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The Real “Potential Domestic Terrorists”

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Photo Credit: OregonDOT

Sometime in the next week or so, Accuracy in Media will publish my research report about militarization of police forces and the proliferation of terrifying and sometimes fatal SWAT raids as a routine tool of law enforcement. While some of these raids are justified, most are simply excuses to use the vast amount of military equipment being bequeathed to federal, state and local police.

In this report I discuss the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to label tea partiers, veterans, gun owners, Christians and pretty much anyone Obama doesn’t like as “potential domestic terrorists.” You have seen the reports. You have also seen how this information percolates down to the state and local level through organizations like DHS “Fusion Centers,” which even leftwing organizations like the ACLU are up in arms about. You recall in particular the fusion center report that listed Ron Paul supporters as a profile for domestic terrorism.

DHS sees nothing wrong with this. Even more alarming is their use of the extreme leftist hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center as consultants on right wing extremism! As I exhaustively documented in my Capital Research SPLC piece, they have been associated with and dominated by communists since their inception, and utilize the communist-inspired strategy of Partisan Tolerance – i.e. intolerance of anything other than extreme left ideology.

DHS is following a time-honored communist tactic of preemptively labeling your enemies exactly what you are, to put them on the defensive. DHS, and for that matter law enforcement at all levels, is not so stupid as to believe that the rallying grandparents of the Tea Party movement, gun owners or veterans are actual or even potential “domestic terrorists”. But by labeling political enemies that way in the very high-profile manner they do, intimidates many people and makes them afraid to speak out or even associate with identified groups and individuals, lest they find their names on some government file or be erroneously lumped in targeted groups.

The whole point of this monologue is to introduce a story by Matt Bracken. Bracken has used the Left’s tactic against them magnificently in a short story called “What I Saw at the Coup.” In this tale a White House aide relates how her fellow advisors launch a plot to murder prominent conservatives in order to permanently silence the opposition.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Steyn: The Panopticon State

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Photo Credit: National Review I shall leave it to others to argue the legal and constitutional questions surrounding drones, but they are not without practical application. For the last couple of years, Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, has had Predator drones patrolling the U.S. border. No, silly, not the southern border. The northern one. You gotta be able to prioritize, right? At Derby Line, Vt., the international frontier runs through the middle of the town library and its second-floor opera house. If memory serves, the stage and the best seats are in Canada, but the concession stand and the cheap seats are in America. Despite the zealots of Homeland Security’s best efforts at afflicting residents of this cross-border community with ever more obstacles to daily life, I don’t recall seeing any Predator drones hovering over Non-Fiction E–L. But, if there are, I’m sure they’re entirely capable of identifying which delinquent borrower is a Quebecer and which a Vermonter before dispatching a Hellfire missile to vaporize him in front of the Large Print Romance shelves.

I’m a long, long way from Rand Paul’s view of the world (I’m basically a 19th-century imperialist a hundred years past sell-by date), but I’m far from sanguine about America’s drone fever. For all its advantages to this administration — no awkward prisoners to be housed at Gitmo, no military casualties for the evening news — the unheard, unseen, unmanned drone raining down death from the skies confirms for those on the receiving end al-Qaeda’s critique of its enemies: As they see it, we have the best technology and the worst will; we choose aerial assassination and its attendant collateral damage because we are risk-averse, and so remote, antiseptic, long-distance, computer-programmed warfare is all that we can bear. Our technological strength betrays our psychological weakness.

For a war without strategic purpose, a drone’ll do. Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen born in New Mexico, was whacked by a Predator not on a battlefield but after an apparently convivial lunch at a favorite Yemeni restaurant. Two weeks later, al-Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman was dining on the terrace of another local eatery when the CIA served him the old Hellfire Special and he wound up splattered all over the patio. Abdulrahman was 16, and born in Denver. As I understand it, the Supreme Court has ruled that American minors, convicted of the most heinous crimes, cannot be executed. But you can gaily atomize them halfway round the planet. My brief experience of Yemeni restaurants was not a happy one but, granted that, I couldn’t honestly say they met any recognized definition of a “battlefield.”

Read more from this story HERE.

White House Denies Involvement In ICE’s Decision To Release Detainees (+video)

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHoteyThe White House and the Department of Homeland Security were unaware of Immigration Customs and Enforcement’s decision to release detainees until the agency announced it, administration officials said Wednesday.

“This was a decision made by career officials at ICE without any input from the White House, as a result of fiscal uncertainty over the continuing resolution, as well as possible sequestration,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday.

Personnel at Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Washington were also unaware of the decision until the announcement was made, a department official told POLITICO.

ICE announced Tuesday that it has released several hundred undocumented immigrants in recent weeks as funding cuts loom. The detainees will instead be monitored in less expensive ways, the agency said.

[Editor’s note: Notice how precisely Carney’s prepared statement is tailored to the question asked by this reporter, if I didn’t know better I might think the whole thing was staged. Surely the White House Press Corps wouldn’t go to such lengths to bail the President out of a sticky situation?]

Read more from this story HERE.

McCain Defends Immigration Plan To Angry Residents

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Arizona took center stage in the national immigration debate Tuesday as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano toured the state’s border with Mexico and Sen. John McCain defended his proposed immigration overhaul to an angry crowd in suburban Phoenix.

The presence of the top officials is the latest sign that Arizona will play a prominent role in the immigration debate as President Barack Obama looks to make it a signature issue of his second term.

Napolitano toured the border near Nogales with the highest-ranking official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the incoming chairman of the Senate’s homeland security committee and an Arizona congressman. Napolitano, Arizona’s former governor, said afterward that comprehensive immigration reform will strengthen the nation’s border against criminals and other threats.

Also Tuesday, McCain hosted two town hall meetings in Arizona, during which he defended his immigration plan to upset residents concerned about border security. A bipartisan group of senators — including Arizona Republicans McCain and Jeff Flake — want assurances on border security as Congress weighs what could be the biggest changes to immigration law in nearly 30 years. Arizona is the only state with both of its senators working on immigration reform in Congress, a sign of the state’s widely debated border security issues.

Immigration activists and elected officials say it’s only natural for Arizona to continue to take the forefront in the national conversation on immigration after years of internal debate on the topic.

Read more from this story HERE.

Department of Homeland Security Ammo Acquisition Grows to 1.4 Billion Rounds (+video)

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According to American Thinker, the Department of Homeland Security’s ammunition acquisition has now soared to 1.4 billion rounds over the last six months.

Until now, Restoring Liberty has avoided posting articles regarding the various federal agencies’ ammunition procurements as earlier numbers seemed to be within the parameters of what could be expected for routine practice and training. However, at 1.4 billion, every employee of DHS (not just those with federal law enforcement authority) would have hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition each.

It’s also disturbing that hundreds of millions of these rounds are hollow-points, prohibited by the Geneva Convention.

Here’s how the American Thinker describes the volume of DHS’s ammunition purchase:

Let’s put these DHS numbers in perspective. An Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer displaces (weighs) 9,300 tons. 1.4 billion rounds weigh around 28,000 tons, three destroyers’ worth, so to speak. It takes over 1,200 18-wheel trucks to move that much ammunition. That’s the equivalent to a line of single trailer trucks, parked end to end, almost 14 miles long.

There are 314 million Americans, men, women and children living in the United States this morning. This year alone, DHS has purchased four rounds for each and every American. We don’t know how much more ammo the DHS may have accumulated during the preceding 36 months of the Obama Administration. This enormous DHS stockpile supplements the ammunition already held by the US Armed Forces, the National Guard, hundreds of local and state police departments, plus other Federal law enforcement agencies such as the ATF, Secret Service, FBI, TSA and the US Marshals Service.

Why did DHS purchase 28,000 tons of ammunition? Why did DHS purchase almost half a billion rounds of hollow point ammunition, banned by the Hague Convention of 1899 for use in international warfare, that is carefully designed to kill it intended targets? Americans have no good answers to these questions since the DHS is now refusing to respond to media inquires on the subject. Pull back the curtain of silence by asking your Congressmen and Senators these questions.

These huge inventories are extremely troubling from the standpoint of a free society. DHS and other Federal governmental agencies will be much less inclined to ever use this ammunition as long as Americans citizens stand firm in supporting our Second Amendment rights to bear arms. We must never forget that tyrants throughout modern history (Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin and Mao) always disarmed their opponents before rounding them up and sending them to the killing fields.

Here’s a video that was put together by a concerned citizen that asks the question that Restoring Liberty would like answered: Why?

Thousands of DHS employees, co-conspirators convicted of corruption, criminal misconduct

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There have been 2,527 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees and co-conspirators convicted of corruption and other criminal misconduct since 2004, according to a federal auditor. Charles Edwards, the acting inspector general (IG) at DHS, made that revelation in written testimony prepared for an Aug. 1 hearing held by the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Organization, Efficiency, and Financial Management.

In his remarks, Edwards added that as of July 15, the DHS OIG (Office of the Inspector General) was dealing with 1,591 open criminal cases involving DHS employees and some accomplices. Some cases date back to fiscal year 2004 (Oct. 1, 2003 thru Sept. 30, 2004) although the majority of the open investigations were initiated in the last three fiscal years. The DHS started operating in March 2003.

Once the OIG completes most of its investigative work into employee misconduct allegations, the matter is presented to a U.S. attorney’s office for prosecution. The Department of Justice (DOJ) oversees the various U.S. attorneys’ offices located across the country. A case is considered “open” by the inspector general until all judicial activity is completed.

The thousands of criminal convictions have resulted from the arrest of individuals, both employees and non-employees, associated with components of DHS. These include individuals who either conspired with a DHS employee or were linked to the crime that was being investigated by the IG. The DHS IG’s investigative work has prompted a total of 2,527 convictions of corruption and other criminal misconduct since around the time when DHS began operating.

Among the 2,527 criminal convictions as of July 15, 1,644 (about 65 percent) stem from Federal Emergency Management Agency-related investigations; 358 (about 14 percent) from those linked to the Customs and Border Protection agency; 166 (7 percent) from Immigration and Customs Enforcement-related investigations; and 133 (5 percent) from investigations linked to the Transportation Security Administration. The remaining 226 (about 9 percent) convictions are categorized as “other.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Napolitano “pondering stepping down” as top aide is put on leave due to allegations of lewd behavior

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Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano’s embattled high-ranking immigration aide took a leave of absence following salacious new claims about the agency’s alleged sexually hostile environment toward men, while Napolitano herself indicated she is pondering stepping down.

Suzanne Barr, who has close Arizona ties to Napolitano, took a “voluntary leave,” according to Brian Hale, spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Barr’s leave, which began Tuesday, comes as two more male accusers claimed they personally witnessed Barr engage in lewd and hostile behavior with subordinates.

In a sworn affidavit obtained by The Post but with the accuser’s name redacted, an ICE employee described as an assistant attaché says at a party at the deputy chief of mission’s house in Colombia in 2009, “He said she got too close for comfort.Suzanne Barr approached me and offered to give me a b— job.”

ICE travel records obtained by The Post confirm Barr traveled to Colombia along with ICE director John Morton between Sept. 20 and Sept. 23, 2009, to meet with Colombian officials and ICE staffers.

An affidavit by another ICE employee states that just before Halloween in 2009, at a gathering in the ICE director’s office, Barr turned to another ICE employee and called him a “sexy mothaf–ker!” Barr also allegedly “looked at his crotch and asked, ‘How long is it anyway?’” prompting other employees to laugh nervously, according to the statement.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Savage hits Biden, DHS Ammo, Skinning Whites, Russian subs in the Gulf of Mexico

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In this clip, Michael Savage covers most of the major stories hitting the blogosphere over the last 48 hours. Savage’s discussion relating to the federal government’s recent purchase of hundreds of millions of rounds of hollow point ammo is particularly interesting.

 

“Capitulation to Lawlessness”: Obama’s new plan to protect illegal alien criminals

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Photo credit: Kevin Coles

President Obama’s new immigration plan will provide safe harbor to criminal illegal immigrants and will lead to a “capitulation to lawlessness” that could threaten public safety, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said.

Fox News has obtained an internal document detailing how the Department of Homeland Security plans to implement what critics say amounts to an amnesty policy for what could be more than one million illegal immigrants.

According to the documents, illegal immigrants convicted of felonies or misdemeanors under “state immigration laws” may be granted deferred action. Those who have repeatedly entered the United States illegally will also be eligible. And traffic violations would not be considered a misdemeanor.

“It is a direct threat to the rule of law and to the demonstrated desire of the American people for a lawful system of immigration,” Sessions said. “I believe this administration has utilized this policy to basically undermine and negate the ability of the law officers to do what they have been hired and paid to do.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Illegal alien students: pay $465, stay in the U.S.

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Photo credit: Fibonacci Blue

The Homeland Security Department said Friday that illegal immigrants will have to pay $465 to apply for legal status in the U.S. under President Obama’s administration Dream Act, with the fees going to make sure no taxpayer funds are used.

Illegal immigrants will be able to begin applying Aug. 15 under the program announced in June by President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, which will apply to illegal immigrants age 30 and under who were brought here before age 16.

In another key decision, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas said the agency will generally not use the information from the applications to try to deport illegal immigrants who don’t qualify unless they lie on their application, have serious criminal records or are otherwise deemed threats to the country.

That move is likely to draw fire from critics who say the Obama administration is knowingly turning its back on illegal immigration, but an administration official, who briefed reporters on condition that he not be named, said they made that decision in order to try to convince illegal immigrants to come forward.

“Information contained in the request will not be used for immigration enforcement purposes,” the official said.

Read more from this story HERE.