Category → Government Of the People…
PA landowners now enjoy actual privacy rights
Bravo, kudos, and thanks to the unanimous Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Pennsylvania landowners now enjoy the actual verbatim privacy rights that both the US Constitution (Fourth Amendment) and the PA State Constitution (Article 1, Section 8) say we have.
This right to basic privacy has been a long time in coming, and like all individual rights, it was heavily, aggressively, shamefully resisted by actual Americans in government positions.
For a very long time, the idea of “Open Fields” ruled the way that wildlife enforcement officers accessed private property here in PA. Here in PA, PA Game Commission and PA Fish & Boat Commission officers would just walk right onto and deeply into a private property, regardless of its posted signs, regardless of the landowner’s demand that the officers leave, regardless of whether or not the officers had any probable cause or reasonable suspicion to be on the private property. Like kings, they would simply stride right up to within talking distance of a home, and start poking around.
You might not even hunt, or be a licensed hunter, or fish, and yet, these government agents just decided to watch you…
PGC and PFBC said this was both justified by law (it kind of was allowed by a somewhat related court ruling from the Prohibition Era regarding bootlegging moonshine), and necessary because of the unique challenges facing wildlife managers. Because PA has a strong anti-baiting law and culture among law-abiding hunters, it has been customary for Game Wardens to creep around private properties, looking for bait piles, salt blocks, some wildlife crime, etc. Without a search warrant.
But not all Game Wardens have been looking for illegal bait or signs of poached deer way out in our woods. They have also pretty brazenly walked right around people’s private homes way the hell out in the middle of large private properties, apparently at the request of the PA State Police, who were already limited to search warrants.
They have also surreptitiously hidden spy cameras on these private properties. In places where all Americans presume they can fully enjoy their rights to privacy without being interrupted or disrupted or alarmed by the sudden appearance of a man with a gun. Without “the king” surveilling them, without any reason other than simply wanting to.
That the PGC long adamantly defended this un-American behavior understandably rankled people, to the point where some sued the PGC over what was truly egregious behavior by people who should know better. And yesterday, they won; we all won. A unanimous PA Supreme Court held that our individual right to privacy is greater than the PGC’s desire (not its proven need) to simply walk around and see what Americans are doing within the privacy of their own properties.
Yes, managing wildlife is difficult. Yes, trying to outwit lawbreakers who bait deer and bear is hard. But, Americans’ constitutional rights supersede all other considerations.
And it is the role of government to protect our rights for us, not to officially chip away at them, in the name of government efficiency. People in government know this, and they should conduct themselves accordingly. But as you and I have seen so, so many times throughout our careers, once people get some power, especially the power to rule over others, they really do not want to let go of it. Americans are supposed to have government employees who are immune to this draw, but guess what, we don’t. Human nature has not changed.
As of today, government officials may not simply walk onto your property or mine, without a search warrant or without exigent circumstances, such as chasing an armed bad guy who happens to take refuge on your property, or without actually seeing a bait pile while on an adjoining property.
The result of this freedom is that poachers are going to poach more wildlife, no question about it. But that is the price of individual freedom and limited government. If the role and purpose of government was to be always efficient and always effective, we Americans would have no rights, and our government would be totalitarian. America is not that kind of place.
Better that some bad dude goes free than all of us suffer the indignity and danger of armed government agents just walking around our private properties, watching us…
Thank you to the Institute for Justice, which has done yeoman’s work for all of us Americans who cherish our freedoms. And thank you to the hearty Pennsylvanians who chose to stand and fight back against official injustice, like our predecessors did 250 years ago.
I-81, the 1950s relic
While making an epic deep-South deep-dive last week, I had the interesting experience of driving on a great long stretch of the I-81 interstate. Holy Moses. I have returned alive and in one piece to report back on this journey-by-traffic, and to ask a basic government policy question.
Originally started in 1957 to connect northeastern Pennsylvania to Upstate New York and southern Canada, for moose hunters, one presumes, today I-81 connects Upstate New York/ Canada with Tennessee, and in doing so it transverses New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, and penetrates deeply into Tennessee, where I-81 ends and I-40 then seamlessly takes up the west-ward flow of vehicles and young men.
In its day, it seems that much of our 1950s built infrastructure was considered grand, even sometimes grandiose. Sure, back then, the idea of paving hundreds and hundreds of miles of highway with bazillions of tons of mined quarry aggregate and petroleum tar probably seemed an achievement just short of landing on the moon. And indeed, building modern highways is still a real achievement of science and technology, as well as physical manpower.
After all, a road is nothing more than liquid rock, which was mined, picked, blasted, bulldozed, lifted, trucked, crushed, and re-constituted in heated form with tar that, when it all settles and dries, provides a comfortable high speed driving surface. It is nothing less than a miracle to remove millions of tons of rock from the ground, process it, then put it back on top of the ground so that humans can easily and smoothly travel.
Today, Americans take good roads, smooth roads, for granted. Probably like everything else in our lives, to be honest. But the harsh truth is that our road system is aging, and I-81 is a good example of both the old combination of muscle, modern science, and good government, in short a real miracle, meeting up with the harsh reality of fulfilling our dreams by failing to maintain the big investments of yesteryear.
What did not follow in I-81’s wake, in either functional or miraculous form, was the simple funding necessary to operate and maintain this and all of the other incredible roads that make up our interstate system.
The I-81 experience today of driving at modern posted speeds of 60-70 miles per hour, on a crumbling two-lane roadway, that is chock full of bumper-to-bumper traffic, sucks mightily. Such a wild experience begs the question: Why the hell is 2026-level traffic expected to safely transit from Canada to Tennessee on a crowded two-track?
Why the hell is I-81 almost entirely two lanes in each direction, for hundreds and hundreds of miles, with only a few three-lane passing zones on steep hills thrown in helter skelter? It is a study in modern combat driving. It is a study in strange political choices, funding priorities.
The same can be said for the two-lane I-78, which brings New Yorkers and New Jerseyites westward into Pennsylvania, where, after fleeing their fouled nests back east, they settle here and begin voting for the same damned failed policies and ideologies that fouled their nests and drove them out in the first place.
Come to think of it, keep I-78 at two lanes.
And now come to think of it, while remembering a couple of the conversations I had with locals in the middle of rural southern Tennessee farmland on the Mississippi border, maybe this is the reason why I-81 remains a two-track the entire damned way: Keeping the damned Yankees out!
And with that in mind, now I understand: The narrow road and the local Southern attitude are both relics of the 1950s. Yep, now it all makes sense.
I-81 in both directions is packed with high speed traffic
Not to be confused with Harrisburg, PA, but it happens anyhow
First and only Stars-and-Bars I saw the whole trip, and this in central VA. None in rural TN, where I saw they dominated the American flag forty years ago.
Southern humor. Works for me
Said living former PA politician texted back “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Different guy, same name.
Canada’s forest fires influenced life on Southern American roads
“Yankees”… talk about a 1950s Southern attitude…
On the 250th anniversary of America, this sign held special meaning to me
Southern humor. Note the “Dukes” sign
Southern rural TN is spectacularly beautiful
Foggy Ireland
Ten years ago several young Syrian toughs confronted me on a boat in Mallaig, Scotland. Freshly imported into Scotland as supposed victims, they knew that they were untouchable, and they pushed everyone around, acting like they owned the boat. It irked the American crap out of me and I stood my ground. Been a while since I had a good donnybrook, which is always good for a man’s vasculature, and I squared off.
The captain walked over to me and quietly confided “Ya, ya kin take ’em, and we will all cheer you for it, but the coppers will lock you up and ship ya home, no matter who started it.”
So I drank that bucket of Syrian sh*t and enjoyed the quiet ride across the loch and to my hunt for red stag.
Not long after, Scotland had a Syrian prime minister who said wildly racist crap about the native, indigenous white Scots people, and he derided both Protestant and Catholic religion. The Scots had imported their own invading force, intent on destroying Scotland from within. No “Bravehearts” these.
A couple years later I toured the spectacular Worcestshire Church in Barmouth, Wales, (Bugs Bunny forever destroyed my ability to properly say or spell Worcestshire) and commented to a local man how sadly empty and un-used it appeared. Yes, he confirmed, the church sits neatly cared for and tidy, but the Welsh government acts to dissuade the Welsh people from attending church.
The following year, the government of Wales began removing public statues of white people, because white people statues somehow represent racism, they said, because apparently white people are inherently racist, they said. Or something nuts like that, they said. Whatever their nutty cause (imagine removing statues of black people because of their skin color…it is nuts), the Welsh government was making culture war on its own people.
England’s government has obviously gone to war against its own native people, importing millions of illegal, unvetted, unknown criminals from culturally opposing places, allowing them to run violent rampages daily against the native, indigenous people, and then arrests and harasses the victims of said rampages. Whether I am willing to submit myself again to this craziness, I doubt that I will even be allowed into England as a tourist at present. Thought crimes like those committed on this blog are officially deemed much more serious offenses than knifing people, and the British government is quite effective at tracking the different opinions held by others.
So one supposes that Ireland just had to join this war against native Europeans, and against its own native Gaelic speaking indigenous people, and so the Irish government began doing all the same things as the aforementioned “UK” member states. A stroll through Dublin a few years ago revealed more tattooed Pakistani men than native Irish on the streets, more Arabic spoken than English, or Gaelic, more new mosques than churches. As in Wales, the beautiful old churches sit empty. Irish coppers (Gardia) will indeed jail an Irish guy for stopping racial harassment and sexual violence by Pakistani men, while looking away at the Pakistanis’ crimes.
The official Irish Government war against Irish culture and people is well on its way. Despite countless generations of Irish fighting and dying to maintain their independence from Romans, Vikings, Angles, Saxons, Victorian England, modern British…the list of invaders and occupiers is long…now, Ireland is embarked on a foggy headed policy of self-erasure.
Conspiracy mongers dwell heavily on the unnatural coincidence of all of Western Civilization suddently and simultaneously committing “Harry Kary,” or ritual seppukku suicide. I do concur that it is odd as hell. But it is not some shadowy, secret handshake cabal causing this.
Rather, this “suicidal empathy” immigration policy is the inevitable result of too much material success putting too many people to sleep. Way way too many people in France, Germany, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and America have too much, and thus take way too much for granted, and have too many creature comforts and food and ease of living, to realize that they cannot drain their own collective bank account for the benefit of myriad total strangers, without losing it all themselves.
The old adage about soft times making soft men, resulting in hard times, which then make hard men, tough men, making tough and sometimes brutal decisions about life and death, seems to be playing out here. I observe the America’s young socialist brats have no idea just how hard and tough the old Americans like me can be, will be, need be.
An Irish song comes to mind about the likely future, as told by the Irish past:
As down the glen one Easter morn to a city fair rode I
Their Armed lines of marching men in squadrons passed me by
No pipes did hum, no battle drum did sound its dread tattoo
But the Angelus Bell o’er the Liffey’s swell rang out through the foggy dew
Right proudly high over Dublin Town they hung out the flag of war
‘Twas better to die ‘neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud-El-Bar
And from the plains of Royal Meath strong men came hurrying through
While Britannia’s Huns, with their long range guns sailed in through the foggy dew
Oh the night fell black, and the rifles’ crack made perfidious Albion reel
In the leaden rain, seven tongues of flame did shine o’er the lines of steel
By each shining blade a prayer was said, that to Ireland her sons be true
But when morning broke, still the war flag shook out its folds in the foggy dew
‘Twas England bade our Wild Geese go, that “small nations might be free”
But their lonely graves are by Suvla’s waves on the fringe of the great North Sea
Oh, had they died by Pearse’s side or fought with Cathal Brugha
Their graves we will keep where the Fenians sleep, ‘neath the shroud of the foggy dew
Oh the bravest fell, and the Requiem bell rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide in the spring time of the year
While the world did gaze, in deep amaze, at those fearless men, but few,
Who bore the fight that the freedom’s light might shine through the foggy dew
As back through the glen I rode again and my heart with grief was sore
For I parted then with valiant men whom I never shall see more
But to and fro in my dreams I go and I kneel and pray for you,
For slavery fled, O glorious dead, When you fell in the foggy dew…
Screenshot
J6 bodycam footage is available!
If you are at all curious about what really happened on January 6th, 2021, in Washington, DC, then you should be interested to see the thousands of hours of various DC Metro Police Dept. bodycam footage that is now available.
I was at J6, out in front of the US Capitol, peacefully protesting. And yet a lot of things happened that day, at that location, that I had no idea about. I know what I experienced, and saw, which was a lot. But when I see the bodycam footage, a whole new world opened up. I see some protestors acting like a-holes towards the police, as well as protestors doing what they could to defuse and de-escalate the confrontations.
It is telling that the US House J6 committee burned their files when they completed their false dog and pony show against President Trump and against us patriots. They destroyed their own “evidence” because they did not want anyone else to see what a sham that “evidence” was, and the falseness of the case they brought against President Trump.
It is telling that the DC Metro Police fought tooth and nail to keep the public from being able to see this unedited video footage. Almost like this police force is trying to hide things…
Well, now we get to see a lot of different angles of what actually happened on January 6th, ground level. I have watched a lot of it, and most of it is pretty boring. But here and their are important scenes that shed light on what actually happened. Some of it I can recall watching from down in front, looking up.
Thanks to Judicial Watch, you can see the footage here.
Happy USA 250th at National Mall big success
Spending two days in the DC-area 102 degree summer heat is not usually something I choose to do, but I gladly did it this week. And I am here to report back two facts: 1) The USA 250th Birthday National State Fair Semiquincentennial Celebration on the National Mall was a big success, and 2) Everyone I met there at the National Mall, and then yesterday at Mount Vernon, was a conservative patriot. This I consider to be not a success, but a failure by the political Left in America. More on this in a moment.
First, let me report on the USA 250th Birthday National State Fair Semiquincentennial Celebration on the National Mall. It was a lot of fun and I am glad I went. They had an active rodeo ring and horse riding competition, with hundreds of active fans cheering from around the fence at any given time. They had a huge Ferris wheel, which we rode in, and got a unique view from and of the DC skyline. There was a long line to get onto this ride at all times, and the two young ladies we rode up with said it was their second or third trip on it.
The FIFA or Fifi or FAFO whatever whatever huge screen soccer watching area was jam packed with thousands of fans, most of whom wore American flag shirts, pants, hats, or draped a flag over their shoulders. America was playing Bosnia when I was there, and the fans were cheering lustily. The line to get in went around the block.
The empty part of the National Mall that people try to show as evidence that this event is not popular is empty because there is nothing happening there. The state booths and the activities are almost all down-the-way, or back the other way. Everywhere else I went there were lots of Americans showing lots of interest in the events and music and exhibits etc etc. The live music was constant, fascinating, and performed by really talented people. No matter where we went, live music was being played.
The Princess of Patience was able to find one frozen ice cream treat out of all the food being marketed. And as far as I could see, the food vendors were struggling to keep up with the constant demand. A lot of food booths had staff promising that the next food delivery was due at any moment, and the hot, sweaty visitors were lined up and waiting. Gotta say, “artichoke dip-stuffed jumbo pretzel” and “bacon-and-cheese stuffed jumbo pretzel” sounds like a lot of work to make, cook, and then deliver ready to serve.
How about selling just ye olde regular big salty soft pretzel, with lots of yellow mustard? Strangely, I looked and never saw just regular old burgers and hotdogs being offered. The food was all creative and fancy, semi-gourmet. That would put a kink in your cowgirl rope, if you were trying to serve up fresh food to a constant stream of hungry fair-goers.
The state booths were fascinating and informative. I stopped in at Guam and had a long, fascinating talk with the friendly reps there, both of them Native, one of whom helped the Princess of Patience charge her phone. I learned about the 80-year American military presence on Guam (still a necessity, due to Chinese imperialism in the Pacific Ocean), and how the Natives are developing their own identity and tourist trade. Similar to Hawaii.
Pennsylvania’s booth seems clouded in controversy, but you would not know that when visiting it. PA’s booth was the best of all that I visited, because it had so much interesting information, and because the fascinating exhibits linked our glorious history to our excellent present. Lots of framed historic American and Pennsylvania flags, antiques, a life-size copy of the Liberty Bell… who the heck scrambled hard at the last second to put all of that together into a coherent exhibit? Thank you very much to US senators John Fetterman (D) and Dave McCormick (R), and to the many corporate sponsors who under-wrote the costs.
It is disappointing that my own governor, Josh Shapiro, did not participate. This big event, our nation’s 250th, should be a bi-partisan celebration. A person’s hate for someone in politics should not outweigh your patriotism for America or your pride in the state you represent. It is tough not to see this as a childish tantrum, but then again, I have yet to have any Democrat friend or family member explain this phenomenon to me without them going immediately from zero to a hundred on the Angry Meter. And it is hard not to see that as a childish tantrum.
Support for America should not be partisan, or even politically questionable. Especially on our 250th birthday.
Which brings us back to the attendees. What on earth is happening in America that people’s personal hatred of a president is so corrosive that they will vandalize national monuments that he has had cleaned up, and that they will boycott a fun, informative, unifying “national state fair” on the National Mall, on America’s 250th birthday?
Every single person I met and chatted with (dozens) there at the National Mall was a conservative patriot. The attendees had a great pride in celebrating America’s 250th Birthday, and made real showings of that pride in their choice of clothing, hats, and words of happy encouragement with one another. That there was no one Leftist (who I saw) just there out of love for America or pride in America says a lot of bad stuff about the political Left in America.
Ditto for yesterday’s day spent at Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. The place was LOADED with American tourists, Boy Scout groups, all wearing patriotic colors and clothing. We all stood in lines to see just about anything, and despite the 102* blazing heat, everyone was just as friendly, happy, and good natured as the audience had been the day before at the National Mall. How refreshing.
Mount Vernon has incredible updated displays and exhibits, with a significant emphasis on the roles and daily lives of African slaves there, and presumably also across the South, until 1866, when the Republicans took away the Democrats’ slaves.
The George Washington Grist Mill and Distillery was closed, I guess due to the high heat, but come on, people. On July 4th week? On the week of America’s 250th birthday? Something there stank of sabotage….NPS staff who cannot bring themselves to work for a president they disagree with. That was not professional behavior or being devoted to America, if not to the man who temporarily runs it.
I fear for an America that is once again divided into halves. One half, my half, is proud of America, happy to be an American, will work with anyone to advance our great nation forward. The other half (or third) is angry about America, at war with America as we were founded, constantly faulting America, trying to set us back, trying to subvert us, and is actively boycotting our great nation’s 250th birthday celebration.
One guy I spoke with on a train was headed out of DC for the weekend. He is a Democrat lobbyist, an attorney, wearing a fabulous Swiss watch, and more or less said that DC was being inundated with knuckle dragging backwoods types, people like me, I guess, for the 250th celebration, and he had to get out of Dodge in order to enjoy the holiday weekend.
It is curious to me that the political left cannot enjoy sharing America with others. Either the political Left has absolute and totalitarian control of America, or they are miserable boycotters.
Kind of like 1860, a LOT like 1860….which America lived through, and came through stronger, after everything got sorted out.
On the other hand, I and the millions of Americans like me wish you a Happy Independence Day and a Happy 250th Birthday, America!
I took all of the photos below. Any reproduction requires attribution, please.
President George Washington’s face, made from a clay mask while he was alive. In 1776 he lead America to freedom
George Washington’s grist mill and distillery, which made him more money than anything else he did. Washington made rye whisky, which is now coming back into vogue, and which I can occasionally enjoy
General George Washington crossing the Delaware River imposed on the Washington Monument on the National Mall
The Washington Monument, the National State Fair Ferris wheel, and the “Arc d’Trump”
The Arc d’Trump, the big Ferris wheel, and the Washington Monument at dusk, a once-in-several lifetimes view. Smithsonian Institution on the left
Washington Monument lit up in celebration of America’s 250th birthday, with a temporary “national state fair” building in front
American soccer player Malik on the JumboTron on the National Mall, with the US Capitol in the background. Pretty unique view
Earliest known depiction of Uncle Sam, on an 1876 Centennial celebration flag, welcoming “all nations.” Legally, not as an invasion force
My view from the Ferris wheel, looking at the so-named “Arc d’Trump” and the US Capitol in the distance. The soccer game JumboTron is visible in the distance.
People from around America inscribed their best wishes for America’s 250th Birthday
Your faithful author and the Princess of Patience
Two friendly all-American federal police provided me with a grand entrance onto the National Mall
Yours truly, visiting the Truth booth. Truth Social is the official voice of President Trump, because former Twitter couldn’t stand the truth
So-called “Arc d’Trump” has great symbolism, especially with the Ferris wheel and the Washington Monument in the background
Pennsylvania’s booth had the most amazing exhibits, including this old flag from my home turf
Copy of the Liberty Bell at the PA booth
Why isn’t PA in the National Fair in DC?
Came as news to me that there even was a national state fair. Being held on the National Mall, in Washington, DC. Cotton candy, rides, Ferris Wheels, fried foods guaranteed to jump start your heart and then clog it, stuffed teddy bear prizes for your sweetheart, strong man competitions, rope-pulling contests, the usual fun stuff seen at most county and state fairs around America for the past 100 years or more.
Either I do not spend much time online, or the marketers for this big event were not aggressive about it. I just knew nothing about it, read nothing about it, heard nothing about it, had seen nothing about it until a week ago, when it was a couple days away from opening.
Turns out that this “National State Fair” is really big time. Almost a World’s Fair in some ways, with new technology and products being debuted. Pretty darned cool. It runs for a month, and covers America’s 250th birthday celebration on July 4th Independence Day. We are told the fireworks “will be like nothing you have ever seen, that Washington has ever seen.”
Yeah, OK, but is there a place and a role for one of my black powder cannons? Those things really go BOOM.
And so it came as a shock to see recent follow-up articles about how my home state of Pennsylvania is not (or was not) participating in this National State Fair on the National Mall in DC. Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, not participating in America’s 250th birthday celebration in Washington? Really?
Pennsylvania is called the Keystone State for some good reasons, some historic reasons. We were the keystone colony and then state that held together the northeastern and southern colonies and then states. Home of the Declaration of Independence. Pennsylvania’s natural resources literally built the America you experience today. Our own coal fueled the mills in Steelton and Pittsburgh that smelted our own iron ore into steel, that in turn became the railroad tracks laid on Pennsylvania oak railroad ties (of which I have sawed up many on my own sawmill).
The state of Wyoming is not some western name. It is an eastern name, from the Delaware Indian word for “great grassy plains.” The state of Wyoming is named after the Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania, because it was the eastern railroads built entirely of Pennsylvania materials that deposited European settlers out on the Wyoming plains (after the Indians had been forced onto reservations). I do not know what the various Indian tribes called what is today Wyoming. But I do know that Pennsylvania had a big hand in making it so.
Pennsylvania coal, iron, and old growth hardwood timber drove the Industrial Revolution in America. Forty minutes due east of Harrisburg is the village of Cornwall, in Lebanon County. An enormous pit there is now filled with water, but it used to be filled with men mining heavy iron ore from the ground. In 1776, those pits were opened to produce the iron to make the cannons that Revolutionary War general George Washington needed to face off against the most hardcore British military, with much of the subsequent cannon blasting and men bleeding happening on Pennsylvania soil (and again at Gettysburg in the Civil War…hmmmmm… this Keystone State thing just keeps raising its head).
I could go on and on about Pennsylvania history in the founding and development of America, but you should get the point here. Pennsylvania got the nickname “Keystone State” for a lot of good reasons, worthy reasons, hard-won reasons.
So, Pennsylvania, having played such a huge role in the founding and early development of America, should naturally be well represented in America’s 250th birthday celebration in Washington, DC, right? Right? RIGHT?
Ummmm, nope. PA governor Josh Shapiro very recently stated to the press that his administration was unable to locate any PA businesses who wanted to participate in the National State Fair, or who could afford to participate in it.
Apparently, I was not alone in learning this new information, as both of our US senators, John Fetterman and Dave McCormick, have in the past 72 hours leapt to action, together, to find both interested businesses and the private funding to get them situated at the National State Fair.
Their bi-partisan action to save the day for Pennsylvania on the national stage is news in and of itself, because just finding a Democrat who wants to be caught dead anywhere near a Republican, much less work with one towards some common shared goal, like, say, a National State Fair in Washington, DC, is harder than raising Lazarus from the grave.
So bravo! to senators McCormick and Fetterman, who say that they have received an outpouring of interest from all of the associated and related and even distantly related associations, groups, and individuals and businesses. PA -based manufacturers and inventors are especially keen to showcase their wares at the event, and have now publicly said so.
Which brings me back to the lurking elephant in the room (it is more of a big donkey than an elephant): Why is Governor Shapiro not out in front of this, leading the charge down to the National Mall? Why did he just kind of low-T diss this event and downplay it, as if it is no big deal for PA to be AWOL on something so important as the national celebration of America’s 250th birthday?
Does Governor Shapiro really, truly, sadly suffer from an affliction of TDS so terribly fatal that he became grossly partisan and petty about something so important?
What a big missed opportunity this is for a man who has represented himself as a political centrist, a uniter and not a divider. Governor Shapiro has aspirations of being re-elected this Fall, and of possibly running for President of America in 2028. As a former Democrat myself, I find myself shaking meself’s old head, once again, at the sad turn the Democrat Party has not just taken once or twice, but which now continues to take even farther off and over a steep cliff.
That someone of Governor Shapiro’s caliber is sulking and boycotting America’s national 250th birthday celebration is a baaaaaad sign. Bad for our body politic and bad for Governor Shapiro’s larger political aspirations.
Past PA governor Ed Rendell was as partisan a politician as you could find anywhere. Rendell was a huge and tireless champion for the Democrat Party. And yet, Rendell also took every opportunity to work cooperatively with his political opponents when those opportunities were given. Rendell understood that it is better to bask in the spotlight of national appreciation with political opponents, than it is to sulk alone in some partisan silo, holding one’s ball close to the body and vowing to never play with those kids ever again. That behavior is bad for everyone.
Pennsylvania’s Governor Shapiro likely has better things to do than read this blog, but if he does, I would (and do) ask that he hightail it down to the National Mall, and share the spotlight with the two US senators from Pennsylvania, McCormick (R) and Fetterman (D).
Promoting Pennsylvania is Job #1 for elected officials from Pennsylvania, and doing that with a smile on one’s face makes everyone involved look like emotionally healthy adults. And it makes all Americans feel like there are still some sane, normal people involved in retail politics. People we can look to for leadership. People who care about all of America, and not just about their own little slice of the electorate, off in some corner, away from everyone else American.
Now, please excuse me while I go hang my Happy 250th America flag on my front porch.
Give appeasement a chance
Yes, the “Iran Deal” is appeasement of a dangerous American enemy. Yes, it looks like disgraced British prime minister Neville Chamberlain has arisen from the dead, and declared “Peace in our time” with Iran.
(Chamberlain traveled to Germany three times in 1938 to meet with Adolf Hitler, who pinky- promised him that Germany had no intention of invading more of Czechoslovakia, or any of Poland, or France, or England or or or… and then Germany invaded all of those places, and more, and proved how foolish it is to believe the promises of totalitarian homicidal maniacs like Adolf Hitler or the Iranian mullahs)
Yes, American administrations have rightly said for at least fifty years “We do not negotiate with terrorists.” And what is the “Iran Deal” but direct negotiation, and direct bilateral signatures by the American president, no less, which fully legitimizes the terrorists. This tends to undermine our own credibility in the long run, with terrorists and their victims alike.
Yes, setting “red line” one after another, only to run out of red pens and out of buckets of red paint to draw any more red lines, because Iran had already crossed all of them, and then not holding Iran accountable for crossing them, sends the wrong message. It tells Iran that no matter what, they can probably get away with murder, if they call it something else.
Yes, throwing our allies under the bus (Israel, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait) when they no longer suit our superficial goal of creating the impression of a “peace deal” is really bad form. And then criticizing Israel for defending its citizens against cross-border rocket fire, because self-defense might mess up the “peace deal,” puts the self-defender in the hot seat, and Iran, the aggressor, in the driver’s seat. This is just bad chess.
One of my greatest concerns is that JD Vance, the Iran deal’s greatest salesman, is so un-likable and abrasive and arrogant, that as the the de facto nominee in 2028, he will cost us the presidency. I 1000% want a Republican president to win the 2028 election, and more and more it looks like Marco Rubio is the one to do it. JD Vance has a sour personality, he just radiates hostile disdain for anyone who disagrees with him, and I do not believe enough Americans will vote for him to make him president. This is perhaps my biggest issue with the “Iran deal”: The wrong guy is trying to sell it.
We can go on and on here, and critique the “Iran deal” line by line, idea by idea, action by action. But, we need to give appeasement a chance.
No, the Iran deal” is not peace by any definition, and it comes with a lot of warnings to Iran, and promises of more bombings if Iran does anything wrong. Yes, it is open appeasement, and no, Iran is unlikely to stick to its end of the deal. However, consider the short-term benefits:
a) Gasoline prices dropped immediately, b) oil markets began leveling out immediately, c) Republicans have less of a likelihood of carrying the millstone of high fuel prices and a less-than-perfect economy around their necks as they enter the mid-term election season, which culminates this November. If the Republicans can survive this election cycle, and maintain control of the US House and the US Senate, then President Trump is not a lame duck for 2027 and 2028, but rather a jet-fueled, super-charged, hypersonic vehicle for even more much needed change.
And if Iran does in fact go back to its old terrorist ways, then Daddy Trump will have no problem reminding them who carries the belt.
So, yes, yes, I know, people are unhappy with the “Iran deal,” but let us give it a chance to bear fruit, if not for years, then at least for the next few months.
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday to President Trump (whose birthday coincides with that of one of my kids)!
Best president of my lifetime, best president since Reagan, and arguably much longer. Yes, President Trump’s strong personality rankles people’s sensibilities, but so did “TR” Theodore Roosevelt. To get great things done often requires great force of personality.
There are certain things I wish President Trump would do, like flat out ignore over-reaching courts, whose overtly politicized holdings on subjects like military justice, White House operations, and other executive branch prerogatives, are lightyears outside the judicial branch’s jurisdiction. The courts are a co-equal branch with the presidency and executive branch; not superior, stronger, or more authoritative.
There are certain things I wish President Trump would not do, like create a forced “deal” with Iran that no one buys, no one expects to last, much less work. Yeah, we understand the president feels the need to try something different than acquiescence or total war… but, this is not likely to bear fruit.
Nonetheless, I appreciate President Trump’s patriotic passion for a free America and prosperous Americans. No one else like him, which scares me. What will happen to America when this great protector is no longer in office?
Screenshot
What the new J6 weaponization fund means, to me
Two parts to this blog entry. First part is what the new January 6th (J6) weaponization fund for reimbursing victims of the weaponized Biden DOJ means to me. Second part is Roger Stone’s outstanding essay about this fund and its larger context, its background.
Part 1: What the new “Anti-Weaponization Fund” means to me.
While I am not one to tout my victim status, as if I have much in any case, the new reimbursement fund for J6 victims means something concrete to me. It means precisely $3,000, the amount I was unfairly forced to spend to have a competent attorney present when two FBI agents “interviewed” me about J6, several years ago.
Yes, I was at the January 6th, 2021 mostly peaceful protest out in front of the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Like a million other fed-up American citizens that day, I stood exactly where us peaceful protestors were supposed to stand that day: Out in front and around the sides of the building.
I did not break anything.
I did not hurt anyone or attack anyone.
I did not go inside the US Capitol, nor try.
All I did was peacefully stand out in front of the barricades, in the approved area, sing our National Anthem, sing God Bless America, chant “USA! USA! USA!,” and watch in horrified disgust as uniformed police officers illegally beat, pepper sprayed, gassed, bombed, and shot with rubber bullets myself and the peaceful protestors all around me.
I watched a police officer wearing black tactical gear walk up and down the barricades, leaning over them and clubbing peaceful protestors in the face, head, hands, shoulders, and arms with his baton. These American citizens had done nothing illegal or wrong or threatening. They were just standing there. The instigation and violence was all with the police.
I watched a handsome young man in a business suit, carrying an American flag and standing at the barricade, get shot point-blank in the face with a police-only explosive flash-bang grenade. His cleanshaven face was blasted white, and blood ran out of his eyes, nose, and mouth. He staggered backwards, unable to see, and then members of the crowd helped move him back, away from the ultra-violent police officers.
I watched dozens of events like this, got gassed several times and shot dozens of times with rubber bullets, before my friends and I called it quits and walked to where our chartered bus was waiting at Union Station. We rode home to Pennsylvania in mostly stunned silence. The raw and lawless evil we had just experienced out in front of the US Capitol was precisely the opposite of what is supposed to happen in our constitutional republic. We citizens are supposed to be able to peacefully assemble and petition the government with our grievances.
Instead, we were abused, beaten, hurt, antagonized by the very people paid to actually protect us. It was a shocking experience, which I wrote about the day after here on this blog.
And then a year and a half later, two FBI agents showed up at my home. One very butch lady named Melissa, and a forties-aged guy named Patrick Armor. I was not home, so Agent Armor engaged with my wife and two kids at home at the time. Yes, he said, they really wanted to talk with me. No, I had done nothing wrong on January 6th, but they really wanted to talk with me about things I may have seen.
My son asked Agent Armor if I had to contact him, and what would happen if I just ignored them.
“Oh, we will talk with Josh one way or another,” Agent Armor said, implying that the same wildly unreasonable official violence America was watching being used against all kinds of J6 victims could easily be brought to bear on me, too. You know, the 6AM dawn door-busting raid by 25 to 30 heavily armed federal agents in tactical body armor, grenades, and machine guns that so many other peaceful J6 protestors had been treated to.
A couple hours later I got a photo of Agent Patrick Armor’s FBI card, and I emailed him. He responded quickly, and encouraged me to just “talk on the phone” with him. Which of course was a huge red flag by then, as the Biden FBI and DOJ had been on a zero-due-process Stalinesque round-up of political enemies across America. A prospective victim like me just had to talk on the phone, the federal agent would lie about it, and make up something that would then justify arresting that innocent person, and then your life was over.
So I assured Agent Patrick Armor that I would have an attorney get in touch with him, and set up an interview with an attorney present, thereby protecting my constitutional rights.
Months later we met in a local attorney’s office. Me, the attorney, her stenographer and recorder, Agent Patrick Armor and an Agent Oh (not a stage name; he was Korean, and Oh is a common Korean last name).
When Agent Patrick Armor asked me if I saw anything illegal or involving violence or destruction, I said “Yeah, I saw the police! I watched the police badly injure and beat the hell out of innocent peaceful protestors, with no cause!”
Agent Patrick Armor just waved that off. No no, not that stuff, the crowd, the protestors is who the FBI is interested in. Instead of asking for more about the illegal police brutality I was willing to testify about, Agent Patrick Armor began asking me about what I did on January 6th.
“You know exactly what I did on January 6th better than I can recall now almost two years later” I responded. I reminded him and Agent Oh that their cell phone tracking ability could pin point every step I took on January 6th, from the bus ride starting in PA to the walk to the US Capitol to the location out in front of the US Capitol, and everything afterwards.
“If you already know where I was and what I did, then what is your purpose here of asking me to remember fine details of a chaotic day almost two years ago, if not to entrap me and accuse me of lying,” I said.
Agent Patrick Armor smiled cruelly at that response, and then began asking me about everything I did, everything everything everything about my experience that day, and what groups and organizations I belong to (he seemed genuinely alarmed about the old guy sportsmen’s clubs we have here in Pennsylvania, asked pointedly if I belonged to Proud Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers or other similar organizations, and did not ask me about my friends who had been with me on J6); he even critiqued my blog essay about my J6 experience, pointing out that the Capitol Rotunda is actually inside the building, and not outside, as I had mistakenly written.
Note to freedom-loving Americans: When you have a federal agent criticizing your blog to your face, you have a justice system that is going off the rails and falling into the deep river canyon below. It is lawlessness in a free society that honors free speech.
After what felt like hours and hours, I had had enough, and said “I am done talking about something I can barely remember so long after the fact.”
My attorney assured me that I had not incriminated myself, nor lied, nor done or said anything that could be used against me by these federal agents. Little did she know then just how evil the Biden FBI was then becoming in these same circumstances, throwing law and constitution out the window in its pursuit of perfectly innocent people, like myself.
And so, that fake and unnecessary intimidation FBI interview hung over my head until President Trump won re-election for a third time in November 2024. All of my friends wondered aloud if some Biden Gestapo squad would come busting into my home at 4AM with fake charges from that interview. I concurred, but could think most about that three grand spent on the lawyer, instead of on the new roof our home needs.
So yeah, I intend to file a claim with the J6 weaponization fund people, and see if I cannot get my three grand back. I did nothing wrong, nothing that warranted two FBI agents grilling me. It would mean a lot to me, symbolically and financially, to get my money back.
Part 2: Here is Roger Stone on this subject, and he speaks for me if my words above are insufficient for you:
“…
The Republic in Chains
Empires rarely collapse all at once; they decay incrementally like an ancient cathedral left exposed to centuries of salt air and corrosion.
|
Empires rarely collapse all at once; they decay incrementally like an ancient cathedral left exposed to centuries of salt air and corrosion. The marble still glistens from a distance. The banners still wave. The ceremonies continue with rehearsed grandeur. Yet beneath the surface, the foundation begins to rot. Institutions once built to safeguard liberty metastasize into instruments of coercion. Bureaucracies swell into ravenous organisms consuming the very constitutional restraints that gave them life. The citizen gradually transforms from sovereign to subject while the state cloaks its appetite for power in the sanctimonious language of “security,” “justice,” and “democracy.” America now stands perilously close to that precipice.
This week the United States Department of Justice quietly acknowledged what millions of Americans have understood for years. On May 18, 2026 the Department of Justice announced the creation of what it calls the “Anti Weaponization Fund” a staggering $1.776 billion mechanism established through settlement agreements tied to the lawsuit Trump v. Internal Revenue Service. The suit stemmed from the unlawful leak of President Donald Trump’s tax returns and those of his family and business entities. Rather than monetary damages flowing directly to President Trump and the plaintiffs, the settlement instead creates a process whereby victims of government weaponization and political lawfare may seek apologies and financial redress from the federal government itself.
Pause for a moment and consider the sheer historical gravity of this announcement. The federal government is now formally establishing a taxpayer funded compensation structure for Americans harmed by politically motivated abuses carried out by government institutions. That alone is an indictment more damning than any speech ever delivered from the Senate floor. The very existence of this fund is an admission that the cancer of weaponized governance metastasized so profoundly throughout federal agencies that it now requires an official remediation process.
The Anti Weaponization Fund draws its money from the Treasury Department’s permanent Judgment Fund, the same perpetual appropriation mechanism historically used for government settlements and legal liabilities. Approximately $1.776 billion will transfer into the fund over the coming weeks. The structure itself is extraordinary. A five member commission appointed by the Attorney General will oversee claims, including one member selected in consultation with congressional leadership. The President retains removal authority over commissioners, and the panel will continue hearing claims until no later than December 1, 2028. Quarterly reports will be submitted to the Attorney General. Audits and anti fraud mechanisms are supposedly built into the process, while any remaining money at the end of the program returns to the federal government rather than activist organizations or politically connected nongovernmental entities.
The commission will reportedly evaluate claims according to the “totality of the circumstances,” including legal costs, imprisonment, financial losses, reputational destruction, and other demonstrable harms tied to politically motivated investigations or prosecutions. No partisan requirement officially exists. In theory any American who believes he or she was targeted by government power for ideological, political, or personal reasons may apply for compensation or formal acknowledgment.
That detail alone distinguishes this fund from earlier government settlement structures such as the Obama era Keepseagle settlement involving discrimination claims against the Department of Agriculture. Critics on the left have already erupted in apoplexy, hysterically describing the fund as a “slush fund” for Trump supporters and January 6 defendants. Yet the irony is staggering. These are the same political factions that spent years applauding taxpayer funded legal crusades, multimillion dollar special counsel investigations, coordinated intelligence leaks, censorship campaigns, and prosecutorial fishing expeditions aimed almost exclusively at conservatives, populists, Trump allies, and dissidents.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche declared that “the machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American.” Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter condemned the use of federal authority for “improper and unlawful political, personal, or ideological reasons.” Those are remarkable words because they constitute an extraordinary institutional confession. The Justice Department is effectively admitting that the federal apparatus became infected with partisan venom.
The term “lawfare” itself has become one of the defining terms of modern American politics. It is derived from combining the words “law” and “warfare,” a concept popularized by Air Force Colonel Charles Dunlap in 2001. At its core, lawfare means using legal systems as weapons rather than instruments of justice. Courts become battlefields. Prosecutors become political assassins wearing tailored suits instead of military uniforms. Investigations are strategically timed to destroy reputations, bankrupt adversaries, silence dissent, and manipulate public perception. The process itself becomes the punishment. Endless subpoenas, coordinated leaks, selective prosecutions, confiscatory legal bills, ruined careers, frozen bank accounts, and public humiliation become tools of attrition.
The Left perfected this strategy with almost medieval precision. The American legal system was transformed into a labyrinthine torture chamber designed to exhaust political enemies financially, emotionally, physically, and psychologically. They understood that even if convictions never materialized the spectacle itself could still inflict irreparable damage. The goal was never merely prosecution. The goal was obliteration.
Closely intertwined with lawfare is the broader phenomenon known as the weaponization of government. This phrase refers to the abuse of state power against citizens for political or ideological purposes. Agencies originally created to defend the nation instead become praetorian guards for entrenched bureaucracies and political factions. Intelligence agencies surveil political opponents. Federal law enforcement stages theatrical raids. Regulatory bodies harass disfavored industries and organizations. Social media companies receive pressure from government officials to censor lawful speech. Bureaucrats become unelected sovereigns operating behind layers of institutional opacity.
The Founding Fathers would have viewed such conduct as the behavior of tyrants. Thomas Jefferson warned repeatedly about the consolidation of executive power. James Madison feared factions manipulating institutions for partisan domination. George Washington cautioned against corrosive political tribalism consuming the republic from within. Benjamin Franklin famously warned Americans that they had been given “a republic, if you can keep it.” One suspects these men must now be rolling over in their graves as modern Americans witness armed federal agents behaving like a domestic occupying force.
I know this reality personally. I was besieged in my own home despite never committing a crime involving violence, espionage, or insurrection. Before dawn, 29 heavily armed FBI agents descended upon my residence in what can only be described as an outrageous pageant of intimidation orchestrated for maximum political theater. They arrived like a militarized phalanx storming a terrorist compound in Tikrit rather than serving a process crime indictment against a 66 year old political consultant. CNN had been conveniently tipped off in advance and positioned outside my home before the raid even began. That fact alone remains one of the most brazen and scandalous indications of collusion between federal law enforcement and corporate media in modern American history.
The entire spectacle was designed not for justice but for humiliation. It was political pornography masquerading as law enforcement. Federal agents armed with automatic firearms and other weapons arrived in tactical gear and stormed into my home before sunrise while cameras rolled outside to ensure maximum public degradation. Such conduct belongs in banana republics and collapsing authoritarian states, not in the constitutional republic established by George Washington and defended by generations of American patriots. They sent more people to arrest me than they did to neutralize Usama Bin Laden.
What happened to me was not isolated. President Donald Trump endured years of coordinated investigations, leaks, fabricated narratives, selective prosecutions, and unprecedented legal assaults. The Russia collusion hoax poisoned the nation for years despite collapsing under scrutiny. The Mar a Lago raid shattered all historical norms surrounding former presidents. Confidential tax records were leaked with virtual impunity. Intelligence officials manipulated media narratives while prosecutors and bureaucrats operated with astonishing asymmetry.
General Michael Flynn was financially annihilated through prosecutorial misconduct. Internal government communications later revealed discussions about whether the goal was to “get him to lie” or “get him fired.” A decorated military officer who served his country for decades was destroyed because he represented a threat to the permanent bureaucracy.
Rudy Giuliani, once celebrated as America’s Mayor for leading New York through the ashes and smoke of September 11, was transformed by the establishment media into a caricature to justify the destruction of his finances and reputation. His law licenses were attacked. His bank accounts were strained. His name continued to be dragged endlessly through the mud because he dared to challenge the ruling class and stand beside President Trump. The same media institutions that once canonized Giuliani suddenly treated him like a public enemy because political obedience matters more to the establishment than truth or loyalty.
Michael Caputo and his family also became casualties of this malignant culture of lawfare. Caputo has now filed one of the first claims seeking restitution through the Anti Weaponization Fund after years of investigations, smears, financial devastation, and personal suffering tied to the Russia investigation era. The implications are enormous because his claim may become the first domino in a tidal wave of similar filings by Americans who believe they were politically targeted.
The Michael McMahon case has now become one of the clearest modern examples of why Americans have lost faith in the integrity of the justice system itself. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated the entire case against Michael McMahon in New York, a stunning development made even more extraordinary by the fact that the decision was ultimately unopposed by the prosecution. That detail speaks volumes. Cases with genuine evidentiary strength are defended aggressively on appeal. Here the government effectively stood aside while the conviction collapsed. Yet despite the implosion of the case, Michael McMahon had already endured imprisonment, financial devastation, reputational destruction, and years of emotional torment inflicted upon both him and his wife Martha along with their three children. The cost was not merely personal. Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars were incinerated pursuing a prosecution against an innocent man that many Americans now view as fundamentally meritless from the beginning. Careers were destroyed first while questions came later.
Similarly countless January 6 cases have begun unraveling under deeper legal scrutiny. Charges once wielded like political bludgeons were later narrowed, reconsidered, vacated, or criticized after defendants had already lost homes, careers, businesses, and years of their lives. The damage had already been done. Men and women were transformed into political hostages while cable news networks converted prosecutions into prime time entertainment. The process itself became the punishment.
John Eastman likewise became one of the most visible casualties of modern lawfare. Eastman, a constitutional attorney and former law professor, advised President Trump regarding legal theories surrounding the disputed 2020 election. For that alone he became the target of disbarment proceedings, criminal investigations, financial ruin, public vilification, and relentless professional destruction. Regardless of whether one agrees with his legal theories, the broader danger is unmistakable. Lawyers cannot provide candid constitutional advice to presidents or political clients if every unpopular legal argument risks professional annihilation years later. Once legal advocacy itself becomes criminalized, constitutional government begins suffocating beneath the weight of political vengeance.
Jeff Clark represents another central figure in this expanding landscape of lawfare victims. Clark served as a senior Department of Justice official during the final year of the Trump Administration, including as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and previously as head of the Environment and Natural Resources Division. A highly credentialed attorney educated at Harvard and Georgetown, Clark became a target because he questioned aspects of the 2020 election process and discussed potential investigative avenues within the Department of Justice. For those actions he became the subject of coordinated political attacks, congressional targeting, bar disciplinary proceedings, raids, investigations, crushing legal expenses, and attempts to destroy his professional livelihood.
Supporters argue that Clark is being punished not for criminal conduct but for offering legal advice and participating in internal executive branch deliberations that political opponents later found objectionable. The implications are chilling. If government lawyers can be professionally destroyed for providing controversial advice to elected officials, then future administrations will govern beneath a permanent cloud of fear, intimidation, and ideological enforcement. That is not constitutional governance. That is bureaucratic terror masquerading as ethics enforcement.
Then there are the January 6 defendants. Nearly 1,600 Americans were charged in connection with January 6. Many lost careers, homes, businesses, pensions, reputations, marriages, and years of their lives. One only needs to glance at social media to see and read all their stories which are, admittedly, too voluminous to fully comprehend all at once. Some J6er’s were held in prolonged pretrial detention under conditions critics described as punitive and politically motivated. Images of nonviolent defendants being marched in shackles, isolated, denied opportunities, and publicly vilified became symbols of what many Americans viewed as selective justice and ideological vengeance.
President Trump repeatedly described many January 6 defendants as “horribly treated” and victims of weaponized government. He issued pardons and commutations for many involved. Lawyers representing January 6 defendants are already signaling their intention to pursue restitution claims through the Anti Weaponization Fund for legal expenses, imprisonment, lost livelihoods, reputational destruction, and emotional suffering.
Predictably establishment figures erupted in outrage. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges have already moved to challenge the legality of the fund in court, arguing that taxpayer money should not compensate January 6 participants. Yet even Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche declined to categorically exclude such claimants, emphasizing instead that cases will be evaluated individually according to the totality of circumstances.
That phrase is critical because it suggests the commission may examine prosecutorial conduct, sentencing disparities, pretrial detention practices, financial ruin, selective charging decisions, and broader patterns of government behavior rather than merely accepting official narratives at face value.
Meanwhile politically connected figures on the left routinely escaped accountability for conduct that would have destroyed any conservative public figure. The violent Black Live Matter domestic terror attacks during 2020 caused billions of dollars in damage, destroyed neighborhoods, injured police officers, and terrorized cities across the nation, yet media organizations often described the chaos as “mostly peaceful.” Prosecutors dropped charges. Politicians raised bail money. Celebrities endorsed the unrest. Americans watched a bifurcated justice system emerge before their eyes. One standard existed for regime loyalists and another for dissidents. This asymmetry shattered public trust.
The Department of Justice announcement therefore represents something far larger than a settlement agreement. It is a tacit acknowledgment that confidence in federal institutions has catastrophically eroded. Once citizens begin viewing law enforcement and intelligence agencies as partisan actors rather than neutral guardians of justice, the moral legitimacy of the republic itself begins to fracture. Civilization depends upon confidence in impartial justice. Without it nations descend into tribalism, cynicism, instability, and eventually societal disintegration.
The Anti Weaponization Fund does not erase the damage already inflicted. It does not restore ruined reputations, recover lost years, or repair shattered families. It does not undo unconstitutional surveillance, improperly motivated political prosecutions, media coordinated character assassinations, destroyed careers, or psychological trauma. But it does represent something profoundly important. It is the first formal recognition by the federal government that the machinery of the state was corrupted and turned inward against the American people themselves.
For years millions of Americans were told these concerns were paranoid fantasies. They were mocked, censored, ridiculed, and dismissed. Anyone questioning federal agencies was branded dangerous, extremist, conspiratorial, or unhinged. Yet now the Department of Justice itself has effectively admitted the disease existed all along. The Goliath finally confessed what I and so many other Americans already knew. It had become sinister. It had become monstrous. And now after years of humiliation, intimidation, prosecutions, raids, censorship, surveillance, bankruptcies, and public destruction, the American people are finally demanding restitution from the very monster that turned against them.”
******
FBI Agent Patrick Armor at my front door, speaking to my gentle wife and one of my kids
