Sanctuary City Supporter to Head Border Patrol?

Posted on November 10, 2015November 10, 2015 by Denise Simon

Chief Fong drew criticism in June 2008 for failing to complete firearm recertification for over five years though all San Francisco police officers are required to recertify annually by department regulations. Chief Fong was quoted as saying that she was too busy to recertify. When the controversy erupted in the local media, she was recertified a week later. Additionally, in 2003 there was a police scandal in San Francisco where she was involved but skirted prosecuted.

Sources: Vocal supporter of sanctuary cities on short list to be next head of Border Patrol

FNC: A former San Francisco police chief and vocal supporter of a sanctuary cities policy is on a short list of candidates to become the new chief of the Border Patrol, according to sources.

As police chief, Heather Fong shielded illegal immigrants, including aliens who committed crimes, from deportation. In contrast, it is the job of the U.S. Border Patrol to catch and deport all illegal immigrants, including those with a criminal history.

“If they bring (a police chief) in for political purposes based on the sanctuary cities model, that politicizes the job and I think it completely undermines credibility and morale in the organization,” House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, told Fox News.

“If you have someone who is advocating for sanctuary cities, that’s the opposite side. They welcome these illegal immigrants to stay in the country. And so I think it’s at cross-purpose with the mission itself.”

Fong, according to Border Patrol, DHS and Capitol Hill sources, is one of several candidates to replace current chief Mike Fischer, who announced his resignation last month.

Fong is currently an assistant secretary for state and local law enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security. If tapped, she would be the first outsider to lead the Border Patrol in its 90-year history.

That decision is up to Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske, who released a statement Monday saying, “”At this time, CBP has not begun the search for the Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol. It is completely false that any individual could be a potential candidate at this time. We are currently preparing the paperwork to begin the process.”

Rank and file agents were surprised she would be considered.

“The appointment of Heather Fong would prove that the Border Patrol is no longer the enforcement agency that Congress and the American public intended it to be,” according to a statement released by Brandon Judd, head of the agents’ union.

“Heather Fong oversaw a sanctuary city, which is directly contrary to our mission. Her appointment would be for political purposes and the trust of the men and woman of the Border Patrol in DHS and CBP leadership would be lost.”

During her five years as the chief of SFPD, Fong refused to cooperate with ICE, telling reporters in November 2008, “We do not cooperate with ICE when they go out for enforcement of immigration violations of the law.”

A few months earlier, she appeared in a public service campaign telling illegal immigrants they’re welcome in the city. In promoting San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy on TV, radio, posters and brochures in five languages, Fong said illegal immigrants had nothing to fear under her watch. “San Francisco is committed to providing safe access to public services to our communities,” she said.

In a news conference unveiling the campaign, she told reporters, “We do not work on enforcing immigration laws.”

The chief of the Border Patrol position does not require congressional approval. But given the “border security first” mentality among many on Capitol Hill, McCaul said he believes bringing in an outsider could be a hard sell.

Operation Choke Point Overlord

Posted on November 10, 2015November 10, 2015 by Denise Simon

A disgusting program concocted by Eric Holder, former Attorney General was launched called Operation Choke Point. Several Federal agencies are part of this program where government intimidates private business where agency deem them high risk. Banks then are told to no longer do business with them.

Freedom and liberty is threatened.

The current Attorney General, Loretta Lynch is still operating the program and private businesses across the country continue to be squeezed. Across a spectrum of industries, they include ammunition and weapons companies, fireworks manufacturers and payday lenders. The FDIC and the Securities and Exchange Commission are part of the operation.

Senate Judiciary Committee Considers Nomination of Operation Choke Point Overlord

Fairfax, VA -(AmmoLand.com)- On Wednesday; Nov. 4, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the nomination of Stuart F. Delery for the position of associate attorney general of the United States.

If confirmed, Delery would become the third-ranking official in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), behind the attorney general and the deputy attorney general. Delery has been serving as “acting” associate attorney general since September 2014.

The NRA is seriously troubled by Delery’s nomination because of his supervisory role over DOJ’s scandalous Operation Choke Point (OPC). Fortunately, committee members had some tough questions for him on this point. Delery’s unconvincing denials and platitudes in response demonstrate that he does not take seriously the harm OPC, whether intentionally or not, caused to legitimate businesses. The fact that the Obama administration continues to push his nomination shows that it is more interested in rewarding ideological and political fidelity than performance in the pursuit of justice.

The functions of DOJ, however, are far too important, and the department’s powers too great, to make politics its main function.

Delery himself had key oversight responsibility for OPC. He approved the operation and its tactics. He also individually approved the investigative subpoenas that resulted in various banks ceasing business with certain industries wholesale, rather than trying to separate good actors from bad within those industries. Attached to the subpoenas that Delery approved were FDIC guidance materials that included a list of supposedly “high risk” merchants and activities. These included sales of ammunition and firearms. This same list appeared in a PowerPoint presentation given in September 2013 to bank examiners at a workshop conducted by officials from the FDIC, Department of Justice, and Office of Comptroller of the Treasury.

Whatever the true intent of OPC (and DOJ has done nothing to earn the benefit of the doubt on that score), the effect of the government’s tactics was clear: banks were interpreting DOJ’s actions as directives not to deal with certain types of legal businesses. As a result, numerous gun shops and manufacturers lost long-established banking relationships or were refused those relationships in the first place.

Questioners at Wednesday’s hearings pressed Delery hard on these facts. In his opening statement, Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called OPC a “stunning and dangerous” use of government power.

He noted that the operation was “sold to the public as merely an initiative to protect consumers from predatory payday lending practices.” Nevertheless, he continued, “we now know based on internal DOJ documents that from the outset it was specifically designed to prey on the banking industry`s fear of civil and criminal liability, with the stated goal of shutting down legal businesses” disfavored by the Obama Administration.

He also criticized the broad net the program cast over the banking industry: “three prosecutions out of 60 subpoenas is hardly a justification for the scattergun approach the Department undertook.”

Sen. Grassley went on to confront Delery with documentation that Delery was aware of the negative affect OPC had on lawful industries. DOJ’s response to these developments was to rationalize that if individual businesses were operating lawfully, they should be able to establish that fact with the banks. Yet the banks themselves had in many cases already made the decision that case-by-case determinations invited more scrutiny and pressure from DOJ than they were worth to the bank.

The toughest questioning, however, came from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Cruz offered a blistering summary of the program and confronted Delery with examples of actual businesses that had lost banking relationships, not because of poor performance, but because the banks had decided to sever all relationships with the firearm industry. Delery insisted that no firearm businesses had even been investigated or prosecuted.

“Choke Point,” Cruz shot back, “was all about using government power to intimidate banks to cut off their money even though they weren’t violating the laws.” “The program as it pertained to firearm businesses,” Cruz continued, “was not targeted on evidence of fraud but based on an antipathy of the Obama Justice Department to the exercise of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms by American citizens.”

Delery uniformly denied any intention to use DOJ’s authority to target lawful businesses. In essence, he blamed the banks themselves for misunderstanding DOJ’s intentions. Yet when bank after bank came to the same supposedly unintended conclusion, DOJ did not change course. Only when Congress itself stepped in to investigate DOJ’s tactics did the department issue public “clarifications” of its objectives to target specific fraudulent actors and not entire industries per se.

By that time, however, the damage to lawful industries had been done. Reports from the field, moreover, indicate that these industries continue to suffer the residual suspicion of financial service providers, notwithstanding DOJ’s more recent guidance on the professed scope of the program. For many banks, once burned means twice shy.

One of the more ridiculous aspects of Wednesday’s hearing was the repeated insistence of Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) that NRA “agrees” that OPC did not intend to target lawful businesses. To “substantiate” this point, he quoted from an alert we issued on May 2, 2014, as rumors were swirling about OPC in the media.

We stated at that point that we had “not substantiated … an overarching federal conspiracy to suppress lawful commerce in firearms and ammunition, or that the federal government has an official policy of using financial regulators to drive firearm or ammunition companies out of business.”

We cautioned, however, that “NRA will continue to monitor developments concerning Operation Choke Point and report on any significant activity of concern to gun owners.”

We also noted, “The Obama administration’s record … certainly provides no reason for confidence.”

Three weeks later, we posted an update to that story in which we specifically stated, “At the time of the [May 2] report, we were unaware of a ‘smoking gun’ to tie [banks’ decisions to drop or refuse firearms industry business] back to pressure from regulatory authorities,” and noted, “That may be changing.”

That second report went on to detail additional evidence on OPC that had since come to light, as well ongoing investigative efforts.

Since that time, NRA has reported on OPC extensively, including here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Anyone who read these reports could not fail to understand that NRA has been gravely concerned about OPC for well over a year and that whatever OPC’s original justification might have been, DOJ was willing to accept or even embrace its negative affect on the firearm and ammunition industries. Yet Sen. Franken cherry-picked one phrase from an early report to falsely portray NRA’s current position and view of the matter. Certainly, this sort of duplicity does not serve the senator’s integrity or the cause of Delery’s nomination well.

Delery’s nomination has not yet been scheduled for a vote. Based on his unconvincing performance at the hearing, however, and continued unanswered questions about the true origins, design, and scope of OPC, NRA remains deeply troubled by this nomination. America deserves better than senior DOJ officials who are merely tools for the political views and schemes of an ideologically-driven administration.

To reward such officials for this behavior with promotions is clearly beyond the pale.

About the NRA-ILA:

Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution Causes Panic Attack of College Students

Posted on November 3, 2015November 3, 2015 by Denise Simon

This is the next generation to which our country will in their control. What is worse, the university staff appear to hate the Constitution as much as well all enemies of the United States.

There is a good bet, some of these people are going to vote for Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton.

Here is the video, check it out and see the real trouble we are in with the future generation.

FBI Director Comey: The Ferguson Effect

Posted on October 26, 2015October 26, 2015 by Denise Simon

FBI Director James Comey has visited several law enforcement agencies across the country to determine the ‘chill’ by law enforcement. The White House pushed back hard as did Amnesty International. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former White House Chief of Staff even declared his police force in Chicago is in the fetal position.

The FBI keeps the statistics….

FBI chief again says Ferguson having chilling effect on law enforcement

WaPo: CHICAGO — Twice in recent days, FBI Director James B. Comey has stepped to a podium here and asserted that police across the nation are reluctant to aggressively enforce the law in the post-Ferguson era of smartphones and YouTube.

And twice his comments have drawn disagreement and derision from a host of sources, including civil rights activists, law enforcement officials and, on Monday, the White House.

“The available evidence at this point does not support the notion that law enforcement officers around the country are shying away from fulfilling their responsibilities,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday during a news briefing in Washington. “The evidence that we’ve seen so far doesn’t support the contention that law enforcement officials are somehow shirking their responsibility.”

Comey, nonetheless, stayed the course, telling thousands of police officials gathered here for a conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police that a violent crime wave is gripping the nation’s major cities. And he suggested that police officers themselves are in part to blame, made gun shy by the prospect of getting caught on the next video of alleged police brutality.

The “age of viral videos” has fundamentally altered U.S. policing, Comey said Monday in a speech virtually identical to one he delivered last week at the University of Chicago Law School.

His comments have been interpreted as giving credence to the notion of a “Ferguson effect” — the theory that riots and racial unrest in places such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, where police were accused of killing civilians, has prompted police officers to become more restrained. That, in turn, has theoretically resulted in an uptick in violent crime, as criminals become emboldened.

Comey acknowledged Monday that he has little evidence to support the theory.

“The question is, are these kinds of things changing police behavior around the country? The honest answer is: I don’t know for sure whether that’s the case,” he said, adding that “I do have a strong sense” that it’s true.

It’s “the one theory that to my mind and to my common sense, does explain” rising rates of urban violence in 2015.

Coming from the nation’s top law enforcement official, the remarks have landed like a bombshell in criminal justice circles, offending people across the political spectrum. Civil rights groups and activists have taken deep exception to the idea that crime rates might be linked to protests against police brutality.

Amnesty International USA executive director Steven Hawkins called Comey’s comments “outrageous” and “unsubstantiated.”

Policing groups, meanwhile, have been equally infuriated by the assertion that their officers have been somehow derelict in their duties, frightened by teenagers with cellphone cameras.

“Time and time again [Comey] generalizes about a segment of the population that he knows nothing about,” said James O. Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “He has never been a police officer.”

Comey is “like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz,” Pasco said. “He wanders around pretending to be smart and then at the end they give him a diploma and he thinks he’s a genius. They swear him in as the director of the FBI and all of a sudden he’s an expert on what police officers are thinking.”

The speeches have also put Comey at odds with the White House, as President Obama is eager to take credit for lowering the crime rate.

As Comey was preparing to deliver his address Friday, Obama was hosting a criminal-justice forum at the White House, where he celebrated “incredible, historic reductions in crime over the last 20 years.”

“I know that there’s been some talk in the press about spikes that are happening this year relative to last year. I’ve asked my team to look very carefully at it — Attorney General Lynch has pulled together a task force — and it does look like there are a handful of cities where we’re seeing higher-than-normal spikes,” Obama said at the time. However, he added, “across the 93 or 95 top cities, it’s very hard to distinguish anything statistically meaningful.”

In his speech Monday, Comey also urged law enforcement leaders to stop engaging in an us-vs.- them tug of war with protesters from Black Lives Matter, the group that sprung up in the wake of the August 2014 shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo.

Instead, Comey said, police chiefs should use the budding protest movement as a window into the minds of those they are charged with protecting.

“There is a line of law enforcement and a line of communities we serve, especially communities of color,” Comey said. “Each time somebody interprets ‘hashtag Black Lives Matter’ as anti-law enforcement, one line moves away. And each time someone interprets ‘hashtag police lives matter’ as anti-black, the other line moves away.”

Comey’s comments come weeks after he held a closed-door session with 100 city leaders and law enforcement officials from across the nation. At that meeting, many — including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) — reported that police morale was sinking in their towns amid ongoing scrutiny.

“We have allowed our police department to get fetal, and it is having a direct consequence,” Emanuel declared during the meeting. “They have pulled back from the ability to interdict . . . they don’t want to be a news story themselves, they don’t want their career ended early, and it’s having an impact.”

Comey said such feedback has served as inspiration for his recent speeches, in which he declared that violent crime rates are being inflated by a “a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year.”

“That wind is surely changing behavior,” Comey said, later adding: “We need to figure out what’s happening and deal with it now. I refuse to wait . . . these aren’t data points, these are lives.”

Oh, More Counterterrorism Bureaucracy/SPLC

Posted on October 14, 2015October 14, 2015 by Denise Simon

As you read through this, understand that pesky Southern Poverty Law Center is part of the bureaucracy:

From the Justice Department website:

Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Remarks as prepared for delivery

Thank you, Lorenzo [Vidino], for that kind introduction.

It is an honor to be at this event, co-hosted by the George Washington University’s new Program on Extremism and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The partnership between SPLC and GW serves as a reminder that violent extremism is neither a new phenomenon, nor one that is limited to any single population, region or ideology.

Since its creation in 1971, SPLC has been an important voice on the wide range of extremist groups throughout this country. And over the past four decades, the existence of hate, violence and extremism has remained unfortunately all too constant. Earlier this year, we honored and remembered the victims of the horrific Oklahoma City bombing on the 20th anniversary of that devastating attack. Less than two months after the anniversary, we again saw unimaginable violence motivated by hate. A young man killed nine African-American men and women attending a bible class in Charleston, South Carolina. A senseless, racist act. The list goes on, past and present.

But as we gather today, new and disturbing trends loom over the horizon – trends we must understand to defeat.

New initiatives, like GW’s program, which focus on empirical research and analysis, are critical to policymakers and the interested public alike.

So although the problem set is by no means new, it is changing, and we must take lessons learned in the past and couple them with trend analysis to understand these shifts.

Today’s event is a good start to that conversation. We are here to talk about combating domestic terrorism, which the FBI has explained as “Americans attacking Americans based on U.S.-based extremist ideologies.”

Much attention has focused on those inspired by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) message of hate and violence spreading worldwide and reaching homes here in America through the group’s unprecedented social media recruitment efforts. And rightly so.

But today is a good opportunity to focus the conversation broadly on violent extremism here in America. The threat ranges from individuals motivated by anti-government animus, to eco-radicalism, to racism, as it has for decades. Many more details here.

DOJ announces new position to focus on domestic terror threat

FNC:

A new national security position is being created to help combat homegrown terror threats, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

John Carlin, head of the department’s national security division, announced the new Domestic Terrorism Counsel at a speech Wednesday at George Washington University, to work with DOJ assets on domestic threats.

“…in order to ensure that we are gaining the benefits of the information and input from those eyes on the ground from around the country, and in recognition of a growing number of potential domestic terrorism matters around the United Sates, we have created a new position to assist with our important work in combating domestic terrorism,” Carlin said, according to his prepared remarks.

Carlin emphasized what he called the growing risk from homegrown terrorism and specifically white supremacy.

“We recognize that, over the past few years, more people have died in this country in attacks by domestic extremists than in attacks associated with international terrorist groups,” Carlin said

“Among domestic extremist movements active in the United States, white supremacists are the most violent. The Charleston shooter, who had a manifesto laying out a racist world-view, is just one example,” Carlin said, before also noting killings by white supremacists in Kansas and Wisconsin.

While he spoke about the threat posed by the Islamic State terror group, he emphasized that law enforcement is focused on racist and anti-government ideologies, and that such ideologies may pose a more serious threat than ISIS.

“More broadly, law enforcement agencies nationwide are concerned about the growth of the “sovereign citizen” movement. According to one 2014 study, state, local and tribal law enforcement officials considered sovereign citizens to be the top concern of law enforcement, ranking above ISIL and Al Qaeda-inspired extremists,” he said.

Carlin said the new Domestic Terrorism Counsel will serve as the main point of contact for U.S. Attorney offices nationwide. The new official will work to identify trends that can be used to help shape a national strategy.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.