New Jersey law enforcement officials now have the authority to use electronic stun guns, also called tasers, in limited circumstances involving emotionally disturbed individuals.

State Attorney General Anne Miligram approved the state’s primary attempt with tasers in late November.

“This is the first time in this state that officers are going to be authorized to carry and use stun guns in any capacity,” said Milgram.

The policy states that stun guns can only be used by officers authorized by each department’s chief executive.

The number of officers authorized to carry or use the weapons depends on the size of the department. In a municipality with 25,000 or fewer residents, one officer can carry the stun gun. Two stun guns are permitted in a town with 25,000 to 50,000 residents. If a municipality houses 75,000 residents or more, four officers can be authorized to carry the weapon.

Attorney General Milgram said that such an important shift in policy means limited deployment and adequate controls are necessary for accountability measures and evaluating the use of tasers. Only officers of supervisory rank can be authorized to use the tasers. The exceptions are for certified officers of a regional S.W.A.T. team.

As I live in North New Jersey and am a resident of one of the towns mentioned I urge these police departments *NOT* start carrying or using tasers in any capacity. I think its been well demonstrated in recent years that the claim of non-lethal for these devices incentivies officers to use the weapon when it’s not really necessary. Often for general pain compliance. Tasers certainly are potentially deadly weapons and too often used as cruel punishment for a baligerant or uncooperative individual.

The incentives too perverse and the outcome is too random to justify utilizing such a weapon.

Related posts:

1. Drug and gun FUD in North New Jersey
2. Rand Corp. recommends giving NYPD more tools for tyranny
3. UN: Tasers a form of torture

The National Rifle Association applauds the Supreme Court’s decision, announced today, to hear the landmark Second Amendment case of McDonald v. Chicago. The case will address the application of the Second Amendment to the states through either the Due Process clause or the Privileges or Immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case has major implications for the legality of restrictive gun laws not only in Chicago, but also in other cities across the United States. The decision to hear the case, which will be argued later this year or early next year, gives Second Amendment advocates across America hope that this fundamental freedom will not be infringed by unreasonable state and local laws.

“The Second Amendment applies to every citizen, not just to those living in federal enclaves like Washington D.C. In the historic Heller decision, the Supreme Court reaffirmed what most Americans have known all along — that the Second Amendment protects an individual right and that it applies to all Americans. The government should respect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens throughout our country, regardless of where they live, and NRA is determined to make sure that happens,” said Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice president.

In the June ruling that the Supreme Court will now review, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that the Second Amendment does not apply to state and local governments. That opinion left in place the current ban on the possession of handguns in Chicago.

This is rather big and could have huge impacts on gun owners and supporters of self defense throughout the United States.

Just like the health insurance “fine” proposed in the current mandatory health insurance bill in Congress is particularly unfortunate due to the difficulty in refusing to obey (it seems to me that ‘tax dodgers’ have little sympathy with the public) so too will laws prohibiting guns be difficult to combat through civil disobedience should the SCOTUS rule with the Seventh Circuit.

Related posts:

1. Supreme Court to hear DC gun ban case
2. Washington DC to petition Supreme Court on gun ban case
3. Summary of today’s DC gun ban Supreme Court case

With guns drawn and flashlights cutting through darkened rooms, Polk County undercover drug investigators stormed the home of convicted drug dealer Michael Difalco near Lakeland in March.

As investigators searched the home for drugs, some drug task force members found other ways to occupy their time. Within 20 minutes of entering Difalco’s house, some of the investigators found a Wii video bowling game and began bowling frame after frame.

While some detectives hauled out evidence such as flat screen televisions and shotguns, others threw strikes, gutter balls and worked on picking up spares.

A Polk County sheriff’s detective cataloging evidence repeatedly put down her work and picked up a Wii remote to bowl. When she hit two strikes in a row, she raised her arms above her head, jumping and kicking.

While a female detective lifted a nearby couch looking for evidence, another sheriff’s detective focused on pin action.

But detectives with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, the Auburndale, Lakeland and Winter Haven police departments did not know that a wireless security camera connected to a computer inside Difalco’s home was recording their activity.

The recording obtained by News Channel 8 showed several members of the county’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) task force entering the house shortly after 8 a.m. According to the search warrant, their mission was to search for drugs, stolen property and the fruits of any illegal drug activity.

Now there are questions on how the impromptu bowling tournament might affect the case against Difalco.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd denies it will have any effect.

“That absolutely is not true; that doesn’t invalidate the search at all,” Judd said. “Now the defendant would like for it to invalidate the search, but unfortunately for him, it won’t.”

Judd, who watched the video during an interview last week, called the situation an embarrassment.

“I’m not pleased that they played that Wii bowling game,” Judd said. The sheriff’s office oversees the drug task force. Judd said he initiated an internal administrative investigation of the incident.

“That is not appropriate conduct at a search warrant,” he said. “But I am less pleased with the supervision that didn’t walk in and say, turn that off. That’s what supervision should have done.”

Task force members played the video game at various times during the day, for a total of a little over an hour of playing time. The competition proved to be quite competitive at times. A task force supervisor from the Lakeland Police Department, gun at his side, pumped his fist after picking up a strike on the first ball he threw. The video showed he continued bowling frame after frame, competing with another undercover detective.

The only reason this has gotten any coverage is because of the game playing. That corruption is only the symptom of the larger problem of the war on drugs and the police state it’s helped facilitate. Get rid of the drug war and you get rid of a large portion of the corrupt cops.

Related posts:

1. Cameras for the win: drug suspect turns tables on NYPD
2. Another drug war police state outrage
3. Undercover NYPD Cops Frame 4 On Drug Charges

Putting to bed the lie that internal Border Patrol checkpoints are immigration checkpoints, this video clearly shows that the Department of Homeland Security routinely uses so-called immigration checkpoints as a pretext to look for contraband including drugs, guns and currency.

In this video, I’m initially greeted by the stopping Border Patrol agent by name. The agent never asks my immigration status. Additionally, other Border Patrol agents on the South side of the checkpoint yell out my name as well.

While I’m being detained at primary by an agent who knows who I am along with my immigration status, a Customs & Border Protection K9 team is going to work on the passenger side of my vehicle sniffing for illegal contraband. The K9 handler isn’t a Border Patrol agent. Rather, he’s a Customs and Border Protection agent normally assigned to Ports of Entry where dogs are trained to search for drugs, guns and currency either entering or leaving the country at the actual border.

Why was this Customs unit being used at a so-called immigration checkpoint over 40 miles North of the border?

To make the legal issues clear, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled Border Patrol checkpoints inside the country must be limited in scope to brief immigration queries with any further detention or searching requiring consent or probable cause. Since there was obviously no question regarding my immigration status in the video, the sole purpose for the detention was clearly contraband interdiction.

This removes any ambiguity regarding the primary purpose of the stop and detention.

One possible explanation as to why a CBP K9 team was being utilized at an internal immigration checkpoint well inside the country along a road that never intersects the border, instead of a port of entry, is an expansion of the program discussed in this blog entry: https://www.checkpointusa.org/blog/in…

For more information regarding suspicionless checkpoints in America, see: https://www.checkpointusa.org

Related posts:

1. How to deal with DHS checkpoints
2. Border Patrol confronted : Part 3
3. Federal appeals court shoots down unconstitutional checkpoints

A traffic stop of a vehicle with tinted windows led to the alleged discovery of cocaine and firearms and the arrest of a Bronx man.

On Aug. 12, at approximately 10:26 p.m., Daniel Santana, 25, from the Bronx, was stopped at the intersection of Martha Washington Way and Bruce Reynolds Boulevard.

Fort Lee Police Officer Timothy Cullen pulled over the white 2006 Chevy Impala because the car had blacked out tinted windows, said Capt. Joseph Zevits from the Fort Lee Police Department.

Upon further investigation, Cullen noticed a Philly Blunt, commonly used for inhaling marijuana, on the front seat area of the vehicle. Santana denied smoking marijuana and told Officer Cullen to check the car if he wanted.

Officer Cullen “called his bluff” and found a hidden compartment in the front dashboard of the vehicle with a kilo of cocaine, which could be worth up to $200,000 on the street.

“He may have been going to New York City, but we couldn’t say for sure,” said Zevits. “There was no intention to sell in Fort Lee that we were aware of.”

Also found was a semi-automatic Glock Model 17 handgun, fully loaded, with a high capacity magazine containing more than 15 rounds of 9mm ammunition. The serial numbers on the gun were scratched off.

The alleged perpetrator was also driving with a suspended driver’s license. He did not resist arrest.

Santana was charged with distribution of one kilo of cocaine, possession of a weapon, possession of a weapon while in possession of cocaine, defaced firearm, possession of a large capacity magazine, possession of drug paraphernalia, obstructed window view and driving with a suspended drivers license.

Bail was set by Judge Matthew Fierro at $250,000 without a 10 percent option.

Not that this is an uncommon story but it occurred not far from where I live.

So this Daniel Santana isn’t very bright. Tinted windows where it’s illegal. A Philly blunt on the seat. And then allowing the cops to search the car. The Officer Cullen probably could have justified searching the car on the Philly blunt alone but regardless you *never* give cops permission to search your belongings. It can only turn out worse for you.

Note the scare tactics used in the article regarding the gun. “Semi-automatic.” Well of course it’s a semi-automatic. It’s a Glock Model 17. That’s sortof the point of a pistol over a revolver. Through FUD the media has made a term which describes the most common handguns known to people through TV and movies something scary. Most people don’t even know the difference between automatic and semi nor do they know the laws regarding them. And then the article goes on to say it had a fully loaded, high capacity mag containing more than 15 rounds of 9mm ammunition. That’s completely arbitrary. You can get a 17 round clip for the Glock 17 which fits flush in the gun. Just like the 19 and it’s 15 round clip. Fifteen is just some arbitrary number the State of New Jersey came up with. In NY “high capacity” is 10. We aren’t talking about the 33 round mag here that sticks out of the gun by several inches.

Fact of the matter is this guy, while you may disagree with his apparent choice of employment, was not harming or threatening anyone. His need to conceal the identity of the weapon and to have the weapon in the first place is due to the prohibition on drugs. Theory and history shows that the side effects of prohibition is worse then the problems which stem naturally from the thing prohibited. This young man will likely end up in prison somewhere and as a result of the awful prison industrial complex and judicial system he will come out of prison a far bigger threat to society then even the FUD makes him out to be now. I find it rather unlikely the there weren’t any real crimes with real victims that Cullen could have been dealing with or investigating.

Daniel Santana should be allowed to trade cocaine to whomever wishes to do so, possess any size magazine for his weapon of choice, scratch out any damn serial number on anything he owns and smoke as much marijuana that he can handle so long as he doesn’t aggress against other person. To do otherwise is an aggressive and illegitimate act in what is supposedly free society. The truth is there isn’t liberty here… you are owned by the State.

Related posts:

1. North Jersey towns consider carrying tasers
2. Chicago police feel their outguned, look to get assult rifles
3. Another drug war police state outrage

Related posts:

1. Ron Paul Manchester, NH Town Hall
2. Chris Mathews interviews protester who open carried at Obama’s NH healthcare townhall
3. Hooksett, NH officer goes off on person open carrying

Related posts:

1. Dave Ridley’s Ridley Report footage used by CNN
2. Ridley Report’s Dave Ridley found guilty of contempt of court, sentenced to 6 days in jail
3. JailedActivist.info plugged on Ridley Report

Related posts:

1. Chris Mathews continues to show his Obama bias
2. Ron Paul responds to William Kostic’s open carrying at the NH Obama town hall
3. Chris Edwards of Cato on Obama’s tax proposals

By ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer Adam Geller, Ap National Writer – 1 hr 12 mins ago

LANCASTER, N.H. – He fled the “People’s Republic of Massachusetts” to escape tyranny. Now he strides the campground in a plaid kilt and mirror shades, an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle across his torso, an immense Scottish sword sheathed between his shoulders.

Out here, though, the only signs of danger are the ones warning drivers to watch out for moose. Could it be he senses a threat we’re not seeing?

“Not expecting,” says the swordsman, who calls himself Doobie, grinning broadly. “Just ready.”

There’s no escaping the long arm of big government — even here at the far edge of a state whose license plate decrees that without freedom from oppressive authority you might as well choose death. But for Doobie and 500 others, this tent colony on this particular weekend is about as close to Libertarian Nirvana as they’re likely to get.

They’ve come for the Porcupine Freedom Festival, four days of beer, burgers and bonfires. But more importantly, they are here to carve out an enclave of less government and more liberty to do as they wish.

They are here to show a lost nation the way back to its political roots.

It hasn’t been an easy message to sell these past few years. Their group, the Free State Project, has struggled to attract followers. But now, with Americans thinking anew about the reach and role of government, Free Staters see at least the hint of an opening.

So this weekend, they drink to the future. Between swigs of a custom brew called Overregulated Ale, they ridicule the Federal Reserve, applaud the defeat of a bill that would have required the wearing of seat belts, bemoan higher taxes and restrictions on gun rights.

“We said bad things are going to happen and they happen,” Jason Sorens, a political science professor, preaching to the crowd clustered around picnic tables. “We say, we told you so.”___

Flapping overhead, on lines between spruce trees where others might dry bathing suits, Free Staters fly the Gadsden flag, with its serpent and warning to government: “Don’t Tread on Me.”

They circle around one activist’s PT Cruiser to test tactics for dealing with government’s front-line troops. “How will you perform when confronted by the police?” the schedule of events for the session asks. “You’ll know once you practice.”

Dozens walk through Porc Fest with handguns hanging from their waists, an unexpected sight on the way to mini-golf.

“I want to excite you to take hold of your liberty,” Dan Itse, a New Hampshire legislator, tells more than 70 who fill the campground’s TV room for a Friday afternoon declaration of state’s rights to freedom from federal control. “You’re the only one who can defend your liberty in the end.”

The threat of overreaching government is not new, Free Staters say, but it is rising. They wonder if more Americans aren’t starting to realize that, too — before it’s too late.

Last fall’s protests against the economic bailout has been followed by public disapproval of the Obama’s administration takeover of General Motors. In 36 states, legislators have introduced resolutions modeled on Itse’s declaring their sovereignty over matters including the right to bear arms, citing the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which delineates the federal government’s powers. Free Staters approve — though they are distrustful of most politicians.

Still, they are convinced the country will eventually recognize the truth. Just have a look, says Free Stater William Domenico, pointing to 18 fresh recruits from Florida, North Carolina and beyond, piling off a bus after a day’s tour.

“Why?” asks Domenico, himself a refugee from an over-licensed life in Colorado. “Because they want government off their backs.”

___

Americans’ faith in government ebbs and flows, with voters giving Washington more rope during times of crisis. Even then, though, uncertainty lingers.

“Underneath it all, there is a suspicion of government doing too much,” says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll, which has long tracked public opinion on the matter. “That’s a general strain of American culture.”

Dislike of big government goes all the way back to colonists fed up with an English king, and a Constitution written to keep power in check.

The Civil War and the Great Depression shifted the balance, asserting the expanded power of federal government.

“None of these powers were ever formally given to these people (government officials) and so occasionally, whenever people notice that the federal government is behaving this way, they get really outraged by it,” said Kevin R.C. Gutzman, a constitutional scholar at Western Connecticut State University.

After World War II, broad political consensus saw most Americans willing to follow Washington’s lead, says Marc Hetherington, a Vanderbilt University professor and expert on public trust in government. But wariness soon returned, though not nearly to the extent hoped for by some advocates of less government.

“If we do not carve out a sphere of freedom now, freedom will be lost for a long time to come,” Sorens, then a Yale University doctoral student, wrote in July of 2001.

He and a few like-minded thinkers met over bagels in Asheville, N.C., and devised a plan. They called upon hardcore activists to move to a small state and do everything possible to take over and scale back government.

The timing of their pitch couldn’t have been much worse.

Weeks after the Free State Project started, al-Qaida terrorists flew jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The attacks, two wars and two recessions over the past eight years unsettled U.S. voters’ attitudes toward government.

In the fall of 2001, for the first and only time since Gallup began asking the question, the number of Americans who said they wanted government to do more reached 50 percent.

“After 9/11 we had a hard time,” says Sorens, now a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. “We had some people quit because they said they didn’t want to become part of a secession movement, even though we weren’t.”

Free Staters pushed ahead, choosing as their destination New Hampshire, whose voters have a hard-earned reputation for political independence. They set out to recruit 20,000 activists by 2006 to sign a pledge to move within five years.

Some of the most spirited moved immediately, but recruitment lagged. The group now has 9,400 participants. About 450 have moved to New Hampshire, joining 250 already there.

The small band of Free Staters in New Hampshire has been trying both conventional and more novel strategies to curtail it government’s role.

A number have run for office. Four have won seats in the 400-member state House of Representatives, the largest in the country. Free State activists have campaigned furiously against measures perceived as emblematic of excessive government, like a mandatory seatbelt bill and budget hikes.

Meanwhile, a group of mostly younger Free Staters have decided the best way to keep government in its place is to needle it.

One Free Stater spent 58 days in jail after filming in a courthouse lobby and refusing to give police his name. Behind bars, he preached the message of less government to fellow inmates.

Others have organized a crew to pick up garbage around a Manchester playground with handguns strapped to their hips, to test the right to bear arms. They’ve filmed police officers on patrol and judges on the bench.

They’ve even filed each other’s nails on a public sidewalk, defying state requirements that manicurists be licensed, their cuticles defying the heavy hand of government.

___

At June’s end, they pack Roger’s Campground to breathe deeply of mountain air, camaraderie and a life away from government.

The weekend is a big party. But it is also a statement, based on sober thinking and often rooted in personal experience.

Carla Gericke’s view on government were jolted in 2003. She was a New Yorker then, living in a city two years removed from 9/11 but still deeply unsettled.

She and her husband were out for walk near their apartment when they rounded a corner and ran into a SWAT officer shouldering a submachine gun, a police dog at his side. Gericke’s mind immediately flashed back to her native South Africa and the apartheid-era government troops who used fear to keep the peace.

“There are a lot of people (in the Free State Project) who have come from what I’d call police states,” says Gericke, who relocated to New Hampshire in 2006. “Now we’ve moved to America because it was land of the free. And it’s like, Ha Ha. Suckers!”

Pamela Ean’s misgivings about government were confirmed at work. A high school teacher, Ean was frustrated trying to meet the testing standards set by the federal No Child Left Behind law. She calls it an illegal power grab by the federal government, and doesn’t see it ending there.

“When you think about it, the federal government is taking over the banking institutions. They’re taking over industry. It’s scary. I mean, what’s next?” asks Ean, who last year ran together with her 19-year-old son for a state legislative seat. They both lost in the primary, but helped unseat the 13-term Republican incumbent.

People have arrived at this ideological destination by different routes. There’s the substantial right-to-bear-arms crowd. Some want drug laws loosened. Others are focused on the economy and see government’s hand as the source of the problems.

Still others get their hackles up over high taxes.

“Once upon a time America was unquestionably the freest nation in the world by a huge margin. That’s not the case anymore and people are starting to realize that,” says Varrin Swearingen, an airline pilot who is president of the group. “The further we go down the path to destruction, particularly economically lately, the more interesting this becomes to more people.”

While more Free Staters lean Republican, there’s little enthusiasm here for George W. Bush, whose administration is viewed as having broken promises to make government smaller. His Democratic replacement, meanwhile, draws backhanded applause.

“I’m glad Obama’s president,” says Lydia Harman, an activist who brings her 6-month-old son to an afternoon talk on state sovereignty. She makes it clear that she and the Democrat don’t agree on a single issue, but that’s not the point: “He wants to centralize everything. … Because of what he’s doing, at the pace that he’s doing it, people are waking up.”

___

With the early morning sun climbing fast, a handful of Free Staters crouch low in a gravel lot to test their resolve on distant targets. Shoulders tense, eyes focused down the length of .22-caliber rifles, they’re trying to take out the “redcoats” with 13 bullets — one for each of the original colonies.

“This is what America is all about — individual freedom, less intrusive government, self-reliance,” says gunsmith Tony Stelik, a political refugee from 1980s’ Communist Poland. “Now it’s rulers are trying to change it.”

Down to her last target, shooter Alicia Lekas nails it, although she seems an unlikely citizen soldier. Lekas makes a living teaching Scottish folk dancing. Her America is embodied in a story of the time a tree fell on a friend’s house near Concord and, instead of waiting for government, neighbors responded with their own chain saws.

She says she can’t imagine shooting a living creature, but she’ll do it if the need arises.

“A bad guy might be the individual crook,” the new rifleman says, “Or it might be somebody who’s taken over government.”

Either way, she’s ready.

Related posts:

1. The Boston Globe: The appeal of ‘Live free or die’ – Antigovernment activists putting down roots in N.H.
2. Sam Dodson’s response to Seninel columnst Michael Schuman’s criticism of the Free State Project
3. Cato Institute’s David Boaz snubs Free State Project

Related posts:

1. Montana passes the “Montana Firearms Freedom Act”
2. EFF and ALC sue federal government over tech device search
3. Republican Montana and South Dakota primary results