22 Friday Dec 2017
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
Tags
‘Tis the Season. Everyone loves something in the old stocking. Today everyone won.
President Trump signed two Bills into law before jetting off to FloridaLand.
The first under pen was the recently passed tax cut package. This allows people who work to actually keep a little more of the money they earn. Crazy concept, right?
The second Resolution provides funding for normal Imperial operations until the middle of next month. State worshipers gotta love that.
AP
Happy Friday to all!
21 Thursday Dec 2017
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
≈ Comments Off on Justice Gives a Gift for the Winter Solstice
Tags
America, civil liberties, Cliven Bundy, Courts, crime, due process, freedom, justice, law, tyranny, winter
Happy winter, 2017, a season which began an hour or so ago. This one begins on a nominally merry note. Several notes, in fact, as the little GOP elves deliver happy tax cuts for the peeps.
Also, yesterday, just like Wodan Santa bringing gifts to the kiddies, Lady Justice delivered to Americans a blow for freedom and against government tyranny. A federal judge declared a mistrial in the Cliven Bundy criminal case, the result of massive government obstruction. My brief recount from Freedom Prepper:
Cliven Bundy, his sons, and friends, are American heroes. Like our great forefathers they actually stood up to the tyrannical power of the central government. You likely know their story of defiance against the Bureau of Land Management.
Now, know the good news. The federal case against them continues to disintegrate. Read the amazing legal feel-good story, here, from the Washington Post and Leah Sottile.
If you still believe in the old Constitution and expect the government to abide by it, then you must notice that nowhere in that document does the government in DC have any authority to own and “manage” “public” lands. None. No authority.
Cliven and Co. took this issue and legal point straight to the BLM. The encounter turned sour as so many interactions with the police state do. Arrests were made and, then, the prosecutorial misconduct began.
“LAS VEGAS — A federal judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the criminal conspiracy case against rancher Cliven Bundy and three other defendants, saying government lawyers suppressed key evidence that would have been favorable to the defendants’ case related to a 2014 standoff with federal agents.
U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro determined that the prosecution suppressed evidence from FBI surveillance cameras recording the Bundy family home and the presence of Bureau of Land Management snipers around the property in the days leading up to the standoff there. Additionally, the prosecution did not provide FBI logs, maps, reports and threat assessments that said the Bundy family was not dangerous.
Navarro pointed to assessments conducted by the FBI, the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center and the BLM that said “the Bundy family is not violent” and that they “would probably get in your face, but not get into a shootout.”
The court “regrettably believes a mistrial is the only suitable option,” Navarro told the packed Nevada courtroom. “A fair trial at this point is impossible.”
–Sottile
This is huge. First, there is public acknowledgement that the government does, in fact, do wrong and itself break the law. Second, a federal judge has called them on it. This usually is well hidden.
A hearing is scheduled for January 8, 2018 to assess the damage caused and to determine if the case should even proceed. It is possible that the judge may find the feds have so compromised justice that she has to dismiss the charges. That would be true and complete justice – not just for Bundy, but for all Americans.
This story is developing. But it is, right now, a victory for anyone interested in freedom. It’s a refutation to the mindlessness of both “government is god” liberals and of “law ‘n order” conservatives. Yes, the police routinely arrest innocent people. Then they commit perjury, hide evidence, mess with rules, prevent discovery, obstruct justice, destroy due process, and trample civil liberties. Usually, they get away with it, sometimes even with commendation. But not this time.
This is huge.
Conservative Treehouse.
01 Friday Dec 2017
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
≈ Comments Off on Seriously, Don’t Talk
Tags
The cops: DO NOT talk to them.
Mike Flynn, today, surely reflects on his fateful decision to discuss matters with the FBI. The FBI are the police. Thus, one should not speak to them.* If you’re not talking, you’re not lying. If you talk and they say you lie, you’re a liar. You get convicted. Felony. Their B—-h going forward. Blah. Blah.
You have the right to remain silent for a reason. Remember that. Anything you say can AND WILL be used against you.
All this talk about “Ty Cobb” have anyone else thinking baseball?
Mimesis/Universal.
*The exceptions would be if you’re superhuman or if you’re talking to a cop, over beers, in his driveway about something that doesn’t really concern either of you…
Okay, Happy December. November, and prior months, have been pretty slow. I’m thinking about a “lightening” round to clear out drafts and such without much additional commentary – and to boost reading, etc. This would be an example. Look for more. Click.
The Christmas ties are coming…
28 Tuesday Nov 2017
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
≈ Comments Off on Of Crime and Punishment and Non-Crime and Punishment
Tags
Constitution, counterfeiting, crime, Donald Trump, law, Lawrence Vance, pardon, piracy, President, treason
While in Asia the other week, President Trump secured the release of three high value American prisoners. All good and well, but Lawrence Vance ponders if Trump’s amnestying efforts might be better spent at home.
LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill, and Cody Riley, who are now on indefinite suspension from the UCLA Bruins basketball team, were in China with their team for a basketball game against Georgia Tech. The trio was arrested after allegedly shoplifting from a Louis Vuitton store in Hangzhou, China. After being detained for over a week and facing up to ten years in prison, they were released after President Donald Trump intervened on their behalf with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
These are not the only prisoners that Trump should have freed. Far more important are the people imprisoned in the United States for victimless crimes.
The United States is indeed an exceptional nation. It has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. It has over 2 million people behind bars, more than any other nation. And it has the highest per capita prison rate.
A great many of the Americans who are in prison have been incarcerated for victimless crimes, and especially drug crimes. Only violent criminals should be incarcerated, and no one should ever be locked up for committing a victimless crime.
Every crime should have a tangible and identifiable victim with real harm and measurable damages. Rape, robbery, assault, child abuse, battery, burglary, theft, arson, looting, kidnapping, shoplifting, embezzlement, manslaughter, and murder are real crimes. Possessing “illegal” drugs, “illegal” gambling, prostitution, discriminating, price gouging, and ticket scalping are victimless crimes.
Prosecuting Americans for committing victimless crimes turns vices into crimes; unnecessarily makes criminals out of otherwise law-abiding Americans; is an illegitimate function of government; criminalizes voluntary, consensual, peaceful activity; costs far more than any of its supposed benefits; does violence to individual liberty and private property; and is incompatible with a free society.
Committing victimless crimes may be unwise, addictive, unhealthy, risky, immoral, sinful, and/or just plain stupid, but it is not for the government to decide what risks Americans are allowed to take and what kinds of behaviors they are allowed to engage in as long as their actions are peaceful, private, voluntary, and consensual.
According to Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution, the president “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States except in cases of impeachment.” According to the case of Ex parte Garland (1867), the scope of the president’s pardon power is quite broad. And according to United States v. Klein (1871), Congress cannot limit the president’s grant of an amnesty or pardon.
This means that Trump could, today, pardon every American in a federal prison for committing a victimless crime. And like he did for the American basketball players in China, Trump could work to free every American held in a state prison for committing a victimless crime.
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, President Trump followed in the tradition of his predecessors and pardoned a turkey. Better that he ate the turkey and pardoned everyone in a federal prison for a victimless crime and ordered their immediate release. No one should ever be detained by police, arrested, tried, fined, or imprisoned for a victimless crime.
I completely agree with this idea. However, assuming (pointlessly) that we still have a Constitution, all Trump could do with the States would be lobby as he did with China. On the federal front things would be a little easier. Some, most, rather, violent federal inmates would have to freed as well.
That Constitution thing, the parts in, above, and below Article Two, only specifies three crimes. Honestly, if it’s not piracy, counterfeiting, or treason, what business has Washington prosecuting it.
Pardon this interruption…
22 Wednesday Nov 2017
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
≈ Comments Off on “Conservatives,” The Second Amendment, and that Constitution Thing
Lawrence Vance looks into the kooky antics of what pass for conservatives in America. As is now utterly obvious, conservatives conserve nothing:
But the strangest reaction did not come from a Democrat, a progressive, or a liberal. It came from a conservative. Bret L. Stephens joined the New York Times as an op-ed columnist in 2017 after a long career with the Wall Street Journal. Stephens, a neoconservative, argues in his book America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder that America should be the world’s policeman.
In an opinion piece for the New York Times, titled “Repeal the Second Amendment,” Stephens declares that he has “never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.” From a law-and-order standpoint, “more guns means more murder.” From a personal-safety standpoint, “more guns means less safety.” From a national-security standpoint, “the Amendment’s suggestion that a ‘well-regulated militia’ is ‘necessary to the security of a free State,’ is quaint.” From a personal liberty standpoint, “the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious.”
…
Only once in American history was a constitutional amendment repealed. The Twenty-first Amendment of 1933 repealed the Eighteenth Amendment of 1920 that instituted Prohibition. What would happen if the Second Amendment were repealed?
Absolutely nothing.
If the Second Amendment didn’t exist, Americans would still have the natural right to keep and bear arms. This is because there is no authority granted to the federal government by the Constitution to ban, regulate, or otherwise infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
The federal government has no authority whatsoever under the Constitution—even if the Second Amendment were repealed—to ban or regulate handguns, high-caliber guns, shotguns, sawed-off shotguns, rifles, assault rifles, extended-capacity magazines, bump sticks, ammunition, automatic weapons, machine guns, grenades, or bazookas.
And neither does the federal government have any authority whatsoever under the Constitution to establish or mandate gun-free zones, background checks, waiting periods, trigger locks, limits on gun purchases, age restrictions on gun purchases, gun-barrel lengths, concealed weapons laws, licensing of gun dealers, gun-owner databases, gun licensing, or gun registration.
If anything should be repealed it is all federal gun laws—even the ones supported by Republicans and conservatives.
How about just repealing the whole Constitution. Replace it with nothing (or the old Articles – Articles of loose, weak, powerless, non-taxing Confederation).
Carlos Slim’s Blog.
10 Friday Nov 2017
Posted in News and Notes
≈ Comments Off on It’s Past Time to Discuss Banning Autos
Tags
car control, cars, communism, crime, France, gun control, law, terrorism
We need car control and truck control – common sense vehicular controls.
Whether it’s the confused elderly, pizza-slicing soccer moms, “refugees,” terrorists, or the ordinary everyday insane, this motoring madness has gone far enough.
A driver ‘suffering from acute schizophrenia’ ploughed into a group of Chinese students leaving a college in the suburb of Blagnac, near Toulouse, on Friday.
Three people were injured, two gravely, in the smash at the exit of Saint-Exupéry high school, in south-west France, before being taken to the nearby Purpan Hospital.
The driver, 28, who deliberately committed the attack, is known to police but was not on a security watch list. While being arrested he admitted to hearing voices telling him to hurt someone.
A driver ‘suffering from acute schizophrenia’ ploughed into a group of Chinese students leaving a college in the suburb of Blagnac, near Toulouse, on Friday
The three victims are Chinese students – a 22-year-old man and two 23-year-old women.
This college campus comprises of several postgraduate courses including journalism, computer science, real estate and business.
The unnamed driver has been arrested following the incident.
Local media report the man is known to suffer from a psychiatric disorder.
Times have changed. The ultra-powerful, modern, assault-style cars and trucks of today barely resemble the simple, single-shot, muzzle-loading cars of yesteryear (yet all are really but another evil invention of white male privilege). If that parenthetical thought isn’t enough to warrant a full ban, I don’t know what is.
Assault-style Truck with Chainsaw Bayonet Hood Ornament. End the madness!
One cannot use a car to hunt. Sportsmen (and Sportswomen, Sportspersons, and Sportszirs) do not need cars. You are far more likely to run over yourself with your own car than to be run over by someone else’s. Criminals frequently use “innocent” people’s cars against them. Car show loopholes allow anyone, even terrorists, cripples, and the schizophrenic, to drive our streets with little more than a small operators “license.”
Face the truth: only the police, the military, other government agents, and the ultra-connected, wealthy, right-thinking, and jet set elite need automobiles. You? You’re just not good enough.
This school attack in France, and the 40 gazillion like it, each year, in America, Europe, and elsewhere, proves we need sensible car control to save our children, ourselves, our planet, maybe even our whales.
The blood is on the cash-soaked hands of the AAA, literally bribing Congress this very minute for more lethal death machines on our highways – all for their own selfish profits…
Write, email, or call your local political critters and fish wrapper opinion editors. Tell them enough is enough. The reign of automotive terror must end. Our children deserve better. No child should have to walk to school under a hail of hub caps or spark plugs.
Scream helplessly at the sky!
*This message brought to you by Citizens Against Car Violence, a division of Gun Control, Inc., in conjunction with the Southern Communism Bullshit Center.
09 Thursday Nov 2017
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
Tags
1984, Big Brother, freedom, Kansas, law, police, police state, surveillance
Big Brother? Or Big Smother? Just a day in the life in Airstrip One Wichita.
If you are caught making a violation on camera by a staffer who is monitoring Old Town from an office in City Hall, that staffer will call and alert a nearby officer of your violation.
The staffer will provide the officer with your location, a description of your vehicle and what violation you made.
That officer can then pull you over.
“I hope people don’t perceive this as ‘Big Brother,’ ” Wichita police Sgt. Kelly O’Brien said. “Officers are monitoring public places where you see it from public viewing. It’s just a way for officers to enhance their abilities to protect the community and improve traffic safety and also improve officer safety.”
Still, O’Brien knows not everyone will think this is OK.
“I did an informal survey before we ever did this to every friend and person I came across, and it’s a 50/50 split,” he said, mentioning that even his wife and daughter were not necessarily on board with camera-based traffic enforcement.
There are 97 cameras monitoring the core of Old Town, with particular attention at First and Washington, Second and Washington and Third and Mead.
Eye in the sky watching you 24/7. How could anyone possibly associate that with “big brother”?
There are ways to beat camera-based offenses, pretty easy ones. However, most will simply opt to pay the taxes fines. That’s what Big Brother O’Brien counts on. And the courts have already rubber-stamped the telescreens. Probably not 50/50 either – the peeps gotta love this “security”.
Definitely NOT Big Brother. You have the right to confront the teevee accuser. Or maybe the keyboard. Nah. Kansas.com.
05 Sunday Nov 2017
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
≈ Comments Off on Short-Lived Independence
In Catalonia. For the leaders, at least.
Catalonia’s deposed leader Carles Puigdemont and four former advisers have turned themselves in to Belgian police, says a prosecutors’ spokesman.
He said an investigating judge would decide by Monday morning whether to execute an EU arrest warrant issued by a Spanish judge on Friday.
Mr Puigdemont fled to Belgium after Madrid imposed direct rule on Catalonia following an independence referendum.
He has said he will not return to Spain unless he is guaranteed a fair trial.
He and his four associates are wanted on charges of rebellion, sedition, misuse of public funds, disobedience and breach of trust following the referendum which a Spanish court deemed unconstitutional.
Last week, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy imposed direct rule on Catalonia, dissolved the regional parliament and called local elections for 21 December.
Mr Puigdemont’s associates also now in custody are Meritxell Serret (former agriculture minister), Antoni Comín (former health minister), Lluís Puig (former culture minister), and Clara Ponsatí (former education minister).
Unusual suspects. BBC/EPA.
All this for a nebulous blessing from Brussels? Or what? Hanging together…
01 Wednesday Nov 2017
My FP article de jure: the NYC Halloween Terror Attack:
For the full commentary, please download the App.
Thank you, Schumer, Celler, Kennedy, and Bush… Fox.
Probably done with this story. The event, the laws – all intractable. Hell with it.
The commentary video (trying to be calm):
Perrin Lovett/YouTube/FPTV.
30 Monday Oct 2017
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
≈ Comments Off on Tin Foil Hat Land: Those CRAZY Conspiracy Theories
Tags
civil liberties, conspiracy, crime, government, justice, law, Mueller
You see, according to the statists, any independent thinking about or criticism of anything coming from the government constitutes a conspiracy theory. Such is synonymous with insane nuttery. All utterances about anything from the government are the literal God’s honest truth (Nature’s truth, whatever).
It works like this:
Mueller and the Government may have (may have) violated Paul Manafort’s civil rights:
Ex-campaign adviser Paul Manafort turned himself into the FBI on Monday after being indicted for money laundering, and a slew of other financial crimes. The feds alleged he illegally funneled millions of dollars of payments into offshore bank accounts in order to avoid detection by U.S. authorities as it related to his work on behalf of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. While the indictment containing Manfort’s alleged criminal activities is very detailed, and well-documented, there is one area that could hurt Mueller’s investigation. Mueller’s team may have obtained evidence in the raid of Paul Manafort’s home that was not covered by the search warrant. That could be problematic.
In a surprise raid on July 26th, FBI agents busted into Manafort’s home in Alexandria, Virginia to collect documents and other materials related to the FBI probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. At the time, Manafort’s attorney raised concerns about how the raid was conducted. In order for the feds to obtain a warrant, a federal judge would have to determine that probable cause existed that a crime was committed. As part of the warrant, investigators attached an affidavit which contained a list of items that FBI agents hoped to collect. That’s where the trouble appears to be in Manafort’s case.
As a legal website, we were immediately drawn to the revelation that evidence was collected that may not have been covered by the warrant. That’s a serious development, and one that Manafort’s attorneys will no doubt seize upon. But, is it necessarily illegal? Did the agents do anything wrong? It’s not clear. It certainly could raise some serious constitutional issues that could taint the investigation.
That Manafort, et al, Conspired Against the Government….
Manafort and Gates were charged in a 12-count indictment with conspiracy to launder money, making false statements and other charges. They are expected to make their first court appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson at 1:30 p.m.
The charges against Manafort and Gates did not reference the Trump campaign, a point President Trump noted on Twitter Monday. “Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????” Trump wrote.
Dept. of Justice [SIC].
There you have it. The government concocts a 31-page narrative of allegedly suspicious behavior – a conspiracy against it (not the normal other way around). That’s perfectly reasonable and lawful; might as well dispense with the formality of a trial. Done deal. No conspiracy craziness here.
On the other hand, if you dare to mention that … what’s it called again? That Constitution, those rights people supposedly have in a free country, then you are a nut. In fact, any outside, critical thinking is evidence of insanity. Call the men in the white coats. You should be ashamed of yourself. Many of your liberal and conservative friends will point this out to you. Get it straight.
Something about the goose and the gander…
PERRIN LOVETT 
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