Frau Stasi – Blaming the Victims at San Bernadino and Other Nonsense

There’ve been other examples of the “they had it coming/they deserved it” theme in the last week, but I think this is probably the worst, a hit piece on a terrorism victim written by a woman with the extremely apt last name Stasi:

Stasi: San Bernardino killers were radical, ISIS-loving monsters — but one of their victims was just as bigoted
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, December 5, 2015, 7:57 PM BY Linda Stasi

They were two hate-filled, bigoted municipal employees interacting in one department. Now 13 innocent people are dead in unspeakable carnage.

One man spent his free time writing frightening, NRA-loving, hate-filled screeds on Facebook about the other’s religion.

The other man quietly stewed and brewed his bigotry, collecting the kind of arsenal that the Facebook poster would have envied.

What they didn’t realize is that except for their different religions they were in many ways similar men who even had the same job.

Basically the whole piece is: “See!  Muslims and Jews and Christians are the same because that horrible Messianic Jew said bad things on facebook!  That’s why he deserved it!”

One man, the Muslim, was a loser who had to travel all the way to Pakistan to get himself an email bride. (I refuse to add to their fame by using the killer and his murderous wife’s names.)

Based on the tone of the article and other writings by Ms. Stasi (for those who don’t know, that name is hilarious… it’s like getting lectured by Ms. Gestapo), I suspect the real reason not to write “Syed Rizwan Farooq and Tashfeen Malik” is not because of a concern about adding fame.

The killer, however, became half of an Islamic Bonnie & Clyde, while the other died as the male equivalent of Pamela Geller.

Bonnie and Clyde were robbers who killed people as part of their chosen criminal profession.  They were not terrorists.

They probably also won’t get a Hollywood movie glamorizing them… for at least a few years, anyway.

Pam Geller wrote a blog called Atlas Shrugs for years, and now writes with her own name.  She just writes things that aren’t PC.  As far as I know, she’s never killed anyone, but she’s had people try to kill her because they don’t like what she says.

Frau Stasi’s opinion of Geller has been noted in the past.

Geller, like ISIS and al Qaeda, revel in hate and nothing would make any of them happier than to be the catalyst for the killing of hundreds of innocent Americans to prove a point. Geller would be a hero to the hateful. Damn the cost in innocent lives, damn the heartache.

Don’t think for a minute that violence isn’t what she, just like the murderers of ISIS, want. Suppose there was a contest to draw God in defiance of Jewish laws? Would that be free speech or hate speech? What about cartoons of Jesus with his genitals up in the air?

While we have freedom of speech, we also have freedom of religion, which shouldn’t be impinged upon.

Yeah, imagine if it were so bad that taxpayers had to subsidize some kind of offensive art against Jesus?  Or how about this, if a well-known cartoon show drew Jesus offensively?  Oh yeah, that’s right… if you make fun of Christians or Jews (or Buddhists or Shintos or Animists or Sikhs or atheists or Hindus or deists or Zoroastrians or Pastafarians), they don’t go kill you.

If it weren’t for the tyrannical oppressive patriarchal genocidal theocracy that Islam is and demands throughout much of the world, she wouldn’t care.  It’s the nature of the religious/ideological institution that is Islam that brings its critics.  It’s like how rigid dogmatic Catholicism or more extreme Evangelical Christianity brings in the atheists to criticize it.  Difference is, after he made Dogma, Kevin Smith didn’t end up like Theo Van Gogh.

Frau Stasi continues:

As Americans, we have the right to mock anybody’s God, yes, but except for the vile few like Pamela Geller, and murderous religious fanatics among us, it’s just not what we do or what we celebrate.

Well, except for shit-tons of musicians.  Trent comes to mind immediately.

All that, in the Stasi’s view, makes people who say bad things basically the same as those who do bad things.

Make no mistake, as disgusting and deservedly dead as the hate-filled fanatical Muslim killers were, Thalasinos was also a hate-filled bigot. Death can’t change that. But in the U.S., we don’t die for speaking our minds. Or we’re not supposed to anyway.

The first part of that opening sentence can be translated as “I have a black friend” used as a shield, followed by the predictable racist comment.  She may as well be saying “as bad as those child-rapists were, those kids were also total brats.”

Thalasinos was an anti-government, anti-Islam, pro-NRA, rabidly anti-Planned Parenthood kinda guy, who posted that it would be “Freaking Awesome” if hateful Ann Coulter was named head of Homeland Security. He asked, “IS 1. EVERY POLITICIAN IS BOUGHT AND PAID FOR? 2. EVERY POLITICIAN IS A MORON? 3. EVERY POLITICIAN IS RACIST AGAINST JEWS?” He also posted screeds like, “You can stick your Muslim Million Man march up your asses,” and how “Hashem” should blow up Iran.

His Facebook page warns that “Without HEALTHY PREGNANT WOMAN (Democrats) would have NO SOURCE of BABIES to SACRIFICE and SELL!”

Um… he worked in government.  And most people are anti-government, just different parts of it.  And what’s wrong with being anti-theocratic patriarchy?  Or being pro-individual citizen self-defense rights?  Or opposed to killing infants still in the womb?

This is just Stasi making the victim an “other” and a political opponent.  She can’t critically dissect his positions because someone who’s anti-PP is pro-life and is… well, pro-life – and is opposed to abortion on moral grounds that it’s killing innocent people.  Someone who is for the NRA is for self-defense and is for… well, self-defense – which would be protecting oneself and other good people and defending against bad people who actually have to commit attacks against you first.

Ann Coulter is also a NYT best-selling author.  She’s actually much less “hateful” than she is a cultural provocateur.  She trolls.  People with coherent philosophies and arguments have little to fear from her, because most of her schtick is humor and absurdity.  Those with emotional arguments find themselves pulled in, and easily destroyed.  Those with coherent views defuse her joking invective and then it’s just a regular discussion.  Admittedly her humor is hit-or-miss, even for those who often agree with her.

Factoring in the recent baby-parts-for-cash videos showing Planned Parenthood haggling over prices (a practice they defended against “extremists” and then suddenly stopped… which seems like an odd thing to do if it’s completely above board), comments from somebody with a particularly religious objection to abortion condemning Democrats for supporting abortion providers and making taxpayers subsidize abortions seems not very extreme.  (It doesn’t take much to understand the point if one looks at it a different way, either – if a feminist found out that her tax dollars went to fund abortions for culturally sexist parents from the third world who aborted only girl babies, do you suppose she might be upset at the political party that supports that program?)

Thalasinos’ comment on the scheduled for the Million Muslim March isn’t very far out, either.  The Million Muslim March was even condemned by CAIR (who themselves were co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case, and cry “Islamophobia” almost every time they speak).  And considering the Million Muslim March was supposed to take place on 9/11 (intentionally to offend, but whatevs) in 2013 – it shows you Frau Stasi had to go back two years to find something offensive.

Complaining about politicians being bought & paid for and morons is now bigotry?  Complaining that they’re racist against your ethnic group is bigoted?  Stasi better get going after the Black Lives Matter movement and pretty much every ethnic identity with any kind of advocacy group.  Seriously, the Stasi is saying politicians are a protected class that can’t be criticized now without the critic being a bigot?  Bigoted against what?  Politicians?

Considering that the media will go out of its way to find the absolute worst that people they want to demonize say, and that she had to dig back at least two years for the one line… Thalasinos actually sounds pretty sedate, considering the level of stupidity people post on Facebook.

We have freedom of speech but even so, a city worker should refrain from such public bigotry. Municipal workers have been fired for spewing and posting racial and sexual slurs.

Public bigotry against what?  Against politicians, Democrats, jackass Muslim groups that even far a left terrorist-apologist Muslim group condemns?  Bigoted against the Iranian regime supports global terrorism and shot Neda dead in the street?  Against an institution called out for selling baby parts?  I wasn’t aware those are equated with racism and sexism now and meant the victim deserved it.

Damn, Stasi.  Don’t you know?

Because you just went.

Even if one were to run with Stasi’s blame-the-victim scheisse and assume that one of the victims somehow deserved it because he disagreed verbally with his murderer, what did the other couple dozen people killed or wounded do to deserve it?

Well, that’s because they made fun of his beard.  No, really:

Not sure if I’ve seen that kind of media response before, ever.  I don’t remember CNN having a banner like that during Columbine that said “teens were rejected by their peers”, or one during Newtown that said “First-graders called killer a poopie-head”.

The whole crux of this is the “victim had it coming/victim deserved it”, by showing how horribly oppressed that Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik were, seeing as how people… made fun of him for his beard… and disagreed with him (and Frau Stasi) and posted things on Facebook.

I am reminded of Evan Sayet’s story of a guy who says “I hate my wife”.  Frau Stasi is that guy.

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I scrolled through some of Frau Stasi’s other posts and stumbled on this one, which should serve as another example of why to be wary of any calls to use the no-due-process secret terror watchlist for just about anything, least of all removal of citizens’ rights:

Stasi: State Department must list gun-loving NRA as terrorist organization

One terrorist group is responsible for more civilian deaths since December 2012 (the Sandy Hook massacre) than Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas and the Taliban. Yet it is the only nearly-state sponsored terrorist group that is not listed by the U.S. State Department as such.

It is the National Rifle Association and for their unending lobbying that’s kept a lid on gun control we now have 428 times more American deaths by gun than deaths by foreign terrorists.

Easy as that – list it as a terrorist group, disarm those who resist the state.  Now stand by for a further example of “figures lie, liars figure”:

No? Between 2012 and 2015, according to University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database, ISIS has murdered approximately 12,138 civilians, Boko Haram,10,092, the Taliban 9,427 and Hamas, 85.

In that time, Americans have murdered or spree killed via gun and assault rifle, 87,423 people in the United States.

To Frau Stasi, the NRA is worse than ISIS.

Let’s check on that 87,423 number of hers.

The CDC says only 11,000 people were murdered with firearms in 2013.  The FBI says about 8,900 in 2012 and about 8,500 were murdered with firearms in 2013.  Interesting that in 2013 there were 687 people murdered with hands and fists and only 285 murdered with rifles – those evil assault murder guns.

Assuming her numbers are correct at 87,500 (rounding up) people murdered with firearms between 2012 and 2015, and with the FBI able to confirm that only 8,900 and 8,500 were murdered with firearms in 2012 and 2013, then that leaves us with about 70,100 murders for 2014 and 2015… so about 35,000 murders a year, roughly the same number of murders as Nigeria.  Let’s say we roll with the CDC’s number and assume 11,000 for 2012 and 2013, that still leaves us with 55,500 murders for 2014 and 2015 – about 28,000 murders per year (rounding up some more in her favor).

The violent crime rate has been dropping for years, and there weren’t 35,000 murders in 2014 or 2015, nor were there 28,000 murders in 2014 or 2015.  Frau Stasi is full of scheisse.

The (FBI) report says that in 2014 the U.S. recorded the fewest murders since 2009.

What she might be lying about are suicide deaths with firearms. Those numbers account for many deaths, but aren’t indicative of anything but suicides.  Japan, with limited firearms access, has a much higher rate of suicides.

But 21,000 depressed people killing themselves per year isn’t reason to care about mental health to Frau Stasi, while under 9,000 (many of those are dirtbags killing dirtbags, and there are some more that are dirtbags killed by people defending themselves) is reason to have the boot of government stomp on the rights of individuals and leave them defenseless against criminals who will never follow the law, as well as defenseless against governments that will eventually become like… the Stasi.

The FCC and Net Neutrality

Basically Drudge’s big stories of the day, but today the FCC chair refused to testify before congress about net neutrality, The Hill looks at the new arbitrary ability for the FCC to impose internet regulations and asks if it’s outright lawless, and the lefty “Electronic Frontier Foundation” suddenly realizes that big government might not be the best thing to have on an internet that’s supposed to be free.

There are several problems with this approach.  First, it suggests that the FCC believes it has broad authority to pursue any number of practices—hardly the narrow, light-touch approach we need to protect the open Internet. Second, we worry that this rule will be extremely expensive in practice, because anyone wanting to bring a complaint will be hard-pressed to predict whether they will succeed. For example, how will the Commission determine “industry best standards and practices”? As a practical matter, it is likely that only companies that can afford years of litigation to answer these questions will be able to rely on the rule at all. Third, a multi-factor test gives the FCC an awful lot of discretion, potentially giving an unfair advantage to parties with insider influence.

A leftist push for more control really might mean cronyism for their politically aligned friends?  Naw… you don’t say.

The internet will grind to stagnating European halt.

In a joint column, Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai and Federal Election Commission member Lee Goodman, leveled the boom on the Obama-favored regulations, essentially charging that it will muck up the freedom the nation has come to expect from the Internet. …

“These Internet regulations will deter broadband deployment, depress network investment and slow broadband speeds. How do we know? Compare Europe, which has long had utility-style regulations, with the United States, which has embraced a light-touch regulatory model. Broadband speeds in the United States, both wired and wireless, are significantly faster than those in Europe. Broadband investment in the United States is several multiples that of Europe. And broadband’s reach is much wider in the United States, despite its much lower population density,” the two wrote. …

“Internet freedom works. It is difficult to imagine where we would be today had the government micromanaged the Internet for the past two decades as it does Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service. Neither of us wants to find out where the Internet will be two decades from now if the federal government tightens its regulatory grip. We don’t need to shift control of the Internet to bureaucracies in Washington. Let’s leave the power where it belongs — with the American people. When it comes to Americans’ ability to access online content or offer political speech online, there isn’t anything broken for the government to “fix.” To paraphrase President Ronald Reagan, Internet regulation isn’t the solution to a problem. Internet regulation is the problem.”

I’d file this entirely under the part of the cycle of the anointed being wrong where Thomas Sowell says “the critics’ concerns are dismissed”… which comes right before the “solution” is implemented and causes the exact problems the critics fortold.

Sharyl Attkisson and the Obama Administration’s Threats to Journalism

Sharyl Attkisson, for those who don’t know of her, is an old-school journalist.  She finds a story and she pursues it, and no amount of political rhetoric and denials will dissuade her if she has a story.

She pursued Fast and Furious, Solyndra, Benghazi, just to name a few – and all because there are stories there that a good reporter would want exposed.  And they’re also stories that the Obama administration does not want exposed, because despite most of the media acting as a propaganda arm of the Democrat party, ultimately some people will hear and listen when they hear the truth – especially in contrast with handwaving and absurd denials.

Her computers were hacked by some shadowy most-likely-government entity a while back.  I remember it coming up last year and writing about it then.  Twice last year, in fact.

Now she’s got a book out and she’s elaborating.  The people in her story are mostly written about under pseudonyms for their own safety.

She speculates that the motive was to lay the groundwork for possible charges against her or her sources.

Attkisson says the source, who’s “connected to government three-letter agencies,” told her the computer was hacked into by “a sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency.”

That “laying the groundwork for possible charges” is because someone buried classified documents deep in her computer.

Next big moment: Attkisson gets her computer checked out by someone identified as “Number One,” who’s described as a “confidential source inside the government.” A climactic meeting takes place at a McDonald’s outlet at which Attkisson and “Number One” “look around” for possibly suspicious things. Finding nothing, they talk. “First just let me say again I’m shocked. Flabbergasted. All of us are. This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did. I wouldn’t have believed something like this could happen in the United States of America.” That’s all coming from “Number One.”

The breaches on Attkisson’s computer, says this source, are coming from a “sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, or the National Security Agency (NSA).” Attkisson learns from “Number One” that one intrusion was launched from the WiFi at a Ritz Carlton Hotel and the “intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool.”

To round out the revelations of “Number One,” he informs Attkisson that he’d found three classified documents deep inside her operating system, such that she’d never know they were even there. “Why? To frame me?” Attkisson asks in the book.

Media meta-reporter Erik Wemple (who’s so impressively attuned to everything news about news that he even asked me a few questions once) wrote several pieces on Attkisson’s encounters with electronic surveillance.

The first discusses computer intrusions as “worse than anything Nixon ever did”, and introduces us to “Jeff”, “Number One” and “Jerry Patel”, all of which are pseudonyms for various computer experts.  And in the first and into the second, we’re introduced to Don Allison of KoreLogic, who also diagnosed Attkisson’s computer, and is not protected by a pseudonym, but is behind a nondisclosure agreement for the time being.

And then there’s Wemple’s third piece, which talks about the strange case of a “spare” wire.

…By November 2012, writes Attkisson, disruptions on her home phone line were so frequent as to render it unusable: “I call home from my mobile phone and it rings on my end, but not at the house. Or it rings at home once but when my husband or daughter answers, they just hear a dial tone. At the same time, on my end, it keeps ringing and then connects somewhere, just not at my house. Sometimes, when my call connects to that mystery-place-that’s-not-my-house, I hear an electronic sounding buzz,” reads one passage in “Stonewalled.” She also alleges that her television set “spontaneously jitters, mutes, and freeze-frames.” The home alarm, too, “sounds at a different time every night” and when she checks with the alarm system, it indicates that there’s “trouble with the phone line.”

Phone, TV and computer service chez Attkisson all run on Verizon’s FiOS service. “Jeff” asks to inspect the exterior of the house in a check for anything suspicious. He finds a “stray cable dangling from the FiOS box attached to the brick wall on the outside of my house. It doesn’t belong.” “Jeff” says the cable in question is an “extra” fiber-optic line that could be used to download data and then send it off to another spot.

Attkisson takes a picture of the cable. Then she calls Verizon, which tells her that it’s not something they would have installed; they refer her to law enforcement. Attkisson doesn’t feel its a matter for the cops, and in any case Verizon calls back to say that they want to have a look for themselves as soon as possible — on New Year’s Day, no less. “Yeah, that shouldn’t be there,” the Verizon technician tells Attkisson.

Attkisson is a sensible, common sense reporter who follows leads to write reports of real life events.  She is neither Kolchak nor Mulder.

At one point, Attkisson gets a visit from pseudonymous “Terry,” who has “connections to the three-letter agencies.” “Stonewalled” takes it from here:

Terry tells me of a conversation he’d had with my husband back in 2011. He’d noticed a white utility truck parked up the street by a pond. “I didn’t like that. I didn’t like it at all,” he tells me now, shaking his head. . . . “I didn’t like it because I recognized the type of truck and the type of antennae it had. And if you look” — he points up the street — “there’s a direct line of sight from where it was parked to your house.” My husband, who once worked in law enforcement intelligence, had on several occasions in the past couple of years mentioned the presence of nondescript utility trucks parked in our neighborhood — trucks that were working on no known utility projects. Neighbors noticed, too. Ours is a small community filled with people who pay attention to such things. Some of them worked for the three-letter agencies.”

That’s the kind of thing that would make other reporters at least a tad intimidated, if not a bit paranoid.  Of course, if she lives in a neighborhood full of cops and retired spooks, this might be the amateur hour Obama G-men trainees trying to stake out people whose lives are Tom Clancy novels.

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Jazz Shaw and Mary Katherine Ham have been following the story at HotAir as well, with their own opinions on the hacking and journalistic intimidation, as well as reminding us of James Rosen’s encounter with the Obama administration.

My feelings remain much the same as they did last time.

Maybe it’s as a result of too much X-Files, Shadowrun and Project Twilight in the 90s, but I find this government spying stuff is damn creepy.  From the NSA’s massive computer and phone data mining to electronically targeting reporters, it’s like 90s conspiracy-themed entertainment has become 2009-present reality.

I’m sure there’s a pop-culture scholarly way to compare Nowhere Man and The Net to current events, but it’s less fun than it is disturbing when you think about it for too long – even if Attkisson and her three-letter agency neighbors are precisely the kind of people who are adept at navigating that kind of world.

Lame Duck vs Duck Dynasty

I think the most important thing about what Phil Robertson said is what he said at the end:

I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me. We are all created by the Almighty and like Him, I love all of humanity. We would all be better off if we loved God and loved each other.

And what he didn’t say:

He asked for no new laws, he asked for nothing to be taken from one group and given to another, he asked for no force to be applied against people whose choices he disagreed with.  He didn’t ask that the DSM V be dialed back to the DSM II or something, he just voiced an unpopular belief to the media in a direct, folksy way.

Folks who are legimately of very solid faith are often the type who can hate the sin, but love the sinner, regardless of what it might be.  They pray for people they disagree with to see what they view as right, but they don’t try to force other people to live their way, either – forced piety would defeat the purpose and would mean someone doesn’t choose their path.  That older traditionalist mindset, but still respectful of the individual way of living per classic enlightenment views, is an attitude towards life that is part of the appeal of the show – for many it’s alien, for others it’s comforting.  From the few episodes I’ve seen, they are live and let live folks.

For the most part, I consider the entire ruffling of feathers over this to be something that should just be water off a duck’s back.  No one should care.  It neither breaks anyone’s leg nor picks their pocket.

It’d make a lot more sense for A&E to simply take advantage of the comments and ask the Duck Dynasty folks to interact with some normal gay people (not activists).  The discussion would probably be a lot more of a “teachable moment” or something anyway, or allow for an understanding of two different cultures – those mad at Duck Dynasty (who don’t watch it anyway), and those who have harsher views than Robertson’s upsetting but ultimately benign religious disagreement.

Objectively, one could also ask how many gay people are benefiting from the merchandising and financial success of the show through employment or investment in A&E or some other way – and how that prosperity is apathetic on sexual orientation.  A&E may be killing the goose that’s laying the golden egg here, since the Duck Dynasty family doesn’t need them, and without recognizing that all it would take is discussion if they wanted to counter Robertson’s opinions with their own – and it would make good TV.  They could go shooting with some folks from the Pink Pistols… and they’d probably all get along fine.

But instead A&E is choosing to can him, and gay activists are going apoplectic.  Just like didn’t happen with employers and gay activists when Alec Baldwin was actually using anti-gay slurs and threatening people with physical violence.

The contrast is even greater when you consider the difference in societal anger between what’s directed at Robertson and what’s directed at the lame duck, who is our employee and has lied about the murders of US citizens at home and abroad, including leaving our ambassador to Libya – who was gay – to die.  The lame duck is destroying our health care, is targeting us with revenue agents, and is spying on us.  We have an employee who is out to harm us and mass media make excuses for him and ignore actions and force; while they get angry at Robertson.

It’s a damn shame people are getting infuriated about a man’s opinion they disagree with, but who ultimately uses no force and advocates none, while they ignore a man targeting us all who uses force and advocates more.

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Update: At least one gay writer has questioned the stance of taking offense and demanding silence.

Why is our go-to political strategy for beating our opponents to silence them? Why do we dismiss, rather than engage them? One of the biggest pop-culture icons of today just took center stage to “educate” us about sexuality. I see this as an opportunity to further the discussion, to challenge his limited understanding of human desire, to engage with him and his rather sizable audience — most of whom, by the way, probably share his views — and to rise above the endless sea of tweet-hate to help move our LGBT conversations to where they need to go.

G.K. Chesterton said that bigotry is “an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.” If he is right — and he usually is — then I wonder if the Duck Dynasty fiasco says more about our bigotry than Phil’s.

He does spend almost the entirety of the piece saying Robertson is wrong, wrong, wrong, and he can’t see that moral authority he claims is why the gay community’s go-to political strategy is to silence people.  Except for Alec Baldwin, of course.  And anyone else who’s on the political left and supports the correct causes.

The most important point he brings up might be this:

But I also think that if I were to spend a day calling ducks with Phil, I’d probably end up liking him — even in spite of his position on gay men.

You don’t have to agree with the guy on everything to get along.  And Robertson isn’t advocating any harm to anyone or government or other coercive force be used against them.

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And some gay dudes from the umpteenth spinoff of Storage Wars found a much less destructive, much more hilarious way to disagree:

An openly gay couple on A&E’s “Storage Wars: New York” is NOT offended by the homophobic comments made by fellow A&E’er and “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson — telling TMZ, they just feel bad for him … because man ass beats vagina any day of the week.

It’s crude, offensive to some folks in probably the same way Robertson’s were offensive to others, but it’s also funny.

Chris and Tad aren’t fazed, telling us, “You can’t go through life worrying what other people think. That’s their values and that’s what they think … as long as they’re not nasty to people … We’re not offended at all.”

Tolerance means you don’t have to agree, but if somebody isn’t harming you or advocating harm, it’s probably not that important, either.  You don’t have to send people to the Death Camp of Tolerance.

Twitter Censors Obamacare Criticism

Remember how people said the demonstrations in Iran over the last couple years were the result of Twitter and social media?  Kinda important to remember that who controls social media makes a difference, too.

In the US, resistance to the state’s control of your health is being suppressed by social media.

Via Jawa Report, from Daily Caller:

Twitter has repeatedly suspended an account critical of the Affordable Care Act.

The account, @mycancellation, was just getting started when Twitter suspended it—twice—before reinstating the account late Saturday night.

The purpose of @mycancellation or mycancellation.com was to allow some of the millions of Americans who are losing their health insurance to post pictures of themselves with their cancellation letters. “Help us show Washington the faces who lost what they liked,” the account asked. “ObamaCare canceled your health insurance. Now, send us your letter,” the tagline for the website advertised.

Government doesn’t need to control Twitter.  All that’s required is for the people who control Twitter to be ideologically in line with the government and willing to act on their ideology.  They’re leftists, so the response is to crush dissent.

The Twitter account quickly gained steam and had over 1,000 followers before Twitter suspended it.

That may not seem like a lot, but it’s also a start.  Much like how the “We Are The 53%” got kicked off and became a counterpoint to the welfare state begging of last year, things that get kicked off and begin to go viral can make a difference in the national discussion.  Cutting off a voice (and a thousand voices with it) is just following the old leftist playbook of “Shut Up“.  And cutting off something before it goes viral is quite effective.

Shutting down a website is likened by IT specialists to tearing down a poster in the days before the internet.  They consider it to mean little.  But tearing down a poster for a small band may mean half their audience never sees that they’re in town, because there’s no word of mouth, as there’s no poster to say they’re in town.  It feeds on itself.  It can never spread if it can’t start.  Tear down the poster and put it back up later and a huge chunk of audience may simply assume the band’s never coming.  Again, the word doesn’t get out to the same extent.

Here, it’s something people run with and create on their own and contribute to.  Make it go away, and people simply can’t contribute to it to make it go viral.

The government doesn’t have to censor things in such a crude manner as they used to.  Those in leftist ideological lockstep voluntarily censor things for the government.

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It’s for your own good, of course.  You’re too stupid to know you shouldn’t disagree with your betters.  You’re going to be getting equal access to healthcare, so shut up about your problems because you’re the tight-fisted greedy capitalist pig that made it unequal.  You’ll be made equal by your betters and you’ll be made to shut up by your betters.

That’s equality to the left.

Obama Administration Silencing Obamacare Dissent

DC Area Tyranny Through Gun Control

Two days ago there was the report of a DC businessman whose home was raided, family terrorized, and who faces 2 years in prison for a dud shotgun shell and a brass casing.

Today, there’s this, from the Daily Caller:

A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed.

In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter.

A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home.

A stone’s throw from DC, a twice Pulitzer-nominated reporter had her house raided by the police and DHS back in August, and now she’s revealed some of what they were looking for.

Her journalist files and notes related to confidential sources were seized as the police we looking for guns.  And why were they looking for guns?

The document notes that her husband, Paul Flanagan, was found guilty in 1986 to resisting arrest in Prince George’s County. The warrant called for police to search the residence they share and seize all weapons and ammunition because he is prohibited under the law from possessing firearms.

27 years ago her husband was guilty of resisting arrest.  What was he the actual crime he was arrested for more than a quarter century ago?  Story doesn’t say anything except resisting arrest.  So apparently he was arrested for resisting arrest.  Makes as much sense as anything.  His resisting arrest almost three decades ago, buying a non-functional potato gun from a Scandinavian, and being in pictures with guns on Facebook was apparently enough to warrant a 0-dark-30 night raid by armored law enforcement:

At about 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 6, Hudson said officers dressed in full body armor presented a search warrant to enter the home she shares on the bay with her husband. She estimates that at least seven officers took part in the raid.

Ms. Hudson had her guns taken by the police, of course:

During the raid, the officers also went after Hudson’s three pistols and three long guns, which she obtained legally.

She notes the guns were already known to the local PD due to a holiday happy fire noise complaint, and they didn’t care then.  Also, they belong to her, legally, yet apparently the state can simply seize her arms and her property, and her rights become revokable privileges because… uh… marriage?  Oh, no, wait, “it’s for the children!”

But the gun complaint looks secondary to the real purpose of the raid, to go after notes including names of whistleblowers who were critical of the Air Marshal service lying to congress about knowledge of terrorist and anti-terrorist activities and programs:

“In particular, the files included notes that were used to expose how the Federal Air Marshal Service had lied to Congress about the number of airline flights there were actually protecting against another terrorist attack,” Hudson wrote in a summary about the raid provided to TheDC.  …

She said she asked Bosch (ST: USCG/DHS investigator) why they took the files. He responded that they needed to run them by TSA to make sure it was “legitimate” for her to have them.

“‘Legitimate’ for me to have my own notes?” she said incredulously on Wednesday.

Asked how many sources she thinks may have been exposed, Hudson said: “A lot. More than one. There were a lot of names in those files.”

“This guy basically came in here and took my anonymous sources and turned them over — took my whistleblowers — and turned it over to the agency they were blowing the whistle on,” Hudson said. “And these guys still work there.”

The Most Transparent Administration Ever going after whistleblowers?  Targeting reporters who might embarrass the administration?  Naaaaw…

Hudson has been a reporter in Washington, D.C. for nearly 15 years and was nominated twice by The Washington Times for the Pulitzer Prize. She is a freelancer for Newsmax and the Colorado Observer.  …

Unlike some other reporters whose sources have been targeted in recent years by the government, Hudson said none of the information she had was classified or given to her by someone who broke the law.

“None of the documents were classified,” she said. “There were no laws broken in me obtaining these files.”

She notes that a lot of the files were “For Official Use Only” or “Law Enforcement Sensitive”.  Neither of these is a legal classification, just policy classifications for individual agencies.  Ms. Hudson says that she obtained the files through Freedom of Information Act requests.  Ultimately her possession of a FOUO or LE sensitive document is not illegal for her – the normal actions that can be taken with regards to those kind of documents are internal and administrative – an agency going after its own personnel for violating policies.  The only enforcement that could probably be used would be if there were some greater criminal conspiracy, which doesn’t seem to be the case – because if it were, they’d go after her for the documents and list her as an unindicted co-conspirator or some such, rather than simply ransack her house “looking for guns” as a pretext to grabbing files.

But it is rather telling to see journalist’s First Amendment rights abused through accepted abuse of Second Amendment rights.

Too bad she didn’t understand that rights are only for those who fully support the Obama administration and all of its decisions unquestioningly.

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Fortunately, we here at The Patriot Perspective have no such worries.  I have prepared us for any such run-ins with the authorities by becoming good friends with a paginator from the State Investigating Committee.

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Update: Looks like the Daily Caller story just hit Drudge with this headline:

SWAT team raids investigative journalist’s home, seizes confidential files…

He didn’t include that the cited reason for the search was “guns are bad, m’kay”, but anyone reading it will see it at the third sentence in the story, after all.

Update 2: Ed over at HotAir agrees it looks like something is rotten in the state of Maryland.

Does the Maryland State Police usually troll Facebook to find illegal possession of firearms? Or is it more likely that DHS instigated this as a way to go after a longtime critic and reporter of the agency?  This certainly doesn’t look like a coincidence, and perhaps Congress might want to look into what looks like a gross abuse of power to silence reporters and punish whistleblowers.

LA Times Solution To Manbearpig Opposition: Shut Up

Via FOX:

The Los Angeles Times is giving the cold shoulder to global warming skeptics.

Paul Thornton, editor of the paper’s letters section, recently wrote a letter of his own, stating flatly that he won’t publish some letters from those skeptical of man’s role in our planet’s warming climate. In Thornton’s eyes, those people are often wrong — and he doesn’t print obviously wrong statements.

“Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published,” Thornton wrote. “Saying ‘there’s no sign humans have caused climate change’ is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.”

They’ve shown Andrew Klavan’s dissection of leftist debate to be correct again:

Anthropogenic global warming advocates and watermelon environmentalists pushing their own agenda lie?  It happens over and over, and those who oppose “the consensus” are mocked and compared to holocaust deniers?

Manbearpig proven to be fake again and again?

The solution?  Muzzle dissent!  Block out all observations that are contrary!  It’s what science demands!  Observation that disproves the theory are heretical lies that go against science!  Death to the unbelievers!  Death to those who question Manbearpig!

What amounts to a ban on discourse about climate change stirred outrage among scientists who have written exactly that sort of letter.

“In a word, the LA Times should be ashamed of itself,” William Happer, a physics professor at Princeton, told FoxNews.com.

“There was an effective embargo on alternative opinions, so making it official really does not change things,” said Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism at The Rockefeller University in New York.

“The free press in the U.S. is trying to move the likelihood of presenting evidence on this issue from very low to impossible,” J. Scott Armstrong, co-founder of the Journal of Forecasting and a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told FoxNews.com.

In short: shut up.

The Greatest License Plate You’ll See This Week

From Legal Insurrection:

Gunwalker Update: ATF Tries To Block Whistleblower Dodson’s Book

Not content with undermining and destroying the Second Amendment, the ATF is now targeting the first by trying to hush up whistleblower Jon Dodson’s book on Fast and Furious:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is blocking the main whistleblower in the Fast and Furious case from publishing a book for pay, claiming his retelling of the Mexico “gun-walking” scandal will hurt morale inside the embattled law enforcement agency, according to documents obtained by The Washington Times.

ATF’s dispute with Special Agent John Dodson is setting up a First Amendment showdown that is poised to bring together liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and conservatives in Congress who have championed Mr. Dodson’s protection as a whistleblower.

The way the ATF is trying to do this is by claiming it’s employment outside the agency, and simply rejecting it.

Documents show that one of Mr. Dodson’s supervisors in Arizona, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Carlos Canino, rejected his request July 19 and was backed in the decision by the agent in charge of the office, Thomas G. Atteberry, four days later.

Supervisors ultimately don’t make those decisions in the fedgov.  Requests for outside employment will go up at least to the level of an “agent in charge” of an office, station, or area of operations.

Their rejection made no claims that the book would release sensitive or classified information or compromise ongoing law enforcement proceedings.

Rather, the supervisors offered a different reason for their decision. “This would have a negative impact on morale in the Phoenix [Field Division] and would have a detrimental effect on our relationships with DEA and FBI.”

Given that Canino also testified in front of congress, I’m not sure what his personal opinion on the book would be, but he’s probably also being pressured from above.

The ATF general counsel’s office subsequently sanctioned the decision, all but killing the book project.

“An employee’s supervisory chain may disapprove any outside employment request for any reason, at any supervisory level,” ATF attorney Greg Serres wrote Mr. Dodson on Aug. 29, underlining the word “any” for emphasis. “The Office of Chief Counsel cannot approve outside employment requests in lieu of the supervisory chain’s disapproval.

“Therefore, your request to engage in outside employment is denied,” he said.

Again, to write a book, which will net a paycheck when published, is something that can be denied.  The idea behind this (for other agencies) is that it limits corruption and allows for a CYA by employees as they can show that other income isn’t from being crooked, and it allows managers to determine if an outside job will take too much time and interest away from the employee’s duties.

This, however, is just saying “don’t tell the truth because it’ll hurt our feelings” at best, but more “don’t tell the truth because the ATF is a destructive, corrupt, tyrannical agency”.

And here the story begins to get the basics of Fast and Furious wrong:

In all, ATF officials permitted more than 1,700 semi-automatic weapons to flow through the hands of straw buyers for the Mexican cartels, with many crossing the border.

Senior ATF officials hoped to trace the guns to crimes, then make a bigger case against the Mexican drug lords. The strategy, however, backfired when hundreds of the weapons began showing up at crime scenes on both sides of the border, including at the December 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The strategy didn’t backfire.  In testimony to congress, the operation was described to send guns south so they would be found at crime scenes.  That was the whole plan.

The Mexican authorities didn’t know, and Darren Gil, ATF attache in Mexico, didn’t know.  No one in Mexico, whether US or Mexican authorities, knew about the plan to send guns south.  There was no way to interdict the guns, and there was no way to make a case against the cartels.  This is one of the things that left the investigators on Oversight and Reform shocked (even a Democrat or two, before their party line programming kicks in).

The story goes on with a couple more huge lies from the ATF.

The ATF, under new director B. Todd Jones, says it has imposed sweeping procedures to ensure gun-walking doesn’t occur in future cases.

That’s a joke.  Todd Jones was one of the architects of Fast and Furious.

The book dispute with Mr. Dodson, however, is not the first First Amendment controversy to erupt in the aftermath of the scandal.

Last year, Mr. Jones raised alarm in Congress and inside his own agency when he released a videotaped message that warned agencies that there would be “consequences” if agents blew the whistle on wrongdoing outside their chain of command.

The message led to claims that whistleblowing would be chilled, and ATF subsequently clarified Mr. Jones‘ remarks to emphasize that the agency would not interfere with legitimate whistleblowing activities.

Note the key word there “legitimate”.  They’ll decide what’s “legitimate” and what’s not.  And what’s “legitimate” and what’s not is defined as what helps the Obama administration versus hurts it.

The ATF will retaliate.  They already have against most of the whistleblowers, and they will continue to do so.