Posted on 06/12/2011 11:04:21 PM PDT by Nachum
HERE’S a story that is so screwy it sounds like a script from “The Simpsons,” but it’s real, and it’s about our federal government at work. That’s what makes it so scary.
At 6 a.m. last Tuesday, a good citizen, Kenneth Wright of Stockton, Calif., was awakened by the clamor of about 15 armed SWAT team members breaking through the front door of his house.
Wearing only his boxer shorts as he came downstairs, Wright was grabbed by the neck and put down on his lawn with an officer’s knee on his back.
His kids, ages 3, 7, and 11 were terrified. Wright, confused and upset, was handcuffed, stuffed into the back of a hot police cruiser and held there for six hours while the agents searched his home.
What’s going on here?
The commandos were armed agents of — really — the U.S. Department of Education. And they bashed their way into his house and held him and his children while they apparently searched for evidence of alleged student loan fraud involving Wright’s estranged wife.
Amazing. Alarming.
Why does the U.S. Department of Education need a SWAT squad? And why would they need to bash their way into an ordinary person’s house and terrorize everyone there at 6 a.m., just to look for student loan paperwork?
Those are good questions for the uber-bureaucrat who requested the search warrant, one Special Agent Howard Nance of the Education Department’s Office of the Inspector General.
But Nance isn’t answering questions. And his Education Gestapo is refusing public requests to explain themselves, citing an ongoing criminal investigation.
Unbelievable. Now faceless bureaucrats can tear up the Fourth Amendment and bash their way into your house brandishing heavy weapons in search of paperwork. And they refuse to explain themselves.
Your papers had better be in order, citizen.
Back in March 2010, I was puzzled to read an obscure account of the Department of Education seeking to buy a couple dozen short-barreled shotguns. Now we know what that was about.
Other unlikely federal bureaucracies have their own armed agents, too, including the Small Business Administration and even the Railroad Retirement Board, according to Quin Hillyer, writing in the Freedom Line Blog at the Center for Individual Freedom, based in Alexandria, Va.
Dealing with government bureaucrats is bad enough, but Americans are really in danger when the bureaucrats can send gunmen to break down your door for any stupid reason they can get a deranged judge to sign off on, as Kenneth Wright and his kids discovered this past week.
There’s no reason for these agencies to have their own little armies. And there’s even less reason for those agents to confront citizens with deadly weapons. Somebody is going to get killed, if for no other reason than negligent handling of those firearms. Check out the YouTube video of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agent who shot himself in the foot while telling a classroom audience he was the only one in the room qualified to handle the pistol he was holding. Now imagine 15 jumpy, macho Education Department commandos with loaded shotguns milling around in your living room.
Apparently all these bureaucratic armed squads in the Executive branch of government have their roots in a law adopted in 1978 setting up Inspector General offices. Shame on Congress for not thinking that one through. Now Congress needs to undo that damage.
Similarly, President Obama needs to tell the Department of Education and all the other oddball armed Inspector General units in his Executive Branch to stand down and turn in their guns before they hurt somebody.
Obama might be a little gun-shy right now, though. That’s because tomorrow, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa of California is to open a congressional hearing into the Project Gunrunner Operation Fast and Furious scandal that has barely made the national news yet.
That’s the scandal in which the U.S. Department of Justice led by Obama crony Eric Holder has been stonewalling congressional inquiries into why the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed hundreds of firearms to be purchased illegally in the U.S. and taken into Mexico supposedly for tracking to narco-gangsters, and how some of those guns the ATF lost track of turned up in connection with the murders of two U.S. agents and who knows how many Mexican citizens.
Whistleblowers indicate that the OK for this insanity went high up into the Justice Department. How could such a dangerous international operation get started without approval of the attorney general or the White House?
And how could anyone who is competent and in their right mind, possibly allow such a ridiculous and potentially deadly scheme to go ahead?
So far, Obama has said only that he and Holder did not authorize the Gunrunner Fast and Furious scheme, which falls short of saying they knew nothing about it.
The answers Rep. Issa is seeking could be, well, explosive.
Meanwhile, make sure not to fudge your college loan paperwork, lest you get a rude awakening at the end of a Department of Education shotgun.
America, what is happening here?
Tom Skoch is editor of The Morning Journal and www.MorningJournal.com, where his Tell the Editor blog appears. He is on Twitter as MJ_Tom_Skoch and can be contacted by e-mail at tskoch@morningjournal.com.
Tell everyone you know about this.
It is interesting, that the 60s generation that accused the “establishment” of being fascist, violent pigs, has morphed into what they always accused others.
Fascism tends to that over time.
And the worst part of it is that we have allowed this kind of thing to happen. Love the song reference.
Date, November 9–10, 1938.
Kristallnacht, also to referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht
Anyone who does not see what is coming, must be out of their minds.
There are only a few things which can hold a large region together under a central government.
1) Common culture. (gone)
2) Common religion (forbidden)
3) Common good. (declining, and will get worse as solvent states are compelled to pay for the bankrupt)
4) Common language (declining quickly)
5) Brute force and terror (escalating, but subject to “kinetic nullification” and a declining treasury)
In passing, the Soviet Union was principally organized to be held intact by #5; it was designed for that very purpose. Even there, even with an unarmed, less skilled, less wealthy and generally more acquiescent population, the Soviet Union imploded during its first serious challenge by the people. Because the government was bankrupt, and did not pay its military or law enforcement, those organizations remained in barracks at the time of the Kremlin’s dire need. How much better will the Pustule on the Potomac fare, when the statues of Lenin and Dzerzhinsky were pulled off of their plinths in Moscow itself by an UNARMED people?
Absolutely.
Am I wrong?
Nazi ping
Pretty much every department, agency, bureau and sub-department of the Federal government has police forces, including SWAT teams.
What Good Can a Handgun Do Against An Army?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/2312894/posts
This is how fascism works. It's exactly what America voted for in 2008.
Just like the deadly incident in Pima County AZ, this isn`t about an actual search for evidence and arrest of an accused criminal. This is about instilling fear and submission into the hearts of Americans.
The government thugs make no attempt to hide the fact this happened. Conversely, they want us to see it, know it, fear it, and tell others about it. Government terror is proving to be a highly effective tool for bringing the populace to heel. Notice no one is talking anymore about what occurred in AZ? Similarly, there will be no outrage about this either. Remember all the demonstrations against the Bush Administration? Aside from those gatherings organized by the TEA Parties, where is the outrage about this and other abuses by the current regime?
Americans, like others under authoritarian regimes, are quickly learning to lower their eyes and stay quiet when told. Perhaps, as in the former Soviet Union, a watchful and repressive government gives them a feeling of security.
bttt
Not good.
Did anybody else find it odd that the guy was featured on ABC news - ABC NEWS - and said something along the lines: let this be a lesson, pay your student loans, take care of your credit. ABC featured this quote prominently in their coverage.
Something about that makes me wonder if this wasn’t a little drama that was staged for the viewing American public... an incentivizer maybe.
While I understand the need to move quickly to prevent the destruction of evidence, this is a job for two US Marshals, not a separate DOE SWAT team. Disturbing.
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