How to Become a "Stalker" in Oregon: Criticize the Police

Behold the man who terrorizes the Sunriver Police Department: Bob Foster and his grandson.

 What does it take to be officially designated a “stalker” in the State of Oregon?

 In a recent decision the State Court of Appeals ruled that a bully can subject a terrified elderly woman to a years-long campaign of harassment, intimidation, and physical violence without being saddled with a stalking protection order (SPO). Two years ago, the same court ruled that an individual can commit repeated acts of property damage, coupled with physical assaults and even an explicit death threat, and not qualify for stalker status.

Apparently, the only guaranteed way to earn the unwanted title of “stalker” in the Beaver State is to criticize the local police and the corrupt municipal cabal it serves. That’s a reasonable inference to draw from the bizarre experience of Sunriver, Oregon resident Robert Foster, whose stalking case involving the Sunriver PD and the Sunriver Owners Association (SROA) is scheduled for trial on Tuesday, April 24. [Update: The trial has been rescheduled -- again -- for August 21.]

 Roughly two years ago, Foster – a well-established and widely respected local businessman who operates a hot tub service company – was designated a stalker in an ex parte proceeding. Since that time he has been arrested twice for the supposed crime of coming within eyeshot of one of the timid, shivering creatures who supposedly live in bladder-loosening fear of Foster – Sergeant Joseph Patnode and Officer Kasey Hughes.

Foster has never said or done anything to harm either of those proud, intrepid members of the Brotherhood of Coercion. Prior to the arrests made pursuant to the spurious stalking protection order, Foster had no criminal record of any kind. Over the past two years, Foster has been treated as a prisoner in his own hometown. At one point last fall he was driven into out-of-state exile for three months to avoid arrest as he prepared for a January 26 court date. 

Rather than convening the trial on the appointed time at the designated location, the presiding Judge conducted a series of sidebar conferences with the parties in her chambers while dozens of people waited for several hours in a crowded, poorly ventilated courtroom. In the far corner of the small room could be seen a poorly-disguised Detective from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, who furtively took photographs of everyone who had gathered to support Foster. 

A typically spectacular Sunriver vista.

In the middle of the courtroom had assembled practically the entire Sunriver Police Department. All of them but Hughes and Patnode were in uniform and wearing body armor. They were also wreathed in the unmistakable aroma of pure, unfiltered fear. This shouldn't surprise us: These are people who profess to be terrified by the mere sight of a skinny, mild-mannered, unarmed, 51-year-old businessman whose only weapon is a finely whetted wit.

Bob Foster and his daughter, Rebecca Kossler, were as eager for their day in court as the Sunriver PD was to avoid it – a fact that says everything we need to know about the relative merits of their respective cases. If Foster's accusers were telling any portion of the truth, they wouldn't be exhausting every dilatory tactic known to man in an effort to avoid testifying under oath in an adversarial setting. 

In defiance of State Law, the original SPO was granted without a mandatory hearing at which Foster could contest it. His court appearance on January 26 was the first time he was able to speak for himself in a judicial proceeding. Rather than permitting Foster the opportunity to tear apart the specious case against him, the presiding judge attempted to fashion a modified order under which Foster would be granted the supposed privilege of a judicial hearing before the “victims” – Officers Patnode and Hughes – could arrange for his arrest. 

The Sunriver PD faction refused to drop the charges against Foster because, as they explicitly told the judge, they were concerned that he would sue the department for the taxpayer-subsidized harassment he has experienced. 

Assuming that his persecutors could be held personally liable, rather than socializing the costs of their criminal foolishness, Foster would be entitled to sue them into penury: During the past two years he has spent more than $200,000 contesting the patently false and unambiguously malicious accusation that he had been stalking the local police. 

In sworn pre-trial depositions, neither of the “victims” of Foster’s purported stalking was ever to describe an instance in which he did or said anything so much as suggesting violent intent. The same is true of former Sunriver Police Chief Michael Kennedy, who – as we will see – has since lost his position and offered several key disclosures regarding what can only be called a criminal conspiracy against Foster. 

Foster’s supposed victims are armed individuals claiming a license to use lethal force at their discretion – and who supposedly dissolve into puddles of petulant panic at the sight of him. Pedro Erazo’s victim, by way of contrast, was a senior citizen named Kathryn Reitz, whom he repeatedly harassed, threatened, and physically assaulted at the Goodwill convenience store in Hillsboro, Oregon. 

Over the course of two years, Erazo and his cohorts would descend on the thrift store in pursuit of severely discounted books to re-sell online. Three times a day, employees would wheel out large bins full of merchandise, including books. Heedless of rudimentary courtesy, Erazo’s group would shove aside other shoppers – and, on occasion, store employees – in order to scoop up armloads of books whose barcodes would be read by a handheld digital scanner. Any potentially valuable volumes would be piled in a cart.

Reitz attracted Erazo’s malign attention by voicing disgust over his behavior. He retaliated by following her around the store, barraging her with insults and threats.

“You should be afraid of me,” Erazo sneered at the terrified 64-year-old woman. “They’re not going to stop me. I can do whatever I want.”

As it happens, the thrift store chain’s management did stop him: Erazo is now banned from 40 stores in Northwest Oregon and Southwest Washington. At Reitz’s request, Washington County Circuit Court Judge Donald Letourneau imposed a stalking order against Erazo, who was one of several people to complain about the tactics he employed.

Another frequent shopper who testified on behalf of Reitz recalled that Erazo had instructed his goons to “shadow me, follow me. If I would go here, then [he told them] `go with her,’ and then a person would come and … just follow me wherever I would go … stand right next to me, elbow me, make it incredibly uncomfortable.” 

Despite the fact that Erazo and his gang had clearly engaged in aggressive and violent behavior, the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned the stalking order. Oregon state law requires at least two “contacts” in which the victim would have a “reasonable apprehension” regarding his or her physical safety. While Erazo had physically assaulted Reitz on one confrontation, and assailed her with insults and threats during numerous others, a second violent “contact” would be necessary in order for his behavior to qualify as “stalking” under state law.   

In a similar case from 2010 (Swarringim v. Olson), the Court of Appeals dealt with a neighborhood dispute that escalated to property damage (vandalism to the petitioner’s home and automobile) as well as violence and death threats. In one confrontation, Swarringim’s 14-year-old son was knocked flat on his back by an Olson’s 18-year-old son, Matthew, who also warned that he knew people “who will slit [the boy’s] throat.”

Stipulating to the facts as related by the Swarringim family, the Court of Appeals threw out the stalking order, maintaining that the evidence was insufficient to establish that the actions of Olson and his son had caused “reasonable apprehension for personal safety” on the part of the victims.

Obviously, it is difficult to make a stalking order stick in the State of Oregon, even when the subject of the order has committed acts of criminal violence and made explicit death threats. The designation of “stalker” is reserved for truly dangerous people like Bob Foster, whose sole offense was to make the police uncomfortable. 

Foster was a prominent opponent of both the SROA and the proposed Special Services District (SSD), which was created in 2008 and inflicts an annual cost of several million dollars on Sunriver home owners. 

Sunriver – although a lovely place -- isn’t really a town; it is a shopping mall with a thyroid condition. The Census Bureau considers it to be part of nearby Bend. Until 2008, its streets were not considered “public conveyances,” but rather private roads accessible to the public. This meant that the Sunriver PD couldn’t write traffic citations, much to the frustration of those who coveted the revenue. 

In 2007, the SROA successfully lobbied Oregon State Rep. Gene Wisnat to sponsor H.B. 3445, a bill custom-tailored for Sunriver that extended police "authority" to include roads and streets on "premises open to the public that are owned by a homeowners association…." The following year, the SROA enacted a special multi-million-dollar tax assessment for a special service district (SSD) it had created in 2002. The SSD now included a fully functional police department, which immediately became a huge nuisance to local business owners and the visitors upon whom the local economy depends.

Strategy session: Sunriver officers during break in the Jan. 26 hearing.

 “The police constantly harassed people in my parking lot,” recalled Connie Hutcherson, former owner of RJB’s restaurant, in an interview with a private investigator. “They would do drive-throughs looking for DUIs…. I lost a lot of business because of them. Customers would tell me, `We’d love to come in more, but we’re scared.’”

On more than a few occasions, an aggravated Hutcherson confronted the officers in her parking lot. “They didn’t care for me much,” she wryly observed.

In her interview with the investigator, Danyl Dahl described a March 2009 episode in which the deli delivery van she was driving was stopped by two Sunriver officers who – in response to a trivial traffic infraction – approached her with guns drawn and faces drawn taut with irrational rage.

“Do you want to get arrested today?” one of them snarled at the perplexed and terrified woman. “Do you want to go to jail today?” 

“These people were hired by the Sunriver Owners Association,” Dahl pointed out. “They think they can do anything they want.”

 

The Sunriver police were just as inhospitable to visitors – something Shawn Vickers, who was stopped for speeding, witnessed first-hand. During the traffic stop, a tourist riding a bicycle stopped and began taking photos of the police vehicle.

“The officer lost control,” Vickers related to the investigator. “He was like, `Halt! You do not have my permission to take my picture! Freeze! Do not move!’   And then he … was very agitated, he did not know what to do…. At some point, I thought he was going to draw his gun.”

“Are you kidding me?” exclaimed an astonished Vickers, who was still seated behind the wheel of his vehicle. This provoked another outburst: “He was like, `Freeze! Put your hands where I can see them! Do not move!’ He moved about 6-7 feet from me. He never turned his back to me.” As it happened, the bicyclist was a visiting sheriff’s deputy from Los Angeles County who collected photographs of police vehicles. Upon learning of the tourist’s identity, the officer regained at least a portion of his composure. For several anxious moments, however, “I thought this guy was going to lose it and draw down on one of us,” Vickers reports.

A Sunriver resident who identified herself only as “Vicki” told the investigator about asimilar incident she witnessed in October 2010 involving three Sunriver police officers who swarmed a car containing an elderly couple “with guns drawn and pointing at them.” The elderly couple weren’t armed fugitives; at worst they had committed a minor traffic infraction. Yet they were threatened with lethal violence by a police department perversely determined to manufacture work for itself.

April Gossling, who operated the Villagio Espresso shop, recalled anApril 2011 incident in which three Sunriver Police officers pulled over a group of teenagers who were found with alcohol and marijuana. She overheard the police “threatening them – telling them how much trouble they were in, and how they needed to report to them” regarding drug and alcohol use by other kids. 

One of the officers wasn’t satisfied merely to cultivate a group of informants: He prevailed on one of the underage girls to supply him with her phone number in a conversation involving the suggestion of “sexual favors,” Gossling testified. During this lengthy encounter, Gossling overheard an emergency call on the police radio that was blithely ignored by the officers.

Unremitting harassment by the Sunriver PD led at least one resident to flee the town.

“I was a victim of such continuous harassment by the Sunriver PD that I eventually simply moved,” former Sunriver resident Jared Lewis told Pro Libertate. “I was so fearful of them every time I left my house…. I was routinely followed, harassed and stopped by Sunriver PD for absolutely no reason for a period of three years.”

In some cases, Lewis reports, Officer Kasey Hughes – one of the two gallant defenders of the public weal who filed a stalking order against Foster – followed him “for miles at a time before stopping me.” In one particularly crowded day, Lewis was stopped four times by four different Sunriver PD officers. 

 The most disturbing aspect of this was that after dozens of stops per month, I finally reached a point of approaching the (now former) chief to complain and was not only rebuffed, but it was revealed to me by the chief that none of my stops was recorded. He essentially told me that his officers had never stopped me and that I was a liar.”

Obviously, many Sunriver residents recognized that the police department – and the quasi-private municipal cabal running it – constituted a large, festering problem. However, only Bob Foster was willing to confront those responsible for it.

Sharp-Dressed Man: Bob Foster with his Stratocaster.

 In public meetings, Foster denounced the Service District as an unnecessary expense that consolidated the grip of the village’s insular ruling elite. He proposed abolishing the District and contracting with nearby La Pine for emergency services – an arrangement that would have saved Sunriver home owners a great deal of money and reined in the power of the SROA.

In reprisal, the SROA concocted a plot to silence the civic-minded businessman. This is not a matter of speculation: The key player in that conspiracy, former Sunriver Police Chief Michael Kennedy, has provided an admirably candid summary of that conspiracy in a March 8 letter to the Deschutes County Commission.

Kennedy wrote that letter to file a grievance with the Commission after being fired on February 16 in what he described as an act of retaliation by a corrupt and unaccountable municipal government whose official dealings are as opaque as the proceedings of the North Korean Politburo.

“The Sunriver Owners Association has pressured the Sunriver Police Department as well as me to perform unlawful and unethical acts … which we have refused,” wrote Kennedy. “It is my firm belief that my firing was a direct result of my refusal to act on their unethical requests.”

The conspiracy to railroad Bob Foster on “stalking” charges was prominent among those “unethical” acts to which Kennedy refers.

After growing weary of what was described as Foster’s “unwanted attention,” Kennedy approached the SROA and requested “that Bob Foster be trespassed from the SROA/Police building,” the former Chief recalled. This would mean that Foster wouldn’t be able to attend public SROA meetings, or file a police complaint, without being subject to arrest. 

Kennedy’s suggestion, if act on, would have been an act of petty, officious retaliation, but it wasn’t a criminal conspiracy. What the SROA suggested does meet that description.

“After meeting with the board, the SROA board president, Bob Nelson, and Bob Wrightson, who are both also on the Service District board, came to my office and told Sergeant Patnode and I [sic] that they would not be trespassing Bob Foster…. [H]owever, their legal counsel had a better solution….. A short time later, our legal counsel advised that we would be filing a stalking order against Bob Foster…. At the request of legal counsel, I contacted Sergeant Patnode and Officer Kasey Hughes to see if they would be willing to have the stalking orders filed on their behalf. They subsequently agreed and the stalking orders were filed.”

Kennedy before the falling-out.

 Unfortunately for the SROA, Bob Foster “didn’t immediately roll over,” Kennedy recalls. Instead, he gave notice that he intended to file lawsuits against the SROA and the Service District – which, as Kennedy points out, are essentially the same entity.

“The current management structure of the Sunriver Service District puts entirely too much control in the hands of a small segment of the community,” Kennedy explained to the County Commission. “The end result is that a private home owners association has effective control over the operations and funds of a public taxing district.” (Emphasis added.) That same entrenched cabal uses the Sunriver PD as its enforcement arm and revenue-extraction mechanism. 

Seeking to limit the potential damage from the lawsuit, the SROA “appeared to be attempting to withdraw Service District protection from the two officers” it has used to file stalking orders against Foster. 

In an executive session, SROA Board President Nelson “said something to the effect of `Why is the Service District financing these stalking orders, when this is clearly a civil matter between these two officers and Bob Foster,” Kennedy recalled. “I reminded him that we had asked those officers if they would be willing to file the stalking orders at the request of legal counsel…. I advised him that if asked, that is how I would have to testify in court. After that, SROA appeared to further distance themselves from the case, even though they were the ones who initially started us down the path of filing the stalking orders.” (Emphasis added.) 

In those paragraphs, Kennedy made at least three critical admissions: 

*The private SROA, in defiance of conflict-of-interest laws, controls a public taxing district and the police department – just as Bob Foster had predicted it would.

*The stalking case against Foster was instigated by the SROA, with the connivance of the police department; it had nothing to do with any criminal conduct on Foster’s part.

*The SROA and Service District were using funds extracted from Sunriver tax victims to finance its vendetta against Foster.

Kennedy’s final performance evaluation by the SROA commended him for taking the lead “in seeking to support and protect [his] officers when harassment by a stalker reached the point where legal action had to be taken.” The SROA’s assessment of Kennedy changed abruptly after the predictable scene in which the Chief told them, in effect, “If I go down, I’m taking you with me.”

After Kennedy was cashiered, he was reportedly given a severance package of $100,000 – a rather extravagant amount for a minor bureaucrat who managed a tiny police force in a tranquil resort community with a permanent population of fewer than 1,000 people. If the SROA’s intention was to buy off Kennedy, they badly underestimated the price of his silence – and misunderstood the magnitude of his admissions against interest.

Kennedy insists on being reinstated as Sunriver Police Chief. He also demands the resignation of five directors of the SROA, and the disbanding of the special service district. That last demand is another vindication of Bob Foster, who made the same proposal five years ago – thereby provoking the lengthy and expensive campaign of criminal harassment in which Kennedy eagerly participated until it became personally risky to him. 

Disbanding the service district is necessary but insufficient. The only adequate remedy would be to add Sunriver, Oregon to the lengthening roster of small towns that have been relieved of the burden of a municipal police department. Chances are, Kind Reader, that the city in which you live would benefit from the same kind of "neglect."

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The Predators of Marengo County

Diane Avera (rear, left), with grandchildren Gavin and Caleb (foreground)

“What brings you to Demopolis?” 

The question seemed harmless, as did the questioner, Sgt. Tim Soronen of the Demopolis, Alabama police department. Diane Avera, the 45-year-old grandmother from Meridian, Mississippi to whom that question was posed, couldn’t see any harm in answering it candidly.

“I came over to buy some Sudafed for our scuba diving trip this weekend, since we can’t buy it in Meridian anymore,” Mrs. Avera explained. 

Soronen asked Avera if she knew it was against the law to cross the state line to buy Sudafed. 

“No, sir, I did not know,” the startled woman replied.

“I need you to step out of the car,” Soronen demanded.

“For what? I swear I didn’t know. What did I do?” Avera asked in alarm.

“You came to Demopolis to buy some Sudafed,” came the curt response. “Step to the back of the truck.”

 Before the sun set on July 29, 2010, Diane Avera was in the Marengo County Jail, where she would remain for forty days. At one point she was shackled to a restraint chair for 17 hours. During that time she was denied water or access to a bathroom. She also developed edema in her feet. Edema-related blood clots have been identified as the cause of death for several of the inmates who have perished while chained to  the “Devil’s Chair.”

(For illustration only: This is not Diane Avera.)

Using the threat of kidnapping Avera’s grandchildren, Soronen extorted from the terrified woman a confession that she had knowingly purchased Sudafed for the purpose of manufacturing crystal methamphetamine. After more than a month in a government cage, Avera was released from jail on $51,000 bail.

Marengo County DA Greg Griggers offered Mrs. Avera his standard plea bargain: Five years of probation if she agreed not to defend herself in court. If she turned down that deal, however, Griggers promised, “I will send you to prison.”

If Avera had been a meth dealer, she almost certainly would have accepted Griggers’ offer. As an innocent woman whose unwitting violation of an obscure technical statute had injured nobody, Avera contested the charge. 

During Avera’s three-day trial, Judge Eddie Hardaway gave Griggers generous latitude to make entirely unsubstantiated claims, among them that Diane had confessed that she and her daughter had been using meth for at least two years. He also insisted that Avera had somehow “diluted” drug tests she had undergone after being bailed out of jail – a charge that was refuted by the clinicians who had examined the samples. 


Avera was found guilty of conspiracy to manufacture crystal meth and sentenced to a year in prison with an additional seven years of probation. She was released two months later after filing an appeal, and remains free today on a $20,000 appeal bond – if the word “free” applies to someone living in the shadow of a prison sentence.

“This has cleaned out my retirement savings, and [her husband] Keith’s as well,” Diane Avera told Pro Libertate. “We can’t get any answers as to when the appeal hearing will be held, because nobody in Marengo County seems interested in filing the paperwork. So right now, all we can do is wait with our lives on hold, and with this thing hanging over my head.”
Prior to her arrest in July 2010, Diane had no criminal record, and no history of drug abuse or addiction of any kind. 

“I have known Ms. Avera for approximately 10 years,” wrote Dr. Dennis Sims in an October 8, 2010 letter to Judge Hardaway. “Ms. Avera worked as a nursing assistant at Rush Medical Group for many years. She worked part time for me as a nurse…. I have never heard the first hint concerning any drug use, drug dependence, or any hint of scandal whatsoever.”

Dr. Simms related that he has treated Diane for “recurrent sinusitis and recurrent allergy symptoms” on roughly a dozen occasions over the past decade, and that she has undergone surgery to deal with this persistent problem. Diane routinely purchased pseudoephedrine as an over-the-counter medication to treat the problems described by Dr. Sims. In July 2010 – just weeks before Diane was arrested – a new state ordinance went into effect in Mississippi that made pseudoephedrine a prescription drug. Dr. Simms astringently refers to that measure as “a rather asinine law.”

New hobby: Diane Avera on a scuba expedition.

It wasn’t allergies that prompted Diane to buy Sudafed in the middle of the summer – it was her newly acquired hobby of scuba diving. 

She and her husband Keith – a Public Safety Diver with the Lauderdale County Emergency Management Agency – were planning a scuba trip to Panama City, Florida.  Dr. Simms explains that “changes of air pressure when diving can lead to ear block, sinus block, sometimes with grave and immediate consequences including acute dizziness and disorientation.” 

In his own letter to Judge Hardaway, RC Sample, the Master Scuba Diver Trainer (MSDT) who instructed Diane, testified that “when Diane would travel to depth, she had difficulty equalizing the pressure at the boundary of her eardrum of a number of reasons … relating to her sinuses,” a condition that can be treated through the judicious use of pseudoephedrine.

“Pseudoephedrine, contrary to what law enforcement believes, is used for something other than making crystal methamphetamine,” wrote Sample, displaying the kind of weary patience exhibited by adults trying to explain the obvious to a resolutely dim-witted child. “Without belaboring all of the biochemistry involved … [the medication relieves] inflammation of the nasal membranes,” thereby reducing “the effort needed to equalize the pressure on the eardrum when scuba diving….”

“It is common among our group of divers to use an over-the-counter decongestant sinus medication to aid in equalizing the pressure associated with the water depth required to scuba dive,” confirmed Liza Gilton, another member of the Meridian-based diving group, in her letter to Hardaway. “I have been on literally hundreds of dive trips and have personally used such medication on almost every trip.” 

The explanations offered by Sims, Sample, and Gilton are perfectly reasonable and should be sufficient to convince any rational person.  The deranged people responsible for the Drug War would probably view those letters as an admission that Avera’s scuba club is a front for a meth manufacturing ring. In fact, that was essentially the charge made by DA Griggers in court, when confronted with more than a score of people who had come to act as character witnesses on Diane’s behalf.

 “He claimed that all of these people were somehow involved in meth trafficking,” a disgusted Keith Avera told Pro Libertate. 

Perhaps we should expect to see “Diver Down” bumper decals added to the informal profile used to conduct forfeiture-focused pretext stops. I wish I were kidding. 

 In anticipation of the trip to Panama City, Sample advised Diane to pick up a box of Sudafed. On the suggestion of a Wal Mart clerk in Meridian, Diane decided to go across the state line to Demopolis, where it would be possible to obtain it over the counter. 

In the company of her 27-year-old son Larry, his girlfriend Shana, and three small children (her grandsons Gavin and Caleb, and the girlfriend’s nephew), Avera made two stops – the first to the CVS pharmacy, where he son and his girlfriend each bought a box of Sudafed, and then to Wal Mart, where she bought another, in addition to crayons for the grandchildren.

At the time the Demopolis  PD was “conducting a sting operation,” reported the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. As it happened, the oh-so-helpful pharmacist at CVS was a police informant. 

 As soon as Avera pulled out of the Wal Mart parking lot, Soronen intercepted her. 

“If it’s against the law” to make an out-of-state Sudafed purchase in Demopolis, Diane asked the officer, “why did Wal Mart sell it to me?” Soronen was too busy calling for back-up to reply. Within a few minutes two additional officers arrived and started to search the vehicle.

“How much Sudafed did you buy?” Soronen demanded of Diane.

“I only bought one box,” she replied.

“So, if I search the truck I’ll find one box of Sudafed,” he persisted.

“No, sir,” Diane responded. “I bought a box, my son bought a box and Shana bought a box. So you’ll find three boxes.” 

Up to this point – as her ingenuous candor demonstrated -- Diane assumed that she was mired in a misunderstanding, rather than caught in a trap. When Soronen told her that he could “call in the DEA to come down here,” she mistakenly assumed that the officer was trying to help, rather than making a veiled threat.


“I appreciate it,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was against the law.”

By this time, Soronen surely knew that he wasn’t dealing with a drug manufacturer. He just as clearly didn’t care. The officers continued pawing through the vehicle. They eventually exhumed a bottle of methadone that had been prescribed to Diane’s son Larry, a habitual drug user who had been through several rehab programs. A few minutes later an officer found a pouch containing drug “paraphernalia” – which Larry admitted belonged to him.

Diane’s grandsons had been taken into custody and were in the back of a police vehicle. One of the officers loudly inquired of Soronen, “Do you want me to go ahead and call DHR to pick up these kids?”

This sadistic bit of stagecraft had the desired effect.  

As a child, Diane and her siblings had been seized by “child protection” bureaucrats in Mississippi and scattered across the state.  When Soronen announced that he was going to handcuff the adults and call for the child-snatchers to collect the children, Diane’s reaction was immediate, and visceral. She broke down entirely – which was the intended result.

“What do I have to do to prevent DHR from picking up my grandkids?” Diane pleaded. Soronen insisted that Diane would have to “confess” that all of the Sudafed was hers. He didn’t explain that this put her over the legal limit in Alabama.


Soronen's roadside interrogation of Diane lasted roughly an hour. The entire incident was captured by way of a concealed recording device worn by the officer. Only a few minutes of that recording was played in court -- the portion containing her purported confession. In her appeal, Diane is demanding that the complete record be entered into evidence.

Diane’s son Larry – an admitted drug user – was permitted to drive the children back to Mississippi. She was taken to jail, where Soronen – acting as an exceptionally demanding copy editor – had his victim commit the bogus confession to writing.  “I did not know it was against the law to cross the state line to purchase Sudafed,” Avera’s statement concluded. “I promise to never buy another box in my life.”

During the five weeks she spent in Marengo County Jail, Diane was denied the rudimentary decencies of a human existence. Blankets and sheets were withheld from her, leaving her to freeze on a bare metal bunk. For an entire week, she and the other inmates were deprived of utensils and forced to eat with their fingers. Each inmate was given a single set of clothes. The 17-hour torture session in the restraint chair inaugurated a regular course of smaller acts of calculated cruelty by the jail staff.

This question should be considered in light of the mistreatment Diane endured: Why would she turn down the plea bargain and risk a prison sentence after suffering as she did, unless she is innocent?

Keith Avera describes Diane as “a prisoner of the drug war going on inside America.” Under Mississippi’s newly enhanced “meth”-control law, he points out, people can be arrested on drug charges for possessing “isopropyl alcohol, Hydrogen peroxide, acetone, potassium, and many more commonly used house hold items” – all of which are listed as meth “precursors.”

 “When common household medications and disinfectants are now illegal to possess, I believe we have gone overboard in the drug laws,” he observes. 

Embellishing on that point, it should also be said that when your local pharmacy clerk is a police informant ready to report you for buying an over-the-counter cold medicine, it should be obvious that, whatever the USA may have been at one time, it has formally degenerated into a reich. Avera’s case is particularly infuriating – not just because of the practiced viciousness with which Soronen used her grandchildren as hostages, but also because the snitch that got the grandmother in trouble works for a large corporation that was spared federal charges for its admitted role in providing large amounts of pseudoephedrine to meth manufacturers.

Since 2005, over-the-counter cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine have been treated as a controlled substance. Jeffrey Tucker of the Ludwig von Mises Institute points out that “Before 2005, you could by as many Sudafed packages as you did Big Mac sandwiches…. Now, your 30-allotment is nine grams,” which for most people won’t survive the cold and flu season. The  government-approved replacement is a placebo.

Pharmacies are required to limit customers to no more than 3.6 grams a day, supposedly to make it more difficult for would-be traffickers to obtain the raw ingredients of methamphetamine.


In predictable fashion, this created a flourishing black market for pseudoephedrine. Cash-strapped people are eagerly acting as “smurfers” – that is, proxy buyers who obtain huge quantities of Sudafed and other cold remedies on behalf of meth dealers.

About a year ago, CVS, whose corporate leadership admits that it knowingly allowed extensive purchases of pseudoephedrine by “smurfers,” avoided criminal charges and given a large fine that was passed along to customers. As Avera’s case illustrates, the pharmacy chain is also eager to aid in the prosecution of small-time defendants who purchase forbidden amounts of cold medicine. Some of them face years in prison – where meth and other illegal drugs are readily available. This is particularly true in Alabama.

In early 2009, reported the Opelika-Auburn News, twenty-five people in that region of Alabama were arrested on “meth-related charges.” Of those arrested, only two were charged with either possessing or manufacturing methamphetamine; the others were arrested for what was described as “unlawful possession of a precursor” – that is, “purchasing over the legal amount of pseudoephedrine.”

The Averas point out that Diane is not the only Mississippi resident who was entrapped in Marengo County’s Sudafed snare: During her ordeal, Diane met another Meridian-area woman of similar age and background who fell prey to the same racket. Unlike Diane, however, the other victim (who prefers not to be named) accepted a plea deal from Griggers.

Tim Soronen seems to typify the kind of “good people” Isabel Patterson described in her essay “The Humanitarian with the Guillotine” – the kind who routinely do horrible things they believe “to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.”

Soronen’s name appears in the 2009 case Baney v. State, in which the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction of a man who had been caught in one of Soronen’s child predator stings. 

The ruling describes how Soronen “developed several teenage-girl profiles in an Internet chat room,” two of which attracted the attention of John Baney. 

After enticing the deviant into sending explicit images of his anatomy and of a self-administered sex act, Soronen attempted to lure him to a nearby park. Although Baney appeared to take the bait, he “failed to show up at the designated place and time.” It was never proven that Baney had acted on his degenerate impulses. However, the applicable statute doesn’t require an overt act – only evidence of a “culpable mental state.”

Which is more loathsome – pursuing sexual liaisons with underage girls, or exploiting those depraved impulses by playacting the role of a potential victim? That question is best pondered by someone equipped with a mind more subtle -- and a gag reflex less sensitive -- than mine. This much, however, is indisputable: Someone who would wring a confession out of an innocent woman by using her grandchildren as hostages is a child predator at least an order of magnitude more contemptible than John Baney.

Many thanks...

... for the kind donations to help keep Pro Libertate on-line. While supplies last, I will continue to send a personalized copy of Liberty in Eclipse to anyone who contributes $20  or more. We really appreciate your kindness. Thanks, and God bless!

Be sure to check out Republic magazine. 

Dum spiro, pugno!

"Necessary Force"

(Minor clarification below)

“I always thought police were nothing but good and were there to protect people,” testifies Elizabeth Polak, a registered nurse from Phoenix. Her view of the State’s enforcement caste changed dramatically as a result of what she witnessed in Denver on the evening of March 25, 2008.

Polak, returning to her apartment following her daily jog, saw a man and a woman having an unremarkable conversation near the entrance to the building.  Two police officers appeared – a development always pregnant with trouble – and approached the couple. From a distance of about 100 feet, Polak saw the officers stride purposefully toward the man, who was later identified as James Moore.

“The officers did not stop and have a conversation with Mr. Moore,” she later recounted in a sworn affidavit. “The officers walked up to him and instantaneously punched Mr. Moore. Prior to being punched, there was no resistance or non-cooperation on his part. Mr. Moore was not given the chance to comply with any orders, if any were given. It appeared that the police were on a mission to walk up to Mr. Moore and punch him.” 

Shocked and terrified by the assault on Moore, the woman – his girlfriend, Julie Gomez – repeatedly exclaimed: “You have the wrong people!” Moore, who had been knocked to the ground, did what he could to avoid or deflect the blows directed at him by the assailants. 

The attack on Moore “appeared to be completely unprovoked and at no time was Mr. Moore fighting back,” Polak – who has never spoken with the victim – related in her affidavit. “At no time did Mr. Moore try to attack an officer. At no time did Mr. Moore try to reach for an officer’s weapon. Mr. Moore was surprisingly calm.” 

“I did try to stay calm,” Moore, a Special Forces combat veteran, recalled to Pro Libertate. “I just tried to assure myself that the beating would eventually stop, and I just had to endure it patiently. But it didn’t stop.” 

The assailants, Officers Shawn Miller and John Robledo of the Denver Police Department, had been summoned to the apartment building by a noise complaint from a neighbor after Moore – who has been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – had a somewhat tumultuous breakdown upon learning of a friend’s death in Afghanistan. (Moore, who was a Ron Paul delegate in 2008, has become an unabashed opponent of the Empire.) After deciding a change of scenery was in order, Moore and his girlfriend called a cab and went outside to wait. An hour later, the cops arrived.

“We were waiting outside the building, when I suddenly hear pounding and rushing footsteps -- then next thing you know Miller is in my face shouting, `Get your hands out of your pockets! Show me some ID!’” Moore told Pro Libertate. “I said, `Why. what's going on' -- and I was almost simultaneously knocked to the ground before I could finish." Once the beating began, Moore tried to identify himself and point out he was a disabled Vet -- but this availed him nothing.

Moore hit the ground hard – and went very still. Moore recalled that there was a sudden, brief pause in the assault after blood gushed from his face onto the sidewalk. 

“It seems to me that they knew at that point they’d screwed up,” he said. “It was as if, after a second or two, they decided to make it look as if I had been resisting arrest – which meant that they had to use a great deal of `necessary force’ to subdue me.” Robledo immediately hog-tied Moore, binding his wrists and ankles in a restraint device -- while Miller continued the assault. When Miller’s hands grew weary and his knuckles became sore, he extracted a small club and began hitting the victim in the neck and head.

“I stood in terror watching the beating for about 7-10 minutes,” Polak attested. The attack lasted long enough for the young woman to enter her apartment and get to a window. 

During that time, the assailants -- seeking to sustain the fiction that they were subduing a dangerous, resisting criminal -- called for "backup." A thugscrum of about ten officers quickly congealed at the scene. As many as a half-dozen of them helping to restrain the unresisting Moore, who was already hog-tied and remained conscious for roughly half of the amount of time described by Polak.

"Every time I tried to say something, they raised my leg higher into the air behind my back, causing my diaphragm to push into my lungs to shut off my air supply," Moore pointed out. "I could not breathe out, much less breathe in." Even though he was helpless, hog-tied, face-down on the concrete, and suffocating, the police continued to beat him unstintingly while chanting the preferred refrain of the rapist: "Stop resisting! Stop resisting!"

“From the windows inside the complex, I saw Mr. Moore lying lifeless in his own blood,” Polak narrates. “Officers were still on top of him striking him with their fists. He was not moving and did not look like he was breathing. His face looked caved in.”

Eventually one of the officers – obviously the brightest of a very dim lot – noticed that 

Moore appeared to be dead, and began to administer CPR. An ambulance pulled up shortly thereafter and Moore’s apparently lifeless body was taken to the hospital. 

At one point, that body was literally lifeless, in a clinical sense: Moore “flatlined” on the sidewalk and had to be medically revived by the EMTs. Polak, looking at Moore from a distance with the eyes of an RN, couldn’t tell if the victim had survived: “I called my mom and asked if she would call the police to inquire whether Mr. Moore was alive or dead.”

It’s doubtful that Denver’s, ahem, Finest would have cared much about the fate of a mere Mundane like James Moore. The officer who led the unprovoked assault certainly wasn’t troubled by what he had just done.

“After the ambulance left, a fireman used a fire hose to wash the blood off the sidewalk,” Polak notes. I also noticed that the same officer that was beating him with the club was wiping Mr. Moore’s blood off of his club.” 

Swaggering coward Shawn Miller bullies a small, disabled woman.

 That officer’s name, once again, is Shawn Miller. Two days before he committed what was very nearly an act of aggravated homicide against James Moore,he and his partner severely beat a pedestrian named Jason Graber, leaving him with a broken knee and a permanent disability.

Concerned that Miller’s reckless driving was putting pedestrians at risk, Graber gestured for the officer to slow down. This constituted the unforgivable offense called “contempt of cop” – and Graber was brutalized as an act of “street justice.”

In a November 2010 incident in a secure apartment building, Miller cursed at, browbeat, threatened, battered, and abducted a disabled woman named Doreen Salazar because of her perceived tardiness in buzzing him and his partner into the residential area. Salazar, who had been advised by the apartment managers never to grant access to anyone she didn’t know, and who had difficulty identifying the officers as police, paused for perhaps a second or two before letting them in. It’s a tragedy that she didn’t understand that police are the most dangerous variety of strangers she's likely to confront.

Security camera video shows Miller snarling at the small, middle-aged woman, pushing her, and cornering her near an elevator. He then slammed her face-first into the elevator door, handcuffed her, and held her in his patrol car for about ten minutes – a sadistic act that served no purpose other than to terrorize an uppity Mundane who had failed to respect Miller’s supposed authority.

“Did you learn your lesson?” a smirking Miller sneered at Salazar after releasing her from the handcuffs.

“Yes, I learned my lesson,” Salazar – who is more of a man than little Shawn will ever be -- replied. “I learned not to open a door for a cop ever again.”

While that is a sound and commendable policy, it’s inadequate to deal with the threat posed by police officers to those citizens – like James Moore – who actually venture outside their homes on occasion.

Moore underwent a lengthy and expensive hospitalization that included back surgery. While recuperating from the nearly fatal beating, Moore had to deal with the expense, frustration, and stress resulting from the spurious charges filed against him by the thugs who had beaten him. In keeping with standard procedure in such matters, the victim of this unprovoked, and nearly fatal, attack was charged with Felony Assault on a Police Officer and Felony Disarming of a Police Officer. It took two years for the charges to be dismissed.  

Moore in rehab following back surgery.

In March 2010, Moore filed a federal lawsuit against Miller, Robledo, and Denver’s municipal government. During depositions last December, Miller and his boyfriends continued to peddle the fiction that they had subdued a violent, dangerous suspect.

“They’re trying to make me look like Rambo – an unhinged Special Forces veteran who is a danger to the public,” comments Moore. “Yes, I did serve in a Special Forces unit that saw combat in Afghanistan, but I was a computer nerd. I was never part of an assault team.”

After returning to the United States in 2004, Moore suffered from combat-related psychological problems -- including post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2006, he sought help from the VA, and was turned down. Shortly thereafter, he attempted suicide. 

By 2008, however, “I was healthy again, and looking forward to live. Julie and I planned to make a life together, but that ended the night that the cops attacked me.” Julie, whose only involvement in the March 25, 2008 incident was to be a witness to the Denver PD's gang assault on her boyfriend, was abducted by the police and slapped with several entirely contrived charges, including assault on an officer, resisting arrest, and "obstruction." While in jail following her arrest, Julie was told that the police would have the couple evicted from their apartment -- and they made good on the threat.

Julie spent the next two years fighting the fraudulent and vindictive charges against her. Although James and Julie are still on cordial terms, the accumulated trauma of the evening and her subsequent incarceration ended the relationship.

“In his testimony, Miller said that `This was the worst fight I’ve ever been in. This guy must have been trained in martial arts,’” Moore reflects. “He also said that I was a threat because he couldn’t see my hands and I was wearing a hoodie. Neither of those statements is true. I never had my hands in my pockets, and I was actually wearing a North Face jacket, not the notorious hoodie.”

Between his medical bills and his legal expenses, Moore – who pulled in a salary north of $100,000 working in Silicon Valley before going to war – is destitute, living with his father in Oklahoma. He was able to gather sufficient funding to travel to southeast Asia in search of alternative therapies for his back injuries – treatment that cost a great deal less than conventional methods in the U.S. While the prospect of relocating to Asia was attractive, Moore points out, “I had to come back here and take care of business in court.”

Last September, the Denver City Council approved a $225,000 taxpayer settlement with Jason Graber. U.S. District Judge John Kane, who had dismissed Graber’s lawsuit last March, reversed his decision a few months later after it was demonstrated that the Denver PD and the municipal government had refused to turn over documents dealing with excessive force complaints – many of them filed against Shawn Miller, who remains on duty and has never faced disciplinary action of any kind.

Denver’s police department is among the most notoriously abusive agencies of its kind in the Mountain West. Two years ago, in the context of growing public outrage over accumulating episodes of criminal assault by police, Chief Gerald Whitman told the local NBC affiliate that "the police department is under control" and that it actually receives fewer use-of-force complaints than departments in most other major cities. 

Apparently the public is expected to confide in the Chief’s uncorroborated assurances, because he is determined to preserve the institutional opacity of his department.

Last fall, Judge Kane issued an order demanding that the police department turn over all documents dealing with excessive force complaints over the previous eight years, including disciplinary records. Despite fines of $5,000 a day, and Kane’s threat to dispatch U.S. Marshals to collect the files, the Denver PD and the ruling clique it serves have refused to comply.  [Clarification: The department, while not in full compliance with the order, has turned over a small fraction of the documents it is required to provide.]

“The people behind this are simply trying to wear me down,” Moore observes. “They want to outlast me, and they have taxpayer money at their disposal, while I have next to nothing. They probably assume that I’ll get desperate and they’ll be able to settle for pennies on the dollar. I, on the other hand, am determined to be the guy who doesn’t cash out – the one who holds out for real accountability, which means the exposure of all the corrupt and criminal things this department has done to innocent people.”

“You know, before this happened I trusted the police,” Moore concludes in an ironic echo of the witness who saw him beaten and left for dead on the sidewalk. His experience is just one illustration – albeit an uncommonly infuriating one – of the fact that no informed and rational person should ever make that mistake. 

My sincere thanks, once again...

... for every generous donation made to keep Pro Libertate up and running. The books should start arriving by the end of this week. Once again: Everyone who donates $20 or more will receive a personalized copy of Liberty In Eclipse. 

Your help is urgently needed, and deeply appreciated. Thank you!

VERY IMPORTANT: To avoid any possible confusion, please understand that that I am not soliciting donations for James Moore's legal case against the Denver PD.


Those interested in following James's legal struggles should check out the new Facebook page "Justice for Jimmy," which will be regularly updated with information about his case and similar outrages.

Please be sure to check out Republic magazine -- which is updated daily.

Dum spiro, pugno!

The Hutaree Case: Next Time, They'll Just Send In The Drones

Exonerated Hutaree defendants leave court: Future "seditionists" probably won't get a trial.

 

Next time the Regime identifies a group of people as “domestic terrorists,” the result might be summary execution, or imprisonment in military custody, rather than a trial. This is one very plausible result of the dismissal of “seditious conspiracy” charges against members of Michigan’s Hutaree militia. 

Thanks to the legal environment created by the NDAA, the Feds won’t have to run the risk involved in submitting the next “domestic terrorism” case to the scrutiny of a court. Now that Attorney General Eric Hoder has helpfully clarified that “due process” and “judicial process” aren’t the same thing, it’s entirely possible that the next group of American dissidents identified by the SPLC or other self-appointed political watchdog groups as “terrorists” could be targeted by a drone-fired missile or a presidential strike team. 

When asked by Rep. Thomas Graves (R-Georgia) if such "targeted assassinations" could be conducted domestically as well as overseas, FBI Commissar Robert Mueller pointedly refused to rule out the possibility. This was probably welcome news to Leslie Larsen, the FBI Agent who presided over the Hutaree case. 

 "We haven't worked a year and a half on this investigation and risked [an undercover agent's] life to walk away from this with 3 arrests," groused the secret police investigator two years ago. At the time it appeared that the FBI wouldn’t be able to manufacture a criminal conspiracy out of a few trivial firearms violations and a surfeit of anti-government rhetoric. 

During the past decade, false flag operations targeting disaffected Muslims have become the FBI’s métier. The Hutaree was the first non-Muslim “domestic extremist” groups to be cast as the lead in one of the Bureau’s post-911 Homeland Security Theater productions. U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts, who was able to see the plot holes in the FBI’s implausible script, had the character and good sense to dismiss the case with prejudice.

 In her order granting the defense motion for summary judgment, Roberts – who had previously expressed severe skepticism regarding the supposed merits of the case – lambasted the Feds for repeatedly venturing beyond "inference to pure speculation” and “attempting to formulate an alternative theory of criminal liability” when it became clear that they couldn’t provide tangible evidence of intent to commit an overt criminal act. This resulted in a theory of the case “based primarily on two conversations … the first on August 13, 2009, and the second on February 20, 2010.” 

Hutaree Crackdown: SWAT operators raid a church in Michigan.

 The Hutaree “militia” was a loosely organized group of obscure people united by their entirely commendable hostility toward the criminal clique calling itself the United States Government. They apparently shared a set of apocalyptic beliefs about the imminent rise of the Antichrist, and they engaged in survivalist training in anticipation of the End Times, when they might confront the necessity to use defensive force against government agents – whether foreign or domestic – in league with the enemy. 

It was in the context of this scenario that members of the Hutaree group supposedly plotted to murder a law enforcement officer and then follow up with opportunistic attacks on other LEOs who would attend the funeral. This repellent terrorist tactic should be familiar to the Feds who investigated the Hutaree group; after all, the government that employs them has made extensive use of it. A detailed report compiled by British and Pakistani journalists has documented that CIA drone-fired missile strikes have killed “dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or [who] were attending funerals” that resulted from earlier missile attacks.

In orchestrating its phony domestic terrorist plots, the Regime tends to use a script inspired by its own acts of state terrorism abroad. The Hutaree “plot” to assassinate a cop and then capitalize on the funeral may have been prompted by the federal informant who infiltrated the group and – acting as a provocateur– thoughtfully offered to teach them how to make improvised explosive devices. It may have been stitched together in  post-production by the FBI impresario presiding over this little melodrama. What we know for certain is that it was not conceived by the Hutaree activists, nor did they take ownership of it.

The original indictment – which Judge Roberts eviscerated in a preliminary ruling – accused the Michigan dissidents of making material preparations to carry out specific criminal acts. When it was shown that there was no evidence to support that charge, the Feds shifted their focus and charged them with “seditious conspiracy,” which consisted of expressing opinions about government corruption and making physical preparations to for self-defense against criminal violence perpetrated by government authorities. 

Citing a Supreme Court precedent (Russell v. United States, 1962) holding that the prosecution isn’t “free to roam at large – to shift its theory of criminality so as to take advantage of each passing vicissitude of the trial,” Roberts observed that the Feds were not free to “say that the alleged plan set forth [in the original indictment] is irrelevant.” Yet that’s precisely what they attempted to do.

 

Although the supposed police assassination plot was central to the case against the Hutaree, “the Government did not provide sufficient proof of the existence of a conspiracy at all,” ruled Judge Roberts. “The Government says it is not certain whether the Hutaree intended to initiate the conflict, or simply engage in it once it was initiated by others.” While Hutaree members frequently engaged in what were described as “diatribes” against law enforcement, “all of this speech is protected by the First Amendment,” Roberts observed. Expressing hatred for the government’s enforcement caste “is not the same as seditious conspiracy.”

Under the Government’s theory of the case, Roberts noted, one could be charged with “sedition” simply through his or her “mere presence at the scene” when a Hutaree activist spoke about “going to war and killing police.” 

One of the defendants, Tina Mae Stone, was described by the Feds as an “active, engaged and vocal member” of the purported conspiracy because she overheard two conversations – one regarding a planned trip to Kentucky by David Stone, Sr. and the federal informant, and a second that took place in an FBI-rented warehouse in which the provocateur “discussed explosives” with Mr. Stone. 

The latter conversation touched on the subject of using coffee cans and wine bottles to make improvised explosively formed projectiles (EFPs).  Ms. Stone joked that “she would take one for the team and drink more wine, presumably so that the bottles could be used to make explosives,” Roberts recounts. The Feds characterized that wisecrack as evidence that she had “played an active, unhesitant, and continuing role in obtaining materials to use in building EFPs” – despite the fact that she was present for only one meeting with the Hutaree co-defendants, and never provided them with anything. 

Unchained: Michael Meeks hugs his aunt after being set free.

 Following dismissal of the case, Hutaree defendant Michael Meeks, a 42-year-old former Marine, said that the salient lesson taught by the case was the need for Americans to “watch what you say. Even the most innocent of statements can be used against you.” 

Actually, the lesson is that anything said in your presence can be used against you -- and if a sufficiently incriminating remark isn't forthcoming from you or your friends, the Feds can always pay somebody to perform on cue, and on camera.

While the Feds didn’t succeed in imprisoning the Hutaree defendants for life, they were able to steal more than two years of their respective lives through pre-trial incarceration. 

As a consolation prize, the Feds were able to extort guilty pleas from David Stone, Sr. and his son Joshua on weapons charges, which could result in prison terms. 

Although U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade – the Madam DeFarge behind this case – wasn’t able to feed the defendants to the guillotine, she expressed a measure of vindictive satisfaction that the felony convictions mean “that these defendants will never be permitted to possess firearms again.” She also reiterated the Regime’s intent to continue “dismantling” militias and other dissident groups suspected of impermissible animosity toward their rulers. 

Once again, thanks to the NDAA – the Obama Regime’s “Law of Suspects” – the Feds will be able to use extra-judicial means to “dismantle” dissident groups in the future. 

 The original Law of Suspects was enacted by France’s revolutionary Jacobin government  on September 17, 1793 (as it happened, the sixth birthday of the U.S. Constitution). The decree permitted the wholesale imprisonment of several classes of people deemed enemies of the State:

*Those considered “partisans of tyranny” or “enemies of liberty” -- which in the Jacobin lexicon referred to defenders of the monarchy and traditional institutions;

*Individuals who had been denied “certificates of patriotism” issued by the revolutionary regime;

*Former “civil servants” who had been cashiered by the National Convention;

*Former nobles and emigres and their families, if they failed to provide suitable displays of “devotion to the Revolution”;

*Those who emigrated from France between July 1, 1789 and April 8, 1792.

 As David A. Bell of Johns Hopkins University points out in his study The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It, the Law of Suspects -- the template for every modern totalitarian legal system, including the NDAA -- was the enabling act for the revolutionary Reign of Terror. As is the case with a contemporary American deemed an “enemy combatant,” any French citizen branded a Suspect had no right to appeal that designation. Protests of that kind were probably met with some variation of the sentiment recently expressed by Robespierre’s modern disciple, Sen. Lindsey Graham: “Shut up – you don’t get a lawyer!” 

The same concept was adopted by the Soviet Union’s Fundamental Principles of Penal Legislation, which identified the central mission of the state's law enforcement apparatus (chiefly the Ckeha secret police, which would later become the KGB) as that of identifying, and removing the threat of, "socially dangerous persons." That mission was enshrined in Article 58 of the Soviet penal code, which was the foundation of that government’s perpetual war of terror against dissent – and the antecedent to section 1031 of the NDAA.

 The law dealing with "socially dangerous persons," notes the authoritative Black Book of Communism, dealt with "any activity that, without directly aiming to overthrow or weaken the Soviet regime, was in itself `an attack on the political or economic achievements of the revolutionary proletariat.' The law thus not only punished intentional transgressions but also proscribed possible or unintentional acts” (emphasis added).

Additionally, the expression "socially dangerous persons" itself was based on "extremely elastic categories" that permitted the imprisonment of people in the gulag "even in the absence of guilt." This is because what the Soviet rulers were pleased to call "the law" specified that incarceration, exile, or execution could be employed as means of "social protection" against "anyone classified as a danger to society, either for a specific crime that has been committed or when, even if exonerated of a particular crime, the person is still reckoned to pose a threat to society." (Emphasis added.)

Soviet "law" discarded entirely with the idea of punishing overt acts, focusing instead on the supposed motivations of those deemed innately threatening to the regime. Note also that the Soviet system was rigged to nullify exculpatory verdicts. Soviet prosecutors, like Federal prosecutors today, considered themselves entitled to “shift the theory of criminality” as needed in order to justify detention of political offenders.

Detention of “socially dangerous persons” was the primary function of the Soviet penal apparatus. As Paul Gregory points out in his book Lenin's Brain, most of the prisoners consigned to the gulag were sent there not because of what they had done, but because of what the state suspected they could do; they were being isolated from the rest of society "because of actual or suspected opposition to the Soviet state” – that is to say, that they had a “general plan” to “oppose the authority” of the government,” as the U.S. “Justice” Department said of the Hutaree defendants. 

 During the Senate’s discussion of the NDAA’s martial law provisions, Sen. Graham warned that Americans suspected of terrorism –  another “elastic” category that can include practically any kind of organized dissent – should “know what will come your way – death; detention; prosecution.” 

Under the NDAA, the Regime has the luxury of ignoring the third option listed by Graham when courts refuse to ratify every conspiracy theory concocted by the Cheka (or, as it’s now know, the FBI).  Or the Feds could simply avoid the messiness associated with “judicial process” of any kind and implement the Obama administration’s policy of executive assassination.

Thank you so much!

I would like to offer earnest and emphatic thanks to everyone who has responded so generously to my recent appeal. This really means a great deal to me and my family. The first batch of personalized copies of Liberty in Eclipse will be shipped out tomorrow (March 30). Two cases arrived a couple of days ago, and I will continue to send out a copy of the book to anyone who donates $20 or more to Pro Libertate. For non-Pay Pal donations, or to send a mailing address, please contact me (WNGrigg [at] msn [dot] [com]). Once again, thank you, and God bless.

Be sure to check out Republic magazine.

Dum spiro, pugno!