Good morning, kids. If there is one overarching theme or characteristic to the horrifying state of the nation and the world in general, arguably it's got to be the attempt at every level to silence any and all voices of dissent and opposition to those who have brought us to said state. A number of stories today (and every day, really) serve to underscore this proposition. First, I've heard of bombing when you tell a joke. But SWAT-ing?
Whatever one may think of the COVID-19 situation, one thing that cannot be denied is that it pushed America to its breaking point. Between the lockdowns, the closures, the runs on stores, the increase in substance abuse, and the online predation of children, and the the impromptu Salem Witch Trials of people seen without socially acceptable masks, it was a rough time in America. And plenty of people tried to inject a little levity into the situation to take the edge off, including Alexandria, Louisiana, resident Waylon Bailey.
The Washington Post reports that in March 2020, Bailey posted the following to his Facebook page:
SHARE SHARE SHARE ! ! ! ! JUST IN: RAPIDES PARISH SHERIFFS OFFICE HAVE ISSUED THE ORDER, IF DEPUTIES COME INTO CONTACT WITH ‘THE INFECTED’ SHOOT ON SIGHT….Lord have mercy on us all. #Covid9teen #weneedyoubradpitt.
Bailey was making a joke. But the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office was not laughing. A few hours later, a SWAT team showed up at Bailey’s home without a warrant but with bulletproof vests and brandishing weapons. Bailey was arrested for making a terroristic threat. According to court documents, as Bailey was handcuffed one of the deputies stated, “…next thing [you] put on Facebook should be not to f*ck with the police.” The other officers laughed. . .
. . . It was also noted that Bailey’s post was in response to another comical post and contained emojis.
The appellate judge ruled that Bailey could continue with his legal action and concluded that the district court was in error when it said that Bailey’s post was not protected by the First Amendment and in granting qualified immunity to Iles and Wood. And then it reiterated that it “REVERSE the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Defendants and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
. . . I’ve known a lot of cops, and almost every one of them was a stand-up person. That having been said, what happened in Alexandria, Louisiana? The detectives I knew would have put something out on Facebook (had it existed at the time) letting the public know that they were not shooting, arresting, harassing, or otherwise vexing infected people. And then they may well have called Mr. Bailey in to explain himself. They would not have sent a SWAT team to Bailey’s home.
The pandemic brought out the worst in many people. . .
. . . This is unfortunate. We have come to expect that our federal government will co-opt a crisis to expand its reach. It is even more unfortunate when it happens on a local level. It is what happens when people succumb to a crisis, rather than rise to it. Even more chilling is the fact that the post that set the SWAT team into motion was intended as a joke. Compound that with the facts that the district court found that Bailey’s rights had not been violated and shielded the detective and the sheriff, a clear picture emerges as to how dire things are. And not just for Donald Trump and his supporters or for someone who was defending his son outside of an abortion clinic. Even one’s jokes are suspect. Now, an off-hand Facebook comment could land one in Room 101.
That's just it. The "pandemic" – that is the artificially-induced "panic" over what really was bad flu, it's origins notwithstanding – or really any other crisis should have brought out the best in us. What happened revealed not much human nature, but how the greatest society and people on earth, once a beacon of morality and decency flawed though from time to time it might have been, had been so utterly degenerated by the forces of heathen leftist progressivism.
There's always been corruption and crooked cops to one degree or another everywhere, even here in the USA. But as we know all to well, the police have been far from the defenders of our civil liberties as was amply demonstrated during the lockdowns as well as the George Floyd summer of love wave of terror.
In that vein, we move from the police to the prosecutors, judges and worst of all, the juries. That is, our erstwhile fellow citizens in these two cases:
First, for the crime of sitting down and blocking a doorway, this happens:
The Biden Department of Justice successfully swayed a jury on Tuesday to convict five pro-life activists for demonstrating at a controversial abortion clinic, which the DOJ argued violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, also known as the FACE Act.
Conservatives quickly expressed outrage over the case, especially since the activists — Lauren Handy, 28, John Hinshaw, 67, Heather Idoni, 61, William Goodman, 52, and Herb Geraghty, 25, — face 11 years behind bars and were thrown in jail to await their sentences. The activists also each face a $350,000 fine.
“The evil apparatchiks in Washington, DC, are imprisoning these five patriots for this simple act of demonstrating against abortion,” [pundit Michael] Knowles said. “These five pro-life activists demonstrated in defense of babies at an abortion mill, an infanticide factory, and for that they face more than a decade in prison.”
The activists engaged in a sit-in demonstration at the D.C.-based Washington Surgi-Clinic late-term abortion facility in October 2020. According to reporting from CBN, the demonstrators sang songs, prayed, locked arms in front of the facility’s staff entrance, and attached themselves with ropes and chains to block doors inside the building in an effort to “delay the murder of kids,” the activists said.
I would admit that blocking doors with ropes and chains, regardless of the reasoning, is definitely criminal behavior But does it warrant over a decade in prison and financial ruin, epecially in light of how homegrown and illegal alien murderers, rapists and thieves are dealt with by the same prosecutors, judges and juries?
Biggs, a 38-year-old U.S. Army veteran of Ormond Beach, Florida, was convicted in May of seditious conspiracy; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of an official proceeding; conspiracy to use force, intimidation or threats to prevent officers of the U.S. from discharging their duties; interference with law enforcement during civil disorder; and destruction of government property.
During his sentencing hearing, he reportedly admitted that he “messed up” on January 6 while claiming he was “seduced by the crowd” to move forward at the nation’s Capitol.
“I know that I messed up that day, but I am not a terrorist,” he said.
“I wanted to see what would happen,” he said. “My curiosity got the better of me, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.”“I’m not a terrorist,” he added. “I don’t have hate in my heart.”
Another former leader of the Proud Boys was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Thursday.
Unlike the pro-life protestors who did commit "crimes," albeit of a relatively benign nature, these guys and everyone else who made the mistake of being duped into being invited into the Capitol Building by the FBI and DOJ, were even less "criminal" in their behavior, doing nothing more than getting tricked into the moral equivalent of a panty raid. And for that, they have been ruined and forced to "confess" much in the same manner as those beaten into signing their names for Stalin and Beria. And considering there are multiple confirmed reports of abuse by guards in the jails where scores of people still languish to this day, that is not hyperbole.
But as I stated above, the worst are our erstwhile fellow citizens. Not just on juries either but in our everyday lives who are de facto judges, juries and executioners if we dare commit the crime of wrong-think in their presence:
George Washington University ’24 Law School student Tahmineh Dehbozorgi knows the dangers of a weaponized justice system. Earlier this week, she told me how, as a teenager, she and her family fled from one in Iran in 2015.
Dehbozorgi’s grandfather was among the first targets of the new regime after the fall of the Shah in 1979. He was thrown in prison, where he faced execution without trial. His crime: He worked as a public servant in the previous government before the Islamic Revolution.
The new Islamic regime also used guilt-by-association tactics to prosecute lawyers who represented its opponents. So when the news broke here that President Trump’s legal advisers would be indicted along with him, Dehbozorgi was alarmed. Earlier this month, she went on Fox and Friends to talk about why the government’s prosecution of Trump’s lawyers should bother everyone, regardless of which side you’re on.
As she later tweeted:
As a law student, seeing attorneys named as co-conspirators and threatened to have their licenses revoked only because they gave legal advice to former President Trump worries me. This is against the very nature of the American justice system I’ve long aspired to be a part of:As a law student, seeing attorneys named as co-conspirators and threatened to have their licenses revoked only because they gave legal advice to former President Trump worries me. This is against the very nature of the American justice system I’ve long aspired to be a part of. pic.twitter.com/y4dxufXHGa
— Tahmineh Dehbozorgi (@DeTahmineh) August 16, 2023
As if to prove her point, left-wing “Law Twitter” swiftly reacted warning that she may not be able to pass the character fitness test for admission to the bar. The morning after she tweeted about her Fox appearance, prominent Maryland lawyer and DNC operative Robbie Leonard, tweeted:
If she’s in law school in Maryland, then please put me on her character committee interview.
This suggests that if it were up to him (which it’s not) Dehbozorgi wouldn’t pass her character and fitness exam—essential for bar admission in every US jurisdiction. . .
. . . There was no due process for Dehbozorgi’s grandfather. He sat in prison for months with other employees of the former government until her grandmother finally got him out. Many of his colleagues were killed by the regime without a trial. She says, “nobody, no party, should be using the justice system for their political gain.”
As an aside, now you can understand why our criminal justice system is so utterly fucked up: because our law schools have been pumping out little Roland Freisler's by the bushel for decades now. And that's a microcosm our educational system in general.
If a Martian appeared in Washington, D.C. today, made a thorough study of the contemporary scene (which takes Martians about six seconds, ya know), and concluded that a traitor class had captured the U.S. government and was determined to drive the nation into a ditch, how could you convince him or her or xer otherwise? Certainly not from the actions of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which just featured as a speaker a former top official of the Iranian regime. Yes, that Iranian regime, the one whose top officials frequently chant, “Death to America.”
The Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday that STRATCOM “earlier this month hosted a former top Iranian official who came under fire last year for bragging about the hardline regime’s efforts to assassinate American leaders.” STRATCOM’s featured America-hater was Hussein Mousavian, “a former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team who works as a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University.”
Why is a guy from a regime that considers the United States an enemy and has vowed to destroy it working at Princeton University, as well as speaking for U.S. Strategic Command? Because the same America-hating leftism has infected them both. . .
. . . In response to the entirely justifiable outrage, STRATCOM issued the expected mealy-mouthed non-apology: “We always seek in our panelists and speakers a broad array of perspectives, including those which differ from our own. We were aware of Mr. Mousavian’s previous position within the Iranian government and believe that, in the context of the Deterrence Symposium, we would have benefited from that insight into an opposing viewpoint.” Yeah, sure, the Biden regime is renowned the world over for its respect for opposing viewpoints.
As Robert Spencer also reports – which made my heart sink – NYC will make this guy feel right at home just before the 22nd anniversary of when, as Bro-Fo Omar states, "Some people did some things."
Of course at the top of the heap of all this is the Biden Regimes revolting persecution of its chief political rival Donald Trump, both as a distraction from its own real, massive and potentially treasonous selling out of our national security and as a means to put down once and for all the resistance that he, Trump knowingly or not, engendered. And on that note, at the risk of pissing many of you off, it pisses me off that in the face of all of this, Trump of all people goes on as if it's business as usual.
As people in Florida dealt with the fallout of the hurricane, Trump posted about how he got more votes than DeSantis in Florida, though DeSantis was on a midterm ballot and Trump was on a presidential ballot.
“Ron DeSanctimonious is always talking about the number of votes he got in Florida,” Trump posted Thursday in a video. “He doesn’t say that I got a record 1.1 million more votes than him!”
Really, Mr. President? Please, for the love of all that is right and good, stop. Just stop. Meh. He won't. The nation and the world are at an inflection point and a man who, despite his foibles is still an undeniable force to be reckoned with because of the millions of people who appreciate what he did and what he is going through. That includes me. But this kind of stuff is just a turn-off. And that's putting it mildly. Then again, what does it matter? If they are going to try and likely succeed in stealing 2024 like they did 2020, then why should I get so upset? We're gone anyway, right?
Have a good Labor Day weekend. See you tomorrow for the hobby thread. Be there. Aloha.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in the links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.
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