Posted on 06/11/2012 8:00:11 PM PDT by STARWISE
An Asheville, N.C. man has enlisted the aid of North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr to investigate a visit he received from two armed Environmental Protection Agency officials and a local police officer.
Burr has been in touch with the man and started an inquiry into the incident with EPA.
According to the Ashville Citizen-Times, Larry Keller claims the EPA targeted him after he sent an email on April 27 to former EPA Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz, who resigned on April 30 over comments he made comparing the administration’s enforcement policy to Roman crucifixions. (RELATED: Complete coverage of the Al Armendariz scandal)
The letter to an EPA external affairs director read simply, “Do you have Mr. Armendariz’s contact information so we can say hello? – Regards- Larry Keller.”
“I wanted to know why someone in his position would say what he did. I wanted to question his reasoning and principles. It’s all about freedom of speech,” Keller told The Carolina Journal.
The agents visited Keller on May 2, two days after Armendariz resigned.
Keller is not convinced the matter is over, and he wants a full explanation. But the Journal reported that Patrick Sullivan, the EPA’s assistant inspector general, does not believe there was “any unprofessional behavior” by Office of Inspector General personnel, and that Keller “answered the questions and the suspicious nature of the email was resolved.”
Fox News Channel reported that the EPA has invited Keller to come to Washington. The Asheville man, however, is unwilling until he has a full understanding of what the EPA wants to discuss.
“The charter of the EPA is to protect the environment and public, not to act as a quasi federal police department,” Keller told Fox News on Saturday.
In late April on the Senate floor, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe highlighted video of Armendariz, then the Region 6 Administrator, explaining EPA’s heavy-handed approach to enforcement. That video brought about Armendariz’s resignation just days later.
“I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said,” Armendariz said in the video footage.
“It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years
Makes me think about “The Simpsons Movie”
Well, you’re right, but I’m not quitting yet. We keep kicking away at it and eventually people will realize that they’ve got more rights than they know about. They don’t need to know it all, just give political support to those that do.
I think we need to approach Constitutional Law under the same auspices that we’ve used with the 2nd Amendment. A guy like Aaron Zelman was considered a nut. The first time I wore a Hitler gun control shirt people went nuts. They didn’t want to be on a elevator with me. Now people get it.
There needs to be a committed core that relates government abuse back to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I think the focus should be on the Commerce Clause and the 10th Amendment. You already have legal scholarship on it and, via Clarence Thomas, a SCOTUS Justice that is leading the way. He’s the most influential Justice in a half century.
We need books, little pamphlets like Stephen P. Holbrook’s on the 2nd Amendment, built on the Tenth or just the Commerce Clause. A little history mixed with some judicial philosophy and real life cases. Tell the story of FDR’s madness and how we still suffer under it.
We’ve also got to get kids out of government schools and the government out of the business of education. We turn them over to liberals and then have to claim them back. I’m not crazy about Romney, but he’s made some noises about vouchers. They’re the first step toward educational liberty.
So is the Department of Education
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/06/beware-us-education-department-swat-team/40158
We can argue over whether or not the EPA should have armed agents (I say NO) but if you send a message like that to someone, do NOT be surprised if you get a visit from the local police accompanied by the FBI, if a Federal official is involved. At least Keller didn't reference his "little friend."
It’s worse than that. They are political police, they derive their authority unconstitutionally from the political aims of the parties in power.
They are no different from any other secret police agency. They are the ‘law’ and they make and enforce their own ‘rules’.
Did you know the EPA has it’s own drone ‘air force’ so they can monitor people’s activities for ‘infractions’?
Yes they are ‘law enforcement’. This is how utterly corrupted our government has become.
Yes, and NOAA and the Department of Education, and the FDA, the list is long.
You can thank the creation of ‘homeland security’ for this. In this case it IS Bush’s fault.
They are actually paramilitary SWAT teams
Oops, I did not mean to imply quitting at all.
Off topic here, but there is no doubt in my mind that Freeper/Tea Party pressure on our congress-critters is the sole reason Eric Holder may soon face some unpleasant music. With enough applied heat, our reps will respond.
Dittos re: Thomas.
We have brown shirts, green shirts and yellow striped shirts. Guess which is which.
“They are actually paramilitary SWAT teams”
I know. I was just trying to show how absurd everything has become. The Dept of Education with a SWAT team???? I would really like to see enumerated and clarified exactly what situations would require the deployment of a Department of Education SWAT team. Hence my prior post, are they deployed to “protect” us from career truants?
Come to think of it, growing up I did run into a couple of Department of Education SWAT members... We addressed them as Miss or Mrs. and they were armed with rulers.. and occasionally they got my attention with a swat.
“...will get neutralized by a Department o Education hit team”
Naah...why waste the manpower on a nest of home-schoolers in Flyover Country...when you’ve got these
http://rt.com/usa/news/us-domestic-drones-armed-090/
This guy is not “fearful” of these clowns.
Some of the enforcement officers are authorized to carry firearms. They or their autos have occasionally been fired upon while carrying out their duties though I don’t know of any being hit. Does the guy say that the weapons were ever drawn?
Since some of the Midnight dumpers are mobbed-up it is easy to justify. Watch the Sopranos for reference.
You will very rarely ever hear me say this, but I’m siding with the ACLU on this one. This stuff is just getting more scary every day.
Nice try but no cigar. EPA has had enforcement authority from long before either Bush. And armed officers.
Oh so it was Reagan then?
The Patriot act allowed a mass deputization of bureaucrats. That was Bush.
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