FBI stops planned New Year’s Eve Los Angeles bombing by ‘anti-capitalist,’ anti-ICE terror cell

WASHINGTON — The FBI arrested five members of an “anti-capitalist, anti-government” extremist group on Friday and charged them with an alleged plot to carry out coordinated bombings in and around Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve, according to officials and a criminal complaint.

The “credible, imminent terrorist threat” to five unidentified companies’ logistics centers in Southern California came from radical members of an offshoot of the left-wing Turtle Island Liberation Front (TILF), FBI Director Kash Patel and other law enforcement officials revealed Monday.

The splinter group called themselves the Order of the Black Lotus and passed along an “eight-page, handwritten document titled ‘OPERATION MIDNIGHT SUN’” that laid out the bombing plot to a confidential FBI source, according to a criminal complaint filed Saturday in Los Angeles federal court.

Four of the suspects were collared in Lucerne Valley in the Mojave Desert, where they were captured on video attempting to test improvised explosive devices (IEDs), Los Angeles first assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli told reporters at a news conference.
The quartet — Audrey Ilene Carroll, 30; Zachary Aaron Page, 32; Dante Gaffield, 24; and Tina Lai, 41 — have been charged with conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device. A fifth unidentified suspect was arrested in New Orleans while planning a separate attack.

Carroll and Page led the group and convened a private Signal chat where they used codenames, with Carroll identified as “Asiginaak,” Page identified as “Ash Kerrigan” or “cthulu’s daughter,” Gaffield as “Nomad” and Lai as “Kickwhere.”

The group had begun assembling the “complex pipe bombs” with “homemade gunpowder” in the desert when FBI agents arrested them on Dec. 12.

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Back to the drawing board™

“Modern High Technology Strikes Again”  – Me.

Person of interest in Brown University shooting released

While Providence Police had detained a person of interest in the deadly Brown University shooting, officials noted during a Sunday night news conference that the individual would be released.

“Shortly we will be releasing the person of interest who had been detained earlier today,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said during the news conference, “Yeah, look, I think it’s fair to say that, ah, there is no basis to consider him a person of interest. So that’s why he’s being released.”

Anti-gun celebrity and his wife get theirs with a knife; by their (recovered) drug addict son.

Hollywood director Rob Reiner’s son Nick in custody following death of his parents

During a press conference on an unrelated matter held Monday, the Los Angeles Police Department brought up the deaths of the filmmaker and his wife. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell admitted the information surrounding the deaths was limited. McDonnell also confirmed Reiner’s son has been booked on suspicion of murder and is being held on $4 million bail.

 

When Seconds Counted, St. Louis Police Were Hours Away

A St. Louis woman was held at gunpoint and assaulted in her apartment for several hours this past weekend, and though a neighbor heard her cries for help and called 911, police didn’t respond until after the victim was able to get to a phone hours later.

25-year-old Miles Faris is facing charges of first-degree kidnapping, second- and third-degree domestic assault, unlawful use of a weapon, and multiple drug charges, but police have not been able to take him into custody because he fled the apartment before officers arrived on scene.

In court documents, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department acknowledged there was a call reporting a woman screaming in the apartment where the incident happened, but “due to a high level of calls that night, police were not able to respond to that call.”

The victim said he then told the woman he would kill her, her family and her friends, and told her to Facetime her mother to say goodbye. He chambered a round and held the gun to her head, reiterating that he was going to kill her, police said.

The victim recorded some of the incident on her phone, including video that showed Faris pointing the gun at her multiple times while appearing “heavily intoxicated.” Faris also said he wanted to bash the woman’s skull in, and that if she didn’t wake up in the morning, he would be the No. 1 suspect, according to charging documents.

According to a police spokesperson, police officers in the area had 27 separate calls for service between 5 and 8 p.m. last Saturday, with one of them involving shots fired. The spokesman told KSDK-TV that the original 911 call from the neighbor didn’t include any information about weapons being involved or a potentially life-threatening situation taking place, so it was essentially put on the back burner in favor of calls that were deemed more important.

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Some good, but mostly bad news

BLUF
The real question is what will the Court do with the gun and magazine ban cases in the new year? We’re getting to the point in the Court’s term that any case they decide to take up would most likely be heard next fall.

Supreme Court Turns Away Challenges to National Firearms Act

The Supreme Court didn’t grant cert to any Second Amendment cases in its orders list released on Monday, but they did keep ahold of several challenges to state-level gun and magazine bans as well as several prohibited persons cases.

The justices also denied cert to a pair of challenges to the National Firearms Act’s restrictions on short-barreled rifles, as well as the appeal of a Pennsylvania father who was hoping to revive a lawsuit against a gun maker and gun seller holding them civilly liable for the death of his son.

Robinson v. U.S. and Rush v. U.S had drawn attention from a number of Second Amendment groups including Gun Owners of America and Second Amendment Foundation, which filed amicus briefs in support of the cert petitions urging the Court to take one or both cases. The groups obviously were hoping that the Supreme Court would declare that short-barreled rifles are arms protected by the Second Amendment, but also pointed out multiple flaws in the rationale deployed by lower courts in upholding the NFA’s restrictions.

The brief filed by GOA and a number of state-level 2A groups in Robinson, for instance, noted the lower courts’ description of the NFA as a “shall issue” licensing system akin to concealed carry regimes.

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That smartphone, in fact any cell phone, in your pocket, doesn’t have to have the GPS activated for it, and thus you, to be tracked. That also applies to all these modern cars with any sort of ‘connectivity’ even if a subscription for some of the services has been paid for.
Just saying.
That’s how they tracked down this guy and also one of the ways they tracked down the murderer of the college students in Idaho 3 years ago.

Brown University shooting: What to know about person in custody

A person of interest is in custody after a gunman opened fire at Brown University over the weekend, killing at least two people and wounding nine others, officials announced.

Providence Police Department Chief Col. Oscar Perez said Sunday that the individual detained is a man in his 20s. Authorities are not currently searching for anyone else in the case.

The attack took place one day earlier at the Providence, Rhode Island, school at about 4 p.m., law enforcement said, prompting a shelter-in-place order that forced students and faculty to spend the night on campus.

Providence Mayor Brett Smiley later told reporters that of the nine people shot, one has been discharged, one remained in critical condition and the other seven victims were in stable condition.

Officials have not yet released the names of those who were killed. Smiley also said that not all of the victims’ families have been notified as of early Sunday afternoon.

Law enforcement was still reviewing surveillance footage, coordinating with prosecutors, collecting evidence and speaking to witnesses on Sunday to gather more information about the suspected shooter, Perez explained.

Here’s what we know so far about the person in custody in connection to the Brown shooting, including where he was reportedly detained:

Who is person of interest in Brown University shooting?

Police have released few details about the person of interest, aside from confirming the man is in his 20s. Authorities initially described the shooting suspect as a man who wore all black.

No charges had been announced in connection to the case as of Sunday afternoon, and Perez told reporters the person detained has not yet been named a suspect in the shooting.

“It takes time, we have to make sure we have all the right evidence to prosecute,” Perez said during an afternoon press conference.

Gov. Daniel James McKee asked the nation to pray for the victims, their families and all those involved.

“The community is suffering and in pain,” McKee said during the press conference. “We stand with you.”

Where was the person taken into custody?

The person detained was taken into custody early in the morning at a hotel in Coventry, according to an update from the FBI. Coventry is located in Kent County, about 16 miles southwest of Brown,

FBI Director Kash Patel said law enforcement used cellular data to track the person of interest to a hotel room where he was detained by US Marshals and Providence police, based off a tip from the Coverntry Police Department.

The person, local  WJAR-TV reported, was apprehended at the Hampton Inn there.

@FBIBoston established a command post to intake, develop and analyze leads, and run them to ground.

We activated the FBI’s Cellular Analysis Survey Team, to provide critical geolocation capabilities.

As a result, early this morning, FBI Boston’s Safe Streets Task Force, with assistance from the @USMarshalsHQ & the @Coventry_RI_PD, detained a person of interest in a hotel room in Coventry, RI, based off a lead by the @ProvidenceRIPD .

We have deployed local and national resources to process and reconstruct the shooting scene – providing HQ and Lab elements on scene.

We set up a digital media intake portal to ingest images and video from the public related to this incident.

And the FBI’s victim specialists are fully integrating with our partners to provide resources to victims and survivors of this horrific violence.

This FBI will continue an all out 24/7 campaign until justice is fully served.

Thanks to the men and women of the FBI and our partners for their continued teamwork. Please continue praying for the victims and their families – as well as all those at Brown University.

The good guy – who turns out be an Afghan immigrant himself -disarms the murdering terrorist, then lets him go? And then the one he let go rearmed himself and continued on?

Then- near the end of the video – an armed ‘someone’ good guy in the background behind them, has the shooters covered and he doesn’t engage either?

I’m sorry, I have no empathy and v-e-r-y little sympathy for the Australians.

The core question of the transgender debate is:
Is it more important to cater to the feelings of mentally ill men, or to keep women and girls safe while affirming reality?

Not surprised in the slightest.

Gabbard: 2,000 Afghan refugees in U.S. have ties to terrorism.

An estimated 2,000 Afghan nationals admitted to the United States following the deadly 2021 pullout of American forces from Afghanistan have ties to terrorism, according to the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard made the astonishing revelation during an interview on Fox News Friday morning, following a tense House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday, when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem highlighted national security risks to the homeland.

The Center Square previously reported that the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General released a report in January 2022 that admitted thousands of Afghan evacuees who entered the U.S. following the American military evacuation in August 2021 were not properly vetted.

“[The DoD] found that Afghan evacuees were not vetted by the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) using all DoD data prior to arriving in CONUS,” the report said.

The report also noted, during an “analytic review, NGIC personnel identified Afghans with derogatory information in the DoD ABIS database who were believed to be in the United States.”

The 2022 report affirms Gabbard’s concerns that some individuals admitted to the U.S. under the Biden administration may pose a national security risk.

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Fifth Circuit’s Suppressor Decision Could Gut Second Amendment Protections

Earlier this week a three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its third ruling in a case dealing with a Louisiana man’s possession of an unregistered suppressor. Unfortunately, the third time wasn’t the charm for George Peterson, with the panel once again upholding his conviction, as it did in its original opinion in February and its first revised opinion in August.

This time around, the panel assumed without deciding that suppressors are protected by the Second Amendment, but ruled that the National Firearms Act’s taxation and registration scheme is akin to a “shall issue” concealed carry permitting regime and is therefore presumptively constitutional.

The panel essentially agreed with the DOJ, which, under Attorney General Pam Bondi, has recognized that suppressors are protected by the Second Amendment, but still maintains that the NFA taxes and registration are constitutional. As the panel wrote in its unanimous decision:

The NFA provides that the ATF will deny a firearm-making application if the “making or possession of the firearm would place the person making the firearm in violation of law.” This is precisely the “objective and definite” licensing criterion held permissible under Bruen.

Further, we have no reason to doubt on this record that the NFA’s fingerprint, photograph, and background-check requirements are “designed to ensure only that those bearing arms in the jurisdiction are, in fact, ‘law abiding, responsible citizens.’” Peterson’s failure to make any showing as to how the requirement places an unconstitutional burden on his Second Amendment rights alone is dispositive.

It is not even clear he could claim that this requirement posed an unconstitutional burden as applied to him given his explanation that he failed to register because he “forgot” to do so. Finally, the NFA enforces its objective shall-issue licensing requirement through prohibiting suppressor possession by unlicensed persons, as did several of the “shall-issue” licensing regimes that Bruen cited approvingly.

The Fifth Circuit panel avoided any debate on the constitutionality of the $200 tax imposed by the NFA (something the DOJ has described as a “modest burden” on our Second Amendment rights) by declaring that, since Peterson brought an as-applied challenge and he never attempted to pay the $200 tax, the question is not germane to his case.

While the panel left open the possibility that other as-applied challenges to the NFA could be successful, the judges were pretty adamant that the NFA and its requirements are no different than a “shall issue” system for issuing concealed carry licenses. And since the Supreme Court hasn’t said anything about various arms enjoying different levels of protection under the Second Amendment, any restriction imposed on the purchase and possession of suppressors could be imposed on commonly-owned handguns, rifles, and shotguns as well… at least in the states where the Fifth Circuit has jurisdiction.

Those states are Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, so I’m not particularly worried about any of them suddenly deciding to apply NFA language to semi-automatic handguns or AR-15s. If the Fifth Circuit’s logic is adopted by other appellate courts, though, it’s not difficult to imagine anti-gun lawmakers in blue states doing just that. We’re already seeing a number of Democrat-controlled states push for permit-to-purchase laws, so adding additional taxes and registration requirements to those statutes wouldn’t be difficult.

The DOJ has been criticized by 2A groups like Gun Owners of America and Firearms Policy Coalition for continuing to defend the constitutionality of the NFA. That is a legitimate concern, and the fact that DOJ is also acknowledging that at least some NFA items are protected by the Second Amendment could also wreak havoc on our 2A rights in statehouses and courtrooms across the country.

As I said, SCOTUS has never suggested that the Second Amendment has tiers of protection for various arms. So when the DOJ says that a $200 tax on suppressors is only a “modest” and constitutionally permissible burden on our right to keep and bear arms, anti-gun politicians (and jurists) can use that to argue that a $200 tax on so-called assault weapons, semi-automatic handguns, or even all firearms is equally compliant with the Second Amendment.

I think the Fifth Circuit panel took some care not to give anti-2A politicians any legal ammunition to that effect, but I’m afraid they’ve opened up a Pandora’s Box by stating that the NFA’s restrictions are no different than a “shall issue” system for concealed carry. Let’s hope that an en banc panel of the Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court close the lid on this “logic” before the gun control lobby uses it as a cudgel to attack our 2A rights.

This is the easily discredited (as all Marxist ideas)”Labor Theory of Value”
Robert Heinlein illuminated this in Starship Troopers:

“Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie,    value zero.

By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess,    value zero.

Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet.

These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value — the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives — and to illustrate the truth of the common-sense definition as measured in terms of use.

 ASU professor calls traditional grading racist, suggests ‘labor-based grading’ instead

Arizona State University professor Asao Inoue recently ranted about “White language supremacy in writing classrooms,” during which he called for abolishing traditional grading in favor of “labor-based grading.”

The latter method scores assignments based on the amount of effort students put towards in the work, devaluing quality and accuracy in the grading.

During Nov. 5 lecture at the University of Tennessee titled “The Possibilities of Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies”, Inoue claimed that “White language supremacy in writing classrooms is due to the uneven and diverse linguistic legacies that everyone inherits, and the racialized white discourses that are used as standards, which give privilege to those students who embody those habits of white language already”.

In order to rid the classroom of the “Habits of White Language”, Inoue advocated for grading to be based on the time spent on assignments, a move he claims “structurally changes everyone’s relationship to dominant standards of English that come from elite, masculine, heteronormative, ableist, white racial groups of speakers,” The College Fix reported.

Inoue paused several times throughout the speech, according to The College Fix, to allow the audience to practice being “anti-racist” by observing themselves “participating in racism, engaging in white fragility, in white rage, or in white language supremacy”.

Inoue has spent a considerable amount of time promoting his grading philosophy. As Campus Reform reported in March, he wrote a 358 page book titled Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom.

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