Free Republic

See link for letter... (1) The Patriot Act turned the intel surveillance radar from foreign searches for terrorists to domestic searches for terrorists. (2) Obama/Biden then redefined what is a “terrorist” to include their political opposition. In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus, instructed by Vice President Dick Cheney, was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose. After 9/11/01, the electronic surveillance system that was originally created...

Orwell could not have imagined the swiftness in which the Left has exerted control over our body politic... In George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” he portrays English society – renamed Oceania – as a futuristic version of the 1940s Soviet Union. In this invented society that Orwell calls IngSoc – English Socialism – the populace has even less freedom than the Soviets permitted its citizens and life consists only of drudgery, loneliness and hideousness. The novel grips the reader with fear and loathing of a totalitarian future enabled by technological advances and prompts one with the question: “Can it, will...

Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Many Ways Our Rights Have Been Usurped Since 9/11“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” — Abraham LincolnThose who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the...

It doesn’t matter whether you know the government is specifically spying on you. It’s damaging enough to believe that it might be. “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” Writing in 1928, John Shedd wasn’t really talking about ships. He was talking about life. And in American life, we no longer feel safe even in the harbor. Years ago, my girlfriend and I went to see a movie. What we saw, I’ve no idea, but I do know we had a terrible time, and it had nothing to do with what was on the...

Following his indictment for mishandling classified documents, former President Trump visited the Versailles Restaurant in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami where he shouted "food for everyone." Since it was his birthday, the crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to him. Afterward he thanked them for "such a warm welcome on such a SAD DAY for our Country!" Upon being apprised of this incident, Special Persecutor Jack Smith announced he would be "amending the indictment to include two new counts. Publicly calling his indictment a 'sad day for the country' is another act aimed at obstructing justice. Promising free food and not...

Children raised in an atmosphere of fear become adults who prioritize security over liberty.The good news is that "only" a minority of younger American adults favor Big Brother-style surveillance of our home life. The bad news is that we're discussing this because it's a disturbingly large share supporting such a totalitarian intrusion. Worse, the idea seems to be gaining acceptance. We either need to get a handle on what's going on here, or else potentially suffer lives monitored by unblinking eyes of the state, imposed by popular demand. The Rattler is a weekly newsletter from J.D. Tuccille. If you care...

Never letting a crisis go to waste is very useful tool, especially when the government creates the crisis. As CTH has said from the first discussion of the classified intelligence leaks, the “leak is the op.” The intel leak is the operation created by the Intelligence Community to support new expanded powers for the Fourth Branch of Government. It should not be a surprise to discover the institution now leading the charge to give more power for U.S. intel agencies, is…. wait for it….. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The SSCI is the organizational institution that supports the Fourth...

Many fully-grown adults have never developed the ability to think beyond words. Others are keenly aware of how easily people fall for this language game. And tactically exploit this mental weakness. This isn’t a new phenomenon. William Shirer, the American journalist and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, described his experiences as a war correspondent in Nazi Germany: [page image at site]. In June of 2015, the PATRIOT Act expired. The Obama Administration then restored most of the provisions under the title Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Effective Discipline Over Monitoring Act....

An FBI whistleblower recently came forward and issued warnings about alleged politicization at the FBI, saying that the bureau is spying on law-abiding Americans and that many of its domestic counterterrorism cases are tantamount to “entrapment.”Kyle Seraphin, who has spent six years in the FBI, was suspended without pay and cannot seek another job without quitting or asking for permission. It’s not clear when he was suspended, but he said that he had run-ins with his managers about his refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine although he was granted a religious exemption.“The number of guys who say, ‘I don’t agree...

Republicans created the Patriot Act, the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The same agencies that Barack Obama later weaponized with the creation of the Dept of Justice National Security Division (DOJ-NSD). The root issue around domestic surveillance and ultimately power & control, underlines Washington DC’s united opposition to Donald Trump. Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act turned the surveillance radar from pointing outwardly, to pointing inwardly, monitoring activity inside our nation....

States accuse Biden administration of concealing and downplaying its 'culpability' in school board memo.. Thirteen states have signed on to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking Biden administration records on any FBI surveillance of parents protesting school boards. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a former member of Congress, has taken the lead in the lawsuit against President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, citing a failure of U.S. officials to honor FOIA requests. The Indiana attorney general previously demanded all communications and records relating to the FBI's decision to investigate violent threats against local education...

There are no other constitutional rights in substance without freedom to transact Being meaning to write this for 6 months, but the Canadian response to the trucker protests is illustrating this so vividly, that today is the day. I assume we are in agreement that constitutional democracies are a good form of government or, at least, a better form of government than the other methods we have found to-date. This means that I am taking for granted the following assumptions. - People have fundamental rights to speech, assembly, religion and so on - People are innocent until proven guilty -...

My hippie professor wasn’t right about a lot of things. He wasn’t right about his minimizing the threat of Communism at the time, but time has proven him right about this the Patriot Act. In the spring following 9/11, the War on Terror had already begun, and I was taking a college course on the Vietnam War. It was a unique course for the time, as most of us didn’t attend the live class, but students were given a choice to purchase the lectures on DVD or, as I did, go to the library and watch them on VHS. It...

Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act. Instead, what Obama and Holder did was to take the preexisting system and retool it so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum. This point is where many people understandably get confused. In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence...

An ideologically-aligned cabal of people in various agencies of the federal government are working together to shut parents down.. a war on parents and every part of the government is getting involved. The latest front began with a letter from the National School Board Association ... the NSBA compared concerned parents speaking up at school board meetings to "domestic terrorists" and called for the "U.S. Departments of Justice, Education, and Homeland Security," the FBI, "including any technical assistance necessary from, and state and local coordination with, its National Security Branch and Counterterrorism Division" to step in .. using the Patriot...

The National School Boards Association issued an apology Friday night for a letter sent to the Biden administration which targeted some parents who are concerned about their child's school curriculum and said certain of their actions could be domestic terrorism. "As you all know, there has been extensive media and other attention recently around our letter to President Biden regarding threats and acts of violence against school board members," the NSBA wrote in a memo. "We wanted to write to you directly to address this matter." "On behalf of NSBA, we regret and apologize for the letter," the NSBA said,...

It took Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers to reveal the staggering extent of the government’s spying on its own people as institutional checks failed.. ... Panic made us politically vulnerable... That vulnerability was exploited by our own government to entitle itself to radically expanded powers that had for decades been out of reach. ... The Patriot Act, which swatted away longstanding rules preventing the state from monitoring US citizens without “probable cause”, was passed .. lightning-fast ... granting domestic law enforcement agencies sweeping new powers. ... green light for the FBI and CIA to carry out “roving wiretaps” where agents...

Illegal immigrants are crossing into the United States from Mexico in record-shattering numbers, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is ignoring a congressional request for an accounting of where the government relocates them.“On April 15, 2021, 34 Members of the House of Representatives sent a letter requesting important information regarding the destinations within the interior of our nation of the heavy illegal migration over our nation’s border,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an Aug. 5 ( letter).The letter was also addressed to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)...

I miss torturing Liz Cheney. But it must be said that the petite blonde from Wyoming suddenly seems like a Valkyrie amid halflings. She is willing to sacrifice her leadership post – and risk her political career – to continue calling out Donald Trump’s Big Lie. She has decided that if the price of her job is being as unctuous to Trump as Kevin McCarthy is, it isn’t worth it, because McCarthy is totally disgracing himself. It has been a dizzying fall for the scion of one of the most powerful political families in the land, a conservative chip off...

The security walls around the US Capitol may be removed, but the federal response to the January 6 protests has only just begun. The Democrats in Washington are determined to treat the incident as on par with the events of September 11, which may explain a troubling report about the potential use of the famed No Fly List. Yesterday Nick Fuentes, a right-wing social media pundit who attended the January 6 protests in the capital, alleged that he has been placed on the federal no-fly list, preventing him from traveling to Florida for a political rally. While Mr. Fuentes shared...