A federal judge provided proof that the Federal Bureau of Investigation under Joe Biden spied on hundreds of thousands of Americans. This is an exceedingly egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment. Sadly this is far from an isolated incident, It seems like similar instances have occurred on almost of monthly basis.
No occupant of the White House has proved to be more hostile to the fundamental rights and freedoms of the American people.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is under fire yet again this week after a federal judge revealed the government agency illegally spied on hundreds-of-thousands of Americans without a warrant between 2020 and 2021.
The revelation came just one day after three FBI agents testified before the House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government as whistleblowers concerned about the mass surveillance of Americans without proper cause or a warrant. The agents had their security clearances revoked and faced retaliation after bringing the issue to superiors.
This mass spying by the FBI was conducted under the FISA Court process. I have been a very harsh critic of the entire FISA process because It is deeply unconstitutional and ripe for abuse. I never believed the FISA Court would restrict its spying to foreign targets. I have been proved right repeatedly.
The FBI supposedly did implement FISA reforms to prevent abuse. These reforms did absolutely nothing
On Monday the FBI claimed FISA reforms had been implemented to prevent political targeting or abuse of the FISA process. The FBI released a statement after Special Counsel John Durham published a lengthy report showing extensive misconduct at the Bureau during the 2016 presidential election, including rampant FISA abuse and tampering of warrant applications issued against Trump campaign officials.
The FISA Court system violates four provisions ot the Fourth Amendment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
FISA warrants are issues en mass instead of on specific individuals that are named. No probable cause is given. No oath if affirmation is given. The place being searched on not listed.
Sarah Hoyt completely nailed the problem with the entire Trump vs DeSantis argument in twelve words
I STILL SAY NONE OF THIS MATTERS AS LONG AS FRAUD REMAINS
I suspect the primary reason Trump won is because Dems who had been stealing these states for years figured they didn’t have to that time around
I remember an old skit from the pre-python show “Do Not Adjust Your Set” where everybody in a criminal gang turned out to be an undercover policeman. I thought of this when I saw this piece at Hotair:
Clearly this Administration’s demand for violent opponents of this administration from the right clearly exceeds the supply. So the idea is “do it yourself”
And of course who cares about the norms of evidence when there are political opponents to defeat.
Former soldier Kurt Schlichter notes trust in the leadership of the Military continues to sink as the mission is now wokeness
Why the hell should anybody join the military right now? Don’t tell me that it is “to defend the United States” because that’s not what the military’s primary occupation appears to be anymore. Let’s review. We just had former admiral and current Biden Baghdad Bob, smarmy State Department Spokesperson John Kirby, announce that a “core part” of United States foreign policy is “LGBTQ+ rights.” You know, not a lot of normal people particularly want to suffer and bleed for that blue coastal fetish. Maybe they do in the rich liberal neighborhoods where Kirby’s masters live – actually, they are happy for your kids to suffer and bleed for it, not their own.
At Don Surber’s substack today he notes how Trump played Allen Bragg and the media like a fiddle concerning an indictment. The best part of it is this:
NBC said, “Law enforcement agencies are prepping for a possible Trump indictment as early as next week.”
As early as next week!
Politico said to Trump, I’ll see your Tuesday and raise you a Monday.
Reuters reported early last Monday, “Former U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to be indicted by a grand jury late Monday or on Wednesday in a hush payments case involving a porn star, Politico reported on Monday, citing three unidentified people involved in the deliberations.”
The walls are closing in!
When the walls had not moved on Monday, Politico changed its story
It seemed that the media had plenty of sources ready to say the indictment was coming this day or that day or some other day but it just never came.
Yeah maybe Trump tried to game Bragg but every media outlet was ready quickly had sources to say something that didn’t come was coming.
amazing.
Finally former Magnificent Seven Writer Juliette Baldilocks Ochieng has the must read piece of the day on her substack on what she saw in CA during the early days of the “lockdowns” :
That first day when I went I out and headed east on I-10, I knew.
I-10 West was pretty much at a dead stop. Taking brief glances over the median, I could see that the traffic consisted mostly of work trucks. Construction workers, gardeners, handymen, plumbers, pool service. Free agents and companies. You name the type of worker, and they were chilling at 0 MPH on the I-10 at 6:30 AM on February 3 March 19, 2020. Bumper to bumper.
I-10 West leads to the 405, and obviously to all points west of that like Santa Monica, Venice Beach, and Beverly Hills. And the 405 North leads to cities where people of means live: entertainment professionals, actors, producers and the like – in other words, rich people. So, all these fine, working gentlemen were heading out to service the houses of these people – to cut their grass, to service their swimming pools, to fix any construction and plumbing issues, and so on. You have to remember how afraid everyone was back then – that some kind of new, virulent disease was destined to kill us all. But the rich did not believe it, and neither did I.
Juiliette might not be writing here but she’s just as worth worth reading as she’s always been.. Go over and subscribe if you haven’t yet.
So I don’t know where to even start with this one. Obviously I’m referring to the FBI memo from the Richmond, VA office that indicates growing concern over terrorism people not worshiping the state in so-called “Traditional” Catholic parishes. When I first saw this article appear, I gave it the ole’ 72 hour wait to see what ends up being true.
After having the FBI confirm it, I went ahead and read the memo. I have read many, MANY FBI memos in the past. I’ve read plenty of intelligence memos from various agencies, and I’ve written a fair number of memos myself and with others. I also wrote a 100+ page masters thesis that was read by some very smart and important people in our government. I know that writing well is important because you never know how far something you write will travel, whether its an email, memo or 100 page analysis. Since its that important, you should learn to write well, cite good sources and be ready for criticism if you’re going to make points that are controversial.
Does this paper do that? Nope.
Seriously, go read it. First, it starts with an interesting statement: that RMVEs are interested in RTCs. As a network guy, I immediately confused RMVEs with NVME solid state hard drives and RTCs with the people that yell at you at boot camp. But no, RMVE is Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist, and RTC is radical-traditionalist Catholic. OK, lots of acronyms, which tells me this is legitimately from a government agency right off the bat, because we know that government loves its acronyms.
Reading the first few paragraphs, its actually kind of bland. The memo states that the FBI is seeing an increase in RMVEs reaching out to RTCs, attending services and engaging more on social media, and that the RMVEs are trying to recruit RTCs. That’s not a crazy assertion. If all you see at more “radical” Catholic churches is women wearing veils and priests speaking out about the evils of homosexuality, and especially if that group of “radical” Catholics thinks the world is on fire because of sins like homosexuality, then yeah, it might seem like a great place to recruit people that would be OK bombing a gay nightclub.
But that’s where it all starts to break down. When I hear Racially Motivated Violence, I think people that hate black people, or white people, or Asians, or immigrants, or something like that. I suspect most people do too. But I have yet to see the Catholic church, including more traditional churches, argue that racism is good. There are lots of Catholic positions that homosexuality, transgenderism, abortion and sex outside of marriage are bad and causing problems in society. These same Catholics vote and protest against the governments attempts to impose these views on people, which is probably the more likely reason the FBI doesn’t like these people.
Saying that the Catholic Church, and more traditional Church followers, appeals to racist terrorism is even more dumb when you think of the extensive Catholic Church in Africa and the Caribbean that is full of…wait for it…black people! The Catholic Church, even the more traditional portions of it, represents people from all walks of life and all skin colors.
Probably should have cited that article over Salon…but I digress.
The next part is though: the FBI referencing “tripwire and source development.” I read that as:
Place snitches in churches
Develop a list of “trigger” words
Wrap up so-called “radical” priests when they say mean things
Threaten a “radical” churches tax-exempt status if they say mean things about the state
Sheesh, does this sound like the Tea Party? Or Waco, TX? Or Trump’s home in Florida? Or the dude that got thrown in jail over defending his kid in PA? If I’m drawing this conclusion, so are a lot of other people.
The analysis in the notes section does an OK job of breaking out SSPX vs FSSP vs Norvus Ordo. Honestly, style point here: put in a side-by-side comparison in the future. One nice graphic would make it a lot easier on the reader.
Further down, the memo admits it conducted no Analysis of Alternatives, fancy speak for “what other conclusions could we draw.” For an example, imagine a memo saying “War with China imminent in X years,” linking the increase in Chinese military activity to a desire to invade Taiwan. An alternative analysis might be that China is simply posturing to distract its population from domestic problems. Not having an alternative is another indication of sloppy detective and writing work on the part of the memo’s author.
The memo cites the Southern Poverty Law Center and a Salon article, which is what most conservative news agencies are jumping on. But the issues are deeper then that. There is no analysis of any of the RTCs, not even a basic open source analysis. The “Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary,” a scary sounding organization, is a bunch of nuns at a monastery. I doubt that they receive tactical weapons training on their campus, but maybe I’m wrong. If so, that might make for a cool addition to Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter science fiction series. But even a cursory review online shows that most of the organizations aren’t engaging in anything resembling violence.
The most disturbing thing to me is that this memo was even created and published. I’m sure the FBI gets thousands of leads every year, most of which end up being garbage. This looks like someone created an extensive memo over a single, unreliable source that was likely one racist person trying to recruit people that attend a Latin Catholic church. How did the Richmond station supervisor not read this and think “This looks dumb?” How did he or she not tell the author “You’re gonna need at least another source before we bother publishing this.”? That would have been my first comment.
So the FBI allows a poorly written memo attempting to tie racially-motivated extremists to members of the Catholic Church that attend a Mass said in a foreign language. It’s poorly researched, poorly sourced, draws crazy conclusions without data, all in what seems a blatant attempt to connect “white supremacy” to the Church. Much like the “white supremacy” nonsense that was tied to the military early on, this is only going to build more distrust in the FBI while doing nothing to fight actual terrorists.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, Roman Catholic Church, or any other government agency.
Sheldon:Given your community-college education, I encourage you to ask me as many as possible.
The Big Bang Theory: The Robotic Manipulation 2010
At first glance this story is a rather sinister thing:
An intelligence analyst within the Richmond Field Office of the FBI released in a new finished intelligence product dated January 23, 2023, on Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVE) and their interests in “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” or RTCs. The document assesses with “high confidence” the FBI can mitigate the threat of Radical-Traditionalist Catholics by recruiting sources within the Catholic Church.
If there is a better illustration of Bishop Fulton Sheen’s famous quote…:
There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.
….I can’t think of it.
Ed Morrissey who linked the story at Hotair had a bit of a chuckle too:
It’s not as if some extremist Christian sects haven’t presented a real domestic-terror threat in the past, either, but the “rad trads” are mainly extremists entirely within the context of Catholicism, not in the sense of secular threats. The Traditional Latin Mass is going to be a major disappointment to FBI agents ‘infiltrating’ it.
And the extent of the rad trads “extremism” is the rejection of the vernacular mass (what is called the Novis Ordo) as illicit which the majority of those who regularly attend the Latin mass do not. Of course to the Fr. James Martins of the world and their allies in the church the affirmation of Catholic doctrine of subjects like homosexual sex, gay marriage and transgenderism is what makes an “extremists” so a Biden FBI run by the left would likely be considering Catholics as a whole (well except for that school in Canada that kicks out and arrests students who dared to say there are only two genders) extreme.
My own reaction is slightly different. If you tell me the FBI are sending people to attend Latin Mass or even the venacular Mass, either weekly or daily my response can be articulated in one word:
Good!
I can think of no group of people who more desperately need to be attending Mass than the folks at the FBI. Furthermore the even if they come with the intent to observe and report they will still be hearing the word and be part of the prayers and in the words of Screwtape:
Wherever there is prayer, there is danger of His [God’s] own immediate action
Give the Holy Spirit an opening to a soul and you can bet your bottom dollar he will dash in.
So to paraphrase Sheldon’s response to Penny: Given what the FBI has become over the last few years I strongly encourage every field agents and analyst in the bureau to attend as many Masses of any type as humanly possible.
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