The Missouri Domestic Terrorist Report

The Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) issued a report in response to a request by the Department of Homeland Security in which they profiled as possible terrorists those individuals who were concerned about taxes, unemployment, illegal immigration, border security, gangs, abortion, gun restrictions, the high cost of living, the IRS, FEMA, and the Federal Reserve.  To this, MIAC added concerns about people who were attracted to gun shows, shortwave radios, action movies, movies with Rambo-like white action heroes, Tom Clancy novels, and Ron Paul, Bob Barr, or Chuck Baldwin.

Americans for Limited Government requested the report under the Missouri Sunshine Law and were told that the state of Missouri only had a draft version of the report, they did not know who had written it, and they had no documentation of the sources used for the report.  The report did directly cite the Southern Poverty Law Center and it lifted some information from the website of the Anti-Defamation League, which was not cited.  These two organizations also played a major role in the highly foolish Department of Homeland Security "rightwing extremism" report of several months ago as well.

Neither report is very reassuring with their inference that agents of the government view the exercise of free speech, use of the press, assembly, and petition of grievances guaranteed in the First Amendment with such suspicion, largely informed by the viewpoint of the far left.  As we can see on college campuses across the nation, where the left enjoys unchallenged power, there is no freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, or of petition in their docile domains.  We also see the very thin skin of the Obama administration already developing and their frequent put-downs of Fox News and conservative and libertarian radio commentators.  We hear Mark Lloyd, the Diversity Czar on the FCC, seeking taxes and fines to suppress our freedom of speech unless that speech furthers the aims of the left and who openly admires Hugo Chavez's suppression of freedom of speech, press, and assembly in Venezuela.  We hear Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director, telling us she admires greatly and thinks constantly about Mao, who killed tens of millions of dissenters and millions who were not even dissenters, but who he suspected might become dissenters.

It has become clear that the socialist left has declared itself an enemy of our First Amendment rights in addition to many of our other individual rights.  Americans who believe in the Constitution and the sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must start taking this threat of the socialists and Marxists very seriously.

Who Elects These People to Congress?

Representative Alcee Hastings introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill to give Attorney General Eric Holder, a man of truly dubious judgment, the sole discretion to decide if groups opposing government policy on abortion, guns, immigration, state's rights, and much more were domestic terrorist or hate groups. Another Hastings bill (HR 645) would use $360 million to set up at least 6 national emergency centers on military installations to house a large number of people in an emergency or major disaster, or for other appropriate needs. Would an appropriate need be to detain people who believed they had a Second Amendment right to keep a gun?

Alcee Hastings was named by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to be the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, but a rebellion among Democrats prevented that. You see, Hastings was an impeached Florida judge prior to being elected to the House. He was accused of accepting a bribe of $150,000 and impeached by the House. The Senate found him guilty in 1989. He was only the sixth federal judge ever to be found guilty by the Senate. His absurd judgment may not have been enough to keep the Democrats from making him Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, but it was a bit too embarrassing to put him forward given his impeachment as a judge, with subsequent loss of his judicial job.

Alcee Hastings was first elected to the House in 1992 as the representative of the 23rd district of Florida. It appears that the Americans who live in the area of Ft. Lauderdale and North Palm Beach and various places to the west of the beach area are not of sound judgment.