Beware, Adams County: A "Sociopath" Will Soon Return to Duty
“I’m a man of faith, and I believe nothing happens without a reason,” insisted Adams County Sheriff Ryan Zollman after Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden placed the state’s imprimatur on the murder of Council rancher Jack Yantis. To the family and friends of the man who had been gunned down without cause by two of his deputies, Zollman recommended that they accept this betrayal with pious stoicism: “Leave this to a higher power watching over us.” Adams County residents in the habit of praying would be well-advised to petition Providence for protection, and unbelievers who re... more »
The Right to Resist and the Vindication of Julius Holmes
Julius Holmes was in his Macon, Georgia apartment cooking dinner when Officer Rogers arrived to arrest him. “I’ll be damned if you will,” Holmes hissed, making a furtive move toward a handgun he had placed on a nearby bed. Miraculously, Holmes wasn’t gunned down by Officer Rogers, who simply shoved him aside and seized the gun. “I’ve come for you, and I am going to carry you even if it takes the whole police force,” Rogers growled. “It probably will,” Holmes defiantly replied. “Go ahead and call them. I’ll die before I’ll be arrested.” In many situations of this kind, a Mund... more »
We Have a "Duty" to Submit; They Have No Duty to Protect
“Somebody is going to die tonight,” a visibly agitated Anthony Lord told a close friend on July 16, 2015. Lord, a resident of Benedicta, Maine, was a registered sex offender who displayed symptoms of violent derangement. His anger had been kindled by a voice mail message from the Maine State Police reporting that a woman named Brittany Irish had accused him of sexually assaulting her, and asking him to visit a local barracks to be interviewed about the matter. Lord’s entirely plausible threat was reported to Jaime Irish, Brittany’s brother. His frantic phone call to Brittany in... more »
Seek Ye First the Protection of Property Rights....
When Screwtape, depicted by C.S. Lewis as a mid-level administrator in hell’s Lowerarchy, gloated that “Prosperity knits a man to this world,” he might well have been thinking of tax-exempt religious corporations. The “Utah Compromise” on religious liberty, which was enacted with the conspicuous support of the LDS Church, offers a splendid case study of the depths of cravenness to which a corporate church will descend in order to preserve its tax exemption. The headline selected by the LDS Church-owned Deseret News captures the import of that ignoble legislation: “LDS Church’s ... more »
Too Big to Jail: Amanda Marshall, Hillary's Oregon Avatar
*"I love the law," lied Amanda Marshall, who actually just loved putting people in cages.* As we were recently reminded, lying to federal investigators is a monumentally serious criminal offense, except when it isn’t. While the language of the relevant statute is unambiguous, the practice of applying it is a science of single instances, since such decisions depend entirely on the professional identity of the suspect. Aspiring global imperatrix Hillary Clinton is the most conspicuous recent beneficiary of the “Justice” Department’s deference to the privileged and powerful, but s... more »
Bill Keebler and the FBI's Entrapment Elves
*Keebler hunting coyotes. * Who is William Keebler, that the Regime’s secret police took such an interest in him? A resident of minuscule Stockton, Utah (population circa 700), Keebler, 57, earned a modest measure of media attention five years ago when he was profiled in a story dealing with state-subsidized coyote hunting. He also exhibited the proper attitude toward the people who presume to rule us, which was described by the state-aligned media as “extreme hatred” for the federal government. Like hundreds of others from around the country, Keebler traveled to Bunkerville, N... more »
Eco-Leviathan Rangeland Management: Lock It Up, Burn It Down -- Then Blame the Ranchers
When one says of Don Barnhill that a given challenge confronting him is “not his first rodeo,” the expression is not a wearisome cliché. Rodeo championships figure prominently in Barnhill’s life, which is cluttered with enviable achievements. As a younger man he was a private firefighter, which means that he actually worked to contain and defeat fires, rather than maximizing expense while minimizing results, which is the government sector approach. He pursued a degree in archeology and is a self-taught historian of the Oregon Trail who helped organize the first reenactment of t... more »
The Peacemaker and the Psychopath
*The Psycho (Love) is on the left; Peacekeeper Dave Bundy is in the center.* Dave Bundy was working on his home in Delta, Utah, when a caravan of at least 20 federal vehicles invaded his property last March. The vehicles decanted a platoon of FBI personnel, some of them clad in battle dress and carrying assault weapons. In what must have been a disappointment to them, Bundy – who wasn’t armed – surrendered without offering the Feds a pretext to dispose of him as they had LaVoy Finicum a few weeks earlier. Bundy had been indicted on federal conspiracy charges for his role in de-e... more »
The "Hate Crimes" Lure
Shortly before dawn on April 30, Steve Nelson was robbed and fatally beaten by three assailants at near Lake Lowell in Canyon County, Idaho. Nelson had contacted Kelly Bryan Schnieder, who has admitted his role in the attack, through the “male escort” section of the “Backpage” social media site. After they met at Gotts Point trail head, Nelson offered to pay Schneider for sex – not knowing that he was about to fall prey to a “trick-rolling” gang led by a charming specimen named Jayson Woods. An equal opportunity predator, Woods later admitted to police that “he sets people up f... more »
The Leo Soell Doctrine: Palpable Punishment for Intangible "Harm"
Two Democratic congressmen, always seeking madder music, stronger wine, and new ways to punish people for holding opinions they despise, have introduced a bill they call the “Do No Harm Act.” The purpose of that measure is to abolish the religious liberty and free speech rights of business owners who hurt the feelings of those who belong to “specially protected groups.” This would be done by weaponizing a legal concept called “dignitary harm.” The case of Leo Soell, which we will examine anon, offers a perfect example of that concept in action. The “Do No Harm Act” is, in par... more »
Lavender Leninists and Heretic-Hunters: The Thoughtcrime Prosecution of Ruth Neely
*Not merely an offender for a word -- an offender for words she didn't say: Ruth Neely. * During her years as a Magistrate Judge in Pinedale, Wyoming, Ruth Neely performed dozens of civil marriage ceremonies. State law (Sect. 20-1-106[a]) specifies that magistrates, like “every licensed or ordained minister of the gospel, bishop, priest, or rabbi … may perform the ceremony of marriage in this state.” Presiding at a civil wedding is a discretionary function of the magistrate’s office, not a mandatory duty. Neely had an unqualified right to decline a request to preside at a weddin... more »
Doreen Hendrickson, Political Prisoner
*The law is the true embodiment* *Of everything that’s excellent.* *It has no kind of fault or flaw* *And I, m’lords, embody the law.* The Lord Chancellor, from Gilbert and Sullivan’s *Iolanthe* Michigan resident Dorren Hendrickson was convicted of “criminal contempt” and sent to prison for 18 months for refusing a judge’s order to commit perjury. The first attempt to convict her of that supposed offense ended in a hung jury. In the second trial, U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds foreclosed the possibility of acquittal by instructing the jury that “It is not a defense to the cr... more »
Take the Fifth -- And Face Life Imprisonment Without a Trial
Philadelphia resident Francis Rawls has been in solitary confinement for seven months, despite the fact that he has not been accused of a crime – let alone convicted of one. He may spend the rest of his life in that condition as punishment for invoking his unconditional right, supposedly protected by the Fifth Amendment, against self-incrimination. Apart from the seventeen years he spent as an officer with the Philadelphia Police Department, Rawls has never done anything to threaten the public. He has no criminal record. He is suspected of possessing child pornography, which wo... more »
Commissar Avakian's Evil Ambitions (Updated, May 2)
Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakianbears a strong resemblance to Mikhail Gorbachev. That comparison is misleading: There’s no reason to believe that the former Soviet ruler was ever as passionately devoted to Communism as his doppelganger from the Beaver State. Unlike Avakian, furthermore, Gorbachev conceded that there were limits to his power, and eventually stopped trying to abolish property rights by decree. Commissar Avakian has just gotten started on that mission. Since 2008, Avakian has afflicted Oregon business owners as chief commissar of the Bureau of Labor and Indust... more »
Gavin Grimm's Totalitarian Fairy Tale
Faith, we are reliably informed, is the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The troubled 16-year-old girl from Gloucester, Virginia who calls herself Gavin Grimm, and insists on being treated as if she were a boy, is acting on something other than faith by denying substantive facts that are plain to be seen by fellow high school students who would share bathroom facilities with her. Those students, and the school faculty, have unwisely indulged Grimm in her delusion to the extent of providing her – and others who have qualified for the trendy and p... more »
The Last Full Measure of Misery: When Will Prohibition Finally End?
“Our safety and happiness lie in obedience to law by every man, woman and child,” pontificated Attorney General Harry Micajah Daugherty in his keynote address to the 1921 annual conference of the American Bar Association in Cincinnati. His homily on the supposed virtue of submission to the state was offered in the service of the crusade to “suppress the age-long evil of the liquor traffic,” a holy errand to which the assembled legal luminaries were firmly committed, at least while they were on the clock. “After hours,” Edward Behr wryly observed in his book *Prohibition: Thir... more »
Sheriff Glenn Palmer and the "Scouring of the Shire"
*The "little folk" rise up against Saruman's Ruffians.* The Shire had changed dramatically for the worse when Frodo, Sam, and their companions returned from Mordor. The hobbit-folk had previously enjoyed a society largely free of the affliction called “government.” Frodo and his friends were mortified to encounter a regimented dystopia in which the shire-riffs –who had been peripheral under the old order – were enforcing an ever-growing list of rules handed down by an unseen “Chief.” The shire-riffs themselves weren’t intimidating, but behind them lurked a band of “Ruffians” who... more »
Merrick Garland, Richard W. Roberts, and the Kenneth Trentadue Murder: The Deep State Takes Care of Its Own
*Not **a suicide victim: **Kenneth Trentadue's brutalized body in his open-casket funeral.* “You have to trust the government,” Justice Department attorney Richard Roberts unctuously told Jesse Trentadue. Seeking to understand why his younger brother Kenneth had died while in federal custody, Jesse, a trial attorney in Salt Lake City, had asked to see the findings of a federal grand jury investigation of the case. In an incandescent response to Roberts’s patronizing dismissal, Trentadue reminded the Justice Department functionary that the proper relationship between citizens a... more »
Finicum's Wake
*He tended herds, rather than serving the state: LaVoy Finicum, a man in full. * *Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren; here there are states….* *A state is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: `I the state, am the people.’…* *Destroyers are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state….*Nietzsche, “The New Idol,” from Thus Spake Zarathustra The late rancher LaVoy Finicum sought to elude the state’s armed enforcers, but he wasn’t attempting to evade the law. His intent, as... more »
From Showdown to Show Trial: The Bunkerville Crackdown is Just Beginning
*(Apologies to Emerson) Beneath the rude bridge that arched the wash, their flag to April's breeze unfurled: Victory at Bunkerville, 2014. * What happened at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775 was an eruption of terrorist violence against the forces of order and decency, insisted Peter Oliver, a former Massachusetts Bay Superior Court Judge. His history of the American rebellion was published in 1781, but it has an oddly contemporary flavor – almost as if it had been published by an 18th Century analogue of the so-called Southern Poverty Law Center. General ... more »
Can You Spare Some Tears for a Killer Cop?
*Does this guy (center) look like a peace officer? If he approached you holding a gun, wouldn't you flee? * “If I go down, I’m taking you with me.” That familiar action movie cliché isn’t found within the lawsuit filed by former West Valley City, Utah narcotics investigator Shaun Cowley against the department that had employed him. It does encapsulate the substance of that suit quite tidily, however. After fatally shooting 21-year-old Danielle Williams in November 2012, Cowley was offered what amounted to a “hush money” buyout to go away quietly, according to a motion filed by A... more »
The Regime's Relentless Persecution of Phil Hart
“Mr. Hart, do you contest the legitimacy of the federal government of the United States of America?” That question was posed to former Idaho State Representative Phil Hart a few minutes into his February 3 federal bankruptcy hearing. By asking that question, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Newman transmuted the proceeding into a heresy trial. “No, I do not,” replied Hart – a good and sufficient answer that was ignored by the Inquisitor. Exhibit 36 in the hearing was a book entitled “Constitutional Income: Do You Have Any?” which Hart published in 2001. Newman read an excerpt fr... more »
Take Pity on Officer "Safe Space"
*Blue Privilege isn't enough: Now cops want to be a "specially protected class." * Makaela Zabael-Gravatt was shot and nearly killed in her own backyard in Meridian, Idaho last September. The man arrested in that attack, Christopher Wirfs, had a violent criminal history. Prior to the attempted murder, Wirfs had spent several weeks stalking and harassing his victim, on multiple occasions explicitly threatening to shoot her. Zabael-Gravatt twice requested, and was denied, an order of protection against the man who eventually tried to kill her. Media inquiries about those denials wer... more »
The Draft-Nappers Are Back -- And This Time They Want Your Daughter
*Death lottery: Military slaves are selected in the 1969 draft.* Roughly a year ago, Nampa, Idaho resident Kenndrick Rose was appointed as a member of the local military enslavement soviet. That is an accurate, rather than official, description of the Canyon County Selective Service Board, which would be activated in the increasingly likely event that the Regime reinstates the odious practice of conscription. Rose inherited his seat on the long-dormant board from his mother, Conchi Morales, who occupied it for twenty years. He has an academic background in computer science but n... more »
Stolen Lives, Protected Criminals: The Wrongful Imprisonment of Christopher Tapp
*This man belongs in prison: Former IFPD Detective, and I.F. Mayor, Fuhriman*. There are abundant reasons to be grateful that we do not live under the Old Testament “lex talonis” legal covenant, and one compelling reason to lament that this is so: Under the system of justice described in the Book of Deuteronomy, a lying police officer and corrupt prosecutor who falsely convicted an innocent man would be required to suffer the punishment intended for their victim. Under that legal principle, former Idaho Falls Police Detective Jared Fuhriman and former Bonneville County District ... more »
Tyranny, Defiance, and the Death of LaVoy Finicum
LaVoy Finicum, who was shot at a roadblock by Oregon State Troopers and left to bleed to death in the snow, was not a violent criminal. He and his colleagues from the group calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom were traveling to John Day, Oregon to organize political resistance to federal control over lands in the western United States. After trying to run the roadblock, Finicum plowed his vehicle into a snowbank. He exited with his hands in the air, staggering in the snow before making a motion with his right hand that the FBI claims was an effort to grab a handgun... more »
Nullifying the Jury
“Could we discuss potential punishments?” asked the tall, middle-aged man identified as “Juror 25” during the voir dire for the trial of Matthew Townsend on a ludicrous felony charge of “witness intimidation.” His supposed offense was to publish a well-reasoned and inoffensive Facebook post complaining about being arrested without cause. Pointing out that he had worked as a prison mentor for many years, and had actually counseled inmates facing the death penalty, the juror thought it would be worthwhile to know what would happen to Townsend if he were found guilty. Trial Judge L... more »
Single-Serving Stalinism: The Continuing Persecution of Matthew Townsend
The State of Idaho remains perversely determined to steal five years from the life of Matthew Townsend as punishment for publishing a defiant but harmless statement on his Facebook page. His supposed offense was to criticize Meridian Police Officer Richard Brockbank by name, demand the dismissal of an equally spurious “resisting and obstructing” charge filed by the officer, and to promise a “non-violent and legal shame campaign” employing “peaceful but … annoying” tactics in the event that charge wasn’t dropped. The trial, which will be a Soviet-style exercise in seeking the ... more »
"This Is Government Land": The Eternal Refrain of the Federal Occupiers
*Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Harney County, Oregon --* Without seeking permission, a small group of defiant armed men seized control of coveted property in Oregon. They weren’t welcomed by local residents, some of whom petitioned the government to evict the intruders from federally administered land. Rather than sending in the troops to uproot the uninvited settlers, the U.S. government told the local residents to accommodate them even as they put up fences and started to run cattle on the land they had seized. This destroyed the local agricultural balance, leaving many... more »
The Real "Ferguson Effect": Increased Police Lethality, Expanded Prosecutorial Deference
*Yes, only shamefully "ungrateful" Mundanes object when police kill the innocent without accountability. * Joshua Jenkins killed thirty-three-year-old Jennifer Chauvin by slamming his vehicle into her sedan at an intersection near AuSable, New York. According to police investigators, Jenkins failed to yield the right-of-way to Chauvin at an intersection. Chauvin’s children, six-year-old Caleb and three-year-old Riley, had to be extracted from the backseat using the Jaws of Life, but they survived. *Her killer is still on the payroll.* Jenkins was entirely at fault for the fata... more »
Rwanda and the Evils of Politicized Christianity
“What does it tell us about the UN that not a single official thought fit to resign over the first indisputable genocide since the UN Charter was signed?” asked human rights activist Alex de Waal following the 100-day orgy of mass murder in Rwanda that claimed up to 1.1 million lives. An equally valid and little-considered question is: What does it say about the church (in the broadest sense of the term) that this genocide occurred in a nation in which 90 percent of the population identified themselves as Christians? Here is yet another, perhaps even more poignant question Ch... more »
When "Rescuers" Become a Death Squad: The Killing of Michael Funk
*Biker, veteran, grandfather, plaintiff-- police victim: Michael Funk, RIP. * The only casualty of an hours-long SWAT raid and hostage situation in Neenah, Wisconsin on December 5 was Michael Funk, a disabled Vietnam veteran who was a party to a $50 million civil rights suit against the same department that killed him. Funk and three other plaintiffs filed that suit seeking compensation for harm they suffered in a SWAT raid at the same location three years earlier. Funk and Steve Erato were co-owners of Eagle Nation Cycles in Neenah, the scene of a hostage situation that develop... more »
"Blue Privilege" and the Felony Murder Rule
Bendetta Miller died on October 25 as a result of what was accurately described as a “senseless act” in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Her husband’s bereavement was compounded by the knowledge that he had spoken with her by phone just minutes before he died – and the thought that if that conversation had been drawn out by mere seconds, Brenda might have avoided the automobile collision in which she was fatally wounded. “If I could have delayed her, if I would have talked with her longer, she would have probably been with me today,” Gary Miller laments, describing a phone call wi... more »
Slapdown in Steamboat Springs: The Blue Tribe Targets Two Whistleblowers
Under the reign former Chief Joel Rae, the Steamboat Springs, Colorado Police Department viewed the local citizenry as revenue-producing livestock, and officers were encouraged to "strike first and strike hard" whenever their targets displayed anything other than utter docility. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a blizzard of "excessive force" complaints and several civil rights lawsuits. More remarkable was the emergence of two whistleblowers whose public testimony led to the removal of Chief Rae -- but who now are being targeted for retaliation. *Dave Kleiber. *Last Mar... more »
Donald Trump's Presidential "Heel Turn"
*Ladies and gentlemen, the 45th President of the United States. * Donald Trump’s presidential campaign makes perfect sense once it is understood to be the political equivalent of what is called a “heel turn” in professional wrestling. In 2007, before becoming a “reality TV” star in his own right, Trump was cast by World Wrestling Entertainment for a major role in an extended storyline that culminated in Wrestlemania 23. The climax of that pay-per-view event was a proxy battle between wrestlers representing Trump and WWE Chairman Vince McMahon. The victor would shave the loser’s h... more »
Justice for Jack Yantis: Don't Leave the Investigation to the "Professionals"
*Scene of the crime shortly after Jack Yantis was fatally shot. * The first rule of bureaucratic crisis management is: “Find someone else to blame.” This is true even in agencies as small as the Adams County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Ryan Zollman would have an insuperable conflict of interest were he to conduct the official inquiry into the November 1st killing of Jack Yantis. He could have avoided that conflict by firing the deputies, charging them as private citizens, and then turning the evidence over to a special prosecutor. This would have provoked trouble with the Frater... more »
Open Range, Open Season: The Killing of Jack Yantis (UPDATE, November 8)
*Open range: A typical Adams County vista. * “They’re calling us murderers,” protests Adams County Sheriff Ryan Zollman, referring to local residents and others who have contacted his office to express their outrage over the November 1nd killing of local rancher Jack Yantis by two of his deputies. That appears to be the opinion of Rowdy Paradis, the only witness to the shooting who has spoken about it publicly. “They took a family man from the dinner table and slaughtered him,” Paradis told the Idaho Statesman newspaper. At the time the fatal shots were fired, Paradis was about... more »
The Chain of Command and the Executioner in the Classroom
*“You know what the chain of command is*? *It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here*.” Jayne Cobb, demonstrating why he should never be left in charge of anything, from “The Train Job.” “We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains without enslaving us,” purred 18th Century arch-reactionary Joseph de Maistre in the opening lines of his essay Considerations on France. “ The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the action of free beings under divine guidance. Freely... more »
Commissar Avakian's War Against Property Rights
*Keeping -- or making -- Portland free would be even better. * Until April of this year, Christopher Penner was an entrepreneur. Now, despite the fact that he has never committed a crime against persons or property, he is an indentured servant. For several years, Penner owned an embattled but marginally successful nightclub in Portland, Oregon. Today, according to his attorney, Jonathan Rademacher, Penner has a job managing a bar owned by somebody else – and twenty-five percent of each paycheck is garnished to pay off a $400,000 civil judgment imposed by Brad Avakian, the Commissar... more »
Please, Dear Leader -- Ban Firearms By Decree
Dr. Barbara LeSavoy, gun confiscation advocate and Director of Women and Gender Studies at The College at Brockport in New York, may be the authentic embodiment of contemporary totalitarian leftism. She might be LARPing – that is, Live-Action Role-Playing – in the character of a self-lobotomized ideological drone. Or perhaps she’s in the middle of an immersive, Andy Kaufman-style long-form comedy sketch. Either she, or the character she is playing, is the post-feminist equivalent of the New Soviet Man. Programmed at a chromosomal level to think and act in collectivist terms, Le... more »
How the State's "Justice" System Cultivates Predators like Ibn Hunter
*About to strike: Ibn Hunter winds up to assault a homeless woman. * On occasion, government-employed police can solve a crime of violence – assuming that the act is captured on video, the offender makes a point of mugging for the camera in close-up, and the clip is disseminated to a large social media audience. Closing the case is even easier when the assailant is a veteran of the criminal “justice” system, and his whereabouts are well-known. Given all of those advantages, police in Atlantic City were able to arrest Ibn Hunter for punching a homeless 45-year-old woman in an unp... more »
Blessed Be the State's Punitive Priesthood
Pastor Jay Dennis, who presides over the First Baptist Church on the Mall, a large and growing “mega-church” in Lakeland, Florida, urges his congregation to see police officers as angelic beings bearing a divine commission to impose summary punishment. They are to be obeyed, prayed for, and never spoken of other than in tones of chastened gratitude and unalloyed reverence. “It grieves me on the one hand, and makes me angry on the other hand, when I hear the criticism, and disrespect towards, and violence directed at those in law enforcement,” the pastor declared during his “La... more »
When You Cross the Blue Line, Your "Blue" Life Doesn't Matter
*SWAT operators carry out a raid in Desert Hot Springs, California*. [Note: An earlier version of this essay inaccurately stated that Heath's death took place in 2012, rather than 2013. I apologize for the error.] Andrea Heath, a former police officer in Desert Hot Springs, California, died two years ago at forty-four years of age. Her untimely death was indisputablythe result of trauma she suffered in the line of duty. Yet she was not the subject of an elaborate state funeral, nor was her name inscribed on the Officer Down Memorial Page. She was an authentic victim of what can leg... more »
When Insulting the Police is a "Crime"
Three residents of Arena, Wisconsin posted critical and provocative messages on the Facebook page of the local police department. All of those comments were purged by the officer who administered that page. Only one of them, however, resulted in criminal charges. Thomas Smith was arrested and charged with “disorderly conduct” and “unlawful use of a computerized communication system” in a fashion that “tended to cause a disturbance.” Following a brief and perfunctory trial in which Smith's written comments were the only “evidence” used against him, the 23-year-old was convicted a... more »
He Wouldn't Back Down: The Bittersweet Victory of Brian McNelis
*He wouldn't back down: Brian J. McNelis, left, with his companion, Leslie White. * Brian McNelis was still recovering froma police raid that wrecked his home and threatened to destroy his commercial painting business when he learned that the state intended to separate him from his daughter. On January 6, 2010, a counter-narcotics task force headed by the Ada County Sheriff's Office invaded McNelis's home in Boise, brandishing a warrant claiming that Detective Stephen Craig had discovered “marijuana trimmings” during an early-morning “trash pull” earlier that day. McNelis and... more »
“We Do Not Need You”: The Blue Supremacist Credo
“I was thrown under the bus for expressing my First Amendment rights,” complained former Surf City, North Carolina Police Chief Mike Halstead following his compelled resignation on September 15. Halstead was ousted after publishing a Facebook post in which he regurgitated a pre-digested slurry of punitive populist talking points about the nonexistent “war on police.” The focus of the controversy was not upon Chief Halstead's derivative, predictable, and predictably ill-informed political opinions, or the adolescent vulgarity he used to express them, but the fashion in which he r... more »
Six Decades of the "Condor": Washington's "Counter-insurgency" Strategy Goes Domestic
*Under William Bradford's legal scheme, posting this photo would make me a "fifth columnist." * "*Our morality has no precedent, and our humanity is absolute, because it rests on a new ideal. Our aim is to destroy all forms of oppression and violence. To us, everything is permitted, for we are the first to raise the sword not to oppress races and reduce them to slavery, but to liberate humanity from its shackles .... Blood? Let blood flow like water . .. for only through the death of the old world can we liberate ourselves forever*." From a 1920 editorial in Krasni Mech (The R... more »
Your "Duty" to Protect and Serve the Police
*If you say something that hurts their feelings, you're no better than a "cop-killer."* Glenn Beck, acting in his self-appointed role as a punitive populist prophet, has urged his audience to join “hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm,” and “ring” their local police departments in prayer. The local police are “under siege,” Beck tremulously insists, and divine intervention on their behalf is necessary. Beck hasn't yet urged Americans to act as human shields on behalf of the heavily armed, body armor-clad functionaries who are supposedly paid to protect them. Some police union officials haven... more »
Vester Lee Flanagan, Social Justice Avenger
A Communist is merely a socialist in a hurry. Vester Lee Flanagan, by his own description, was an impatient social justice warrior. The murderous means he employed to punish those he accused of bigotry made visible the latent lethal violence that resides in State policies oriented toward the same objective. Flanagan, also known by the professional name Bryce Williams, was a promiscuous petitioner to the EEOC. After apparently growing weary of seeking to bureaucratize the violence he wanted to inflict on his former colleague, he chose a more direct approach, one we could call re... more »
License to Prey
*On the hunt: Serial predator and Police Chief Butterfield. * Early one morning in July 2014, a woman in Myton, Utah was startled awake by an uninvited visitor named Thomas Wayne Butterfield. “I'm a cop,” Butterfield explained to the intimidated woman when she asked how he had gotten into her bedroom. “They teach us how to do those things.” When the woman moved into the living room, Butterfield followed her, placing his hand on her leg in a gesture at once proprietary and predatory. The unexpected arrival of the woman's father prevented what likely would have been a sexual assaul... more »
Road Piracy, False Flags, and the State's Crime Cartel
*Welcome to Idaho, Joe David: Signs at the "No More Road Pirates in Idaho" demo. * Joe David, a former California Highway Patrol officer, has made a considerable fortune by teaching police officers how to steal under the color of “law” through his “Desert Snow” consulting firm. When he arrived in Meridian, Idaho for a two-day “asset forfeiture” seminar on August 10, he probably didn't expect to be greeted by protesters. It is to his credit that he took advantage of the opportunity to speak with them, especially in light of the fact that the conversation couldn't have been a pleasa... more »
The Prohibitive Price of Government "Protection"
When they reached Fort Hall in what would eventually be known as southeast Idaho, the leaders of the Oregon-bound Elijah Utter wagon train believed that the most dangerous part of their trek was behind them. Their fortunes would soon change dramatically for the worse, in large measure because of the involvement of the United States military. The 44-member train assembled at a bridge crossing on the Portneuf River near an abandoned fur trading outpost in the late summer of 1860. Their ranks were increased by five recently discharged soldiers who offered their services as guards an... more »
Of Badges and Blasphemy
*... but the police demand your worship. * Sheriff Doug Rader of Missouri's Stone County complains that he is being“attacked” for a “patriotic gesture” – decorating his department's patrol vehicles with the motto “In God We Trust.” By focusing on a largely symbolic controversy, both the sheriff's defenders and detractors are ignoring a more tangible threat – the sheriff's insistence, typical of his profession, that citizens render immediate, unconditional obedience to law enforcement officers as duly appointed ministers of violence on behalf of the divine State. “Where's our patri... more »
"Don't Miss"
Seattle resident Nathaniel Caylor wears a large, conspicuous metal appliance on the right side of his face, a souvenir of a May 5, 2009 incident in which Seattle Police Officer Eugene Shubeck tried to murder him in front of his twenty-month-old son, Wyatt. The police had arrived in response to a third-party report that Caylor, distraught over the death of his wife, was suicidal. Following seventeen surgeries – which included bone grafts and the insertion of metal screws and plates to hold together his shattered face – Caylor was offered $1.975 million by the City of Seattle to s... more »
First, They Came for the Bar Owners....
*Mission Accomplished: The shuttered Twilight Room Annex, a casualty of Oregon's anti-Business soviet. * Chris Penner, owner of the Twilight Room Annex club in Portland, Oregon, had bills to pay and a payroll to meet. He called up his business account only to find that it had been completely drained. “All my money was gone,” Penner later related to the Oregonian newspaper. He was shocked, but not completely surprised, by this development: “I raced to the bank, kind of having an idea what had happened.” The criminals who had siphoned away Penner's earnings were employed by the Ore... more »
Administrative "Law" and the Tyranny of "Tolerance" (Update, July 18)
*In most jurisdictions, an entrepreneur could be prosecuted for posting this sign. * *See the update below.* In a collectivist society, “offenses” aren’t defined by behavior, but rather by identity. This is compellingly illustrated by cases of Antonio Darden and Elaine Huguenin, New Mexico residents and business owners who, acting in the service of their principles, exercised their property rights by refusing service to potential customers. Darden operates a hair salon in Santa Fe, where Republican Governor Susana Martinez has been a regular customer. Darden announced in 2013 th... more »
Of Wedding Cakes and Puritanical Collectivism (UPDATE, July 10)
*Thought criminals: Melissa and Aaron Klein (center) with their children. * *UPDATE --* *Yes, the Kleins were fined -- or, if you prefer, hit with a "civil penalty," which is the same thing -- for not baking a cake, the tortured sophistries of collectivist spin-control specialists to the contrary notwithstanding. Go here for the relevant details. * By declining to make a wedding cake for Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman, Aaron Klein and his wife Melissa saved the lesbian couple roughly $350. This is a case in which discrimination on the part of a business materially benefited... more »
Love of Power Wins – Now the Yezhovschina Can Begin
The Secret Police in Orwell’s dystopian society were employed by the Ministry of Love. In that ironic designation we find the genuine meaning of the insistent refrain that “love” triumphed when the US Supreme Court consummated the long campaign to bring the most intimate human institution fully under the state’s control. Those presently celebrating the state’s “affirmation” of same-sex relationships are intoxicated by the knowledge that they are the “who” rather than the “whom” in Lenin’s famous formula (which defines the essential political question as “who does what to whom”).... more »
Heresies Against the Imperium
*Pontifex Maximus* If Barack Obama is correct that white Americans are racist at a genetic level, shouldn’t this tendency be considered an inherent trait? Given the persistence of racism in the face of unremitting remedial action by government, should we regard it as an ineffaceable characteristic to be preserved and celebrated in the name of “diversity”? Racism could be considered sinful. It is not innately criminal. Assuming that political government has a legitimate reason to exist, its jurisdiction applies only to “external behavior and not the inner life of man,” as Justice ... more »
Too Good for Government "Work": The Death of a Baton Rouge Peace Officer
*Betty Smothers with her son, Warrick Dunn. * Every phone call that arrives after midnight is freighted with terrible expectations, and the one received by Warrick Dunn at about 12:30 a.m. on January 7, 1993 bore the worst possible news. “You need to get to the hospital – quick,” directed the caller, a Baton Rouge police officer. By the time the 18-year-old Warrick arrived, his 36-year-old mother, Betty Smothers, had died from gunshot wounds received during an ambush at a nearby bank. Betty was killed in the line of duty as a private security guard for a Piggly Wiggly grocery sto... more »
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment