It Begins: DC Police Raid Businessman’s House Searching For Unregistered Ammo

This is crazy…

Audio:

The Story:

A Washington, DC gun raid which involved more than 30 officers was not conducted at a known drug den or gang bangers’ hideout but at a respected businessman’s home – all to enforce a controversial city ammo law.
The shocking incident even included the man’s teenage son being pulled naked from the shower after the door was broken down with a battering ram.
In a nation where Americans supposedly possess the same Second Amendment rights, Mark Witaschek, a man without a criminal record, faces prison time for possession of unregistered ammo.
“Anyone who thinks the police won’t come to take your guns is naïve,” Emily Miller of The Washington Times wrote.
The DC law enforcement officers were searching for gun paraphernalia such as empty holsters, ammo, empty magazines, ammo receipts, and even gun cleaning equipment. Mark Witaschek’s entire block was locked down by Washington, DC officers. His 14-year-old daughter opened the door and was met with more than two dozen officers in full tactical gear. The men participating in the gun raid reportedly pointed their firearms at Witaschek and his girlfriend’s heads.
via DC Police Raid Businessman’s House Searching For Unregistered Ammo | Off The Grid News.

So, why’d this happen?

Washington, DC law mandates that all residents register all firearms owned with the police department and only registered gun owners can possess ammunition – even spent casings and shells.
The officers premised their search on a claim made by Witaschek’s estranged wife. The woman was reportedly able to convince a court clerk to issue a temporary restraining order against the father of her children because he had allegedly threatened her with a gun. A judge later ruled in favor of the husband.

…and what did they take?

A list of items found in the DC gun raid after Witaschek’s house was tossed for hours, as shared by the Washington Times’ Emily Miller:

One live round of 12-gauge shotgun ammunition — an inoperable shell that misfired during a hunt years earlier that Witaschek kept as a souvenir.
One handgun holster — which is legal, even in Washington, DC.
One expended round of .270 caliber ammunition — a spent brass casing.
One box of Knight bullets for reloading, according to police notation on the warrant. Except, Miller reveals, they aren’t for reloading; they’re for antique-replica, single-shot, muzzle-loading rifles.

Anyone that believes that we are not in a police state —– is a fool.

Graphic: The Militarization of the Police

Source: The Militarization of the Police

This right here is why Cops get shot and killed

It’s sad, but it’s true: (Via Top Conservative News, and H/T to Police State USA)

The Video:

ToledoNewsNow.com: News, Weather

The Story:

WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, OH (Toledo News Now) –
A traffic stop in Washington Township was caught on camera Sunday, and witnesses say the police officer involved was out of line.
Those who live on Pineridge say the neighborhood is pretty quiet, but what should have been a routine traffic stop has caught the residents by surprise.
Aaron Tatkowski says he spent Sunday with his family, and when he returned home, he noticed his daughter-in-law had been pulled over by a Washington Township Police officer.
The police report states Cassandra Meyers was cited for a license plate violation. Tatkowski says he didn’t like the way the officer was talking to Meyers, so he questioned the officer about his behavior.
“He hollered for me to get back in my truck, so I got back in my truck,” Tatkowski said. “Next thing you know, I’m yanked out of the truck and it made my girlfriend say a few things. He yanked her out of the truck.”
Tatkowski says the officer threw him, his girlfriend, his daughter-in-law, and 14-year-old son to the ground.
via Traffic stop caught on camera causes controversy – ToledoNewsNow.com: News, Weather & Sports for Toledo, OH.

Obama’s IRS

You know, I have been skeptical of much of the right’s witch hunt of Obama. But, this one here has me feeling that before all of this is over with; Obama will end up impeached.

It would be the ultimate payback for the failure to impeach Clinton and it would set the Democratic Party back for years. Not to mention the possible riots. However the only persons to blame would be the Obama administration themselves. They did just what the Bush Administration did; they became drunk with power. They overreached and they are now reaping the whirlwind.

It’s typical DC stuff, but it shows that Obama didn’t change anything at all, if anything, he capitalized on the status quo.

QOTD: Obama loses the NYT

WOW….just Wow… 😯

Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.
Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.
The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the 9/11 attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.

Poop, meet fan.

Others: Alan Colmes’ Liberaland, Politico, BuzzFeed, Yahoo! News, Washington Post, Hit & Run, The Monkey Cage, Washington Wire, The World’s Greatest …, The Daily Caller, Law Blog,VentureBeat, Business Insider, Mediaite, The PJ Tatler, Washington Free Beacon, Hot Air, Weasel Zippers, The Huffington Post, Salon, ComPost, The Week, Guardian, NO QUARTER USA NET, First Read, Mashable, American Spectator, New Republic, msnbc.com, Washington Monthly, Daily Kos,The Atlantic Wire, Firedoglake, TechCrunch, The Maddow Blog and Library of Law & Liberty – Via Memeorandum

The US continues spying on phones under Obama

There are a ton of opinions on this subject and we’ll get to those in a moment.

But first the story:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.
Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
via NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily | World news | The Guardian.

But, there is a big difference this time:

Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.
The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.

Which sounds about right for the Democrats, because they are perfectly fine with Government of a massive scale.

Now there are two very important opinions on this subject that I want you to see. They are same political slant; however, the opinions are very different. Please go check out Michelle Malkin’s take and Ed Morrissey’s take on this subject. While I agree on Michelle Malkin’s assessment, I really do not agree with her narrative at all. If you are smart and read her a good deal, you will know what I am talking about.

Now there is one thing that Ed Morrissey wrote that I, as an Independent, and someone who believes that the war on terror is a very real thing and that we should at least try to keep America safe, without trampling on our constitutional rights. I believe this to be very true and very profound statement coming from someone like Mr. Morrissey:

Hypocrisy is an unfortunately ubiquitous condition in politics, but in the case of NSA seizing Verizon’s phone records, it’s particularly widespread. Some of the people expressing outrage for the Obama administration’s efforts at data mining had a different attitude toward it when Bush was in office. Conversely, we’ll see some people defending Obama who considered Bush evil incarnate for the same thing.
Either way, we’re left with the situation of having the federal government seizing private records without any meaningful civil due process that engages the citizens affected, whether that includes actual wiretaps or just cataloguing our calls and movements. Perhaps this will move this issue out of the partisan sphere and into a common ground in which we can all work to define exactly how far we’re willing to go in trading privacy for security. In order to get there, we’d all better recognize the hypocrisy that has abounded on this issue for far too long, and start thinking about higher principles than party affiliation when it comes to national security and constitutional protections.

Now that last part that I underlined, is something I wholeheartedly agree with. When the story broke about Bush and Co. came about the wiretaps, I remember Keith Olbermann doing a special comment on it and I admired him for standing up. Now, where’s Keith? Where are the liberals who thought that this was much too intrusive? Where are they now? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

My hat tip goes to Glenn Greenwald for putting principles over partisanship and getting this story to the masses. Glenn has been about the only liberal who has stood up and pointed out that Obama Administration has continued the policies of the George W. Bush Administration and in some cases; like this one here — has expanded them to an alarming degree. Yes, this is overreach and it is alarming and I do hope the Congress does something about it.

Others: Hullabaloo, Yahoo! News, Washington Wire, Washington Monthly, New York Times,ThinkProgress, Politico, Firedoglake, BuzzFeed, CNN, Forbes, Joshua Foust, The World’s Greatest …, msnbc.com, The Atlantic Wire, JustOneMinute, American Spectator, Democracy in America,WorldViews, TIME, Business Insider, Examiner, The Fix, News Desk, Associated Press, New Republic, Daily Kos, The Maddow Blog, Mashable, Wake up America, Wonkblog, The Huffington Post, Taylor Marsh, The Volokh Conspiracy, Mediaite, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Library of Law & Liberty, Moon of Alabama, The Daily Caller, TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, Engadget, Betsy’s Page, Patterico’s Pontifications, AllThingsD, Outside the Beltway, Post Politics, Informed Comment,Nice Deb, Real Clear Politics, Wired, The Gateway Pundit, The Week, Illinois Review,AMERICAblog, Pirate’s Cove, CANNONFIRE, VentureBeat, No More Mister Nice Blog, First Read,Prairie Weather, The PJ Tatler, Telegraph, The Hinterland Gazette, Alan Colmes’ Liberaland, Weasel Zippers, Jammie Wearing Fools, GigaOM, Corrente, The Spectacle Blog, Gawker, Boing Boing, The Raw Story, Shakesville, Secrecy News, The Verge, Conservatives4Palin, susiemadrak.com, Sense of Events, Taegan Goddard’s …, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, The BLT, emptywheel and Overlawyered Via Memeorandum

It Begins: Evangelical Christians and the Catholic Church listed in Army training slide as extremists

This is something to put everyone on alert:

A U.S. Army training instructor listed Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism as examples of religious extremism along with Al Qaeda and Hamas during a briefing with an Army Reserve unit based in Pennsylvania, Fox News has learned.
“We find this offensive to have Evangelical Christians and the Catholic Church to be listed among known terrorist groups,” said Ron Crews, executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty. “It is dishonorable for any U.S. military entity to allow this type of wrongheaded characterization.”
Material presented to soldiers at training session.
The incident occurred during an Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief on extremism. Topping the list is Evangelical Christianity. Other organizations listed included Catholicism, Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Ku Klux Klan, Sunni Muslims, and Nation of Islam.
The military also listed “Islamophobia” as a form of religious extremism.
via Army Labeled Evangelicals as Religious Extremists | FOX News & Commentary: Todd Starnes.

Of course, when caught, the Army quickly raced to cover its butt:

Army spokesman George Wright told Fox News that this was an “isolated incident not condoned by the Dept. of the Army.”
“This slide was not produced by the Army and certainly does not reflect our policy or doctrine,” he said. “It was produced by an individual without anyone in the chain of command’s knowledge or permission.”
Wright said after the complaint was lodged, the presenter deleted the slide, and apologized.
“We consider the matter closed,” he said.
The incident was made public by a soldier who attended the briefing. He asked for copies of the presentation and sent them to the Chaplain Alliance.
“He considers himself an evangelical Christian and did not appreciate being classified with terrorists,” Crews told Fox News. “There was a pervasive attitude in the presentation that anything associated with religion is an extremist.”

Which is the story they always tell the public, when they do something and get caught doing it. I just wonder how long it will be, if the Lord tarries; before the United States Government will begin rounding up those who dare to read from the King James Version of the Bible and start imprisoning those Pastors who dare to preach that homosexuality is a sin and that abortion is murder. I think it will happen, before the Lord’s return myself. Why with the Anti-Defamation League — a leftist Jew-run organization; doing the bidding of the Obama Administration, it is a wonder now that Fundamentalists like myself are not in prison.

It goes without saying that we are in the last days. Things like this, are going to become more and more prevalent and will the norm eventually. As Jesus said, “Watch ye and Pray.” and that my friends, is all that we can really do. Watch and pray and be about our Father’s business; and wait for his blessed return.

Others: Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch and Weasel Zippers

BREAKING NEWS: White House to BAN assault weapons, require background checks, limit magazines

Looks like James Yeager’s worst nightmare was right:

President Obama will unveil a sweeping set of gun-control proposals at midday Wednesday, including an assault weapons ban, universal background checks and limits on the number of bullets magazines can hold, according to sources familiar with the plans.
The announcement, to be delivered at the White House, is also expected to include a slate of up to 19 executive actions that the Obama administration can take on its own to attempt to limit gun violence. The White House has invited key lawmakers as well as gun-control advocates to appear at Wednesday’s policy rollout, according to two officials who have been invited to the event.
via Washington Post: White House to announce gun plans Wednesday.

Okay, before anyone, and I mean anyone freaks out about this; let me say this: I believe that there will be a legal challenge to this, I believe that someone, like the NRA or some group like it will challenge this order and take it all the way to the supreme court and they, being a Conservative slanted court, will overrule this order and quickly. This is if the house does not impeach the President first.

Either way, this is big and I expect that this little move here, will play out for the next year. You watch, Obama just hit the nuke button on this issue and He and the Democratic Party will pay for this one in the coming elections. I did not honestly believe that he would go there; and for the record, neither did Harry Reid. Either way, the fit is about to hit the shan here folks. The Democrats wanted a fight and now, they have it. If this ban goes according to this report, you are going to see another Republican revolution like you have never seen before.

I believe that the Democrats and Obama just made the stupidest political move ever. This is another classic example of the Democrats not being able to see past the end of their noses. They just handed the 2014 and 2016 elections to the Republicans. They could have done it better, but they did not. I hope the Democrats up on the hill like their job, because come 2014 and 2016, they will be out of office for a good long while. I thought they were smarter; but I guess not.

This is the problem with Democratic and the Republican Parties; they ALWAYS overreach and they always pay for it politically and they never learn. Sad fact, but it is true.

White House considering executive action on guns

I knew this was coming, it was just a matter of time; and unlike this idiot here, who believes that the following headline was overdone. I happen to believe it to be very true:

drudgeheadline

From the Weekly Standard:

Vice President Joe Biden revealed that President Barack Obama might use an executive order to deal with guns.
“The president is going to act,” said Biden, giving some comments to the press before a meeting with victims of gun violence. “There are executives orders, there’s executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required.”
Biden said that this is a moral issue and that “it’s critically important that we act.”
Biden talked also about taking responsible action. “As the president said, if you’re actions result in only saving one life, they’re worth taking. But I’m convinced we can affect the well-being of millions of americans and take thousands of people out of harm’s way if we act responsibly.”
Biden, as he himself noted, helped write the Brady bill.
Eric Holder was scheduled to be at the meeting that’s currently take place at the White House.

Ah yes, this ought to be very interesting to see what these Marxist gun grabbers come up with; as the Godfather of Chicago said, never let a crisis go to waste. As for what the idiot above that I linked to said about Drudge’s headline, I give you the words of Lew Rockwell:

In my experience, gun controllers are violent people, and private gun-owners are not. That is, gun controllers support mass murder; they just want it to be a monopoly of soldiers, police, etc. They would be glad to see Alex and the rest of us shot. Gun owners tend to abhor personal violence, and would only use it in defense of their family, themselves, and their property. And this is not a left-right issue. Non-commissar leftists like the late Alexander Cockburn are anti-gun control; neocons like Bill Kristol or the Randites are pro-gun control. Here is something that all good people across the spectrum can agree on: the state should be disarmed; the people should be packing.

It will be an amazing thing to see just whom on the right caves to the Marxist’s demands of gun surrender, or “control” as they like to call it. I just wonder which one of the Neoconservatives will fall first and say, :”Well, we have to have some sort of control!” I expect that Podhoretz or Kristol will be the first ones to falter to the demands of this administration.

Again, I do not know if having Alex Jones coming out as the circus act for the far right was a good idea, it may have just given the White House the ammo (sorry…) it needed to get what it wanted to carry out. Needless to say, there is going to be political fallout from something like this and it is not going to be good for the Democrats. I just hope that the GOP is ready to stage a comeback in 2014 or 2016. But from the looks of things at the moment, the GOP has some serious image issues, especially when it comes to the middle class.

Former NSA Agent says, “The Government is spying on us”

This comes Via Joe Farah’s WorldNetDaily:

First the Video:

The Story:

Did you ever get the feeling you were being watched?
And watched by the government?
There’s very good reason to feel that way, says a whistleblower from the National Security Agency who says everyone in the U.S. is under virtual surveillance by federal authorities.
In an interview with RT, William Binney, a former mathematician and code breaker at the NSA, says the FBI records the emails of nearly all Americans, including members of Congress, and warns that the government can use this information against anyone.
“The FBI has access to the data collected, which is basically the emails of virtually everybody in the country. And the FBI has access to it,” Binney said.
“All the congressional members are on the surveillance, too, no one is excluded. They are all included. So, yes, this can happen to anyone. If they become a target for whatever reason – they are targeted by the government, the government can go in, or the FBI, or other agencies of the government, they can go into their database, pull all that data collected on them over the years, and we analyze it all. So, we have to actively analyze everything they’ve done for the last 10 years at least.”

This is not entirely surprising to me at all. I have long suspected that the Government was spying on everyone via Internet. This was a direct result of the attacks on 9/11.

The only quibble I have with this little report is this right here:

“I don’t think they are filtering it. They are just storing it,” Binney told RT. “I think it’s just a matter of selecting when they want it. So, if they want to target you, they would take your attributes, go into that database and pull out all your data.”

You notice he says, “I don’t think…” You see he does not know any of this for a fact, he noticed that the Government was scanning information, using data miners for terrorist activity and basically freaked and left the NSA. However, I am encouraged to see the following; but I am dismayed at the same time:

Binney actually blew the whistle on NSA practices during the term of President George W. Bush, but with President Barack Obama now in office, he says, “it’s getting worse. They are doing more. He is supporting the building of the Bluffdale facility, which is over two billion dollars they are spending on storage room for data. That means that they are collecting a lot more now and need more storage for it. That facility by my calculations that I submitted to the court for the Electronic Frontiers Foundation against NSA would hold on the order of 5 zettabytes of data. Just that current storage capacity is being advertised on the web that you can buy. And that’s not talking about what they have in the near future.”

Now this is where Mr. Binney gets partisan. I doubt very highly that there is any real difference between George W. Bush and President Obama. Both supported Big Government and just because one was a Neoconservative and the other a Neo-Liberal (or one white and one black) does not mean that one is more bigger Government than the other.

The important fact is that the Government is doing this at all; as it violates the Constitution of the United States of American. However, to be fair and balanced, sort of like a Network that we all know about; essentially, the United States Government was caught with its proverbial pants down on 9/11 and the terrorists were in this Country flying under the radar, so to speak. So, the United States had to employ some controversial tactics to catch up with these idiots to catch them, before they hurt anyone else.

This, of course, sent the Constitutionalists into a tizzy and rightly so. Now, the Government has maintained that they only record calls going out of the Country and not domestic calls. This man says otherwise. Now, do I believe him? I have no opinion, and I present it to you to make up your minds. I just think we, as Americans, ought not trust our Government, especially while it is under control of an Government expansionist like Obama. At the same time, I believe it would be a idiotic mistake to believe that any Republicans would actually decrease the size of Government, as long as the Neoconservative right controls the Republican Party.