislation would allow police “to respond to the challenges presented by the organized criminal activity, homicides [and] gun violence,” according to The Associated Press. Breed introduced the proposal in 2021 to combat rampant theft, rioting and looting.

Board President Shamann Walton voted against the legislation, saying it’s a violation of civil liberties, according to AP.

“I know the thought process is, ‘Just trust us, just trust the police department.’ But the reality is people have been violating civil liberties since my ancestors were brought here from an entirely, completely different continent,” he reportedly said.

The ACLU of Northern California also voiced their opposition to the policy in February, with staff attorney Matt Cagle saying the policy would “give unchecked power to the police, and make San Francisco less safe.”

 Collapse Of Energy, Food, Transportation Systems Prompt Calls for Government Nationalization of Industries – Echoes 1930s Push for Great Reset Style Reforms.

By:  – Climate Depot September 21, 2022 11:01 AM

Climate Depot Special Report

The continuing fallout from COVID lockdown policies — from the economic collapse to the supply chain issues, to energy, transportation, and food shortages — is reigniting calls and prompting the nationalization of industries in Europe, the U.S, Canada, and Australia.

The modus operandi of the Great Reset (AKA Build Back Better) is to intentionally collapse the current system with policies designed to create a crisis, havoc, and shortages. And the world has descended into chaos since the COVID lockdowns of March of 2020.

See: Yahoo Finance: ‘Firewood is the new gold’ – prices & theft jump in Europe as Russia’s gas cutoff boosts wood demand ahead of winter – 1000% increase in EU energy prices  &

NYT: ‘Crippling’ energy bills force Europe’s factories to go dark

The Great Food Reset has arrived: Expect ‘real’ food shortages, Biden declares

WHY IT IS FINALLY TIME TO NATIONALIZE AMERICA’S FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY TO END OUR SPIRALING ENERGY WAR

California car ban: ‘This is the planned rationing of vehicles’ – ‘They have energy shortages, food shortages, now they want vehicle shortages’ – Calif. borrows Cuban & East German policies

Once the inevitable societal chaos ensues, a huge coordinated push to promote nationalization or government takeover of the impacted industries ensues. It is always claimed that the “free market” failed, and now only government can come in and clean up the mess. The advocates of nationalization usually bill it as a “temporary” nationalization of the industries, much like “15 days to slow the spread” or “2 weeks to flatten the curve” were billed as temporary measures. See: Salon mag in 2022 noted “the long American history of taking over industries during a time of national crisis” and claimed that “temporary nationalization helped get America through the crisis” of World War II. 

Stuart Chase, a key advisor to former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, envisioned an early version of the Great Reset in the 1930s and 1940s, complete with calls for government “control of energy sources—hydroelectric power, coal, petroleum, natural gas.; The control of transportation—railway, highway, airway, waterway; and the control of agricultural production.”

Chase loved the idea of managing all aspects of society. He asked at the end of his 1932 book, A New Deal, “Why should the Soviets have all the fun remaking the world?” Chase’s lust for Soviet ideology could be updated to 2022 by replacing the “Soviets” for “China”.

Here is Chase’s 2022 proposed updated motto:

“Why should China have all the fun remaking the world?”

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Standard practice these days.
If a person is considered too dangerous to possess a weapon, he’s too dangerous to be left out on the street.

DOJ requests appeal after judge rules felony indictment can’t prevent gun purchases

The Justice Department plans to appeal a Texas judge’s ruling that a federal law blocking people under felony indictment from purchasing firearms is unconstitutional in light of the Supreme Court’s latest gun-related ruling.

U.S. District Judge David Counts found that the law’s prohibitions did not correlate with the Supreme Court’s June decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, in which the justices voted 6-3 (along conservative-liberal ideological lines) that law-abiding citizens have a right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense purposes.

“The Second Amendment is not a ‘second class right,'” Counts wrote. “After Bruen, the Government must prove that laws regulating conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text align with this Nation’s historical tradition. The Government does not meet that burden.”

Counts, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, was tasked with weighing the case of Jose Gomez Quiroz, who was indicted on felony burglary charges related to a June 2020 incident. He allegedly jumped bail, attempted to purchase an automatic gun, and lied on his Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives transaction form but was still able to purchase the gun.

Quiroz was later convicted of making a false statement during the purchase of the weapon and illegal receipt of a gun by a person under indictment. He sought to dismiss the verdict because “of the United States Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Bruen,” according to court filings from Sept. 19.

Although Quiroz’s burglary charge is still pending, Counts sided with his position that the high court established a new “standard” in how it views Second Amendment rights.

“No longer can courts balance away a constitutional right,” Counts wrote.

Counts also voiced his doubt that a felony indictment should prevent someone from owning a firearm.

“The nature of grand jury proceedings is one such area that casts a shadow of constitutional doubt on” someone making a false statement on a firearm form, Counts wrote. “Some feel that a grand jury could indict a burrito if asked to do so.”

In a subsequent filing, the DOJ requested an appeal of Counts’s ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

This Should Terrify Every American: DOJ Harasses Citizens for Exercising Their First Amendment Rights

The Justice Department has hit the Eagle Forum of Alabama with a voluminous subpoena that violates the organization’s First Amendment rights to speak freely, engage in the political process, and talk to their elected representatives. It’s an intimidation tactic, pure and simple, and shows just how partisan the department has become. This out-of-control behavior should scare every citizen and volunteer organization, no matter where they stand on the political or social spectrum.

Eagle Forum is a very small non-profit in Alabama. It only has one full-time employee and a second, part-time employee. Virtually all of its work on issues of interest to its members is done by volunteers.  It is the quintessential, uniquely American grassroots membership organization that French historian Alexis de Tocqueville lauded in Democracy in America.

As the Eagle Forum’s motion to quash the government subpoena says, one of the issues its members have been concerned over is “gender-altering medical treatment to minors” and the “permanent and adverse effects of such medical procedures on those minors.” Those serious, lifelong effects deeply concern many physicians and parents.

Members of the Eagle Forum made their worries known by doing things every American has an absolute right to do: they spoke out, made speeches, organized meetings, talked to other residents and organizations in the state, and contacted their elected state representatives. In other words, they exercised their constitutional rights to engage in “freedom of speech,” to “peaceably assemble,” and “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” They also exercised their right to associate, recognized by the Supreme Court as implicit under the Fourteenth Amendment.

None of these activities should trigger stalking by Justice Department lawyers. So how has this come about?

Earlier this year, the Alabama legislature passed the Alabama Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which became effective on May 8. It bans puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery to alter the biological sex of a minor. A huge number of left-wing advocacy organizations immediately sued the state, and the U.S. Justice Department intervened in the lawsuit, echoing their claims that the new Alabama law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Related: Liberal Intolerance of First Amendment Freedoms on Full Display in Biden’s ‘Pride’ Month

The Eagle Forum is not a party to the lawsuit. Yet the Justice Department has served what is referred to as a third-party subpoena on the Eagle Forum. This subpoena outrageously demands that the Eagle Forum and its members turn over all:

  • information and communications it has or engaged in over the law and any predecessor bills;
  • materials that were considered by the Forum connected to the legislation or any draft or model bills;
  • documents concerning the Forum’s “legislative or policy goals, initiatives, and/or strategies relating to medical care or treatment of transgender minors, or minors with gender dysphoria”;
  • communications with—and testimony, letters, reports, etc., sent to—state legislators or their staff; and any other government agencies and officials in Alabama over the legislation;
  • communications with any other nongovernmental organizations over the legislation;
  • internal minutes and records of meetings, polling and public opinion data, video presentations and speeches, newsletters and emails, and social media postings related to the legislation.

In other words, the Justice Department wants to turn the Eagle Forum inside out, forcing it to turn over its records on everything it does. This would let government lawyers paw through and scrutinize everything, including privileged communications and even personal discussions and communications with other private citizens and nonprofit organizations.

And there isn’t a single, justifiable reason for the department to do this. The Eagle Forum is not a party in the lawsuit. It is not a government agency. It is not the legislature. It has no power to vote to enact this (or any) legislation or sign it into law.

Keep in mind that the lawsuit is making a constitutional claim. The plaintiffs, including the Justice Department, are arguing that the statute as written violates the U.S. Constitution. So, what do the Eagle Forum’s polling data or social media posts have to do with that constitutional question? What do its internal records, its “policy goals, initiatives, and/or strategies,” or the communications of its members with state legislators have to do with that issue?

The answer is: absolutely nothing. None of the documents or information sought by the Justice Department has any relevance to whether the text of a state law violates the Fourteenth Amendment.

This subpoena, issued by Jason R. Cheeks, an attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Alabama, has but one intent: to harass and intimidate a conservative organization for daring to engage in the democratic process by working on an issue that inflames the Left.

The right to associate freely with other citizens who share your interests was recognized by the Supreme Court in 1959 in NAACP v. Alabama. Ironically enough, in that case, the Alabama state government was harassing the NAACP with similar demands for information due to its work on civil rights issues and legislation.

In an affidavit filed with the court in the current case, Rebecca Gerritson, the executive director of the Eagle Forum of Alabama, correctly warns:

If this subpoena is enforced, legitimate, law-abiding organizations like ours will be subject to scrutiny for engaging in constitutionally protected activities.  Further correspondence by EFA, including emails, notes, presentations, speeches, interviews, etc. could be weaponized by government officials who hold (or are being required to assert) opposite political views.  In addition, enforcement of the federal government’s subpoena would set a precedent that would stifle other citizens who want to exercise their constitutional right to make their views known to their elected officials on public policy matters.

This is a dangerous action by the Justice Department. It’s something that all Americans who value their constitutional rights should oppose.

Whistleblower Alleges FBI Schemed to Distort January 6 Cases Into Nationwide ‘Domestic Violent Extremism’ Epidemic

A whistleblower has accused the FBI’s Washington Field Office of using cases related to the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot to “overstate” the threat of “domestic violent extremism” in America, according to Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

The whistleblower alleged the FBI office did not follow standard investigative practices for the January 6 cases when it moved the cases to various local Field Offices around the country based on where the case subjects were from, Jordan revealed in a letter addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Monday.

January 6 cases “should all be officially led by the WFO [Washington Field Office] and categorized as WFO cases,” according to the letter, but instead, a “task force” dispatched instructions to open January 6 investigations to local field offices nationwide.

Those local offices received the cases, making it look as if they were conducting the investigations on the cases, when, in reality, the Washington Field Office continued to conduct the bulk of the work, according to the letter.

The whistleblower told Jordan:

The manipulative casefile practice creates false and misleading crime statistics. Instead of hundreds of investigations stemming from a single, black swan incident at the Capitol, FBI and DOJ officials point to significant increases in domestic violent extremism and terrorism around the United States.

Jordan noted in the letter, “Such an artificial case categorization scheme allows FBI leadership to misleadingly point to ‘significant’ increases in DVE threats nationwide,” which supports a narrative being perpetuated by the Biden administration.

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Well, he’s a anti-gun (for the people) political hack, so nothing surprising here.

AG Garland ignores the importance of arms when congratulating newest citizens

The readers of Bearing Arms are no stranger to the fact that our Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as many of the three lettered agencies that fall under the supervision thereof, has become a machine to crush political opposition and push a radical progressive agenda. Just by trending what the DOJ prosecutes versus what they don’t, or what areas they focus on in their speeches and summits, people can figure out the DOJ under the Biden-Harris administration plays favorites on who/what gets prosecuted. Merrick Garland, who failed to meet the proper standards to sit on the High Court, congratulated the United States’s newest citizens the other day, and in doing so, he exposed some of his own personal history as well as neglected one of the most important civil liberties we have.

In the preamble of the Constitution, those Americans enumerated those hopes: to form a more perfect union; establish justice; ensure domestic tranquility; provide for the common defense; promote the general welfare …

And importantly – in their words – “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Like them, each of you has now made a commitment not only to this nation and your fellow Americans, but to the generations of Americans who will come after you.…

I come from a family of immigrants who fled religious persecution early in the 20th Century and sought refuge here in the United States. Some of my family entered right here, at Ellis Island. My grandmother was one of five children born in what is now Belarus. Three made it to the United States, including my grandmother who came through the Port of Baltimore. Two did not make it. Those two were killed in the Holocaust. If not for America, there is little doubt that the same would have happened to my grandmother. But this country took her in. And under the protection of our laws, she was able to live without fear of persecution.

I am also married to the daughter of an immigrant who came through the Port of New York in 1938. Shortly after Hitler’s army entered Austria that year, my wife’s mother escaped to the United States. Under the protection of our laws, she too, was able to live without fear of persecution.

That protection is what distinguishes America from so many other countries. The protection of law – the Rule of Law – is the foundation of our system of government. The Rule of Law means that the same laws apply to all of us, regardless of whether we are this country’s newest citizens or whether our [families] have been here for generations.

The Rule of Law means that the law treats each of us alike: there is not one rule for friends, another for foes; one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless; a rule for the rich, another for the poor; or different rules, depending upon one’s race or ethnicity or country of origin. The Rule of Law means that we are all protected in the exercise of our civil rights; in our freedom to worship and think as we please; and in the peaceful expression of our opinions, our beliefs, and our ideas.

Garland’s full remarks are worth a read. If our eyes were shut and we heard some of (not all) these words come from the mouth of a Regan or Trump, the rhetoric could be believable. However, these “encouraging” words are hissed out from the current Attorney General who’s complicit to allow the Second Amendment rights of the people be infringed.

Given Garland’s sharing of his personal and family’s history, and that of his wife’s, one would think that he’d be all too knowing that the atrocity of the Holocaust was able to occur in part because of a disarmed citizenry. Do we know for a fact that had the people been armed at that time that the Holocaust would have been averted? No, we don’t. But I’m willing to wage many would have rather tested the odds by fighting it out as an armed populace, instead of being led to slaughter. Regardless, we won’t ever know.

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Rare Ghost Gun Found on Michigan Gun Disposal List, But that is Not All

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- Michigan law requires police and sheriff departments to turn confiscated firearms over to the state police. The state publishes a list of firearms each month that have not been claimed.

From the michigan.gov website:

The information below identifies firearm(s) confiscated by a Michigan law enforcement agency and turned over to the Michigan State Police (MSP) pursuant to MCL 28.434 and MCL 750.239.

List of Weapons to be Destroyed:

List of weapons to be destroyed October 2022 (public notice date 9-1-2022)(embeded below).  

If you are claiming ownership of any firearm(s) listed, please write or call within thirty (30) days of the date of public notice. In addition to your ownership claim, you must be authorized to possess firearms.

If no valid ownership claim is received by MSP within thirty (30) days of the date of public notice, the firearm(s) listed above will be destroyed.

Firearm(s) listed above are not for sale.

The firearms are listed for 30 days so owners can identify them and apply to have them returned.

If no one claims the firearms, they are destroyed. Michigan law does not require they be destroyed. The destruction of firearms has become a wasteful tradition.

Michigan police destroy about half a million dollars worth of firearms yearly for political purposes.

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Trump/Russia investigator hid ties to Russian billionaire.

If there is one thing you can count on with The Swamp it’s that every time they accuse a Republican of doing something, they themselves are likely to be guilty of that very thing themselves.

That may be the case with Charles McGonigal, the former head of counterintelligence at the FBI field office in New York City. In an exclusive report by Military and Defense Insider it was revealed that McGonigal appears to be under grand jury investigation for–get ready–improper ties to Russia.

 

McGonigal was no bit player in the Russia Russia Russia drama: he was one of the key instigators who got the ball rolling back in 2016. When he was at the FBI he was quite the bigwig, playing major roles in a number of high profile cases.

Before his retirement in 2018, McGonigal led the WikiLeaks investigation into Chelsea Manning, busted Bill Clinton’s national security advisor Sandy Berger for removing classified material from a National Archives reading room, and led the search for a Chinese mole inside the CIA. In 2016, when reports surfaced that Russia had hacked the email system of the Democratic National Committee, McGonigal was serving as chief of the cybercrimes section at FBI headquarters in Washington. In that capacity, he was one of the first officials to learn that a Trump campaign official had bragged that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, sparking the investigation known as Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Later that year, FBI Director James Comey promoted McGonigal to oversee counterintelligence operations in New York.

He has apparently been swept up into a grand jury investigation that is looking into his ties to a Russian billionaire and work he appears to have done with his representatives. It isn’t totally clear what exactly is being investigated and how central McGonigal is to the inquiry, but it looks pretty bad.

Late last year, according to internal court documents obtained by Insider, US attorneys secretly convened a grand jury that examined the conduct of Charles McGonigal, the former head of counterintelligence at the FBI field office in New York City. The Justice Department declined to comment on what the grand jury was investigating or whether it remained ongoing. But a witness subpoena obtained by Insider seems to indicate that the government, in part, was looking into McGonigal’s business dealings with a top aide to Oleg Deripaska, the billionaire Russian oligarch who was at the center of allegations that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign to interfere in the 2016 election.

The subpoena, issued in November, requests records relating to McGonigal and a shadowy consulting firm called Spectrum Risk Solutions. A week after the subpoena was issued, a Soviet-born immigrant named Sergey Shestakov said in a separate filing that McGonigal had helped him “facilitate” an introduction between Spectrum and Deripaska’s aide. The filing also states that McGonigal helped introduce the aide to Kobre & Kim, a New York law firm that specializes in representing clients who are being investigated on suspicion of “fraud and misconduct.” Shestakov, who has been identified on TV panels as a former Soviet foreign ministry official and former chief of staff to the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, reported receiving $33,000 for the referrals.

It’s not clear that anything McGonigal did for the sketchy Russians was illegal, but he failed to report doing any work for them. That in itself may be a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Depending upon the exact scope of what the former FBI agent did he may or may not have violated the law.

While it wouldn’t necessarily have been illegal for McGonigal to work on behalf of Deripaska, failing to disclose activities covered by the Foreign Agents Registration Act, such as lobbying and public relations, is punishable by a $250,000 fine and up to five years in prison. Deripaska was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2018 for acting as an agent for the Kremlin, and has been accused of ordering the murder of a businessman. “If McGonigal is mixed up in any way shape or form with Deripaska, that strikes me as unseemly, to put it politely,” says Tim Weiner, the author of “Enemies: A History of the FBI.”

There is little doubt that McGonigal’s ties to a sketchy Russian oligarch are clear evidence that he isn’t as squeaky clean as a top FBI official would like to appear. After all, one of the great perks of having had such a position is peddling the prestige of having had such a job. He certainly has been capitalizing off his status, and getting tied up with sanctioned Russian agents of the Kremlin might hit him in the pocketbook. Perhaps that is why he decided to hide his relationship.

It’s impossible to know at this stage whether McGonigal’s super-friendly ties to Russians played a role in his zeal to get Donald Trump, but these revelations certainly raise questions. Despite the constant repetition that Trump was Russia’s puppet, he was actually far more antagonistic in policy to Russia than Obama ever was. And we know that Hillary Clinton used her ties in Russia to stir up suspicion that Trump was colluding with Russia (she colluded with Russians to fake a narrative that Trump colluded with Russia; how ironic), faking the whole Steele Dossier narrative with Russian help.

Was McGonigal somehow involved? Did he have any contemporaneous or future financial interests? At the moment nobody but the grand jury knows.

These days McGonigal presents himself as a pious and wise man who is using his expertise to defend truth, justice and the American way. He compares the FBI to the FSB favorably.

Since he left the FBI, McGonigal has continued to trade on his expertise in counterintelligence. In 2020, months after his reported assistance to Deripaska’s aide, he appeared on a panel at the Atlantic Council, where he condemned the corruption of Russia’s security services. “You are seeing an erosion in any rule of law as it relates to the FSB,” he said. “It would be akin to having in the United States the FBI as a rogue element, operating at the behest of the highest bidder.”

Unfortunately too many Americans have come to suspect that the FBI actually is a rogue element, operating at the behest of, if not the highest bidder, then the most powerful one.

As Donald Trump would say: sad.

Ahhhhh HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH IIIIIIII Like it!

New Software Negates Latest “Ghost Gun” Rules

A new software program (protected under the First Amendment) is protecting the Second Amendment. The software allows a 3D printer to create a “jig,” a simple but necessary piece of plastic that is used in assembling a firearm at home.

After the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) issued its latest infringement on the Second Amendment, software developers quickly created open source (free to the world) software to allow owners of 3D printers to print out their own jig. In essence this is an end-run around the latest ATF transgression of precious rights.

The continuing flow of misinformation from the ATF sets up the straw man to justify its latest violation of the Second Amendment:

To help keep guns from being sold to convicted felons and other prohibited purchasers, the rule makes clear that retailers must run background checks before selling kits that contain the parts necessary for someone to readily make a gun.

To help law enforcement trace guns used in a crime, the rule modernizes the definition of frame or receiver, clarifying what must be marked with a serial number – including in easy-to-build firearm kits.

To help reduce the number of unmarked and hard-to-trace “ghost guns,” the rule establishes requirements for federally licensed firearms dealers and gunsmiths to have a serial number added to 3D printed guns or other un-serialized firearms they take into inventory.

It admitted that its latest transgression generated a lot of pushback from gun owners:

On May 7, 2021, the Department of Justice issued a notice of proposed rulemaking, and during the 90-day open comment period, the ATF received more than 290,000 comments, the highest number of comments submitted to a proposed rule in ATF’s history.

Here’s the loophole in the new regulation that software developers are exploiting: if the jig isn’t part of the “kit,” then there’s no firearm under the latest definition and hence no required background check. Specifically, the rule states that when an unfinished frame or receiver is “distributed or possessed with a compatible jig or template,” it is now automatically considered to be a firearm. Leave out the jig, however, and the” kit” is incomplete and doesn’t fall under the rule.

On its website, Tactical Machining in Orlando, Florida, offers this update to its customers:

As many of you know or heard, ATF’s lawless and corrupt ruling went into effect on August 24, 2022. At the advice of our counsel, Tactical Machining was advised to maintain a holding pattern. Since then, we have some developing updates.

Per ATF, 80% AR-15 lowers are still legal!

In recent testimony during lawsuits against the ATF, they have admitted in open court that the “Final rule” does not restrict the sale of 80% lowers IF they are not sold with a jig/instructions or Templates.

Our local ATF agent tasked with enforcing the new rule changes also confirmed, in writing, that all of Tactical Machining’s 80% products are legal to buy and sell since we stopped offering our jigs.

Jim Jusick, Tactical’s design engineer and manager, quoted this from that letter from the ATF:

As we’ve been instructed, and our understanding here in Orlando, the unfinished receiver, with a jig, instructions, or template is NOT A FIREARM.

The combination of such an item (unfinished receiver) with other parts (excluding the jig) does not reach the standard for Readily Convertible.

In other words, your manufacture and selling of unfinished receivers with a lower parts kit [without the jig] does not meet the [newly defined] firearm threshold.

Just as was the case with radar detectors, developers were always one step ahead of the enforcers. In their zeal to criminalize all gun owners and eventually disarm them, the enforcers continue to play catch-up ball with the developers.

Should we be surprised at this point?

BIDEN DEMANDS WHITE SUPREMACY

FBI whistleblowers–in this case, the term is probably warranted–have come forward to say that the Bureau is pressuring them to come up with “white supremacists” to investigate, in order to advance the Biden administration’s agenda:

Current and former FBI agents have come forward saying the Biden administration is deliberately exaggerating the danger posed by white supremacists. They claimed that high-ranking FBI officials were pressuring field agents to fabricate domestic terrorism cases and label people as white supremacists in order to “meet internal metrics.”

To the best of my knowledge, I have never met a white supremacist, so this doesn’t surprise me. What ought to surprise all of us is that the FBI’s politicized hierarchy is so willing to do the corrupt bidding of the Democratic Party.

“The demand for white supremacy” coming from FBI brass “vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy,” one agent told the Washington Times. “We have more people assigned to investigate white supremacists than we can actually find.”

The FBI agent, who requested anonymity in order to discuss internal bureau politics, said that top officials in the FBI “have already determined that white supremacy is a problem” and established a policy to prioritize investigations into racially-motivated domestic extremism.

“We are sort of the lapdogs as the actual agents doing these sorts of investigations, trying to find a crime to fit otherwise First Amendment-protected activities,” he said. “If they have a Gadsden flag and they own guns and they are mean at school board meetings, that’s probably a domestic terrorist.”

That is consistent with the disgraceful behavior we have seen from the FBI in recent years. The Bureau is one more once-great institution that has been destroyed by the Left.

Political Cartoons by AF Branco

Mike Lindell Is Suing the FBI and the Government for Violating His Rights. Pay Attention.

Mike Lindell wants more than just his phone back. Following the incident in Minnesota during which agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation blocked his vehicle at a Hardee’s drive-through and seized his phone, Lindell made an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room. He announced that he was filing a lawsuit against the FBI and the government. You can watch Lindell’s conversation with Bannon posted by The Post Millennial below.

Lindell makes the point that his phone is what he uses to run his company and that it even controls his hearing aids. As someone who wears hearing aids, I had the option of connecting mine to my phone and even activating the Bluetooth feature. But while I don’t need to pair my ears with my phone, Lindell chose to do so. And for better or worse (probably worse), our lives are now almost inextricably linked to our phones. While that says more about the continuing decline of Western Civilization than anything else, let’s face it: we’d all be lost without our phones, no matter how erudite we think we may be.

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Once again, the political acumen of Mitch McConnell deserves praise for stopping such a political hack as Merrick Garland from being seated on the Supreme Court

FBI Agents Accuse Biden of Pressuring FBI to Fabricate ‘Extremist’ and ‘White Supremacist’ Cases.

Current and former FBI agents have come forward saying the Biden administration is deliberately exaggerating the danger posed by white supremacists. They claimed that high-ranking FBI officials were pressuring field agents to fabricate domestic terrorism cases and label people as white supremacists in order to “meet internal metrics.”

“The demand for white supremacy” coming from FBI brass “vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy,” one agent told the Washington Times. “We have more people assigned to investigate white supremacists than we can actually find.”

The FBI agent, who requested anonymity in order to discuss internal bureau politics, said that top officials in the FBI “have already determined that white supremacy is a problem” and established a policy to prioritize investigations into racially-motivated domestic extremism.

“We are sort of the lapdogs as the actual agents doing these sorts of investigations, trying to find a crime to fit otherwise First Amendment-protected activities,” he said. “If they have a Gadsden flag and they own guns and they are mean at school board meetings, that’s probably a domestic terrorist.”

The FBI denies that they are targeting people based on politics, but sadly, these revelations are the latest in a longstanding pattern of the politicization and weaponization of the Justice Department under Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Last year, the administration previously came under fire for using the resources of the Department of Justice to target angry parents at school board meetings and treat them like domestic terrorists. Merrick Garland authorized the FBI to investigate parents who protested school board meetings alleging a “disturbing trend” of teachers being threatened or harassed. However, PJ Media’s Megan Fox looked into those allegations and concluded that they’re mostly bunk.

In addition, the National School Boards Association (NSBA), which had prompted Garland to write the memo with a letter likening parents to domestic terrorists, eventually apologized for doing so. Despite this, Garland has not rescinded the memo. Late last year, a whistleblower revealed an internal email showing that the FBI was using counterterrorism tools to monitor parents despite Garland denying before Congress that the FBI was doing so. This summer, whistleblowers revealed that the FBI “pressured and incentivized” agents to classify cases as domestic violent extremism.

FBI labeled veteran-led disaster organization a ‘terror’ group over government criticism, whistleblower says

The FBI was accused of falsely designating a veteran-led emergency prevention organization and its founder as facilitators of domestic terror, according to a whistleblower complaint made public via a letter from the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

In the letter, ranking member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said the FBI associated American Contingency with domestic terrorism despite its own investigation proving otherwise in an effort to “advance a misleading political agenda.”

“American Contingency is a company founded by former U.S. servicemember Mike Glover, who has publicly rejected the FBI’s accusations that he is a terrorist and has described American Contingency’s charitable work on behalf of communities devastated by natural disasters,” Jordan said in the letter addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

According to the letter, the FBI maintained a terror designation on American Contingency despite thoroughly investigating the organization and its founder.

The FBI investigated Glover’s “military records, his veteran’s disability rating, and even his monthly disability benefit” before ultimately determining he was not a perpetrator or instigator of domestic terror. Jordan said these details have been corroborated by an FBI whistleblower.

“We have no comment on any specific groups or individuals. However, the FBI does not and cannot designate domestic terrorist organizations. The FBI can never open an investigation based solely on protected First Amendment activity,” the bureau responded.

“We cannot and do not investigate ideology. We focus on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. The FBI’s mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. One does not come at the expense of the other.”

Jordan said, “The FBI’s recent characterization of American Contingency as a DVE [domestic violent extremism] organization is striking in light of new whistleblower disclosures that show that the FBI had concluded as recently as 2020 that the group was not a threat.”

Following this investigation, the FBI determined Aug. 26, 2020, that Glover “is a decorated veteran of the United States” whose military record and frequent social media posts reflect his “patriotism for the United States.”

“Glover desires to assist Americans in preparing themselves for catastrophic events and not to overthrow the United States Government,” the in-line FBI administrative note said. “A background investigation and review of Glover’s social media failed to support the allegation that Glover is a threat to the United States or its citizens.”

While arguing that the designation was initially unjustified, Jordan highlighted that the FBI kept its terror designation “even after the FBI determined in 2020 that American Contingency was not a threat.”

Jordan then inquired further into the FBI’s “Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide” on “Militia Violent Extremists” (MVEs) — which was publicly shared via Project Veritas — including questions about how and why the FBI pursues people or organizations such as Glover and American Contingency.

The FBI document flags symbols like “2A,” an abbreviation for the Right to Bear Arms under the Second Amendment, and “commonly referenced historical imagery or quotes,” like the “Betsy Ross Flag” and the yellow “Gadsden Flag” that states “Don’t Tread On Me” as symbols of “terrorists,” Jordan said.

Concluding the letter, the top Republican requested from Wray “all documents and communications referring or relating to the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide on Militia Violent Extremism, for the period of January 1, 2020, to the present.”

He also asked for “a full and complete explanation as to why the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Strategic Unit did not include symbols, images, phrases, events, and individuals about left-wing violent extremism of the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide.” Jordan urged Wray to “provide this information as soon as possible, but no later than 5:00 p.m. on September 28, 2022.”

The FBI had told reporters last month, “The threat posed by domestic violent extremists is persistent, evolving and deadly. The FBI’s authority to investigate a case as domestic terrorism requires the existence of a potential criminal federal violation, the unlawful use or threat of force or violence and ideological motivation of any type. We do not investigate ideology.

“The FBI investigates individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and other criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. We are committed to upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment activity.”

John Francis Kirby is a retired Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy serving as Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council in the White House

Gun advocates fight for bump stocks in latest court hearing

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court was told Tuesday that there is no basis in federal law for a Trump administration ban on bump stocks — devices that enable a shooter to fire multiple rounds from semi-automatic weapons with a single trigger pull.

The ban was instituted after a sniper using bump stock-equipped weapons massacred dozens in Las Vegas in 2017. Gun rights advocates are challenging it in multiple federal courts.

At issue is not the Second Amendment but whether bump stocks qualify as illegal “machine guns” under federal law. The rule banning the devices issued by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said that they — a reversal, attorneys said, of a position held prior to the Las Vegas killings.

Opponents of the ban say the ATF’s rule doesn’t comply with federal law, and that it would take an act of Congress to ban bump stocks nationally.

So far, the ban, now being defended by the Biden administration, has survived challenges at the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Denver-based 10th Circuit. Decisions on whether the Supreme Court will hear appeals in those cases are pending. It has also survived a challenge at the federal circuit court in Washington.

A panel of three judges at the 5th Circuit in New Orleans also issued a ruling in favor of the ban, but the full New Orleans-based court, currently with 16 active members, opted to hear new arguments. It’s unclear how quickly the full court will issue a ruling. Some judges raised the possibility in questions that they could await Supreme Court action in the other cases.

According to the ATF, bump stocks harness the recoil energy of a semiautomatic firearm so that a trigger “resets and continues firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter.” The shooter must maintain constant forward pressure on the weapon with the non-shooting hand, and constant pressure on the trigger with the trigger finger, according to Tuesday’s arguments.

But, opponents of the ATF rule argue that the trigger itself functions multiple times when a bump stock is used, so therefore bump stock weapons do not qualify as machine guns under federal law. They site language in the law that defines a machine gun as one that fires multiple times with a “single function of the trigger.”

“The trigger is going to function multiple times,” Richard Samp, arguing for a Texas gun owner, told the judges.

U.S. Department of Justice lawyer Mark Stern said the key is the action of the shooter.

“You only have to do one thing,” Stern told the judges. “Your trigger finger isn’t doing anything other than sitting still.”