State Police: A New Level?
(11/08/2021) – FBI sent a SWAT team to raid founder of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe’s, home to seize a diary they knew he didn’t have.
FBI SWAT teams do not go out, willy-nilly, and pick random houses to raid just for the thrill of the chase–yet, One has to wonder who initially suggested this action, under what legal pretense it was initiated, who approved it, and who finally authorized it: Biden, Merrick Garland (AG), John Sullivan, Susan Rice, Ron Klain, Christopher Wray (FBI), William Burns (CIA), all of the above? This raid smells like an intimidation tactic of the current administration to quell journalistic inquiry and dissent. I wonder whose door the American version of the SS will knock down next?
(7/8/2021) – Capitol Police Field Offices coming to California and Florida
The vice Vice-President (The Duchess of East Capitol Street and California’s 12th Congressional District) recently announced she is going to open satellite D. C. Capitol Police Field offices in California and Florida to deal with increasing numbers of threats against members of Congress. Ostensibly a move to regionalize investigating and prosecuting threats against Congressional members, Jim Holt of the “Gatewaypundit” notes, “Essentially, what Nancy Pelosi is doing is expanding the federal law enforcement mechanism of the legislative branch into specific areas where they can investigate political opposition armed with legal authority” (https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/stunning-congressional-first-pelosi-opens-satellite-field-offices-dc-capitol-police-florida-california-deal-regional-threats/, 7/7/2021).
(7/1/2021) – DOJ Consent Decrees
Another wrinkle in the OBriceklainiden’s motivation to federalize police. Apparently, some police departments have entered into “consent decrees” with the U. S. Department of Justice. Consent decrees grant DOJ control over the policies, and virtual control over the daily activities of local police. Fundamentally, consent decrees curtail the proactive policing since an officer cannot be certain his or her action would be consonant with federal policies enforced by the decree agreement. Arguably, consent decrees are more damaging than federal funding, since the decrees are acknowledgements by local authorities that they need federal oversight.
(6/29/2021) – American Rescue Plan
When questioned by a journalist about the Democrats claiming Republicans defunded the police, the White House Press Secretary doubled-down to blame Republicans for not supporting “The American Rescue Plan.” The problem is that the bulk of police funding is from local taxes. A disturbing implication is that Psaki essentially went on record advocating for federalizing local police. The implication is that “The American Rescue Plan” would replace local police funding with federal police funding, essentially transforming the local police into a federalized police force. By replacing local taxes diverted from police funding by local authorities with federal money, the federal government would have a “club” to require local governments to comply with federal law enforcement directives; “do what we want or lose your money” (how do you spell “extortion?”).
(6/20/2021)
A Disturbing Hypothesis
On “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” a few nights ago, I heard Candace Owens posit a hypothesis I found both credible and terrifying (“Lori Lightfoot Doesn’t Think Much About Crime,” “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” FoxNews, aired 6/16/2021, https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/tucker-lori-lightfoot-doesnt-think-much-about-crime).
Observing the unchecked (condoned?) rioting in Portland, and Seattle, the “defund the police” or “rethink policing” mantras of Democrat voices, and the rise in violent urban crime, Owens suggested it is an indication of the left underscoring a narrative of out-of-control lawlessness in order to grant more power to federal authorities through the institution of a federal police caste.
Nor is hers the only voice. The Epoch Times reported Brandon Tatum, a former Arizona police officer came to the same conclusion (“The ‘Defund the Police’ Movement Has a Broader Agenda and Its Not to Stop the Killing of Black People: Brandon Tatum,” Masooma Haq and Jan Jekielek, The Epoch Times, June 19, 2021, https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-defund-the-police-movement-has-a-broader-agenda-and-its-not-to-stop-the-killing-of-black-people-brandon-tatum_3864676.html).
Federalized police in any form is an abhorrent prospect in this Constitutional republic. Arguably, a federalized police caste is the “standing army” against which the Founding Fathers were adamantly opposed.
Factors Supporting Their Conclusions
From Candace Owens’ conversation with Tucker Carlson, one can infer several factors that led to her conclusion that the Democrat agenda is vying for a federalized police caste.
- Unchecked summer riots
- Ignoring violence directed to destroy federal property
- Uncurbed rises in urban violent crime
- Systemic white oppression rhetoric
- White supremacy primary national threat rhetoric
- Rhetorical emphasis on “gun violence”
- Negative rhetoric about “assault weapons”
- Rhetoric promoting “common sense gun laws”
- “Defund the police,” and “rethink policing” rhetoric
- Calls for help from federal authorities by Democrat urban leaders
- Return to DOJ consent decree policies
On reviewing these factors, especially the last, one question seems obvious: “Why are urban leaders immediately calling for federal help rather than turning to their state leadership?”
A New Factor Contributing to the Conclusion the OBriceklainiden Administration Believes Police Power Emanates from the Federal Government
(Appended 10/6/2021: Updated 10/8/2021) – Federal Police to Quell Pugnacious Rhetoric Against Local School Boards
A new, and aggravating, wrinkle in the argument that the OBriceklainiden elites favor a federalized police jurisdiction over every facet of American life is the recent plea from the Washingtopian National School Boards Association to Diktator Joe.
Upset that local school boards are receiving vehement push-back on their draconian mask and vaccination mandates, and support for Critical Race Theories, the dystopian National School Boards Association petitioned Diktator Joe to invoke the Patriot Act, and label raucous parents “Domestic Terrorists.” Ever tractable to donors, Uncle Joe tasked his “moderate” Attorney General to suppress the “threats” levied against local school board members. Mr. Garland obliged by tasking the FBI with facilitating local “discussion[s] of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.” “Threat reporting, assessment, and response” sounds like potential surveillance. One wonders if Mr. Garland’s assessment of “threats” include the petitioners’ pugnacious promises to remove the local board members from their elected position come the next election cycle.
Once upon a time, threats communicated by one person against another were handled by the local authorities; the local police, or sheriffs, would apprehend the offender for “communicating a threat,” and the local district attorney would prosecute the case in front of a local judge. Now, thanks to the Washingtopian Karens, Diktator Joe, and an autocratic Attorney General who believes in a federal police state, “threats” are now a federal case, backed by the “terrorist” statutes of the Patriot Act, and the full weight of the federal justice system. Nothing better to get recalcitrant parents to toe the Party line than to threaten them with federal prosecution.
Foundational Arguments Over “Standing Armies”
“Standing Armies” is one of the constant threads in the Federalist Papers. On one hand, the authors of the Federalist Papers argued for standing armies as necessary to protect the national sovereignty against foreign incursion. Civilian militias were seen as inappropriate for various reasons. Among them were their disruption of domestic commerce, their inherently temporary constituency, and their time-delayed mobilization as a reactionary force, rather than an immediately deployable force-in-readiness (to borrow a contemporary phrase).
On the other hand, the founders recognized, all too readily, that standing armies can be used against a nation’s citizenry by oppressive national regimes. To counter-balance to this threat, the authors argued for the efficacy of a civilian militia. The core of their argument is that since the civil population will always outnumber the constituency of any standing army, it would be the civilian population’s active opposition, and its ability to mobilize its militia, that would serve as a check to a national regime’s misuse of the standing army (The Federalist Papers, No. 46,).
One of the checks to the potential abuses of a peace-time standing army argued in the Federalist Papers was the provision that the power to fund it be vested solely in the legislature, and that funding had to be re-appropriated every two years, with a proviso that the legislature be prohibited from permanently granting the executive department funds “for the support of an army” (he Federalist Papers, No. 27). In statement surprisingly appropriate to today, Hamilton wrote, “In times of insurrection, or invasion, it would be natural and proper that the militia of a neighboring State should be marched into another. . . .” (The Federalist Papers, No. 29).
The “Posse Comitatus Act” of 1878, which limits the national government’s use of federal troops to enforce domestic policies in the United States, suggests that the specter of abuse of federal military forces existed even 100 years after our founding. What the founders did not foresee, was the establishment of an internal department expressly organized for “homeland security.” There is no constitutional provision to prevent its permanent funding.
(Editor’s Note 6/20/2021): Prohibitions against using federal troops to enforce the law by the Posse Comitatus Act can be suspended by an Act of Congress, or by the President if he deems it necessary “to respond promptly in time of war, insurrection, or other serious emergency” (6 USC 466 § 866). The “insurrection” provision grants new insight into the “official” insistence that the January 6th incursion in the Capitol building was an “insurrection.” By so calling it, federal officials retain “emergency” authority, and, seemingly, are under no legal obligation to disclose any data about the incident.
Whose Job Is It?
The central role of the FBI is “to detect and prosecute crimes against the United States” (28 USC § 533) as well as investigate other specific crimes identified by federal statute. Police, on the other hand, are principally defined as “the department[s] of government concerned primarily with the maintenance of public order, safety, and health and the enforcement of the laws and possessing executive, judicial, and legislative powers,” and “the department[s] of government having as its principal function the prevention, detection, and prosecution of public nuisances and crimes” (Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, s. v. “police”). Since the central task of the FBI is detection (read surveillance), a “boots-on-the-ground” police force from this vector is unlikely.
The Department of Homeland Security was created by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The term, “Homeland Security,” on the other hand, has legislative and executive connotations. Both legislative houses have homeland security committees, and services not directly within the Department of Homeland Security also have homeland security tasks.
If some form of federalized police were instituted, the likely scenario that the first movement would be an “emergency mobilization” of some element(s) of the National Guard, which would be granted police authority (as were select elements of the National Guard at the U. S. Capitol following January 6th). A more permanent “solution” would likely come out of the Department of Homeland Security, either from a renamed, existing service, or a new service, organized “to restore order and protect the public in our cities.”
Under my tin foil hat, I wonder if the mobilization of the National Guard around the Capitol building following January 6th was a “dress rehearsal.”