March 8th, 2013
Blurring the lines between policing and soldiering is an increasing problem best witnessed by YouTube videos showing police officers needlessly Tasering and beating innocent civilians. Now the ACLU is beginning to dig into the transmittal of huge amounts of military hardware from the Department of Homeland Security, of all places, to local police departments around the nation.
Read more here: http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2013/03/07/a-c-l-u-has-concerns-over-military-weapons-used-by-local-police/
MY Question is this: Why and how is the US Dept. of Homeland Security dealing in military weapons and gear? America has always maintained a strong wall between the military and the police. That is clearly being dissolved. Is the DHS becoming the Big Government Big Brother we worry about? Liberty, folks, America is all about individual liberty, and these sorts of policies corrode, erode, and undermine individual liberty one small step at a time. Push back. Elect citizens to office who disagree with these sorts of policies and who will work hard to eliminate them and make them illegal.
March 8th, 2013
By Josh First
March 7, 2013
Just over a week ago, newly minted New York State Representative Didi Barrett (NY-106th) twice called police in a thinly veiled attempt to have an inquisitive citizen intimidated by Red Hook police for exercising his Constitutional right to petition the government. Nope, this is not made up, folks; it is real and it is real-time. It illustrates that the gun control debate is not about guns. It is not even about crime. It is about controlling citizens; that is its purpose and the goal of its proponents. When the police show up at your door or pull you over because someone in an official position said something about you, anything could happen.
Beginning in early January and extending into late February, Chris Stehling, a plumber from Red Hook, NY, visited Barrett’s local office several times to explain his opposition to her position on New York’s anti-gun SAFE Act, and then her recent vote in support of that law. This new law is so restrictive that even most on-duty police officers are non-compliant and potential felons. The heavily rushed and highly defective law must now be “fixed,” and it is already going through a new amendment process, facts that in Stehling’s view indicated a flawed legislative process begging a few more changes.
Stehling tells me that he was respectful and professional when he first visited Barrett’s office, requesting a meeting with her. Asked by staff what the subject was that he wished to discuss, Stehling explained his opposition to his state representative’s vote for the flawed law. Barrett was unavailable, he was told, and “Don’t call us, we will call you” was their parting response.
Several days after he left, a town detective, Tom D’Amicantonio, knocked on Stehling’s door, saying that Barrett had called the police because her office “had concerns” about him.
“I asked Tom ‘What concerns?’, says Stehling, who is a steady, jovial, and articulate guy on the phone, and on a friendly first-name basis with the small-town local police.
After a forty-minute “amicable” conversation, and taking a statement from Stehling, who wanted to see his representative face-to-face, the detective departed, and left Stehling with a feeling of now being victimized twice by Representative Barrett: Once by her careless vote for the poorly written law, and now by her attempt to persecute and intimidate him for daring to ask her about it.
Stehling called a friend, and they returned to Barrett’s office the next morning, calmly seeking both to schedule a meeting and requesting an explanation about why the detective had been called. In addition, Stehling had a friend on the phone who could hear the conversation in the office. Apparently while they were talking to a staffer, someone else in the office was on the phone, calling the police again, because when Stehling returned to his car outside and began to drive away, the town’s police sergeant, Patrick Hildenbrand, pulled him over.
“The sergeant came over to my truck, and he asked me what was going on with Representative Barrett, and we explained our experiences visiting her office, including my First Amendment right to talk to my elected officials,” says Stehling.
After talking with Stehling and taking statements from both of his friends, Sergeant Hildenbrand reportedly later called Barrett’s office, explaining that Stehling was well within his Constitutional rights to petition his elected officials, to visit their offices, and request a meeting with his representative. Is that not the role of an elected official in a representative democracy, after all? The US Constitution’s First Amendment gives citizens the right to petition their government, and to speak freely.
Eventually Stehling was granted a meeting with NY Representative Barrett at her distant Albany office, which he conveniently visited after a pro-Constitutional rights rally at the NY state capitol that same day.
“She was dismissive about our concerns, even when we presented the fact that the new law criminalizes most on-duty police officers [because of their higher capacity guns] and it punishes law-abiding citizens but not criminals,” says Stehling.
Three weeks ago I debated Shira Goodman of CeaseFirePA (http://video.witf.org/video/2335658815), a gun prohibitionist group, on a WITF live call-in TV show. Several times during the debate Shira earnestly exclaimed her avid support for Second Amendment rights, which she is working overtime to destroy. It is now a common tactic to proclaim support for something you obviously despise and undermine. And thus America spawns people like Representative Didi Barrett, the Cuomo-endorsed New York State “Assemblyperson” who believes in getting elected to office, but not in being accountable to the citizens whose consent places her there; in fact, she evidently believes in using the police to intimidate or jail her political opponents.
Gun rights advocates have long worried that their opponents were seeking domination and control of the citizenry, and not control of crime. Representative Didi Barrett’s actions just showed us that concern is valid and true. But Didi Barrett tilted her hand too soon, though, because this kind of heavy-handed response from government should be more common only after Americans have been disarmed, and not before. Those citizens on the fence about this issue can now make an even more informed choice about which way to vote. Vote for freedom, folks, not for the un-American abuse of power that motivates people like Didi Barrett.
Listen to Chris Stehling’s other interview, on Sheryl Thomas’s radio program, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sherylthomas/2013/02/28/ny-gun-owner-harassed-by-assemblywomans-office
Stay involved in the conversation at www.joshfirst.com and on our Facebook page
March 8th, 2013
US Senator Rand Paul filibustered for 13 hours until he received a written response from the White House to his request for an explanation about the Obama administration’s policy on drone strikes against American citizens on American soil.
US Attorney General Eric Holder had publicly said yes, such drone strikes would be legal, prompting an outpouring of amazement from the political left and right. Due process is, after all, a core part of an American citizen’s God-given rights. Due process would normally require a citizen to be tried by a jury and found guilty before the government could exact the death penalty against him\her, and weaponized drone bombings are not a usual method of execution, yet.
So finally the White House contradicted Eric Holder, and decided drone strikes against Americans on American soil are not allowable. The amount of time that lapsed makes you wonder what’s on their minds over there, though, because they clearly had to think it through. What seems so obvious to most Americans was not so obvious to the Obama folks.
And that’s the real story right there: What is quintessentially American is utterly alien to the Obama administration and their supporters.
March 3rd, 2013
Zero Dark Thirty takes its name from the old saw that military duty usually begins at some dark hour long before dawn, when most people are fast asleep in cozy beds.
The movie by that name contains the same message: Americans live comfortably, while brave warriors place themselves at great risk for the greater good, often without thanks or recognition.
It’s certainly a timely message, as our current president is reluctant to lead or give credit to those who do. Americans are in grave danger around the planet, and thankfully we have citizens who still believe in the greater good, even if their current political bosses do not.
Like the movie Act of Valor, Zero Dark Thirty gives a glimpse into the harsh reality of battlefields far away from daily American life, but without which our happy existence would not be possible.
A good message, a necessary movie.