Tag: government overreach

HOME INVASIONS: ALL THE WAYS THE GOVERNMENT CAN LAY SIEGE TO YOUR PROPERTY

In Caniglia v. Strom, police want to be able to carry out warrantless home invasions in order to seize lawfully-owned guns under the pretext of their so-called “community caretaking” duties. Under the “community caretaking” exception to the Fourth Amendment, police can conduct warrantless searches of vehicles relating to accident investigations and provide aid to “citizens who are ill or in distress.”

At a time when red flag gun laws are gaining traction as a legislative means by which to allow police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats, it wouldn’t take much to expand the Fourth Amendment’s “community caretaking” exception to allow police to enter a home without a warrant and seize lawfully-possessed firearms based on concerns that the guns might pose a danger.

What we do not need is yet another pretext by which government officials can violate the Fourth Amendment at will under the pretext of public health and safety.

In Lange v. California, police want to be able to enter homes without warrants as long as they can claim to be in pursuit of someone they suspect may have committed a crime. Yet as Justice Neil Gorsuch points out, in an age in which everything has been criminalized, that leaves the door wide open for police to enter one’s home in pursuit of any and all misdemeanor crimes.

At issue in Lange is whether police can justify entering homes without a warrant under the “hot pursuit” exception to the Fourth Amendment.

The case arose after a California cop followed a driver, Arthur Lange, who was honking his horn while listening to music. The officer followed Lange, supposedly to cite him for violating a local noise ordinance, but didn’t actually activate the police cruiser’s emergency lights until Lange had already arrived home and entered his garage. Sticking his foot under the garage door just as it was about to close, the cop confronted Lange, smelled alcohol on his breath, ordered him to take a sobriety test, and then charged him with a DUI and a noise infraction.

Lange is just chock full of troubling indicators of a greater tyranny at work.

Overcriminalization: That you can now get pulled over and cited for honking your horn while driving and listening to music illustrates just how uptight and over-regulated life in the American police state has become.

Make-work policing: At a time when crime remains at an all-time low, it’s telling that a police officer has nothing better to do than follow a driver seemingly guilty of nothing more than enjoying loud music.

Warrantless entry: That foot in the door is a tactic that, while technically illegal, is used frequently by police attempting to finagle their way into a home and sidestep the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

The definition of reasonable: Although the Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless and unreasonable searches and seizures of “persons, houses, papers, and effects,” where we run into real trouble is when the government starts dancing around what constitutes a “reasonable” search. Of course, that all depends on who gets to decide what is reasonable. There’s even a balancing test that weighs the intrusion on a person’s right to privacy against the government’s interests, which include public safety.

Too often, the scales weigh in the government’s favor.

End runs around the law: The courts, seemingly more concerned with marching in lockstep with the police state than upholding the rights of the people, have provided police with a long list of exceptions that have gutted the Fourth Amendment’s once-robust privacy protections.

Exceptions to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement allow the police to carry out warrantless searches: if someone agrees to the search; in order to ferret out weapons or evidence during the course of an arrest; if police think someone is acting suspiciously and may be armed; during a brief investigatory stop; if a cop sees something connected to a crime in plain view; if police are in hot pursuit of a suspect who flees into a building; if they believe a vehicle has contraband; in an emergency where there may not be time to procure a warrant; and at national borders and in airports.

In other words, almost anything goes when it comes to all the ways in which the government can now invade your home and lay siege to your property.

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Judge Rips Kids Away From Moms Who Get Caught Not Wearing Masks

Broward County Circuit Court Judge Dale Cohen has repeatedly suspended parental timesharing arrangements for mothers who have been caught not wearing masks, according to interviews with parents and stunning audio and court documents obtained by NATIONAL FILE.

Cohen, who was originally appointed by Jeb Bush, indefinitely suspended parental timesharing for Melanie Joseph when he heard that she was seen in a photograph on social media not wearing a mask. Joseph said that she was merely trying to take a break from the mask. Joseph later made an agreement with heavy restrictions (including mandatory vaccinations and a mandate that her asthmatic 14-year old son must wear a mask) to get limited timesharing back. Judge Cohen also completely cut off timesharing for a mother of a less than 2-year old child when a court filing accused the mom of consistently not wearing a mask and photo evidence showed her not social distancing at the beach.

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Family’s Farm Raided, Animals Killed — For Rehabilitating Them Without A Permit

A Michigan farm owner’s desire to help animals in need has landed her in jail and the animals she was helping, killed. Kei Ju Farm and Rescue owner Julie Hall did not pay the government for the proper permit before helping animals so officials arrested her and then killed her animals.

Because there is no animal rescue in Petoskey, for years Hall has been rescuing both wild and domestic animals and nursing them back to health. She has years of experience in the field and has a farm where she carries out the rehabilitation. She was well known in the community for providing this service.

“We have no more rehab centers up here. So this ole farm gal helps everyone,” Hall said.

Folks in her community say that Hall has saved countless animals over the years and has provided a much needed service in the absence of a Michigan Licensed Rehabilitation facility. However, a warrant was issued for her arrest last week because the government forces people like Hall to pay them first before rescuing animals.

Hall explained she has done this for years and she was known for providing her service. However, she says when an employee was caught stealing from her farm, that person became upset and lodged a false complaint with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in Petoskey.

After the complaint was lodged, Kei Ju Farm was raided by DNR agents who served her with an arrest warrant. The charge was for holding wild animals in captivity without permit.

“That Thursday, the DNR rolled in with four trucks. They knew exactly where all the animals were,” Hall said.

Unfortunately, the arrest warrant wasn’t the only thing these DNR agents brought. They also brought their guns and began killing all the animals Hall had been rehabilitating.

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Family Fined, Kicked Off Their Own Property While Trying to Live Sustainably

There is no question that 2020 was one of the most difficult years in American history. As the government shut down the economy, driving unemployment to record levels and forcing businesses to close their doors forever, tens of millions of Americans found themselves in dire straits. To deal with the unprecedented hard times, some folks like Tim Leslie and his family began to get creative, buying property and homesteading. However, because the land of the free is is but a fleeting myth in this country, government officials did all they could to thwart it.

Last year, Leslie lost his job. With no other options in mind, he bought a plot of land in Polk County, parked an RV on it and began to live off the land. On the property, Leslie has chickens, goats, and a vegetable garden for his wife and their two kids, 9-year-old Knox and 18-month-old Daisy.

“We plan on building a forever home here and, you know, growing old and giving it to our kids,” Leslie told WSB-TV.

After he was fired, Leslie took his life savings — draining his pension and 401(k) — and bought the property in Polk County. The purchase took place in November of 2020.

The family’s dreams of homesteading on their own property came to a grinding halt, however, and has morphed into a nightmare thanks to the intrusive and utterly cruel nature of the state.

Leslie and his family are no longer living on their own property and are instead living in an RV park because county officials forced them to move. The county issued the family a steep fine and then ordered them to move or face arrest and have his property stolen — because living on your own property in an RV is “illegal.”

“Before I could go to court, they showed up at my property, the building inspector and the code enforcement officer, and told me that I had to be off my land or they were going to seize my vehicles and my assets,” Leslie told Choi.

This move is especially insidious for two reasons. The first reason is obvious: Leslie and his family own the property and no one should be able to tell him what to do on it — especially due to the fact they are a struggling family during unprecedented times in a pandemic.

The second reason is that Leslie checked the law before making these moves and he is following it.

According to WSB-TV, Leslie says he checked the county codes before buying the land. He showed them the section that allows for “single-family dwellings” in an agricultural district, under which his property is designated. Under the county’s definition for “dwellings” it specifically includes “manufactured homes, mobile homes, industrialized buildings, and recreational vehicles.”

“It showed that we could have our animals here and be in our camper temporarily. So that’s the reason we moved out,” Leslie said.

Despite following the law as stated above, Leslie’s citation is for “living in campers/RV.”

“This is a question about property rights,” said attorney Ari Bargil with the Institute for Justice. “Mr. Leslie owns the property on which he situated his camper. And as a result, he has the right to live there, as long as he’s not harming anybody through his use.”

One would think that the media coverage on the case, coupled with the egregious nature of kicking a family off their own property for trying to survive during a pandemic, would make officials rethink their move. However, one would be wrong.

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Covid-19(84) Is Never Going Away — And If You Give Them An Inch Now, They’ll Take Miles

I hate to break it to you but the Covid-19(84) nightmare isn’t going away anytime soon. Two weeks to flatten the curve has turned into a 9-month psychological operation where fear is now the real virus.

Various health officials in many countries all over the world are warning that these extreme measures will continue indefinitely.

In this video Dan Dicks of Press For Truth explains why the Covid-19(84) lockdown measures are here to stay, and more importantly what you can do right now to actively start protecting yourself moving forward as things are only going to get worse.

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Tennessee Cops Arrest Man For Posting Photoshopped Picture of Men Urinating on Dead Officer’s Grave

Tennessee law enforcement arrested a man last week for posting a photoshopped picture of two men urinating on a dead police officer’s grave.

The Dickson County Sheriff’s Office, following an investigation by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), arrested and charged Joshua Garton with harassment after Garton posted a picture to Facebook that appeared to show two men desecrating the tombstone of Sgt. Daniel Baker, who was shot and killed on duty in 2018. Garton was held on a $76,000 bond.

“Agents subsequently visited Baker’s gravesite this morning and determined the photograph was digitally manufactured,” a TBI press release says. The agency launched the investigation at the request of 23rd District Attorney General Ray Crouch.

While the picture was in poor taste, constitutional experts say law enforcement violated Garton’s First Amendment rights by arresting him for the image.

“The First Amendment clearly and unmistakably protects this man’s right to post an offensive photo about a police officer,” says Daniel Horwitz, a Nashville civil rights attorney. “The only people who broke the law here were the police officers and TBI agents who participated in this flagrantly unconstitutional arrest.”

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STATE LEGISLATURES MAKE “UNPRECEDENTED” PUSH ON ANTI-PROTEST BILLS

Since the day of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, at least nine states have introduced 14 anti-protest bills. The bills, which vary state by state, contain a dizzying array of provisions that serve to criminalize participation in disruptive protests. The measures range from barring demonstrators from public benefits or government jobs to offering legal protections to those who shoot or run over protesters. Some of the proposals would allow protesters to be held without bail and criminalize camping. A few bills seek to prevent local governments from defunding police.

The pushes by close to a fifth of state legislatures are part of a pattern that began to pick up speed after the summer’s uprisings in response to the police killing of George Floyd, which in many communities included significant property damage. In a handful of states, lawmakers did what they often do: introduced new legislation — however unnecessary — to show that they were responding to their constituents’ concerns.“We expected to see some bills this month, as state legislatures reconvened, but the number of bills and their severity is still shocking.”

The rate of new bills being offered sped up dramatically this month as lawmakers kicked off their legislative sessions at the very moment that Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Bills quickly arose in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island.

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11 of the Most Memorable Acts of Civil Disobedience in History

Civil disobedience” evokes a range of reactions when people hear the term. Some instinctively wince, regarding it as anti-social or subversive.

Others, like me, want to know more before we judge. What is prompting someone to engage in it? Who will be affected and how? What does the “disobedient” person hope to accomplish? Are there alternative actions that might be more effective?

One of my earliest memories from childhood was an act of civil disobedience. My family resided near Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, about 11 miles from the Ohio border town of Negley. At the time, Pennsylvania prohibited the unauthorized introduction and sale of milk from Ohio. On many a Saturday in the late 1950s and early 1960s, my father and I would drive over to Negley and fill the back seat of our car with good, cheap milk. During the drive back home, he would caution me to “keep it covered and don’t say anything if the cops pull us over.”

For me, milk smuggling was a thrill ride. It was downright exciting to evade a stupid law while keeping an eye out for a cop who might have nothing better to do than bust a couple of notorious dairy dealers. I know my dad made a few bucks when he re-sold the milk to happy neighbors. We never had any regrets or pangs of conscience for committing this victimless crime. We were simply supporting a cause that even Abraham Lincoln may have endorsed when he said, “The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”

Government officials hate civil disobedience because it’s a disgruntled citizen’s way of thumbing his nose. If we’re unhappy with laws or policies that are stupid, destructive, corrupt, counterproductive, unconstitutional, or in other ways indefensible, they advise us to do the “democratic” thing—which means hope for the best in a future election, stand in line to be condescended to at some boring public hearing, or just shut up.

My go-to expert on the issue is not a politician or a preacher or an academic. It’s Henry David Thoreau, who famously asked, “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.”

If the choice is obedience or conscience, I try my best to pick conscience.

Historically, civil disobedience—the refusal to comply with a law or command of a political authority—is exceedingly common. Sometimes it is quiet and largely unnoticeable. Other times it is boisterous and public. For an act to be one of civil disobedience, it must be accompanied by principled or philosophical objections to a law or command (to exclude such acts as simple theft, fraud, and the like).

Some political theorists argue that to qualify as civil disobedience, an act must be peaceful; others allow for violence in their definition of the term. Revolutions are certainly acts of disobedience, though because they tend to be accompanied by violence they often aren’t very “civil.” In any event, the indefensible violence this week in Washington should not blind us to the very honorable history of genuine civil disobedience and its loftier motivations.

Here’s a short list of what I call “great moments in civil disobedience.” There’s no particular order other than chronological, and I wouldn’t even claim these are all among the “top” examples in history. They are, at the least, interesting food for thought. See how many of them you could endorse.

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