Monday, January 7, 2013 Lights, Camera — Entrapment! Homeland Security Theater in Portland Osman Barre, a Somali-born software engineer living in Portland, Oregon, was concerned that his teenage son Mohamed Osman Mohamud was being radicalized by exposure to jihadist literature. Barre expressed his concerns to the FBI, which quite helpfully arranged for two of its […]

Monday, January 14, 2013 From Undercover Narco-Creeper to Police Chief Craig Kingsbury, the veteran bureaucrat who was recently appointed to head the Nampa, Idaho Police Department, began his law enforcement career by hanging out near schools and buying drugs in what should be seen as an attempt to stimulate the local narco-economy. As a 23-year-old […]

Saturday, January 19, 2013 Put Not Your Trust In Federalized Sheriffs He sold his soul at a steep discount: Richard Rich (l.) displays the badge he earned through collaboration. “You look depressed.” “I was lamenting. I’ve lost my innocence.” “You lost that some time ago. If you’ve only just noticed, it can’t have been very […]

Monday, January 28, 2013 Why is it a “Crime” to Disarm a Uniformed Aggressor? No, they’re not ETs; they’re JBTs: El Paso County SWAT operators play-act a big drug bust.  Sheriff Terry Maketa of Colorado’s El Paso County has promised his constituents that he “will actively oppose any effort that infringes upon your second amendment […]

Thursday, January 31, 2013 “Gun Violence”: The “National Conversation” We Won’t Have Victim of state-inflicted gun violence: Jose Guerena, Jr. after seeing the dead body of his father.   Gabrielle Giffords, the “surprise witness” at the January 30 Senate hearing on gun violence, was among thirteen people attacked by a deranged gunman in the parking […]

Tuesday, March 5, 2013 “For Your Own Protection” There is no situation that cannot be made instantly and immeasurably worse through police intervention. A splendid illustration of this principle is found in a recent ruling from the the Arkansas Court of Appeals. According to the court, police were entitled to arrest, taze, and beat a […]

Wednesday, March 6, 2013 The Stalinist in the White House In the fashion of Caesar thrice refusing the crown even as he assumed dictatorial powers, tyrants will occasionally engage in self-aggrandizement disguised as self-deprecation. Barack Obama offered a moment of that kind last week when, in reply to a question about the budget sequester posed […]

Friday, March 15, 2013 “Ominous Threats” and Murderous Zeal (A  shorter version of this essay was originally published at LewRockwell.com) “There are, in increasingly frightening numbers, cells of angry men in the United States preparing for combat,” warns an unusually strident house editorial by the Los Angeles Times. “They are usually heavily armed, blinded by […]

Sunday, March 24, 2013 Resistance is Dangerous; Submission is Frequently Fatal Resisting arrest is not a crime. It is a common-law right, the exercise of which is treated as if it were a crime.  The act of resistance was transmuted into a criminal offense chiefly through judicial activism, rather than legislation. Courts that seek to […]