Posted on 05/21/2012 7:31:52 AM PDT by Altariel
At 5:30 a.m. on May 10, armed men broke into the bedroom of Kirk Kyle Farrars 12 year-old daughter and shook her awake. The men led her downstairs at gunpoint and forced her to lie on the floor next to her mother and father, with her hands behind her head. Another armed man took Farrars two-year-old son from his crib, and would not let his parents hold him. My son screamed for his mother for what seemed like an eternity, Farrar wrote in an email to friends, obtained by Reason. I will never forget the hopeless feeling of not being able to comfort my son or daughter.
The armed men who broke into Farrars home were officers with the Meridian, Idaho, Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration. They were executing a federal warrant for Farrars arrest for the crime of selling bongs.
Farrars wasnt the only family traumatized that morning. Agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Idaho National Guard, and four Idaho police departments raided the homes of 13 other headshop owners and employees on May 10. All of the headshops had their inventory seized. One shop lost more than $80,000 worth of merchandise (bongs and pipes marketed as tobacco water pipes). Another headshop owner had his and and his employees' vehicles seized.
The investigation into these 13 shops and their employees (two of which are still at large) for selling drug paraphernalia was led by U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson, a Barack Obama appointee. Nine of the shops were also accused of selling "spice," a synthetic alternative to the prohibited and significantly safer drug marijuana.
In his email, Farrar denies selling spice. "Piece of Mind Boise has never carried these products EVER! We made a commitment from the start not to carry it because we believe it is dangerous and not being used in a legal fashion."
He also notes that his cousin, "[who] has never previously committed a crime and has absolutely no criminal record," has been charged with "with 4 Federal felony charges stemming from selling tobacco products."
The open sale of drug paraphernalia promotes unlawful drug use and helps drug traffickers thrive, Olson said at a press conference on May 10. These indictments show federal, state and local law enforcement partners will attack drug trafficking on all fronts.
During a speech at the Center for American Progress earlier this month, Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske said that the law enforcement-only approach to America's drug problem was not "humane, compassionate" or "realistic." He also said that the Obama administration does not believe it can "arrest its way out of the drug problem."
Reason spoke to one headshop owner. At his attorneys behest, this owner declined to go on the record, but did say that local police had been aware of the stores existence and sales of glass pipes for years, but had never threatened charges or discouraged the business from operating. The owner believes that the raids came at the behest of federal law enforcement officials.
According to the Idaho Statesman, the DEA, Idaho National Guard, IRS and the U.S. Marshals and Attorneys offices worked on the case, which the agencies built over the course of an entire year.
As if more evidence were needed that President Obama's drug war looks a lot like George W. Bush's: The charges against Farrar and the other Idaho headshop owners are reminiscent of the federal prosecution of actor Tommy Chong under Bush's DOJ. Chong was convicted in 2003 for distributing paraphernalia through his company Nice Dreams Enterprises. Chong was fined $20,000, and made to forfeit his domain name, all of his inventory, and $103,514 in cash.
How can you hold a firearm illegally when the Second Amendment clearly states the right to hold a firearm “shall not be infringed”?
Where is the evidence that the Farrars were any of those things? (Free clue: it's not in the article.)
So, if the gubmint banned firearms - in essence making NO firearms ownership legal - then you're perfectly fine with the government thugs shooting somebody's kid on a raid for those "illegal" firearms?
I'm not. Kids should live. Thugs should not. It's really that simple.
WOD that too many here support gets it done again
“Baloney Alteriel....that’s not how it really works”
Yes, we know how it works. They could have easily arrested them outside the home, served the warrant on the business, and seized the contraband that they had clear evidence of, but what they really wanted was to search the home for drugs, which they had no evidence of. It was a fishing expedition, because drugs laid out on a table make for a much better photo op than a bunch of glass bongs.
“Water pip, bong, hookah. . .arent these all basically the same type of instrument?”
Yes, until the State says they aren’t. Welcome to arbitrary law enforcement by the State, FRiend.
Because people let the government infringe their rights for so long in the name of safety?
Didn’t Ben Franklin and others warn that if you against giving up freedom for “security”?
OK I botched the grammar in my haste.
Meant to write that Franklin and others warned against giving up freedom for security.
Our government is out of the control of the People and the Constitution..... The entire legal system from bottom to top and top to bottom has failed in its duty to support and defend to the Constitution. .....The current and prior Congresses have failed us. .... the Executive Branch has failed us... and it is now totally in the hands of corrupt people not acting in the best interests of our Constitution and Republic.
Not facing the reality of the place this country is in, and that it's fast becomming lawless by the very powers appointed to abide by the law....is keeping your head in the sand.
Until the people determine to stop this , and I question that it can be any time soon.....the reality is we've lost the Consititution and are no longer a Republic... in the maze of those who completely ignore it thru the powers they weld...
I am amused by the ones that use that Franklin quote to rail against the patriot act but otoh embrace gun control measures.
post 89 answers this.
I knew where you were going.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
I am unclear how your post 89 reconciles with blaming the parents for the actions of an unlawful thugocracy.
Key is the "IF" in your statement. To date they are not banned. Should firearms be banned then the whole equation changes.
We know what's coming and they will do whatever is necessary to overstep the Constitution that affords us the right to protect our home and families.....should they succeed in banning firearms....and I think eventually they will, Then folks need to determine alternatives now and not wait until their choices are far more limited.
Someone on this thread posted that bongs have a hole (known as a “carb” or carburetor) that lets air in to clear the pipe, and the water-pipes/hookahs do not. I’m not sure if that is the case in general, or maybe if that is just this state’s law that defines it that way. Seems like a very slim difference to me, since there are “bongs” that don’t have carbs, but use other mechanisms to do the same thing, and drilling a hole for an “after-market” upgrade would be easy anyway.
Observe that the same dehumanization will be done to you, when you are the owner or consumer of an illegal possession or substance."
Oh, please. If the knucklehead were not dealing in "illegal" substances, he would be sipping lemonade with his family right now. Do you really believe this conspiracy nonsense? Second shooter, grassy knoll, FBI and everyone is out to get you? Look around...you are in the safest country in the world. Go to Mexico where you can run with the cartels unmolested. That's what no law enforcement looks like.
Go back to the beginning of the thread then.....the parents are responsible for putting their children in harms way by the choice they made in riding this fence to begin with.
Hard to understand why people can't get this...and by doing so the parents put their children in danger for whatever outcome might occur thereafter.
Yes, I'm sure they were fully aware that they were risking the intervention of federal storm troopers who would invade their family home and terrorize their children with the threat of violent death, because they openly and legally sold some plastic and glass pipes. Plain as day, it was.
(that's sarcasm, btw)
If the thugs had chosen different employment, or at the very least, refused to threaten the children, they would not have the lifelong guilt of threatening to murder children right now.
Do you feel pangs of guilt because you too, have threatened to murder children? Have you seen too many tear-stained faces of the young look at you in fear and horror?
If peace officers had gone to the man’s business and arrested him there, with a warrant, there would be no constitutional violations, no frightened children, no drama, and no thuggery.
But some people here like to defend such thuggery. Perhaps it is because they fear the revelation of their own thuggery.
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