Category: Enemies Domestic

ANTI-GUNNERS MORE INTERESTED IN PUBLIC DISARMAMENT THAN SAFETY—CCRKBA

BELLEVUE, WA – A recent report by ABC News that gun control groups are vowing to “double down” against incoming President Donald Trump if he pursues national concealed carry reciprocity only proves anti-gunners are more interested in citizen disarmament than in public safety, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said in response.

“National concealed carry reciprocity simply would mean American citizens would no longer leave their right of self-defense at a state border,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “The gun prohibition lobby needs to come clean and admit they don’t care if law-abiding citizens can’t defend themselves while traveling. They’re not interested in public safety, only public disarmament.”

A national reciprocity bill passed the U.S. House in 2017, but was never brought up in the Senate, and Democrats have opposed the idea. Now, however, with Capitol Hill under Republican control, and Trump on record as vowing to sign legislation if it hits his desk, anti-gunners—including Everytown for Gun Safety and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence—are promising a fight to keep people traveling from one state to another vulnerable to criminal attack.

“The gun ban crowd can couch their arguments any way they want,” Gottlieb observed, “but when you boil it down, what they really want is for good people to be vulnerable to violent crime. Anti-gunners argue that reciprocity will make it easier for criminals to cross state lines, but that doesn’t pass the smell test because criminals are already doing that.

“Any notion that legally-armed Americans are somehow a threat to public safety when they journey to another state is manufactured paranoia,” he said.

“And,” Gottlieb added, “when armed citizens go to other states, they must obey that state’s gun laws. The argument that states will see their own gun laws eroded by reciprocity is yet another myth invented by anti-gunners to dissuade people from supporting reciprocity. Each state’s laws would remain intact, and they know it.”

FEMA outrage reveals weaponized government — and points Trump toward reform.

One of President-elect Donald Trump’s first orders of business must be to de-weaponize the federal government. One episode from Florida illustrates why.

Not long ago you might have charged me with paranoid conspiracy theorizing if I had told you that federal disaster relief workers were deliberately keeping Trump supporters from receiving government assistance.

But they were, and a FEMA supervisor has been fired for it.

FEMA skipping Republicans’ homes:

Marn’i Washington allegedly told FEMA workers in Florida to skip houses with Trump signs out front after Hurricane Helene.

“Avoid homes advertising Trump,” she wrote in a “best practices” memo to employees, a copy of which was obtained by Daily Wire, reportedly reinforcing this with a verbal order.

Er, except that it was true. And The New York Times, as of this writing, had not corrected its false reporting, which itself constitutes disinformation.

So does that mean the conspiracy theorists are right?  Well, yes and no.

If the “conspiracy” would involve a handful of big-shots in a smoke-filled room sending out orders to their minions, not really.

That happens in government sometimes — as with the federal campaign to quash dissent on social media over COVID policy and the disputed 2020 election — but usually it doesn’t work that way.

Because it doesn’t have to.

When you have a federal workforce that overwhelmingly favors the Democratic Party, coupled with nonstop media (and social media) accounts of how awful Republicans are and how it’s fair to do pretty much anything to stop them because they’re basically Hitler, you don’t need to issue orders.

People act on their own.

I very much doubt that any FEMA higher-up told Marn’i Washington to skip over houses with Trump signs.

She just knew that she hated President Trump and wanted to punish his supporters. Then she took action.

Democrats like to see themselves as vital soldiers, defending democracy — and, coincidentally, their party’s power — from opponents who are not merely different, but outright evil.

This sense of self-importance is coupled with a self-esteem-boosting snobbery: They tell themselves they deserve to be in charge because they’re so much smarter and better and more moral than the hoi polloi.

And the allegedly high stakes justify even the most immoral actions because they’re in service of a higher cause — stopping Hitler! (An excuse that’s always available: Democrats characterize just about all of their GOP opponents as the next Hitler, going all the way back to Tom Dewey in 1948.)

Trump has said he will fire bureaucrats who get in the way of his reforms, and plans to vastly thin the civil service in general. This will help.

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10 U.S. Code § 894 – Art. 94. Mutiny or sedition

(a)Any person subject to this chapter [ military personnel, .ed] who—

(1)with intent to usurp or override lawful military authority, refuses, in concert with any other person, to obey orders or otherwise do his duty or creates any violence or disturbance is guilty of mutiny;

(2)with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of lawful civil authority, creates, in concert with any other person, revolt, violence, or other disturbance against that authority is guilty of sedition

(3)fails to do his utmost to prevent and suppress a mutiny or sedition being committed in his presence, or fails to take all reasonable means to inform his superior commissioned officer or commanding officer of a mutiny or sedition which he knows or has reason to believe is taking place, is guilty of a failure to suppress or report a mutiny or sedition.

(b)A person who is found guilty of attempted mutiny, mutiny, sedition, or failure to suppress or report a mutiny or sedition shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.
(Aug. 10, 1956, ch. 1041, 70A Stat. 68.)

Sedition, Insubordination, Conduct Unbecoming. In a time of war; Treason.
This sort of thing must be rooted out and the bureaucraps fired, those on active duty who took part relieved, and those who may not have been on active duty (retired), recalled and face courts martial. The military must be completely subordinate to the elected constitutional national command authority and follow their legal orders or what we’ll wind up with is a military hunta akin to the praetorian guard of the roman empire who decided who the next emperor would be after disposing of the last one.

Sorry, We Can Only View This Secret Pentagon Meeting as a Plot to Foment an Insurrection

John Frankenheimer directed a movie called Seven Days in May in the 1960s, starring Kirk Douglas as a military officer who uncovers a coup against the president of the United States by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who signed a deeply unpopular nuclear disarmament treaty. That’s a movie. In 2024, the Pentagon brass plotted to countermand President-elect Donald J. Trump’s orders. If we’re going by the Left’s rules here, this is an insurrection. It’s a military coup. What’s worse is that these anti-Trump meetings were held in secret and then got leaked to the media (via CNN):

Pentagon officials are holding informal discussions about how the Department of Defense would respond if Donald Trump issues orders to deploy active-duty troops domestically and fire large swaths of apolitical staffers, defense officials told CNN.

Trump has suggested he would be open to using active-duty forces for domestic law enforcement and mass deportations and has indicated he wants to stack the federal government with loyalists and “clean out corrupt actors” in the US national security establishment.

[…]

“We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official said.

Trump’s election has also raised questions inside the Pentagon about what would happen if the president issued an unlawful order, particularly if his political appointees inside the department don’t push back.

“Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” said another defense official. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”

CNN’s Scott Jennings tore apart these unelected bureaucrats yesterday. We’re back to the same Deep State games, but this time, Trump, with no re-election ahead of him, can go hard and fast to rid the Pentagon and any agency of troublesome government workers who think they’re above the law and not accountable to the will of the people. The illegal orders narrative is also ridiculous, soaked in the anti-Trump hysterics that have engulfed the Left.

Secret meetings on thwarting a duly elected president are not a good look.

Never forget what they did to us.
Never forget what they meant to do to us.
Never.
Don’t give them the benefit of the doubt next time.
And did they forget we have guns?

CDC Planned Quarantine Camps, Nationwide

No matter how bad you think Covid policies were, they were intended to be worse.

Consider the vaccine passports alone. Six cities were locked down to include only the vaccinated in public indoor places. They were New York City, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. The plan was to enforce this with a vaccine passport. It broke. Once the news leaked that the shot didn’t stop infection or transmission, the planners lost public support and the scheme collapsed.

It was undoubtedly planned to be permanent and nationwide if not worldwide. Instead, the scheme had to be dialed back.

Features of the CDC’s edicts did incredible damage. It imposed the rent moratorium. It decreed the ridiculous “six feet of distance” and mask mandates. It forced Plexiglas as the interface for commercial transactions. It implied that mail-in balloting must be the norm, which probably flipped the election. It delayed the reopening as long as possible. It was sadistic.

Even with all that, worse was planned. On July 26, 2020, with the George Floyd riots having finally settled down, the CDC issued a plan for establishing nationwide quarantine camps. People were to be isolated, given only food and some cleaning supplies. They would be banned from participating in any religious services. The plan included contingencies for preventing suicide. There were no provisions made for any legal appeals or even the right to legal counsel.

The plan’s authors were unnamed but included 26 footnotes. It was completely official. The document was only removed on about March 26, 2023. During the entire intervening time, the plan survived on the CDC’s public site with little to no public notice or controversy.

It was called “Interim Operational Considerations for Implementing the Shielding Approach to Prevent COVID-19 Infections in Humanitarian Settings.”

“This document presents considerations from the perspective of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) for implementing the shielding approach in humanitarian settings as outlined in guidance documents focused on camps, displaced populations and low-resource settings.

This approach has never been documented and has raised questions and concerns among humanitarian partners who support response activities in these settings. The purpose of this document is to highlight potential implementation challenges of the shielding approach from CDC’s perspective and guide thinking around implementation in the absence of empirical data.

Considerations are based on current evidence known about the transmission and severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and may need to be revised as more information becomes available.”

By absence of empirical data, the meaning is: nothing like this has ever been tried. The point of the document was to map out how it could be possible and alert authorities to possible pitfalls to be avoided.

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EXCLUSIVE: FEMA Official Ordered Relief Workers To Skip Houses With Trump Signs
Whistleblower: ‘It’s almost unbelievable to think that somebody in the federal government would think that’s okay’

A federal disaster relief official ordered workers to bypass the homes of Donald Trump’s supporters as they surveyed damage caused by Hurricane Milton in Florida, according to internal correspondence obtained by The Daily Wire and confirmed by multiple federal employees.

A FEMA supervisor told workers in a message to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid, internal messages viewed by The Daily Wire reveal. The supervisor, Marn’i Washington, relayed this message both verbally and in a group chat used by the relief team, multiple government employees told The Daily Wire.

The government employees told The Daily Wire that at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags were skipped from the end of October and into November due to the guidance, meaning they were not given the opportunity to qualify for FEMA assistance. Images shared with The Daily Wire show that houses were skipped over by the workers, who wrote in the government system messages such as: “Trump sign no entry per leadership.”

It is unclear whether the same guidance was issued elsewhere in the country. The employees were part of a Department of Homeland Security surge capacity force team, meaning they volunteered from other DHS agencies to help an understaffed FEMA as it dealt with a second major hurricane in a span of just a few weeks.

Microsoft Teams chat used by FEMA workers.

“I know they’re short-staffed, I thought we could go help and make a difference,” one of the employees said. “When we got there we were told to discriminate against people. It’s almost unbelievable to think that somebody in the federal government would think that’s okay.” 

The employee said it felt wrong to discriminate against Trump supporters when they were at their “most vulnerable.”

“I volunteered to help disaster victims, not discriminate against them,” the employee said. “It didn’t matter if people were black, white, Hispanic, for Trump, for Harris. Everyone deserves the same amount of help.”

The guidance came as the Biden administration was criticized over its sluggish response to Hurricane Helene in rural areas across the country. In Roan Mountain, Tennessee, for example, locals told The Daily Wire it took nearly two weeks for FEMA to show up. The town is located in Carter County, which voted 81% for Trump on Tuesday.

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

DOJ to Drop Trump Cases.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lest anyone forget just exactly how they think of us, our rights and the protections of the Constitution and Bill of Rights that restrict their tyrant dreams

If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees. —Bill Clinton

The “Freedom From Fear” Ticket for Tyranny

The Democratic Party is championing presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a born-again champion of freedom. Earlier this year, Democrats shifted their focus from democracy to freedom, convinced that the latter word would enthrall voters on Election Day. Providing “freedom from fear” has become one of their most frequent political promises this past century.

Politicians routinely portray freedom from fear as the apex of freedom, higher than the initial freedoms buttressed by the Bill of Rights. While presidents have defined “freedom from fear” differently, the common thread is that it requires unleashing government agents. Reviewing almost a century of bipartisan scams on freedom from fear provides good cause to doubt the latest geyser of promises.

“Freedom from fear” first entered the American political lexicon thanks to a January 1941 speech by President Franklin Roosevelt. In that State of the Union address, he promised citizens freedom of speech and freedom of worship—two cornerstones of the First Amendment—and added socialist-style “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear.” FDR’s revised freedoms did not include freedom to dissent, since he said the government would need to take care of the “few slackers or trouble makers in our midst.” Nor did FDR’s improved freedoms include the freedom not be rounded up for concentration camps, as FDR ordered for Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. Three years later, FDR amended his definition of freedom by championing a Universal Conscription Act to entitle government to the forced labor of any citizen.

Richard Nixon, in his acceptance speech at the 1968 Republican National Convention, promised, “We shall re-establish freedom from fear in America so that America can take the lead in re-establishing freedom from fear in the world.” Nixon asserted, “The first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence, and that right must be guaranteed in this country.” But with the Nixon scorecard, government violence didn’t count. He perpetuated the war in Vietnam, resulting in another 20,000 American soldiers pointlessly dying. On the homefront, he created the Drug Enforcement Administration and appointed the nation’s first drug czar. The FBI perpetuated its COINTELPRO program, carrying out “a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order,” as a 1976 Senate report noted.

President George H.W. Bush told the National Baptist Convention on September 8, 1989, “Today freedom from fear…means freedom from drugs.” To boost public fear, a DEA informant arranged for a knucklehead to sell crack cocaine to an undercover narc in Lafayette Park across from the White House. Bush invoked the sell a few days later to justify a national crackdown. He informed the American Legion, “Today I want to focus on one of those freedoms: freedom from fear—the fear of war abroad, the fear of drugs and crime at home. To win that freedom, to build a better and safer life, will require the bravery and sacrifice that Americans have shown before and must again.”

Foremost among the sacrifices that Bush demanded was that of traditional liberties. His administration vastly expanded federal power to arbitrarily seize Americans’ property and increased the role of the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement. In a 1992 speech dedicating a new DEA office building, Bush declared, “I am delighted to be here to salute the greatest freedom fighters any nation could have, people who provide freedom from violence and freedom from drugs and freedom from fear.” The DEA’s own crime sprees, corruption, and violence were not permitted to impede Bush’s rhetorical victory lap.

On May 12, 1994, President Bill Clinton declared, “Freedom from violence and freedom from fear are essential to maintaining not only personal freedom but a sense of community in this country.” Clinton banned so-called assault weapons and sought to ban thirty-five million semi-automatic firearms. Gun bans in response to high crime rates mean closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. Citizens would presumedly have nothing to fear after they were forced to abjectly depend on government officials for their own survival. During Clinton’s first term, public housing authorities began mass warrantless searches of apartments to confiscate guns and other banned items. Clinton slammed a federal court ruling blocking the unconstitutional raids. When he visited the Chicago housing projects, Clinton declared, “The most important freedom we have in this country is the freedom from fear. And if people aren’t free from fear, they are not free.” In Clinton’s view, public housing residents had no right to fear the federally-funded housing police storming into their apartments.

In February 1996, Clinton, seeking conservative support for his reelection campaign, endorsed forcing children to wear uniforms at public schools. Clinton justified the fashion dictate: “Every one of us has an obligation to work together, to give our children freedom from fear and the freedom to learn.” But, if mandatory uniforms were the key to ending violence, Postal Service employees would have a lower homicide rate.

Senator Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee, repeatedly promised voters “freedom from fear” via crackdowns on crime. How did Dole intend to provide “freedom from fear”? By proclaiming that “we must…untie the hands of the police.” Dole did not specify exactly how many no-knock raids would be necessary to restore domestic tranquility.

George W. Bush, like his father, alternated promises of “freedom from fear” with shameless fearmongering. Prior to election day 2004, the Bush administration continually issued terror attack warnings based on flimsy or no evidence. The New York Times derided the Bush administration in late October for having “turned the business of keeping Americans informed about the threat of terrorism into a politically scripted series of color-coded scare sessions.” Yet each time a terror alert was issued, the president’s approval rating rose temporarily by roughly three percent, according to a Cornell University study. The Cornell study found a “halo effect”: the more terrorists who wanted to attack America, the better job Bush was supposedly doing. People who saw terrorism as the biggest issue in the 2004 election voted for Bush by a 6-to-1 margin.

The most memorable Bush campaign ad, released a few weeks before the election, opened in a thick forest, with shadows and hazy shots complementing the foreboding music. After vilifying Democratic candidate John Kerry, the ad showed a pack of wolves reclining in a clearing. The voiceover concluded, “And weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm” as the wolves began jumping up and running toward the camera. At the end of the ad, the president appeared and announced, “I’m George W. Bush and I approve this message.” One liberal cynic suggested that the ad’s message was that voters would be eaten by wolves if Kerry won. The Bush ad spurred protests by the equivalent of the Lobo Anti-Defamation League. Pat Wendland, the manager of Wolves Offered Life and Friendship, a Colorado wolf refuge, Colorado, complained, “The comparison to terrorists was insulting. We have worked for years, teaching people that Little Red Riding Hood lied.”

Bush’s campaign to terrify voters into granting him four more years to rule America and much of the world did not deter him from announcing a few months later in his State of the Union address, “We will pass along to our children all the freedoms we enjoy, and chief among them is freedom from fear.” This was back when the mainstream media was continuing to hail Bush as a visionary idealist, prior to the collapse of his credibility on the Iraq war, torture, and other debacles.

President Joe Biden milked “freedom from fear” in a Pennsylvania speech earlier this year on what he labeled “the third anniversary of the Insurrection at the United States Capitol.” Biden revealed plans to turn the November election into a referendum on Adolf Hitler, accusing Donald Trump of “echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.” CNN reported that Biden campaign aides planned to go “full Hitler” on Trump. Biden spent half an hour fearmongering and then closed by promising “freedom from fear.” This was the famous Biden two-step—demagoguing to his heart’s content and then closing with a few schmaltzy uplift lines, entitling the media to re-christen him as an idealist.

Biden did not survive the Democrats’ version of the Night of the Long Knives and Vice President Kamala Harris has been designated the party’s presidential flagbearer. Harris painted with an even broader brush than most politicians. At a Juneteenth Concert this summer, she condemned Republicans for “a full-on attack” on “the freedom from fear of bigotry and hate.” Harris implied that politicians could wave a psychological magic wand to banish any bias in perpetuity. How can anyone have “freedom from fear of bigotry” unless politicians become entitled to perpetually control everyone’s thoughts?

In August, the Democratic National Convention whooped up freedom in ways that would qualify as “authentic frontier gibberish,” as the 1974 movie Blazing Saddles would say. A campaign video promised “freedom from control, freedom from extremism and fear.” So Americans won’t have true freedom until politicians forcibly suppress any idea they label as immoderate? The Democratic Party platform warned, “Reproductive freedom, freedom from hate, freedom from fear, the freedom to control our own destinies and more are all on the line in this election.” But the whole point of politics nowadays is to preempt individuals from controlling their own destinies. Regardless, a Time magazine headline hailed “How Kamala Harris Took ‘Freedom’ Back from the GOP.”

“Freedom from fear” is the ultimate political blank check. The more people government frightens, the more legitimate dictatorial policies become. Pledging “freedom from fear” entitles politicians to seize power over anything that frightens anyone. Giving politicians more power based on people’s fears is like giving firemen pay raises based on how many false alarms they report.

Politicians’ promises of “freedom from fear” imply that freedom properly understood is a risk-free, worry-free condition. It is the type of promise that a mother would make to a young child. Freedom is now supposedly something that exists only in the womb of government paternalism. “Freedom from fear” is to be achieved by trusting everything that politicians say and surrendering everything that politicians demand. New Mexico Governor Michelle Grisham epitomized that mindset when she proclaimed at the Democratic National Convention, “We need a president who can be Consoler-in-Chief. We need a president capable of holding us in a great big hug.” And continuing to hold us until we formally become psychological wards of the state?

“Freedom from fear” offers freedom from everything except the government. Anyone who sounds the alarm about excessive government power will automatically be guilty of subverting freedom from fear. Presumably, the fewer inviolable rights the citizen has, the better government will treat him. But as John Locke warned more than 300 years ago, “I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else.”

Why not simply offer voters “freedom from the Constitution”? “Freedom from fear” means security via mass delusions about the nature of political power. Painting the motto “freedom from fear” on shackles won’t make them easier to bear. Perhaps our ruling class should be honest and replace the Bill of Rights with a new motto: “Political buncombe will make you free.”

Giffords’ New York Hypocrisy Shows Their Disdain for Voters

National gun control activists are having a hard time keeping their messaging to the American people straight ahead of the Nov. 5 election. Giffords Courage to Fight Gun Violence is only the latest example and the breathless hyperbole and hypocrisy coming out of their press releases and campaign emails makes it abundantly clear. They are hypocrites.

The presidential election is razor thin as early voting has started across the country and the campaigns are making their closing pitches to undecided voters. Former President Donald Trump made his Second Amendment pitch clear, telling voters in a social media post his stance.

“Gun owners must register to Vote, TODAY, if you want to save your guns. Our Second Amendment is under Siege by the Democrats. They want to confiscate your guns. BE SMART. VOTE!!!,” the former president messaged.

On the flip side of the coin is Vice President Kamala Harris. She supported gun confiscation before she didn’t, including handgun bans in San Francisco and using unconstitutional executive overreach to confiscate Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) before walking that back as well. Now, she admits she owns a handgun that is largely off limits to law-abiding Californians given that state’s strict gun control. But as always, it’s “Gun control for thee, not for me.”

Not to be left out of the hypocritical fun, Giffords has jumped in.

Blind to Crime

Giffords can’t keep track any more if crime is down or up and whether Americans are allowed to be concerned about their safety. Just one month ago, they joined the chorus in repeating President Joe Biden’s claims that violent crime in America had been greatly reduced because of his gun control agenda.

“President Biden is right: ‘If you’re trying to talk about reducing crime and violence in America, you need to talk about guns in America.’ [President Biden] has taken historic action to keep guns from falling in the wrong hands. Thanks to his leadership, violent crime is down,” the gun control group posted on social media.

As the saying goes – garbage in, garbage out. It turns out gun control groups and the Biden-Harris administration were crowing loudly about data that was severely flawed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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General Milley’s Attack on the Constitution

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, recently called Donald Trump a “fascist to the core” and “a wannabe dictator.” That such a senior military leader would feel comfortable saying this about his former boss is remarkable given that similar statements by officers have, in the past, resulted in severe punishment. The U.S. Constitution makes the president—the only democratically elected leader in the chain of command—commander in chief. Military leaders serving under the president owe him both deference and respect, regardless of whether their policy preferences differ.

General Milley is challenging this foundational principle of American government. Although General Milley’s recent statements are not subject to Article 88 because President Trump was no longer in office at the time the general made them, his previous attempts to undermine Trump’s authority could be. Indeed, General Milley has recognized as much, expressing concern that he may yet face court-martial for his conduct during the Trump administration. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has revealed that General Milley discussed with her ways in which the military could ignore a hypothetical order from President Trump to deploy nuclear weapons, and that he agreed with the speaker’s suggestion that President Trump was “crazy.”

Others have alleged that General Milley worked behind the scenes to frustrate the Trump administration’s plan to pull troops out of Afghanistan, ultimately succeeding in delaying withdrawal until President Biden was in office. Most egregiously, a 2021 book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa details how General Milley—without knowledge or authorization from the president—offered to warn a senior Chinese military official “ahead of time” in the event that President Trump ordered an attack against the communist state. This latter conduct, if true, goes beyond even insubordination—it borders on outright treason, which can be prosecuted through court-martial or by the Department of Justice under Title 18, Section 2381 of the U.S. Code.

Presidents have traditionally taken swift and decisive action against military officers who challenge their authority as commander in chief. President Truman famously sacked General Douglas MacArthur—who was wildly popular at the time—for questioning Truman’s approach to the Korean War, explaining later that he “fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President.” President Obama similarly accepted General Stanley McCrystal’s resignation as commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan after the general publicly criticized high-ranking civilian officials within the Obama administration.

These men dedicated years of their lives to serving their country, and, in at least some respects, their criticisms had merit. General MacArthur understood the perils of communist aggression and sincerely believed that Truman’s approach discounted that threat. General McCrystal undoubtedly had some valid concerns about American policy in Afghanistan. The substance of the concerns voiced by these men, however, was beside the point. Public disparagement of the civilian leaders appointed over them, as a matter of principle, could not be permitted. Yet, as allegations concerning General Milley’s conduct have come to light, civilian leadership has responded with seeming indifference—and even support.

For a republic to survive, civilian control of the armed forces is crucial. Allowing those serving in uniform to undermine the policies of the civilian officials under which they serve would risk praetorianism—where military commanders feel empowered to seize control when they disfavor a nation’s political leadership. Indeed, the citizens of states that accept such an arrangement almost always suffer as a result. From this nation’s founding, Americans have rejected military rule. George Washington deferred to the Continental Congress throughout the Revolutionary War and resigned his commission at its conclusion. When civilian leaders depart from the tradition established by Washington and allow those in uniform to challenge their authority without consequences, they risk undermining a bedrock principle upon which this nation was founded.

While Americans are right to revere the dedication and sacrifice of those in uniform—including the lengthy service of men like General Milley—that respect should never license insubordination of a sitting president or his advisors, regardless of the perceived wisdom of a particular administration’s policies. General Milley has noted that officers “take an oath to a country . . . . We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator.” True enough, but soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines must remember that, regardless of their personal views on policy, the Constitution vests ultimate authority as commander in chief of the Armed Forces in the president alone.

Officers who disregard the president’s prerogative, therefore, necessarily violate their oaths of office—their duty to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” When President Trump is back in office, he should send a clear and unequivocal message to his officer corps that insubordination will not be tolerated. Unless there are consequences for men like General Milley, the Republic will suffer.

Well, that didn’t take them long, did it?
And the Supreme Court again displays its cowardice concerning the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Second Circuit’s Second Opinion on NY Carry Laws Same As the First

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has issued its second opinion in the multiple challenges to New York’s post-Bruen carry restrictions, but the court ended up making no changes to its initial ruling that was issued almost a year ago.

Instead of granting cert to Antonyuk v. James and hearing the appeal themselves, the justices on the Supreme Court granted cert but vacated the Second Circuit’s first ruling and remanded the case back to the appellate court after SCOTUS released its decision in Rahimi back in June. If the justices were hoping that Rahimi would guide the Second Circuit in a different direction they, like Second Amendment advocates, must be disappointed by today’s ruling.

Essentially, the only portions of New York’s post-Bruen laws the Second Circuit takes issue with are the requirement that concealed carry applicants disclose their social media accounts to licensing authorities and the state’s “vampire rule”, which prohibits concealed carry on all private property in the state unless signage specifically allowing concealed carry is conspicuously posted.

Virtually all of the other “sensitive places” defined by the deceptively named Concealed Carry Improvement Act were upheld by the Second Circuit on Thursday, including houses of worship, public parks and zoos, public transportation, establishments where alcohol is served, theaters, conferences, business centers, and “gatherings of individuals to collectively express their constitutional rights to protest or assemble.”

As Chuck Michel said, the entire decision is more than 200 pages long, so while you can read it in its entirety here, we’ll be focusing on just a couple of aspects of today’s decision in this post.

Just like the Second Circuit’s original ruling in Antonyuk, the panel makes a few staggering leaps of faith that aren’t supported by what the Supreme Court has said about the right to keep and bear arms. The Court has held, for instance, that modern gun control statutes must fit within the national tradition of gun ownership, and doubted “that just three colonial regulations could suffice” to prove a national tradition of restricting concealed carry to those that have demonstrated a justifiable need.

But the Second Circuit says that even if there are no “distinctly similar historical regulation[s]” to point to in defense of a current gun law, that may not matter.

Legislatures past and present have not generally legislated to their constitutional limits. Reasoning from historical silence is thus risky; it is not necessarily the case that, if no positive legislation from a particular time or place is in the record, it must be because the legislators then or there deemed such a regulation inconsistent with the right to bear arms.

No, but it definitely proves that those legislators didn’t create certain laws restricting the rights of lawful gun owners in response to concerns about violent crime or public safety, and that is telling… or at least it should be. The Supreme Court’s “text, history, and tradition” test is relatively straightforward, but it’s been squarely rejected by the Second Circuit in favor of a more “nuanced” approach that, conveniently enough, allowed the panel to conclude that even where there are no historical analogues in place, modern restrictions on the right to carry are permissible.

The Second Circuit also continues to place a lot of reliance on gun laws that were in place around 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, not just 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified. In theory, that makes some sense, given that the Fourteenth Amendment was meant in part to prevent states from intruding on those freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights. But in the aftermath of the Civil War, many states, particularly in the former Confederacy, instituted laws that were designed to stop freedmen from exercising their right to keep and bear arms. In some case those laws were facially about depriving former slaves and freedmen from possessing or carrying a gun, but others were couched in racially-neutral terms but were enforced primarily or solely against groups.

The Second Circuit’s decision upholding most of New York’s newest restrictions on the right to carry relies largely on rewriting the Bruen test and an over-dependence on a handful of mid-19th century statutes. Again, even the absence of any historical analogues is no barrier for the Second Circuit, which is utterly ridiculous.

Antonyuk and the other related cases have yet to go to trial on the merits. So far, all of the legal wrangling has been about preliminary injunctions issued by the district courts, and the Second Circuit has now remanded these cases back to the lowest level of the federal judiciary to start the process all over again. Given the hostility the Second Circuit has historically displayed towards the Second Amendment (it originally upheld New York’s “may issue” law, for instance), today’s decision isn’t exactly surprising. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating for those New Yorkers who’ve seen their right to carry become even more limited in scope and practice in the two years since the Supreme Court declared that right is just as fundamentally important as the right to keep a gun in the home.

Here’s Why GOP Lawmakers Aren’t Surprised by That Treasonous Leak to Iran

Republican lawmakers who have been warning about an Iranian influence campaign, specifically targeted at Democrats on Capitol Hill and Democratic presidential administrations, aren’t surprised about the latest top secret intelligence leak out of the Pentagon. The leak, which was exposed over the weekend, shows someone with a top secret security clearance gave Iran U.S. intelligence about Israel’s attack plans inside the country.

More on the influence campaign from Semafor:

In the spring of 2014, senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials initiated a quiet effort to bolster Tehran’s image and positions on global security issues — particularly its nuclear program — by building ties with a network of influential overseas academics and researchers. They called it the Iran Experts Initiative.

The scope and scale of the IEI project has emerged in a large cache of Iranian government correspondence and emails reported for the first time by Semafor and Iran International. The officials, working under the moderate President Hassan Rouhani, congratulated themselves on the impact of the initiative.

At least two of the people on the Foreign Ministry’s list were, or became, top aides to Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy on Iran, who was placed on leave this June following the suspension of his security clearance. A third was hired by the think tank Malley ran just as he left for the State Department.

An investigation into who leaked the information is being conducted by the FBI, but the pace is unsatisfactory.

“There’s an absolute lack of urgency. This is very, very serious. It doesn’t get more serious than this, particularly, as I said, when Israel is fighting for its very existence and conducting important operations every single day. The fact that this classified information was leaked not only does it really hurt our credibility with our allies around the world in terms of intelligence sharing, but it also, I’m concerned about the lack of urgency from this Administration,” Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik said during an interview with Fox News Monday. “This should never happen again. There needs to be taken immediate criminal action, referrals to the Department of Justice, and this person who broke the law by leaking classified information, they should be in prison.”

There is a suspect, however.

Shades of Commie East Germany and its STASI
The “monkey wrench” is for lots of tips on the demoncraps.

Michigan And Hawaii Launch Tip Lines To Encourage Anonymous Snitching On Gun Owners

Michigan and Hawaii, both Democrat-led states, have launched taxpayer-funded tip lines for individuals looking to report perceived firearms violations anonymously. While these dumpster fire states claim the lines are aimed at lawbreakers, Second Amendment groups are reasonably skeptical, as they should be, because such a system can easily be abused. Let’s face it, we know that the weaponization of this service against law-abiding gun owners is exactly what they are intended for.

On Thursday, October 10, Hawaii’s Democrat Governor Josh Green announced the state’s Department of Law Enforcement had established a confidential “Gun Tip Line for people to make anonymous reports of illegal gun ownership and gun crimes,” where tipsters can either call, text or drop a dime via the DLE’s website or a downloadable app where they can submit photographs and videos to back up their report.

The governor’s office went even further during the brown shirt recruiting exercise saying, “People reporting tips are encouraged to leave detailed information including the names of those in possession of illegal guns or committing gun crimes, a location where those people may be found and a description of the guns.” Sure, what could go wrong when hiring unpaid, untrained, overzealous, anti-Second Amendment sycophants typically knowing very little about firearms to play the role of a detective, spying on and recording their neighbors?

Meanwhile, Gretchen “Lockdown” Whitmer, known for hosting the most oppressive COVID lockdowns in America while still having more deaths per capita than any neighboring Midwestern states, signed House Bill 5503, a measure passed off as an education funding bill that allocates $1 million in School Aid Funding to support an anonymous tip line for students to report firearms thought to be “improperly stored.”

The bill goes on to mandate that Michigan’s Department of Education develop materials concerning improper storage of firearms, including tip line usage, and distribute those materials to school districts across the state. The Gestapo may not pay you for your work, but you will receive free training, whether you want it or not.

As the NRA-ILA points out, language regarding the tip line was added to the bill as an amendment that was then swiftly passed by the Democrat-controlled legislature.

“The expedited pace and the silencing of opposition when the bill came up for a floor vote underscores the reality that this was a political move and another attack on gun owners,” says the NRA.

These tiplines will ultimately create a situation that will lead to wasted resources, unwarranted confrontations with law enforcement and what could amount to unconstitutional searches of homes, businesses and other private property based on vendettas and other nefarious agendas. Not only does this negatively impact the community’s relationship with authorities, but those who abuse the tip lines will undoubtedly drive wedges within communities as well, drawing lines at a time when we need to be working together to strengthen and solidify those connections.