by William N. Grigg, LRC

James Rourke was living out a parent’s worst nightmare when two Pennsylvania State Troopers arrived and promptly made matters much worse.

A little after 6:00 p.m. on January 28, Rourke, a 59-year-old man widely respected among residents of Doylesburg for his generosity and service to others, learned of a car crash involving his 19-year-old son Freddy.

James and his wife Betty rushed to the scene on Path Valley Road, where the car — which was driven by a family friend — had collided with a utility pole. Freddy and his friend, Chad O’Donel, were trapped inside, and live power lines snaked across the wreckage.

At the request of emergency personnel, Mr. Rourke — who had been sitting in a van across the street — walked to an emergency vehicle in the middle of the road to provide a brief medical history on his son. He was accompanied by his daughter, Betty Barrick.

As the medical discussion took place, a police vehicle pulled up and decanted two truculent troopers — Elmer Hertzog and James Erne — who were apparently looking to drum up business for themselves.

Eyewitnesses described Hertzog and Erne as “rude and disrespectful, using profanity in addressing Rourke and calling him a vulgar name” as they ordered him away from the emergency vehicle. The verbal abuse took place before Rourke and his daughter had a chance to leave — as did the ensuing assault by Hertzog.

By his own admission, Hertzog was the first to lay hands on Rourke, grabbing him by the front of his coat and pushing him backwards. This was an act of criminal battery. Rourke, a 59-year-old man with a heart condition, grabbed Hertzog’s jacket in what his daughter described as an effort to keep from falling backward to the pavement.

A local newspaper account twice uses the expression “deliberate attack on the trooper” to describe one possible description of Rourke’s action. Both he and his daughter deny that Rourke did anything more than act out of an understandable defensive reflex. However, given that Hertzog had committed an act of criminal violence against him, Rourke was entirely within his rights to counter-attack, if necessary and possible, irrespective of the official costume worn by his tax-devouring assailant.

Trooper Erne, Hertzog’s cohort in official crime, didn’t exactly “have his partner’s back.” Instead, in a fashion familiar to students of bullying tactics Erne ganged up on the victim by attacking him from the back, striking him in the small of the back with a knee and then piling on when Hertzog took Rourke to the ground.

Rourke’s daughter, frantic for her father’s safety, demanded that his assailants leave him alone, only to be given an abrupt reminder of how members of the state’s coercive caste perceive the rest of us: “You don’t ever touch a cop,” one of them snarled at her.

“I told them they didn’t need to do this, but it was as if they had to show their authority,” she later remarked.

Eventually the uniformed bullies allowed the victim to stand. But as eyewitness Timothy McMillen recalls, the harassment “didn’t just stop at the scene after they took him to the ground, but continued at Chambersburg Hospital,” where Freddie was flown for treatment.

By that time, a horde of donut-grazers had gathered to show solidarity with Hertzog and Erne. “There were four carloads of cops there when we got there,” continues McMillen. The stalwart defenders of public order apparently had no better use of their time than to intimidate and persecute a father whose son was in critical condition.

One of them, apparently stranded in perpetual adolescence, was playing the familiar bully’s game of bumping into Rourke in an attempt to antagonize him, and then lying by claiming that Rourke had bumped into him. While this was happening, doctors were telling Rourke that his comatose son might not survive.

An EMT, giving adult guidance to the overgrown playground tormentor and his playmates, told the police to let the Rourke family leave and to let the doctors get on with the task of saving Freddy’s life.

Freddy was still in a coma when Rourke was informed that he was being charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, and “failure of disorderly persons to disperse upon official order” — for the supposed crime of refusing to allow himself to be thrown to the ground for no reason by an officious prig in a government-issued costume.

Freddy, an honor roll student planning to major in (of all things) criminal justice,  will require extensive hospitalization and rehabilitative therapy. When he returns to his home, notes local crime reporter Vicky Taylor, Freddy “will probably find major changes, not only in his life, but also in his parents’ lives. The aggravated assault charge James Rourke faces carries a state prison sentence of as long as 10 years.”

The only role played by the police in this tragedy was to insert themselves where they didn’t belong, assert “authority” they didn’t possess, assault a man who had done nothing wrong, and charge their victim with crimes he didn’t commit.

All of this offers a compelling case for the proposition that we would be much better off without the state’s armed enforcers. And it’s difficult to think of  two bullies more richly deserving of getting their backs dirty than Troopers Elmer Hertzog and James Erne of the Pennsylvania State Police.

by Paul Joseph Watson

A war reporter who was detained, interrogated and handcuffed at Seattle airport for refusing to answer personal questions about his income has warned that Americans need to start standing up to TSA thugs because entering the country is now a more stifling experience than some of the worst police states on the planet.

“No country has ever treated me so badly,” Michael Yon wrote in a Facebook message. “Not China. Not Vietnam. Not Afghanistan. Definitely not Singapore or India or Nepal or Germany, not Brunei, not Indonesia, or Malaysia, or Kuwait or Qatar or United Arab Emirates. No county has treated me with the disrespect can that can be expected from our border bullies.”

“Yon was taken aside by the TSA and asked a series of questions, many of which seemed to have no bearing on national security. Finally when asked what his personal income was, he refused to answer because he felt it was none of their business. At this point they handcuffed and detained him until he was eventually released by Port Authority police because the TSA had no legitimate grounds to hold him,” reports Blog Critics.

Yon said that his experience was par for the course when entering America and not a manifestation of the Christmas Day attack. He told Breitbart.tv about a similar experience endured by his friend who was forced to give TSA agents her email password, who then proceeded to read her emails while she was in security.

Yon said he decided to stand up for his rights and “stare down” the TSA thugs. “I was like, let’s go to jail. I’m ready, because I’m not going to answer these questions, nobody’s getting my passwords,” he said, adding that he “hoped an adult would enter the room” so that he could be released.

Yon said that it was a nonsense that Americans were putting up with this kind of harassment. “We only have to deal with this because we put up with it….it’s incredible what we will allow our government to put us through,” he said, adding that harassment at American airports was even worse than that he had encountered in Israel.

“If we don’t stand up to them they will continue to infringe on our rights,” Yon warned.

Yon’s experience was similar to that endured by Steve Bierfeldt, a Ron Paul Campaign For Liberty treasurer, who was hounded and harassed by TSA agents for the crime of carrying cash and Ron Paul campaign material.

Bierfeldt was interrogated for over half an hour about his personal life and political viewpoints after he passed a metal box containing cash through a security checkpoint X-ray.

“I do not believe I should give up my constitutional rights each time I choose to travel by plane. I was doing nothing illegal or suspicious, yet I was treated like a potential criminal and harassed for no reason,” said Bierfeldt.

The ACLU fired a lawsuit on behalf of Bierfeldt, arguing that, “The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is subjecting innocent Americans to unreasonable searches and detentions that violate the Constitution.”

Incidents of TSA agents behaving like secret political police and embarking on petty power trips to harass innocent people have exploded way out of control and it has to stop now. Even overlooking the primary issues of gross violations of rights and privacy, the fact is that a large number of people have simply refused to travel to America anymore because entering the country is like trying to get into the old East Germany. This is killing the tourism industry and costing hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

A 2006 investigation by the Discover America Partnership found that tourism to America had sunk due to “a climate of fear and frustration that is turning away foreign business and leisure travelers from visiting the United States and damaging America’s image abroad.”

No less than a third of tourists vowed never to return to America after experiencing the treatment of Homeland Security officials at ports of entry. By early 2007, the U.S. had lost around 60 million visitors as a result of the stifling and intrusive security measures implemented since 9/11, which were proven to be completely flawed in light of the underwear bomber incident on Christmas Day.

America has not only lost its crown as a beacon of freedom and hospitality, turning instead into a feared police state shunned by tourists, but it has also sacrificed almost a third of its tourist industry as a result of TSA and Homeland Security thugs being given the power to treat everyone who enters the country as a potential terrorist who is guilty until proven innocent.

Watch an interview with Michael Yon below.
Yon’s experience was similar to that endured by Steve Bierfeldt, a Ron Paul Campaign For Liberty treasurer, who was hounded and harassed by TSA agents for the crime of carrying cash and Ron Paul campaign material.
Bierfeldt was interrogated for over half an hour about his personal life and political viewpoints after he passed a metal box containing cash through a security checkpoint X-ray.
“I do not believe I should give up my constitutional rights each time I choose to travel by plane. I was doing nothing illegal or suspicious, yet I was treated like a potential criminal and harassed for no reason,” said Bierfeldt.
The ACLU fired a lawsuit on behalf of Bierfeldt, arguing that, “The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is subjecting innocent Americans to unreasonable searches and detentions that violate the Constitution.”
Incidents of TSA agents behaving like secret political police and embarking on petty power trips to harass innocent people have exploded way out of control and it has to stop now. Even overlooking the primary issues of gross violations of rights and privacy, the fact is that a large number of people have simply refused to travel to America anymore because entering the country is like trying to get into the old East Germany. This is killing the tourism industry and costing hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
A 2006 investigation by the Discover America Partnership found that tourism to America had sunk due to “a climate of fear and frustration that is turning away foreign business and leisure travelers from visiting the United States and damaging America’s image abroad.”
No less than a third of tourists vowed never to return to America after experiencing the treatment of Homeland Security officials at ports of entry. By early 2007, the U.S. had lost around 60 million visitors as a result of the stifling and intrusive security measures implemented since 9/11, which were proven to be completely flawed in light of the underwear bomber incident on Christmas Day.
America has not only lost its crown as a beacon of freedom and hospitality, turning instead into a feared police state shunned by tourists, but it has also sacrificed almost a third of its tourist industry as a result of TSA and Homeland Security thugs being given the power to treat everyone who enters the country as a potential terrorist who is guilty until proven innocent.
Watch an interview with Michael Yon below.

by Ed Stone, Atlanta Gun Rights Examiner

It’s open season on gun carriers.

A case out of the First Circuit has some painful lessons for gun carriers in Georgia.  A United States Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld the constitutionality of pointing a gun at any citizen daring to carry, lawfully, a concealed weapon in public.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals is the Court just below the United States Supreme Court in the New England states.  The case stems from a lawyer who sued a police officer after he was detained for lawfully carrying a concealed weapon while in possession of a license to carry concealed.  According to the case opinion, the lawyer, Greg Schubert, had a pistol concealed under his suit coat, and Mr. Schubert was walking in what the court described as a “high crime area.”  At some point a police officer, J.B. Stern, who lived up to his last name, caught a glimpse of the attorney’s pistol, and he leapt out of his patrol car “in a dynamic and explosive manner” with his gun drawn, pointing it at the attorney’s face.

Officer Stern “executed a pat-frisk,” and Mr. Schubert produced his license to carry a concealed weapon.  He was disarmed and ordered to stand in front of the patrol car in the hot sun.  At some point, the officer locked him in the back seat of the police car and delivered a lecture.  Officer Stern “partially Mirandized Schubert, mentioned the possibility of a criminal charge, and told Schubert that he (Stern) was the only person allowed to carry a weapon on his beat.”

For most people, this would be enough to conclude that they were being harassed for the exercise of a constitutional right, but the officer went further, seizing the attorney’s pistol and leaving with it.  Officer Stern reasoned that because he could not confirm the “facially valid” license to carry, he would not permit the attorney to carry. Officer Stern drove away with the license and the firearm, leaving the attorney unarmed, dressed in a suit, and alone in what the officer himself argued was a high crime area.

The attorney sued in federal court, but the District Court threw out his suit, ruling that Officer Stern’s behavior is the proper way to treat people who lawfully carry concealed pistols.  Mr. Schubert appealed, and the First Circuit upheld the District Court’s ruling.  The court held that the stop was lawful and that Officer Stern “was permitted to take actions to ensure his own safety.”

The court further held that the officer was entitled to confirm the validity of a “facially valid” license to carry a concealed weapon.  The problem for Officer Stern was that there is no way to do so in Massachusetts, where this incident occurred.  As a result, the court held that Officer Stern “sensibly opted to terminate the stop and release Schubert, but retain the weapon.”

Georgia is not in the First Circuit, but this case holds some harsh lessons for Georgians who exercise their right to bear arms.  Recall that in the MARTA case here in Georgia, the court held that the officer was entitled to take measures to protect himself, including disarming the person carrying, and entitled to investigate further for a half hour even after Mr. Raissi produced a Georgia firearms license.  Although the officers in that case did not actually point a gun at Mr. Raissi’s face, as Officer Stern did to attorney Schubert, it is a logical conclusion that the court would have upheld the constitutionality of them doing so.  The vast majority of the cases MARTA cited in its briefs to the federal court included an officer pointing a gun at the person stopped.  In addition, carrying a concealed weapon onto the MARTA system is a felony, and no court is going to hold that an officer violated any constitutional right by pointing a gun at an armed felon.

Furthermore, it must be recalled that Georgia, like Massachussetts and the vast majority of states, has no system to confirm the validity of a Georgia firearms license.   The similarities between the MARTA federal opinion and the First Circuit opinion are startling, and the implications for Georgia are clear.

This First Circuit case is a logical extension of the MARTA case here in Georgia, and it shows what armed Georgians can expect if the General Assembly does not take action soon to correct the presumption of criminality that federal judge Thomas Thrash attached to the exercise of the right to bear arms.

Welcome to the new “right” to bear arms.

from Washington’s Blog via InfoWars.com

Numerous high-level officials and experts warn that the economic crisis could lead to unrest world-wide – even in developed countries:

• Today, Moody’s warned that future tax rises and spending cuts could trigger social unrest in a range of countries from the developing to the developed world, that in the coming years, evidence of social unrest and public tension may become just as important signs of whether a country will be able to adapt as traditional economic metrics, and that a fiscal crisis remains a possibility for a leading economy, it said that 2010 would be a “tumultuous year for sovereign debt issuers”.

• The U.S. Army War College warned in 2008 November warned in a monograph[click on Policypointers’ pdf link to see the report] titled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development” of crash-induced unrest:

The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The “widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” “An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,” it went on. “Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance,” the document read.

• Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said:

“The global economic crisis … already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries … Economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they are prolonged for a one- or two-year period,” said Blair. “And instability can loosen the fragile hold that many developing countries have on law and order, which can spill out in dangerous ways into the international community.”***

“Statistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one-to-two-year period.”***

“The crisis has been ongoing for over a year, and economists are divided over whether and when we could hit bottom. Some even fear that the recession could further deepen and reach the level of the Great Depression. Of course, all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.”

Blair made it clear that – while unrest was currently only happening in Europe – he was worried this could happen within the United States.

[See also this].

• Former national security director Zbigniew Brzezinski warned “there’s going to be growing conflict between the classes and if people are unemployed and really hurting, hell, there could be even riots.”

• The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned the the financial crisis is the highest national security concern for the U.S., and warned that the fallout from the crisis could lead to of “greater instability”.

Others warning of crash-induced unrest include:

• The head of the World Trade Organization

• The head of the International Monetary Fund (and see this)

• The head of the World Bank

• Senator Christopher Dodd

• Congressman Ron Paul (radio interview on March 6, 2009)

• Britian’s MI5 security agency

• Leading economic historian Niall Ferguson

• Leading economist Marc Faber and billionaire investor Jim Rogers

• Leading economist Nouriel Roubini

• Leading economist John Williams

• Top trend researcher Gerald Calente

• European think tank Leap2020

by Don Cooper

I’ve read my share of columns on police abuse and the police state. I’ve seen my share of videos on YouTube of police abusing people for the most mundane things like speeding, riding a bike on a sidewalk, riding a bike down the street, and, civil, non-violent protest.

But until just recently I hadn’t experienced it myself firsthand. I was down in Chinatown in Washington DC for dinner and a movie. After leaving the movie theater I noticed cops parked on the side of the road in front of the movie theater. These cops had out their little pen lights and they were randomly pulling over passing drivers.

I crossed the street and saw a small gathering of other folks standing there watching what was going on. Each asking the other: “do you know what they are doing?” Nobody seemed to know for sure but we all know what it looked like. It looked like a scene out of Nazi Germany or Communist Russia: you papers please.

As we all stood there looking on a black teenager came whizzing by us on his skateboard. He skated across the street, past the cops and on down the road. As the cops saw him skate by they yelled something at him that was too intelligible for us to understand. I would imagine it was too intelligible for the skateboarder to understand as well because he turned and looked and kept on his way another 20 feet or so.

That’s when our heroic blue uniformed doughnut feeders leapt into action like Boy George at a Liberace concert. They took off running at full speed after this felonious social miscreant who so arrogantly and willfully didn’t kowtow to the fact that they said something.

Once the young man saw the cops running after him he voluntarily stopped his skateboard and stood there in the street waiting for the eggheads to catch up. Once they did they grabbed him as if they had cornered the devil himself and cattle rustled him up onto the sidewalk and up against the wall. They forcibly held one arm behind his back and the other against the wall up over his head, spread his legs and searched his person. I took a snapshot of this position with my cell phone:

As I stood there I could hear the police disciplining the young man on the error of his ways. How when they say to jump his only option is to ask: how high? Of course, being in possession of a functioning frontal lobe, the young man insisted that he had done nothing wrong but the tax feeders didn’t care. They simply kept repeating that he was told to do something and he didn’t and therefore evidently had forfeited his civil rights.

In the end the young man received a citation for J-walking, I kid you not, since he didn’t cross the street on the crosswalk. Unfortunately, it would seem that J-walking in China Town in DC is tantamount to suspected armed robbery so please use those crosswalks.

Unfortunately, this particular incident also gave me yet another opportunity to observe the sheep like hypnotic stupor that most Americans seem to exist in. While the young man was pinned up against the wall somebody walking by recognized him and asked him what was going on. The young man explained the civil injustice taking place and pleaded that the acquaintance remain as a witness to what was taking place to which she replied: “oh, you’ll be okay, I’m late for something, I’ll see you at church on Sunday”!

I could just feel the attitude in the air that night. Everyone witnessing this scene no doubt felt that this young man must have done something very bad, very wrong otherwise why would the police be chasing after him? No doubt they felt that if it had been them that they would have somehow deserved it because after all: the law is the law.

I remember growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, we were taught that everything to do with communism, especially Russia, was bad. That communist countries were evil governments and evil empires which abused citizen’s civil rights and might one day try to do the same to the U.S. They represented everything that was bad in the world and the U.S. represented everything that was good and we must fight the evil for the sake our humanity.

Is my picture above really so different than this one of Russian police arresting peaceful civil rights protesters?

Or this one from communist China:

Then why do people continue to see the U.S. through rose colored glasses? I just don’t get it. I guess that’s why I drink.