Another Illegal Bloomberg Mayor

Yet another member of Mayor Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors has been arrested. Muncie, Indiana Mayor Dennis Tyler was arrested by the FBI on Monday for accepting a $5,000 bribe to steer a public works contract.

From the Muncie Star-Press:

The 76-year-old Tyler was indicted last Wednesday by a U.S. District Court grand jury on a count of theft of public funds. The indictment was then sealed, setting the stage for the mayor’s arrest by FBI agents Monday morning at his northside Muncie home.

“Public officials are entrusted to perform a public service and to legitimately conduct business in the best interest of the community that they represent,” U.S. Attorney Josh Minkler said Monday. “Tyler not only betrayed the trust of his community, but violated federal law, and all in an effort to serve his own personal interests.

“My office intends to prosecute Tyler to the full extent of the law.”

The FBI has been investigating corruption in the Muncie mayor’s office and the sanitation department since 2016. Seven others have been indicted since them for taking bribes, kickbacks, wire fraud, and other Federal charges.

As a side note, you would have had to wait until the 29th and final paragraph in the story to learn that Tyler was a Democrat.

Tweet Of The Day

I found the following amusing though profoundly sad in its implications. At one time the FBI was a very respected institution. Lately it seems they are just another part of the politically-correct deep state who are more concerned with trapping Republicans for minor transgressions than in preventing honest to god, people are gonna die, terrorism.

Outside His Area Of Expertise

Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker was interviewed on CNBC on Monday regarding the mass casualty event in Las Vegas. Swecker was the former number three person in the FBI and was probably called upon by CNBC’s John Harwood because of that.

Listen to what he has to say about suppressors and semiautomatic rifles with ugly cosmetics.

Swecker said that civilians – that’s you and me in his LEO-speak – have no need to own suppressors. He also said fully automatic weapons are illegal and that AR-15s are way too easy to convert to full auto. He wondered “what rational purpose is there for 10 different ‘assault weapons’ (sic) in the hands of one person.”

One must wonder how someone with this level of ignorance rises to the level he did at the FBI. Fully automatic weapons are legal if made before the May 19, 1986 (Hughes Amendment) so long as they are registered under the NFA and the owner paid the tax and underwent the requisite background checks. Furthermore, ARs are not easy to convert to full auto unless you have a machine shop and the proper parts. Bumpfire is still not full auto no matter how fast you can dump a mag.

You also have to wonder where his law enforcement expertise lies. Was he a street guy infiltrating motorcycle gangs and fighting violent crime on the streets?

If his LinkedIn page is any indication, his law enforcement expertise lay in white collar crimes and especially financial and cyber crime. From his LinkedIn page where he lays out his expertise both in the FBI and in his subsequent career.

Experience

 In my field it is unethical to practice outside the area of your competence. Given his entire career is and was devoted to white collar crime, financial irregularities, fraud, and the like, Swecker is outside the area of his competence when talking about firearms and violent crime. If he dealt with terrorism, it was regarding the funding of terrorism and not how to rescue someone being held hostage.

If I were to guess why CNBC called upon Chris Swecker to talk about the events in Las Vegas, it is because they knew of him from his role in investigating and prosecuting financial irregularities and thought they could parlay his old position as No. 3 at the FBI into something newsworthy.  In my opinion, they failed.

Something To Think About

There has been much talk in recent days on whether persons on the FBI’s terrorist watch list, the Terrorist Screening Database, or the TSA’s No-Fly list should be allowed to purchase firearms.

The day after the terrorist attack in San Bernadino, Sen. Dianne Feinstein proposed Sen. Amendment 2910 to HR 3762 (a budget bill), which would have granted the attorney general the discretion to deny the right to purchase a firearm to anyone known or suspected of having been involved in any way with domestic or international terrorism. The Senate voted down this amendment 45-54.

Then this past Sunday in a televised speech to the nation from the Oval Office, President Obama said this:

To begin with, Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun. What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semi-automatic weapon? This is a matter of national security.

There have been many who have taken exception to using this no-fly list as means to deny someone the right to purchase a firearm. Prof. Eugene Volokh, among others, has objected to it on the basis of denial of due process noting that we don’t deny rights based upon mere suspicion. The New York Times was against them before they were for them. (My friend Prof. David Yamane has two very well-reasoned responses to the Times on this.) The NRA has long opposed using terrorist watch lists to deny firearm rights. Charles C. W. Cooke, a Brit who has a better appreciation for the Bill of Rights than many American politicians, says those who would use terror to subvert the Second Amendment should be tarred and feathered. That sounds appropriate to me.

Legal and philosophical arguments are fine and are needed. However, the most practical reason for not including those on any watch list on the NICS denied list is that it aids the terrorist.

What!? Aids the terrorist? The hell you say.

Larry Keane, General Counsel of the NSSF, explained his opposition to using these list to deny gun rights in a conversation with Jim Shepherd of the Gun/Outdoor/Tactical Wires.

His answer wasn’t based on individual gun rights.

Instead, it focused on the fact that adding a person who might be under suspicion for a criminal activity to the prohibited persons list wouldn’t keep them from getting firearms illegally, but it would create a de facto “terrorist notification system.

“If someone suspected they were being surveilled -or they were doing something illegal and wanted to know if they’d done something to alert authorities,” Keane said, “they could go to a gun store and try to make a legal purchase. If they were denied, well.there’s their answer.”

In essence, smart terrorists (and we better get used to the idea that our enemies are pretty smart) would use the NICS denial process as the on-line equivalent of a storefront’s glass windows. Spies, terrorists, and anyone being followed is trained to use the windows as a way to spot a tail. Terrorists could easily use the NICS system in much the same manner.

Moreover, by the time the NICS Center in Parkersburg, WV notifies a FBI Special Agent in eastern nowhere North Carolina that Mohammed al Mohammed was denied while trying to buy an AK at Bubba’s Bait, Tackle, Guns, and Beer in Chocowinity, old Mohammed will have gone underground. Furthermore, that overworked FBI Special Agent is probably working 10 MediCare fraud cases, 2 bank robberies, and a kiddie porn case and this will be just one more thing on his or her plate.

Forewarned is forearmed and that is the last thing you want to do when dealing with a terrorist. You want the terrorists rolled up with their guns and explosives in hand long before they’ve perpetrated this act of jihad. You absolutely don’t want them to accelerate their plans because authorities are on to them.

As I said, this is something to think about.

NC Attorney General Roy Cooper Jumps On The “No-Fly, No-Gun” Bandwagon

Roy Cooper has been the Attorney General of North Carolina for the last 15 plus years. You’d think that in that time he’d have learned a little bit about protecting civil liberties. While he refused to sign on to the multi-state attorney general amicus brief in the Heller case, he did sign on to the one for McDonald v. Chicago. Cooper also intervened in the Duke lacrosse case which ultimately dismissed all the (false) charges against the three Duke University lacrosse players.

Now that Cooper, a Democrat, is running for governor he is going all out to look tough on crime and secure the votes of those who are feeling insecure during these times of Islamofascist terrorist attacks. To that end, he has proposed that the North Carolina General Assembly preempt Congress and prohibit those in the FBI‘s Terrorist Screening Database from purchasing firearms. It should be noted that neither of the San Bernadino killers was on the list.

Attorney General Roy Cooper on Monday called on state lawmakers to approve legislation that would prevent anyone being monitored by the FBI as a terror suspect from purchasing firearms in North Carolina.

“Stopping terror suspects from getting weapons that could harm our state and its people makes common sense,” Cooper said in a statement. “Even if Washington won’t act, we can.”

In the wake of last week’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., the U.S. Senate voted down a measure that would have curtailed the gun rights of people on the government’s no-fly list and other FBI databases of terror suspects.

Hasan Harnett, Chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, immediately fired back at Cooper.

“It’s shameful that Roy Cooper has chosen once again to side with Washington, D.C. and follow President Obama’s lead, using the recent terrorist attack as a bait-and-switch to push for more gun control in North Carolina. Considering anyone can be placed on the terror watch list for any number of reasons arbitrarily, it is equally as scary that our state’s elected attorney general and top law enforcement officer is for stripping our citizens of their constitutional rights and denying them due process in order to score points with the far-left elements of his party.”

 Roy Cooper has finally come out of the closet on gun control. For years he has been rather wishy-washy on gun rights. I’m actually glad that he has decided to ally himself with the national Democrat Party on gun control issues. Given that Michael Bloomberg spent millions to make sure the state kept it racist Jim Crow-era pistol purchase permit system, I would fully expect Cooper to get Bloomberg’s monetary support.

Grass Roots North Carolina is not taking Cooper’s proposal lying down. They have issued an alert and are asking people to both email and call Cooper regarding his proposal. They refer to it as “modern-day McCarthyism”. I would suggest everyone who is reading this to cut and paste the message and flood “No Fly” Roy’s mailbox.

NC’s
Attorney General to
Bring
Modern Day
McCarthyism to North

Carolina

Parroting Barack Obama and
Hillary Clinton,
North
Carolina Attorney General
Roy Cooper recently
demanded
state legislation to
deny gun purchases for
anyone
on the Terrorist Watch
List, saying:
“Stopping terror suspects from
getting weapons that could

harm our state and its people
makes common sense. Even if

Washington won’t act, we can.”
By barring gun purchases to

1,000,000 people on the
Terrorist Watch List, Cooper

surpasses even Barack Obama’s
proposal to deny roughly

50,000 people on the No Fly
List.

Fret not that tens of

thousands of lawful citizens –
including Senator Ted
Kennedy – have been
denied airline
transportation
thanks to
misidentification. Never mind
the
Terrorist Watch List is so
inaccurate it includes
72 Department of Homeland Security employees
.

Forget that stringent gun
control in both France and

California failed to stop
terrorists from getting

weapons. And don’t bother to
read the Huff Post’s “7

Ways You (Yes, You) Could
End Up On A Terrorist Watch

List“.

Why not? Because all that is
trivial compared to having the

state’s top cop and would-be
governor proposing to flout

the Constitution by denying
you due process under both the

Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendments. You have no

“right” to fly, but as
affirmed by the Supreme Court
in DC v. Heller and
McDonald v. Chicago,
you
definitely have a
right to keep and bear
arms.

America has traveled this road
before, and the landscape

wasn’t pretty. Widespread
violations of Constitutional

rights and civil liberties in
the late 1950s against

“subversives” on secret
blacklists compiled by the FBI
were so shockingly
un-American, they earned their

own moniker: McCarthyism.

Where
will Cooper’s modern
McCarthyism end? Once
government is free to deny a

fundamental, enumerated
Constitutional right for

merely being included on a
secret list, are our other

cherished freedoms far behind?
Free speech? Freedom of

religion? History demonstrates
that when governments are free

to use the full powers of the
state against those on secret

lists, the first casualty is
liberty.

Due process

notice, an opportunity
to be heard, the
right to
face one’s accuser –
has been America’s
bulwark
against tyranny since
the Founders penned the

Constitution.

IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED!

  • EMAIL ATTORNEY GENERAL ROY
    COOPER.
    Use this contact form on the NC
    DOJ website:
    http://ncdoj.com/Home/ContactNCDOJ.aspx

    and use
    the copy/paste
    message provided below,
    under ‘Deliver This

    Message.’

  • PHONE ROY COOPER at this
    number: (919) 716-6400

    Tell
    him that you’ve
    read about his proposed

    scheme to suspend the
    Second Amendment rights

    of North Carolinians
    using the arbitrary and

    secret “Terrorist Watch
    List.” This would
    suspend the rights of
    certain citizens absent

    any proper due process.
    Suppressing the Fifth

    and Fourteenth
    Amendments is clearly

    illegal, and would be an
    example of modern day

    McCarthyism. It will not
    be
    tolerated.

DELIVER THIS MESSAGE


Suggested Subject:
‘Watch List:’ No McCarthyism in
North Carolina!
”  
Dear Attorney General Cooper:
I
have just read of
your
proposal to use the
“Terrorist Watch List” to
deny Second Amendment rights
to North
Carolinians. I
am absolutely
mortified to hear
this, and I
demand that you
immediately cease any effort

to establish what can only
be called modern day

McCarthyism.

The “watch list” is an
arbitrary and secret
government list. Citizens
who are placed on this list

usually have no knowledge of
the fact that they are on

it, have had no hearing, and
no opportunity to face their

accusers. There are also
numerous examples of

innocent civilians being
placed on this list in

error. The “watch list”
sidesteps due
process, and denying
citizens their
Constitutional rights
outside of proper due

process is a clear violation
of the Fifth and Fourteenth

Amendments.

There is no Constitutional
right to “fly commercial,”
but there is a
Constitutional right to keep

and bear arms. Do not
attempt to use an arbitrary

and secret government list
to deny human rights to
this
state’s citizens. It
would be a huge
mistake.

I
will be monitoring this
issue through alerts from

Grass Roots North Carolina.

Respectfully,

Tabloid Journalism At Its Finest?

As posted on Facebook by the Daily News.

To paraphrase one of the Daily News’ most famous headlines –  NRA to NY Daily News: Drop Dead.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that this sort of drivel comes from the New York Daily News. Until 1991, their tagline was “New York’s Picture Newspaper.” In other words, they were the paper meant for functional illiterates who needed the story told in pictures rather than words.

The gist of the article is that pro-gun Republicans are standing in the way of legislation that would add those people on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database to the NICS denied list. They quote from a GAO report showing how many people on this list were allowed to purchase firearms. Given the error rate and vague criteria for being added to the list, this should not be surprising. What I do find surprising is that the GAO was even given this data given the secretive nature of that list.

The article quotes major proponents of the list (and enemies of civil liberties) such as Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY). Both have been longtime proponents of using the Terrorist Screening Database as another means of denying firearms purchases.

The timing of the article days after the terrorist attacks in Paris is not coincidental. It is an overt effort on the part of the Daily News to cast the NRA – Hillary Clinton’s favorite punching bag – as enablers of Islamic terrorism because they oppose efforts to tie the FBI’s vague and inaccurate terrorist list to the NICS System. It is yellow journalism at its worst.

UPDATE: Colion Noir makes an excellent point on Facebook regarding those on the FBI terrorist list who (legally) obtained firearms. He said, ” If there are 2000 suspects on a terror watch list and each of them “legally” bought firearms that means they underwent a FBI background check, which means the FBI knew about each attempted purchase and approved them.”

I agree with him that this is “dishonest manipulative garbage”.

And Here I Thought I Was Being Frugal

Buying ammunition when it is on sale or even just before an announced (or unannounced due to current events) price hike to me just makes sense. It appeals to my innate sense of frugality.

It also, I am informed, now makes me and thousands of others like me guilty of “suspicious activity” that might “indicate pre-operational terrorist attack planning or criminal activity.”  This is from a joint Department of Homeland Security and FBI “Roll Call Release”.  The example given to justify calling this suspicious activity was the case of the Norwegian killer who murdered a number of children at a summer camp back in 2011.

(U//FOUO) Possession of large amounts of weapons, ammunition,
explosives, accelerants, or explosive precursor chemicals could indicate
pre-operational terrorist attack planning or criminal activity. 

Really?

They also referred to “military-grade weapons”. I guess that would mean my Swiss Schmidt-Rubin K-31 rifles as they are actual Swiss Army surplus not to mention my Garand and Springfield 1903A3.

Given I found this due to a story on Off Grid News I wondered if this was just some sort of “survivalist” paranoia with little documentation. No, it isn’t.

The DHS-FBI bulletin does include this disclaimer at the end:

(U//FOUO) Constitutional activities should not be reported in a SAR or
Information Sharing Environment (ISE) SAR absent articulable facts and
circumstances that support the source agency’s suspicion that the
behavior observed is not innocent, but rather reasonably indicative of
criminal activity associated with terrorism, including evidence of pre
operational planning related to terrorism. Race, ethnicity, national
origin, or religious affiliation should not be considered as factors
that create suspicion (although these factors may be used as specific
suspect descriptions).

 After all the hyperbole contained in Roll Call Release, one has to wonder just how many police departments in many areas will even notice the “constitutional activities” disclaimer.

Abandoned Property?

Privacy is a concern of mine so I found this Wall Street Journal report quite interesting. It is entitled, “How to Stop the FBI From Reading Your Email.” The FBI holds that any email that is greater than six months old and is still on a server is abandoned property. As such, they say they don’t need to obtain a warrant to read that email. According to report Jonnelle Marte, this stems from a law written in 1986. I wish she had been a bit more specific as to which law treats it as abandoned property.

The reporter suggests two things to prevent the FBI from snooping into your email. First, there is encryption but both the sender and receiver need to have the key. The second is actually much easier – delete older emails or download them from the server to your own harddrive.

For people using Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or something similar for their email, this is a good reminder to clean out your in-box and archives. While I use Gmail for some things, I tend to use my older email account for more sensitive and personal stuff in combination with Mozilla Thunderbird. It downloads directly to my hard drive and doesn’t leave anything on their server.

UPDATE: The law in question is the Stored Communications Act of 1986. More on the law here. Thanks to Bill G. for the info.

About Motive In These Politically Correct Times

The Israeli satiric news show, LATMA, skewers the FBI over the search for a motive behind the Boston Marathon bombing. Think of them as kind of an Israeli “The Daily Show”.

I certainly don’t hate the FBI as my Mom served as a cryptanalyst with
them during WWII and I have a first cousin who is a FBI Special Agent. I just wish the FBI had done their job correctly.

The video is pretty funny yet sad at the same time. The funny is obvious. The sad part comes from the truth behind it which is that political correctness blinds many in positions who might have been able to do something to prevent this bombing.

H/T Matt Bracken

About Those Arrests At The 2010 SHOT Show

You may remember going back in time, that the FBI arrested a number of defense and law enforcement industry executives and employees attending the 2010 SHOT Show as a result of a sting operation. Incldued in the arrested was a vice-president of Smith and Wesson. These individuals were charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and had been accused of using bribes to influence purchases by the Gabon Presidential Guard.

Steve at The Firearm Blog has an excellent follow-up and summation of what has happened since the arrests in 2010. Without trying to stealing Steve’s thunder, the cases fell apart. Steve ends by saying:

So in summery (sic), the BATFE and FBI made a high profile raid during SHOT
Show to arrest a 21 gun industry people. Their case was hinged on the
word of a thief, druggie and all round morally bankrupt individual.
Bistrong got just 18 months while the accused spent two years fighting
their case.

Bistrong refers to Richard Bistrong who was the FBI’s principal informant.