Seeking tighter controls over firearm purchases, the Obama administration is pushing to ban Social Security beneficiaries from owning guns if they lack the mental capacity to manage their own affairs, a move that could affect millions whose monthly disability payments are handled by others.
The push is intended to bring the Social Security Administration in line with laws regulating who gets reported to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, which is used to prevent gun sales to felons, drug addicts, immigrants in the country illegally and others.
A potentially large group within Social Security are people who, in the language of federal gun laws, are unable to manage their own affairs due to “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease.”
First off, it’s not accurate to pin the law entirely to Democrats. It’s true that more Democrats than Republicans voted for the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. But it got a measure of bipartisan support. It passed the House with a 264-163 vote (with 36 Republicans voting in favor). And in the Senate, the vote was 65-27 (with 20 votes in favor from Republicans). And it was signed by Republican President George W. Bush. We also explore the issue of whether fluorescent bulbs release “dangerous” amounts of mercury into the environment in a separate fact-check.
A federal appeals court is upholding the firearms conviction of a Tennessee man whose brother’s rural farm was monitored for 10 weeks straight by a remote-controlled camera the authorities installed on a utility pole 200 yards away—without a warrant.
The decision (PDF) by the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals affirms the nine-year sentence of a man named Rocky Houston, who was caught by the camera as being a felon in possession of a gun. The man was on a Roane County Sheriff’s Office watch list after he was cleared of murder charges following a gun battle that left a Roane County law enforcement official dead in 2006.
“There is no Fourth Amendment violation, because Houston had no reasonable expectation of privacy in video footage recorded by a camera that was located on top of a public utility pole and that captured the same views enjoyed by passersby on public roads,” Judge John Rogers wrote for the unanimous court, which ruled 3-0 to uphold Houston’s 2014 conviction. “The ATF agents only observed what Houston made public to any person traveling on the roads surrounding the farm. Additionally, the length of the surveillance did not render the use of the pole camera unconstitutional, because the Fourth Amendment does not punish law enforcement for using technology to more efficiently conduct their investigations. While the ATF agents could have stationed agents round-the-clock to observe Houston’s farm in person, the fact that they instead used a camera to conduct the surveillance does not make the surveillance unconstitutional.”
It all started in Hong Kong where as we reported last night, the Hang Seng Index plunged 3.9%, catching up with the week’s selloff as the market reopened from a holiday, and capping its worst Lunar New Year start since 1994.
As of the time of this post, gold is up $38.40$43.30 $57.20 an ounce. How do you know when the collapse is here? When the markets crash AND the manipulation of gold as the historical safe haven, goes up. Gold has always been the indicator of the impending collapse.
Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, the father of the jailed militia leader whose followers have occupied a federal wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon for the past 40 days, was arrested by FBI agents in Portland, Ore. late Wednesday as he stepped off a flight from Las Vegas.
Bundy’s arrest was confirmed on the website of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, which said he had been booked in to the Multnomah County Detention Center shortly before 11 p.m. local time.
The FBI also confirmed Cliven Bundy’s arrest but declined to provide a reason or other details, saying further information would be released by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Las Vegas Thursday.
The Oregonian newspaper reported that Bundy faces charges related to the 2014 standoff between federal agents and militia members on his Nevada ranch. The charges include conspiracy to interfere with a federal officer, the same charge lodged against two of Bundy’s sons, Ammon and Ryan, for their role in the ongoing standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
At approximately 4:30 p.m. (Pacific) on Wednesday, February 10, 2016, one of the occupiers rode an ATV outside the barricades established by the militia at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. FBI agents attempted to approach the driver, and he returned to the encampment at the refuge at a high rate of speed.
At this time, the FBI has moved to contain the remaining occupiers by placing agents at barricades both immediately ahead of and behind the area where the occupiers are camping. Negotiations between the occupiers and the FBI continue. No shots have been fired.
“It has never been the FBI’s desire to engage these armed occupiers in any way other than through dialogue, and to that end, the FBI has negotiated with patience and restraint in an effort to resolve the situation peacefully. However, we reached a point where it became necessary to take action in a way that best ensured the safety of those on the refuge, the law enforcement officers who are on scene, and the people of Harney County who live and work in this area,” said Greg Bretzing, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Oregon.
Wednesday marks day 40 of the occupation of the refuge.
Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in a northeastern Nigerian refugee camp, killing at least 58 people, health and rescue officials said Wednesday.
A third woman bomber was arrested and gave officials information about other planned bombings that helped them increase security at the camp, said an official of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency.
Some 78 people are being treated for wounds from the twin explosions that occurred Tuesday morning in a camp of some 50,000 people driven from their homes by the Boko Haram Islamic uprising, according to health workers in Maiduguri, the biggest city in northeastern Nigeria and birthplace of Boko Haram. They spoke on condition of anonymity as did rescue officials who said they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
As posted earlier today, an Islamist terrorist attack in the United States is expected to happen this year. Americans have no concept of true terror or how to react to it. Train, communicate and pray.
With central bankers losing credibility left and right, and failing outright to boost the “wealth effect” no matter what they throw at it, the next big question is when will central planners around the world unveil the cashless society which is a necessary and sufficient condition to a regime of global NIRP.
And while in recent days we have seen op-eds by both Bloomberg and FT urging the banning of cash, the most disturbing development we have seen yet in the push for a cashless society has come from the following slide in a Morgan Stanley presentation, one in which the bank’s head of EMEA equity research Huw van Steenis, pointed out the following…
On January 6, 2015, the small City of King, North Carolina, made the decision to remove all religious symbols from the veterans’ memorial at their Central Park. This included a Christian flag and a metal statue of a soldier kneeling at a grave marked by a cross.
The decision came after a legal battle lasting over four years, wherein local resident and U.S. Army veteran, Steven Hewett, sued the city in 2012 for allegedly violating his Constitutional rights.
Today, the Christian flag and kneeling soldier statue can no longer be found at the memorial.
This educational America’s Remedy short study booklet,REMOVED, seeks not only to answer the details behind what happened in King concerning the Hewett v. City of King lawsuit, but also WHY it can happen anywhere in America, and a remedy to reverse the trend.
