Texas raid
[Via Drudge.]
WND reports:
In a deliberate “show of force,” federal and local police forces raided a political meeting in Texas, fingerprinting and photographing all attendees as well as confiscating all cell phones and personal recording devices.
Members of the Republic of Texas, a secession movement dedicated to restoring Texas as an independent constitutional republic, had gathered Feb. 14 in a Bryan, Texas, meeting hall along with public onlookers…
Information Liberation noted, “The pretext of the raid was that two individuals from the group had reportedly sent out ”˜simulated court documents’ ”” summonses for a judge and a banker to appear before the Republic of Texas to discuss the matter of a foreclosure. These ”˜simulated documents’ were rejected and the authorities decided to react with a ”˜show of force’ ”“ 20 officers and an extremely broad search warrant.”
The invalid court summons was signed by Susan Cammak, a Kerr County homeowner, and David Kroupa, a Republic of Texas judge from Harris County.
The search warrant against the Republic of Texas authorized the seizure of “all computers, media storage, software, cell phones and paper documents.” Kerr County Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer said the seized devices “will be downloaded and reviewed to determine if others conspired in the creation and issuance of false court documents.”
If this report is true, it’s hard to avoid the thought that the action has something to do with the administration’s war on violent extremism, either directly or indirectly. But the group isn’t violent, you say? Ah, but it’s extreme, and isn’t it necessary to make sure it never gets that violent? But this was just fake court papers, and the names of the perpetrators were known, you say; why raid the whole group? The logical answer is intimidation of right-wing groups.
Obama’s failure to label the violent extremism that we are fighting “Islamic” has been criticized for the obvious reason that if we cannot name our enemy it is unlikely that we can fight it effectively (although Obama’s inability to fight it goes far deeper than a naming problem). But another problem with the term “violent extremism” is that it allows the administration to focus on what it sees as its enemies on the right, to label and define them as a large part of the terrorist problem, and to clamp down.
Think IRS versus the Tea Party, only with the tools of the police rather than those of the tax collector.
You.have.been.warned:
Revealed: Obama Plan to Fundamentally Transform America by Creating a “Country Within a Country”
Camp of the Saints
Intimidation of right-wing groups is certainly the goal. They shall fail in that goal. In fact, acts of intimidation are counter-productive. Which actually may be the deeper purpose.
This administration has from the very beginning focused on its enemies on the right, seeking to label and define them as a large part of the terrorist problem and, to repress through intimidation.
That said, peaceful protest limits the ability of the State to ‘clamp down’. Exposure of attempts to intimidate are the best defense against abuse under the ‘color of law’.
g6loq,
A bit too clever by half. In that, without fundamental transformation of the constitution, a country within America cannot legally exist. Obama’s efforts at gaining citizenship for 34 million formally “undocumented’ democrats has a more immediate and simpler goal; effective seizure of the political process wherein a new voting ‘majority’ ensures permanent one-party rule. When that voting majority of liberals, leftists and law breaking illegals grows large enough, they can successfully vote for legal amendment of the constitution.
Step by step.
Does anyone remember when fringe groups were shrugged off, or at most monitored, and laughed at? In a free society they were expected; and so long as they didn’t actually do anything subversive they were left to the their own imaginary pursuits.
Well, I guess we still tolerate them if they carry banners for, “The New Black Panthers” ; “Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement”; “Boricua Popular Army” (history of violence in support of Puerto Rican Independence); or “The Islamic Circle of North America” (supporting Sharia Law in the US), among others.
People whose mother’s name was Stanley cannot abide even a smidgen of additional mockery.
There’s something a little more subtle going on here and is pretty close to a followup on what I said about the dangers of left trying to turn Republicans against Scott Walker. What the administration is doing isn’t so much trying to intimidate the right as they are trying to marginalize them. From the article, it appears that this Republic of Texas group is a fringe, but not violent group, which makes them a perfect target for this.
The idea here is to equate, in the minds of moderates (everyone slightly right of center to slightly left of center), that right-wing fringe == dangerous. They marginalize the groups on the outermost edge polity, start working on the next groups in. Wash, rinse and repeat.
KRB
Boy oh boy I bet he would love to round up anyone who ever gave money to a tea party candidate and put them in a re-education center.
Anyone still think we live in a free country?
GB: I’m missing something in your nuance. A family doesn’t need a tombstone over a grave to know their loved one is dead. A certificate of death makes it official but the lack of one doesn’t make the body any less dead.
So, if they achieve one party rule what difference at that point does it make if the constitution is formally amended? Isn’t that a bit like worrying about if you have gasoline to burn the body after you already shot it dead?
Sounds more like those raids in WI as part of the “John Doe” prosecutions, where Walker’s big donors had their homes raided in the middle of the night and computers and other records taken.
Odd this is hitting the news just now; it happened on Valentine’s Day. The timing couldn’t be better as far as irony is concerned, though, since today, March 2, is Texas Independence Day, a state holiday there.
This looks to have been mostly the work of the Kerr County sheriff, who said this about the crazy raid:
I suppose the FBI could have been the ones who prodded him into it, or maybe he’s up for re-election or something.
Once the cops get your computers, you’re toast. They can install anything they want and you’re screwed. Child porn is probably the most potent.
Were I on a jury, I would automatically vote to acquit in a case depending on data from a seized computer.
there has been a steady drip of stories of gov police training materials classifying right leaning groups as terrorist linked… but with an absence of actual terrorist acts. Been mostly in the fringe conservative press but the articles tend to have some facts (actual materials being quoted) that seem convincing. More facts than the gov can present that these are actual terrorist groups at least…
With 28 million people in Texas, maybe 2 or 3 million more non-docs there is more than enough crazy down here. As noted above, today is Texas Independence day and it is day nine of the battle of the Alamo where they were not aware Independence had been declared.
We are a few days away from the high holy day in Texas, March 6 1936 when the battle ended in Texan defeat and Texans remembered the Alamo on April 21 the Mexican army was defeated and Santa Anna was forced to order his troops out of Texas.
This is big stuff down here in Texas and some folks get carried away with thinking that the Texas did not really join the USA. There is some mystery to the history and being 57% conservative at times, from the Governor on down lots of people think the Texas has more right answers that the Feds.
Some of the Independence guys went active nutty in the late 1990’s and had a stand off and then gave in and the folks who had done criminal stuff went to prison. George W. was governor at the time and unlike Ann Richards who in 1992 along with Janet Reno went charging into Waco “for the children”, the lawmen managed to bring that standoff to a non bloody ending in about a week.
Yep, we have enough people in Texas for every kind of crazy and some of it is more colorful whackiness than harmful.
“if they achieve one party rule what difference at that point does it make if the constitution is formally amended?” KLSmith
They achieve two important things, the first of which leads to the second, which pragmatically speaking is the more important. The first is legality and the second, support from the military.
If the constitution is formally and legally amended, conservatives have no legal basis for objection.
While we all know that the theory of ‘inalienable’ rights informed the thinking of the founders, the categorization of “inalienable” is not in the constitution. Because that is so, the military would have no legal basis for claiming an order to be lawful, if under a new amended constitution it is lawful. The left could amend the constitution such that it could outlaw all private ownership of firearms or place severe constraints upon free speech and any other ‘rights’ that today we view as ‘inalienable’.
No American government can survive which does not have the support of the US Military, which is sworn to uphold the US Constitution. They must do so even if it has been gutted, as long as any ‘amendments’ were legally done.
Just by-the-way, I think it is worth remembering that the man who originated the “violent extremism” usage was Donald Rumsfeld–coined in order to avoid offending Muslims and Islam. Because (ahem) “Islam” MEANS “peace.” Obama is what he is, of course, and the dangers we face are what they are. But sometimes I wonder just what is going on, here. Maybe some guy whose name rhymes with “Beb Jush” could enlighten us on that score.
GB: thanks for the reply. I still see this as a bit of a moot point. We are well on our way to having our right to free speech constrained if it offends the progressives. And if the new Obamnet goes forward, well…
Also, I don’t see them going door to door confiscating weapons (although I’m sure they’d love to). The left is perfectly willing to play the long game. They will be grumpy, but they can be satisfied with making it too difficult/expensive to
get ammunition or put gun stores out of business.
I think it suits their purposes to curtail our freedoms on a de facto rather than de jure basis. They don’t want to rile up the proles too much.
Americans take the Bama far too seriously. The man was born from the union of a white whore with a penchant for black men and a black drunk from Kenya. Neither of the parents had any morals or any claim to fame. But you got him; those who voted him in will have to take and deal with him when it is his time to go; those who did not vote for the silly bastard, ignore him. He is a passing phase.
Except for Arab North Africa like Egypt and Libya who would like to burn him at the stake for the trouble he caused them; the rest of Africa has already put him in the past.
Let him fade away into obscurity.
The Obama administration is removing all references to Islam from terror training materials, and instead the term “terrorist” is being applied to large groups of American citizens.
Below is a list of 72 types of Americans that are considered to be “extremists” and “potential terrorists” in official U.S. government documents. To see the original source document for each point, just click on the link. As you can see, this list covers most of the country:
72 types of US Americans
The groups of people in the list above are considered “problems” that need to be dealt with. In some of the documents referenced above, members of the military are specifically warned not to have anything to do with such groups.
[posted at a previous thread]
Y’all continue rational think and rational think and see what happens to y’all …
*rational think and rational speak