Sources, Timeline & Summary of the ATF "Project Gunwalker" scandal and the death of BP agent Brian Terry.

Timeline & Summary of the ATF "Project Gunwalker" scandal and death of BP agent Brian Terry, with sources.

19 January 2011
by Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com

Summary: For many months the ATF's "Project Gunrunner" initiative was under fire for poor management, exaggerated statistics, etc. Floundering to carry out an agenda that wasn't entirely covered by the law, stung by poor publicity and an Inspector General's report that excoriated their performance, it is alleged by ATF's own agents that the Phoenix office of ATF began a policy of "walking" semi-automatic rifles south of the border -- at first with a wink and a nod, later, according to one agent:

"(The agency was) not only looking the other way but actually facilitating trafficking, threatening and punishing agents who voiced objections, covering up trace information, the truth about the gun that killed BPA Terry, what I.C.E. knew, it goes on and on."

My own sources tell me that this was done at the direction of the "highest levels of Main Justice and the West Wing."

During this time, it is alleged by an experienced ATF street agent, that the ATF deliberately did not inform the Mexican authorities that this was going on:

"(REDACTED) former attache to Mexico is an honest and honorable guy. He was forcefully removed from Mexico w o warning in Nov in large part because he wouldn't sit silent on these matters. He will tell the truth if asked by competent authority. He retired Dec 31 because of all this."

Also during this time, gun stores along the border were calling ATF and reporting multiple sales, only to be told to allow the sales to go through, and in some cases, follow the purchasers out into the parking lot to get license numbers. The case of Carter's Country in Houston (see timeline below) is but one example. There are other firearm dealers who are willing to come forward and detail their similar experiences to the Congress if asked under oath. They are reluctant to do so without Congressional protection because their livelihoods are at the mercy of ATF regulation.

All of this, it is alleged, was done in order to boost the numbers of seized semi-automatic "assault weapons" in Mexico to justify continued, or expanded, Project Gunrunner funding.

On 15 December 2010, Border Patrol officer Brian Terry was killed with a semi-automatic rifle in the hands of a smuggler. It is alleged by ATF street agents that this weapon was one of the "walked" rifles. An FBI murder investigation is proceeding, as is an internal ATF investigation. In the opinion of some ATF agents, these investigations have been used by ATF management to extort silence from agents in the furtherance of a cover-up of the complicity of ATF and Justice Department senior management in the death of BPA Terry.

What is known is that an unknown but significant number of ATF agents with personal knowledge and documents of this scandal, which has been dubbed "Project Gunwalker" by blogger and Guns Magazine columnist David Codrea, are willing to tell their story to any Senator who asks them. At present, their careers, their liberty and perhaps even their lives are on the line. They need whistleblower status. They remain twisting in the wind, subject to all the considerable coercive forces that any administration under pressure of the exposure of its own lawbreaking can bring.

Yet to date no Senator has stepped forward to assist them.

Not one.

Not even, with the least excuse, my own Senator Jeff Sessions, former ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose staffers Stephen Miller and Sarah Haley, have been regularly apprised by both email and phone of this and other ATF scandals. To date, Senator Sessions has taken no action. He has, to all external evidence, shamefully looked the other way and left these brave agents in the lurch.

Mike Vanderboegh


Timeline on ATF "Project Gunwalker" scandal and the death of BP agent Terry.

21 September 2010: Michael Isikoff story, written from a leaked draft report, criticizes ATF performance in interdicting smuggled weapons to Mexico: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39282887/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

"A major Justice Department program aimed at intercepting the flow of U.S. weapons to Mexico’s drug cartels is misfiring due to bureaucratic turf battles and a failure to share critical intelligence about illegal firearms purchases, according to an internal department report."

This story has followed on the heels of much disputation of ATF statistics used to justify Project Gunrunner. Contact David Codrea, of the National Gun Rights Examiner column for background. Email: dcodrea@hotmail.com.

November 2010: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General report, "Review of ATF's Project Gunrunner" excoriates ATF performance. Report found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/41724438/Inspector-General-Report-on-ATF-s-Project-Gunrunner

12 December 2010: Washington Post runs an article based on leak from ATF claiming that Carter's Country gun store outlets in Houston area are guilty of straw-man sales. Storyline attacked the next day by celebrated Texas criminal defense attorney Dick Deguerin, representing Carter's Country, who says:

"Let me tell you something about Carter's Country. They have been co-operating with ATF from the get go," says attorney Dick Deguerin who represents Carter's Country owner, Bill Carter.

Deguerin says the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms asked Carter's Country to complete transactions, even when sales people strongly suspected the weapons were headed to Mexican drug gangs.

"They were told to go through with what they considered to be questionable sales. They were told to go through with sales of three or more assault rifles at the same time or five or more 9 millimeter guns at the same time or a young Hispanic male paying in cash. It's all profiling, but they went through with it," said Deguerin.

I cover the story a month later here http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/01/following-various-threads-of-project.html along with links to stories and video.

15 December 2010: Border Patrol officer Brian Terry killed with a semi-auto rifle in the hands of a smuggler. Story here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40678058/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

28 December 2010: My first post on the subject headlined: "Border Patrol agent killed with ATF-smuggled AR? Some ATF agents seem to think so." Link: http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2010/12/border-patrol-agent-killed-with-atf.html It referred to a CleanUpATF website post (CUATF.org is a website run by ATF agents who desire that the ATF clean up its own act.): http://cleanupatf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=153

Gist of the rumor posted by ATF agent:

Word is that curios George Gillett the Phoenix ASAC stepped on it again. Allegedly he has approved more than 500 AR-15 type rifles from Tucson and Phoenix cases to be "walked" to Mexico. Appears that ATF may be one of the largest suppliers of assault rifles to the Mexican cartels! One of these rifles is rumored to have been linked to the recent killing of a Border Patrol Officer in Nogales, AZ.

29 December 2010 to 5 January 2011: We continue to get rumors from ATF agents and others that this story is correct. Among those who are hearing from ATF agents are David Codrea, myself and Len Savage, Georgia firearms designer and SOT manufacturer who has a federal court C.V. as an expert witness on firearms. Having previously incurred the wrath of ATF's Chief Counsel's Office by testifying against them in various court cases, Savage is himself the victim of what is called by the ATF an "economic Waco." Len's email is: lensavag@bellsouth.net. David Codrea runs stories both on his Examiner column and his blog, The War on Guns. David dubs this scandal "Project Gunwalker."

On 3 January, David runs a story entitled: "Media coverage of ATF corruption investigation developments nonexistent."

Here's the link: http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-national/media-coverage-of-important-atf-corruption-investigation-developments-nonexisten

On 5 January, I run a story which says:

Remember this story from the 28th of December? "Border Patrol agent killed with ATF-smuggled AR? Some ATF agents seem to think so."

The DOJ computers have been hitting this story big-time the last two days. Usually they out-click to CUATF.org.

Well, here's what a solid source within ATF says about this story this morning:

"It's true. Pure fact verified. Ongoing inv(estigation) I can't discuss."

Now, to be careful, let's assume that this confirmation applies only to what would be knowledge to the ATF -- that the Phoenix SAC and ASAC were responsible for allowing the smuggling of semi-auto rifles into Mexico to boost the statistics to justify Operation Gunrunner. I do know that "mainstream" reporters are working on the mysterious circumstances of the death of Border Patrol officer Brian A. Terry and getting close to verifying the rumor posted on CleanUpATF.org that he was killed with one of the "walked" weapons.

If this story makes it to the cable news cycle, there is no possibility that ATF can avoid the antiseptic qualities of sunlight on all of their criminal acts. All credit should go to the agents of CUATF who broke this story and to David Codrea who has shoved the story along and into a wider audience.

See: http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/01/pure-fact-verified-atf-scandal-thats.html

7 January 2011: I report that "A long-time friend of mine . . . informs me that his sources tell him that the White House is now fully briefed on the "Walking Gun-gate" scandal and is now calling the shots. "They are in desperate need of a cover-up, but aren't competent enough to arrange one," he said with a laugh. "They don't know whether to shit or go blind."

I continue:

Among the things we know:

1. ATF’s Phoenix office allowed the guns to go across the border.

2. The ATF office in Mexico was denied permission to share this information with their Mexican counterparts. Believing this was wrong, they went over the heads of the Phoenix office and requested permission directly from headquarters in DC.

3. The higher-ups sided with the Phoenix decision to withhold the information from Mexican authorities.

As David asks: "That would make this an international law enforcement incident, would it not?"

Yes it does, and that is reported to be part of the White House dilemma.

In terms of proof that one of ATF "walking guns" was used to murder Brian Terry, it can be simply answered under oath by settling two questions:

1. What does ATF trace data show?

2. Were any prior traces ever run on this particular firearm, and what did they show?

I also report on 7 January that the CleanUpATF.org website was hacked overnight.

Link to my story: http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/01/white-house-now-in-decision-making-loop.html

7 January 2011: Later that day, I post this story, based on an email I received from an ATF agent:

This just in on the Mexican end of what David Codrea has called "Project Gunwalker."

Just received this in over the electronic transom:

(REDACTED) former attache to Mexico is an honest and honorable guy. He was forcefully removed from Mexico w o warning in Nov in large part because he wouldn't sit silent on these matters. He will tell the truth if asked by competent authority. He retired Dec 31 because of all this.

OK, Senators and Congressmen. If you want to have a name to pursue in your investigation(s) you have only to contact me.

(Senator Sessions' office received this email, among many others on the same subject over the past months. So did his man on the Senate Judiciary Committee. We have the name of this man which is redacted but it is said he prefers to talk to Senator Sessions or other federal legislator rather than the media due to the on-going investigation. The FBI has opened a murder investigation of BPA Terry, and my info is that both Main Justice and ATF internal affairs are on this, but their traditional default position is to "investigate" in order to cover up.)

Link at: http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/01/this-just-in-on-mexican-end-of-what.html

17 January 2011: ATF agent contacts David Codrea, saying, in part:

The risk that comes with me putting it out there is so great; I need to know that whomever is going to do the right things with it. It needs to stop - now. Your numbers are way too low and there's so much more: not only looking the other way but actually facilitating trafficking, threatening and punishing agents who voiced objections, covering up trace information, the truth about the gun that killed BPA Terry, what I.C.E. knew, it goes on and on. And I can prove it all. So you tell me - who do I talk to?

18 January 2011: Numerous people, including myself, spend most of the day contacting various Senators' offices, including those who had previously indicated that they would help us. By the end of the day, none have agreed to contact the courageous ATF agents who are risking so much. Most calls go to voicemail. None are returned.

David Codrea asks: "Is Project Gunwalker about to bust wide open?"

Go here.

Senators crawfish on helping agents in Project Gunwalker scandal. See if you can't help concentrate their minds.

United States Senator Jeff Sessions.

Folks, this has been a frustrating morning. Senate staffers who have been completely briefed on the Project Gunwalker scandal over the last few weeks are deliberately not answering their phones. Others, including Charlie Harmon, the chief of staff of Saxby Chambliss, the U.S. Senator from Georgia, told one of his constituents, "We're on it." Yet, when pressed about the urgency of the matter, said "these guys need to get a lawyer."

No, Charlie, right now they need a Senator with a spine and a pair to do his damn job. The agents need a Senator to COME TO THEM. There are ongoing investigations, the main thrust of which, in my opinion, is to cover up the circumstances of Project Gunwalker and the death of Border Patrol agent Terry. To volunteer to go to the press during an ongoing investigation can end their careers or put them in jail themselves. Yet some are willing to do so, if forced by the inaction of your elected senators and representatives. The tools that the agency, Main Justice and the White House have at their disposal to shut these agents up are many and powerful. These guys need whistleblower protection NOW.

The staffers of the Senators below all have been briefed in one way or another. Yet none of them have reached out to the agents so far. The ostrich impulse is strong in DC and strongest in the GOP. These birds need some constituents to kick their asses and get their heads out of the sand, or their own anal sphincters, or wherever it is they are hiding from their responsibilities and this huge scandal.

Here are the skulkers/guilty parties so far:

Senator Jeff Sessions, former ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. His office phone is 202-224-5225. His press contact is Sarah Haley. Ms. Haley, along with Sessions' guy on the Judiciary, Stephen Miller, has been on my email list throughout the scandals of the past few months and has never responded. Her cell phone, if you'd like to leave her a nice, non-threatening message of supreme disappointment, is 202-641-0543.

Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, whose chief of staff Charlie Harmon was so free with helpful legal advice for agents whose lives are on the line, has an office number of 202-224-3521.

Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, new ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose office number in DC is 202-224-3744 and whose office number in Des Moines is 515-288-4415. Grassley's Second Amendment "go-to" guy is Nick Podsiadly and his Judiciary Committee guy, replacing Sessions' Stephen Miller, is Brian Downing. Downing also declined to talk with me this morning and has yet to return my call.

The safety of whistleblowers, it seems, is the least of his concerns. There's a lot of that going around lately.

When you get in touch with them, tell them that all they have to do is get in touch with me (at GeorgeMason1776@aol.com) or David Codrea (at dcodrea@hotmail.com) and we will, after making sure they are who they say they are, forward a means by which they can contact the agents who wish to come in from the cold.

There are reporters who are now working on this story. Ask the people above this question: At what point do they think that failure to get off their asses and do their jobs becomes felony assistance to a cover-up?

Feel free to post this to any firearms rights discussion boards or blogs that you can.

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters.

"Project Gunwalker" scandal story at a tipping point this morning, though it may take a short while for you to see it.

Say a prayer, and include in that prayer a mention of some brave ATF street agents who are risking all for the truth.

Praxis: The Swiss Army Knife of Folding Shovels -- Chinese Military Shovel WJQ-308. I gotta get me a couple hundred of these!

Anybody know of an American wholesaler or retailer for these?

Product name: Multifunctional shovel
Model: WJQ-308
Weight: max 0.85kg
Hardness (working part): HRC47-51
Length (mm): folding length: 400mm
Unfolding length: 590mm

Product Introduction:

1. Invented, designed and manufactured by army man. Combine 18 functions which makes a real miracle.

2. Combine the functions of digging, sawing, chopping, cutting, picking, prying, hammering and measuring perfectly.

3. More functions, less weight. Save your strength and time which reflects humanity.

4. Fine materials and good craft, further more, 268 process procedures and 48 inspections, make a perfect quality.

5. This product is widely used for single soldier, auto equipment, driving and camping.

6. Accompanied portable bag, which makes it portable to carry.

Now there's the Utah Sound Money Act.

My thanks to the several Threepers who drew my attention to this:

Legislation proposes Utah adopt a gold-based system.

Utah Sound Money Act.

Joads return to Oklahoma citing new California ammo law.

"C'mon Tom, let's go back to Oklahoma where you can buy ammunition like a free man." "Okay, Ma."

Why more Californians don't vote with their feet, I'll never understand. What a socialist shithole.

Sorry, folks, I've been hacking-cough, no-sleep crud sick for the past two days.

Now, I come back to my email this afternoon, and find we're in the middle of another clue on Project Gunwalker that must be pursued. Maybe I'll have more later this evening.

Interesting.

Virginia Creates Subcommittee To Study Monetary Alternatives In Case Of Terminal Fed "Breakdown", Considers Gold As Option.

Tea Party leader yells "You're dead" at Democrat at town hall meeting. No, wait, it's the other way round. Rachel Madcow, care to comment?

Shooting victim arrested, accused of threat.

A man who was wounded in last week's shooting rampage in Tucson was apprehended by authorities Saturday after he allegedly threatened a "tea party" activist at a town hall meeting of victims and eyewitnesses of the attack.

James Eric Fuller, a 63-year-old Democratic activist, was arrested after shouting "You're dead!" at Tucson Tea Party spokesman Trent Humphries, said Pima County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jason Ogan. Fuller was shot in the knee and back Jan. 8 when a gunman opened fire, killing six and injuring 13, including Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Fuller, a disabled veteran and former campaign volunteer for Giffords, was charged with making threats, intimidation and disorderly conduct and was involuntarily committed for a psychiatric evaluation, Ogan said.

In an interview with Democracy Now on Thursday, Fuller linked the shooting to conservative leaders associated with the tea party, including Sarah Palin, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck and Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle. "It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target," Fuller said.

"No matter how insane she thinks we are she cannot wish us away. We are here. We exist and we are armed. Deal with it."

Pia Lopez: If she wants our firearms and magazines, she should come and get them herself.

My thanks to Kurt Hofmann at the Saint Louis Gun Examiner
for bringing to my attention this discussion in the Sacramento Bee which included this remarkable proposal from a SacBee editorial writer:

"It is time to reinstate the 1994 ban – without the NRA loophole. Simply ban the possession, manufacture, use or importation of weapons and ammunition clips that can hold more than 10 rounds."

Really? Poor ignorant female collectivist has apparently never heard of the Three Percent. I enlightened her:

-----Original Message-----
From: georgemason1776
To: letters
Sent: Sat, Jan 15, 2011 7:35 am
Subject: Pia Lopez's ignorant wish for a civil war over firearms.

Pia Lopez, Sacramento Bee editorial writer, declared on Wednesday that: "It is time to reinstate the 1994 ban – without the NRA loophole. Simply ban the possession, manufacture, use or importation of weapons and ammunition clips that can hold more than 10 rounds."

I trust Ms. Lopez will have the courage of her convictions and accompany the ATF raid parties directed to the doors of previously law-abiding firearm owners to enforce that unconstitutional diktat. If Ms. Lopez and her fellow citizen disarmament advocates want our military-pattern semi-automatic firearms and magazines and have the juice to pass a law to that effect, they should by all means come and get them. Come and get 'em and watch what happens.

No doubt Ms. Lopez would willingly comply if the federal government ordered her to turn in her laptop on pain of death. No doubt, too, that California's gelded firearm owners are already putting up with a slightly lighter form of such tyranny -- at least those who haven't voted their principles with their feet and left. But to extrapolate from her own cowardice over principle -- or from that of California's firearm owners hostage to your state's collectivist politics -- to the nation as whole would be making a big mistake. For she would have to kill millions of us "bitter clingers" from Montana to Michigan to Alabama to enforce her proposal, and WE would not go quietly into that tyrannical good night.

For we are still Americans as the Founders understood that concept and we will fight to the death for our natural, God-given and inalienable rights to liberty and property. Ms. Lopez may find that concept alien and condemn us as "throwbacks" to an earlier era. But no matter how insane she thinks we are she cannot wish us away. We are here. We exist and we are armed. Deal with it. If she wants to enforce such a policy she and her friends must kill us. All of us.

Stacking up hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of bodies in a new American civil war over the forcible disarmament of the citizenry seems a curious way to, in her words, "prevent large-scale death and injury."

Perhaps she should rethink her proposal in the interest of preventing really "large-scale death and injury."

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters.
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126

Praxis: This idea has real possibilities.

Md. father uses robocall to get revenge on school officials.

Paul Krugman gets it half right. (Unusual for him, I know.)

Paul Krugman holding his pussycat named Hypocrisy.

In the New York Times today, Paul Krugman writes of "A Tale of Two Moralities."

He begins:

On Wednesday, President Obama called on Americans to “expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.” Those were beautiful words; they spoke to our desire for reconciliation.

But the truth is that we are a deeply divided nation and are likely to remain one for a long time. By all means, let’s listen to each other more carefully; but what we’ll discover, I fear, is how far apart we are. For the great divide in our politics isn’t really about pragmatic issues, about which policies work best; it’s about differences in those very moral imaginations Mr. Obama urges us to expand, about divergent beliefs over what constitutes justice. . .

Or, put another way, belief in the collective versus belief in the individual.

What are the differences I’m talking about?

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.

The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

There’s no middle ground between these views. One side saw health reform, with its subsidized extension of coverage to the uninsured, as fulfilling a moral imperative: wealthy nations, it believed, have an obligation to provide all their citizens with essential care. The other side saw the same reform as a moral outrage, an assault on the right of Americans to spend their money as they choose.

He's close, but not quite there. It is not merely about spending our money the way we choose so much as preserving our liberty against unconstitutional Federal diktat. The Obamacare law forces us to buy something we do not wish. With its enforcement, we truly become slaves to Federal power.

Krugman continues:

This deep divide in American political morality — for that’s what it amounts to — is a relatively recent development. Commentators who pine for the days of civility and bipartisanship are, whether they realize it or not, pining for the days when the Republican Party accepted the legitimacy of the welfare state, and was even willing to contemplate expanding it. As many analysts have noted, the Obama health reform — whose passage was met with vandalism and death threats against members of Congress — was modeled on Republican plans from the 1990s.

"Vandalism." Hmmm.

But that was then. Today’s G.O.P. sees much of what the modern federal government does as illegitimate; today’s Democratic Party does not. When people talk about partisan differences, they often seem to be implying that these differences are petty, matters that could be resolved with a bit of good will. But what we’re talking about here is a fundamental disagreement about the proper role of government. . .

Right now, each side in that debate passionately believes that the other side is wrong. And it’s all right for them to say that. What’s not acceptable is the kind of violence and eliminationist rhetoric encouraging violence that has become all too common these past two years.

It’s not enough to appeal to the better angels of our nature. We need to have leaders of both parties — or Mr. Obama alone if necessary — declare that both violence and any language hinting at the acceptability of violence are out of bounds. We all want reconciliation, but the road to that goal begins with an agreement that our differences will be settled by the rule of law.

First of all, Krugman needs to understand that the G.O.P. is the least of his worries. Just as the constitutional militia movement grew out of G.O.P. failure to protect the people from a militarized federal police, the Tea Parties grew out of G.O.P. failures to restrain Krugman's collectivists over the past two years and of their hypocrisies growing bigger government during the Bush years.

Secondly, when he says that the country needs to "declare that both violence and any language hinting at the acceptability of violence are out of bounds," he is only objecting to the threat of counter-violence to defend ourselves against the Federal Leviathan. Excuse me, Paul, but Nancy Pelosi and her ilk (cheered on by you and your kind) first plunked the threat of violence down on the table when the "health care" bill mandated our participation. As I wrote in my call to break Democrat party windows:

Nancy Pelosi's Intolerable Act is within days of passage by devious means so corrupt and twisted that even members of her own party recoil in disgust.

This act will order all of us to play or pay, and if we do not wish to, we will be fined.

If we refuse to pay the fine out of principle, we will be jailed.

If we resist arrest, we will be killed.

They will send the Internal Revenue Service and other federal police to do this in thousands of small Wacos, if that is what it takes to force us to submit.

This arrogant elite pretends that this oppression is for our own good, while everyone else understands that this is about their selfish, insatiable appetite for control over our liberty, our money, our property and our lives.

What Krugman objects to is our conclusion that two can play that game.

But let us not have any finger-pointing or tongue wagging about "threats of violence." Their side brought the threat of government violence to the table first. Now they want us to unilaterally disarm?

(Expletive deleted.)

Mike
III

Praxis: "Light is Might" and the "Speed Bag"

From the Virginia Rifleman:

Light is Might in the Fight and that’s Right and



Practical Equipment: the Speed Bag

"Progressive" historical amnesiac sez: "You want a gun so you can kill police or soldiers. Are you out of your minds?"

The Borg bleats, "Resistance is futile."

"Guns For Killing Cops and Soldiers?"

When discussing issues of gun rights/gun control, it amazes me how people argue for needing a gun to fight the police or the military. What you're saying is you want a gun so you can kill police or soldiers. Are you out of your minds?

Two hundred and thirty five years ago, armed resurrection was possible. Maybe even 100 years ago. But today, with the weapons the government possesses, it is totally impossible. The weapons that can take down a government that are threatened, that you should be fighting for are the internet, words, free media...

We're never going to be in a situation where using guns to fight police is a viable, reasonable or sane option. The fact is, we have to face the problems we face with ways that can actually work. Martin Luther King faced oppressive injustice and incredible corruption and won using non-violence. People owned guns in Nazi Germany. It didn't help.

There he goes, another collectivist extrapolating from his own cowardice again. Obviously he's never heard of the armed veterans of the Deacons for Defense and Justice who guarded MLK's saintly ass at night from the Klan. "Non-violence?" (Insert snort.)

"What you're saying is you want a gun so you can kill police or soldiers. Are you out of your minds?" The answers to those two statements/questions are, in order, "yes" and no."


This is Reinhard Heydrich. He was a policeman.


This is what his car looked like after Czech resistance fighters assassinated him.


These are soldiers of the Wehrmacht Feld Polizei after an entire village was wiped out in retribution. No doubt somewhere in this welter of dead innocents you could have found at least one believer in non-violence.

When police and soldiers conduct themselves as butchers of innocents, you bet your ass I want a firearm to defend myself.


This is an American religious community wiped out by federal policemen and soldiers of Delta Force on 19 April 1995.

Functional difference between Waco and Lidice?

Questions?

Gloryosky, Batman! David Hardy (and by extension the NRA) finally notices Project Gunwalker!

"ATF allowing guns to go into Mexico."

There have been local rumors that ATF allowed considerable quantities of guns to go south of the border, saying it was necessary to their investigations, and without informing Mexican authorities of the arrangements. That'd make it rather unlikely to have aided investigations, though it might help to inflate the numbers traced to US sales...

Well, ain't that special? Maybe we'll get help from the Lairds of Fairfax on oversight hearings? Naaah. Too much to hope from those weenies. . .

Does Texas gun shop tie in with ‘Project Gunwalker’?

My source says in light of the bureau’s recent “emergency” request, the uncontrolled practice being reported is like allowing an area to be flooded with heroin just to get more enforcement authority.

With "friends" like this who needs enemas? And this guy calls himself a "libertarian"?

Blood dancers cavort in celebration.

“I don’t see any constitutional bar to regulating high-capacity magazines,” Levy said in an interview with NBC. “Justice (Antonin) Scalia made it quite clear some regulations are permitted. The Second Amendment is not absolute.”

The comments by Levy, chairman of the board of the libertarian Cato Institute, come as Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York is preparing to circulate a bill Thursday to ban the sale or transfer of high-capacity magazines. Supporters took Levy’s comments as a sign that at least one gun rights advocates might be open to the idea.

Praxis: New Kel-Tec design shotgun: 14 rounds of twelve gauge

"Imagine slugs in one side and buckshot in the other." -- L. Neil Smith

I like it!

Well, there went that theory out the window. . . not that facts mean a damn thing to anti-liberty extremists.

"Jared Loughner’s friend says suspect ‘Did not watch TV … disliked the news’"

He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right.

Here's a question: If they can call us "anti-government extremists" why can't we call them "anti-liberty extremists?"

Just saying. And ours would have the advantage of being true.

Alvie on Bipartisanship.

Indeed.

David Codrea says "Restricting freedom after Tucson shooting will galvanize gun owners."

From his mouth to God's ears.

Following the various threads of Project Gunwalker -- "Gun Dealer: 'ATF Approved Sales to Mexican Gun Runners'"

(A tip of the boonie and a deep genuflection goes to Irregular Tommy S. who brought this story to my attention and to Kurt "45superman" Hofmann who posted the video.)

I missed this story when it hit on 12 December last year:

No other state has produced more guns seized by police in the brutal Mexican drug wars than Texas. In the Lone Star State, no other city has more guns linked to Mexican crime scenes than Houston. And in the Texas oil town, no single independent dealer stands out more for selling guns traced from south of the border than Bill Carter.

Carter, 76, has operated four Carter's Country stores in the Houston metropolitan area over the past half-century. In the past two years, more than 115 guns from his stores have been seized by the police and military in Mexico.

As an unprecedented number of American guns flows to the murderous drug cartels across the border, the identities of U.S. dealers that sell guns seized at Mexican crime scenes remain confidential under a law passed by Congress in 2003.

A year-long investigation by The Washington Post has cracked that secrecy and uncovered the names of the top 12 U.S. dealers of guns traced to Mexico in the past two years.

By the next day, the Post ran another story whose headline didn't mention the salient contradictory fact buried under this headline: "Carter's Country, a Houston area gun seller, under investigation by federal grand jury."

It wasn't until the third and fourth paragraph that the really important allegation was mentioned:

DeGuerin said Carter's Country and the salesman did nothing wrong and were acting as tipsters to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in developing cases against suspected gun traffickers.

"They tipped them off to dozens of purchases," DeGuerin said. "What's outrageous is that there could be this kind of suspicion that Carter's Country or anyone at Carter's Country did anything unlawful, when they were just doing what ATF wanted them to do."

The local FOX affiliate on the same day did a much better job.

When it comes to selling weaponry to the drug thugs of Mexico, Houston gun dealer Carter's Country has been labeled a profit hungry merchant willing to turn a blind eye to bad guys south of the border.

A Washington Post investigative story linked 115 firearms confiscated over the past two years by Mexican authorities waging the drug war to Carter's Country outlets. That makes the largest independent gun dealer in the region among the biggest sources of fire power for the murderous cartels.

It certainly looks bad, until you hear a different side of the story.

"Let me tell you something about Carter's Country. They have been co-operating with ATF from the get go," says attorney Dick Deguerin who represents Carter's Country owner, Bill Carter.

Deguerin says the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms asked Carter's Country to complete transactions, even when sales people strongly suspected the weapons were headed to Mexican drug gangs.

"They were told to go through with what they considered to be questionable sales. They were told to go through with sales of three or more assault rifles at the same time or five or more 9 millimeter guns at the same time or a young Hispanic male paying in cash. It's all profiling, but they went through with it," said Deguerin.

Here is some of their video of this story:



As the FOX reporter stated, Dick DeGuerin is no ambulance-chasing schmuck. And he has plenty of experience with the lying bastards at the ATF:

As MSNBC reported:

DeGuerin represented Koresh before he died with about 80 followers in a fire that erupted during a federal siege of their Waco compound in 1993. Hired by Koresh’s mother, DeGuerin went inside the compound during the 51-day standoff that preceded the blaze and took part in negotiations between Koresh and the FBI. He blames the government for the fiery ending.

It was DeGuerin and his fellow attorney Jack Zimmerman who later testified at the Waco hearings that during visits to their clients inside Mount Carmel before 19 April they saw the metal door (which later disappeared after the fire) and who said that the bullet holes showed entry from the outside in. They also testified that they saw the same pattern in the roof of the building that was being ground into the dirt by the tanks before the fire started. The two of them made very powerful "speakers for the dead" at the hearings. Not even that bullying shithead Schumer could intimidate them. (See the documentary film by Mike McNulty, "Waco: The Rules of Engagement.")

The fact that DeGuerin now represents Carter's Country and its employees ought to send shivers up and down the spines of the ATF and Main Justice. In fact, I'm sure it does.

I think I'll put DeGuerin into the email loop on Project Gunwalker. Maybe we can pull the various threads of this scandal into a seamless whole by the time the promised hearings begin. Wouldn't that be just special, Mr. Traver?

Mike
III

Praxis: The remarkable Mossberg 500

Mossberg Persuader Riot Gun. I keep one of these handy about the house, loaded with flechette rounds and buckshot.

Early in my life, I had the unexpected occasion to entrust my continued ability to exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide on a 12 gauge pump shotgun. As it happened, that shotgun had a single slide bar action. On the evening of the excitement, when I recognized that someone was shooting 9mm in my direction, I racked the slide and twisted the inadequate single slide bar out of alignment in my feverish haste, putting the shotgun out of action. It was the last time in my life I did so. Fortunately I also carried an M1911 .45, so my oxygen-CO2 exchange was able to continue.

Shortly thereafter, talking to Red, the venerable owner of The Long Rifle gun store in Columbus, Ohio, I was introduced to the double slide bars of the Mossberg 500. I've never used another shotgun for serious social work.

One of the things about the Mossberg 500 which attracted my attention was the ease with which barrels could be swapped out according to the task at hand. With Matt coming back home in a few months, I wanted to gift him a shotgun which could multi-task.

Thus, at the gun show last Saturday, I picked up a used Mossberg 500AG 12 GA ribbed turkey gun in excellent condition fitted with the old C-Lect choke system. C-lect chokes are adjusted by turning a knob on the end to make it a full, modified, or improved choke. It looks something like this one below (without the rat dog).



I traded about $135 worth of stuff for it.

My thought was to refinish the stock to a bit more subdued scheme and refinish the action and barrel in a more rust-resistant finish. Then, I will pick up a deer slug barrel and a cylinder bore riot barrel, as below and redo them in the same style.



I even thought I would get the riot barrel fitted with a door breacher attachment.



Fortunately I have a good friend who is, among other things, a top-notch gunsmith (I can hear him groan as he reads this) who can install it without running afoul of the ridiculous ATF regulations.

Thus, with one firearm, Matthew can have a weapon that is capable of taking turkeys, birds on the wing, rabbits, deer, two-legged pack wolves and doors. It will take me a while to find some good used barrels of the proper type chambered for both 2.75" and 3", but hey, that's why God made gun shows.

Mike
III

The Biggest Brother Is Gone

Don't waste time attempting to define leadership. No need to go to the dictionary. The Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, had defined leadership in just two words via its motto: "Follow me!" Never ask your team to do something you wouldn't do yourself. . . You cannot make sound decisions unless you are at the point of attack. Leaders should always position themselves where the critical decisions must be made. Precisely where that location should be is a judgment call, but in my experience leaders should be as far forward as possible. Successful leaders must be highly visible, if for no other reason than to share the hardships of their men. -- MAJ Dick Winters, Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters, p. 288.

It is with great sadness that we are only now learning of the death on 2 January of Maj. Richard "Dick" Winters, Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. MAJ Winters was 92 and had suffered from Parkinson's Disease for some time.

The race is on to buy up high capacity magazines, but I wouldn't worry about it just yet.

Although we're still snow and ice bound here in Pinson, Alabama, I've received some anecdotal evidence by phone and email that the race is on to buy up high capacity magazines -- especially pistol mags -- in the wake of the Arizona killings. Yet Politico reports that as far as Congress goes, those fears may be overblown.

Those who have brought up gun control in light of the Tucson shooting have largely been the issue’s regular standard-bearers on Capitol Hill. Even gun-control advocates aren’t very optimistic about their chances. . .

Gun-control advocates hope that, because one of its own has become a victim, Congress will see things differently. But with a new, solidly pro-gun Republican majority in the House and a Senate stocked with red-state Democrats up for reelection, there are few indications of widespread conversion on the issue.

The Curious Case of the Walking M-16s by L. Neil Smith

Let me repeat that for our slower readers in Keene, New Hampshire: the BATFE is smuggling semiautomatic weapons into Mexico to support their claim that the drug cartels are being equipped by American gun dealers.

"Gotcha Sheriff Clarence 'Jackass' Dupnik" -- There is more to this story than Deputy Dawg has let on. Loughner's friend in the Sheriff's Department

By way of Pete at WRSA.

Jared Loughner is a product of Sheriff Dupnik’s office.

How I conspired with the Tea Parties, Sarah Palin and Lucifer to send Jared Loughner to Safeway. (Or, not.) Principle in a time of panic.

Miniature altar with human skull replica in backyard tent at Jared Lee Loughner's home.

The more we find out about the demented assassin Jared Loughner's life and apparent thought processes, the less factual basis there obviously is for the manufactured "Brown Scare" (to use the term of historian Robert Churchill) which is currently being whipped up by the media and the collectivist political party that "Blue Dog" Rep. Gabrielle Giffords belongs to, but is despised by.

The New York Daily News reports a "frightening, twisted shrine in Arizona killer Jared Lee Loughner's yard."

A sinister shrine reveals a chilling occult dimension in the mind of the deranged gunman accused of shooting a member of Congress and 19 others. Hidden within a camouflage tent behind Jared Lee Loughner's home sits an alarming altar with a skull sitting atop a pot filled with shriveled oranges. A row of ceremonial candles and a bag of potting soil lay nearby, photos reveal. Experts on Sunday said the elements are featured in the ceremonies of a number of occult groups.

Investigators have focused on Loughner's online anti-government ramblings as the chief motivation for the shooting Saturday of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). The discovery of the shrine raises the possibility that Loughner, 22, may have been driven by other forces. Students and faculty at Pima Community College, which he attended until his suspension last summer, said Loughner was clearly at odds with the world. . .

"It was obvious to everyone that Jared wasn't a normal guy," said neighbor Anthony Woods, 19. Loughner worked as a volunteer at the Pima Animal Care Center, where he walked dogs and cleaned cages. "He loved animals and was a good worker," said another volunteer.

"Driven by other forces" indeed. A former classmate describes Loughner as a "left-wing pothead."

World Net Daily reports that:

In a bizarre turn of events, the YouTube website of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords suggests she subscribed to the YouTube channel of her suspected attempted assassin, Jarred Loughner, at some point before the shooting incident.

Given YouTube rules, for Giffords to subscribe to Loughner's YouTube channel would have required an affirmative action taken by Giffords or by someone with access to her YouTube username and password to establish the subscription link.

Loughner's YouTube subscription channel under the username "Classitup10" was created on Oct. 25, 2010, and his last two videos were posted to the channel on Dec. 15, 2010, approximately three weeks before the shooting.

While it is now known that Loughner worked for Gifford's election campaign in 2007, that Gifford subscribed to Loughner's website since Oct. 25, 2010, suggests the two may have been in contact more recently.

The Washington Post reported:

Loughner appeared to have planned the shooting, according to court documents. In a safe at his parents' home, investigators found an envelope with the words "I planned ahead" and "my assassination" written on it, along with the name "Giffords.'' Loughner's signature is also believed to be on the envelope, the complaint says.

In the same safe, authorities found a 2007 letter to Loughner from Giffords, using congressional stationery to thank him for attending a "Congress on Your Corner" event in Tucson. Saturday's shooting took place at another such event, where Giffords was meeting constituents outside a supermarket.

Yet the headlines do not say "Insane Former Campaign Supporter Shoots Congresswoman." Likewise, they do not say ""Left-Wing Pothead Kills Six." Nor do the cable talking heads blame the Pima Animal Care Center, though there is a more direct connection between that worthy establishment and the assassin than with the Tea Parties or Sarah Palin or me. Indeed, other than the target which makes this a political crime, there is no evidence that it had a political motive -- unless the obsessions of an isolated, occult-driven mentally disturbed individual can be said to be a political platform of one.

Various reporters, including one from the New York Times, called me yesterday asking if I knew Loughner or if I thought that my alleged call to "break her windows" and anything to do with the mass shooting. Their single source, as detailed in these pages, was the libelous story in Mother Jones by James Ridgeway.

After I pointed out that I had only asked for the breaking of local Democrat party windows and not the windows of congresscritters* and that in any case to conflate violence against property with assassination and mass murder was a huge leap of logic, they went away disappointed. Since none of my quotes fit the meme, I am not in any of those reporters' stories this morning, which suits me just fine.

(*Note: I did that specifically and deliberately because the one is a local vandalism charge and the other a federal crime. What I advocated then and now, is a discrete and calibrated response by those who insist upon being free to those who would enslave us with their nanny-state tyranny. Intelligent resistance to tyranny is a cumulative and nuanced process, allowing the would-be tyrant to change his mind at any point along the continuum. Study the Founders. Political and legal remedies are the first steps. Civil disobedience is the next. Uncivil disobedience is another. Only after we have tried everything else and we have provoked the frustrated tyrant into first use of violence are we justified in defending ourselves and our property with firearms. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something, or trying to discredit your cause. Maybe both.)

Yet the "Brown Scare" drumroll goes on and, worse, Congress with the help of the new GOP leadership seems poised to make this awful situation infinitely worse. The Blood Dancers leaped onto the stage before the corpses had cooled outside of Safeway. Politico reports:

Carolyn McCarthy readies gun control bill.

One of the fiercest gun-control advocates in Congress, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), pounced on the shooting massacre in Tucson Sunday, promising to introduce legislation as soon as Monday targeting the high-capacity ammunition the gunman used. . . “My staff is working on looking at the different legislation fixes that we might be able to do and we might be able to introduce as early as tomorrow,” McCarthy told POLITICO in a Sunday afternoon phone interview.

Gun control activists cried it was time to reform weapons laws in the United States, almost immediately after a gunman killed six and injured 14 more, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in Arizona on Saturday.

Many said that people with a history of mental instability, like the alleged shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, should not be able to buy a gun — and no one should be able to buy stockpiles of ammunition used by the 22-year-old assailant.

McCarthy said she plans to confer with House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to see “if we can work something through” in the coming week.

McCarthy’s spokesman confirmed the legislation will target the high-capacity ammunition clips the Arizona gunman allegedly used in the shooting, but neither he or the congresswoman offered any further details.

“Again, we need to look at how this is going to work, to protect people, certainly citizens, and we have to look at what I can pass,” McCarthy said. “I don’t want to give the NRA – excuse the pun – the ammunition to come at me either.” . . .

Another vocal supporter for gun control, Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, told POLITICO that he hopes “something good” can come from the Arizona tragedy – perhaps discussion on a new assault weapon ban, sales at gun shows and tracing measures.

Loughner legally purchased his weapon – a Glock 19 with an extended magazine – from an Arizona store. The same kind of extended magazine was illegal under the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.

“The ability to buy a weapon that fires hundreds of bullets in less than a minute,” said Quigley. “He had an additional magazine capability. That’s not what a hunter needs. That’s not what someone needs to defend their home. That’s what you use to hunt people.”

Bad enough. But wait, there's more:

Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Brady, a Democrat from Philadelphia, told CNN that he also plans to take legislative action. He will introduce a bill that would make it a crime for anyone to use language or symbols that could be seen as threatening or violent against a federal official, including a member of Congress.

"Symbols?" Like this, maybe?



The El Guapo of citizen disarmament, Josh Horwitz, has also seized on this incident in an article entitled "Tucson Shooting Shows True Face of NRA's 'Second Amendment Remedies'" to beat his "government must have a monopoly of force" drum, mentioning me, among others, by name.

‘If They Bring a Knife to the Fight, We Bring a Gun’ -- Barack Obama, June, 2008.

Understand that all of this "Brown Scare" stuff is not mere unconscious hypocrisy. Talking heads have been predicting that Obama could retrieve his flagging fortunes with an "Oklahoma City moment." This refers to how Bill Clinton exploited Oklahoma City for political gain.

Politico reports:

The references to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 echoed in other ways. That horror, which killed 168 people including many children, helped then-President Bill Clinton stigmatize extreme anti-government rhetoric and re-energize his presidency at a time when Newt Gingrich and conservative Republicans were riding high in Congress.

One veteran Democratic operative, who blames overheated rhetoric for the shooting, said President Barack Obama should carefully but forcefully do what his predecessor did.

“They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”

Another Democratic strategist said the similarity is that Tucson and Oklahoma City both “take place in a climate of bitter and virulent rhetoric against the government and Democrats.”

This Democrat said that the time had come to insist that Republicans stand up when, for example, a figure such as Fox News commentator Glenn Beck says something incendiary.

Jared Loughner has now provided that Oklahoma City moment just in the nick of time. No matter that Loughner was a nutjob, left-wing doper, the problem is "right-wing rhetoric." No matter that the facts don't support the allegation. No matter that the first reaction of some collectivists was to demand that "Democrats should Retaliate and kill Sarah Palin." No matter. They need this to be an Oklahoma City moment, so an Oklahoma City moment it shall be.

The principal question is: how badly will the GOP in the House be stampeded on this one? Which will they choose? Principle or panic? Based on past experience, don't bet the farm on principle.

And yet, for those of us with principles, a panic is precisely the wrong time to compromise them or to run away from them. For those of you who last week were giddy at the successes of the Tea Parties, did you think that it would really be that easy? The collectivist enemies of the Founders' Republic are nothing if not dynamic and opportunistic. Look at how masterfully they have turned a set of contradictory facts into a serious counter-offensive against their opponents.

But for those of us with uncompromisable principles, whether the GOP panics or not is immaterial. We should fight this new "Brown Scare" with facts, reminding the GOP of their duty and their oaths to the Constitution. But if we fail to convince them -- if the collectivist blood dancers twist this act of a madman into new infringements on our liberties -- we must and will fight. We will fight it with our refusal, our resistance, our civil and uncivil disobedience, and, if attacked violently, with our rifles.

Keep calm. Keep cool. Be restrained. Be determined.

We can say truthfully that this act of murderous insanity had nothing to do with us. Anyone who tries to make it into something it is not and use that big lie to pass more infringements will find themselves ultimately muzzle to muzzle with the Three Percent. And if they do, I hope they take their Dear Leader's advice and "bring a gun."

They'll need it.

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters.

"The awesome stupidity of the calls to tamp down political speech in the wake of the Giffords shooting." Plus, "The Media & The Shooter."

"In Defense of Inflamed Rhetoric"

"The media today, as it begins more expansive reporting, will not let the facts get in the way of making the right, yet again, responsible for violence it neither incited nor enabled."

FOX News posts DHS memo claiming links between homicidal nut-job and racial-collectivist American Renaissance

Another John Doe #2? Nope, sez county sheriff, just a cab driver.

This is said originally to be an internal Homeland Security memo obtained by Fox News put out by DHS compiling facts known so far about the case. I doubted the format and TPM has this to say:

Don't Jump To Conclusions
David Kurtz | January 9, 2011, 1:59PM

A lot of attention has been paid today to a Fox News report about what was originally described as a leaked "DHS memo" that tied Jared Loughner to an anti-immigration, racist group called American Renaissance.

But Fox has walked back its initial description of the memo as coming from the Department of Homeland Security. Now it uses a labored description: "a law enforcement memo based on information provided by DHS."

That's not the same thing as a DHS memo, and it suggests somewhat less certainty about whether Loughner's reference to the group in his internet ramblings is getting special attention from law enforcement.

Here's the memo:


MEMO:

"The investigation has been taken over by the FBI, and is being run through the Tucson Command Post. Here's what can be confirmed at this time (1800 hrs)...

* Gabrielle Giffords Is in ICU.

* Federal judge John Roll is deceased. He did rule on a 32 million dollar civil rights lawsuit in February, 2010. That ruling brought death threats to Roll and his family, and for a time he was given a protection detail.

* 6 deaths attributed to the shooting. 19 total people hit by gunfire.

* suspect’s mother works for the Pima County Board of Supervisors* the suspect has multiple arrests ... But no criminal record? Intervention by someone?

* no direct connection - but strong suspicion is being directed at AmRen / American Renaissance. Suspect is possibly linked to this group. (through videos posted on his myspace and YouTube account.). The group’s ideology is anti government, anti immigration, anti ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government), anti Semitic. Gabrielle Gifford is the first Jewish female elected to such a high position in the US government. She was also opposite this group’s ideology when it came to immigration debate.

* DHS have a list of names and dates of birth of all victims.

* the ACTIC is still playing a major role in the investigation... Computer forensics is cleaning up the surveillance videos, and images from around the scene, and involved in the investigation - working together, was MCSO, DPS, Phoenix PD, ICE, and of course the FBI. It did just come in from the command post, that the federal judge was Not originally scheduled to attend the meeting, according to wife. She stated that he received a phone call about an hour before and was invited to attend. Wrong place - wrong time. For the planning side, there are impromptu memorials popping up all over the state, but the largest one is downtown phoenix, at the capital."

For its part, American Renaissance denies any links. Once again, I am very interested in the identity of a John Doe #2.

Mike
III

LATER: Second guy identified as "cab driver" according to cops.

Libeler Ridgeway's dishonest Nixonian non-retraction retraction.

No, that's not a relief map of the Bitterroot Range, that's the face of Jim Ridgeway, although the confusion is understandable.

In a post below, I noted that the blood had not yet dried on the pavement outside of the Safeway in Arizona before, before I was being libeled by lefty "journalist" Jim Ridgeway of Mother Jones -- "Giffords's Office Was Vandalized by Followers of Former Militia Leader." This was somewhat surprising to me because we've known each other since the mid-90s when Ridgeway was on my John Doe Times newsletter mailing list and me and my constitutional militia friends had just embarrassed the FBI by means of a poster campaign into finally arresting Michael Brescia, Aryan Republican Army bankrobber and bomber. Ridgeway wrote a story about it for George magazine, which even dispatched a photographer to Birmingham to take a photo of me talking to a source on a payphone. (Yeah, they still had payphones back then.)

Militia poster authored by me that, after being put up all over Philadelphia and covered by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Telegraph, finally embarrassed the FBI into arresting Michael Brescia.

Ridgeway, suspicious of the FBI since the COINTELPRO days, struck me as an honest lefty. Obviously somewhere along the way, whatever honesty he had drained out on the collectivist ideological carpet.

After his original libelous story, I sent him this email. I copied it to Judy Thomas, a Kansas City Star reporter who knows us both:

From: "georgemason1776@aol.com"
To: jridgew@yahoo.com
Cc: jthomas
Sent: Sat, January 8, 2011 9:55:40 PM
Subject: re: Your libelous post.

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/01/giffordss-office-was-vandalized-followers-former-militia-leader

Mike Vanderboegh, a former 1990s militia leader from Alabama, enouraged (sic) readers of his blog to throw bricks through the doors of members of Congress who had supported President Obama's health care bill last spring. One of the doors broken was that of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot at a rally in a Tuscon supermarket earlier today.

Kindly go over my call to break the windows of LOCAL DEMOCRAT PARTY HEADQUARTERS and find just once where I called for anybody to break the windows of Congresscritters.

My original post is here: http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-all-modern-sons-of-liberty-this-is.html

When you don't, as you won't, fix your libelous post to correctly reflect the facts.

Jeez, Jim, you were smarter than that in the 90s.

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters
("As denounced by Bill Clinton on CNN!")

The response I got was this:

-----Original Message-----
From: james ridgeway
To: georgemason1776
Sent: Sun, Jan 9, 2011 12:13 am
Subject: Re: Your libelous post.

Mike--thanks for your note. I have made an addendum to my post quoting from yr email and your blog.It's on the Mother Jones web site.

I would very much like to talk to you about all this if you will give me a phone number.You can always phone me at (New York phone number redacted). If there is no answer,just leave a message and i'll get back to you as soon as I can.
Again, I appreciate your sending me the email.jim

THIS is what his addendum said:

ADDENDUM, 11:55 p.m.: In an email to me this evening, Mike Vanderboegh, the former militia leader discussed above, wrote the following:

Kindly go over my call to break the windows of LOCAL DEMOCRAT PARTY HEADQUARTERS and find just once where I called for anybody to break the windows of Congresscritters.

Readers can make up their own minds about Vanderboegh's call to action by reading his original blog post, here -- http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-all-modern-sons-of-liberty-this-is.html -- where he writes, among other things:

So, if you wish to send a message that Pelosi and her party cannot fail to hear, break their windows.

Break them NOW.

Break them and run to break again. Break them under cover of night. Break them in broad daylight. Break them and await arrest in willful, principled civil disobedience. Break them with rocks. Break them with slingshots. Break them with baseball bats.

Now, when I read that, I admit, I got pissed. What Nixonian "non-denial denial" was this? This was the result, copied to both Judy Thomas and LTC Roger Charles, (USMC, Retired), who also knew and cooperated with Ridgeway on the OKC bombing cover-up story --

-----Original Message-----
From: georgemason1776
To: jridgew
Cc: jthomas; rogcharles
Sent: Sun, Jan 9, 2011 1:29 am
Subject: Re: Your libelous post and your Nixonian non-retraction retraction.

What part of THIS:

"These windows are not far away from where you are reading this right now. In virtually every city and county in this land, there is a local headquarters of Pelosi's party -- the Democrat party. These headquarters invariably have windows. . . .

And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary."

Don't you understand?

Screw your Nixonian non-retraction retraction and the libelous horse you rode in on. You sure have gotten dishonest in your old age. As far as allowing you to interview me, why would I willingly open myself up to more falsehoods and distortions from the same lying, conflationary sack of excrement who defends himself with weasel logic and selective quotes? If you're not honest enough to fix an error pointed out to you and plain as day, why should I gratuitously give you a second shot at libeling me? How truly stupid do you think I am?

Fix the lie. Or are you content to let your political prejudices override simple truth? And does Mother Jones agree with you?

-- Vanderboegh

I await his reply, but I ain't holding my breath.

Mike
III

A Homicidal Lefty Nutburger, NOT a Three Percenter -- not that the facts will stop the collectivist conflation industry. Blood dancer alert.

A quote you won't hear much in the coming days:

"As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal and oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy." She also described him as "more left." -- Caitie Parker, writing on Twitter of Jared Loughner, a high school and college classmate and who was in a band with the gunman. She said she hadn't seen him since 2007. (Source, World Net Daily.)

From the Associated Press:

The suspect Loughner was described by a former classmate as a pot-smoking loner, and the Army said he tried to enlist in December 2008 but was rejected for reasons not disclosed.

Federal law enforcement officials were poring over versions of a MySpace page that included a mysterious "Goodbye friends" message published hours before the shooting and exhorted his friends to "Please don't be mad at me."

In one of several YouTube videos, which featured text against a dark background, Loughner described inventing a new U.S. currency and complained about the illiteracy rate among people living in Giffords' congressional district in Arizona.

"I know who's listening: Government Officials, and the People," Loughner wrote. "Nearly all the people, who don't know this accurate information of a new currency, aren't aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn't have happen (sic)."

In Loughner's middle-class neighborhood - about a five-minute drive from the scene - sheriff's deputies had much of the street blocked off. The neighborhood sits just off a bustling Tucson street and is lined with desert landscaping and palm trees.

Neighbors said Loughner lived with his parents and kept to himself. He was often seen walking his dog, almost always wearing a hooded sweat shirt and listening to his iPod.

Loughner's MySpace profile indicates he attended and graduated from school in Tucson and had taken college classes. He did not say if he was employed.

High school classmate Grant Wiens, 22, said Loughner seemed to be "floating through life" and "doing his own thing."

"Sometimes religion was brought up or drugs. He smoked pot, I don't know how regularly. And he wasn't too keen on religion, from what I could tell," Wiens said.

Lynda Sorenson said she took a math class with Loughner last summer at Pima Community College's Northwest campus and told the Arizona Daily Star he was "obviously very disturbed." ''He disrupted class frequently with nonsensical outbursts," she said.

In October 2007, Loughner was cited in Pima County for possession of drug paraphernalia, which was dismissed after he completed a diversion program, according to online records.

We'll hear more than we ever wanted to know about this homicidal lefty nutburger's "philosophy" in the coming days.

The question will be -- how much use will the collectivist disarmament blood dancers make of this? Much, I suspect. Although they have not yet released the facts on where this loon got his 9mm Glock, Expect more howls of "gun show loopholes" and calls for bans on extended magazines. The fact that the target was a Congresswoman will resonate in DC, even -- perhaps especially -- among the GOP whose principles are often non-existent on a windy day.

This hands the advocates of Leviathan a huge propaganda weapon -- almost on the scale of the OKC bombing. It seems likely that this is the act of a lone madman, but in any case the blood dancers and the collectivist tyrant wannabes will push their advantage.

The White House, frightened about the "Project Gunwalker" scandal and the death of Border Patrol officer Brian Terry at the muzzle of a rifle smuggled with a wink and a nod from ATF breaking out into the major news media, can now breathe a huge sigh of relief. This horrific madness will suck all the air out of that story for the next weeks.

As Three Percenters, we must stand by our principles and be ready for what comes. And if that is more infringements on our liberties passed with the complicity of a frightened GOP, then we must resist by every means consistent with those principles -- refusal, uncivil disobedience and, ultimately, self-defense.

Mike
III

Conflation Orgy Begins: Mass Shooting in Arizona Leads Mother Jones to Libel Me.

This is the first time I've been home today, although I was informed by cell phone of the multiple homicide in Arizona. It doesn't take long to be libeled by the left-collectivist press, though. A link sent to me by several readers goes to Mother Jones, where I've already been libeled by Jim Ridgeway.

Mike Vanderboegh, a former 1990s militia leader from Alabama, enouraged (sic) readers of his blog to throw bricks through the doors of members of Congress who had supported President Obama's health care bill last spring. One of the doors broken was that of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot at a rally in a Tuscon supermarket earlier today.

That's a damn lie. I called on people to break local Democrat Party HQ windows. I specifically did not ask people to break federal windows because that is a federal crime. In point of fact, I called on folks to break windows because I was fearful of incidents of real violence such as this.

Now I don't know this murderer's story. He is said by the radio to be a 22-year old Afghan war vet. Whatever his grievance nothing justifies this mass killing, I don't care who the target is. My prayers go out to his victims and their families.

Even so, the collectivist conflation machine begins again.

LATER UPDATE: A reporter friend of mine says in an email, "Fox is reporting that his favorite book is Mein Kampf." Hardly surprising. If so, Ridgeway knows he's not one of mine for he detailed the militia's campaigns against the neoNazis in the 90s in both the Village Voice and George Magazine. If this guy is a neoNazi then it will make the conflation campaign slightly more difficult but hardly impossible for the fact-challenged media.

Yet later: No "Afghan war vet" (apparently he CLAIMED to be one), the Army issued a statement saying he was rejected for enlistment. Obviously a mental case, said to be more liberal than anything by some of his acquaintances and obsessed with the 2012 Mayan calendar crap. But according to the Pima County sheriff this is all because of political "hate and vitriol." "It may be free speech, but it's not without consequence."

See, it is STILL my fault.