“I Have Been Reading With Horror….”

August 21, 2022

D.C. Lawyer of the Year: Natasha Taylor-Smith

By Clarice Feldman at American Thinker:

I have been reading with horror Julie Kelley’s day-to-day description of the treatment afforded some 850 people arrested in D.C. for conduct on January 6 and the awful legal representation and judicial treatment they have received.  Many have been held in horrible prison conditions for over a year, denied bail and an opportunity to have their cases heard outside this venue where the jurors will never grant them a fair trial.

None of the big law firms in town which puff up their public service donating time — for example, to defend Guantanamo Bay detainees — have to my knowledge volunteered to help these people. So it was a welcome surprise to see one young public defender do her job. The woman is Natasha Taylor-Smith, and for once I am proud of the legal profession in this ginned-up partisan Stalinist prosecution of mostly ordinary citizens most of whom did little more than walk through the open doors of the Capitol and leave. (Six more were just convicted of this — ordinarily a minor trespass with no charges brought — and will now face a potential six months in jail.)

Most of the defendants have had to rely on public defenders and most of those caved utterly in defending them. Not Natasha. Here’s her opening statement to the trial court:

The 2020 presidential election was unlike any in modern times. Regardless of what side of the aisle you stood on, there were intense thoughts and feelings about the way in which each state handled the process. For Mr. Fitzsimons, the election results of his community came as no real shock to him. No Republican candidate for President had won four Electoral College votes from Maine since 1988. But shortly after the election Mr. Fitzsimons started to hear about irregularities across the country. And not just from your typical aluminum-foil wearing hat conspiracy theorists. He was hearing these stories from mainstream media, from global elected officials, from state elected officials, from federal elected officials and from the President of the United States himself. And if the old adage “where there’s smoke there’s fire” has any credence whatsoever, Mr. Fitzsimmons felt as though he was watching a towering inferno. And so he watched intently as challenges and rallies were held across the country. And although he saw the results of each challenge fade away, he was still being pulled by these same mainstream individuals, and by the Chief Executive Officer of this nation — that there was a plan! That plan did not include the military. It did not include violence, or guns, or weapons of any kind. All that needed to happen was for the State’s Legislatures to come together on January 6th and to object to the certification.  TO COME TOGETHER ON JANUARY 6TH AND OBJECT TO THE CERTIFICATION. They had every right to do so. And each of them had taken an oath to protect our Constitution, and that included ensuring free and fair elections. It was their responsibility. And if the Congressmen did that, and they found there to be irregularities, they would act. And if they didn’t, it would be over, and Joseph R. Biden would be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.

That’s what this country is all about. That is what our nation is built upon.

So when Fitzsimons went to the rally in DC to support this effort, he drove down. He didn’t drive down with weapons — although prior to January 6 he owned legal firearms and knives that were used in his employment. He also owns several serrated and long blades that he used as a butcher. He didn’t link up with any fringe groups or anti-establishment types.
He drove down — he visited the shrine to Pope John Paul the 2nd. And on the morning of January 6th he got up early and walked over to the Ellipse. He stood in line for almost an hour to wait to get in. He stood during the speeches. And he remained the entire time the rally was going on.

He watched every speech, and yes there was some rhetoric — but the overarching theme of that rally was that there was a legitimate and legal path for an objection to the certification and that that was happening at the Capitol. So after the speeches, Mr. Fitzsimons found his way down to the Capitol, where he saw people gathered. As he made his way up to the Capitol, you will hear what Mr. Fitzsimon heard, and you will see what Mr. Fitzsimons saw. Eventually he did find himself as part of the fray. And when he left the Capitol on January 6th, he was taken to an Area Hospital where he was bloodied, concussed, and received 8 staples to the top of his head.

In the days following January 6th, Mr. Fitzsimons never bragged about his interactions with law enforcement. He didn’t go around telling people how he tried to enter the Capitol. And he never ever advocated for further action. The election had been certified at that point. Congress had done its job. And he had travelled to DC to see just that! Congress to do their job. That’s it. Mr. Fitzsimons never attempted to actually enter the Capitol building itself, and his sole purpose for traveling from Maine to the District of Columbia was to witness and support those legislators who had already committed to objecting to the certification. Mr. Fitzsimons could not get what he wanted if he somehow stopped that process from happening.

And while there was some interaction with law enforcement, Mr. Fitzsimons never intended to injure anyone, and the evidence in this case will bear that out. And this court would say to a jury if there was one in the box, that what I have to say, or what the council has to say is not evidence – it is just arguments. So at this point I’m going to conclude my opening remarks so that this court can get to the evidence and at the end of this evidence I’m going to ask this court to find Mr. Fitzsimons not guilty. 

She then proceeded on cross-examination to destroy the government’s (and the Jan 6 Committee’s) law enforcement witness.

It’s not just that having refused to act on the widespread Antifa and BLM rampages which burned cities, businesses, courthouses, and police cruisers, it’s not just that the sentences being handed down after inept legal representation that is so infuriating. It is that Nancy Pelosi refuses to release the full video record of what actually happened in the Capitol that day. When snippets previously kept from the public and defense are dribbled out, the picture is often far different from the prosecution’s fairy tales. For example, there’s Capitol Police Lieutenant Tarik Johnson who put on a MAGA hat and urged the Oath Keepers, whom the government has changed with stirring up violence, to help him escort out of the building police officers. Which they did.

Nor, in fact, has any action at all been taken against the Capitol police officer who shot a woman in cold blood or the other law enforcement officers who bludgeoned to death a woman who had fallen in the crush of a peaceful crowd.

Nor (without explanation) have there been any charges against Ray Epps, who is on video urging the storming of the Capitol and who warned of a bomb attack days before dud bombs were planted outside the DNC and RNC headquarters which we were to believe triggered the government response.

The bombs were of amateur construction and the FBI’s selective release of tapes of their being  planted the previous night in places the Secret Service could not possibly have overlooked adds to the suspicion that they were meant to be found at an auspicious time to divert attention from the Capitol. Adding further to the suspicion that this was part of a scheme is that the Secret Service’s text messages have “permanently disappeared.” The FBI has apparently never identified the person who planted them.

According to the FBI, the ghost never left a single fingerprint, skin cell, hair follicle, or breath droplet on anything it touched or sat on during the entire DC walking tour the FBI has captured on camera. No traces are recoverable from either of the two home-made pipe bomb devices the ghost presumably toiled over for hours building amateur-style in some basement somewhere.

For reference, in 2018, the dubbed “MAGA bomber” Cesar Sayoc, who allegedly built and mailed pipe bombs to prominent Democrats, was instantly identified from just a single trace fingerprint.

But the January 6 pipe bomb ghost never coughed, sneezed, or exhaled moisture onto any parts of any of the two devices, nor into its gloves before touching anything, or including the bag, the bombs, or the bench. There is nothing traceable from cell phone calls or text messages the pipe bomber may have interacted with, despite videos show him/her using a mobile device and being totally alone on the street for meters, with very few possible other pings nearby to narrow down the list of suspects.

Then throw in the fact that the DC FBI Field Office’s Assistant Director-In-Charge on the night of the pipe bombs was the same FBI special agent-in-charge whose agents sold pipe bomb materials to a right-wing militia just one month before the 2020 election.

The hyperbolic narrative about that day is doubtless fed by Steven D’Antuono, Assistant Director of the D.C. FBI Field Office. Does that name sound familiar? It should. he ran the FBI Field Office in Detroit where agents ran an entrapment operation — the hoax kidnapping of Governor Gretchen Whitmer. An FBI agent there was the group’s “explosive expert”; their transportation head was an undercover agent; their head of security was an undercover FBI informant. The Detroit jury didn’t buy the FBI’s cocked-up plot then, but Wray apparently was happy with Antuono’s work and promoted him to the D.C. job and put him in charge months before January 6.

Lazy if not partisan judges, lawyers neglecting their duty, the bar which mouths fancy platitudes ignoring its special responsibility to the justice system by volunteering its services, an FBI mired in corruption, the Speaker of the House sitting on relevant, probably exonerating evidence, and one young woman alone acts for justice. Bravo!

TWEETING FOR FUN? OR ONLY AN ESSAY?

The President of the American Historical Association criticized the 1619 Project and outrage followed

JOHN SEXTON Aug 21, 2022 at HotAir:

 Professional historians are outraged over an essay that was published last week in the magazine of the American Historical Association. The author of the piece is the current president of the AHA, James H. Sweet. Sweet teaches at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and his focus is on the “social and cultural histories of Africans in the Atlantic world.” Before we get to the outrage his essay caused, let’s first look at the piece itself. It’s focus is “presentism” something he sees as a threat to the proper approach to history:

As the discipline has become more focused on the 20th and 21st centuries, historical analyses are contained within an increasingly constrained temporality. Our interpretations of the recent past collapse into the familiar terms of contemporary debates, leaving little room for the innovative, counterintuitive interpretations.

This trend toward presentism is not confined to historians of the recent past; the entire discipline is lurching in this direction, including a shrinking minority working in premodern fields. If we don’t read the past through the prism of contemporary social justice issues—race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism—are we doing history that matters? This new history often ignores the values and mores of people in their own times, as well as change over time, neutralizing the expertise that separates historians from those in other disciplines. The allure of political relevance, facilitated by social and other media, encourages a predictable sameness of the present in the past. This sameness is ahistorical, a proposition that might be acceptable if it produced positive political results. But it doesn’t.

Sweet then turns to the 1619 Project. His critique isn’t intended to be scathing. In fact, it seems clear he didn’t realize how much outrage this commentary would create.

When I first read the newspaper series that preceded the book, I thought of it as a synthesis of a tradition of Black nationalist historiography dating to the 19th century with Ta-Nehisi Coates’s recent call for reparations. The project spoke to the political moment, but I never thought of it primarily as a work of history. Ironically, it was professional historians’ engagement with the work that seemed to lend it historical legitimacy. Then the Pulitzer Center, in partnership with the Times, developed a secondary school curriculum around the project. Local school boards protested characterizations of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison as unpatriotic owners of “forced labor camps.” Conservative lawmakers decided that if this was the history of slavery being taught in schools, the topic shouldn’t be taught at all. For them, challenging the Founders’ position as timeless tribunes of liberty was “racially divisive.” At each of these junctures, history was a zero-sum game of heroes and villains viewed through the prism of contemporary racial identity. It was not an analysis of people’s ideas in their own time, nor a process of change over time.

Finally, he describes a recent trip to Ghana in which he saw a black family from America having breakfast with a copy of the 1619 Project on their table. Later as he toured a historical site called Elmina Castle he was struck by the degree to which the international history of the place had been narrowed down, seemingly for the consumption of African-American tourists.

Our guide gave a well-rehearsed tour geared toward African Americans. American influence was everywhere, from memorial plaques to wreaths and flowers left on the floors of the castle’s dungeons. Arguably, Elmina Castle is now as much an African American shrine as a Ghanaian archaeological or historical site…

Yet as a historian of Africa and the African diaspora, I am troubled by the historical erasures and narrow politics that these narratives convey. Less than one percent of the Africans passing through Elmina arrived in North America. The vast majority went to Brazil and the Caribbean. Should the guide’s story differ for a tour with no African Americans?…

The erasure of slave-trading African empires in the name of political unity is uncomfortably like right-wing conservative attempts to erase slavery from school curricula in the United States, also in the name of unity. These interpretations are two sides of the same coin. If history is only those stories from the past that confirm current political positions, all manner of political hacks can claim historical expertise.

The rest of the essay is an attack on presentism in recent Supreme Court decisions written by Justice Thomas and Justice Alito. Perhaps Sweet thought that by ending with an attack on conservatives on the Supreme Court readers would be willing to overlook his criticism of the 1619 Project. But he was clearly wrong about that. I’d prefer to show you some of the tweets reacting to the essay but many of the primary sources (so to speak) have been hidden away by people protecting their tweets. So here’s a description of what happened from economist Phillip W. Magness at the American Institute for Economic Research. It’s worth noting that Magness has been a frequent critic of the 1619 Project.

Within moments of his column appearing online, all hell broke loose on Twitter.

Incensed at even the mildest suggestion that politicization is undermining the integrity of historical scholarship, the activist wing of the history profession showed up on the AHA’s thread and began demanding Sweet’s cancellation. Cate Denial, a professor of history at Knox College, led the charge with a widely-retweeted thread calling on colleagues to bombard the AHA’s Executive Board with emails protesting Sweet’s column. “We cannot let this fizzle,” she declared before posting a list of about 20 email addresses.

Other activist historians joined in, flooding the thread with profanity-laced attacks on Sweet’s race and gender as well as calls for his resignation over a disliked opinion column. The responses were almost universally devoid of any substance. None challenged Sweet’s argument in any meaningful way. It was sufficient enough for him to have harbored the “wrong” thoughts – to have questioned the scholarly rigor of activism-infused historical writing, and to have criticized the 1619 Project in even the mildest terms…

Other activist historians such as the New School’s Claire Potter retorted that the 1619 Project was indeed scholarly history, insisting that “big chunks of it are written by professional, award-winning historians.” Sweet was therefore in the wrong to call it journalism, or to question its scholarly accuracy. Potter’s claims are deeply misleading. Only two of the 1619 Project’s twelve feature essays were written by historians, and neither of them are specialists in the crucial period between 1776-1865, when slavery was at its peak. The controversial parts of the 1619 Project were all written by opinion journalists such as Hannah-Jones, or non-experts writing well outside of their own competencies such as Matthew Desmond.

Jamelle Bouie’s tweet about this is still up. This was apparently retweeted by Nikole Hannah Jones.

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The result of all this was that two days after the essay appeared, Sweet had offered an apology which now sits atop the essay.

My September Perspectives on History column has generated anger and dismay among many of our colleagues and members. I take full responsibility that it did not convey what I intended and for the harm that it has caused. I had hoped to open a conversation on how we “do” history in our current politically charged environment. Instead, I foreclosed this conversation for many members, causing harm to colleagues, the discipline, and the Association.

A president’s monthly column, one of the privileges of the elected office, provides a megaphone to the membership and the discipline. The views and opinions expressed in that column are not those of the Association. If my ham-fisted attempt at provocation has proven anything, it is that the AHA membership is as vocal and robust as ever. If anyone has criticisms that they have been reluctant or unable to post publicly, please feel free to contact me directly.

I sincerely regret the way I have alienated some of my Black colleagues and friends. I am deeply sorry. In my clumsy efforts to draw attention to methodological flaws in teleological presentism, I left the impression that questions posed from absence, grief, memory, and resilience somehow matter less than those posed from positions of power. This absolutely is not true. It wasn’t my intention to leave that impression, but my provocation completely missed the mark.

Once again, I apologize for the damage I have caused to my fellow historians, the discipline, and the AHA. I hope to redeem myself in future conversations with you all. I’m listening and learning.

One of the historians critical of the piece was pretty blunt about why Sweet shouldn’t have written it in the first place.

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In sum: It’s wrong to criticize left-wing journalists writing about history if you know that criticism could be used by the right to discredit those efforts. There are no enemies on the left, regardless of what they say. Jonah Goldberg had a good response to this. Why not criticize the 1619 Project for being strident and shoddy instead of criticizing critics for pointing out it’s strident and shoddy?

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Finally, I have to credit William Jacobsen for making what I think is the key point, one that was overlooked by critics of Sweet’s piece and by Sweet himself. Nikole Hannah Jones herself has previously stated that the 1619 Project was about journalism and narrative, not history. In other words, she has admitted this was exactly the sort of exercise in “presentism” Sweet was saying it was in his essay: “The project spoke to the political moment, but I never thought of it primarily as a work of history.”

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Like a lot of things Hannah Jones says on Twitter, those tweets have since been deleted. But I think they are revealing because they suggest that, at base, she agrees with Sweet’s take on her work. At least she did at one point. Again, I don’t see any of Sweet’s critics acknowledging this and, unfortunately, he also didn’t point to it. Instead he quickly backed down and apologized. Experience tells me that won’t quell the outrage. I guess we’ll see if that’s the end of it or if he winds up under additional pressure to resign from his current position as AHA president.

“reading with horror”…

August 21, 2022

D.C. Lawyer of the Year: Natasha Taylor-Smith

By Clarice Feldman at American Thinker:

I have been reading with horror Julie Kelley’s day-to-day description of the treatment afforded some 850 people arrested in D.C. for conduct on January 6 and the awful legal representation and judicial treatment they have received.  Many have been held in horrible prison conditions for over a year, denied bail and an opportunity to have their cases heard outside this venue where the jurors will never grant them a fair trial.

None of the big law firms in town which puff up their public service donating time — for example, to defend Guantanamo Bay detainees — have to my knowledge volunteered to help these people. So it was a welcome surprise to see one young public defender do her job. The woman is Natasha Taylor-Smith, and for once I am proud of the legal profession in this ginned-up partisan Stalinist prosecution of mostly ordinary citizens most of whom did little more than walk through the open doors of the Capitol and leave. (Six more were just convicted of this — ordinarily a minor trespass with no charges brought — and will now face a potential six months in jail.)

Most of the defendants have had to rely on public defenders and most of those caved utterly in defending them. Not Natasha. Here’s her opening statement to the trial court:

The 2020 presidential election was unlike any in modern times. Regardless of what side of the aisle you stood on, there were intense thoughts and feelings about the way in which each state handled the process. For Mr. Fitzsimons, the election results of his community came as no real shock to him. No Republican candidate for President had won four Electoral College votes from Maine since 1988. But shortly after the election Mr. Fitzsimons started to hear about irregularities across the country. And not just from your typical aluminum-foil wearing hat conspiracy theorists. He was hearing these stories from mainstream media, from global elected officials, from state elected officials, from federal elected officials and from the President of the United States himself. And if the old adage “where there’s smoke there’s fire” has any credence whatsoever, Mr. Fitzsimmons felt as though he was watching a towering inferno. And so he watched intently as challenges and rallies were held across the country. And although he saw the results of each challenge fade away, he was still being pulled by these same mainstream individuals, and by the Chief Executive Officer of this nation — that there was a plan! That plan did not include the military. It did not include violence, or guns, or weapons of any kind. All that needed to happen was for the State’s Legislatures to come together on January 6th and to object to the certification.  TO COME TOGETHER ON JANUARY 6TH AND OBJECT TO THE CERTIFICATION. They had every right to do so. And each of them had taken an oath to protect our Constitution, and that included ensuring free and fair elections. It was their responsibility. And if the Congressmen did that, and they found there to be irregularities, they would act. And if they didn’t, it would be over, and Joseph R. Biden would be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.

That’s what this country is all about. That is what our nation is built upon.

So when Fitzsimons went to the rally in DC to support this effort, he drove down. He didn’t drive down with weapons — although prior to January 6 he owned legal firearms and knives that were used in his employment. He also owns several serrated and long blades that he used as a butcher. He didn’t link up with any fringe groups or anti-establishment types.
He drove down — he visited the shrine to Pope John Paul the 2nd. And on the morning of January 6th he got up early and walked over to the Ellipse. He stood in line for almost an hour to wait to get in. He stood during the speeches. And he remained the entire time the rally was going on.

He watched every speech, and yes there was some rhetoric — but the overarching theme of that rally was that there was a legitimate and legal path for an objection to the certification and that that was happening at the Capitol. So after the speeches, Mr. Fitzsimons found his way down to the Capitol, where he saw people gathered. As he made his way up to the Capitol, you will hear what Mr. Fitzsimon heard, and you will see what Mr. Fitzsimons saw. Eventually he did find himself as part of the fray. And when he left the Capitol on January 6th, he was taken to an Area Hospital where he was bloodied, concussed, and received 8 staples to the top of his head.

In the days following January 6th, Mr. Fitzsimons never bragged about his interactions with law enforcement. He didn’t go around telling people how he tried to enter the Capitol. And he never ever advocated for further action. The election had been certified at that point. Congress had done its job. And he had travelled to DC to see just that! Congress to do their job. That’s it. Mr. Fitzsimons never attempted to actually enter the Capitol building itself, and his sole purpose for traveling from Maine to the District of Columbia was to witness and support those legislators who had already committed to objecting to the certification. Mr. Fitzsimons could not get what he wanted if he somehow stopped that process from happening.

And while there was some interaction with law enforcement, Mr. Fitzsimons never intended to injure anyone, and the evidence in this case will bear that out. And this court would say to a jury if there was one in the box, that what I have to say, or what the council has to say is not evidence – it is just arguments. So at this point I’m going to conclude my opening remarks so that this court can get to the evidence and at the end of this evidence I’m going to ask this court to find Mr. Fitzsimons not guilty. 

She then proceeded on cross-examination to destroy the government’s (and the Jan 6 Committee’s) law enforcement witness.

It’s not just that having refused to act on the widespread Antifa and BLM rampages which burned cities, businesses, courthouses, and police cruisers, it’s not just that the sentences being handed down after inept legal representation that is so infuriating. It is that Nancy Pelosi refuses to release the full video record of what actually happened in the Capitol that day. When snippets previously kept from the public and defense are dribbled out, the picture is often far different from the prosecution’s fairy tales. For example, there’s Capitol Police Lieutenant Tarik Johnson who put on a MAGA hat and urged the Oath Keepers, whom the government has changed with stirring up violence, to help him escort out of the building police officers. Which they did.

Nor, in fact, has any action at all been taken against the Capitol police officer who shot a woman in cold blood or the other law enforcement officers who bludgeoned to death a woman who had fallen in the crush of a peaceful crowd.

Nor (without explanation) have there been any charges against Ray Epps, who is on video urging the storming of the Capitol and who warned of a bomb attack days before dud bombs were planted outside the DNC and RNC headquarters which we were to believe triggered the government response.

The bombs were of amateur construction and the FBI’s selective release of tapes of their being  planted the previous night in places the Secret Service could not possibly have overlooked adds to the suspicion that they were meant to be found at an auspicious time to divert attention from the Capitol. Adding further to the suspicion that this was part of a scheme is that the Secret Service’s text messages have “permanently disappeared.” The FBI has apparently never identified the person who planted them.

According to the FBI, the ghost never left a single fingerprint, skin cell, hair follicle, or breath droplet on anything it touched or sat on during the entire DC walking tour the FBI has captured on camera. No traces are recoverable from either of the two home-made pipe bomb devices the ghost presumably toiled over for hours building amateur-style in some basement somewhere.

For reference, in 2018, the dubbed “MAGA bomber” Cesar Sayoc, who allegedly built and mailed pipe bombs to prominent Democrats, was instantly identified from just a single trace fingerprint.

But the January 6 pipe bomb ghost never coughed, sneezed, or exhaled moisture onto any parts of any of the two devices, nor into its gloves before touching anything, or including the bag, the bombs, or the bench. There is nothing traceable from cell phone calls or text messages the pipe bomber may have interacted with, despite videos show him/her using a mobile device and being totally alone on the street for meters, with very few possible other pings nearby to narrow down the list of suspects.

Then throw in the fact that the DC FBI Field Office’s Assistant Director-In-Charge on the night of the pipe bombs was the same FBI special agent-in-charge whose agents sold pipe bomb materials to a right-wing militia just one month before the 2020 election.

The hyperbolic narrative about that day is doubtless fed by Steven D’Antuono, Assistant Director of the D.C. FBI Field Office. Does that name sound familiar? It should. he ran the FBI Field Office in Detroit where agents ran an entrapment operation — the hoax kidnapping of Governor Gretchen Whitmer. An FBI agent there was the group’s “explosive expert”; their transportation head was an undercover agent; their head of security was an undercover FBI informant. The Detroit jury didn’t buy the FBI’s cocked-up plot then, but Wray apparently was happy with Antuono’s work and promoted him to the D.C. job and put him in charge months before January 6.

Lazy if not partisan judges, lawyers neglecting their duty, the bar which mouths fancy platitudes ignoring its special responsibility to the justice system by volunteering its services, an FBI mired in corruption, the Speaker of the House sitting on relevant, probably exonerating evidence, and one young woman alone acts for justice. Bravo!

“As in so many other Democratic strongholds, violent crime is out of control here!”

AUGUST 21, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at Power Line:

THE CRISIS OF CRIME IN MINNEAPOLIS AND BEYOND

On Friday United States Attorney for Minnesota Andrew Luger called a press conference to discuss the strategy he is pursuing with other state and federal law enforcement agencies to address violent crime in the Twin Cities. Alpha News has posted the CrimeWatch account of the press conference here. Stephen Montemayor’s longer and more detailed Star Tribune story is here. Both stories reflect telling statements by Luger on the local crisis of lawless violence.

As in so many other Democratic strongholds, violent crime is out of control here. Luger’s relatively forthright description of the anarchic situation is worth taking in for that reason alone. Here is a long excerpt of Montemayor’s story:

“What law enforcement is encountering on the streets of Minneapolis, St. Paul and other cities today is far more disturbing than even the alarming numbers show,” Luger said. “By their actions, their weapons and their words, violent offenders are displaying an absolute disdain for the law and a disregard for human life.”

Luger unveiled the results of the Thursday raids with an hourlong morning news conference in his office alongside nearly a dozen federal and state law enforcement leaders from the area.

He illustrated a criminal landscape where violent offenders feel more emboldened to deploy militaristic weapons while trafficking potentially lethal doses of fentanyl all out of a belief that they will not be caught or held accountable. Luger attributed that ethos to feedback from some of those arrested in recent operations.

More than 100 officers — including those from out-of-state special response teams — convened in the Twin Cities on Thursday to arrest 15 people on federal gun charges. The operation included the seizure of 29 firearms and three auto sear devices used to turn otherwise semiautomatic weapons into fully automatic machine guns, Luger said.

The special response teams, a tactical group, travel to high-crime areas to help arrest those deemed to present the highest risk of violence.

“While we are fortunate that two of these elite teams traveled to our communities to arrest high-level targets,” Luger said, “it is sad news that we in Minnesota need them in the first place. But we do.”

Jeffrey Reed, assistant special agent in charge of the St. Paul division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), said Friday that local divisions call in such teams based on certain offenders’ criminal histories and potential for violence.

Thursday’s deployment of the teams was precautionary, Reed said, and the five suspects deemed “high risk” were safely arrested. This was just the latest example of resources pouring in from elsewhere to assist in the Twin Cities: Reed said the ATF’s St. Paul division has pulled in research specialists and additional agents from other divisions to increase its capacity this summer.

“Right now the top priority on every law enforcement officer’s mind is reducing the violent gun crime that is affecting the Twin Cities,” he said.

Also Thursday, federal drug enforcement agents and state authorities arrested 10 people in the Rochester area on federal methamphetamine conspiracy charges while seizing drugs and firearms during their arrests.

Luger made prosecuting violent crime his top focus upon beginning his second term as U.S. Attorney this year. He has ordered all criminal prosecutors to handle violent crime cases and plans to also prosecute such cases himself.

Luger said Friday that his office has charged about 35 “high-risk” offenders in recent weeks with crimes ranging from serial convenience store robbery, carjacking, illegal firearms possession and other gang-related activities.

He highlighted the recent case of Derrick Scott, a man with eight prior felony convictions before being arrested for allegedly selling fentanyl pills and possessing a machine gun to protect his trade. When brought into custody, Luger said, Scott told officers he would have no trouble doing federal prison time before returning to the street.

“He then proclaimed, ‘I will still be the king,’” Luger said.

The crisis described by Luger is an indictment of the abdication by state and local authorities, from Governor Tim Walz on down. That’s not the way Luger puts it, but the inference is one step removed from his account of the status quo. I have posted video of the press conference below.

Biden TO USE AMTRAK TO DISTRIBUTE Future Dem Fascists?

Biden Plans to Use Tax-Payer Money to Fund Amtrak to Send Illegal Aliens to American Towns

Sarah Arnold at Townhall:

Posted: Aug 20, 2022

 

Source: Andrew Harnik/AP Photo

Rumor has it the Biden administration is on the verge of using Amtrak to transport illegal migrants from parts of the U.S. Mexican border. 

According to 19 House Republicans, President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security is planning on using hard-earned taxpayer money to fund the transportation of illegal aliens from the border to cross into the country. 

The House Transportation Committee blames Biden’s urgent need to end Title 42 for the massive spike of illegals crossing the border, inciting GOP members to heighten the need to expose the president’s plans. 

In a letter to Amtrak officials, Republicans cautioned that Biden may use their transportation services for processing if immigration checkpoints are inundated with new arrivals, furthering the crisis at the border. 

“We are concerned about the impact that a significantly greater border surge could cause to your services and the potential use of Amtrak in the Administration’s response to its self-created border crisis,” the letter reads. 

“Such a situation would cause disruptions for Amtrak customers as well as interrupt freight traffic that could further exacerbate the supply chain crisis…would also constitute an unconscionable use of significant amounts of taxpayer funds and resources to aid in the vast movement of illegal migrants into American communities,” the letter continued. 

The Republicans said they are “deeply concerned” that Amtrak’s resources will be used to move undocumented people. 

“We are deeply concerned that Amtrak’s resources – especially those supporting the Sunset Limited route – will be used to transport these undocumented persons. Such a situation would cause disruptions for Amtrak customers as well as interrupt freight traffic that could further exacerbate the supply chain crisis. Such actions would also constitute an unconscionable use of significant amounts of taxpayer funds and resources to aid in the vast movement of illegal migrants into American communities,” the GOP members’ letter said. 

The Democrats Have Become the Death Party (With Apologies to C.S. Lewis)

Craig Shirley

The Customs Border and Protection (CBP) announced earlier this week that nearly 200,000 illegal migrants have entered the U.S. in July alone, taking the total so far this fiscal year to 1.946 million encounters. 

Fascistic Dems and Liberals Crave Full Control OVER UNCLE SAM And Its Schools!

 AUGUST 20, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

DOWN WITH THE CONSTITUTION!

In recent years, many liberals have become openly hostile to the Constitution. The present moment in history, with the Democrats controlling the House by the barest of majorities, a 50/50 Senate with a Democratic vice president, and a Democratic president, has heightened liberal frustration with the Constitution. With their hands, for a brief moment at least, on all of the levers of power, why can’t the Democratic Party effect a total transformation of American society?

To a normal person, that question perhaps answers itself. But check out this op-ed in the New York Times, which is literally one of the stupidest things I have ever read. Its authors are Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn, professors at Harvard Law School and Yale Law School respectively. The op-ed advocates doing away entirely with the Constitution. Why? The authors don’t quite put it this way, but the reason is that the Constitution fails to establish a pure democracy by plebiscite, and makes it difficult to use a transient majority to effect radical change. Those who had a high school civics class understand that this is more or less the point.

One reason for these woeful outcomes is that our current Constitution is inadequate, which is why it serves reactionaries so well. Starting with a text that is famously undemocratic, progressives are forced to navigate hard-wired features, like the Electoral College and the Senate, designed as impediments to redistributive change…

But neither the Electoral College nor the Senate inherently advances, or hampers, “redistributive change.” The fact that small states are overrepresented in the Senate with respect to population–a chief grievance of the authors–could just as easily be a force for redistributive change if, for example, small states unite in pressing for redistribution of wealth from wealthier large states to poorer small states.

…while drawing on much vaguer and more malleable resources like commitments to due process and equal protection — resources that a conservative Supreme Court has used over the years to invalidate things like abortion rights and child labor laws and might use in the coming term to prohibit affirmative action.

It is shocking that two law professors could write that sentence. The Supreme Court did not use the concepts of due process and equal protection to “invalidate…abortion rights.” On the contrary, it was the misuse of “due process” by liberal justices that created the fictitious right to abortion. The Dobbs decision correctly took that concept out of the equation and returned the issue of abortion to the democratic process, where it belongs. And, by the way, deciding issues democratically rather than through anti-majoritarian institutions like the Supreme Court is exactly what these authors claim to be in favor of. Their thinking is hopelessly confused; in fact, they go on to contradict themselves:

It’s difficult to find a constitutional basis for abortion or labor unions in a document written by largely affluent men more than two centuries ago. It would be far better if liberal legislators could simply make a case for abortion and labor rights on their own merits without having to bother with the Constitution.

With respect to abortion, that is exactly where we are after Dobbs. But the references to labor unions are incomprehensible. Labor unions are obviously permitted by the Constitution, while by the same token they are not required. Unions have been the subject of federal legislation for nearly 100 years. It is impossible to understand what point these authors are trying to make.

So how do the authors intend to achieve their avowed goal of doing away with our constitutional republic? Forget about packing the Supreme Court, they want to pack the Union with new states:

One way to get to this more democratic world is to pack the Union with new states. Doing so would allow Americans to then use the formal amendment process to alter the basic rules of the politics and break the false deadlock that the Constitution imposes through the Electoral College and Senate on the country, in which substantial majorities are foiled on issue after issue.

The Times op-ed links to a 2020 article in the Harvard Law Review that advocates a plan whereby leftists can take permanent control over the United States, in effect staging a coup. The proposal is to break the District of Columbia down into 127 neighborhoods, and admit each of those 127 neighborhoods as a new state. You think I’m kidding?

To do this, Congress should pass legislation reducing the size of Washington, D.C., to an area encompassing only a few core federal buildings and then admit the rest of the District’s 127 neighborhoods as states. These states — which could be added with a simple congressional majority — would add enough votes in Congress to ratify four amendments: (1) a transfer of the Senate’s power to a body that represents citizens equally; (2) an expansion of the House so that all citizens are represented in equal-sized districts; (3) a replacement of the Electoral College with a popular vote; and (4) a modification of the Constitution’s amendment process that would ensure future amendments are ratified by states representing most Americans.

This will work because the District is overwhelmingly Democratic:

[E]very measurable subdivision of D.C. voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic party in the 2016 election, so the Democratic caucus in Congress could be confident that new states created within the District would elect like-minded delegations to Congress.

If that doesn’t do it, the op-ed authors have more ideas:

More aggressively, Congress could simply pass a Congress Act, reorganizing our legislature in ways that are more fairly representative of where people actually live and vote, and perhaps even reducing the Senate to a mere “council of revision” (a term Jamelle Bouie used to describe the Canadian Senate), without the power to obstruct laws.

In so doing, Congress would be pretty openly defying the Constitution to get to a more democratic order — and for that reason would need to insulate the law from judicial review.

Apart from its sheer stupidity, we see here another example of the pervasive bad faith with which the Left operates. Frankly, it would be more honest and no less lawless to advocate taking over the U.S. Army, mobilizing tanks and howitzers and staging an old-fashioned coup, in order to install the Democratic Party permanently in power.

Finally, I am not really surprised that a Yale Law School professor could write something as ridiculous as the Times op-ed. Yale Law School has always been rather goofy. But for a Harvard Law professor to sink to this depth reflects a dizzying decline in academic standards.

Handel’s Messiah….The Mormon Tabernacle Choir & Orchestra