Heads Up A Weekly edition of News and Views from around our country October 18, 1996 #5 by: Doug Fiedor fiedor19@eos.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please Distribute Widely ------------------------------------------------------------------------ IT'S A MATTER OF HONOR A ninety year old man cut through the flack in the election, and brought it all home this week. "It's a matter of Honor," the old man said. "Who would you trust? Which one would you dare let your mother, wife, daughter spend a half-hour alone with in a hotel room?" PART OF THE PROBLEM As governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton allowed thousands of pounds of cocaine to be smuggled through Mena Airport. The evidence is sound. As the state's chief law enforcement officer, he knew about the drug trafficking, but did nothing. As President, Bill Clinton already pardoned seven drug dealers. He slashed the staff of the Drug Czar's office to 25, from 147 under Bush. He cut the Drug Enforcement Agency by 227 agents. And, he stopped many of the drug interdiction efforts at the borders. Today, the amount of drugs available on the street is at an all time high. So too is adolescent drug use. Kids are experimenting with drugs at a younger age. The quality of the drugs is up. The price of the drugs is down. And, there are more illegal drug sellers on the street than ever before. One bright light through all of this haze is the fact that Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr has spent a lot of time in Arkansas questioning people with knowledge of the drug trafficking at Mena Airport. The evidence is there, if Starr chooses to use it. This could easily become the scandal of the century. Many of us believe that drugs should probably be legalized. We cannot find authority in the Constitution for the central government to regulate such things. But, until that time, Article II, section three of our Constitution instructs the president to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." To that end, Bill Clinton is a complete failure. He's consistently crying about terrorists, and suggesting a whole series of oppressive anti- terrorist laws. Most of the terror in our cities, however, is caused by the drugs -- the illegal drugs, and the way the drug laws are enforced. It's time for some changes. NOT THE PEOPLE'S COURT The government of the United States has a secret court. The special court was created in 1978 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and so far has received over 7,500 applications to authorize electronic surveillance within the U.S. It approved all but one. The point is, each of these decisions was reached in secret. The court does not publish orders, opinions, or provide a public record. And, the people and organizations spied on were not notified of either the hearing or the surveillance. Now comes Clinton's Executive Order 12949. That order gives the court authority to approve black-bag operations, and allows the Department of Justice to conduct physical, as well as electronic, searches -- without first obtaining a warrant in open court. Nor would they have to notify the subject, or provide an inventory of items seized. Oh, and the subjects of the search need not even be under suspicion of committing a crime. Any association with a group, or member of a group, that might pose a threat to national security is enough nowadays. So, the police are secret, the courts are secret, the actions of both are secret, and the reasons they are acting is secret. This presents some very interesting possibilities. No wonder the Clintons want so much included under the anti-terrorist laws. And is this why the administration wants the Internet listed as a national security asset? THE TENTH IS DEAD "We federalize everything that walks, talks, and moves," said Senator Joe Biden, Democrat chairman if the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1986 to 1994. Former Attorney General Edwin Meese II agrees. "Unfortunately, this is not much of an exaggeration," Meese told a Heritage Foundation meeting last spring. Today there are more than 3,000 federal crimes on the books. Hardly any crime, no matter how local in nature, is beyond the reach of federal jurisdiction. Federal crimes now reach from serious but purely local crimes like carjacking and drug dealing to trivial crimes like disrupting a rodeo. President Clinton's 1994 crime bill alone created two dozen new federal crimes." Nationalizing crime contradicts the Constitution. The Founding Fathers gave the central government jurisdiction over three crimes: treason, counterfeiting and piracy. The states were intended to bear responsibility for public safety. Meese got it exactly correct when he told the group: "Unfortunately, the damage caused by the federalization of crime is not merely abstract or academic. The more crime that is federalized, the greater the potential for an oppressive and burdensome federal police state." It sure would have been nice if Ed Meese felt that way while he was Attorney General. Because, if he did, it didn't show. KNOB CREEK Thousands of people attended the Knob Creek, Kentucky function last weekend. One report says that there were about seventy-five shooters there with class III licenses. That's an automatic weapon, for those of you not into guns. Many of those guns can fire from twenty-five to one-hundred dollars worth of ammunition per minute. And that, folks, is what an assault weapon really is: full automatic. As usual, vendors were selling everything from Tommy guns to T-shirts. One report said that over the three days, at least twenty-thousand people attended. There were also a few side meetings within the main gathering. Herein is a short report from an attendee of one such meeting: Knob Creek Ky. Oct 12,1996 Representatives from various Militia groups meet this weekend to consolidate their resources in the never ending fight to preserve liberty and freedom. Many new friendships and bonds where established. Leaders agreed to expand their capabilities to establish a nation- wide communications system which will serve the movement in its efforts to re-establish a constitutional government. Further efforts will be reported in this newsletter. THOUGHT POLICE Somewhere buried in that huge budget bill passed in the last days of Congress was another child pornography statute. This one outlaws "computer-generated" depictions of children engaging in sexual conduct, the New York Times reports. This law is called The Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. The law expanded the definition of child pornography to include images not necessarily based on a real child. You know, drawings. And, they set a mandatory prison sentence of 15 years for creating or transmitting this type of drawing! Yup! You read it correctly. You can now get 15 years. Mandatory. For drawing. It looks like we're going to have to remove a few dozen medical books from the Internet. And for those of us who are poor artists, we better not try drawing humans lest some mean, near-sighted prosecutor misinterpret the art as being a minor engaged in "lascivious" behavior. And another thing: I seem to remember something being said in a psychology class way back when that the people who continually fixate on such things are themselves the very ones with the personal problems. . . . IT'S A SECRET Word on the street is that the indictments from the Whitewater grand jury were out last week. They just were not made public. We the people are said to not be able to handle the information before the election. Really, there was a "deal" made between the White House, a few Members of Congress and, evidently, Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Clinton threatened to veto one or two appropriations bills -- specifically the parks bill -- and make it look like the Republicans were shutting down parts of the government again, if the indictments were released before the election. Apparently, Clinton's blackmail scheme worked. Three independent sources say that there were "a few" White House people indicted. No one would say more. Uncharacteristically for Washington, everyone is very quiet about this. Members of the press have to know, but nothing is being said. Why?