Fire Hydrant of Freedom

I can’t even:

https://pjmedia.com/graysonbakich/2024/05/22/illinois-renames-offenders-to-justice-impacted-individuals-n4929264

Your feel good story of the day:

https://nypost.com/2024/05/22/media/cnn-posts-lowest-rated-week-in-primetime-since-1991/

Just Security is a reliable Deep State mouthpiece. As such, this post of theirs likely serves as a blueprint for what we are likely to see as the 2024 election looms:

Tech Platforms Must Do More to Avoid Contributing to Potential Political Violence
Just Security / by Yaël Eisenstat / May 22, 2024 at 10:05 AM
This essay is co-published with Tech Policy Press.

At the end of March, we convened a working group of experts on social media, election integrity, extremism, and political violence to discuss the relationship between online platforms and election-related political violence. The goal was to provide realistic and effective recommendations to platforms on steps they can take to ensure their products do not contribute to the potential for political violence, particularly in the lead-up to and aftermath of the U.S. general election in November, but with implications for states around the world.

Today, we released a paper that represents the consensus of the working group titled “Preventing Tech-Fueled Political Violence: What online platforms can do to ensure they do not contribute to election-related violence.” Given the current threat landscape in the United States, we believe this issue is urgent. While relying on online platforms to “do the right thing” without the proper regulatory and business incentives in place may seem increasingly futile, we believe there remains a critical role for independent experts to play in both shaping the public conversation and shining a light on where these companies can act more responsibly.

Indications of potential political violence mount

The January 6th, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol looms large over the 2024 election cycle. Former President Donald Trump and many Republican political elites continue to advance false claims about the outcome of the 2020 election, a potential predicate to efforts to delegitimize the outcome of the vote this November.

Yet such rhetoric is but one potential catalyst for political violence in the United States this political season. In a feature on the subject this month, The New York Times noted that across the country, “a steady undercurrent of violence and physical risk has become a new normal,” particularly targeting public officials and democratic institutions. And, a survey from the Brennan Center conducted this spring found that 38% of election officials have experienced violent threats. And to this already menacing environment, add conflict over Israel-Gaza protests on college campuses and in major cities, potentially controversial developments in the various trials of the former president, and warnings from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security about potential threats to LGBTQ+ Pride events this summer. It would appear that the likelihood of political violence in the United States is, unfortunately, elevated.

The neglect of tech platforms may exacerbate the situation

What role do online platforms play in this threat environment? It is unclear if the major platforms are prepared to meet the moment. A number of platforms have rolled back moderation policies on false claims of electoral fraud, gutted trust and safety teams, and appear to be sleep walking into a rising tide of threats to judges and election officials. These developments suggest the platforms have ignored the lessons of the last few years, both in the United States and abroad. For instance, a year after January 6th, supporters of Brazil’s outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro used social media to organize and mobilize attacks on governmental buildings. And an American Progress study of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections concluded that “social media companies have again refused to grapple with their complicity in fueling hate and informational disorder…with key exceptions, companies have again offered cosmetic changes and empty promises not backed up by appropriate staffing or resources.”

Platforms’ failure to prepare for election violence suggests that in many ways, 2024 mirrors 2020. In advance of that election, two of the authors (Eisenstat and Kreiss) convened a working group of experts to lay out what platforms needed to do to protect elections. Sadly, platforms largely ignored these and many other recommendations from independent researchers and civil society groups, including enforcing voting misinformation restrictions against all users (including political leaders), clearly refuting election disinformation, and amplifying reliable electoral information. The failure of platforms to adequately follow such recommendations helped create the context for January 6th, as documented by the draft report on the role of social media in the assault on the Capitol prepared by an investigative team of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attacks.

Recommendations

To avoid a similar outcome, we propose a number of steps the platforms can, and should, take if they want to ensure they do not fuel political violence. None of the recommendations are entirely novel. In fact, a number of them are congruent with any number of papers that academics and civil society leaders have published over the years. And yet, they bear repeating, even though time is short to implement them.

The full set of seven recommendations and details can be found in our report, but in general they center on a number of themes where online platforms are currently falling short, including:

Platforms must develop robust standards for threat assessment and engage in scenario planning, crisis training, and engagement with external stakeholders, with as much transparency as possible.
Platforms should enforce clear and actionable content moderation policies that address election integrity year-round, proactively addressing election denialism and potential threats against election workers.

Politicians and other political influencers should not receive exemptions from content policies or special treatment from the platforms. Platforms should enforce their rules uniformly.
Platforms must clearly explain important content moderation decisions during election periods, ensuring transparency especially when it comes to the moderation of high profile accounts.

This election cycle, so much of the conversation about tech accountability has moved on to what to do about deceptive uses of AI. But the distribution channels for AI-generated content still run largely through the online platforms where users spread the “Stop the Steal” narrative in 2020 and galvanized the people who ultimately engaged in political violence at the U.S. Capitol. We will continue to draw attention to these unresolved issues, in the hope that rising demands for accountability will prompt platforms to act more responsibly and prioritize the risk of political violence both in the United States and abroad.

The post Tech Platforms Must Do More to Avoid Contributing to Potential Political Violence appeared first on Just Security.

Clearly a card carrying member of the Uniparty, so nothing to see here, move along:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/05/rand-paul-demands-doj-investigate-top-fauci-aide-for-allegedly-destroying-covid-origin-emails/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rand-paul-demands-doj-investigate-top-fauci-aide-for-allegedly-destroying-covid-origin-emails

And his second one this month. Dude’s got a serious set of stones:

https://gearjunkie.com/climbing/mountaineering/new-mount-everest-summits-record

An interesting turn:

Billionaires for Trump grows
Pledging lives, fortunes, and sacred honor has become fashionable again
MAY 22, 2024

After his honorable discharge on March 5, 1960, from the Army after being drafted, Elvis Presley hit RCA’s studios in Nashville and began recording hits again, including his riff on O Sole Mio that he called It’s Now or Never, which became his biggest international hit.

It’s now or never
Come hold me tight
Kiss me, my darling
Be mine tonight
Tomorrow
Will be too late
It’s now or never
My love won't wait

That is Trump’s theme song this election because it is do or die time. The indictments and the attempt to destroy his business in civil court make it clear that we don’t get another chance to topple this banana republic.

Some rich men get it. The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post reported, “Trump gets $1 million from Silicon Valley donor who once gave to Democrats.”

The subheadline said, “The donation from Jacob Helberg, a Palantir adviser who helped push the TikTok ban, shows some tech leaders coalescing against Biden.”

He’s gay. He’s Jewish. He’s not alone.

He said, “The social cost of supporting Trump isn’t as great as it was. Trump was right on a lot of make-or-break issues for America.”

Helberg is part of the Gay Mafia that made Peter Buttigieg the secretary of transportation who did such a lousy job that just about everyone in America knows who the secretary of transportation is. Heck, before Buttigieg, most people didn’t know we had a secretary of transportation.

Another strike against him is Helberg also has been a lobbyist for the ban on Tik Tok bill. I love free speech more than I hate Red China.

The Bezos Post said:

Earlier this month, Helberg traveled to Mar-a-Lago, where he says he “fell in love” with Trump while mingling with a slate of GOP vice-presidential hopefuls, including Sen. J.D. Vance (Ohio), Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Rick Scott (Fla.). He spent the better part of the other week in conversation with the former president about topics such as the risks of overregulating artificial intelligence and the importance of Silicon Valley playing a role in developing military technologies, he recalled.

Tech executive-turned-podcast influencer David Sacks, who, like Helberg, is a close associate of billionaire investor Peter Thiel, is another member of the Silicon Valley cohort who has moved toward the former president. (Helberg is married to Keith Rabois, a compatriot of Thiel since their undergraduate years at Stanford University and a former partner at Thiel’s venture capital firm, Founders Fund.) Sacks initially backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — helping launch his campaign on X — and then hosted fundraisers for Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and now-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Now, Sacks is organizing a Trump fundraiser of his own, and he hosted the likes of Elon Musk, Thiel and Rupert Murdoch at his Hollywood Hills home in April for a dinner party focused on airing anti-Biden grievances, according to four people familiar with his activities, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them. The Sacks fundraiser and party were first reported by Puck.

Sacks has complimented Trump on X. And he might be joined in his fundraising efforts by Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive who co-hosts the “All-In” podcast with Sacks and has historically backed Democrats, one of the people said. Palihapitiya did not respond to a request for comment. Sacks declined to comment. Rabois told The Post last year that Trump was a “sociopath” and that he would not vote for him, but declined to comment on his current position beyond saying he was not supporting Biden.

Bezos knows who all these people are because the Astor 400 of elegantly dressed and refined elites has given way to politically charged elitists. Members of the Astor 400 went down with the ship as they gave their spaces in lifeboats on the Titanic to women and children first. These clowns fly their jets to climate control conferences.

After the 2020 election, Jacob Helberg tweeted, “Congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for winning a hard fought election. To all who supported Pres Trump, you will have in Joe Biden someone who will always strive to represent you and Americans of all stripes. Now is when the hard work of rebuilding our nation only begins.”

Sarcasm or gullibility? You make the call.

At any rate, his flip to Trump is a healthy sign because given the bloodsport Biden has made of American politics, these men really are pledging their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Chairman Xi destroyed Jack Ma — once the richest man in China — for daring to publicly criticize communism. Does Helberg really believe he won’t be Jack Ma-ed in Biden’s second term?

Three things explain this inexplicable move by Helberg. The first is that he does not really believe they would do this to him because, it is just politics, right? I doubt Helberg understands the feeling of having the power to force millions of Americans to take a shot. But the government did and that rush Biden and the rest have explains why Mengele did the things he did.

The second reason he is publicly rebuking Biden is Elon Musk. Trump standing up for America can be dismissed as ego tripping. But then the richest man on Earth at the time acquired Twitter, a direct and open challenge to the deep state, which sponsored its censorship. Musk encouraged others to stand up.

The third reason — and this is more conjecture than usual on my part — is October 7. The savage attack on civilian Israelis by Palestinian soldiers/Hamas terrorists and the world’s refusal to be horrified should have sent the message to Helberg, Rob Reiner and every other Jew in America that being Jewish makes you a target.

Indeed, instead of making Hamas leaders stand trial for these war crimes, the world goes after Israel. Iranians may have celebrated the death of their dictator, but the United Nations mourns.

My condolences to Biden for losing another friend.

Reiner can pretend to be Buddhist all he wants, but circumcised matters. When the actual Nazis take over, it will come down to whether a man has a foreskin. It won’t grow back.

71% of American males are snipped, by the way.

For whatever reason Helberg has, I welcome his support for two reasons. One, it is a million bucks going to help elect Trump. Two, it is a million bucks not going to Biden to continue this madness.

Biden and the deep state used the mails to stuff the ballot boxes and win in 2020. It could happen again. Helberg and a few others are going to make it more difficult because Americans now see how a banana republic in DC abuses its power.

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/billionaires-for-trump-grows?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

A piece exploring whether those that claim to be “anti-Zionist” are actually just bigots when it comes to Jews:

Do You Actually Hate Jews?
A simple test to check ‘criticism of Israel’ for antisemitism
BY
CYNICAL PUBLIUS
MAY 21, 2024

A soldier lays tefillin near the Gaza border in southern Israel on Dec. 6, 2023
ALEXI J. ROSENFELD/GETTY IMAGES
I have spent much of my adult life in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean regions of the Middle East. I am not Jewish, which will somehow matter to certain readers. I am, instead, a Roman Catholic American who has been in the area during war and peace, with multiple military assignments in the region.

I made many Arab friends in my service. I’ve sat in a tent in the middle of the desert at night during Ramadan, playing cards and drinking chai (and painfully sticking clothespins on my ears as a penalty when I lost at those card games, which happened a lot.) I was a regular for diwaniya at friends’ homes in Kuwait. I sat cross-legged with Egyptian heavy equipment transport drivers drinking scalding hot cardamom coffee while we watched the sun come up over the desert. I am not an Arab, and I do not claim to be, but I have come to admire the richness of much of Arab culture.

And yet, I would be lying by omission if I did not note what was appalling about what I saw: women treated as property; third-country nationals cleaning toilets in orange jumpsuits and living as literal slaves; gay and lesbian people as criminals; utter religious intolerance; fascist restrictions on free speech; monarchies ruling by fiat, and more.

Amid all of this, Israel stood apart to me, a shining light in a region full of dark despotism—a true democracy with guaranteed liberties, a technological wonderland carved out of a stark desert devoid of resources, and a place where 21% of the citizenry of this ostensibly Jewish state consists of non-Jewish Arabs. In Israel, gays are not criminalized and women are not property. Is it without problems? Of course not. It is a country born in violence, and every day it deals with that reality. It has the same internal political strife that we see in all Western democracies. Crime happens. Extremists capture the national dialogue. It is exceedingly easy to point out Israel’s flaws, just as it is for any nation.

The question, especially these days, is: Given the sharp contrasts with its neighbors, why is Israel so repeatedly singled out as if it is the only (and worst) bad actor in that region, whether in the media, on X, in the United Nations, and everywhere else for that matter? And why lately do these attacks seem to be coming from people, including former military people, who should—no, who definitely—know better?

The IDF’s efforts are as measured as those of any Western military. They are simply being singled out. Why do these attacks seem to be coming from people, including former military people, who should—no, who definitely—know better?

These days, if you spend enough time with strangers online discussing anything related to Israel, you will inevitably come into contact with that person who claims, “I have nothing against Jews, it’s ZIONISM I hate.” In the past, this was usually followed by something about the Rothschilds, or bankers controlling the world, or how Dachau was actually an aromatherapy spa, but these days it might just as easily be heard from someone who seems, on the surface, to share a bunch of your own views.

These people inevitably become angry and puzzled when they are labeled “antisemitic,” and their response is usually along the lines of “What? Criticizing Israel doesn’t make me a Jew-hating antisemite! How could you think that?”

If you have found yourself on either side of an exchange like this one, let me give you a scenario that might help.

There are five dry cleaners in your town. You’ve tried them all and are unhappy with all of them. Four of them are owned by Muslim immigrants from the Middle East, and all four are horrible—they overcharge you, they lose your clothes, they never have your clothes ready on time, they rarely get stains out and never offer a refund. The fifth dry cleaner is owned by Orthodox Jews. That dry cleaner’s prices are lower than the other four, they never lose your clothes and always have them ready on time.

Last week, that Orthodox Jew-owned dry cleaner failed to get a mustard stain out of your favorite shirt and would not give you a refund. So you wrote a scathing Yelp review of the Orthodox Jew-owned dry cleaner, something you have never, ever done for the other four dry cleaners over your many dissatisfied years of going to them with your clothing. If that is not enough, in addition to leaving the bad Yelp review, you also attend massive demonstrations in your town in support of the four Muslim dry cleaners, blaming their incompetence and failures on the Orthodox Jew-owned dry cleaner. Also, you chant “From the dry cleaning fluid to the fur storage area” over and over outside the Orthodox Jew-owned dry cleaner.

Which brings us to the war in Gaza.

Let me say some things about that war. First, in my experience, the IDF is one of the most professional militaries the world has ever seen. Its historic track record of stunning victories over better-funded, numerically superior foes is not the only reason I say this. The IDF’s officer corps attends the same sorts of command and staff colleges that have made the U.S. military so great. The IDF’s enlisted forces are drawn from across the entire society, giving it the natural diversity that U.S. military leaders crave. Most importantly for this conversation, it trains and practices civilian harm mitigation with the same zeal as all professional Western militaries. I could go into great detail here, but suffice it say that at the top of the mitigation list is constant warnings to civilians to evacuate tightly targeted areas before engagement with minimally destructive munitions. This is genuine risk mitigation, and is practiced only by the world’s most professional militaries. (See this piece by the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, for example.) Bottom line: As a matter of training and doctrine, the IDF does all it can to minimize civilian casualties—and in this it is as good as, and I’d argue maybe even better, than U.S. forces.

Second, in war it is impossible to prevent all damage to civilians. It cannot be done. Don’t believe me? Ask the remaining family of Zemari Ahmadi, killed in Kabul by mistake along with his seven children by a U.S. drone strike. Ask the families of the five U.S. troops and one Afghan interpreter killed by a U.S. B-1B laser-guided bomb in Afghanistan’s Zabul Province in 2014. Ask fans of the Arizona Cardinals what they know about Corporal Pat Tillman. Go back to the Normandy campaign in World War II and wonder why U.S. B-17 bombers killed U.S. Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair. Heck, ask me about the time outside Habbaniyah, Iraq, where I personally was seconds away from giving the order to shoot and kill an Iraqi civilian who was trying to sell my troops some whiskey after momentarily thinking the bottles were Molotov cocktails; we eventually let him go in peace, but it could have just as easily gone the other way.

War is ugly. The “fog of war” is a real thing. Innocents die. Most importantly, there is a huge difference between killing innocents by accident, and killing them on purpose (you know, like Hamas does with its random rockets aimed at Israeli civilians). Things like the missile strike on the World Central Kitchen convoy happen in war—that is just a brutal, undeniable truth. Should responsible IDF officers suffer if negligence is proven? Absolutely. But here is the real question: If the unintentional death of innocents is inevitable in all wars, why does Israel get special disapprobation when it happens with the IDF? More importantly, why would anyone instantly (and without full knowledge) assume that the IDF intentionally targeted legitimately innocent aid workers?

The IDF’s efforts are as measured and tempered as those of any Western military at war. They are simply being singled out, amid a world of equally brutal war.

I can already hear the hue and cry—from the BDS crowd on the left and the Protocols crowd on the right—screaming: “They are leveling Gaza! Have you seen the pictures? It’s GENOCIDE!”

Listen to me, people: If you want to commit genocide, you do not warn civilians to seek safe shelter before you engage the combatants in their midst. You’re upset about the pictures of a leveled Gaza? Have you seen any of what the U.S. military did to Fallujah? Remember the “Highway of Death” in 1991? How do you think Iran treats Kurdish villages? Darfur would like a word too. War is ugly in the best cases; it is even uglier when facing a demented foe like Hamas. People who would perpetrate Oct. 7 and hide behind human shields from their own population will not go easy.

To quote that Seinfeld episode where Elaine’s communist boyfriend got banned from a Chinese restaurant: I don’t want to “name names,” but I will say there is a certain X account where the author claims to be a combat veteran, and he regularly posts about how the IDF is recklessly targeting civilians as a tactic. This person does, in fact, demonstrate a deep understanding of military history, which actually makes this behavior of his worse, because he knows better. He understands the fog of war. He understands the mitigation measures the IDF takes. He understands that in all war, certain levels of civilian death and destruction are inevitable. So why does he say what he says?

The hate of the well-informed is purposeful. Any so-called influencer or self-styled intellectual who spreads the mind virus of antisemitism to fellow Americans, under the guise of informing them, is a predator.

In 2024, antisemitism generally evidences itself in two forms. The first is your classic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, “Hitler was right” sort of neo-fascist fabulism. The second is the kind who buys every lie coming out of Al Jazeera and the rabidly antisemitic Arab press. The thing about both of these kinds of hate is that they have been watered down to a level of acceptability in many circles. The watered-down Protocols crowd accurately points to the number of Jewish influencers in Hollywood and the media, as if that somehow validates an unspoken blood libel. These people are the Joe Rogans of the world—avowedly “fair” while actually speaking from highly bigoted assumptions.

The second crowd—the watered-down Al Jazeera crowd—hides behind “anti-colonialism” as an excuse for quaint chants in favor of exterminating Israel’s Jewish population. Unfortunately, that second kind of watered-down antisemitism is mirrored in the great majority of the mass media in the U.S. and globally. CNN, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters and the like will buy every line coming out of the Gaza Health Ministry and every staged Pallywood video without question, and will flood the zone endlessly with stories supporting the myth of Israeli fascism and “genocide.” When you see Jewish students on college campuses across America being terrorized by their Hamas-sympathizing peers, that phenomenon is fueled almost completely by that second sort of antisemitism—let’s call it the “media narrative of Israel.”

When someone starts demonstrating outside the Jewish dry cleaner because of that mustard stain—whether they’re politically on the right or the left—there are only two possible explanations:

They bought the media narrative of Israel.
Consciously or subconsciously, they hate Jews.
I can almost forgive people who fall prey to No. 1, especially if they are young and/or stupid. College students who don’t know any better are immersed in a nonstop barrage of the media narrative of Israel, and as college students their brains are mush anyway, so I sort of get how they could be so easily misled. Your average, working, adult American who does not pay much attention to politics or international relations can also be driven into this belief set—their media bombards them with unbalanced, anti-Israel propaganda, and if all those kids are protesting on campus, there must be something to it, right?

But it’s people like my fellow soldier on X who trouble me more. When you know that Israel is the freest, most liberal state in the region; when you know that war is hell and civilians die in all wars; when you know that the IDF engages in state-of-the-art mitigation measures to protect innocent civilians; when you know all of these things and still engage in the blood libelish lies of “Israel is committing genocide,” No. 2 is the only logical conclusion. The only stain is the one on that person’s soul—a black stain of Jew hatred that goes back millennia.

The hate of the well-informed stands out because it’s purposeful. Ultimately, antisemitism is a mind virus. Any so-called influencer or self-styled intellectual who spreads it to fellow Americans, under the guise of informing them, is a predator.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/do-you-actually-hate-jews

Given Tabbi’s work breaking the Twitter Files I suspect this bodes some very interesting revelations:

Note to Readers: That Eerie Silence
Getcha popcorn ready.
MATT TAIBBI
MAY 21, 2024

“THE AI ELECTION”: Forget Russians, domestic terrorists, or “Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior.” This year’s censorship hobby horse is AI

Subscribe
Racket readers may have noticed it’s been a bit quiet in here of late. That’s because I’ve been spending the last few weeks on an investigative series in cooperation with another site. What seemed like a cut-and-dried report turned into a bit of a rabbit hole on us; hence the delay.

When I first started publishing the Twitter Files in 2022-2023 along with Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, David Zweig, Paul Thacker, and others, there was an emphasis on speed. Once we saw phrases like “flagged by DHS,” I knew the project was temporary, and guessed we’d probably need to stay ahead of the news cycle in order to avoid seeing material drown in blowback. So, we set aside some explosive bigger-picture storylines to focus on things that could be confirmed and published quickly. There were also topics we didn’t fully understand at the time.

Some of those broader stories will begin coming out now, hopefully starting this week. There’s a reason for working back through this material now. Sources tell me at least two different active groups are working on political content moderation programs for the November election that tactically would go a step or two beyond what we observed with groups like Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership, proposing not just deamplification or removals, but fakery, use of bots, and other “offensive” forms of manipulation.

If the recent rush of news stories about the horror of foreign-inspired AI deepfakes (“No one can stop them,” gasps the Washington Post) creating intolerable risk to the coming “AI election” sounds a bit off to you, you’re not alone. This is one of many potential threats pro-censorship groups are playing up in hopes of deploying more aggressive “counter-messaging” tools. Some early proposals along those lines are in the unpublished Twitter Files documents we’ve been working on. Again, more on this topic soon.

Also: beginning around the time we published the “Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex,” Racket in partnership with UndeadFOIA began issuing Freedom of Information requests in bulk. The goal was to identify inexcusably secret contractors of content-policing agencies like the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. The FOIA system is designed to exhaust citizens, but our idea was to match the irritating resolve of FOIA officers by pre-committing resources for inevitable court disputes, fights over production costs, etc. Thanks to UndeadFOIA’s great work, we now have a sizable library of documents about publicly-funded censorship programs (and a few private ones scooped up in official correspondence).

We’ll be releasing those, too, focusing on a few emails per batch, and publishing the rest in bulk. There’s so much material that a quick global summary here would be difficult, but suffice to say that the anti-disinformation/content control world is much bigger than I thought, enjoying cancer-like growth on campuses in particular, in the same way military research became primary sources of grants and took over universities in the fifties and sixties. Some of these FOIA documents are damning, some entertaining, some just interesting, but all of them belong to the public. We’re going to start the process of turning them over, hopefully today.

In any case, thanks to Racket readers for their patience. I’m very appreciative of the commitment every subscriber makes, especially in this narrowing media environment, which is why I want to make sure readers understand what’s usually going on when things go dark around here. My idea of a vacation is one or two days. If you don’t hear from me for six, I’m working on something. Back soon, and thanks again.

https://www.racket.news/p/note-to-readers-that-eerie-silence

Homeless spending grows, so does the size of the homeless population. Only government program managers can’t see there’s something wrong with this set of circumstances:

Why Are Both Homelessness and Homelessness Spending Growing?
May 17, 2024
By CHRISTOPHER J. CALTON

Also published in The Orange County Register Fri. May 17, 2024   Show More »
Over the past decade, homelessness in California has been rising at alarming rates. California already topped the national list in 2014 when it had a homeless population of 114,000, but according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2023 Homelessness Assessment Report count, that number has grown to more than 180,000—nearly a 60 percent increase—and an astonishing two-thirds of these individuals are entirely unsheltered. In fact, with a total unsheltered population of 123,423, California is shamefully only about 10,000 shy of the other 49 states combined.

Yet California has spent a record $24 billion fighting homelessness over the past five years, according to a state audit published last month. In other words, the homeless population and homelessness spending have grown in tandem. How is this even possible?

The sad reality is that the current homelessness policy, known as Housing First, virtually guarantees an ever-ballooning homelessness budget, regardless of how effective it is in reducing the homeless population. This is because the measure of success under Housing First is not independent self-sufficiency, but in homeless persons becoming de facto wards of the state.

In 2013, the federal government adopted Housing First as its approach to homelessness, and California followed in 2016. This means that both state and federal homelessness grants are reserved exclusively for providers who comply with Housing First principles.

The Housing First philosophy contends that the most effective way to address homelessness is to offer people immediate, no-strings-attached housing. Service providers forfeit their grants if they make housing conditional on, say, sobriety or participation in treatment programs. In theory, supportive services are voluntary, but in practice they are almost non-existent.

Instead, California’s approach to Housing First entails little more than warehousing people in permanent-supportive housing (PSH) units. PSH residents are not classified as “homeless” for official counts, but they remain dependent on taxpayer support, which is paid out of the homelessness budget.

We did not always treat permanent dependency as the best-case scenario for homeless individuals. When the Clinton administration first established the continuum of care system for homelessness services in 1994, the Department of Housing and Urban Development explicitly stated that “the goal of the comprehensive homeless service system is to ensure that homeless individuals and families move from homelessness to self-sufficiency, housing, and independent living.”

When Sam Tsemberis, a clinical psychologist, conducted the first Housing First experiment in New York City, he altered the measure of success to “housing stability,” achieved not through self-sufficiency, but through perpetual subsidies. Tsemberis found that 88% of his clients remained stably housed, compared to 47% of patients in treatment-oriented programs. However, Tsemberis worked exclusively with people suffering from severe mental illnesses—those who would have been institutionalized in an earlier era—so it is reasonable that perpetually subsidized housing may have been the best possible outcome for this particular subset of the homeless population.

But should permanent dependency be the goal for all homeless persons? In FY 2022-2023, California spent $116 million on permanent-supportive housing for homeless youth. A policy that functionally treats homeless and at-risk children as lost causes is not only financially unsustainable, it’s downright inhumane.

A significant portion of homeless individuals suffer not from incurable mental illness, but from untreated substance-use disorder, and the overdose mortality rate of PSH residents is disturbingly high. But studies of crack-addicted homeless persons in drug-abstinent housing, work therapy, and day treatment programs found that upon completion, roughly half of the participants remained sober, housed and stably employed. Yes, “housing stability” was lower than Housing First experiments, but independent self-sufficiency is an unquestionably better outcome for those capable of achieving it.
We can accept that there will always be people who require permanent assistance, but state policy should not treat this assumption as universal. Even if we could end homelessness by permanently warehousing people, we should strive to do better.

But after following the Housing First playbook for nearly a decade, the results are clear: the more money we spend on this strategy, the faster the homelessness crisis grows.

 
CHRISTOPHER J. CALTON is the Research Fellow in Housing and Homelessness at the Independent Institute.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14931

Given Tabbi’s work breaking the Twitter Files I suspect this bodes some very interesting revelations:

Note to Readers: That Eerie Silence
Getcha popcorn ready.
MATT TAIBBI
MAY 21, 2024

“THE AI ELECTION”: Forget Russians, domestic terrorists, or “Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior.” This year’s censorship hobby horse is AI

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Racket readers may have noticed it’s been a bit quiet in here of late. That’s because I’ve been spending the last few weeks on an investigative series in cooperation with another site. What seemed like a cut-and-dried report turned into a bit of a rabbit hole on us; hence the delay.

When I first started publishing the Twitter Files in 2022-2023 along with Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, David Zweig, Paul Thacker, and others, there was an emphasis on speed. Once we saw phrases like “flagged by DHS,” I knew the project was temporary, and guessed we’d probably need to stay ahead of the news cycle in order to avoid seeing material drown in blowback. So, we set aside some explosive bigger-picture storylines to focus on things that could be confirmed and published quickly. There were also topics we didn’t fully understand at the time.

Some of those broader stories will begin coming out now, hopefully starting this week. There’s a reason for working back through this material now. Sources tell me at least two different active groups are working on political content moderation programs for the November election that tactically would go a step or two beyond what we observed with groups like Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership, proposing not just deamplification or removals, but fakery, use of bots, and other “offensive” forms of manipulation.

If the recent rush of news stories about the horror of foreign-inspired AI deepfakes (“No one can stop them,” gasps the Washington Post) creating intolerable risk to the coming “AI election” sounds a bit off to you, you’re not alone. This is one of many potential threats pro-censorship groups are playing up in hopes of deploying more aggressive “counter-messaging” tools. Some early proposals along those lines are in the unpublished Twitter Files documents we’ve been working on. Again, more on this topic soon.

Also: beginning around the time we published the “Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex,” Racket in partnership with UndeadFOIA began issuing Freedom of Information requests in bulk. The goal was to identify inexcusably secret contractors of content-policing agencies like the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. The FOIA system is designed to exhaust citizens, but our idea was to match the irritating resolve of FOIA officers by pre-committing resources for inevitable court disputes, fights over production costs, etc. Thanks to UndeadFOIA’s great work, we now have a sizable library of documents about publicly-funded censorship programs (and a few private ones scooped up in official correspondence).

We’ll be releasing those, too, focusing on a few emails per batch, and publishing the rest in bulk. There’s so much material that a quick global summary here would be difficult, but suffice to say that the anti-disinformation/content control world is much bigger than I thought, enjoying cancer-like growth on campuses in particular, in the same way military research became primary sources of grants and took over universities in the fifties and sixties. Some of these FOIA documents are damning, some entertaining, some just interesting, but all of them belong to the public. We’re going to start the process of turning them over, hopefully today.

In any case, thanks to Racket readers for their patience. I’m very appreciative of the commitment every subscriber makes, especially in this narrowing media environment, which is why I want to make sure readers understand what’s usually going on when things go dark around here. My idea of a vacation is one or two days. If you don’t hear from me for six, I’m working on something. Back soon, and thanks again.

https://www.racket.news/p/note-to-readers-that-eerie-silence

Fills in some blanks re the various, competing Mexican cartels:

SWJ El Centro Book Review – CJNG: A Quick Guide to Mexico's Deadliest Cartel

John P. Sullivan

CJNG Quick Guide
Chris Dalby, CJNG: A Quick Guide to Mexico's Deadliest Cartel. Virtual: World of Crime, 2024 [ISBN:  978-9083423913 paperback, 978-9083423906 eBook, 170 Pages]

The Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), or Jalisco New Generation Cartel is one of Mexico’s major criminal cartels. It is locked into a major contest for dominance of Mexico’s illicit economy with the Sinaloa Cartel (Cártel de Sinaloa). Indeed this competition is increasingly global and involves numerous smaller conflicts with other rival cartels and gangs in Mexico and beyond. Both the CJNG and CDS, Mexico’s largest criminal groups, exercise territorial control and criminal governance and effectively rule over large segments of Mexico’s populace, economy (markets), and spaces. This places the CJNG in direct confrontation with its criminal rivals and the state in the areas it controls or seeks to control. This contest for power and profit is often punctuated by violence. It is also colored by myth and misunderstanding of the nature of these contests,

Chris Dalby, a seasoned journalist, formerly with InSight Crime, has analyzed Mexico’s criminal landscape along with its crime wars and criminal insurgencies for many years. Now Director of World of Crime, a think tank based in the Netherlands with a global virtual remit, has published a resource guide capturing the salient aspects of the CJNG story. The guide, CJNG: A Quick Guide to Mexico's Deadliest Cartel, is built upon years of field work, research, and reportage.

Early Days

After a brief introduction, the text is divided into thirteen substantiative chapters followed by a list of “essential resources.” Each chapter describes a distinct aspect of the CJNG’s activities, from their economic ventures to their threats and a description of their geographic reach.

The first topical chapter, “The CJNG’s Origins,” looks at the foundation of the CJNG in the Milenio Cartel under Armando Valencia Cornelio, briefly recounting the early links to the so-called Guadalajara Cartel under Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, and influence of Pablo Escobar and the Colombian Medellín Cartel. These early seeds set the stage for the rise of “El Mencho” or Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes the CJNG’s founder and current leader. This emergence is punctuated by the rise of “avocadonomics” or the boom in avocados as a cash crop that became integral to Michoacán’s economy and ripe for exploitation by the CJNG.

The next chapter, “The CJNG’s Many, Many Wars,” recounts criminal conflicts with a number of groups, including the Cárteles Unidos and La Familia Michoacana in Michoacán, the Gulf Cartel in Tamaulipas and Veracruz, the Mezcales in Coloma, the Cártel de Santa Rosa de Lima (CSRL) in Guanajuato, and the Zetas Vieja Escuela in Tamaulipas. This is followed by “The Matazetas,” which examines the story of a counterforce to the Zetas that many report as a part of the emergence of the CJNG. Yet, the true story is more nuanced and complicated.

The Cult of El Mencho

The next chapter details the emergence of “The Cult of El Mencho.” Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, aka “Mencho,” is the notorious leader of the CJNG.  El Mencho eschewed the mantle of social bandit, cultivated by Sinaloa kingpin El Chapo Guzmán, and “Cultivated an aura of fear, devotion and anonymity.”(p. 50) This section recounts Mencho’s early years, when he was connected to the Valencia family and the Milenio cartel; his time in the United States (both in California and in federal prison in Texas); and his return to Mexico where he became a cop, before he reconnected with the Valencia Family and the Milenio Cartel in time for the war with Los Zetas.

The Rise and Fall of the Cuinis and the Next Generation

The legacy of "Los Cuinis” is told in “The Rise and Fall of the Cuinis” which describes the symbiotic relationship between the CJNG and the Cuinis, led by Mencho’s brother-in-law known as “El Cuini.” This group, or faction, were dominated by the González Valencia family. Money laundering, funding expansion into the global methamphetamine trade were hallmarks of the Los Cuini era. After several notable arrests the Cuini power faded. The next chapter “The Next Generation of CJNG Leaders” assesses potential successors to “El Mencho” amid speculation that he is seriously ill and dying or already dead (his actual fate is unknown at the time of this book’s release and this review).

Money Laundering and Branding

“The CJNG’s Money laundering Empire” looks at the financial services component of the CJNG. From front businesses to real estate transaction, trade-based money laundering helps convert the profits from the global meth, fentanyl, and heroin trade into portable capital. The early rise of this business center to its connections to the Chinese shadow banking system and use of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is briefly reviewed before turning to public affairs. “The CJNG’s Gift for Public Relations” examines the CJNG’s use of social media—including generating a fan base and associated trademark “purple devil” (😈) emoji—and propaganda are described emphasizing “narcoculture,” machismo, hyper-violence, battle images, and cults of personality to reinforce the CJNG brand.

Synthetic Pharma, Other Profit Centers, and Geospatial Reach

The next two chapters focus on the CJG trade in illicit pharma or drugs. “The CJNG and Methamphetamine” sets the stage with a description of the cartel’s innovation in producing its own product through a network of meth labs to form a power base. The global connections derived from this endeavor were the foundation for the next phase, fentanyl. “The CJNG and Fentanyl” describes the growth and current state of the fentanyl trade and its impact in Mexico. The next chapter, “How Else Does the CJNG Make Money?” Looks at the Avocado trade, Extortion, Fuel Theft (Huachicoleo), Illegal Fishing, Illegal Logging and Timber Trafficking, Migrant Smuggling, and Timeshare Fraud. The final two chapters” “Where is the CJNG in Mexico” and “The CJNG Across the Americas” briefly ok at the CJNG presence in each of Mexico’s states and Mexico City (CDMX) and the United States, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, and Guatemala. The text ends with a short list of reference resources.

Assessing the Text

CJNG: A Quick Guide to Mexico's Deadliest Cartel is a quick read. While it is not a comprehensive account of the CJNG, an exhaustive investigative account, and in-depth ethnology or political economic assessment, it provides an accessible, synopsis of the CJNG’s rise, operational context, and geographic reach. While specialists may miss detailed accounts of social network analysis and conflict analysis, both specialists and generalists will find this an accessible and succinct overview of the CJNG’s major characteristics. Journalists and senior leaders seeking to prepare themselves to understand current events and more detailed research and operational analyses will likely find this a good primer or “essential A–Z” on the Jalisco New Generation Cartel’s background. The author states that this is the first of many potential World of Crime “quick guides” with future volumes on the Tren de Aragua an the Chapitos in preparation. I look forward to seeing those released as companions to this text.

Categories: El Centro
About the Author(s)

John P. Sullivan
Dr. John P. Sullivan was a career police officer. He is an honorably retired lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, specializing in emergency operations, transit policing, counterterrorism, and intelligence. He is currently an Instructor in the Safe Communities Institute (SCI) at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California. Sullivan received a lifetime achievement award from the National Fusion Center Association in November 2018 for his contributions to the national network of intelligence fusion centers. He completed the CREATE Executive Program in Counter-Terrorism at the University of Southern California and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government from the College of William and Mary, a Master of Arts in Urban Affairs and Policy Analysis from the New School for Social Research, and a PhD from the Open University of Catalonia (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya). His doctoral thesis was “Mexico’s Drug War: Cartels, Gangs, Sovereignty and the Network State.” He can be reached at jpsullivan@smallwarsjournal.com.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/swj-el-centro-book-review-cjng-quick-guide-mexicos-deadliest-cartel

No dots to connect here:

https://nypost.com/2024/05/16/us-news/nih-director-admits-taxpayers-funded-gain-of-function-research-in-wuhan-four-years-after-covid-pandemic-began/

It seems the charging cables electric vehicles use to power up are popular targets of thieves:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/05/ev-charging-stations-across-the-nation-are-targeted-by-thieves-for-their-copper/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ev-charging-stations-across-the-nation-are-targeted-by-thieves-for-their-copper

Quite the tale!

And yes I sometimes forget how annoying many non-lawyers find being subjected to Socratic lines of questioning whereas for me it is simply a search for getting to definition of terms and clarity in what is being asserted.

In addition to my various misadventures in interaction with law enforcement (nowhere near those of your brother!) I regularly work with law enforcement during which I am exposed quite a bit to what the world looks like from an LEO perspective.

I do not deny the potency of your argument, but in equal measure as a general principle I find it quite implausible to suggest that police need to be as subject to lawsuits as anyone just walking around.  I could be mistaken, but it seems like that is where you are or are heading.

It's not a justice system, it is a legal system. 

Even when one "wins" litigation is a significant emotional event with high costs in emotion, time, energy, and money.   The plaintiff gets his lawyer with a contingency agreement, but someone must pay for the defendant's representation.

Yes it had our little burg north of Chicago all aflutter back in the 1970's. Cop had a last name of Bruce, but my google-fu isn't letting me pull anything up. It was reported in the Chicago Tribune IIRC, but they won't let you search their archives for free.

These misadentures drove my brother Randy into basically an outlaw biker lifestyle, an element I believe in his premature death due to all his motorcycle crashes, bar fights, and general hard living. Some of the stupidest things I ever did involved hanging with him at the Kenosha biker bar he favored as aggravated assualt seemed the hobby of many there, while the rules that crowd lived by were quite difficult to discern though unwitting violations of 'em had ugly, even fatal, consequences.

With that said, I don't think I've argued for setting LEOs up for more lawsuits, but do feel when they cross the line as noted in the piece I posted:

"The two officers then release both men, allowing the obviously intoxicated DD to drive home in his pickup truck. Two days later, the officers, Michael Garcia and Joshua Few, swear out a thoroughly rotten probable‐​cause affidavit in which they credit DD’s incoherent and contradiction‐​riddled story that GS impersonated a police officer during the encounter on the highway. Warrant in hand, they then go to GS’s house at 3 a.m., wake him up with a ruse, and arrest him for felony impersonation of a police officer—for which he is duly charged and prosecuted until the charges are quietly dropped a few months later."

... thus forcing a law abiding citizens to stare down the barrel of felony charges and attendant huge legal bills. Those officers ought not be able to cite QI as a reason they aren't taken to task for their crimes or don't have to endure what the Samaritan did. Sure, it's a legal system, one that was weaponized via QI against a law abiding citizen and Good Samaritan, something that is neither just or legal and hence ought not incentivize so perverse an outcome IMO.

This piece contains some deeply subversive to the "Progressive" point of view elements. I'd paste it here, but there is more italicized text than I can format at the moment, and seeing the italics are important to understanding the piece:

https://reason.com/volokh/2024/05/21/what-is-sex/

This could go in more than one place, but given how elemental the American creed is to the gent's campaign and point of view I'll drop it here. And, FWIW, Recoil is the only gun rag worth subscribing to, both for pieces like this and for the fact it's the only one out there that isn't a de facto industry shill:

The American Sheriff: Mark Lamb About Upholding the Constitution, Border Security, and His Run for Senate
Patrick McCarthy
May 21, 2024 Join the Conversation

For most Americans, the security of the southern border is a subject to debate from afar. While the ripple effects of drug smuggling and human trafficking reach throughout our nation, reading news articles and studying statistics doesn’t yield the same perspective as witnessing the problem firsthand.

Since his election in 2017, Sheriff Mark Lamb has been serving at the forefront of this complex situation. His jurisdiction — Pinal County, Arizona, which covers a large area between Tucson and Phoenix — is smack dab in the middle of one of America’s most active trafficking corridors, and the problem is only getting worse.

In February of 2023, Lamb testified at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing that human trafficking incidents in Pinal County had quadrupled during the previous two years, and that seizures of fentanyl pills had grown six-fold in the same time frame.

He said to the committee, “Our biggest frustration stems from being told by this administration and the media that there is not a crisis at our southern border, and the lie that our southern border is secure. Clearly, our statistics tell a different story.” A few months later, Lamb announced he’s taking the fight to Washington by running for U.S. Senate.

In addition to his strong stance on border security, Lamb has been an outspoken advocate of Second Amendment rights and the sworn duty of a sheriff to preserve the constitutional freedoms of fellow countrymen, leading to the nickname “The American Sheriff.”

As an extension of that viewpoint, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he openly defied a stay-at-home order issued by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, refusing to arrest or cite owners of businesses that remained open.


With a total area of 5,300 square miles, much of which is agricultural land and open expanses of desert, catching traffickers as they pass through Pinal County is a constant battle.
We met Sheriff Lamb one morning outside a U.S. Border Patrol field office near Interstate 10 and hopped into his truck for a brief ride-along. After cruising around the county for a few hours, we returned to his office and sat down to discuss his background, views, and senatorial ambitions to “yank the chain back on the federal government.”

RECOIL: Tell us a little bit about your upbringing.

I was born and raised in Hilo, Hawaii — the Big Island. We lived there until I was 11 years old, then we moved to the Philippines and lived there for another year. Everybody asks, was my dad military? No, he was a graduate of Thunderbird, which is an international business school here in Arizona. He loved international business. So, we lived abroad and then had to regroup, and came back to Chandler, Arizona, which is where my dad was from. I went to junior high and high school in Chandler.

While I was in high school, my family moved to Panama, Central America. So, I spent a lot of time every summer there, and spent Christmases there. I was in Panama when the United States invaded during Operation Just Cause in 1989, rolling into ’90. I stood on guard with a gun out front of my building for multiple days. Then, I served a mission for my church in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

I spent a lot of time outside of the United States, so much so that the first chapter in my first book I wrote was “Welcome to America.” As kids, it really gave us a good understanding of what it’s like to live abroad and what poverty really looks like. You gain a real appreciation, a deep love for America and the freedoms that we have.

What led you to pursue a career in law enforcement?

It was happenstance. I never thought about being a police officer, didn’t grow up thinking I wanted to be one. Nobody in my family or my wife’s family is a police officer.

I was 33 years old and had my own business. I knew I was missing something in my life. Both my wife and I knew that I could be doing more, needed more purpose. So, my neighbor asked me if I wanted to do a ride-along one night. I never would have guessed that I would find my purpose on that ride-along, but I went anyway.

It was at the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, on the Indian Reservation near Mesa, Tempe, and Scottsdale. It was a graveyard shift, and I remember that on one of the calls — I tell this story all the time — we went to the house of a guy who found a 20-year-old with his 14-year-old daughter. They got into a little physical altercation, the kid runs out the back, and we show up. He lets me out of the car, and I'm armed with a flashlight and courage out there, just looking for this guy.

On the reservation, you might have a house and then nothing behind it. At this particular house, there was an old, abandoned travel trailer out in the desert behind the house. I walk up to it with the flashlight, look in the window, and I see what I think is a quarter-sized area of skin amongst all the trash and clothes and debris in this trailer. I tell those guys, hey, I think he's in here. Sure enough, they go in, tase him, dig him out, and put him in cuffs.

The next morning, I woke up my wife and said, “I'm going to be a cop.” Six months later, I was in the academy, and I found what I love. I love the rule of law. I think it is the most important thing to our republic, which the founding fathers established in the preamble to the Constitution. The very first charge is to have justice.

I'm unapologetic about how much I think the rule of law means to this country. So, I take it very seriously and I've enjoyed every bit of my career since then. That ride along really changed the trajectory of my life.


As you worked your way up through the ranks, what was your ultimate goal?

I started with the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and became a gang and drug detective within a couple of years. I really loved it. But unfortunately, I felt the president and the administration at the time were really undermining the rule of law. President Obama, his administration, I just thought they were doing things that were tearing away at the fabric of trust that society has in law enforcement. And things were changing. Social media was coming about. I thought, you know, somebody's got to do something about this.

The other thing that I noticed is in law enforcement, unfortunately, you don't always have the best leaders. You have supervisors. You don't always have leaders. And I saw things I thought I could do better. Instead of being that guy that was just going to sit and complain about it and run my mouth, I decided to do something about it. So, one day I told all the guys that I worked with, “I'm going to run for sheriff.” They thought I was crazy. [laughs]


I lived in Pinal County already, traveled into work every day. And I said, “No, I'm serious. I'm going to run for sheriff!” And they said, “Nah, you're crazy.” Well, six months later, I took a job here at Pinal County with the purpose of running for sheriff. I was here for a couple years working as a deputy, then as a reserve, and then I left so that I could run for sheriff.

I also started another business, made some money that would put me in a position to be able to do that. And then I ran for sheriff at the end of 2015 all through 2016, and was fortunate enough to win the primary 63 to 37 percent. And then go on to win the general election 60 to 40 percent.

So, that's how I got to this point. It was really just saying, I don't like what it is, and I want to be part of the solution. And so I went through some very uncomfortable times, made some hard, hard decisions. Really took some hits financially as a family to get to this point. But we knew what the target was, what the end goal was, and so we stayed focused on that. And with hard work, determination, and faith in God and the process, we were fortunate enough to be in this position.

You’ve been very outspoken about your support of the Second Amendment, but many legislators are working to dismantle it with unconstitutional laws. How can you and others in your line of work preserve 2A rights?

You know, that's a great question because I get labeled as a constitutional sheriff all the time. I think they mean it to be an insult. I don't take it as an insult.

First of all, as a sheriff, when I swore an oath — when I put my hand on that Bible and was elected, I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. And I always say to these reporters, you're referring to me as a constitutional sheriff. I swore the same oath as every other elected official. What you should be asking them is, why are they not upholding their oath?

Now, one of the challenges that a sheriff runs into that's different than a normal elected official is I am part of the executive branch. I don't make the laws. I don't judge on the laws.

I basically am an executive piece of it. So, what happens is you will have, like in many states, where they push to undo the Second Amendment, to subvert it, to infringe upon it. That’s what they’re really doing. Then, it puts a sheriff in a very tough spot. The sheriff has to make a decision.

Do you follow the state law that the men passed, which we have seen time and time again that the Supreme Court has upheld that they were wrong, or do you follow the Constitution?

I believe in the Constitution being the supreme law of the land, and I believe that it ultimately will always supersede. So, that's a long way of telling you that as long as I'm in a position of authority in government, I will always fight vehemently to defend the Second Amendment.

That's great to hear.

And let me take one more step further, because let me explain. Take the guns out of it. Let's just talk Second Amendment. It's an amendment to the Constitution. I wouldn't let you change the First Amendment or the Third or the Fourth or the Fifth or the Sixth or the Seventh and so on and so on.

I would not let you change those. What they've done is they've made it about a gun as opposed to making it about an amendment to the Constitution, because if you allow them to change the Second Amendment because you don't like guns, I promise you what is next is they will tell you that you can only speak freely on Wednesdays and you can only go to church once a month, or maybe the press can only write a paper on Sunday.

Or maybe — and you may think I'm being over-the-top — I would think that over the last few years this government and people in power have proven time and time again that wherever they can, they will take from you, and they won't give it back.

Above and beyond wanting to protect guns because I think they are imperative for our freedom, above and beyond that, taking the guns out of it, it is an amendment to the Constitution, and I will not let you change any of those amendments to the Constitution. If you want to pass another amendment, good luck. I won't be up for that either unless it's something that reduces the size of government and government's power.

When Arizona Governor Doug Ducey passed a statewide “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order in response to COVID, you refused to enforce that order, citing the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. What responsibility do LEOs have to make choices like these in the face of possible legal and career-ending consequences?

I think we have a solemn responsibility. They have entrusted the sheriffs to not only protect you from the bad guys, but to protect you from government overreach. It is my job to make sure that you are not trying to pass off a mandate or an order as a law, and unjustly pass things. The executive branch doesn't make laws.

The judicial branch shouldn't make laws, but they continue to rule. And by judgments, they’ve been making laws. But the sheriff has a solemn responsibility to defend the people's constitutional rights and their freedoms. And I viewed the lockdowns as a serious and egregious violation of people's rights. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say, “on behalf of a health emergency” or “because it's what's safe for people,” we can subvert or put the Constitution aside or put it on the bench for a little while. It's not the way it works. The Constitution is there. It is the supreme law of the land.

What they were doing, in my opinion — and I think ultimately it was proven, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out — they were violating people's constitutional rights. So, we told the governor, no, we weren't going to do that here in Pinal County.

I think the majority of the citizens appreciated the bold stance. I had some that didn't. But when I explained my stance to them, at least I took the time to say, I'm going to listen to you, and then I want you to listen to me as to where my stance is. And I have no doubt we stood on the correct side as we watched as the majority of places across this country violate people's constitutional rights.

We had a saying in SWAT: you will not rise to the occasion, you will only rise to the highest level of your training. Whatever it is that you do in life — whether it's photography, shooting guns, being a police officer — if you are not honing your craft, you will only be as good as whatever training you've taken or whatever time you've put into your craft.

So, I would say to anybody, especially somebody who is in law enforcement and carries a gun, make sure you are spending ample time training because I think it's important to the people that you're serving. I think it's important to yourself, so that you can come home safe to your family. For anybody else out there that carries a gun, an average citizen, I thoroughly support that. I pull people over and ask them if they have guns in the car. And if they say no, I say, “Well, why not? You should. It's dangerous out there.”

I fully support people's right to exercise their Second Amendment rights. I also tell them, please go out and get training so that you don't hurt yourself or somebody else, and so that you know when you can and cannot use deadly force. So, please educate yourself, get trained, carry a gun — do all of those things.

Defunding the police has become a topic of debate in many metropolitan areas throughout the U.S. What short-term and long-term effects will this have?

We've seen the short-term effects. The short-term effects have been catastrophic. I mean, we've seen cities literally being burnt to the ground. We're seeing crime on the rise in major cities. We're seeing police agencies that basically either abandoned sections of their jurisdiction or — because they don't want to be sued or they don't want to get in trouble — they've made the determination that they're going to be more of a cleanup crew than a proactive stopping crime crew. Part of me can't hardly blame them, but the other part of me says, no, look, you’ve still got to fight. You can't raise the white flag.

Those are the short-term effects. The long-term effects are what I said in the beginning. They’ve eroded the trust in law enforcement, and now anytime you allow something to be pervasive, it is much harder to get it out and fix it than if you would have just kept it out in the first place. When they do want a course correct, society is not going to like the outcome of how hard it's going to be to take the law and order back in this country. Plus, you have the long-term effect of hiring, finding people who want to do this job.

America's strength — everything that we have, all of it — was what the founding fathers said in the preamble to the Constitution. We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice. And number two was ensure domestic tranquility. They knew how important the rule of law was to America. And if we lose that — defunding the police is a way to do that — we ultimately will pay the price as citizens, and we may lose our republic because of it.

With that in mind, what do law enforcement agencies in the United States need most right now?

Strong leadership. Right now, you need strong leadership. In times of trouble and in times of stormy waters, you need a captain that will grab hold of the helm, that will stay on the course, that will protect the crew, and make sure that the crew's needs are met.

What we're seeing is weak leadership, abandoning their troops, firing people because of the social pressure that might come along with a decision that a police officer makes in a split second. I tell people very frankly, we are not in the business of good optics. If we show up, the optics of what we have to do to restore balance and order to chaos is not always good.

But my job is not to worry about the optics of it, my job is to worry about the outcome of it. And my job is to restore balance and order to chaos. And we do the best we can to prevent crime in every situation, but we will also hold you accountable if you break those laws. Should you choose to be violent with us, we are more than prepared to be violent with you as well.

This is the reality of the business we're in, and I stand with my people when they do what's right. When they know that you’ll have their back if they do what's right, they make better decisions. The police officers who make bad decisions are hesitating for a split second because they're not sure if they're going to get in trouble. And those split seconds, not only do they create bad decisions, they also are getting cops hurt across this country. And families are losing loved ones because they made that split-second pause to determine whether or not they were going to get in trouble.

We need leadership to stand against these social pushes that we're seeing in this country of defunding the police, of saying that only one race or one skin color matters, and those types of things. Those are all social constructs, and they are not true to what this country is. Nobody cares more for people than we do, because that's why we go out and put on a gun and a badge and we're willing to protect people every day.

What advice would you give to someone who is considering beginning a new career in law enforcement?

Do it. You know, we need warriors now more than ever. I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's not a challenging job. It is a challenging job; it is a stressful job at times. It will bring the best out of you, though. It makes you a better person.

If you take this job, go out and enjoy it, work hard at it, and don't let the things that you see consume you. The average police officer, they say, will experience between 400 and 700 traumatic incidents in their career.

The average citizen only experiences two to four in their entire lifetime. The impact that this will have on us personally, and on our families is substantial. So, if you're going to do the job, do it, but make sure you have an anchor in your life. Whether it's religion, your family, or something else that anchors you so that your ship doesn't set off to sea with no rudder.

It's a great career. I think it is the most important and honorable career for this country, for maintaining our republic. Now is the time where you need warriors more than ever.

You’ve called the situation at the southern border “the greatest threat to national security right now.”

How has your experience here in Arizona led you to that conclusion?

We've been saying this for a while. This is not something that is new to us. October 7, 2023, really exposed just how vulnerable we are. I think a lot of Americans woke up to the fact that we are exposed.

We saw Hamas go into a very protected and very secure Israel and do what they did. Atrocities. Terrorism. And we see those same types of people coming into our borders all the time — 160 to 180 terrorists being caught a year, 16,000 criminals last year that were convicted of crimes in this country or wanted by law enforcement in this country trying to get back into America.

We're getting gang members from other countries. We're getting people that are coming from places like Mauritania that has become one of the leading breeding grounds for Al-Qaeda. We have Senegal, Chad, China. We have Chinese nationals coming across to the tune of over 30,000 in a year. And then we have the FBI telling us they found 10 makeshift Chinese police headquarters across this country.

This is the point that we're at. We're allowing these people to just walk across our border and give them carte blanche in our country. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when that rears its ugly head. So that's one piece of it. The second piece — probably even more important because it's affecting American lives every day — is the fentanyl piece. China is bringing fentanyl precursors, giving it to the cartels. The cartels are then making it into pills and powder. And they are bringing that fentanyl across our border. And it has become the leading cause of death amongst Americans between the ages of 18 to 45. We have lost over 100,000 Americans per year to fentanyl poisonings.

Let me put that into perspective. If you would drop a bomb on Phoenix and kill 100,000 people, what would we do as a country? We went to war for 20 years over 9-11. We're losing 100,000 civilians and our government is doing nothing. As a matter of fact, not only are they doing nothing, they’re pulling back even more so that the border is more unsecure than it has ever been.

We are seeing unprecedented amounts of people and drugs coming across while we are losing 100,000-plus American civilians, that could have been stopped, by the hands of people that are really enemies to this country. China and the cartels who have zero regard for human life. So, when we talk about the greatest threats to America, I'm the simple guy. I look at it and say, what's killing the most amount of Americans? Fentanyl.

So, I don't see how everybody else doesn't see that this is the greatest national security threat. This is what's claiming more American lives every day, and we are putting more Americans at risk every day with the amount of people that we are letting in here, many of them who hate America.

That’s why I say it is the greatest national security threat. There's nothing that's happening in the Middle East and there's nothing that's happening in Taiwan that affects me and my family more than what is happening at the southern border.



During the ride-along, we stopped in a field near an unassuming farm road where the landscape was scattered with dozens of empty water jugs, food cans, and carpet shoes left behind by illegal immigrants.
What would you say is the biggest misconception about the state of the southern border right now?

Well, I don't know that it’s a misconception — I think it's intentionally misleading. I think you have a government that is intentionally downplaying, and in most cases lying to the American people. They're standing at a podium telling you that the border is secure. They're telling you that people aren't just walking across the border. They are lying. They are. And they're doing nothing about it.

And the media — that’s why I say this is purposeful misleading — the media is covering for them. If you bring it up, then they want to quickly try to debunk what you say. Case in point, I just released a video recently where I said that a lot of these people crossing the border were getting cell phones, they were getting plane tickets to wherever they wanted to go in the country, getting Visa cards with $5,000.

The media could not work harder and faster to try to debunk me. Not to say, hey, we should look into this. They wanted to debunk me. And where did they go for their source? They went to the federal government, the same people that are actually giving our tax dollars to them. They do it through non-governmental organizations. And those non-governmental organizations or NGOs are the ones giving them the money. So, you have a complicit media that is covering for them.

The founding fathers would be turning over in their grave to know that the media betrayed the people. That is why the freedom of the press is in the First Amendment with the freedom of speech and religion and the right to assemble, because they knew how important the press would be in holding the government accountable. Not necessarily siding with the people but telling the people the truth. We don't have that anymore. And so that's one of the great threats to the American people. It's not even a miscommunication. It's flat-out misleading and lying to them.

We sat down with Mark Lamb to talk about his run for office, protecting the people of Arizona, and where to get a good cowboy hat.
Why did you make the choice to run for Senate?

I didn't want to. This was not on my list of things to do. I love being sheriff. I had a plan, not just as a sheriff but beyond that. But I just started seeing the way the country was going, and people were saying, hey, sheriff, you should run for Senate. So, I actually went to my wife and said, we've got to come up with a list of reasons why not to do this. And in that process, we started feeling very compelled to do it.

Then, we had a tragic thing that happened to us. I got a knock at the door at 8:30 at night on December 16, 2022. And it was a sheriff from Maricopa County, two of my chiefs, and two guys from Gilbert PD. My wife and I had been wrapping presents, and I had been out at a dinner and shopping and came home. I'd been home for maybe 20, 30 minutes and got the knock on the door.

I opened the door and immediately knew something wasn't right. One of my chiefs, who's known my kids for a long time — my middle son, Cooper, had a fiancée and an 11-month-old daughter. And the only thing my chief could say was, “Cooper and the baby are dead.” And so immediately, in the snap of a finger, I lost my son, I lost my 11-month-old granddaughter, and I lost my daughter-in-law.

I didn't want to do anything at that point. Didn't want to run for Senate, didn't want to run for sheriff, didn't want to even get out of bed. But a few weeks later, somebody said something to me that just sparked something. Going through this with my son reminded me: there is no guarantee for tomorrow, and the only thing we take with us in this life is what we do. And I could not stand on the corner and watch the building burn to the ground, especially when I knew I had the capability and the ability to do it.

There's an old Danish saying that I love: “Whoever has the ability has the responsibility.” Well, I have the ability on the border stuff and on crime. And I run a large agency with a budget of over $60 million with over 600 employees. And I have been working on trying to protect national security within my county for a long time. I have the ability, and I felt like I had the responsibility.

I always tell people, look, this country's in chaos. We can't get along. Politics is in chaos. The world's in chaos, frankly. And if your house was on fire or there were thieves in your house or there was a domestic situation where mom and dad can't get along, are you going to call a politician? No. You're going to call your sheriff. Why? Because we are trained and experienced in restoring balance and order to chaos. It is what we do every day.

You call us in the worst moments of your life. And in minutes, we are expected to start to restore balance and order to chaos. And this government, this country, this world needs men and women that are experienced and trained in restoring balance and order to chaos. So, I'm determined to be free, I'm determined to preserve America, and I'm going to Washington, D.C. for that.

When you ask me why I wanted to do it, I can't say that I wanted to do it. But I felt compelled to do it. And you better believe I'm going to go 100 percent and do what I have to do, because ultimately our country's on the line.


What will be some of your top priorities as a senator?

Securing the border. I mean, that's something we've got to do day one. Securing the border.

We've got to start restoring our energy independence. That's one of the ways we're going to dig our way out of the economic crisis we're in as well. We can't do that without energy independence because it takes energy to make a product, to ship a product, and to sell a product. It takes energy. And when you increase the cost of energy to the American people and to those industries, those costs will ultimately be absorbed by us. Whether it's in increased prices or through inflation, we will end up absorbing those costs.

Americans are going deeper in debt. Forty percent increase in credit card debt over the last year, from $765 billion to $1.1 trillion. We're at an all-time high on vehicle delinquencies. We're at a 20-year high on mortgage rates. I mean, our economy is in rough shape. We've got a lot of issues that this administration has bungled. But let's start by securing our border and fixing what is the greatest threat to our national security. Let's start there.

Let's stop the flow of fentanyl. Let's start to work on our economy immediately. And as it relates to crime, as a senator, my job is not to go out and tell local law enforcement and states what to do. I believe in the 10th Amendment. My job as a U.S. senator will be to yank the chain back on the federal government. We need to do some serious, serious oversight on federal law enforcement and really evaluate whether these agencies

even need to exist at this point. I hope to be digging into that really quick as well, because I think the American people would expect that of me as well.

Many Americans have become disillusioned by politicians who make promises but don't follow through, seemingly putting their own careers above their responsibility to their constituents.

How will you navigate the political swamp without getting bogged down in it?

Well, I think the key is not getting involved in the political swamp. That's the key. I'm not a politician. You know, I've taken stands when I was the only one standing for these things. Nobody else was there standing with me, and it was not easy.

But I will tell you, for me, it actually was easy, because the line is so distinct between what is right and wrong and what is constitutional and not constitutional. I hope to be that person that stands up for the American people. The way I avoid the political swamp is not be political.

I think what people will expect is for me to be the genuine person I've been for the last seven years as sheriff, and take that same no attitude to Washington, D.C., and start to fix some of this nonsense.

And I'm not sitting here saying it's going to be easy, but I think that the clearest path is to just stay on course — follow God, family, freedom, the Constitution. Those are my things. And I think that's what's going to keep me grounded, that's what's going to keep me weathering the pressures and the political storms in Washington to stand up for the people.


Where can readers learn more about you and your campaign?

Please go to sherifflambforsenate.com. If you live in Arizona, sign the petition. If you don't live in Arizona, you can still donate to my campaign.

You can share my messages online. You can go to Instagram, @americansheriff on Instagram. On Twitter, it's @sherifflamb1. On Facebook, it's Sheriff Lamb. And on TruthSocial, it's American Sheriff as well. But yes, please go support. Share the messages. Tell your friends. Donate some money if you've got a few bucks.

And sign the petition if you can. That's what it takes. Politics is not an easy thing.

Here's what I'm asking. My wife and I, my family, we have slid all of our chips into the center of this table on this hand. And we're asking that you throw a couple chips on the table with us. I'll do the rest of it. I'm just asking for a couple chips to help us as we bet all of it on this.

https://www.recoilweb.com/the-american-sheriff-mark-lamb-184541.html

Yes.  What is far right?  As you say, to them it is anyone who opposes the crazy Direction they are trying to take us in.

To me, conservative is short for common sense conservatism.  If it isn't aligned with common sense, it probably isn't conservative.

Same goes for libertarian. Supporting Liberty is the default position. Opposing tyranny, same.

None of that means anarchy or no government.  Just the opposite. If Government stopped doing all the other things, they could focus so much better on basic governing, roads, libraries and providing for the common defense.

All this other stuff is the extremism. Taking from some to give to others, spending 40% more than we take in, scraping the genitals off of children and calling it gender affirmation.

They think opposing all of that is extremism. Are they f'ing nuts?

They control nearly 100% of all information flow, from K through 12 to college to the networks to the Big Tech' social media, and they still can't get 50% support for the craziness.

George Orwell had no idea what he was starting.

If they couldn't cast aspersions they'd run out of "arguments" pretty darn quickly. It's amusing how the side of the aisle that can find "racist dogwhistles" just about anywhere if they look hard enough feign oblivion to a far more concrete tactic they embrace that claims some sort of tangential association is proof positive right wing authoritarianism.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/how-to-defeat-left-wing-racialism

z

Great piece. Thx.

Twitter is not posting for me, but I think myself sufficiently informed as to the point to heartily agree.  Witness e.g. what they have done to John Eastman.

Here's a quick, greasy cut and paste:

LAWFARE: Will there be any Republican Lawyers Left to Ensure Election Integrity in November?
Democrats have aggressively targeted over 400 Republican lawyers and politicians with criminal charges, civil lawsuits, and disbarment proceedings ahead of the upcoming presidential election. They have successfully jailed Peter Navarro, with Steve Bannon expected to join him shortly. In multiple states, Democrats have pursued criminal charges against dozens of Republican lawyers and politicians, including:
Georgia: 19 Republicans arrested and charged
Arizona: 18 Republicans arrested and charged
Michigan: 16 Republicans arrested and charged
Nevada: 6 Republicans arrested and charged
Pennsylvania & Wisconsin: Are still conducting criminal investigations into as many as 30 Republicans who have yet to be charged
In addition to these criminal trials, Democrats are pursuing numerous efforts to have Republican lawyers disbarred. The Soros-backed 65 Project has filed disbarment proceedings against more than 100 Republican lawyers, which prevent many of these lawyers from working until the proceedings are concluded. In almost every case, the charges lack merit, but they have three primary impacts: a chilling effect that discourages other Republican lawyers and politicians from helping Trump, a financial drain on the resources of Republicans who might otherwise use their funds to help elect Trump, and a time drain that physically keeps them busy during the campaign.
This weekend, Arizona Democrats even crashed Rudy Giuliani's 80th birthday party to serve him with a criminal indictment. One day earlier, the same Democrats arrested John Eastman, President Trump's former attorney. His indictment and arrest are shocking because he was never involved with any litigation or hearings in Arizona and never talked to anyone there during or after the election. Additionally, he's facing disbarment in California after a judge recommended his removal as a lawyer.
Make no mistake, the Democrats are conducting a well-funded, well-organized effort to remove as many Republicans as possible from the November election process. Their goal is to prevent Republicans from ensuring the integrity of the election and protecting the sanctity of your vote. This is a war on the 6th Amendment—everyone, including President Trump and Republican candidates, deserves the right to legal representation. Democrats are working overtime to ensure that doesn’t happen in November.
UPDATE: Some people have asked for some details about the people who have been targeted. Here is a partial list:
Georgia:
Donald Trump - Former President
Rudy Giuliani - Former New York Mayor and Trump attorney
Mark Meadows - Former White House Chief of Staff
John Eastman - Conservative lawyer, former dean of Chapman University Law School
Kenneth Chesebro - Lawyer involved in election manipulation plans
Sidney Powell - Attorney involved in hiring forensic experts for voting system breaches
Jeffrey Clark - Former DOJ official
Jenna Ellis - Trump lawyer
David Shafer - Former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party
Shawn Still - Georgia state senator
Harrison Floyd - Leader of "Black Voices for Trump"
Trevian Kutti - Publicist, former associate of Kanye West
Robert Cheeley - Georgia trial lawyer
Mike Roman - Trump campaign official
Stephen Lee - Lutheran pastor
Ray Smith - Lawyer who represented the Trump campaign in Georgia
Scott Hall - Bail bondsman involved in the Coffee County voting system breach
Cathy Latham - Former Coffee County GOP chair and fake elector
Misty Hampton - Former Coffee County elections supervisor involved in the voting system breach
Arizona:
Rudy Giuliani - Former Trump attorney, involved in promoting false claims of election fraud.
Mark Meadows - Former White House Chief of Staff.
John Eastman - Lawyer who devised legal strategies to overturn the election.
Christina Bobb - Attorney associated with Rudy Giuliani and a Republican National Committee official.
Jenna Ellis - Lawyer who worked with Giuliani.
Boris Epshteyn - 2020 Trump campaign aide.
Mike Roman - Director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign.
Tyler Bowyer - Republican National Committee member and COO of Turning Point Action.
Nancy Cottle - Chair of the Arizona Republican Presidential Electors.
Jake Hoffman - Arizona state senator.
Anthony Kern - Arizona state senator.
James Lamon - 2022 U.S. Senate candidate and chair of Depcom Power.
Robert Montgomery - Former Cochise County Republican Committee chair.
Samuel Moorhead - Former Gila County Republican Party head.
Loraine Pellegrino - Secretary of the Arizona Republican fake presidential electors.
Gregory Safsten - Former Executive Director of the Arizona Republican Party.
Kelli Ward - Former Arizona Republican Party chair and former state senator.
Michael Ward - Republican activist and husband of Kelli Ward.
Michigan:
Kathy Berden - Michigan Republican National Committee member.
William (Hank) Choate - Former chair of the Jackson County Republican Party.
Amy Facchinello - Trustee on the Grand Blanc Board of Education.
Clifford Frost - GOP activist from Warren.
Meshawn Maddock - Former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.
Marian Sheridan - Grassroots vice chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party.
Kent Vanderwood - Mayor of Wyoming, Michigan.
Stanley Grot - Shelby Township clerk.
Rose Rook - GOP activist from Paw Paw.
John Haggard - Former GOP candidate for state representative.
Mari-Ann Henry - GOP activist from Brighton.
Timothy King - GOP activist from Ypsilanti.
James Renner - GOP activist from Lansing.
Mayra Rodriguez - GOP activist from Grosse Pointe Farms.
Ken Thompson - GOP activist from Orleans.
Michele Lundgren - GOP activist from Detroit.
Nevada:
Michael McDonald - Chair of the Nevada Republican Party.
Jim DeGraffenreid - Nevada GOP national committeeman.
Jesse Law - Chair of the Clark County Republican Party.
Eileen Rice - GOP activist.
Durward James Hindle III - GOP activist.
Shawn Meehan - GOP activist.
Disbarment (65 Project):
John Eastman
Rudy Giuliani
Sidney Powell
Jenna Ellis
Cleta Mitchell
Stefan Passantino
Michael McDonald
Jim DeGraffenreid
Jesse Law
Emily Newman
Kurt Olsen
William Olson
Lynn Fitch (Mississippi Attorney General)
Steven Marshall (Alabama Attorney General)
Patrick Morrisey (West Virginia Attorney General)
Leslie Rutledge (Arkansas Attorney General)
Derek Schmidt (Kansas Attorney General)
Eric Schmitt (Missouri Attorney General)
Tim Fox (Former Montana Attorney General)
Sean Reyes (Utah Attorney General)
Herbert Slatery (Former Tennessee Attorney General)
Jeff Landry (Louisiana Attorney General)
Curtis Hill (Former Indiana Attorney General)
Mike Hunter (Oklahoma Attorney General)
Douglas Peterson (Nebraska Attorney General)
Ashley Moody (Florida Attorney General)
Alan Wilson (South Carolina Attorney General)
Kevin Koons
William Bock
Jeffrey Gallant
Daniel Eastman
Michael Dean
Robert Citak
James Knauer
Richard Coleson
Courtney Milbank
Howard Kleinhendler
Brandon Johnson
Melana Siebert
Julia Haller
James Bopp
Kenneth Klukowski
Kenneth Chesebro
Stefanie Lynn Junttila Esq. (MI) - Disbarment Letter12
Gregory Rohl Esq. (MI) - Disbarment Letter13
Scott Hagerstrom Esq. (MI) - Disbarment Letter14
Julia Z. Haller Esq. (DC)
Brandon Johnson Esq. (DC)
Lin Wood Esq. (GA)
Howard Kleinhendler Esq. (NY)
Emily Newman Esq. (VA)
Sidney Powell Esq. (TX)
Kurt Olsen Esq. (MD) - Disbarment Letter16
William Olson Esq. (VA) - Disbarment Letter17
John Eastman Esq. (DC) - Disbarment Letter18
Kenneth Klukowski Esq. (DC) - Disbarment Letter19
Kenneth Chesebro Esq. (NY) - Disbarment Letter20
Jenna Ellis Esq. (PA & CO) - Disbarment Letter21
Linda Kerns Esq. (PA) - Disbarment Letter22
Bruce Marks Esq. (PA) - Disbarment Letter23
James Bopp Esq. (PA) - Disbarment Letter24
Ronald Hicks Esq. (PA) - Disbarment Letter25
Carolyn B. McGee Esq. (PA) - Disbarment Letter26
Anita Milanovich Esq. (PA) - Disbarment Letter27
Marc Scaringi Esq. (PA)- Disbarment Letter28
Brian Caffrey Esq. (PA) - Disbarment Letter29
Walter Zimolong Esq. (PA) - Disbarment Letter30
Senator Ted Cruz Esq. (TX) - Disbarment Letter31
Cleta Mitchell Esq. (DC) - Disbarment Letter32
Joseph diGenova Esq. (DC) - Disbarment Letter33
Boris Epshteyn Esq. (NY) - Disbarment Letter34
Paul Davis Esq. (TX) - Disbarment Letter35
William Calhoun Esq. (GA) - Disbarment Letter36
James Troupis Esq. (WI) - Disbarment Letter37
There are many more... I've written about the effort in multiple places:
https://politiquerepublic.substack.com/p/the-lefts-war-on-the-6th-amendment?utm_source=publication-search

This is good news. It's been a long fight with many discouraging turns, but it appears the NRA has cleaned house and jetisoned a lot of the people that had made dubious decisons and then dug their heels in:

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20240520/bob-barr-elected-nra-president-doug-hamlin-elected-to-serve-as-nra-executive-vice-president-ceo

I draw your attention to this:

"Your passion on this issues seems to not notice the word "qualified"-- so far neither of us have engaged on the parameters of that qualification."

In other words, I am not holding myself out as better than you. 

I do not propose a definitive answer precisely because IMHO one is not possible.

Okay, so the point of this less than Socratic exercise is…?

Again, I’ve provided specific examples where the “Q” in ‘QI lead to outcomes that don’t appear just to me. Are my breadcrumbs not leaving a distinct enough trail?

And yes, I am passionate about this. Growing up my brother was considered the teenage mastermind of area crime and hence we were subject to all manner of rousts, with numerous post facto LEO lies being part of it. My late brother developed a deep hatred of the police due to this, and took to harassing them as he felt he was being harassed. In one case he broke into an LEOs car and stole a bunch of vending machine tins filled with change. He insisted this proved the LEO was involved in a rash of burglaries that he was forever being pulled in for … which proved correct, eventually at least, with the officer eventually being convicted and jailed. I won’t even get started regarding what was then called the Metropolitan Enforcement Group’s tactics back in my telephone hotline days. Suffice to say they weren’t shy about ignoring search and seizure rules and then lying about it in pursuit of what they considered justice.

So yeah, I’m a fan of accountability generally—my brother did his share of prison time and deserved it—and don’t much like incentives that have perverse outcomes, with the piece I posted documenting one such instance and inspiring you to initiate this exchange. I dunno, perhaps this is a once burnt reaction on my end as there was a time when posting about police misconduct or the utter failure of current drug laws would result in endless badgering and little illumination and I’m not finding any light shone here.

As that may be, if there is a specific element of the Q you’d like non-lawyer me to speak to feel free to spell it out and if I feel I can engage intelligently I will.

Is the tide perhaps turning?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/camp_of_the_dumbbells.html

A bit of a personal attack saying "I have no problem etc". 

I'm well aware that police sometimes act quite badly; indeed many years ago I was arrested and the officers lied on the stand but my attorney was able to put doubt as to their testimony in the judge's mind.   As the only white member of a nine man band, I''ve been roused roughly by police etc.

Your passion on this issues seems to not notice the word "qualified"-- so far neither of us have engaged on the parameters of that qualification.

Hmm, the "personal attack" feels two edged on my end. Having confessed I don't have the legal background required to formulate an elegant system for ensuring that malfeasant and/or illegal acts by police officers are not underwritten--when something is underwritten you tend to get more of it, don'tcha know--by the state/feds/whomever, you persists in implying the wheels on the law enforcement bus will fall off unless we continue to do just that, even in the face of examples I've provided, examples you have not spoken to where the "Q" is indeed a factor, labeling comments that I view as staying in my lane as "unresponsive," acting as though I don't understand guilt or innocence needs to be established before a penalty phase is entered into, and generally persisting in asking me to provide a solution in a complex area in which I've no expertise, though you do.

So yes, penalties can't be assigned in advance of a trial, but once guilt is established and we get to the penalty portion of the trial financial penalties such as court costs can be assigned, yes? Perhaps if LEOs know they will have to bear those costs if found guilty that may inspire the benefits and costs of illicit behavior to be weighed differently, at least if one assumes, as the criminal justice system does, that assigning accountable costs to crime has an impact on criminal behavior.

At the end of the day a system of justice that appears to support official misconduct that a citizen would undoubtedly be penalized for has its share of downsides and can be used by agitators to inspire conflagrations as we saw occur across the country in the wake of the George Floyd incident and subsequent gross exaggeration and sacrifice on the SJW altar, as I feel was the case, where Thomas Lane in particular is concerned. QI and spineless LEO administrators ought to bear that onus IMO, and I also have no problem in my lay view with coming up with a means of ensuring those types of expedient metaphorical defenestrations don't occur, or at least the officer(s) involved have access to the sorts of resources to counter the weight of political expediency, something I feel would have far more bearing on LEO retention and willingness to engage in proactive law enforcement than modifying QI to disincentivize illegal behavior in an official capacity.

Again as noted, I view my perspective as something of a tautology: bad motivating factors lead to bad outcomes. I assume you don't take issue with that statement, leaving me to wonder what you are arguing for? The status quo? Increasing the protections offered by QI? As it stands I'm left making a point I feel is an obvious one while be asked to offer a solution I don't have the training or background to intelligently craft while you defend ... I'm not sure exactly what, though you've the ol' Esq. to fall back on as the issue is discussed.

This is hardly the first time someone on this list has tried to drag me into their area of expertise, whereupon they can showcase my admitted ignorance, but it's the first time you have done so, and I'm not sure to what end.

Astounding the Biden admin keeps playing pattycake w/ Iran, given their behavior.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/iran-america-october-massacre

Nope, not arguing that at all AND my question remains 

Alrighty then. Yes the officer gets a lawyer. And should felonious actions be proven, the cop in question can pay those costs back as part of her/his punishment. At least in my non-lawyer it-ain’t-justice-if-taxpayers-foot-the-bill-for-wanton-criminal-behavior opinion. As someone far better acquainted with how these wheels turn feel free to suggest a method whereby felonious behavior isn’t underwritten and hence tacitly supported. I’m not a lawyer and hence don’t see a percentage in stating much beyond what ought to be acknowledged as a tautology: when criminal behavior is supported you get more criminal behavior, and that’s a bad thing.