NY SAFE Act - A Crime in Itself

My letter to my county legislator requesting support in condemning this egregious act.

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Sir,

I'm writing to you, as the county legislator for the district in which I reside, to register my disapproval of the NY SAFE Act and request you please support a County resolution to condemn it.

With the fast and furious loss of so many of our rights as citizens of a free republic in the past decade under the guise of necessity in the war on terror that brought us the Patriot Act, NDAA, targeted assassinations, proliferation of swat team raids, stop and frisk, TSA gropings, and DHS immigration checkpoints and suspicionless searches miles inland from our physical borders, to mention just a few, our second amendment rights are the last defense that we can ill afford to lose. When is it going to stop?
 

The right to defend ourselves, our family, and our property is a natural right. The police forces cannot physically perform such a duty, for if it is even possible to contact them during a life-threatening situation, they often arrive well after the crime has been committed and the perpetrator long gone. Even if they could always arrive in time, the Supreme Court of the US has consistently ruled that police forces have no special duty to protect anyone but themselves. Mayor Bloomberg's own NYC lawyers are using such defense in a lawsuit by Joseph Lozito against the NYPD, where officers present and actively engaged in a citywide manhunt for the murderer Maksim Gelman allegedly hid behind a locked subway door to protect themselves and watched as Gelman attacked and seriously wounded Mr Lozito until after he had subdued the culprit himself.

http://gothamist.com/2013/01/27/city_argues_nypd_had_no_special_dut.php

I find it amazingly ironic that so many like Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg are mindlessly and emotionally engaged in trying to disarm American citizens and have succeeded here in NY in rushing through this horrendous act. Yet the NY State Constitution still clearly states "The defense and protection of the state and of the United States is an obligation of all persons within the state." So our government servants expect us to be required to help defend the state and our country even after they've disarmed us from bearing any of the most effective self-defense tools, but police departments and officers they commission to enforce the laws that they've enacted have no legally binding duty to protect us citizens from criminals while we are taxed to pay for their services. That's insane.

It's even more disturbing in light of seeing Mayor Bloomberg's own security forces made up of NYPD officers follow a reporter who was armed with nothing more than a soda for simply asking the mayor a question and attempting to harrass him, demanding he show identification while acting well outside their jurisdiction .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCC-rEx81PE

Again, I request you please support condemning this egregious Act and help us keep our state and country free.

Thank you,

v/r

Frank Koza

Brandon Raub - American Hero or Ticking Bomb?

The republican Mother is following the developing Brandon Raub story.  Her latest post Brandon Raub:  Crazy Like a Fox? gives us a most profound thought on what young Brandon may or may not realized he was doing when he predicted his detainment.  She says:

But getting back to Brandon and his comments, the one I found most interesting was the one made on August 14, a couple days before his arrest. "The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it."
 

Adam Kokesh's interview with Brandon blows my mind, for he certainly sounds perfectly sane yet he's still being held after 72 hours on the opinion of someone who Ben Swann describes as a "special judge who is actually just a lawyer and part of what Virginia calls a Civil Commitment Board".

Now this is scary.  I've been looking at many other situations where Americans or permanent residents have been picked up and even convicted on skimpy evidence or coerced confessions.  They need to be tied to the escalating use of swat teams to prosecute the War on Drugs, which is spilling over into arrests of non-violent offenders in other areas such as student loan fraud and food co-ops.  There are so many more out there that I was planning on someday putting something together to better "connect the dots", but until then, here are a few.

 

• Justice for Yassin Aref - Monster or unwitting innocent victim?
• The Lackawanna Six - Many questions abound about how big of a threat they really were.  See also this.
• Robert Perske - Advocate for justice for those with learning disabilities.
• The Agitator - Radley Balko performs exhaustive investigative reporting on civil liberties and the criminal justice system.
• Sultans of Swat - Can they seriously come for you?

 

That's enough to give a glimpse into the serious implications of possible effects behind our government's imposition of the Patriot Act, NDAA, and other excesses into the usurpation of our Constitutionally protected rights.  Of course, without anyone left actively supporting their oath to abiding by that Constitution anymore, you have no rights.

Update (28 Aug 12) - Brandon, who was taken into custody on Aug 16, was ordered release by Circuit Judge W.Allan Sharret on Aug 23.

Brandon discusses his ordeal with John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute.