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The Other Drone Question: Is Obama Building A Federal Police Force?
American Thinker ^ | Mar. 18, 2013 | Tara Servatius

Posted on 03/18/2013 6:39:52 AM PDT by EXCH54FE

Less than two weeks ago, Sen. Rand Paul's demanded to know whether the president believed he had a right to kill an American citizen on American soil with a drone, finally getting an answer that had to be dragged out Attorney General Eric Holder. An equally important, but still unasked question is whether the president intends to build a federal, drone-based "public safety" force to police local communities.

Somebody had better ask the president about this quickly, because it appears that his administration intends to use drones to actively usurp what were once local police and sheriff's department functions.

Put it all together, and it sure looks like Obama is building the backbone for that national police force he wanted the first time he ran for office.

Worse yet, both Democrats and Republicans are now openly discussing a plan to put all the drones flown in America's skies, including those owned and operated by local police departments, under the ultimate supervision of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, consolidating the country's surveillance and law enforcement powers under one powerful federal police jurisdiction.

According to Wired.com, DHS is now experimenting with how its drones can be used in "first responder, law enforcement and border security scenarios."

The DHS's drones could also be used, Nextgov.com reported, "to support emergency and non-emergency incidents nationwide" and to give the department "situational awareness" in public safety matters or disasters, including forest fires. The department also plans to use its drones, and their attached cameras to surveil and police sporting events, political events and large public gatherings.

The problem with DHS's plans is that many of the above functions used to be handled by local law enforcement without any help from the federal government.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: backoffbarry; bhofascism; bloodoftyrants; cwii; cwiiping; deaddronesflying; democrats; donttreadonme; drones; dronesus; govtabuse; guncontrol; obama; obamabrownshirts; policestate; secondamendment; socialistdemocrats; surveillance; tyranny; waronliberty
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To: EXCH54FE

>>>While the intentions here might not be totalitarian, the ultimate outcome could be...<<<<

A long time ago I took a class at college called “Authoritarian Regiemes.” Among the little nuggets of wisdom from that class was the idea that the modern totalitarian state operated by using the police to enforce its decrees instead of the military, since the military had a bad tendency to instill a sense of loyalty to the military itself and not the state.

In any case, the creation of a national police force goes as far back as Lenin, and as a matter of course there is no reason to create a national police force other than enforcing the will of the state.

God help us.


61 posted on 03/18/2013 1:38:47 PM PDT by redpoll
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To: EXCH54FE
[Art.] Put it all together, and it sure looks like Obama is building the backbone for that national police force he wanted the first time he ran for office.

This isn't the first place I've seen this, unfortunately, and people are starting to notice.

I think the most useful user-aid for any student of Obama's Regime is any history of the Third Reich, and its included analysis of what Hitler created, how the component parts worked, and what were his evident intentions for how they were to work, and what they might tell us about the real intentions behind some of the institutional monstrosities Obama is creating, without telling us what he is doing, as part of his recreation of East Germany here in America.

62 posted on 03/18/2013 1:56:31 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: EXCH54FE

What makes you think they might not be totalitarian?


63 posted on 03/18/2013 2:04:38 PM PDT by ilovesarah2012
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy
Though Obama and his bureaucracy are using it, these authoritarian police agencies were for the most part given broad and unconstitutional authorities under George W. Bush, who, while he was correct in taking the War on Terror to our foreign enemies, devoted just as many resources to creating a police state in the US, against its honest citizenry.

I'm convinced these measures were a put-up job sold to Bush under the stress of (his) trying to prevent a recurrence of a big terrorist strike in the U.S. .... by people with further agenda, who did not fully disclose their intentions for these new powers and assets. People like, oh, the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street playmates, like elite players at CFR and the Chamber, and so on and so on, and other people with a vested interest in helotizing the American People.

I was afraid at the time, fears fully realized now, that laws like the Patriot Act would prove very empowering to would-be despots like Obama and his gang.

64 posted on 03/18/2013 2:16:18 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy
Yes, but he did so for the wrong reasons, resulting in the worst depression (that probably would have happened anyway) until the Great Depression. He insured it would happen by issuing his infamous Specie Circular just before he left office.

No, the bankers did it -- in retaliation -- by severely contracting credit, something Andrew Jackson had no power to permit, or to deny. They had the power of the purse over the economy, they knew it, and they used it. In pique at Jackson.

Though the bonds were purchased with dollars, many of those indirectly backing them did so with privately issued currencies from local banks. Their accounts, purchased with dollars, were recorded in the bank’s currency.

Which made every bank issuing such scrip a sort of mini-Fed (and Nicholas Biddle merely intended his bank to be a much bigger version of the same thing), with all the bankers, collectively, in effect taking over the supply of money in the economy just as the Fed has done since 1913, howbeit with less legal leverage and with narrower bases of supply.

They hadn't the authority to "coin" real money, but the use of scrip put them in the game anyway .... contrary to the letter and intent of the Constitution, that only lawful money be used for tender.

65 posted on 03/18/2013 2:28:22 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: Travis McGee
(+)
66 posted on 03/18/2013 3:01:32 PM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: lentulusgracchus

I just cannot buy the old idea that “The Czar is a good man, but surrounded by unprincipled villains”, that the Russians used to explain why their beloved Czar imposed such cruelties on them.

W. Bush knew exactly what he was getting, and was all in favor of it. It didn’t take a “rocket surgeon” to figure out that warrantless searches will almost exclusively be used against non-terrorists.

If you asked the FBI at that time how many terrorists and potential terrorists were in the US, they would have given you a low number, likely in the low hundreds. Oppressing 330 million people to sniff out a few hundred bad ones cannot be explained as a good faith technique.


67 posted on 03/18/2013 3:01:46 PM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy (Best WoT news at rantburg.com)
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To: Travis McGee

If it “Walks like a duck” I’d say yes.


68 posted on 03/18/2013 3:11:22 PM PDT by bayouranger (The 1st victim of islam is the person who practices the lie.)
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy
It didn’t take a “rocket surgeon” to figure out that warrantless searches will almost exclusively be used against non-terrorists.

I disagree. The concern was almost entirely with another truck-bombing or airliner-hijacking escapade. That's what they were telling the MSM, anyway.

You think Shrub and Big Dick Cheney actually sat around scenarizing sending a SWAT unit, a la the Elian grab, to crash into some woman's house and kitchen and drag her away screaming into the night?

69 posted on 03/18/2013 3:55:56 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy
Oppressing 330 million people to sniff out a few hundred bad ones cannot be explained as a good faith technique.

The team that made the 1993 World Trade Center attempt were a small group, maybe what, six, eight guys including the Blind Sheikh?

At the time, USG sources were telling media that the towers were in no way ever in danger from Sheikh Abdul's truck bomb. More recently, I saw a statement that if it hadn't been for the prime spot's having been occupied by parked federal agency vehicles, their plan might actually have worked, and dropped Trade 1 with 25,000 people in it in the middle of the afternoon. Doubtful that bringing down Trade 1 would have broken the foundations of Trade 2 and brought it down, too (after all, that didn't happen on 9/11), but if it had, that would have been more than 50,000 dead, including the workers in WTC 4, 5, and 6 and the Marriott Hotel adjacent (and the Marriott hadn't yet been structurally strengthened, which was something done after the bombing).

That's the kind of stuff they were thinking about, not Obama's giant gun-grab wet dream.

70 posted on 03/18/2013 4:02:08 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: rcrngroup

You are exactly right! Doofus, dumb-ass, dumber than dirt, GW Bush, laid the groundwork or passed the laws, enabling just about every abuse & atrocity being committed today by 0dumb0 & his fascist gubmint! So in addition to destroying the Repub party and giving us 0dumb0, GW Bush laid the groundwork for a totalitarian dictatorial federal gubmint!


Do you mean the mongoloid idiot that said about CFR that it was probably unconstitutional, but he’d sign it anyway and let the courts sort it out? That Bush?


71 posted on 03/18/2013 4:28:27 PM PDT by Peet (Notice: Due to the high price of ammo, there will be NO warning shots.)
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To: EXCH54FE

This is called “Federal mission creep” from fighting and protectin Americans from a “terrorist” attack to monitoring American at “ball parks.”

The reach into the private lives of Americans by this federal governmen should send a chill down the spine of every American, but, it won’t, some Americans will want even more regulation and control by this out of control government.

Sad state of affairs watching this once great Nation decend into a “police state” with the support of 1/3 of the American people. The coming civil war appears to be closer than ever before, since this federal government will NEVER surrender this power back to the American people and the never ending war on (place name here) will never be won, continuing to be used an an excuse for spending more and more of our hard earned tax dollars.

This is exactly why The American people cannot afford to “compromise” with these liberal socialist and must get this out of control government back under the limitations in our Constitution, this government will have to be forced back into the bottle, the federal government will never do it by its self.

Stay safe everyone, keep yourselves ready, it won’t be pretty when it comes, not “if” it comes, but, “when” it comes!


72 posted on 03/18/2013 4:54:52 PM PDT by PotatoChop (Respect is earned, not demanded by this out of control socialist government!)
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To: lentulusgracchus

Little of had to do with such snatch and grab. That already existed. What W. Bush did was authorized “front end” things like communications monitoring without warrant, compiling huge databases of personal information, GPS in cell phones, secret courts issuing warrants, etc. It is noteworthy that though the FISA court almost never turned down a warrant request, the intelligence community complained that even having to ask a judge was too bothersome.

(2008) “FBI headquarters officials sought to cover their informal and possibly illegal acquisition of phone records on thousands of Americans from 2003 to 2005 by issuing 11 improper, retroactive “blanket” administrative subpoenas in 2006 to three phone companies that are under contract to the FBI, according to an audit released Thursday.”

Then there was the infamous monitoring of books checked out and computers used in public libraries.

“Sneak and peek” search warrants, which let authorities search a home or business without immediately notifying the target of a probe.

“Under Bush, the attorney general’s guidelines governing FBI operations were overhauled, allowing investigative tactics from the infamous COINTELPRO era, such as infiltrating constitutionally protected ideological groups — on the basis of a secret legal standard that has never been disclosed. And even though the CIA is prohibited from operating within the United States, it has smeared critics and trained local law enforcement in counterproductive profiling techniques.”


73 posted on 03/18/2013 5:10:25 PM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy (Best WoT news at rantburg.com)
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To: lentulusgracchus

If it is necessary to imprison 330 million people, because of six or a dozen terrorists, the terrorists do actually win.

The Bill of Rights exists, not because government granted it, or has any authority to reduce it, no matter how important they think a reason is for reducing it. The US fought in World War II while keeping its liberties, and when Nazi saboteurs landed in Florida, we captured then eventually hung them.

Face it, the FBI exists for domestic security, against enemies, foreign and domestic. You don’t need massive new agencies to do that. You don’t need to monitor all transportation and communications to do that. You do not need a police state to do that.


74 posted on 03/18/2013 5:18:00 PM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy (Best WoT news at rantburg.com)
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To: EXCH54FE

bookmark


75 posted on 03/18/2013 6:04:30 PM PDT by Faith65 (Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior!)
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To: EXCH54FE; All

I have a simple recommendation...

Every time someone has to mention the US Attorney Generals name, we preface it with the term “IMPEACHED”...

I mean, IIRC he was impeached, right???

Why is he (the IMPEACHED Attorney General Eric Holder) still in that position of authority???


76 posted on 03/18/2013 7:23:39 PM PDT by stevie_d_64 (It's not the color of one's skin that offends people...it's how thin it is.)
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To: Peet
Do you mean the mongoloid idiot that said about CFR that it was probably unconstitutional, but he’d sign it anyway and let the courts sort it out? That Bush?

That's the one! The same doofus, dumb-ass, dumber than dirt GW Bush, who in his first 4 years vetoed exactly..... ZERO bills sent to him from Congress. Even John E'ffn Kerry was astonished that GW Bush signed everything that came across his desk in the first 4 years, and mostly everything that came in the 2nd 4 years.

Another legacy....he allowed Ted Kennedy to write the trillion dollar prescription drug boondoggle that still did not fix the so-called "donut hole", was passed by both demoturds & repubs, and then hung like a millstone around doofus's neck. GW Bush... the dumb-ass, traitorous gift that keeps on giving!

77 posted on 03/18/2013 8:14:34 PM PDT by rcrngroup
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To: EXCH54FE

Big Brother Barack
Wants to give us all
A “Fair Shot.”

Could be a Silver Bullet?
Or an Obamadrone?
Or maybe a Breitbart drink - - - ?


78 posted on 03/18/2013 8:22:53 PM PDT by Graewoulf (Traitor John Roberts' Commune-Style Obama'care' violates U.S. Constitution AND Anti-Trust Law.)
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To: bikerman

Probably not. And that is probably the “why” behind the leftists banning or trying to ban certain weapons like sniper rifles and the AR-15. So angry Americans won’t be shooting down Obama’s spy drones.


79 posted on 03/18/2013 9:38:03 PM PDT by XenaLee (The only good commie is a dead commie.)
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy
You do not need a police state to do that

Concur. Many of these security issues need to be revisited, de-PC-loused, and recast in the light of constitutionalism and federalism.

80 posted on 03/19/2013 12:33:04 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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