Would you like the police to break into your house at 4 AM and search it just because you are a conservative? Then order you to tell no one about the raid? That’s what happened in Wisconsin.
Religious liberty expert David French writes about it in National Review.
Excerpt:
It was still dark outside when “Jonah” (not his real name) heard the pounding on his front door. As luck would have it, he was awake — or mostly awake. He’d gotten up at 4:00 a.m. on October 3, 2013, to see his parents off to the airport. They were leaving on a quick trip to raise money for the children’s charity his father runs. Jonah was 16 at the time, old enough to stay home alone for a short time, but not old enough to deal with what awaited him on the other side of the door.
The pounding continued, and Jonah peered out the window to discover its source. To his horror, he saw uniformed officers, their guns drawn. “Police,” they yelled. “We have a warrant.” An officer shined a flashlight on a document Jonah couldn’t read. Unsure what to do, but unwilling to defy the authorities, he let them in.
The officers sat him down, read him the entire search warrant, and ordered him not to tell anyone about the raid — not even school officials. He asked if he could call his parents. They said no. He asked if he could call a lawyer. They said no.
Then, they proceeded to turn his house “upside down.”
[…]The pretense for the October raids was suspected “coordination” between various conservative organizations and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s campaign — activity that a trial court has held constituted nothing more than entirely legal “issue advocacy,” if it even occurred. Because they’d had the temerity to engage in this issue advocacy — constitutionally protected free speech — multiple conservative citizens were subjected to so-called John Doe proceedings by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat.
[…]As a prominent Wisconsin conservative and political consultant, Jonah’s father was one of Chisholm’s targets.
Obviously, Jonah’s father’s career was negatively impacted when news of this raid got out. But even more interesting than the professional damage was the psychological damage:
Even reliving the experience of the raid in an interview was difficult for Jonah. He has a “deep sense” that his home is no longer safe. His family lives in a rural part of their county, and cars — especially dark SUVs — approaching their driveway now cause him deep, immediate anxiety. His family used to be more politically active; now, they watch what they say. They used to be more trusting, especially of police; now, they assume the worst.
And his mother continues to be terrified by the thought of what could have happened in the raid.
“We’re so fortunate that he’s okay,” she says. “He could have been in the shower. They could have broken the door down. He could have been shot. Over politics.”
You know, we have all these stories of secular leftist regimes in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, etc. and we imagine to ourselves “well, that can’t happen here, because secular leftists are different here”. No they aren’t. They just have to operate within a legal framework that puts the brakes on what they’d really like to do to people who disagree with them. Historically speaking, the left does shoot people over politics. They have shot millions and millions of people over politics in the last 100 years. That is not my opinion, that’s the record of leftist political regimes in the 20th century. There is no right-wing regime that shoots people over politics – to be right-wing means to be for free enterprise, free speech, freedom of religion, marriage and family, right to life, private property, self-defense, and so on. People on the right value individuals, businesses and families. Conservatives oppose big secular government breaking down people’s doors at 4 AM, with guns drawn.
Previously, I blogged about some of Chisholm’s other victims. One of them has now filed a civil rights lawsuit against him, which is good news – although criminal charges would be better. And criminal charges would also be good for the IRS leaders who persecuted conservative groups just ahead of the 2012 election.
And there is actually more news about the IRS targeting of conservatives, from The Stream.
Excerpt:
Newly released documents show Department of Justice officials, Internal Revenue Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials were discussing prosecuting nonprofit organizations for allegedly engaging in illegal political activity.
An official “DOJ Recap” document obtained by the group Judicial Watch details an Oct. 8, 2010 meeting between DOJ, IRS and FBI officials, including Lois Lerner, where the administration employees discussed “several possible theories to bring criminal charges under FEC law” against groups “posing” as tax exempt nonprofits.
Those groups are, of course, the Tea Party groups – groups that could have affected the re-election of Barack Obama.
More:
Judicial Watch says another document shows that just prior to the October 2010 meeting the IRS began giving the FBI confidential taxpayer information on nonprofits. The document obtained by Judicial Watch says the IRS gave the FBI some 21 disks with 1.25 million pages of taxpayer records.
“These new documents show that the Obama IRS scandal is also an Obama DOJ and FBI scandal,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his reelection. And this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information. How can the Justice Department and FBI investigate the very scandal in which they are implicated?”
Does anyone in the leftist media care about this? Of course not. They like that government is criminalizing conservatives. They are 100% on board with it, and that’s why they cover it up.
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