“Holy shit I know that guy!”— Lord Single Malt (@Singlemaltfiend) November 1, 2017
-The FBI after most domestic terrorist attacks
Experience
To begin with, Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun. What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semi-automatic weapon? This is a matter of national security.There have been many who have taken exception to using this no-fly list as means to deny someone the right to purchase a firearm. Prof. Eugene Volokh, among others, has objected to it on the basis of denial of due process noting that we don't deny rights based upon mere suspicion. The New York Times was against them before they were for them. (My friend Prof. David Yamane has two very well-reasoned responses to the Times on this.) The NRA has long opposed using terrorist watch lists to deny firearm rights. Charles C. W. Cooke, a Brit who has a better appreciation for the Bill of Rights than many American politicians, says those who would use terror to subvert the Second Amendment should be tarred and feathered. That sounds appropriate to me.
His answer wasn't based on individual gun rights.In essence, smart terrorists (and we better get used to the idea that our enemies are pretty smart) would use the NICS denial process as the on-line equivalent of a storefront's glass windows. Spies, terrorists, and anyone being followed is trained to use the windows as a way to spot a tail. Terrorists could easily use the NICS system in much the same manner.
Instead, it focused on the fact that adding a person who might be under suspicion for a criminal activity to the prohibited persons list wouldn't keep them from getting firearms illegally, but it would create a de facto "terrorist notification system.
"If someone suspected they were being surveilled -or they were doing something illegal and wanted to know if they'd done something to alert authorities," Keane said, "they could go to a gun store and try to make a legal purchase. If they were denied, well.there's their answer."
Attorney General Roy Cooper on Monday called on state lawmakers to approve legislation that would prevent anyone being monitored by the FBI as a terror suspect from purchasing firearms in North Carolina.Hasan Harnett, Chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, immediately fired back at Cooper.
"Stopping terror suspects from getting weapons that could harm our state and its people makes common sense," Cooper said in a statement. "Even if Washington won't act, we can."
In the wake of last week's mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., the U.S. Senate voted down a measure that would have curtailed the gun rights of people on the government's no-fly list and other FBI databases of terror suspects.
“It’s shameful that Roy Cooper has chosen once again to side with Washington, D.C. and follow President Obama’s lead, using the recent terrorist attack as a bait-and-switch to push for more gun control in North Carolina. Considering anyone can be placed on the terror watch list for any number of reasons arbitrarily, it is equally as scary that our state’s elected attorney general and top law enforcement officer is for stripping our citizens of their constitutional rights and denying them due process in order to score points with the far-left elements of his party.”Roy Cooper has finally come out of the closet on gun control. For years he has been rather wishy-washy on gun rights. I'm actually glad that he has decided to ally himself with the national Democrat Party on gun control issues. Given that Michael Bloomberg spent millions to make sure the state kept it racist Jim Crow-era pistol purchase permit system, I would fully expect Cooper to get Bloomberg's monetary support.
NC's Attorney General to Bring Modern Day McCarthyism to North Carolina
Fret not that tens of thousands of lawful citizens - including Senator Ted Kennedy - have been denied airline transportation thanks to misidentification. Never mind the Terrorist Watch List is so inaccurate it includes 72 Department of Homeland Security employees. Forget that stringent gun control in both France and California failed to stop terrorists from getting weapons. And don't bother to read the Huff Post's "7 Ways You (Yes, You) Could End Up On A Terrorist Watch List".
Why not? Because all that is trivial compared to having the state's top cop and would-be governor proposing to flout the Constitution by denying you due process under both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. You have no "right" to fly, but as affirmed by the Supreme Court in DC v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, you definitely have a right to keep and bear arms.
America has traveled this road before, and the landscape wasn't pretty. Widespread violations of Constitutional rights and civil liberties in the late 1950s against "subversives" on secret blacklists compiled by the FBI were so shockingly un-American, they earned their own moniker: McCarthyism.
Where will Cooper's modern McCarthyism end? Once government is free to deny a fundamental, enumerated Constitutional right for merely being included on a secret list, are our other cherished freedoms far behind? Free speech? Freedom of religion? History demonstrates that when governments are free to use the full powers of the state against those on secret lists, the first casualty is liberty.
Due process - notice, an opportunity to be heard, the right to face one's accuser - has been America's bulwark against tyranny since the Founders penned the Constitution.
IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED!
- EMAIL ATTORNEY GENERAL ROY COOPER. Use this contact form on the NC DOJ website:
http://ncdoj.com/Home/ContactNCDOJ.aspx
and use the copy/paste message provided below, under 'Deliver This Message.'- PHONE ROY COOPER at this number: (919) 716-6400
Tell him that you've read about his proposed scheme to suspend the Second Amendment rights of North Carolinians using the arbitrary and secret "Terrorist Watch List." This would suspend the rights of certain citizens absent any proper due process. Suppressing the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments is clearly illegal, and would be an example of modern day McCarthyism. It will not be tolerated.DELIVER THIS MESSAGE
Suggested Subject: "'Watch List:' No McCarthyism in North Carolina!"Dear Attorney General Cooper:I have just read of your proposal to use the "Terrorist Watch List" to deny Second Amendment rights to North Carolinians. I am absolutely mortified to hear this, and I demand that you immediately cease any effort to establish what can only be called modern day McCarthyism.
The "watch list" is an arbitrary and secret government list. Citizens who are placed on this list usually have no knowledge of the fact that they are on it, have had no hearing, and no opportunity to face their accusers. There are also numerous examples of innocent civilians being placed on this list in error. The "watch list" sidesteps due process, and denying citizens their Constitutional rights outside of proper due process is a clear violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
There is no Constitutional right to "fly commercial," but there is a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Do not attempt to use an arbitrary and secret government list to deny human rights to this state's citizens. It would be a huge mistake.
I will be monitoring this issue through alerts from Grass Roots North Carolina.Respectfully,
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| As posted on Facebook by the Daily News. |
(U//FOUO) Possession of large amounts of weapons, ammunition, explosives, accelerants, or explosive precursor chemicals could indicate pre-operational terrorist attack planning or criminal activity.Really?
(U//FOUO) Constitutional activities should not be reported in a SAR or Information Sharing Environment (ISE) SAR absent articulable facts and circumstances that support the source agency’s suspicion that the behavior observed is not innocent, but rather reasonably indicative of criminal activity associated with terrorism, including evidence of pre operational planning related to terrorism. Race, ethnicity, national origin, or religious affiliation should not be considered as factors that create suspicion (although these factors may be used as specific suspect descriptions).After all the hyperbole contained in Roll Call Release, one has to wonder just how many police departments in many areas will even notice the "constitutional activities" disclaimer.
So in summery (sic), the BATFE and FBI made a high profile raid during SHOT Show to arrest a 21 gun industry people. Their case was hinged on the word of a thief, druggie and all round morally bankrupt individual. Bistrong got just 18 months while the accused spent two years fighting their case.Bistrong refers to Richard Bistrong who was the FBI's principal informant.
Chairman Issa Hearing Preview StatementMuch of the hearings and much of what has been released has been about incompetence which is a start but doesn't go far enough. I would suggest that this operation could be more accurately be considered a subversion of the Constitution. I may be jaded but I don't think a reasonable person would conclude that such a Keystone Cops approach to the Mexican drug cartels was ever meant to work. Rather it was meant as a way to build support for greater and greater gun control measures. If one reads John Ross' Unintended Consequences or Matthew Bracken's Enemies Foreign and Domestic which are fiction and then compare Operation Fast and Furious to them, the similarities become downright eerie.
Over the past year, the ATF program known as Operation Fast and Furious has been the subject of a joint investigation by this committee and Sen. Chuck Grassley, who serves as the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. When this investigation began, the Department of Justice took the position that allegations by whistleblowers about reckless tactics and decision making in this operation were false.
Late last year, after months of investigation, the Justice Department finally acknowledged the allegations were true. Fast and Furious was both reckless and flawed.
The Justice Department, however, has been less than forthcoming in cooperating with the efforts of Congressional investigators to determine exactly what happened and who was responsible:
• The Justice Department has delivered fewer than 8% of the 80,000 documents we know it has identified as being related to this flawed operation.
• It has refused to allow investigators access to numerous witnesses who participated in the operation – one witness, after being served with a subpoena, invoked his Fifth Amendment right to protection against self-incrimination rather than answer questions.
• Justice Department now asserts that many documents pertaining to internal discussions and decision making about its response to Operation Fast and Furious are off-limits to investigators.
The American people deserve better from our nation's top law enforcement agency. Thursday's hearing will feature the nation's top law enforcement official, Attorney General Eric Holder, who will be asked to explain his decision to withhold this factual evidence from investigators. What he is concerned this information would reveal? Why is the Department trying to keep its internal discussions about Operation Fast and Furious from after February 4, 2011 secret? Why did it take nearly nine months for the Justice Department to acknowledge its earlier denials were false? Why did senior Justice Department officials who knew about and received briefings on the operation fail to stop it? Should Americans have confidence in their chief law enforcement agency even though these same officials remain in their posts?
There is now broad bipartisan agreement that the congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious has exposed a serious and deadly failure of government. We know that the life of a brave Border Patrol agent has been lost along with countless Mexican citizens who have been victimized by guns from Operation Fast and Furious. Attorney General Holder has acknowledged that the danger created by Fast and Furious will continue for years.
This hearing is not about controversial struggles between gun control advocates and supporters of the Second Amendment. It is about the unifying, and what should be bipartisan, expectation that the Justice Department be held to a high standard and that those who failed to meet this standard should be held accountable. I look forward to Attorney General Holder's testimony.
So, since October the committee staff have been aware of the FBI sanitized version of the "one-armed man" and his brother who were their confidential informants, who provided the money to the straw buyers and whom the FBI have been protecting ever since Brian Terry was murdered. But does the Committee draw the obvious conclusion? Have they aggressively probed the FBI on Operation Head Shot? If this pathetic entry is any indication, no, they haven't. The FBI, it seems, is off limits.So now you have a troika of agencies - ATF, DEA, and FBI - involved to some degree in Project Gunwalker. Such coordination of effort among agencies doesn't just happen without a controlling hand from above in Main Justice. This leads me again to say this wasn't about the cartels but rather about building the case for more gun control. This administration is the most Machiavellian since Richard Nixon and it fits their under the radar approach to these issues.
Grassley, Issa Press for Answers from FBI, DEA in Fast and Furious InvestigationThe full letter to DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart can be found here.
WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Darrell Issa are pushing for additional information and documents from the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in relation to the two agencies roles in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) reckless strategy known as Operation Fast and Furious. The strategy employed by the ATF allowed firearms to be purchased by known straw buyers and then transferred to third parties where the guns often crossed the border to Mexican drug cartels.
The letters are a follow-up to a recorded, transcribed interview with Acting ATF Director Ken Melson. The Acting Director was interviewed by congressional investigators on July 4 where he corroborated several details that included other agencies involved in Operation Fast and Furious.
In the letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Grassley and Issa asked about the “veracity of claims” regarding the possible involvement of paid FBI informants in Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically at least one individual who is allegedly an FBI informant” and “might have been in communication with, and was perhaps even conspiring with, at least one suspect whom ATF was monitoring.”
The letter to DEA Administrator Michelle Leonhart requested a briefing by DEA staff as well as “the number of informants or cooperating informants handled by other agencies identified in the course of any investigations related to Operation Fast and Furious.”
In addition, both letters (to Mueller and Leonhart) asked for communications of several members of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force who were working in coordination with the ATF to conduct Operation Fast and Furious.
