'Gunwalker' subpoena dispute escalates

Via Sipsey Street Irregulars

WASHINGTON - Today, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing to explore whether Congress has the right to hold the Justice Department in contempt in the so-called ATF "gunwalker" investigation.

Experts indicated the Justice Department should probably be more forthcoming when responding to the document requests from Congress. They said Congress has the right to resort to contempt proceedings, but that the document tug-of-war between the co-equal branches of government is not unusual.

In this case, it's getting heated. Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, has said more subpoenas are forthcoming. He accuses the Justice Department of withholding documents after a subpoena he issued to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF); which is under the Justice Department's jurisdiction.

Issa subpoenas ATF over gunwalking allegations

Morton Rosenberg, a specialist in American public law, formerly with the Congressional Research Service, told Congress, "the Department of Justice has the power to string out your investigation, refuse to obey it, and then when it's time for contempt...say all you can do is bring a civil action which will extend and delay your constitutional ability to enforce your" legislative powers.

Drugged, Kidnapped and Deluded Foreign Volunteers

N.Y Draft Riots

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The civil war the first American war in which soldiers were drafted. The South was first to employ the draft, followed by the North. In March of 1863, the National conscription act was passed. Draftees would be called by lottery. Once called, a draftee had the opportunity to either pay a commutation fee of $300 to be exempt from a particular battle, or to hire a replacement that would exempt him from the entire war. Over the course of the riots, Blacks were often the target of many of the rioters. Lincoln sent federal troops to put down the riots. There are various estimates of the number of dead and wounded– ranging from 70 to 1,000.

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After McClellan’s complete defeat on the Peninsula and Burnside’s bloody disaster at Fredericksburg in late 1862, volunteering practically ceased in the North by the spring of 1863. This led to Lincoln’s draft, which in reality was a whip to stimulate volunteers – and the eventual use of captured slaves who counted toward State enlistment quotas which helped white Northern men avoid military service. Creative inducements to serve were also utilized in Canada, a fertile source of those needed to dress in blue.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
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“The proximity of Canada to the United States led to violations of Canadian neutrality in various ways by the more vicious of the enrolling officers and bounty brokers. Canadians resident in the United States became victims, and just as there was disguised recruiting in European countries, so recruiting under one guise or another occurred in Canada.

The first cases of coercion and kidnapping of Canadians to come to light occurred in 1862, with the mistreatment of John Roge, who had come from Canada to the United States in 1862. At Portland, Maine, he met a party of men who asked him to enlist and on his refusal forced him to go to their camp. They kept him three days until the arrival of the commanding officer, who tried to swear him in. Upon his flat refusal, he was thrown into the guardhouse; after a month’s confinement he was induced “through cold and misery” to enlist in the regiment, which proved to be the Seventh Maine Infantry.

Stated in the words of Governor General Monck of Canada to Lord Lyons, the enormity of [these offenses] stands out in its nakedness: “These papers appear to establish the fact that a serious violation of British Territory was committed by a Party of the United States soldiers who crossed the frontier armed and in uniform [on January 8, 1863], entered a house in the township of Wolfe Island in Canada West [Ontario] and thence forcibly carried off a man named Ebenezer Tyler. On March 9, the Governor General reported that he had heard that Tyler had been confined as a deserter in Watertown, New York.

The greater number of complaints dealt, however, with the luring of Canadians across the border by false premises of work at high wages. Richard Malone was represented as the victim of fraud by parties who engaged him, along with “many other young men of the city” of Montreal, to work as a laborer in the mines of Lake Superior. When the Canadians reached their supposed destination, they were told that there was no work for them in the mines and that their only recourse was to enlist in the United States Army.

In the fall of 1863, Clark E, Lloyd [of Montreal]…was drugged by a recruiting agent and induced to enlist. French Canadians speaking only their own patois were even more helpless. Two Canadians…were hired in Canada to chop wood; but when they reached a point near Concord, New Hampshire, they were enlisted in the army under false names. On the same date that he reported the case of these two youths (April 2, 1864), Lyons reported to [Northern Secretary of State William] Seward that thirteen men, all with French names, had been brought over the border, ostensibly to cut wood but actually to be drugged and put into the Second New Hampshire Volunteers.

[On a visit to the Canadian legislature on September 7, 1863, Lord Lyons]…held in his hand a placard, which he had been told had been widely circulated in Montreal, stating that two hundred men were wanted for government service in the United States, to whom $200 would be paid at once and who would ultimately receive $500 in addition to clothing and pay. Applicants were invited to apply at Ogdensburg, New York, where they would be inspected. Another speaker also reminded the house that Canadians had been offered high wages for work in the States, but, as the road to employment lay through New York, where the deluded workers had often in the past been forced to enlist in the army. Members were reminded that the Foreign Enlistment Act and the Queen’s Proclamation of 1861 made it a misdemeanor to enter another country to enlist.”

(Foreigners in the Union Army and Navy, Ella Lonn, LSU Press, 1951, pp. 458-463)
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Drugged, Kidnapped and Deluded Foreign Volunteers

Scholars Debate Over Black Role In The Confederacy

Ijames, who is black, said it is unrealistic to maintain that no people of color took sides against the Union. A seventh-generation North Carolinian, Ijames said some blacks may have pledged allegiance to the Confederates as a means of self-preservation.

This is something Gregory Perry has begun to consider about his ancestor.

“I can only think there must have been something more about this war, something we don’t know about, for him to have had such a connection to the Southern people or to the land,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ed Smith, an American University professor who has spoken widely on the subject, says today’s audiences can’t really gauge the societal, economic and other pressures that played on blacks and whites during slavery.

Via SHNV
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Whitehall Memorial Park Dedication Service

(Earl L Ijames, Curator NC Museum of History speaks on NC blacks: slaves, free, slave owners, and Confederate soldiers, facts they don't teach you in school. BT)

The Empire Has No Clothes

Highlights

• The U.S. maintains more than 700 military bases worldwide, spanning an area that dwarfs the great empires of world history. Although many leaders today support a policy of foreign interventionism, extensive military engagement around the world is a policy at odds with principles of the republic’s founders—and at odds with the economic, political, and security interests of the American people.
  
  
• The U.S. has military dominance but no longer the economic dominance to match; it accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world’s military spending but only about 30 percent of global GDP. The U.S. is so dominant today only because other empires declined as a result of losing wars (Germany and Japan) or becoming overextended abroad relative to their frail economies (Britain, France, and the Soviet Union). If the U.S. stays the course, America’s economic dominance and political influence will likely decline.
  
  
• Why is the U.S. disproportionately attacked by terrorists? Although the president, other highlevel policymakers, the foreign policy elite, the media, and even large segments of the public are in a state of denial, the key factor is obvious to the rest of the world: the interventionist U.S. foreign policy in support of the informal American global empire. The U.S. has received unfavorable ratings from people in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries around the world, not because of its political and economic freedoms or its culture, but because of its policies—particularly toward the Middle East.
  
  
• Small government conservatives who favor military adventurism should check their history and rethink their assumptions. Increases in nondefense spending have been lower during administrations in which warfare was sporadic or nonexistent (Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton) than during the three administrations in which major long-term wars were being fought. Like prior wars, Bush II’s “War on Terror” has led to increases in both defense spending and nondefense spending (which has increased more during the wartime presidency of George W. Bush than during any comparable period since the wartime administration of Lyndon Johnson).
  
  
• Knowing that popular support for military actions unrelated to American security is fragile, U.S. policymakers resort to “war on the cheap.” This strategy has resulted in the use of military tactics that increase casualties among civilians in the nation being helped. The use of heavy U.S. air and ground firepower results in the moral equivalent of killing people to save them. Thus, military interventions for humanitarian purposes usually achieve the opposite result and are morally questionable.
  
  
• Heavy-handed U.S. military intervention to facilitate social work almost always fails because of the onset of mission creep (e.g., in Lebanon and Somalia), the creation of enemies as a result of taking sides in local disputes or using excessive force (e.g., in Lebanon, Somalia, and Iraq), the exacerbation of original problems (e.g., ethnic cleansing in Kosovo), or the loss of public support at home (e.g., in Lebanon, Somalia, and Iraq).
  
  
• In a post–Cold War world, taking into account only the security of American citizens, their property, and U.S. territory, the benefits of an interventionist foreign policy have declined and the costs have escalated dramatically. Americans continue to pay excessive taxes to defend countries that are rich enough to defend themselves or to occupy conquered countries in the world’s backwaters (e.g., Iraq and Afghanistan). Their sons and daughters are killed on remote foreign battlefields for reasons even more remote from U.S. vital interests.

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Synopsis

RAPE OF GERMAN WOMEN: After Germany lost the Second World War

These mass rapes were one of the greatest crimes against women throughout history. Rapists were mainly Red Army soldiers, many of them - non-white soldiers from the Asian republics of the Soviet Union.. However, unfortunately, it must be said that many rapists, were American soldiers. They certainly behaved like animals, but they had official sanction. The European women of those nations that had been allies of Nazi Germany were targeted too.

Millions of women victims raped by Russian soldiers during the last months of World War II. Anthony Beevor's book "Berlin -- The Downfall 1945" documents rape by Russian soldiers. "Beevor's conclusions are that in response to the vast scale of casualties inflicted on them by the Germans the Soviets responded in kind, and that included rape on a vast scale. It started as soon as the Red Army entered East Prussia and Silesia in 1944, and in many towns and villages every female aged from 10 to 80 was raped." The author "was 'shaken to the core' to discover that even their own Russian and Polish women and girls liberated from German concentration camps were also violated." Until recent years, East German women from the World War II era referred to the Red Army war memorial in Berlin as "the Tomb of the Unknown Rapist."

"This is not a love-making process."

"This is not a love-making process." -- Prof. Charles Tiefer, testifying to Darrell Issa's committee on the subject: "Obstruction of Justice: Does the Justice Department Have to Respond to a Lawfully Issued and Valid Congressional Subpoena?"

Gary Martin of the Houston Chronicle's Washington Bureau reports "Lawmakers press feds for documents on cartel gun sales."

He also reports that the pressure is becoming bi-partisan.

House and Senate lawmakers are threatening to block presidential nominees and subpoena Justice Department officials this week to force the release of documents on a controversial gun trafficking program that allowed American shipments of weapons to Mexican cartels.

Congressional investigators claim U.S. officials allowed American gun stores to sell weapons in bulk to Mexican buyers in order to track the shipments and identify the ringleaders, known as "Operation Fast and Furious" under "Project Gunrunner."

Weapons from those sales were found at the scene of two separate attacks on U.S. agents, and Congress wants to know if they were used specifically in the deaths of Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent Jaime Zapata or Customs and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, claims the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is conducting a cover-up in its refusal to hand over documents and witnesses to congressional investigators.

Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he will block President Barack Obama's nominees from confirmation until he gets the documents he needs for his panel's investigation.

In the House, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., will hold the first of several hearings today into the failure of the Justice Department and the ATF to cooperate with the congressional probes. Issa is threatening to issue subpoenas to retrieve documents and to gain access to witnesses.

Bipartisan support

Missouri-Kansas Border War/1st NC Confederate to die to be honored in Raleigh/NC to dedicate grave markers for 20 Confederates

Missouri-Kansas Border War

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Henry Wyatt Statue at state Capitol

Monuments and memorials on the Common

The Wyatt Fountain on the Common is in memory of Henry L. Wyatt, a 19-year-old who was the first to die in battle of the Civil War.

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1st NC Confederate to die to be honored in Raleigh

Verbatim post

A ceremony at the North Carolina Capitol will remember the battle where the first Confederate soldier from the state died.

Nineteen-year-old Henry Lawson Wyatt died at the Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861 in Virginia. Wyatt was born in Richmond, Va., but was living in Edgecombe County when he became a Confederate soldier. A statue dedicated to Wyatt is located on the Capitol grounds.

On Saturday, the North State Rifles re-enacting group will speak about Wyatt's life at his monument, where they also will model the uniforms worn by Tar Heels soldiers in the war's first year and give a lecture on the battle.

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NC to dedicate grave markers for 20 Confederates

Verbatim post

Grave markers honoring 20 Confederate soldiers who died during the three-day Battle of Bentonville will be dedicated at the site in Four Oaks.

The Union army paroled at least 45 wounded Confederates before marching on to Goldsboro, leaving the troops in the care of John and Amy Harper, whose home had become a field hospital. Twenty-three of the soldiers died, and 20 were buried on the farm.

The exact location of the graves was lost over time. Using a 19th century photo of the graves and ground-penetrating radar, archeologists found the graves, which will be dedicated Saturday.

Nearly 4,200 Union and Confederate soldiers died in the battle, which occurred in March 1865 near the end of the Civil War.

Leon Panetta: Is He A Sneak Communist?

The Market Ticker ®

Verbatim post
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This is some wild stuff folks....

Researchers Trevor Loudon and Cliff Kincaid are warning the Senate to examine CIA Director Leon Panetta’s anti-defense record, associations with identified communists, and support for the Marxist Institute for Policy Studies before voting on his nomination as Secretary of Defense. A vote could come as early as Tuesday in the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Is this real?

Look folks, the Secretary of Defense is one of the most-critical positions in our civilian control of the armed forces. It is the "interface" between the military and civilian system, responsible for reporting directly to the President and to Congress.

Any evidence of contamination - that such a nominee is in any way influenced by or is under the control of Marxists or Communists needs thorough examination. If there's any sort of evidence that these allegations are real then Panetta cannot be confirmed.

Yes, people are entitled to the presumption of innocence in a court of law. But you're entitled to nothing of the sort when under Senate confirmation. The Senate's job is not to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, it is to give the nod to someone who they believe is beyond reproach for the job they are being appointed to.

There are many who believe that Obama is a confirmed Marxist and Socialist. Many believe he's a communist. (Ain't no ifs, ands or buts about it. BT) This just adds fuel to that fire, and results in the need for an even-more-thorough examination of Panetta's record in this regard.

Perhaps this is nothing more than a smear campaign, but whether it is or not deserves a full examination. The Senate has a duty of advice and consent in these appointments, and should they confirm Panetta without examining, in detail and in public, these allegations they will have failed in that regard and any harm that comes to this nation as a consequence shall fall on and be their responsibility.

Roger Hedgecock uses the "I" word.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Impeachment. Personally, I don't think, given certain spineless GOP realities, that impeachment is in the cards. This is, however, likely a game-changer. I DO think a full exploration of the truth of the Gunwalker Scandal will:

1. Remove Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano and perhaps Hillary Clinton and Robert Muller as well (don't forget the cover-up of the circumstances of Terry's murder is an FBI operation). Lesser lights (Restrepo, Melson, Breuer, some ATF & DOJ managers and attorneys) have an excellent prospect of federal prison, especially if they don't roll now.

2. Deliver a huge blow to both the citizen disarmament agenda and the legitimacy of the Imperial Federal Leviathan.

3. Wreak organizational havoc in the bureaucratic instruments of the Leviathan for as long as a decade. The next time somebody gets a hair-brained scheme, someone will say, "Yeah? Remember Gunwalker?"

4. And, incidentally, make Barack Obama a one-term president.

No one with half a brain will trust anything these discredited Mandarins say for a long, long time. Even if we fall short of impeachment,

Pizza Guy Pulls Gun on Robber

Via Our Eternal Struggle

Police Misconduct NewsFeed Weekend Recap 06-10-11 to 06-11-11

Injustice Everywhere

Verbatim post

Here are the 8 reports of police misconduct tracked in our National Police Misconduct News Feed for this weekend, June 10-11, 2011:

• An Orlando FL police officer is accused by several witnesses of shooting a man in the back as he fled from a drug sting and it appears as though he may have been unarmed as well. [3] http://bit.ly/kdzeWj

• An Elyria OH police officer has been charged with misdemeanor assault after he was suspended for 5 days for punching a DUI suspect who was handcuffed to a hospital bed. [0] http://bit.ly/irVLm5

• An Elmore OH police officer took advantage of a plea deal involving charges for sexting and exchanging nude pics with a 14yr-old girl. No word on what sentence he’ll receive yet. Apparently the girl’s father gave him a second chance by telling him not to do it anymore but the officer kept having chat sessions with her anyway. [1] http://bit.ly/mT6nJx

• A Gaffney SC cop resigned after charged with a felony DUI for hitting a utility pole while off duty which resulted in an 18yr-old being injured. [0] http://bit.ly/k0gRcw

• A Norfolk VA police officer was arrested on 11 charges including sales of steroids or stimulants and distribution of marijuana [0] http://bit.ly/jmdtTp

• An Elwood KS police officer was fired while he’s the subject of an unspecified criminal investigation by state bureau of investigation [2] http://bit.ly/kucyw7

• A Smith County TX deputy was suspended after arrested for drunk driving when he was found passed out in an SUV at an intersection [0] http://bit.ly/m7VoNJ

• And finally, the Bandara TX police department is being accused of corruption involving documented problems with evidence handling by a cop who is suing for discrimination after he was disciplined for leaving evidence in his police car. [0] http://bit.ly/jvIl5s

Last week was very difficult and things didn’t get much better over the weekend. We could really use some donations to help out right about now even though I really hate to ask. Let’s just hope this week is better.

That’s it for this weekend, stay safe out there.

Taming the Alaskan Hummingbird

Roundabout via Cousin Colby

Accused Sit in Jail As Mil Courts Drag Out Appeals

Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. Brian W. Foster served nearly a decade in Leavenworth for a crime he didn't commit.

Foster is now free and serving his country once more. The military appeals system that failed him, meanwhile, is still trying to right itself.

"It's a terrible system," Foster said. "The judges and attorneys who had the opportunity to stand up and say 'this isn't right,' they didn't do that."

The court that finally freed Foster in 2009 called him a victim of "judicial negligence" and "intolerable" errors. The nine-year delay between conviction and appeal was "unacceptable," the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals acknowledged.

While Foster's experiences were extreme, they were not entirely unique. Other Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines have likewise languished in appellate limbo.