BART Police Shooting – July 3

Charles Hill ‘allegedly’ threw a knife at a BART policeman on July 3 and was killed for it. Witnesses say Mr. Hill did throw the knife. But did he deserve to die for it?

Law and Order fanatics will no doubt respond with a loud and forceful ‘YES!”. I’m for law and order. But this man did not deserve to die at the hands of a public servant.

Police are trained to respond to an attack on them or the public with deadly force. I think they should be.

Police should also be trained to look deeper into the situation. After the knife was thrown Mr. Hill was now unarmed. So, the police officer now retaliated against an action taken towards him rather than defended his life and public safety. Retaliation is NOT an acceptable reason for a police officer to use deadly force.

Witnesses say the homeless Mr. Hill was drunk. I’m willing to bet that the unidentified police officer could see that Mr. Hill was drunk. Given that situation, the act of throwing the knife was most certainly an act of defiance. Had Mr. Hill pulled a gun I would be one of the first to applaud the officer for the shooting. But, this is not the case.

My use of the term ‘excessive use of force’ in this situation will no doubt be challenged by policemen everywhere. It was clearly unnecessary for this police officer to fire his weapon at Mr. Hill. This weapon was fired because the officer was pissed off at this civilian for having the ‘audacity’ to strike out at him. This type of behavior is unbecoming a peace officer.

This type of ‘split-second’, reactionary behavior breaks down the respect that the civilian population should have for its police force. This type of behavior breeds ‘fear’ from the civilian population. We should never ‘fear’ our public servants.

In the long history of ‘officer involved shooting’ investigations nearly 100% of the time the officer involved is found to be free of any wrong-doing. In the eyes of the public and especially eye witnesses to these shootings, the police have become a ‘government sanctioned street gang’ who will stand by each other no matter how atrocious and culpable their actions against the general public.

Our nation’s police forces need to start working WITH the public whom they are sworn to protect and check their ego and machismo at the door.

The retaliation killing of an unarmed, drunken individual is not acceptable.

Things Have Changed?

Twenty years after the beating of Rodney King, the LAPD is a changed operation.

Compared to the cops who beat King, officers these days hit the streets with a new reality ingrained in their minds: Someone is always watching.

"Early on in their training, I always tell them, 'Whatever you do, assume it will be caught on video,' " said Sgt. Heather Fungaroli, who supervises recruits at the LAPD's academy.

"We tell them if they're doing the right thing then they have no reason to worry."

"Things are a whole lot more transparent now and if you're going to do something stupid, then you're going to pay for your stupidity."

It finally took the threat of citizens 'catching' them to get them to stop beating us. And, If you believe they won't still find a way to get away with it, you are living in a fairy tale.

Supreme Court gets the chance to review police action without warrant

I learned of this story through a Washington Post report written by staff writer Robert Barnes. The tale is based in Kentucky, much later in the report we are told this took place in Lexington. The first paragraph tells us that the police were following a man who had just sold drugs to an undercover informant. We are not told that the police knew this man, he is only identified as ‘a man’.

I’m going over this story trying to make some sense out of it and I am not having any luck without jumping to conclusion, much in the same way the story is being told. The story leaves me with unanswered questions. And that does not bode well for the reporter. There are too many holes and leaps of conclusion that no well-written story should have. This reason I am focusing on this aspect of this story ahead of the subject is because this type of sloppy reporting is becoming all too common in today’s main stream media. One can expect this from what these so-called professionals refer to as street reporters. But I have read many street reporters who do a much more thorough job than Robert Barnes.

Anyway, I will try to wade through this mess and along the way I will point out the inadequacies of this reporter’s writing style.

Still in the first paragraph, we are told that the police entered a breezeway and heard a door slam and that they now had two choices. So far I am lead to believe that the police don’t know which door slammed or if it was even slammed by the as yet to be identified man they were following.

The second paragraph informs us that behind door number one (leap of faith, because how do they know which door he was behind since they only ‘heard’ a door slam?) and behind door number two is another person named Hollis King along with two people smoking marijuana.

Paragraph three tells us that after smelling ‘the drug’ (are we still talking about marijuana or some other drug?) they banged loudly on King’s apartment door and identified themselves as police and after hearing what they thought was evidence being destroyed they kicked the door down. Several questions arise here, since they are pursuing the dealer and they ‘know’ he is behind door number one, why are they pounding on door number two? Are they abandoning the pursuit of the guy who they have hard evidence against? Plus, by yelling out that they are police didn’t the dealer just become alerted and most likely did get rid of evidence? This sounds all very rookie-ish to me.

In the fourth paragraph the reporter has abandoned any reference to the dealer the police were pursuing. Instead he states that King was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Kentucky Assistant Attorney General Joshua Farley backed the police decision to kick down the door. Of course he would. And this is part of the problem. He claims to believe the story from his officers that they ‘heard noises’ that led them to believe ‘evidence was being destroyed’. I have to laugh at this claim. What ‘noises’ did they hear, a toilet being flushed? A match being struck to burn the evidence? This is beyond the realm of ridiculous. I cannot for the life of me imagine what ‘evidence being destroyed’ in this situation would sound like. They chose to use this lame excuse because of the three reasons for entering without a warrant this is the only one that they had a half-assed chance of getting away with. There was not a life being endangered, they were not concerned with the suspect escaping because as we read in this stellar report these were not even the guys they were chasing.

This Assistant Attorney General Joshua Farley should be ashamed of himself for using such a flimsy basis for taking this case to trial in the first place. By doing this only shows me that he along with many other legal system lackeys are emboldened by what the police are allowed to get away with.

The point of this Washington Post report is that the U.S. Supreme Court heard this case on Jan 12, 2011 and is in the process of deciding whether or not police can abandon the Fourth Amendment and kick down a door because the police claim they smelled marijuana.

I am in agreement with justices Ginsberg, Kagan and Sotomayor on this that police would indeed roam the halls and sniff for ‘reasons’ to kick in a door. Justice Scalia said the police did nothing wrong and that the occupants could have told police they could not enter without a warrant. Where has this guy been living? He is clearly out of touch with what law enforcement has been getting away with.

Police departments all across this nation have a growing reputation for abusing the ‘probable cause’ tenet. Therefore, I see this as a good opportunity for the Supreme Court to finally define police powers in similar situations. However, I realize that given the current atmosphere of law and order in this country, chances are good that the police will be given a free ride on this issue.

I must say here that I am in complete agreement that the illegal drug issue needs to be addressed. Drug abuse in this country has cost Americans untold billions of dollars in lost productivity and tax revenue, years of freedom in the ridiculously unbalanced and unfair prosecution, and the waste of lives alone should make this issue a top priority.

I admit I am being hard on the police. They need to do things the right way. If, as Justice Scalia says, criminals are stupid, they will eventually be caught at their illegal activity. There have been many instances where police have busted down the wrong door. In some of those cases innocent law-abiding citizens have been terrorized and killed. Given this environment, of course people are going to panic when they hear that thunderous pounding on their door followed by “Open Up”, “Police.”

Listen, drugs need to be removed from our streets. Criminals need to be punished. I object to the citizenry becoming victims due to over-zealous police forces who would rather bust heads and let God sort it out.

Oh, and as far as this reporter goes, how about giving us some hard facts and stop leaving out information like what happened to the dealer the police were originally pursuing.

Non-Incident Reveals Sloppy Reporting and unwarranted Citation

Aaron B. Tobey, 21, of Charlottesville, Va., arrived at Richmond International Airport's Checkpoint B on the afternoon of Thursday Dec 30, 2010 and stripped down to his underwear.

He did this to protest the TSA’s security screening procedures. Mr. Tobey had written, on his chest, language of the Fourth Amendment which states: “The right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated."

The report goes on to say that local police were called and that Mr. Tobey was issued a citation for disorderly conduct.

The most burning question I have is  “what was the nature of the disorderly conduct?” Frank Green, the reporter sent to cover this story, must be a jaded reporter who feels the public does not need to know the details. Maybe he assumes the readers will figure out on their own that this is just another case of protest against our federal government’s outright disregard of our constitutionally guaranteed right and therefore is not worthy of taking the time to actually report any further facts. Or perhaps Mr. Green got his information directly from the police and we all know they only tell the whole truth. Yeah, right.

Perhaps Mr. Green feels that anyone who protests against our government is a criminal and as such deserves to be hauled away for being so ungrateful.

Since I was not there to witness what happened and the reporter does not seem to have the desire to report all of the facts, here is what I get out of the story: this guy shows up at the airport, displays his disagreement with government policy, and is then cited for disorderly conduct. Pretty poor reporting, Mr. Green.

I’m going out on a limb here and say that given the recent state of the media these past few years, if there had been an actual incident it would have been reported, because everyone knows the media loves to report any type of drama, and have even been known to ‘stretch the truth’ a bit to really ‘sell it’. But, since there wasn’t any report of disorderly behavior I am left to believe that the police, being the intensely brain washed puppets that they are, felt the need to cite him simply because their federal brothers called on them to make an appearance. I’m sure their reasoning is that there’s no way the feds would call on them unless they wanted him arrested. And, after all, the feds opinion is the only one that matters, right?

It seems every day we are given more insight as to what the TSA considers disorderly conduct. In this case a simple display of the right we are all granted was enough to have Mr. Tobey cited. He didn’t even have to actually be disorderly to be labeled a criminal. See how efficient our federal government is becoming at identifying enemies of the state?

How about simply stepping out of line? Is this going to be considered disorderly conduct? They figure they can prevent this non-incident from becoming a federal matter by calling in the local puppets and let them deal with him.

Why are so few of us American citizens outraged at this form of treatment towards a constitutional right to protest?

The media, the TSA and the local police should all be ashamed of themselves for how they handled this. And to this list I’m adding all of you out there who think it is okay to haul someone before a judge because he exercises his constitutional rights.

Make no mistake people, live like mice and that is how we are all going to be treated.

DHS has redefined the term Terrorist. . . to include us all

According to the Department of Homeland Security any act of dissent against the US government either physically or written is now considered an act of terrorism. I am, right now, by simply writing this post, am committing an act of terrorism against the US government.

Long before Homeland Security ever came into existence, voicing our displeasure against the government, or putting it into writing was considered free speech protected under the Bill of Rights. Clearly Secretary Janet Napolitano, is not a fan of James Madison, who is considered to be the ‘Father of the Constitution’ and the ‘Father of the Bill of Rights’.

Since so many of you have lost the true value of what Americans should hold most dear, let me remind you of the rights that the Bill of Rights grants every one of us:

• freedom of speech,
• a free press,
• free assembly,
• free association,
• the right to keep and bear arms.

Janet Napolitano is using the contrived terror threat as justification for the announcement that your every activity is being sent to federal fusion centers, those same fusion centers have been busy defining peaceful assembly, non-violent protest and criticism of the government as domestic terrorism. According to the government’s own definition of what constitutes terrorist activity – you are a terrorist.

Homeland Security is building a gargantuan database of every website you visit, every email you send and every phone conversation you have in order to genuinely hunt down terrorists. They are doing this without our permission, they are doing this because they think they are protecting us.

The driving force behind DHS desire to define domestic terrorism is to chill political dissent and, even more sinister, to justify their funding. Their zeal in pursuing this ridiculous endeavor is labeling some very American behaviors as terrorism. Behaviors such as flying American flags, wearing Levi jeans, being nice, looking “normal” and going scuba diving have all been redefined as signs of domestic terror.

They are taking a page out of George Orwell’s book1984 by encouraging Americans to “report suspicious activity” that includes such behavior. They figure that by making people afraid to exercise their constitutional rights then the only people who do exercise their rights must be terrorists.

Did you know that law enforcement across the country are being told that informed Americans who know their rights are dangerous? Check this out for the details.

Here are just a few ‘potential signs of terrorism’:

• Displaying bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with the Constitutional, Campaign for Liberty, and Libertarian parties
• Supporting Congressman Ron Paul
• Supporting former presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin
• Supporting former Congressman Bob Barr
• Opposing the implementation of a North American Union
• Owning gold bullion
• Displaying historical U.S. flags
• Opposing abortion
• Talking about the documentary Zeitgeist

How ridiculous is this list? This list is much longer and is populated with so many stupid entries that it doesn’t even warrant serious consideration.

Under the new definition of what constitutes a terrorist your neighbor will be acting perfectly reasonably when they inform on you to the authorities because you rented a hotel room, used a large amount of cash, or possess a significant amount of alcohol.

This stuff has nothing to do with the defining of a domestic terrorist. It has everything to do discouraging Americans from engaging in any kind of dissent. And this is a very real and clear danger to our constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and assembly.

To those of you out there who believe everything this government tells you concerning the definition of a domestic terrorist and say things like ‘If you don’t do anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about’, I want to slap some sense into you. Under the paranoid and distrustful guidance of Homeland Security, America has become a decrepit and decaying banana republic where the government tells its people to spy on each other, where everyone is a potential terrorist and will come under suspicion if they don’t rigidly conform and ensure that their behavior displays the maximum amount of fealty and subservience to the state.

Little by little citizens are surrendering their liberty to the state. Until one day it seems perfectly reasonable for us to be herded off to internment camps, for our own protection naturally. The terrorists are coming. We'll be safe under the watchful eyes of Homeland Security.

Beware ladies and gentlemen, we are all now the enemy.

Judge Napolitano on Tactical Tower in Walmart parking lot

This video was taken in Hickory, North Carolina, population 40,000. It is video of what is called a Tactical Tower, purchased by the Hickory Police Department and placed in a Walmart parking lot.

Why on earth would a small town, or any American town, need a tactical tower?

Everyone needs to see this. The thought process that would allow a police department to think they need something like this can only come out of a deep distrust of the American people.

This kind of thinking is sweeping across American city police departments and we the American people are not going to fair well from the police acting on it.

I am not an alarmist by any stretch of the imagination, but seeing this is sort of thing become a reality in a small rural town is a far cry from just hearing rumors of the coming police state.

Small town America is no place for this thinking.

People, this is chilling. This is scary stuff.

For those of you non-military types who don’t understand what tactical refers to, the definition of tactical equipment is, as a broad rule, classed as vital equipment that helps defend, protect and keep safe law enforcement officers or military personnel in ordinary and extraordinary situations.

This is in a Walmart parking lot!! Really?

This is an indication of how the American public is being thought of. We are now the enemy.

Obama legal team wants to limit defendants' rights

clipped from www.freep.com The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overrule longstanding law that stops police from initiating questions unless a defendant’s lawyer is present, another stark example of the White House seeking to limit rather than expand rights. The administration’s action — and several others — have disappointed civil rights and civil liberties groups that expected President Barack Obama to reverse the policies of his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, after the Democrat’s call for change during the 2008 campaign. Since taking office, Obama has drawn criticism for backing the continued imprisonment of enemy combatants in Afghanistan without trial, invoking the “state secrets” privilege to avoid releasing information in lawsuits and limiting the rights of prisoners to test genetic evidence used to convict them.

Hear that sound? The chip, chip, chipping away of our constitutional rights? Apparently, it doesn’t matter if the president is republican or democrat we are all going to lose in the end.

Even if the court decides not to hear the case, the fact that Obama wants to overturn this means he is willing to put constitutional rights aside to get what he wants.

This is indicative of how much closer we are coming to a police state.

Further Training for the Looming Police State

Narcotics officers and a Sheriff's Office SWAT Team in Prince George's County, Maryland violently stormed Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheya Calvo’s home and recovered a package containing 32 pounds of marijuana. When main stream media report a story in this fashion the majority of people who actually take the time to read or listen to the story believe immediately that the mayor is guilty. After all, why would the police fortify themselves with heavily armed SWAT team members if this guy wasn’t guilty? Why indeed.

The story takes on an even more “sensational” aspect (which media eats up like ‘crack’ candy) when they are able to report that officers also shot and killed Calvo's two black Labradors. Sheriff's Office spokesman Sgt. Mario Ellis says deputies "apparently felt threatened" by the dogs, which is just a cavalier excuse that trigger happy police always use when they want to shoot something. They get away with this lie far too often. Calvo insists the dogs were not attacking, and as one of the dogs ran away a big bad policeman chased him down and killed it as it was cowering in a corner. Labrador retrievers are not known to be aggressive dogs. They may bark up a storm but they only attack when threatened. Unlike humans.

Calvo has not been charged and he, his wife and his mother-in-law are "persons of interest". Police say the investigation into how the drugs were in his home continues. Are they identifying these people as “persons of interest” out of bravado to avoid the embarrassment of obviously terrorizing the wrong family?

The raid occurred after Calvo returned from walking his dogs and discovered the package sitting on his doorstep addressed to his wife. As any husband would, he picked up the package and brought it into his home. This was the signal the overzealous police, hiding in wait, was hoping for. They unleashed their terror on this family, breaking in the front door, screaming for everyone to get on the floor, all with semi-automatic weapons pointing at the hapless, unsuspecting family. They feel they have the ‘legal right’ to commit this terror under a no-knock warrant which absolves them of all responsibility.

This article from Police Link does nothing to present the whole story and is meant to only cast this police action in a favorable light. This amounts to propaganda for the police state of which the vast majority of citizens don’t even realize they are under.

I was going through the comments that readers post on several different sites, each with their own version of the story, and I am once again appalled at the number of people who automatically assume the guilt of Mr. Calvo just because the police say so. This gullibility is one reason why people are so easily controlled by the people who control the media and an ever-increasing police fascist mentality that is taking over this country. Don’t get me wrong, there are good people out there who have joined their local police force for the purpose of ‘helping’ people by taking bad guys off the street. And we need them. The problem comes from those little dictator types who think that by putting on a police uniform they are given total and absolute control over any private citizen.

We have all run into these little racist Hitler wannabes. Unfortunately, there are more and more of them being accepted at police academies every year.

Sometimes it is just intuition that screams at you that identifies a story as having a false element. This story is one of those. After a little research I discovered that Mr. Calvo, besides being a very anti-drug Mayor, also is a director on the board of SEED, a national nonprofit that helps urban public boarding school students prepare for college. Based on this characterization of the man, it is looking more and more like this family is the recipient of someone’s idea of revenge.

There are several personality types that would have no problem in perpetrating just such a revenge. Someone who wants to see the mayor publicly humiliated and destroyed, or someone who wants to see the police humiliated, sends the package to get them busted. Perhaps by some drug dealer seeking revenge. Or, maybe a neighbor simply had the package delivered to this address, that is usually vacant during the day, and then snags the package before the residents get home. At any rate, this tragedy could have been avoided if the police had done some homework, notified the local police chief (who reported he had not been notified ahead of the raid) and not been so hopped up on the prospect of a gunfight in which they emerge the heroes for taking yet another despicable, murdering, gun-toting, crime lord out of commission for selling “marijuana?”.

The package was discovered to contain the marijuana in an Arizona shipping facility by drug sniffing dogs. There is no indication that the package had been opened in Arizona to verify the contents actually was marijuana. It is an assumption to think cops are that thorough. This gave police in Maryland time to organize the raid. It also gave them time to do a criminal background on the current occupants of this house. Had police actually conducted this research they would have discovered this address to be the home of the city’s mayor. They would have discovered the wife is not likely to have been involved in a major drug ring. But their mentality is such that they had an opportunity to take more illegal drugs off the street before they could be used to ‘destroy’ other families lives. If the Chief of Berwyn Heights Police Department has been notified of the impending raid he could have offered some insight into the occupants of this home.

Drug raids happen quite a lot across America, and due to the sheer number of them, there are bound to be “mistakes”. I’m saying that brain work needs to be undertaken to prevent this from happening again. And in the mean time, the Narcotics officers and the Sheriff's Office SWAT Team in Prince George's County, Maryland needs to apologize for their quick use of fascist tactics and their lack of proper preparation.

The bottom line here is that police are getting way out of hand in the exercising of their powers. They are given a lot of responsibility and are under a lot of pressure to enforce drug laws, as they should be, but they also need to do some thinking instead of first reaching for their weapons and automatically assuming they are busting a major dealer inside a fortress filled with drugs, guns and money. They had plenty of time to do so and chose not to.

Police State 2.0: Soon To Be Released

Rolling Stone Magazine recently published a story of such tremendous import that every freedom loving American needs to read it. We are slowly being lulled into a surveillance society so complete that privacy will be something you can only read about in history books. There is big money to be made in high-tech surveillance so don’t be fooled into believing it cannot happen here.

London is under constant surveillance via CCTV cameras o every street corner, China’s internet has become a conduit through which Chinese authorities can monitor internet sites in real time and identify both the site owners and visitors, America’s police departments are salivating at the possibility of having drones and other high-tech security toys they can use ‘for our protection’. Homeland Security wants national ID cards that can track everywhere you go, the FBI wants massive databases on every American complete with every bit of biometric data they can get their paranoid hands on. Corporations have been tracking employee email. The NSA, under the direction of a very paranoid White House, has already used telecom companies to spy on our cell phone calls and internet traffic, and it is only a matter of time before banks and credit card companies will fall under the same directives.

How far away are we from having facial recognition software that can match a human face to a database within one second? We are less than one year away. Why is this ability being developed? Where is this ability being tested and perfected? China. Right now. You think they won’t sell this technology to any country who wants it? It’s all about money and control.

L-1 Identity Solutions, based in Connecticut, already has a stake in China’s development of software they, L-1, developed. L-1 is a one-stop shop for biometrics. Thanks to board members like former CIA director George Tenet, the company rapidly became a homeland-security heavy hitter. L-1 projects its annual revenues will hit $1 billion by 2011, much of it from U.S. government contracts. Licensing their software to any Chinese company is against U.S. policy, but it obviously didn’t concern L-1. Like I said, it’s all about the money. And the government contracts that L-1 is thriving on is of course our tax dollars.

Many other U.S. companies are charging into China, eager to make a profit from helping China spy on its citizens. The risk of violating the law does not deter these companies from helping the Communist Party spend billions of dollars building Police State 2.0. As long as they make big profit, they will do it. This isn't an unfortunate cost of doing business in China: It's the goal of doing business in China.

Taken from the article:

As The New York Times recently reported, aiding and abetting Beijing has become an investment boom for U.S. companies. Honeywell is working with Chinese police to "set up an elaborate computer monitoring system to analyze feeds from indoor and outdoor cameras in one of Beijing's most populated districts." General Electric is providing Beijing police with a security system that controls "thousands of video cameras simultaneously, and automatically alerts them to suspicious or fast-moving objects, like people running." IBM, meanwhile, is installing its "Smart Surveillance System" in the capital, another system for linking video cameras and scanning for trouble, while United Technologies is in Guangzhou, helping to customize a "2,000-camera network in a single large neighborhood, the first step toward a citywide network of 250,000 cameras to be installed before the Asian Games in 2010." By next year, the Chinese internal-security market will be worth an estimated $33 billion — around the same amount Congress has allocated for reconstructing Iraq.

All of this activity in China is just a run up to what we can expect to see here in the U.S. Every Chinese security firm is hatching some kind of plan to break into the U.S. market.

The Defense Department has already attempted China’s grand experiment with something called Total Information Awareness, a virtual, centralized grand database that would create constantly updated electronic dossiers on every citizen, drawing on banking, credit-card, library and phone records, as well as footage from surveillance cameras. Although Total Information Awareness was scrapped after the plans became public, large pieces of the project continue, with private data-mining companies collecting unprecedented amounts of information about everything from Web browsing to car rentals, and selling it to the government.

Empowered by the Patriot Act, many of the big dreams have already been put into practice at home. New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., are all experimenting with linking surveillance cameras into a single citywide network. Police use of surveillance cameras at peaceful demonstrations is now routine, and the images collected can be mined for "face prints," then cross-checked with ever-expanding photo databases.

We condemn China for human rights violations and yet we have Guantanamo Bay. Our constitution prohibits illegal search and seizure yet police departments and the federal government find ways around it all in the name of fighting crime, immigration and terrorism.

China is becoming more like us in very visible ways (Starbucks, Hooters, cellphones that are cooler than ours), and we are becoming more like China in less visible ones (torture, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, though not nearly on the Chinese scale).

There are a lot of people in our federal government that would do what China is doing in many of its cities, if they could. And we already have proof that they are not intimidated by the law.

The State of Texas is Wrong

A community that works together for a common goal, supporting each other through times of need, sharing in each others joys and triumphs. Sounds pretty wonderful doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you want to live in a community with these principles?

Children raised to believe that God is their heavenly father, that people should be held to a moral law, that you support every member of the community, that crime is condemned and punished by a higher authority than man. Who among you would not want to be a part of this community?

Far too many families these days stay away from church. Their children are not being taught the golden rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. They are not taught to love thy neighbor. They are taught that trust is for fools and will only result in you being ripped off or exposed to personal injury.

Children in the FLDS community, as in other religious based communities, are being protected from the ugliness and sin that has so pervaded our world. Is this so wrong?

The main point that so many people object to with the FLDS sect is that one man can have more than one wife. And, of course, if you believe it happens, that girls are forced to marry older men.

Many stories we read from women who have “escaped” this lifestyle are told from the perspective of their own experiences based squarely in their own agenda. They use the word escape, which denotes imprisonment, and yet they entered these marriages voluntarily and stayed for some time. Marriages fall apart everyday. Wives leave their husbands for a variety of reasons. Did they say they were actually abused? No. But they leave us with the impression that abuse was a common occurrence. It is easy for us to believe abuse was common because we don’t subscribe to plural marriages and believe that it can only exist if a woman is forced into it. And choosing to believe this only satisfies our understanding of it. We only listen to stories from those who want to break away and we easily believe their version because our culture has been indoctrinated by mass media to expect only the juicy gossip, the more gory and demeaning the better. And allowing the assumption of abuse as the basis for these women’s escape helps them garner our sympathy. It is human nature to try to gain sympathy from others to help rationalize their actions as justifiable.

The wording of this statement: “young girls forced to marry older men”, is being tossed about by the Texas authorities as one justification for their raid because Texas law says it is illegal for any man over the age of 19 to have sex with a woman under the age of 16. It’s a good and proper law. Personally, as the father of four daughters I think the age of consent for the girl should be 18, but, that’s just me.

This picture of girls being forced into marriage is simply not true. Many women involved in these polygamist marriages deny that they were arranged or forced. They also say women are free to leave the faith if they want to.

It is true that they are raised to believe that it is acceptable for one man to have many wives. Is this brainwashing? Isn’t it brainwashing for the rest of us to be forced to believe that a man should only have one wife? Is it brainwashing to be taught to obey your parents? Is it brainwashing to be raised to believe in only one God? What about being raised to believe in “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”.

The state sees another point of contention, a closed community that does not need the state.

After the raid on this sect, the state of Texas must maintain that there was imminent danger towards these children in order to justify their actions in taking these children away from their mothers. They have to say they are acting in the best interest of the children because that pulls hardest at the public’s sense of justice. They entered this community based on a tip that has not been verified, has not been corroborated, and has not been substantiated. The caller has not come forward to get the help she supposedly claims she needs. So, naturally, the assumption is that the call was never placed.

Those of you who believe Texas authorities rightfully removed these children from their homes have the right to your belief. I am sure you are convinced that the FLDS followers were duped into a life of immorality which in your world is considered abuse and you base your belief solely on the fact that they don’t subscribe to the same beliefs as you.

We allow authorities too much leeway in the interpretation of what constitutes abuse. When they can come into a community, remove children from their homes, based on the idea that ‘in the future’ another fifteen year old will be ‘forced’ to marry an older man for the purpose of producing children then we have given the authorities too much power.

The FLDS community is not a criminal enterprise. They do not prey on members outside of their community, nor do they prey on each other, they do not ask for handouts from state welfare or anyone else. They are self-sufficient. They don’t need the outside world.

Texas rangers did not need to come riding in on their white horses to clean up a lawless town.

Many of you reading this may have formed the opinion that I must be a polygamist member or sympathizer with my own agenda for painting law enforcement as the bad guys here. Well, I confess, I do have an agenda:

I don’t believe law enforcement has the right to tear families apart without valid verifiable evidence.

I believe a law abiding community of like-minded adults has the right to raise their children as they see fit, if that excludes the state then so be it.

I do not believe in plural marriages, I am not a polygamist, I am not a member of the LDS church. I am Baptist, I believe in God and Jesus and the apostils.

I believe every child should be exposed to religious instruction for the purpose of learning morals.

I believe every child should be taught ethics.

I believe in the basic right of every human being to live his/her live in any way they see fit until they begin encroaching on the rights and livelihood of their fellow man.

I believe the state of Texas is out of line in this case and that they are justifying their actions based on simple religious prejudice.

That phone call or phone calls cannot be proven to have ever taken place. Texas is ripping these families apart based on their “faith” that future crimes will take place.

This is not my ideal of legal justice.

Is the U.S. becoming a fascist state?

I have read several blogs and webpages concerning this subject lately and I have to admit the authors of these sites present some very compelling evidence to show that our government is indeed becoming fascist.

This is an extremely scary prospect that needs to be closely examined. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, considering myself scholarly enough to tackle this question but as an American I feel deeply compelled to take heed of some very serious warning signs.

One of the blogs I have read is Vermont Commons, in particular, an article entitled “Speaking Truth to Power: The End Of America--The Police State Is Right Here, Right Now” shows the 10 steps to becoming fascist.

All of these actions took place to convert Germany from a democratic to a fascist state during Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930’s and because history does have a habit of repeating itself, I am in agreement with many others that these steps need to be scrutinized to see if this conversion can happen here.

As you go down this list, make note of anything that can be attributed to America today:

• Invoking an external and internal threat
• Establishing secret prisons
• Developing a paramilitary force
• Surveiling ordinary citizens
• Infiltrating citizens’ groups
• Arbitrarily detaining and releasing citizens
• Targeting key individuals
• Restricting the press
• Casting criticism as “espionage” and dissent as “treason”
• Subverting the rule of law

Can anyone deny that these steps will lead to fascism?

Can we deny that any of these things have taken place during George W. Bush’s term as president?

Let’s examine each one.

• Invoking an external and internal threat
George has been warning us for how long now that if we pull out of Iraq then the terrorist will follow us and we will fight them in our streets. Does anyone really believe his threat?

The Bush administration has repeatedly linked Iraq to the attack on the World Trade Center and we were told repeatedly and insistently that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, against proof to the contrary. Enough people believed these blatant lies that they gave him the go ahead to commit our troops over there, ostensibly to search for them. Saddam had nothing to do with bombing the World Trade Center nor did he have weapons of mass destruction.


• Establishing secret prisons
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating al Qaeda captives at Soviet-era compounds in at least eight countries in Eastern Europe. This is in addition to Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. This has all been verified by current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

See this article for further information.


• Developing a paramilitary force
My understanding is that a paramilitary force is not part of the regular armed forces of any nation but looks like them in their training, equipment and organization. In other words they look, act, and feel like a military force but aren’t considered ‘regular’ army. For example the Nazi SS was paramilitary. They were an elite security force operating in tandem with the regular German army.

The U.S. did create a paramilitary force of Iraqi militiamen to confront insurgents in Iraq while the regular U.S. military performed their duties. But I don’t think this is the same thing.

Can a private security force such as Blackwater USA be considered a paramilitary force? Not in the strictest sense. And because the U.S. ‘hired’ them to assist the military to act as bodyguards, can this be considered ‘developing’?. I am not convinced that private security forces meet the criteria for this step.

The CIA does have a paramilitary force.

So this could meet this criteria.


• Surveiling ordinary citizens
Oh yeah. Everyone who pays attention knows about this.


• Infiltrating citizens’ groups
See Surveiling ordinary citizens


• Arbitrarily detaining and releasing citizens
Just look at Guantanamo and remember that this is the first administration since the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II to enact special laws for a specific ethnic group. Non-citizen young Muslim men are now required to register and subject themselves to interrogation. Many hundreds have been arrested and held without trial or access to legal assistance--a violation of one of the pillars of American democracy: habeas corpus. In Guantanamo Bay, where it is said that they are now preparing execution chambers, hundreds of foreign nationals – including a 13-year-old and a man who claims to be 100 – have been kept for several years in a limbo that clearly contravenes the Geneva Convention.


• Targeting key individuals
See Surveiling ordinary citizens

I am not certain about what is meant by ‘key individuals’. Maybe terror suspects can be considered key.


• Restricting the press
Mainstream media is doing this themselves, or are they being coerced or threatened behind the scenes? True, they are not being restricted as far as not being allowed to report on certain aspects of daily life in the U.S. or government but you have to go to alternative news sources to get the whole story about what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Mainstream media is definitely painting a rosier picture than what the alternative news sources are.

I began questioning the mainstream media during their reporting of the Vietnam war and it turned out I was correct to do so. Only after the war was over did I learn more about what was really going on. Maybe this could be attributed to national security but I have always hated it when someone hides behind that reason for not exposing the whole truth.


• Casting criticism as “espionage” and dissent as “treason”
Florida student tasered by campus police at a political rally.

This one has nothing to do with Iraq or terrorism but why did the police insist on tasering this guy while John Kerry was saying he would answer his questions? This is just a very small sample of the police state we are currently living in. If you think this is inflammatory of me to call our nation a police state then look at all of the cases where police brutality charges have been dismissed or swept away by the very police departments who have the biggest interest in not going forward with them. Look at all of the police shootings that have been deemed ‘justified’ and the officers allowed back on the streets. There is no such thing as an ‘independent’ review board when it comes to investigating the police.

We have witnessed police brutality and shootings on video and still the officers involved go unpunished. Police state, hell yes.


• Subverting the rule of law
The Senate recently gave Little Bush ‘temporary’ expanded authority to eavesdrop on suspected foreign terrorists without court warrants. The purpose of a court warrant is to involve an impartial judge so that citizens rights are not abused. Bush considers this requirement as a stumbling block to his freedom.

Can we truly trust this man to make a determination as to who is and who is not a terrorist? Since he lied to us about Iraq being a terrorist state out to destroy the U.S. and got us into an illegal war it is no stretch of the imagination to believe that he can ‘see’ terrorism anywhere in the world, including right here in the U.S. among our neighbors. Perhaps you or perhaps me. What is to stop him? Don’t even think that common sense has anything to do with it because that train left a long time ago.

What about all of the instances where he has evoked 'executive privilege' to get around a law to get what he wants or to protect one of his ‘cronies?

After examining these requirements for fascism for myself, I am not convinced we are in a fascist state, yet. We are on the precipice because no one can deny that all of the earmarks are certainly there. And, even though we are so dangerously close, there are too many other factors in play that will not allow this nation to fall under that evil ‘ism’.

Another blog that deserves mention if only because it highlights some of the dangers we face from having George Walker Bush as our president is this one. This blog goes a little deeper into identifying why King Bush Jr is such an insidious threat to our freedom. The blog deserves to be read by every American, free-thinking or otherwise.

There are others, there certainly is no shortage of what could be called ‘conspiracy theorists’ and I hesitate to label all of them so harshly, because this term is gaining a negative, lunatic connotation. But when there are so many people saying the same thing, coupled with the fact that we as a nation are becoming more and more apathetic about what our government leaders are doing, I think we owe it to ourselves to at least look into it.

I have been watching politics for many years, hence my general cynicism and skepticism about all political motives, and until just recently I haven’t really ‘seen’ what is happening to us. Now that I have opened my eyes I do not like what I see.

This administration is the most radical government in modern American history. George W. Bush’s ideologies, or rather the true ruling junta behind him, have become so pervasive and well-accepted that the main stream media doesn’t even realize that they are now a part of it.

There is no doubt that Little Bush has damaged this countries psyche, but, in the final analysis, I think we are a strong enough nation to withstand even his bungling attempt at leadership.