posted May 08, 2009 02:09 PM         

The report warned law enforcement agencies to watch for suspicious individuals who may have bumper stickers for third-party political candidates such as Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin.

It further warned law enforcement to watch out for individuals with "radical" ideologies based on Christian views, such as opposing illegal immigration, abortion and federal taxes.

Chief James Keathley of the Missouri State Patrol issued a statement that the release of the report, which outraged conservatives nationwide, prompted him to "take a hard look" at the procedures through which the report was released by the MIAC.

"My review of the procedures used by the MIAC in the three years since its inception indicates that the mechanism in place for oversight of reports needs improvement," he wrote. "Until two weeks ago, the process for release of reports from the MIAC to law enforcement officers around the state required no review by leaders of the Missouri State Highway Patrol or the Department of Public Safety."

He said the militia report was "created by a MIAC employee, reviewed by the MIAC director, and sent immediately to law enforcement agencies across Missouri. The militia report was never reviewed by me or by the Director of Public Safety, John Britt, at any point prior to its issuance. Had that report been reviewed by either my office or by leaders of the Department of Public Safety, it would never have been released to law enforcement agencies," wrote Keathley

The report simply "does not meet" the needed standard for "intelligence," he said.

"For that reason, I have ordered the MIAC to permanently cease distribution of the militia report. Further, I am creating a new process for oversight of reports drafted by the MIAC that will require leaders of the Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Department of Public Safety to review the content of these reports before they are shared with law enforcement. My office will also undertake a review of the origin of the report by MIAC," he ordered.

The warning earlier prompted Americans for Legal Immigration to issue a "national advisory" against relying on any such reports.

The Missouri document, it said, "attempted to politicize police and cast suspicion on millions of Americans. The 'Missouri Documents,' as they came to be called, listed over 32 characteristics police should watch for as signs or links to domestic terrorists, which could threaten police officers, court officials, and infrastructure targets.

"Police were instructed to look for Americans who were concerned about unemployment, taxes, illegal immigration, gangs, border security, abortion, high costs of living, gun restrictions, FEMA, the IRS, The Federal Reserve, and the North American Union/SPP/North American Community. The 'Missouri Documents' also said potential domestic terrorists might like gun shows, short wave radios, combat movies, movies with white male heroes, Tom Clancey Novels, and Presidential Candidates Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin!" ALIPAC wrote.

It said the report cited the Southern Poverty Law Center as a resource.

"When many of us read these Missouri Documents we felt that the false connections, pseudo research, and political attacks found in these documents could have been penned by the SPLC and ADL," said William Gheen of ALIPAC. "We were shocked to see credible law enforcement agencies disseminating the same kind of over the top political propaganda distributed by these groups."

posted May 08, 2009 02:25 PM         

Now this, a man detained for having a bumper sticker on his car.

HOMELAND INSECURITY
Suspect detained over 'extremist' bumper sticker
'Don't Tread on Me' puts driver in 'watch' category in DHS report
Posted: May 07, 2009
10:45 pm Eastern
By Bob Unruh

A Louisiana driver was stopped and detained for having a "Don't Tread on Me" bumper sticker on his vehicle and warned by a police officer about the "subversive" message it sent, according to the driver's relative.

The situation developed in the small town of Ball, La., where a receptionist at the police department told WND she knew nothing about the traffic stop, during which the "suspect" was investigated for "extremist" activities, the relative said.

It followed by only a few weeks the release of a Department of Homeland Security report, "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment", which prompted outrage from legislators and a campaign calling for the resignation of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

The report, which cites individuals who sport certain bumper stickers on their vehicles as suspect, was delivered to tens of thousands of local law enforcement officers across the nation.

WND is withholding the driver's name and the relative's name at their request.

However, the situation was described on the American Vision blog.

According to the relative, it happened this way: Her brother-in-law was driving home from work through the town, which has a local reputation for enhancing its budget by ticketing speeders. He was pulled over by police officers who told him "he had a subversive survivalist bumper sticker on his car."

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"They proceeded to keep him there on the side of the road while they ran whatever they do to see if you have a record, keeping him standing by the side of the road for 30 minutes," she told WND.

Finding no record and no reason to keep him, they warned him and eventually let him go, she said.

The company that sells the bumper sticker is The Patriot Depot, where Chief Operating Officer Jay Taylor told WND the woman had told his staff about the situation while ordering more bumper stickers.

"It's rather shocking," he said. "We supposedly have freedom of speech in our country.

"We joke around every now and then how our spouses will come to visit us in jail," he continued, citing his products that say, "The Audacity of Nope," "Taxed Enough Already," "Born Free, Taxed to Death," "Bring Home Our Troops: Send the Democrats" and "I'll Keep my Guns and Money, You Keep the 'Change'."

"We hope people realize this is serious," he said.

American Vision noted the "background check" that was done on the driver.

"Why? [He] had purchased and displayed a conservative 'Don't Tread on Me' bumper sticker.""

The commentator wrote, "The bumper sticker is based on the famous flag designed by American Revolution era general and statesman Christopher Gadsden. The yellow flag featured a coiled diamondback rattlesnake ready to strike, with the slogan 'Don't Tread on Me!' underneath it. Benjamin Franklin helped make the rattlesnake a symbol of Americans' reluctance to quarrel but vigilance and resolve in defense of their rights. By 1775 when Gadsden presented his flag to the commander-in-chief of the Navy, the rattlesnake was a symbol of the colonies and of their need to unite in defense of threats to their God-given and inherited rights. The flag and the bumper sticker symbolize American patriotism, the need to defend Americans' rights, and resistance to tyranny's threats to American liberty. Those threats included-and include-illegal taxation, profanation of Americans' rights, and violation of the fundamental principles of American law."

American Vision continued: "The notorious Department of Homeland Security memo, which was apparently based on the infamous Missouri State Police Report that described supporters of presidential candidates Bob Barr, Ron Paul, and Chuck Baldwin as 'militia'-type potential extremists and potential terrorists, is not the first effort of leftist radicals to slander their political opponents as 'extremists.'"

"'Liberals' and other leftists have been calling defenders of traditional American limited, constitutional government, free enterprise, and individual liberty 'extremists' since at least the 1964 election," the Vision America statement said. "Small town police misled by phony left wing 'reports' are bad enough. Federal government agencies and their armed agents under the direction of leftist radicals are exponentially worse."

WND reported earlier on the DHS report, which advised about the "extremism" that could be expected from returning veterans, those who support homeschooling and oppose abortion, post certain bumper stickers on their vehicles and other factors.

The DHS not only issued that report, but also an earlier memo defining dozens of groups, members of animal rights organizations, black separatists, tax protesters and others as "threats."

That item, the "Domestic Extremism Lexicon" reportedly was rescinded almost immediately, but Benjamin Sarlin of The Daily Beast recently obtained and published online a copy of the unclassified memo, dated March 26, 2009.

It defines the "tax resistance movement" – also referred to in the report as the tax protest movement or the tax freedom movement – as "groups or individuals who vehemently believe taxes violate their constitutional rights. Among their beliefs are that wages are not income, that paying income taxes is voluntary, and that the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allowed Congress to levy taxes on income, was not properly ratified."

It states that tax protesters "have been known to advocate or engage in criminal activity and plot acts of violence and terrorism in an attempt to advance their extremist goals."

posted May 08, 2009 02:55 PM         

not that it will stop law officers checking people out for the flimsiest of excuses. like the state sheriffs who several times interrogated me for walking across a parking lot and getting into my car in a predominately black neighbourhood - blocking my exit until they had finished checking me out - because whites were suspected druggies, why else would i be there?

posted May 08, 2009 06:08 PM         

I have no idea why you were in a suspected drug infested high crime area. Whatever the reason for stopping you, it had nothing to do with the Patriot Act, nothing to do with Bush and nothing to do with the DHS domestic terrorist report.

On the other hand, this guy was just driving through the city on his way home from work and was stopped specifically because of a bumper sticker bearing a famous line from the beginnings of country; "Don't Tread on Me". The DHS and State of Missouri put out reports about possible domestic terrorists, bumper stickers and a lot of other things of which law enforcement were to be suspicious.

posted May 08, 2009 06:34 PM         

i did not mention bush you did. i said profiling is rampant. but it only bothers you when it is people you consider above it. it doesn't matter that it's usually a neighbourhood, or the colour of someone's skin, that is the big "tip-off". a white person in a black neighbourhood must be up to something, right? wrong. i wasn't even talking to anyone about what is wrong with the government.

posted May 08, 2009 06:49 PM         

You're the one who mentioned drugs in connection with the reason your were stopped, I profiled nothing. I took your word that the neighborhood is a place whites come to buy drugs.

I didn't say you were "up to anything". You said that's what the Sheriff thought about you being in the neighborhood.

posted May 08, 2009 07:35 PM         

actually jwhop i have agreed with you on quite a lot of things. but you seem to be so sure that i am a "leftist" (translate = liar and/or idiot) that you don't seem to have noticed. so believe it or not i feel "profiled" by you.

as i was trying to say in the hate crimes thread, profiling is not done just by the authorities, nor is terrorism. in our little ways, making assumptions about people who don't agree with us, considering them unworthy of polite answers, is a microcosm of profiling and terrorism. i have noticed you don't like being teased but you don't mind insulting people. i suffer from the same knee-jerk reaction at times. we all do. and it shows in our society-at-large.

posted May 09, 2009 07:24 AM         

The funny thing is that this kind of hatred and slamming of Christians ties in very well with the views that many hard right Christians have about what awaits us in the "end of days". Very curious.

And Napolitano? How can you be the head of the DHS and allow such an idiotic "report" to be released? I guess her experience with one ex-miliary nut job has made her biased against all of them. She should resign for that bias alone.

Extremist bumper stickers? This would be laughable if the actual threat weren't being carried out.

I wonder when the blinders will come off on the moderates and not far lefties. All the stuff we were warned about under Bush, all the trampling of civil liberties and the like, is coming to pass. Only it's not a Republican in charge; it's Obama, people he has appointed and mostly other Democrats. Does that mean that because they're not right wingers that they obviously have our best interests in mind and couldn't possibly be "the bad guys"? It's such a blatant bias in support of anything left wing. I don't think anyone is automatically good or bad, especially politicians, just because they call themselves this or that. Blind party allegiance makes me wanna' hurl. I wouldn't tolerate this crap if it was Republicans warning about extremist left wingers ... watch out, they eat tofu and carry peace signs! It should be denounced by people no matter what their political leanings are. And yet the outcry from the left has been ZERO in the MSM. And that is more appalling than anything else.