USA Today is reporting that the FBI raided a Philadelphia sheriff's office. The FBI suspects the sheriff's office of involvement in shady real state dealings. According to the FBI, the investigation of the sheriff's office began under the tenure of John Green, who resigned in 2011.
However, recent revelations about the Drug Enforcement Agency being encouraged by the Special Operations Division to creatively reconstruct the precise time an investigation was launched renders the FBI assertion suspicious if not moot. As I reported previously, the Federal government is concerned about a certain militia in Gilberton, Pennsylvania. This latest raid represents an attempt by the Federal government to test the proverbial waters, and to conduct future raids under the auspices of a non-partisan flag. The investigation could have for the FBI started in 2011, but it could have for the NSA started in 2008.
The Federal government has over that past couple of days gone into overdrive, with General Electric's voice piece MSNBC going as far as nearly blaming the Boston Bombing attacks on Alex Jones. We've recently seen a clown attacked for a joke, and a Dartmouth fraternity being chastised for a gangster-theme party. Simply put, America is under the exact level of media and state-encouraged taciturn-ess that was only seen during the height of the Civil War.
If we recall our Civil War history, we should remember that Lincoln in the Gettysburg address stated that the birth of our nation was "four score and seven years ago." The United States was born at the moment of independence, not at the time the Constitution was framed. This comes from the University of Chicago, where Obama used to teach [I have interviewed a student at Yale who studied under him {she received her only C, so he's a harsh grader}] : "Lincoln's view was that the American nation came into existence at the moment of independence, and that state governments owed their existence to this act of nationhood. He was dubious about state sovereignty, and pointed out that the word sovereignty doesn't even appear in the Constitution."
Not only did Lincoln doubt the concept of state sovereignty, he suspended habeas corpus, jailed dissidents, and shut down newspapers. An interview with the author of Lincoln's Constitution reveals that Lincoln went too far in Ex parte Vallandigham. In Ex parte Vallandigham, the Supreme Court decided that the army could indeed make it treason to express sympathy for an enemy state -- namely, the Confederate States. Theoretically speaking, Obama could by military tribunal imprison a congressman who expresses support for Al-Qaeda or an associated force, with those associated forces being classified. It is, essentially, a safer action to not express support for any group that is not directly aligned to the US. As Bush should have legally said, "You're either with us, or you're in a potentially classified manner against us."
As such, it is the case that the prisoners in Guantanamo are not directly with us. During the Civil War, a rebellion in Maryland threatened to cut off DC from the rest of the country. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and when Chief Justice Taney ordered him to release a prisoner, Lincoln refused, arguing that releasing the prisoner would threaten the very existence of the United States. Accordingly, Obama is under no obligation to release anyone in Guantanamo if he believes that their release could threaten the existence of the United States.
Though most Americans don't realize it, the Republic is dead. Some Marine officers have told me that they see this war against Al-Qaeda in the same way they see the Indian American Wars, a war that will last generations. Recently, it has been detailed how the Department of Homeland Security's new headquarters at St. Elizabeth's will be completed by 2026, with the hope of creating a single Federal culture. St. Elizabeth's is just less than 9 miles from the Pentagon, but it will be bigger. America's internal security will soon dwarf America's external security.
