January 5-12, 1998
January 19,1998
January 26, 1998
More dirt is being uncovered in the background of discredited "Friend of Bill" M. Larry Lawrence.
Former U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, M. Larry Lawrence, was almost thrown out of that country as "unacceptable" shortly before he died.
Lawrence was named to the prestigious job by President Bill Clinton to reward him for his major efforts to elect Clinton to office. During his lifetime - which was characterized by deceit, fraud and double-dealing - Lawrence donated millions to the Democratic Party and raised millions from others.
Last issue (December 29, 1997), The SPOTLIGHT exclusively revealed Lawrence's connections to San Diego's corrupt ruling circles.
When ambassador to Switzerland, Lawrence became deeply involved in the extortion attempt by Edgar Bronfman to wheedle some $7 billion out of Swiss banks to "compensate holocaust victims."
The money was to be paid to the American Jewish Committee, of which Bronfman is chairman. Bronfman and Lawrence were to decide who received the money.
This was an audacious scam. Or it would have been, had it succeeded.
Lawrence's activities in Switzerland pursuing this endeavor were so obnoxious and "pushy" that he was summoned to the Swiss Foreign Ministry. He was told that if he did not cease his behavior he would be declared persona non grata and asked to leave.
Lawrence backed down. Shortly after, he died of leukemia.
Thus, another chapter in the life of an extraordinary confidence trickster is brought to light.*
Now black leaders are looking into the killing of a former commerce secretary.
Alan Keyes, a black economist who rallied social conservatives when he sought the Republican nomination for president In 1996, has joined those demanding a new investigation into the death of the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.
Three forensic experts claim Brown may have died of a gunshot wound to the head, not the plane crash that killed 35 Democrat donors on a European junket in April 1993.
However Brown died, it was most convenient for the Clinton administration. Several ranking Commerce Department careerists have said that if not ow in his grave, Brown would be in prison for bestowing partisan favors at taxpayers's expense.
On the other end of the political spectrum, Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), wrote Attorney General Janet Reno demanding the government investigate.
"The NAACP is very concerned about the ramification of these allegations, and left unanswered and unresolved, they raise serious questions,' says Mfume, a former congressman. "It is clear to me that this issue should not be allowed to fester."
The White House told The SPOTLIGHT that President Clinton has no comment on the Brown matter. Asked later at a press briefing, White House spokesman Mike McCurry attributed recent allegation to people wh "hate" Clinton and refused to answer questions.
CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION
But Keyes puts Congress in a delicate situation with a letter suggesting that, if there is no further investigation, it would suggest that a black life is less valuable that a white's life.
"It has become clear in recent days that the circumstances of the death of Commerce Secretary Brown may not have been competently investigated," Keyes wrote to congressional leaders.
"It is essential that the Congress act to ensure that the truth be known and that the suspicion of foul play be dealt with honestly,' Keyes wrote.
The appearance of indifference could fuel a growing national atmosphere of distrust and aggravate racial misunderstanding by not showing a proper respect for the serious circumstances surrounding Brown's death, Keyes warned.
"The perception that a possible assassination of a cabinet officer does not merit the vigorous attention of Congress because that cabinet officer is black reinforces lingering suspicions...That, even at the highest levels, black life is cheap in America," Keyes wrote.
"Congress must act to forestall these corrosive suspicions," he added.
Keyes served as ambassador to the United Nations and assistant secretary of state under former President Ronald Reagan. He is a popular commentator who hosts a daily syndicated radio and television program.
Keyes said efforts to suppress statements by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology experts and the apparent disappearance of crucial forensic evidence - X-rays, photographs and medical examiner reports - add to the urgency of a congressional inquiry.
The Army has ordered the pathologist who raised the issue to shut up (SPOTLIGHT, December 28).*
A federal judge has ruled White House officials "acted dishonestly" with the court. Now Clinton cronies owe nearly $300,000 in legal fees. Guess who they want to pay for the bill?
A federal judge denouncing the administration for "cover-up" and "outrageous conduct," has ordered the White House to pay the court costs of physicians who successfully challenged the 1993 health care task force's imposition of secrecy on its workings.
Royce Lamberth, the U.S. district judge for the District of Columbia, also accused administration officials "at the highest levels of government" of participating in a "cover-up" and pressuring the Justice Department to defend its "dishonest" actions.
"It is clear that the decisions here were made at the highest levels of government and the government itself is - and should be - accountable when its officials run amok,' Lamberth wrote.
The case grew out of the health care task force created by the president in 1993 and led by first lady Hillary Clinton. Its mission was to develop a plan for universal health care, which was rejected.
A group of physicians sued on grounds that the secret meetings were illegal because private citizens were involved. Federal law requires that such groups meet publicly if non-government workers are involved.
The issue later became moot when the court ordered the working papers to be made public and the task force disbanded.
Those papers showed that Mrs Clinton's "working group" included special- interest representatives who would have profited from a government-run, universal health care system.
WHITE HOUSE COVER UP
"It seems that some government officials never learn that the cover-up can be worse that the underlying conduct," Lamberth said.
He ordered the defendants to pay the $285,864 legal fees of the physicians' trade group that sued the White House in February 1993 to force open the meetings. The white House said taxpayers would pay. The White House had no other comment.
"We're pleased at this point to have any reimbursement, but the money was never the issue,' said Kathryn Serkes, spokesman for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the group that filed the suit.
"What's important are the conclusions the judge reached," she added. "Without using the president or first lady's name, he points a finger squarely at them."
When the physicians tried to open up the meetings of the larger "working group," White hose health care policy advisor Ira Magaziner told the court on March 3, 1993, the panel included "only federal government employees."
But Magaziner's statement was "actually false," Lamberth said, expressing anger that the White House and Justice Department never attempted to correct the lie.
Lamberth sought a perjury investigation of Magaziner. But the Justice Department said it would not prosecute Magaziner, who is currently the president's top adviser on policies dealing with the Internet.
Lamberth said Magaziner's misleading statements were part of a cover-up organized by the first lady's attorneys, including deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster, whose death four months later was called suicide, and Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell.
In his new book, Hubbell writes that Foster committed suicide in part because of the pressure Mrs. Clinton put on him to defend her in the case. Hubbell later resigned and pled guilty to stealing from the Little Rock law firm where he, the first lady and Foster all once worked.
WHITE HOUSE LIED
"It is clear that Mr. Magaziner relied upon the advice of White House attorneys - including Vincent Foster...and Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell," the judge wrote.
The "most outrageous conduct by the government" was the administration's failure to correct Magaziner's misstatement, the judge said.
"There were no rogue lawyers here misleading this court...the executive branch of the government, working in tandem, was dishonest with this court, and must now face the consequences of its misconduct," the judge said.
The judge also expressed anger that the Justice Department "succumbed to pressure from white House attorneys" from White House attorneys" to use false excuses and "strained interpretations" to defend the actions of Magaziner.
"Acting dishonestly, as the government did in this case, is...acting in bad faith," the judge said.*
The right to private property has always been constitutionally protected in the United States. The Fifth Amendment to our Constitution specifically states that "no person shall be...deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; not shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
These words are in the Bill of Rights, which our Founding Fathers put there to protect the people from an all powerful government. And nobody can take away these rights unless we let them.
Today, at an ever increasing rate, so-called forfeiture laws are being interpreted and implemented as weapons against the right of the people to keep their property, as our Spotlight n congress describes this week.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal (Dec. 29, 1997), James Bovard,
an authority on the rights of Americans, Presents an ugly picture
of the power of government against the people to be secure in
their right to private property.
He points out that there are more than 100 federal laws authorizing
federal agents to confiscate private property, allegedly involved
in violations of statutes on wildlife, gambling, narcotics, immigration,
money laundering, and so forth.
You would think that the courts wouldn't permit such gross violations of the Constitution. But think again. Chief Justice William Rehnquist did just that in a case involving a woman who co-owned a car with her husband. The car was seized for the illicit behavior of the husband. The wife was nowhere near the incident. She claimed her constitutional rights were violated and sued all the way to the Supreme Court, seeking compensation for the car.
In ruling against the woman Rehnquist wrote that "The government may not be required to compensate an owner for property which it has already lawfully acquired to compensate an owner for property which it has already lawfully acquired under the exercise of governmental authority.
Bovard comments that "Rehquist basically granted government unlimited power to steal: If it wants to 'lawfully acquire' private property without compensation, all it need to do is write more confiscatory laws."
The mater of innocence does not count. Nor does the mater of honesty. Currently, the Supreme Court is considering the case of a Syrian immigrant who decided to return to Syria, taking along with him $357,144. This money was the profit from the sale of two service stations he owned and loan repayments for Syrian relatives.
CONFISCATED CASH
The government confiscated the money because the traveler did not fill out a federal disclosure form stating he was taking more than $10,000 out of the country.
However, he won both in federal district court and in the appeals court, which ruled he had acquired the money honestly and therefore it should be returned to him.
The federal government has taken the case to the Supreme court
asserting that the fact that he failed to fill out the disclosure
form is the relevant consideration and not the fact that the money
was legally and honestly earned.
Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Judiciary committee,
was at one time, the chief sponsor of a bipartisan bill to correct
abuses of seizure: "Some of our civil asset seizure laws
are being used in terribly unjust ways and depriving innocent
citizens of their property with nothing that can be called due
process."
But then Hyde caved in to the power of the Justice Department. At the last minute before the committee was to vote on the measure, Hyde replaced his good bill with one crafted by lawyers from the Justice Department. The foxes were writing the rules for watching the chickens.
This new bill moved quickly through his committee and was reported out on a 26-1 vote June 21. The lone dissenter was Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who has a track record of speaking up for the people. (He is leading the move to impeach Bill Clinton, for example.)
FOR THE PEOPLE
Barr originally co-sponsored the first Hyde bill on forfeiture reform. But this new measure prompted him to say that it "seems to be precisely what the Department of Justice wanted." Barr notes that "The problem is that it has a good title [The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act] and with the reputation of Chairman Hyde behind it, that carries a lot of weight."
Time and again we have pointed out in this column that the people cannot look to their elected representatives to back them up. Congress is too busy working overtime for those who tell it what to do and when to do it. The real movers and shakers are the high level plutocrats who boldly hold all power to themselves, allowing the people to believe otherwise.
Alarmingly, Bovard says that the new Hyde bill "greatly expands prosecutors' power to seize people's assets before a trial -thereby potentially crippling a person's ability to hire defense counsel, makes it much more difficult for citizens to get summary judgements against wrongful seizures, and greatly increases the number of crimes for which government can seize a person's or a corporation's assets."
Now Liberty Lobby and The SPOTLIGHT have always contended that the American eople are way ahead of the Congress in believing in the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights. In fact, the Establishment's own polls consistently make Congress a liar.
What is more, the policy positions of Liberty Lobby and The SPOTLIGHT are those of the American majority. If the Hyde Forfeiture Reform Act moves along to become law, the American people will have one more illustration of congressional contempt for them.
As we have often said, if we do not exercise our rights and fight to keep our Constitution safe from those who would destroy it - including Congress - we deserve to lose our liberty.
We must escalate the attack. The refusal of the House to grant President Clinton fast track authority to expand NAFTA was a sign that we can win. Members of both parties stood firm because the people forced them to. It was a great defeat for the plutocrats and their Global Plantation.
That was before the current recess. Members will return on January 27. Unless they are partying it up on a tax-paid junket somewhere, they are home now. Keep the pressure on them. It is your right. It is your duty.
Government has no right to take our property, our lives or our freedom without due process, regardless of the opinions of chief Justice Rehnquist and Henry Hyde.
Remember: Your influence counts. Use it!*
The White House is intervening in New York politics.
Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the leading anti-gun crank in Congress, is being pressured by the Clinton White House to drop out of the New York Democratic primary race for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican Alfonse D'Amato.
This would leave the Democratic nod a virtual certainty for 1984 vice presidential candidate and former Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, who announced her candidacy on January 5, Ferraro resigned January 4 from her position as the in-house liberal on the popular CNN show Crossfire.
Fund-raising is a major concern of the Ferraro camp. Schumer has amassed some $8 million and can fight a costly primary campaign. Ferraro says she will need to spend at least $5.5 million just for the primary.
Clinton and Ferraro are both eyeing the $14 million-plus war chest of D'Amato is unopposed for the GOP nomination.
According to highly placed sources within the New York Democrat Party, Ferraro and Clinton held several "extended telephone conversations" about the Senate race and getting Schumer out of it, while Clinton and the first lady were recently vacationing in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Ferraro and her husband, John Zacarro, have a vacation home on the islands.
According to SPOTLIGHT sources, Ferraro has pledged to the president that she will be a leader in fighting for new anti-gun legislation in the Senate.
At the same time, Clinton has been told by political experts in New York that Ferraro has the better chance of defeating D'Amato in the federal election nest November that Schumer.
Schumer is virtually unknown among Democratic voters in the upstate regions of New York.
At the same time, these sources say, Clinton wants to see Schumer remain in the House where he can continue "hauling the administration's water" on the Clinton's anti-gun agenda.
Schumer is willing to sacrifice his safe House seat from a heavily-Jewish New York city district to seek the Senate nomination and, according to most experts, will most likely be defeated by Ferraro in a primary battle. She is currently leading by wide margins I the polls.
In addition to Schumer, Mark Green, New York city's elected consumer advocate, is also a Democratic primary Senate contender. He is seen as most likely to take votes away form Schumer in the primary. Ferraro is seen as the favorite of New York democratic women and voters in upstate.
Schumer is expected to receive heavy support from anti-gun groups, such as Handgun Control Inc., but he will be battered by pro-gun forces. On the other hand, Ferraro's anti-gun philosophy is not well known.
When push comes to shove in the Senate, D'Amato has a record of being pro- gun in most instances.*
All the signs are there: The sub-structure of the world government is in place.
David Crane, economics editor for the Toronto Star, says a global system of governance was planned for the first "Ministerial" meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to take place in Singapore in December of 1996.
That meeting was but another step "...in the creation of a global system of governance that reaches beyond tariffs to domestic policies, traditionally the sole purview of national governments."
Crane complained that "it is unlikely that we will develop a system of world government, at least for many years to come. But we are developing an array of global rules and conventions...The World Trade Organization is just one example."
As Crane is such an important figure in the world of economics (he writes three times a week), it may be said that herein is verification that NAFTA, GATT, WTO, etc are but steps toward the realization of a world government.
Although its forerunner, 'multiculturalism," is already proving the most utter disaster to North America and to Europe, what will soon be the major powers in the world, if they are not so already: Israel, Red china, India, Saudi Arabia, etc, understand full well from whence this Western sickness derives. They themselves will have no part of it. Any permanent immigration into these countries, black or white, and in the case of Israel, non-Jewish, is out of the question.
In my essay: "What Is the Hidden Meaning of GATT?" as published in The SPOTLIGHT (Feb. 14, 1994), I wrote:
"...As NAFTA is but a sly attack on the sovereignty and morale of the North American Teutonic peoples, similarly the so-called GATT is but another device of the bankers directed toward the destruction of the independent sovereignty of all peoples...It is but another stage in the drive toward world government in which, in the hopeful dream of international money powers, "We will all be one"...
We will all be one." What a misleading, if not mischievous, statement. In five words is indicated the complete fatuity of those who imagine and scheme to redesign the structure of life itself.
Is such "thinking" done wittingly and with wickedness and sinister purpose to further confuse mankind? Or do such words imply that some 'Golden Age" will come upon the earth in which there will be no master (except them, of course)?
From the tower in Brussels or wherever it may be, mankind presumably will be directed on his stumbling way: a mankind who will no longer have cause to strive. According to some religious sect that it is obvious that one-worlders control, presumably he shall lie down in peace with the lions and tigers, etc. But of what will the lions and tigers eat, for eat they must, and of raw flesh and blood that has been killed.
How utterly absurd is such a dream and how great the wickedness of those who feed such ideas into the minds of simple people. And, indeed in the end, what will become of those know-all bureaucrats when the electricity comes to an end?*
It had to happen sometime: An appellate court has ruled that citzens have Fifth Amendment rights in their dealings with tax collectors despite IRS protests.
For years, the IRS has succeeded in persuading judges to allow them to proceed in their prosecutions and audits in spite of defendant's attempts to rely on Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.
Under the guise of a supposed "tax crime exception, U.S. attorneys have been defrauding citizens targeted have been defrauding citizens targeted by the IRS fir audit. These victims have been denied their Fifth Amendment rights and thus from the protection our forefathers intended for citizens under attack from the government.
The 1993 Troescher case (U.S. v. Loren C. Troescher No. CV-93-5736SVW) was typical of IRS abuse of citizens' constitutional rights in which a client of attorney Joe Izen was denied his right not to testify or furnish evidence against himself.
The U.S. District court for the Central District of California denied Loren Troescher protection under the Fifth Amendment. The court ordered him to comply with IRS demands by producing documents and answer a series of questions for and involving tax years 1986-1991.
The District court's Order to Compel was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (as No. 95-55609) by Izen. The Order to Compel was stayed by the district court pending appeal.
On November 7. 1996 the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of Troescher and the Constitution.
* There is no general 'tax crime" exception to the Fifth Amendment. Troescher's Fifth Amendment claims were not defeated simply because he feared prosecution for tax crimes.
* Ninth Circuit case law is clear that the Fifth Amendment may be validly invoked when the taxpayer fears prosecution for tax crimes.
* On remand to the U.S. District court, Judge Stephen V. Wilson went well beyond the court of appeals in detailing the exact meaning of the protection in Troescher's case.
Wilson's order denying the IRS Motion to Compel was not only in compliance with the ruling of the higher court, but the judge rendered specifics of the protection achieved from the Fifth Amendment in the case.
The district court listed 33 questions that were asked by the IRS that Troescher was not required to answer under the protection of the Fifth Amendment.
The decision was filed December 29, 1997 (Troescher v. U.S. No. 93-5783SVW Shxl).
Patriots who read the decision opined that it should bring significant changes in IRS tactics and place much more emphasis on collection of data and evidence by the IRS tactics and place much more emphasis on collection of data and evidence by the IRS prior to proceeding against a taxpayer in court. Even then, convictions can be expected to become more difficult to obtain.
More details are available from Izen's home page on the Internet at www.joeizen.com.*
Despite repeated announcements from Congress and the government that Scial Security is on solid footing, it turns out that those in the baby boomer generation can expect returns of just 1.2 percent.
This figure is significant. People who were born before 1935 can expect to get all their money back plus an annual rate of return of 5 percent.
If the boomers, those born after 1995, would be allowed to drop out of the system and invest in an individual retirement account, they would have accumulated, according to income averages, over $1 million, as opposed to the $500,000 they would have paid into Social Security, which is getting ready to take such cost-cutting measures as raising the retirement age and maybe hiking the payroll tax.
Also benefitting more from Social Security than the boomers are poor people. A low income family in their late 30s can expect a return of 3.5 percent, while a high income two earner family of the same age is looking at the negative returns.
Another loser in the Social Security game is black men, who can expect a negative return on their contributions. Since they generally die befor they can draw out of the system the money they put into it.
NO TRUST, NO FUND
The Social Security Trust fund is a misnomer. There is no fund, and there's certainly no trust. The money goes directly into the general revenue, having been "borrowed" from Social Security, and replaced by IOUs.
Since Social security is "off-budget," meaning it can't be counted as revenue, but borrowing from the fund offsets the budget deficit to the tune of some $3 to $5 billion a year. Putting Social Security on budget would reflect the true dimension of the budget deficit, somewhere near $600 billion a year.
Suggestions that people be allowed to make either a token contribution or none at all, if they set up their own retirement accounts regulated by the government, are being voiced more and more frequently.
Dr Martin Larson, the dean of tax writers and a longtime columnist for this paper, suggested more than 10 years ago that his was the way to go. Now this voice of common sense is being heard repeated in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
These voices assure us that pressure for privatization of at least some part of Social Security will grow, especially as it becomes more of a welfare program than supplementary insurance against a loss of wages when one retires.
According to the Journal, all this talk about rates of returns makes the system's defenders nervous. In part, they fear people will stip supporting it if they see how income is shifted from the affluent to the poor. The term "Social Security" has a certain magic in public discourse; the word "welfare" does not.
So Martin Larson's advice is more timely than ever. He recognized the problem long before the papers and politicians have started talking about it. The last thing we need right now is another massive social engineering project dedicated to shifting wealth from the middle class to the poor.*
Members of the plutocratic elite lay out a Clinton doctrine for the president to follow, one which makes the world safe for Israel.
In what is apparently a trial balloon, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Pro-Israel Lobby in this country have declared war against Iraq.
Robert A. Manning, a senior fellow at the CFR, and Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near east Studies, have written an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal asking for just that. The Washington Institute is a spin-off of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, the official lobby for Israel.
In the article they analyze Clinton's foreign policy moves since entering the presidency and find them lacking any "doctrine" such as protecting American sources of oil or simply slapping down dictators who have the gall to defy us.
The dictator in this case is Saddam Hussein. "Saddam's defiance offers the president an opportunity to demonstrate that force is a credible option when vital U.S. interests are at stake".
The other examples of U.S. intervention are discounted as furthering the president's view that conflicts should be worked out by talks, backed up by a military whose purpose is to separate the warring sides, such as in Somalia and the Balkans. They also accuse the president of attempting "nation building," all of which efforts have failed, such as in Haiti.
"The idea of geopolitics are passe. Instead, it's all about geoeconomics. Ideas like 'balance of power must five way to the concept of 'cooperative security,'" which defuses threats "by drawing potentially hostile states into a network of cooperation among a broad group of nations." Clinton has no idea that most nation look to their own interests first, the authors declare, and that his policy will not work on defiant leaders such as Saddam. Thus, we muxt blow him to bits. The authors deplore that Clinton has not bombed Bagdad.
The authors see threats everywhere. Even Modern Europe still carries with it the baggage of "3,000 years of history which suggests "that greed, ambition, rivalry - the ingredients for conflict - unfortunately remain intact." the entire continent of Asia, they claim, is also ripe for "old-style conflict - this time with weapons of mass destruction."
More and more interventions is the gist of the CFR's advice. American troops in 101 countries is not enough, and there is not yet enough violence. Perpetual war for perpetual peace is still the keynote of the internationalist intellectuals who formulate American policy, none of whom have been any closer to a speeding bullet than the nearest gunfight on the streets of New York.*
The following comments were made by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) on the floor of the House of Representatives on September 17, 1997. They remain relevant today.
Mr. Speaker, earlier this year, another member severely criticized me on the House floor for declaring on C-SPAN that indeed many Americans justifiably feared their own government.
This fear has come from the police state mentality that prompted Ruby Ridge, Waco and many other episodes of an errant federal government.
Under the constitution there was never meant to be a federal police force. Even an FBI limited only to investigations was not accepted until this century.
Yet today, fueled by the federal government's misdirected war on drugs, radical environmentalism, and the aggressive behavior of the nanny state, we have witnessed the massive buildup of a virtual army of armed regulators prowling the states where they have mo legal authority.
The sacrifice of individual responsibility and the concept of local government by the majority of American citizens has permitted the army of bureaucrats to thrive.
We have depended on government for so much for so long that we as a people have become less vigilant of our liberties. As long as the government provides largesse for the majority, the special interest lobbyists will succeed in continuing the redistribution of welfare programs that occupies most of Congress' legislative time.
Wealth is limited, yet demands are unlimited. A welfare system inevitably diminishes production and shrinks the economic pie. As this occurs, anger among the competing special interests grows.
While congress and the people concentrate on material welfare and its equal redistribution, the principles of liberty are ignored, and freedom is undermined.
More immediate, the enforcement of the interventionist state requires a growing army of bureaucrats. Since groups demanding special favors from the federal government must abuse the rights and property of those who produce wealth and cherish liberty, real resentment is directed at the agents who come to eat out our substance. The natural consequence is for the intruders to arm themselves to protect against angry victims of government intrusion.
Thanks to a recent article by Joseph Farah, director of the Western Journalism Center of Sacramento, California, appearing in the Houston chronicle, the surge in the number of armed federal bureaucrats has been brought to our attention.
Farah points out that in 1996 alone, at least 2,439 new federal cops were authorized to carry firearms. That takes the total up to nearly 60,000. Farah points out that these cops were not only in agencies like the FBI, but include the EPA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and the Army Corps of Engineers. Even Interior Secretary Bruce babbitt, according to Farah, wants to arm the Bureau of Land Management. Farah logically asks, "When will the NEA have its armed art cops?" This is a dangerous trend.
It is ironic that the proliferation of guns in the hands of the bureaucrats is pushed by the antigun fanatics who hate the Second Amendment and would disarm every law-abiding American citizen. Yes, we need gun control. We need to disarm our bureaucrats, then abolish the agencies. If government bureaucrats like guns that much, let them seek work with the NRA.
GOON SQUADS
Force and intimidation are the tools of tyrants. Intimidation with government guns, the threat of imprisonment, and the fear of harassment by government agents puts fear into the hearts of millions of Americans. Four days after Paula Jones refused a settlement in her celebrated suit, she received notice that she and her husband would be audited for 1995 taxes. Since 1994 is the current audit year for the IRS, the administration's denial that the audit is related to the suit is suspect, to say the least.
Even if it is coincidental, so not try to convince the American people. Most Americans, justifiably cynical and untrusting toward the federal government, know the evidence exists that since the 1970s both Republican and Democratic administrations have not hesitated to intimidate their political enemies with IRS audits and regulatory harassment.
Even thought the average IRS agent does not carry a gun, the threat of incarceration and seizure of property is backed up by many guns. All government power is ultimately gun power and serves the interests of those who despise or do not comprehend the principles of liberty. The gun in the hands of law- abiding citizens serves to hold in check arrogant and aggressive government. Guns in the hands of the bureaucrats do the opposite. The founders of this country fully understood this fact.*