Heads Up
A Weekly edition of News and Views from around our country
October 18, 1996 #5
by: Doug Fiedor fiedor19@eos.net
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IT'S A MATTER OF HONOR
A ninety year old man cut through the flack in the election, and
brought it all home this week. "It's a matter of Honor," the old man said.
"Who would you trust? Which one would you dare let your mother, wife,
daughter spend a half-hour alone with in a hotel room?"
PART OF THE PROBLEM
As governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton allowed thousands of pounds of
cocaine to be smuggled through Mena Airport. The evidence is sound. As the
state's chief law enforcement officer, he knew about the drug trafficking,
but did nothing.
As President, Bill Clinton already pardoned seven drug dealers. He
slashed the staff of the Drug Czar's office to 25, from 147 under Bush. He
cut the Drug Enforcement Agency by 227 agents. And, he stopped many of the
drug interdiction efforts at the borders.
Today, the amount of drugs available on the street is at an all time
high. So too is adolescent drug use. Kids are experimenting with drugs at a
younger age. The quality of the drugs is up. The price of the drugs is
down. And, there are more illegal drug sellers on the street than ever
before.
One bright light through all of this haze is the fact that
Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr has spent a lot of time in Arkansas
questioning people with knowledge of the drug trafficking at Mena Airport.
The evidence is there, if Starr chooses to use it. This could easily become
the scandal of the century.
Many of us believe that drugs should probably be legalized. We
cannot find authority in the Constitution for the central government to
regulate such things. But, until that time, Article II, section three of our
Constitution instructs the president to "take Care that the Laws be
faithfully executed."
To that end, Bill Clinton is a complete failure. He's consistently
crying about terrorists, and suggesting a whole series of oppressive anti-
terrorist laws. Most of the terror in our cities, however, is caused by the
drugs -- the illegal drugs, and the way the drug laws are enforced. It's
time for some changes.
NOT THE PEOPLE'S COURT
The government of the United States has a secret court. The special
court was created in 1978 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA), and so far has received over 7,500 applications to authorize
electronic surveillance within the U.S. It approved all but one.
The point is, each of these decisions was reached in secret. The
court does not publish orders, opinions, or provide a public record. And,
the people and organizations spied on were not notified of either the hearing
or the surveillance.
Now comes Clinton's Executive Order 12949. That order gives the
court authority to approve black-bag operations, and allows the Department of
Justice to conduct physical, as well as electronic, searches -- without
first obtaining a warrant in open court. Nor would they have to notify the
subject, or provide an inventory of items seized.
Oh, and the subjects of the search need not even be under suspicion
of committing a crime. Any association with a group, or member of a group,
that might pose a threat to national security is enough nowadays.
So, the police are secret, the courts are secret, the actions of both
are secret, and the reasons they are acting is secret. This presents some
very interesting possibilities. No wonder the Clintons want so much included
under the anti-terrorist laws.
And is this why the administration wants the Internet listed as a
national security asset?
THE TENTH IS DEAD
"We federalize everything that walks, talks, and moves," said Senator
Joe Biden, Democrat chairman if the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1986 to
1994. Former Attorney General Edwin Meese II agrees.
"Unfortunately, this is not much of an exaggeration," Meese told a
Heritage Foundation meeting last spring. Today there are more than 3,000
federal crimes on the books. Hardly any crime, no matter how local in
nature, is beyond the reach of federal jurisdiction. Federal crimes now
reach from serious but purely local crimes like carjacking and drug dealing
to trivial crimes like disrupting a rodeo. President Clinton's 1994 crime
bill alone created two dozen new federal crimes."
Nationalizing crime contradicts the Constitution. The Founding
Fathers gave the central government jurisdiction over three crimes: treason,
counterfeiting and piracy. The states were intended to bear responsibility
for public safety.
Meese got it exactly correct when he told the group: "Unfortunately,
the damage caused by the federalization of crime is not merely abstract or
academic. The more crime that is federalized, the greater the potential for
an oppressive and burdensome federal police state."
It sure would have been nice if Ed Meese felt that way while he was
Attorney General. Because, if he did, it didn't show.
KNOB CREEK
Thousands of people attended the Knob Creek, Kentucky function last
weekend. One report says that there were about seventy-five shooters there
with class III licenses. That's an automatic weapon, for those of you not
into guns. Many of those guns can fire from twenty-five to one-hundred
dollars worth of ammunition per minute. And that, folks, is what an assault
weapon really is: full automatic.
As usual, vendors were selling everything from Tommy guns to
T-shirts. One report said that over the three days, at least twenty-thousand
people attended.
There were also a few side meetings within the main gathering.
Herein is a short report from an attendee of one such meeting:
Knob Creek Ky. Oct 12,1996 Representatives from various Militia groups
meet this weekend to consolidate their resources in the never ending fight
to preserve liberty and freedom. Many new friendships and bonds where
established.
Leaders agreed to expand their capabilities to establish a nation-
wide communications system which will serve the movement in its efforts to
re-establish a constitutional government.
Further efforts will be reported in this newsletter.
THOUGHT POLICE
Somewhere buried in that huge budget bill passed in the last days of
Congress was another child pornography statute. This one outlaws
"computer-generated" depictions of children engaging in sexual conduct, the
New York Times reports.
This law is called The Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. The
law expanded the definition of child pornography to include images not
necessarily based on a real child. You know, drawings. And, they set a
mandatory prison sentence of 15 years for creating or transmitting this type
of drawing!
Yup! You read it correctly. You can now get 15 years. Mandatory.
For drawing.
It looks like we're going to have to remove a few dozen medical books
from the Internet. And for those of us who are poor artists, we better not
try drawing humans lest some mean, near-sighted prosecutor misinterpret the
art as being a minor engaged in "lascivious" behavior.
And another thing: I seem to remember something being said in a
psychology class way back when that the people who continually fixate on such
things are themselves the very ones with the personal problems. . . .
IT'S A SECRET
Word on the street is that the indictments from the Whitewater grand
jury were out last week. They just were not made public. We the people are
said to not be able to handle the information before the election.
Really, there was a "deal" made between the White House, a few
Members of Congress and, evidently, Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr.
Clinton threatened to veto one or two appropriations bills -- specifically
the parks bill -- and make it look like the Republicans were shutting down
parts of the government again, if the indictments were released before the
election. Apparently, Clinton's blackmail scheme worked.
Three independent sources say that there were "a few" White House
people indicted. No one would say more. Uncharacteristically for
Washington, everyone is very quiet about this.
Members of the press have to know, but nothing is being said. Why?