Gary Edwards's List: Federal Gestapo

Good collection of links!  excerpt:  According to an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal (behind its pay firewall), Speaker Boehner asked the administration for a list of rules it had in the works with potential costs exceeding one billion dollars per year.  The administration responded providing a list of seven rulemakings – four from EPA and three from the Department of Transportation.

Speaker Boehner’s overarching point was that the “economy cannot withstand the barrage of major new federal regulations planned by the administration.”  Of course, the Obamacare and financial industry regulations are also on the drawing board somewhere.

Mark Levin had an excellent commentary on our state affairs at the beginning of his 8/30 broadcast.  He believes that we no longer have a “representative republic.”  This condition exists in large measure, Levin argues, due to unchecked regulation.  He also thinks that we now have an “Imperial Presidency.”

That said, Levin later gave a boldface example.

Listen to the absolutely chilling interview Levin conducts with the CEO of Gibson Guitar who was raided on 8/24/11 by federal agents. (Start at minute 92:00.)  Here is John Hayward’s Human Events background article.  The federal government claims that Gibson is illegally importing wood to make its guitars from India and Madagascar.  Gibson claims that officials from those countries have certified the legality of these exports from their nations.  Additionally, Gibson’s competitors apparently use the same woods from the same sources and have not been raided.  Only time will tell how this will turn out, but this iconic company may not be able to survive the legal costs of fighting a criminal investigation while its productive activities are interrupted.

The Justice Department raided the Gibson Guitar factory in Nashville on Wednesday morning.  From a Gibson press release:

On August 24, 2011, around 8:45 a.m. CDT, agents for the federal government executed four search warrants on Gibson’s facilities in Nashville and Memphis and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. Gibson had to cease its manufacturing operations and send workers home for the day, while armed agents executed the search warrants. Gibson has fully cooperated with the execution of the search warrants.

This actually happened once before:

In 2009, more than a dozen agents with automatic weapons invaded the Gibson factory in Nashville. The Government seized guitars and a substantial amount of ebony fingerboard blanks from Madagascar. To date, 1 year and 9 months later, criminal charges have NOT been filed, yet the Government still holds Gibson’s property.

Why is the Justice Department invading Gibson’s factory and seizing its property, without filing any charges?  Do they think illegal materials might be hidden inside the guitars?  Or, given recent history, were they trying to hide illegal guns inside guitars headed for Mexico?

No, this is all about the wood the guitars are made from.  As the Wall Street Journal explains:

Intro to the Diigo Federal Gestapo List.  Includes brief explanation of the10th Amendment movement, ordered liberty, and the Rule of Law.

The Issue: 
President Obama and his liberal cohorts are set to takeover the Internet beginning November 20 unless freedom-loving Americans demand this illegal assault on Free Speech in America end.

Back on December 21, 2009, a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) power-grab, illegally imposed strict, job-killing restrictions on the Internet. The move was no doubt fueled by Tea Party successes, and a growing fear among liberals that conservatives needed to be silenced. That said, the FCC move wasn’t widely reported. In fact, many are unsure as to what the new Net Neutrality rules actually mean. What is certain, however, is that in seizing the Internet Obama has also muzzled the greatest mechanism of growth in our history (under the guise of promoting "freedom" for all), and taken one giant step closer to controlling the unfettered access to news and information that we read.

The Action: 
Without the support of the American people and requiring no votes in Congress, the so-called Net Neutrality rules didn’t require any Congressional action. Now with the federal government seizing control, Grassfire Nation is moving quickly to amass at least 150,000 petitions demanding Congress to reverse the Net Neutrality ruling through legislation.  

With the 2012 presidential election before us, the country is again caught up in debating national security issues, our ongoing wars and the threat of terrorism. There is one related subject, however, that is rarely mentioned: civil liberties.

Protecting individual rights and liberties — apart from the right to be tax-free — seems barely relevant to candidates or voters. One man is primarily responsible for the disappearance of civil liberties from the national debate, and he is Barack Obama. While many are reluctant to admit it, Obama has proved a disaster not just for specific civil liberties but the civil liberties cause in the United States.

Looks like the issue of Civil Liberties and the Obama Gestapo Government are getting traction in the main stream media.  So far the incredible increase in Obammunism's crushing Federal Regulations has been focused on the economic destruction caused.  The flip side of the Obammunism coin is that of Civil Liberties and the 10th Amendment getting similarly crushed.

excerpt: Finally, some front-page attention to a major, and frightening, American problem!

Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal featured an in-depth look at how federal laws increasingly apply criminal penalties for violations involving no mens rea, roughly translated as a “guilty mind.” The stricture against criminal penalties for unwitting violations is an age-old, bedrock legal principle. Alas, in today’s dangerously armed, bureaucratic super-state, ancient legal principles go by the wayside when politicians pretend to be “tough on crime” and when officious civil “servants” indulge their fetishes for power.

U.S. governments at every level these days are prone to “overcriminalization,” which means turning ordinary activity into violations of the law, turning what should be civil violations into criminal ones, and applying penalties far harsher than should be warranted.

On the mens rea front, the Journal explains: “In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent. Today not only are there thousands more criminal laws than before, but it is easier to fall afoul of them…. Today, there are an estimated 4,500 crimes in federal statutes, plus thousands more embedded in federal regulations.”

A USA Oil and Natural Gas revolution - WSBJ Stephen Moore interview Harold Hamm of Continental Resources.  Hamm recounts his discussion with the watermelon in chief, Obama. (Green on the outside and red on the inside).  Seems Obama really believes his green energy will totally replace oil and natural gas within the next five years.  What an idiot.

excerpt: Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, is a man who thinks big. He came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century."

"President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy," he adds. We can't come anywhere near the scale of energy production to achieve energy independence by pouring tax dollars into "green energy" sources like wind and solar, he argues. It has to come from oil and gas.

You'd expect an oilman to make the "drill, baby, drill" pitch. But since 2005 America truly has been in the midst of a revolution in oil and natural gas, which is the nation's fastest-growing manufacturing sector. No one is more responsible for that resurgence than Mr. Hamm. He was the original discoverer of the gigantic and prolific Bakken oil fields of Montana and North Dakota that have already helped move the U.S. into third place among world oil producers.

How much oil does Bakken have? The official estimate of the U.S. Geological Survey a few years ago was between four and five billion barrels. Mr. Hamm disagrees: "No way. We estimate that the entire field, fully developed, in Bakken is 24 billion barrels."

Obama outlines his new Bill of Rights, very similar to the 1944 new Bill of Rights Roosevelt proposed, guaranteeing the right to food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, travel and education - among many things.  Obama demands a radically new interpretation of the Constitution where the Marxist Redistribution of Wealth is carried out as an Administrative function, by-passing the Courts, Congress, Taxpaying citizens, the legislative process and the Constitution itself.  Incredible!

Glenn Beck presentation juxta-positioning the swearing in "pledge to Uphold and Defend the Constitution" of Obama Socialist Democrats, and their statements in defiance of that same Constitution.  Sickening liars!

It's Kristallnacht for the Open Internet, free speech, right to assemble, the rule of law, and probable cause.  SendWrie provides an easy to use means of sending digital letters to your congress critters.

n a chapter titled “Breaking the Back of Crony Capitalism,” Schweizer lays out some much needed reforms that he hopes are undertaken. Here are some of his proposals:
• Create a legal code that makes trading on nonpublic government information illegal both for those who pass the information and for those who trade on it. 
• Corporate insiders trading their own company’s stock are required to disclose these transactions to the SEC within two days. Why not apply the same standard to Congress? 
• Members of Congress should not be allowed to trade stock in companies that are overseen by their committees.
• Apply whistleblower laws to Congress. If it’s good enough for federal workers and corporate employees, it should be good enough for Congress. 
• Disallow “sweetheart” IPOs. Unless the initial public offering goes through a public auction, in which people can openly compete for shares in a bidding contest, members of Congress should not be allowed to participate.
• Family members of legislators should not be allowed to become lobbyists.
• The federal government needs to get out of the business of offering grants and taxpayer-backed loans. 
Americans who have suspected that Washington does not have their interests at heart and wonder on their trips to the nation’s capital how it is such a gilded boomtown will get answers in this book. 
The country is at the beginning stages of a citizen revolt against the permanent political class whose interests are tied to the crony capitalistic system that benefits their own self-interest. 

Ali Soufan is a Lebanese-American FBI agent who was involved in a number of high-profile anti-terrorism cases both in the United States and around the world. A New Yorker article in 2006 described Soufan as coming closer than anyone to preventing the September 11 attacks, even implying that he would have succeeded had the CIA been willing to share information with him. He retired from the FBI in 2005 after publicly chastising the CIA for not sharing information with him which could have prevented the attacks. He is the CEO of the Soufan Group.

This article describes a draft of a Obama Executive Order to regulate and control the Internet. Of course, "cyber security" and cyber threats to national security are used as the rational for an unconstitutional action. Congress has repeatedly shot down previous Obama attempts to take over the Internet. No matter. Nothing like an un Constitutional EO dictate to get the job done.