Category Archives: Confidence in Government

Can we hope?

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Rumors of a political coup against Speaker of the House John Boehner (D-OH) arose when his partner-in-crime, Mitch McConnell caved on the DHS funding bill. Those rumors haven’t gone away. In fact, they’ve increased after Boehner pushed a DHS funding bill that included funding for Obama’s illegal alien amnesty. Boehner was able to do so by relying on his democrat partners who voted en masse for the bill. Only 75 ‘Pubs followed Boehner. All the remaining ‘Pubs, 167 of them, did not.

House Republicans weigh coup against Boehner after series of political defeats

Retreat in Homeland Security shutdown showdown latest embarrassment for GOP leaders

By S.A. Miller – The Washington Times – Thursday, March 5, 2015

Rank-and-file Republicans are openly contemplating a coup against House Speaker John A. Boehner and his top lieutenants after a series of self-inflicted legislative fumbles and political defeats in the first weeks of the congressional session.

This week’s retreat from the standoff over Homeland Security Department funding and President Obama’s deportation amnesty was only the latest embarrassment for Republican leaders, who also have had to yank bills on abortion, border security and education after rebellions within their own party.

Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland Republican, conceded that running the conference was like “herding cats” but said that is not an excuse for failure.

“I’m still optimistic that leadership can herd the cats. But if they can’t, then I think there will be consideration about whether a new leadership team needs to be put in place,” Mr. Harris said.

The leaders have acknowledged stumbles at the opening of the congressional session, when Republicans took control of the Senate as well as the House and members had high expectations for advancing a conservative agenda. But leaders have insisted that they don’t need dramatic changes in how they run the conference, a Republican aide said.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, California Republican, prides himself on having an open-door policy and listening to members, but conservative lawmakers say the leadership team hasn’t been listening to them or their constituents.

“I don’t think they are listening to all the members,” said Rep. John Fleming, a member of a small band of lawmakers who formed the conservative Freedom Caucus and have been at the center of rebellions against the leadership.

He said the party leaders haven’t kept up with an increasingly conservative Republican base that is electing lawmakers who are more conservative.

“The problem is we are used to being in this moderate lane and the people, our constituents who are sending us here, are trying to move us over into the more conservative lane,” said the Louisiana Republican. “I think the struggle is that leadership has not yet picked up the trim line that they need to put out more conservative legislation to get better results.”

Supporters of the leadership team blame the dysfunction on conservatives such as Mr. Fleming, who they say sabotage good legislation by demanding perfect bills and ideological purity.

“Our problem isn’t leadership around here; it’s followership,” said Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican who is a close ally of Mr. Boehner.

“We have a group of people who, frankly, think they are always right and their leaders and the conference collectively are usually wrong,” he said. “It’s actually a fairly small group.”

Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican, put it more bluntly: “I don’t consider them conservatives. I consider them anarchists.

“The whole party is going to suffer, not just the leadership, all of us are going to suffer if we can’t get more organized. But I don’t know if that group of about 35 wants to be organized. It’s almost as if they sit by themselves in the floor there — like a separate party, like in France or Italy where you have the rump parties out there,” Mr. King said.

Apparently Representatives Cole, Fleming and King think the conservatives should shut-up and be quiet. They believe those rebelling congressmen should say and do nothing because, “Big Brother knows best!” No other contrary opinions will be allowed.

The column continues on a second page with a list of bills that were pulled after objections from conservatives. Those bills have yet to be refiled.

As an aside, there is a reason why Peter King has been elected from a heavily liberal district. He’s more progressive than any of the democrat candidates who ran against him. He has been and still is a subversive vote among the ‘Pub ranks.

The column continues.

Not all of the leadership’s dust-ups have been with conservatives.

The first blunder occurred with a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with an exception for cases of reported rape, incest or danger to the mother’s life. The leaders pulled the bill Jan. 21 to head off a revolt by some of the conference’s female and moderate members.

“We’re continuing to listen to everybody,” Mr. McCarthy said at the time. “We’re still planning on moving forward with the bill.”

The bill has yet to return.

A week later, a border security bill was pulled amid complaints from conservatives that it was too weak. The legislation is expected to return combined with other bills that beef up interior enforcement of immigration laws.

The third bill pulled off the floor would have rolled back parts of the No Child Left Behind Act, but conservatives balked that it didn’t do enough to get the federal government out of education.

Mr. Fleming said the education bill underscored the disconnect between Republican congressional leaders and voters.

“That’s the reason why there is frustration out there,” he said. “Time and time again, our constituents are telling us, ‘No, we don’t want federal mandating on school education. We want that left to the states.’ And yet somehow there are people who are making decisions up here who think that, ‘No, we just need to have just a little less federal control but not hand it over to the states.’”

Still, Mr. Cole said the Republican conference isn’t going to oust its leadership team.

“People really recognize that the problem is in the culture of the conference; it’s not with the leadership of the conference. So we have to work through this as a family and get to a point where we all — or at least 218 of us — are willing to work together,” he said. “If you can’t do that, you’re going to have a hard time accomplishing the things you said you wanted to do when you came here.”

The two Representatives quoted in the Washington Times, Tom Cole and John Fleming, think the differences between the House conservatives and the ‘leadership’ is just a family squabble. They are wrong! It is the difference between saving the nation as it should and must be, or allowing the country to continue its slide into tyranny and civil war. The House leadership are no friends of ours. They’re on the same side as the democrats and liberals that infest the nation’s capital.

 

 

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The Weekend Review

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Do you know this man?http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2012/11/06/20121106-195938-pic-910164513_mugshot_four_by_three_s267x200.jpg?ec8f261d4936ae3433a61cef779c1dbc8a3728fb

No, it’s not a TV commercial. Richard Viguerie is a long-time conservative who has helped the campaigns of a number of conservatives. He is not among those who believe the GOP establishment should lead the GOP.

Viguerie has just released a book, titled, Takeover: The 100-Year War for the Soul of the GOP and How Conservatives Can Finally Win It, In it, he writes about the civil war that is taking place within the GOP. (Where have you heard that before, readers?)

The Daily Caller reviewed his book. According to the Daily Caller,  Viguerie said:

“Our true opponents are Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Karl Rove, and George Bush. They’re the ones who have been engaged in a massive expansion of government and the American voters don’t like them,” “Whenever they are the face of the opposition to the Democrats, the Republicans almost always lose on the national level. It is the most important political battle in America and it’s not between Republicans and Democrats — it’s inside the Republican Party. And for the most part, conservatives have been losing.” — The Daily Caller.

You can read the column by following the link above. One statement Viguerie makes is that the ‘new’ conservatives, new to the political scene like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul, are loosely tethered to the GOP and more strongly to conservative principles. Viguerie views that as a positive trend within the GOP.

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Have you heard about this? It wasn’t a recent report, although the lawsuit is. It’s another example of unrestrained police abuse. I have to wonder why the majority of these cases occur in the larger metropolitan areas dominated by liberals?

The short report is that some ABC agents in Virginia terrorized two colleges students for buying—a case of water and some cookie ingredients.

UVA student was victim of malicious, spiteful cops, $40 million lawsuit claims

Robby Soave, Reporter, 12:11 AM 03/31/2014

A University of Virginia student is suing the Commonwealth of Virginia for $40 million after her harrowing run-in with the state police, who–acting out of “anger and personal spite”–drew their guns and arrested her on obviously false charges, according to the lawsuit.

The incident happened last June, after 20-year-old Elizabeth Daly and two of her friends purchased a case of water bottles and cookie-baking supplies at a local Harris Teeter.

Officers with Virginia’s Alcohol Beverage Control agency were staking out the grocery store, on the hunt for lawbreakers. Mistaking Daly’s water bottles for beer, they thought they had found one.

Three officers followed the students to Daly’s car. After Daly and her friends had already climbed inside, the officers began banging on their windows. They were wearing their badges around their necks, but Daly couldn’t see them clearly and were unsure whether they were actual cops, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Daly was instructed to roll down her window, but she couldn’t do so without turning the car on, which angered the officers. One drew a gun and attempted to bash in the window.

Daly called 911 and tried to drive to a police station. The emergency operator then told her that the assailants were indeed police officers, so she pulled over. Police then arrested her for assaulting two different officers and failing to stop when ordered. She spent a night in jail. (RELATED: UPDATED: UVA student jailed for possession of bottled water, ice cream)

The charges were eventually dropped, after ABC determined that the officers’s heavy-handed tactics violated official policy.

The ordeal terrified Daly and left her in a nervous state. Her lawsuit alleges that the officers “acted with actual malice, out of embarrassment and disgrace for their own intentional and grossly negligent acts and charged (Daly) with three felonies and did so out of anger and personal spite.”

According to the lawsuit, Daly, “does not and never has consumed alcohol or abused drugs, and/or her parents, on her behalf, have incurred significant legal, medical and other costs, and will continue to do so in the future due to the malicious, intentional, and/or grossly negligent actions of the (d)efendants.”

The lawsuit asks for $40 million in damages.

While that may seem like a lot of money, The Washington Post’s Radley Balko wrote that it “may be just what Virginia policymakers need to start taking these issues seriously. The militarization of regulatory agencies such as the ABC is a disturbing trend,” he wrote.

It is interesting that even the uber-liberal Washington Post viewed the actions of the ABC agents as, “disturbing.”

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In closing for today, here is another example of democrat deceit. Folks, never forget who are our real enemies.

Obamacare voter form pre-marked for Dems – Daily Caller: “A couple in La Mesa, California received a voter registration card from California’s Obamacare exchange already pre-marked for the Democratic Party… ‘I’m an old guy and I never would have noticed it, except I have an accountant that notices every dot and dash on a piece of paper as a wife,’ the man who received the card said… Covered California is in the midst of sending out voter registration cards to all of its sign-ups, due to pressure from left-wing groups threatening legal action if they don’t comply… Covered California denied responsibility for the violation.”

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Another chip gone.

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Chip? What chip? It is a chip off the stone of GOP solidarity. Boehner and McConnell, in order to preserve their political futures, have started a war they cannot win. In the short term, as the GOP continues to fragment, the only winners are the democrats. In the long term…who knows. The real question is whether, when all the chips have fallen, will there be anything to rebuild—of the nation and the Constitution?

The Ryan-Murray budget ‘deal’ is another chip off that rock of GOP solidarity. Ryan, Boehner and the rest of the Washington establishment are willing to risk everything to avoid confrontation before the 2014 elections. Instead, they have risked the entire country to gain a little time.

What Ryan, Boehner, Cantor, McConnell and the others have done is to increasingly solidify the opposition of conservatives against them. The article below from the Washington Times supports the reports of growing opposition to the budget deal.

All-out war breaks out in GOP over budget

By Jacqueline Klimas and Seth McLaughlin, The Washington Times, Wednesday, December 11, 2013

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio,joined by House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., takes reporters' questions, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, as House Republicans signaled support for a budget deal worked out yesterday between Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chair Rep. Patty Murray, D-Wash. The budget deal was one of a few major measures left on Congress' to-do list near the end of a bruising year that has produced a partial government shutdown, a flirtation with a first-ever federal default and gridlock on President Obama's agenda. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)Tea party groups and fiscal conservatives wasted no time Wednesday in savaging a bipartisan budget agreement negotiated between House Republicans and Senate Democrats, drawing an unusually angry response from House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.

All sides were rating the winners and losers in the deal struck a day earlier between House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, Washington Democrat. The modest deficit-cutting deal had some sweeteners for defense contractors and oil drillers, while air travelers, federal workers and some corporate executives would take a hit.

But most of the passion focused on the politics of the deal, with Mr. Ryan, Mr. Boehner and the House GOP leadership defending their handiwork from attacks from conservative colleagues on Capitol Hill and from outside groups such as the Club for Growth, Heritage Action and Americans for Prosperity. Critics said the agreement effectively raised taxes in the form of higher fees, failed to restrain entitlement programs and permitted new spending in the short term in exchange for vague promises of long-term cuts.

Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, said in an interview that Republicans sacrificed their biggest point of leverage — the tough “sequester” spending cuts that were already in force — in the rush to get a short-term deal that did not address the long-term costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

“I am against [the deal] from just a basic point that we embarked on a position at the beginning of the year that said, ‘We will keep the sequester in place unless we get to make changes on mandatory spending that will save those program and put the budget on path to balance within the next 10 years,’” Mr. Jordan said.

Added Chris Chocola, president of the fiscally hawkish Club for Growth, “Apparently, there are some Republicans who don’t have the stomach for even relatively small spending reductions that are devoid of budgetary smoke and mirrors. If Republicans work with Democrats to pass this deal, it should surprise no one when Republican voters seek alternatives who actually believe in less spending when they go to the ballot box.”

— Continue reading here.

Unfortunately for fiscal conservatives, Boehner is pushing for a vote on the ‘deal’ as quickly as he can. The vote could take place as early as today and he, Boehner, wants a quick vote to prevent “interference” from conservatives. Heritage Action, Club for Growth and the American’s for Prosperity initiated call-in campaigns yesterday.

The lines are being drawn as more ‘Pubs shift to one side or another. Some will continue to try to sit on the fence, fearing offending one side or the other. Like so many in the months prior to December 1860, they will discover that fence-sitters will be despised by both sides and have support from neither.

Here is some links to addition columns in today’s digital newspapers.

KIBBE: Another Republican budget surrender

The short-term deal will assure long-term overspending — Washington Times

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Budget Agreement Gets Attention from the Tea Party (Video)

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John Boehner rips conservatives for prematurely bashing budget deal, but rushes bill to floor

By PHILIP KLEIN | DECEMBER 11, 2013 AT 5:48 PM(Washington Examiner)

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Budget deal a step backward: Opposing view

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December 11, 2013 at 4:06 pm (The Foundry)

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Boehner’s Outburst Fuels GOP Civil War

The worst speaker of the House and Republican leader in the memory of living men. (PJ Media)

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To say this deal is unliked is an understatement of biblical proportions.

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Rewrite!!

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Obamacare

healthcare.gov

One of the top headlines on Drudge this morning says, “5 million lines of software code needs to be rewritten...". Five million lines of code. You know what that means? A  rewrite of a significant portion of the software.

Before I retired, I was a project manager. I built things for my employer. I built customer service call centers across and outside the country. I built nearly 30 specialized call centers to allow the Deaf and Hard of Hearing use TTYs to communicate with the non-deaf. I created specifications for unique hardware and in the process of all this, was awarded seven telecommunications related patents.

Some of those projects were larger than the one proposed for Obamacare. The expected user base for our systems approached that expected for Obamacare.

My largest budget was under $15million over a three-year project. Obamacare spent over half a billion dollars—and it doesn’t work. In the private sector, everyone connected with that software development project would have been fired in three months—for gross incompetency and failure to meet milestones.

You see, in the private sector, there exists project gateways. Every few months, a gateway review is conducted—are you on schedule, does the design meet the original specifications, are you on budget (and woe to you if you are over or under budget for that particular segment of the project.)

Fail one of these criteria, and your project is on probation, fail two, you, the manager, are up for review and maybe fired, fail three and the project is killed before it can waste more money and usually, everyone on the project team is looking for a new job. Contractors are out on the street. In addition, at the end of each year of the project, it is reviewed for specification changes, whether the business climate, still needs the project. The project must pass this gateway, too, before any money is allocated and allowed to be budgeted to the project for the coming year.

I once had a three-year project killed after the second year. Why? I was on-time, on-budget, meeting all the project specifications and milestones…but the business climate changed and the project wouldn’t meet its expected ROI, Return-On-Investment. Too bad. Stamp! The project was killed. The company would not pour money into a project that couldn’t pay for itself within three years.

That is the real world, not the fantasyland that is now government. Apparently, the government failed to do any of these project reviews.

Obama is scheduled to have a press announcement later today to explain what he’s going to do to fix Obamacare. I know what he should do but knowing him and the dems, he’ll throw more money down the rathole to fix the unfixable.

He no longer takes questions. It is too dangerous. Someone may ask a hard question such as why a project needed 500 million lines of code or why was a Canadian company chosen on a No-Bid contract? Are there not plenty of US companies with that skill? I’ve managed projects with a comparable customer user base that was one-tenth that amount of code—and my project worked.

I suspect the real reason is that the data collected from people is shared across a multitude of government (and maybe outside companies, Obama favorites?) databases all across the government from the IRS to the FBI to who knows. One bottleneck in that update slows everything—if the transaction is completed at all. It is a rookie mistake by software engineers who don’t understand transaction processing, which, at the core, Obamacare enrollment must be.

Be that as it may, now Obama must “explain” why it failed. He’s already blamed Bush, I wonder who he will blame now? Probably Ted Cruz and the Tea Party.

Tech ‘surge’ to repair Obamacare websites

By JASON MILLMAN | 10/20/13 1:38 PM EDT Updated: 10/21/13 11:21 AM EDT

The Obama administration Sunday said it’s called on “the best and brightest” tech experts from both government and the private sector to help fix the troubled website at the root of the Obamacare enrollment problems.

The unusual Sunday 600-word blog post from the Department of Health and Human Services was the first update in more than a week on the many failings of an expensive website that HHS itself described as “frustrating for many Americans.” But it didn’t specify whom the administration had called in, or when the American people would see clear-cut results on HealthCare.gov.

“We’re kind of thinking of it as a tech ‘surge,’” an HHS official told POLITICO.

The Health and Human Services statement didn’t explain everything that’s wrong, or give technical details about the repairs under way. It outlined some steps being taken to fix the site, including updates with “new code that includes bug fixes.” The department also says it’s installing monitors to catch parts of the website that are proving the most troublesome for consumers. And it also said it had seen some improvements in wait times and consumer access to the website, the online portal to health insurance exchanges or marketplaces the federal government is running in 36 states.

Blah, blah, blah. Words from non-engineers who have no concept what they’re doing. I can tell you right now, they’re going to fail because they never knew what it was supposed to do in the first place. It reminds me of the old programmer’s joke.

IT Manager yells to his programming team, “You start coding and I’ll go see what they want!”

It was never so true as with Obamacare.

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Tax and Spend

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It’s Fall and two monstrous spending bills will be working their way through Congress. The first is the Continuing Resolution, the democrats spending solution that bypasses the budget process. The second will be the Debt Limit.

Depending on your viewpoint, there has been significant progress on the Continuing Resolution—removing funding for Obamacare. It’s a step but it doesn’t address the validity of Continuing Resolutions as a budget substitute.

Some House conservatives are going further—replacing Obamacare with another system. I haven’t read all the few details yet but I wonder about the wisdom of replacing one horrific government operation with another government operation. The rough outline presented so far retains government-sponsored insurance pool and federal subsidies to selected groups. So far, I have yet to find any substantive improvement in the new bill over Obamacare. Supposedly, the ‘new’ substitute would eliminate some taxes.

Big Whoop!

There’s more to Obamacare than taxes, it is an entire system of federal mandates that robs us of personal choice, selection and plans for our own future.  I would hope the ‘Pub alternative fulfills its hype. Given the leadership of Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, et. al., I have strong doubts.

According to the Heritage Foundation, Boehner has been forced to allow a version of the CR to go forward without Obamacare funding. That limited CR will go to the Senate where Harry Reid will stick Obamacare funding back into the CR. It will then return to the House where dems hope Boehner will cave and allow the funding to remain.

At best, the CR will ping-pong back and forth, from the House removing Obamacare funding, to the Senate that restores it until one side blinks. The dems hope, and I expect, that side will be the ‘Pubs. The way to end that cycle is to remove RINOs like Boehner, Cantor and McConnell from any leadership role in Congress and come the primaries, send them home—permanently.

The other spending bill is the increase of the nation’s debt limit. Obama wants us to believe, 'RAISING DEBT CEILING DOES NOT INCREASE OUR DEBT'. Yeah, and pull my other finger while you’re at it. We know now that we cannot believe anything from the pathological liar in the White House.

Obama and the dems both claim that failure to pass either bill, the CR or increase the debt limit, will shutdown the government. Many of us think that would be a good thing. We note that the government shuts down every weekend. We have sufficient income to pay the basic bills, pay for the entitlements of Social Security and Medicare, meet our debt and interest payments, and maintain the vital departments, such as Defense.

The dems disagree and if any spending cuts were made, they would target Defense and the vital programs of government instead of weaning the parasite class that keeps the dems in power.  Boehner and the GOP establishment are preparing to sell us out again by agreeing to a 1-year increase of the debt limit. John Boehner is morphing into Obama—you can’t believe a word that come out of his mouth.

In the end, if either bill passes both Houses of Congress with no funding for Obamacare, Obama will veto it. Next he’ll shutdown the government and blame the ‘Pubs. We know what happens next. The ‘Pubs get weak-kneed and give in.

Am I confident we’ll be able to defund Obamacare? No. The track record has been established in Washington beginning in the early Bush administration. Whenever a tough decision is required from the ‘Pubs, they will duck and weave and give in to the dems. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and other conservatives are fighting this record and practice. Unfortunately, they are outnumbered by the weak-willed and the ‘Pub democrat-lite members of Congress.

Yes, it is a pessimistic day.

The Abuses of Militarized Police

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A story has come from Nevada of a lawsuit that was filed on July 1st, 2013. It contends the Henderson, NV, police violated the 3rd Amendment rights of a man and his parents.

Amendment 3 – Quartering of Soldiers

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

The issue in this complaint against the Henderson PD is that “militarized” police, i.e., their SWAT organization, seized the home of a man against his wishes. When the SWAT police didn’t get permission to enter, they broke in the door, assaulted him, arrested him and took him off to jail. They subsequently, using a subterfuge, did the same with his parents who lived in another, nearby residence. The following day all charges were dropped. Clearly the arrest was a ploy to remove the man from his home and his parents from their home against their protests.

You can read the complaint of the lawsuit here.

Henderson [Nevada] police arrested a family for refusing to let officers use their homes as lookouts for a domestic violence investigation of their neighbors, the family claims in court.

Anthony Mitchell and his parents Michael and Linda Mitchell sued the City of Henderson, its Police Chief Jutta Chambers, Officers Garret Poiner, Ronald Feola, Ramona Walls, Angela Walker, and Christopher Worley, and City of North Las Vegas and its Police Chief Joseph Chronister, in Federal Court….

The Mitchell family’s claim includes Third Amendment violations, a rare claim in the United States….

“On the morning of July 10th, 2011, officers from the Henderson Police Department responded to a domestic violence call at a neighbor’s residence,” the Mitchells say in the complaint.

It continues: “At 10:45 a.m. defendant Officer Christopher Worley (HPD) contacted plaintiff Anthony Mitchell via his telephone. Worley told plaintiff that police needed to occupy his home in order to gain a ‘tactical advantage’ against the occupant of the neighboring house. Anthony Mitchell told the officer that he did not want to become involved and that he did not want police to enter his residence. Although Worley continued to insist that plaintiff should leave his residence, plaintiff clearly explained that he did not intend to leave his home or to allow police to occupy his home. Worley then ended the phone call.

Mitchell claims that defendant officers, including Cawthorn and Worley and Sgt. Michael Waller then “conspired among themselves to force Anthony Mitchell out of his residence and to occupy his home for their own use.”

The complaint continues: “Defendant Officer David Cawthorn outlined the defendants’ plan in his official report: ‘It was determined to move to 367 Evening Side and attempt to contact Mitchell. If Mitchell answered the door he would be asked to leave. If he refused to leave he would be arrested for Obstructing a Police Officer. If Mitchell refused to answer the door, force entry would be made and Mitchell would be arrested.’”

It continues: “The officers banged forcefully on the door and loudly commanded Anthony Mitchell to open the door to his residence.

“Surprised and perturbed, plaintiff Anthony Mitchell immediately called his mother (plaintiff Linda Mitchell) on the phone, exclaiming to her that the police were beating on his front door.

“Seconds later, officers, including Officer Rockwell, smashed open plaintiff Anthony Mitchell’s front door with a metal ram as plaintiff stood in his living room.

“As plaintiff Anthony Mitchell stood in shock, the officers aimed their weapons at Anthony Mitchell and shouted obscenities at him and ordered him to lie down on the floor….

“Although plaintiff Anthony Mitchell was lying motionless on the ground and posed no threat, officers, including Officer David Cawthorn, then fired multiple ‘pepperball’ rounds at plaintiff as he lay defenseless on the floor of his living room. Anthony Mitchell was struck at least three times by shots fired from close range, injuring him and causing him severe pain….”

Officers then arrested him for obstructing a police officer, searched the house and moved furniture without his permission and set up a place in his home for a lookout, Mitchell says in the complaint. — The Volokh Conspiracy.

If you read the complaint, you’ll note the Henderson Police also violated their 4th Amendment rights as well by searching both homes without warrants nor any probable cause.

Amendment 4 – Search and Seizure

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The police searched, ransacked the house, for what reason?

When plaintiff Linda Mitchell returned to her home, the cabinets and closet doors throughout the house had been left open and their contents moved about. Water had been consumed from their water dispenser. Even the refrigerator door had been left ajar and mustard and mayonnaise had been left on their kitchen floor.” — Courthouse News.

The Mitchells, son and parents, had broken no law. They were not the subject of the domestic dispute—that was their neighbor. So what justification did the police have for their actions other than they could? From what a number of legal professional have determined, none. There was no justification.

The crux of this suit is whether militarized police constitutes “soldiers” within the definition of the 3rd Amendment. They are agents of the state, as are soldiers. Many will say SWAT police are soldiers if you use the “walks like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck” logic.

Although it’s not well known, there is a history of US military forces violating the 3rd Amendment. That last such occurance was during WW II.

During World War II, after Japan attacked the Aleutian Islands off Alaska’s coast, the United States forcibly evacuated the islands’ natives and quartered soldiers in private homes. That hitherto unremarked violation of the Third Amendment gives us a fresh perspective on what “Property” means in the U.S. Constitution. As a general legal matter, property includes not just real estate – land, fixtures attached thereto, and related rights – but also various kinds of personal property, ranging from tangibles such as books to intangibles such as causes of action. That knowledge would, if we interpreted the Constitution as we do other legal documents, tell us just about everything we need to know about the scope of constitutional property. Case law and commentary do not speak as plainly, however, raising troubling questions about what “Property” means each of the four times it appears in the Constitution. In particular, some authority suggests that the Takings Clause protects personal property less completely than it does real property. The unjust treatment of Aleutian natives during World War II shows the risk of giving constitutional property so peculiar and narrow a definition. This paper describes the troubling inconsistencies that afflict the law of constitutional property and invokes the Third Amendment, that oft-forgotten relic of the American Revolution, to argue for giving “Property” a plain, generous, and consistent meaning throughout Constitution. — The Volokh Conspiracy.

The issue above is, that while troops “may” be quartered in private homes during wartime, the act must follow specific law. In other words, Congress must pass specific legislation that clarifies the circumstances when the 3rd Amendment doesn’t apply, compensation to the owners for damage, and the legal procedures to enact the seizure. That clarifying legislation has never been passed making the acts during WW II illegal.

The event in Henderson, NV in 2011 doesn’t have the quasi-justification of occurring during war. That is, if the Henderson PD does not consider themselves at war with the residents of Henderson.

The abuses of militarized police are growing across the country. It is a manifestation of a growing police state that has been actively encouraged by the federal government.

Whether our front door is kicked in by a group of lawless thugs, or by armed and armored SWAT troops acting like lawless thugs, it is still a violation of our castle. Theoretically, we could be justified in resisting under the auspices of castle laws. Of course, it wouldn’t matter when the SWAT team kills us. We’re still just as dead. And…the SWAT team would likely get off without charges.

It does beg the question. Can people defend themselves against police when it is the police who are violating the law? That is something for our Legislatures to address.

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Pre-Revoluntionary America

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Today’s post title is taken from an article that appeared in PJ Media. It mirrors concerns that I have and have spoken about for several years. The author of the column, Roger L. Simon, is polite and uses the term, “Revolution.” I’m not so polite. I have used another term, “Civil War.”

I’ve always been a student of history. There are many books written about the Civil War, and, now that we’ve reached its 150th anniversary, the Battle of Gettysburg. There are few books written, except for scholarly pieces not written for public consumption, the delve into the conditions and forces that lead to that civil war. Yes, slavery was an issue. For some, a major issue, but it wasn’t the only one. State’s Rights and Sovereignty played significant part as well. At least from the Southern side. However, the trends and acts of government that lead to the first civil war, mirror trends today, namely the further erosion of state’s rights, power and sovereignty. Instead of slavery, we now have governmental dependence…another form of slavery, but to the FedGov, the new substitute for slaveowners.

Please believe, I’m no advocate of revolution, or rebellion, or armed resistance to the federal government. But when the federal government itself violates the constitution, acts lawlessly, fails to enforce existing law while extorting compliance with federal regulations that have no basis in law, when the federal government ignores federal court orders that limits the power of government, our options and peaceful alternatives become more and more limited.

The article, “Is America in a Pre-Revolutionary State this July 4th?” written by Roger L. Simon, was mentioned on Mark Levin’s radio show yesterday. Levin spoke for some time on the subject and about the article. In fact, he read it over the air.

Is America in a Pre-Revolutionary State this July 4th?

Roger L. Simon, July 2nd, 2013 – 12:23 am

As we approach July 4, 2013, is America in a pre-revolutionary state? Are we headed for a Tahrir Square of our own with the attendant mammoth social turmoil, possibly even violence.

Could it happen here?

We are two-thirds of the way into the most incompetent presidency in our history. People everywhere are fed up. Even many of the so-called liberals who propelled Barack Obama into office have stopped defending him in the face of an unprecedented number of scandals coming at us one after the other like hideous monsters in some non-stop computer game.

And now looming is the monster of monsters, ObamaCare, the healthcare reform almost no one wanted and fewer understood.

It will be administered by the Internal Revenue Service, an organization that has been revealed to be a kind of post-modern American Gestapo, asking not just to examine our accounting books but the books we read. What could be more totalitarian than that?

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal warns the costs of ObamaCare are close to tripling what were promised, and the number of doctors in our country is rapidly diminishing. No more “My son, the doctor!” It doesn’t pay.

And young people most of all will not be able to afford escalating health insurance costs and will end up paying the fine to the IRS, simultaneously bankrupting the health system and enhancing the brutal power of the IRS — all this while unemployment numbers remain near historical highs.

No one knows how many have given up looking for work while crony capitalist friends of the administration enrich themselves on mythological clean-energy projects.

In fact, everywhere we look on this July Fourth sees a great civilization in decline. And much of that decline can be laid at the foot of the incumbent. Especially his own people, African Americans, have suffered.  Their unemployment numbers are catastrophic, their real needs ignored while hustlers like Sharpton, Jackson, and, sadly, even the president fan the flames of non-existent racism.

Tahrir Square anyone?

Ironically, if our society enters a revolutionary phase, liberals will find themselves in the role of the Islamists, defending a shopworn and reactionary ideology on religious grounds, because it is only their faith that holds their ideas together at this point.

The facts of the American decline tell us otherwise. We don’t need the contempt of Vladimir Putin to remind us how bad things are and that the seeming result of the end of the Cold War is that American presidents are now mocked by the second coming of the KGB (not that it was ever gone).

We all know the famous Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times!

We certainly are, and I am of two minds about it. Like so many Americans, I have lived a comfortable, privileged life, vastly so compared to most of human history.

But I am filled with foreboding about what’s to come, indeed about what is already here. When I look at the masses swarming in Tahrir Square, I am at once repelled and attracted, repelled because, to be honest, I find their culture more than a bit crazy, but attracted because I know something is seriously wrong, not just in Egypt but in the USA.

Perhaps the most interesting quote from this article is, “Ironically, if our society enters a revolutionary phase, liberals will find themselves in the role of the Islamists, defending a shopworn and reactionary ideology on religious grounds, because it is only their faith that holds their ideas together at this point.”

We conservatives have our point of faith, our political doctrine, the U. S. Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers. For those of us who are believers, we also have our Bibles. The liberals who oppose us have their own religious views, environmentalism, humanism, and, contrary to their claims, Marxs’ Das Kapital.

Karl Marx thought that capitalism inevitably lead to economic collapse. History has proved him wrong. It is his theories, when applied to government, that has failed. Note the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the communist governments in Eastern Europe. Liberals here and in Europe believe their versions will work…as long as they don’t run out of other people’s money.

We’re fast approaching a point where we will either run out of money, or, the people will rebel in some form and refuse to allow more spending. The failure of the so-called Farm Bill in June, was an example of the latter. Unfortunately, the feds will continue to spend at the previous rate—fed by the last “continuing resolution.”

If you read the article at PJ Media, the comments are worth reading as well. George B, said:

The revolution won’t be people heading to the streets with guns. The revolution happens when the people who have been following the rules simply quit obeying the federal government. The revolution will be millions of independent contractors working for cash or barter and not reporting income. Just like the 55 mph speed limit was the object of ridicule before it was repealed, the whole system of big stupid government comes crashing down if enough people ignore it and simply quit paying.

I could easily see ObamaCare causing the return of cash payment for medical services. What happens if doctors find cash business is profitable while government managed 3rd party payer medicine is not? What if many thousands of small businesses simply “Go Mexican” and drop out of the regulated economy?

If everyone in the federal government was suddenly cut off from the rest of the country, would life end? No. Most of the day-to-day useful things done by government happen at the local level. It has to be one of the biggest fears of the ruling class that a majority of the people discover that they can live just fine without intervention from the national government.

It is the fear of social collapse, of anarchy, that restrains the people…so far. If the tyranny of and opposition to the federal government reaches a level where that fear of social collapse is less that allowing the FedGov to continue as-is, then we will reach the state where non-compliance is more palatable than compliance. At that point, the union ceases to exists.

As we go out to celebrate the Fourth of July (Note: the Declaration of Independence was approved on the 2nd of July), let us celebrate that we are still able to do so.

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