it can’t happen here

Jacob Hornberger, America: a Military Nation

"It’s true that the federal government used to consist of three branches. Bu that quaint notion disintegrated when the federal government was converted to what is known as a 'national-security state' after World War II. Even though it was done without a constitutional amendment, that conversion effectively added a fourth branch of government to the federal government — the national-security branch, which consists of the NSA, the CIA, and the Pentagon. The addition of that fourth branch fundamentally altered the original three-branch concept, especially because the fourth branch quickly became the most powerful branch. The reason is because ultimately government is force, and the fourth branch is where the most force was concentrated within the new, altered governmental structure."

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The State of Our Union: A House Divided, Enslaved & Mired in Past Mistakes

"The list of abuses being perpetrated against the American people by their government is growing rapidly: SWAT teams crashing through doors. Militarized police shooting unarmed citizens. Traffic cops tasering old men and pregnant women for not complying fast enough with an order. Resource officers shackling children for acting like children. Citizens being jailed for growing vegetable gardens in their front yards and holding prayer services in their backyards. Drivers having their cash seized under the pretext that they might have done something wrong. Brace yourselves. We are approaching critical mass."

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Judge Napolitano: A Conspiracy of Silence Assaults Privacy

"Why were all members of Congress but the 22 on this committee kept in the dark about NSA and FBI lawlessness? Why didn't the committee reveal to Congress what it claims is too shocking to discuss publicly before Congress voted on surveillance expansion? Where is the outrage that this information was known to a few in the House and kept from the remainder of Congress while it ignorantly voted to assault the right to privacy? The new law places too much power in the hands of folks who even the drafters of it have now acknowledged are inherently unworthy of this trust."

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Professor Maintains List of 400,000 “Far-Right Extremists” For Antifa, SPLC

"The anonymous left-wing activist, states Wired, posts the identities of the people whose information she gives him, along with their photographs, 'for the public to do with what it would.' Squire also shares her data with the far-left militia group, Redneck Revolt, where it reportedly 'gets used in somewhat less official ways.'"

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ICE gains access to database that tracks license plates in realtime

"Using the database, ICE agents will be able to see where license plates have been located over the past five years, as well as find individual’s residences, according to The Verge. Officials can also be instantly alerted when new records of specific plates are located. Civil liberties groups slammed ICE’s access to the database."

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U.S. Border Crossings Have Become Authoritarian Testing Grounds

"The border is seen by the government as a civil rights-free zone where U.S. citizens are being increasingly treated like criminals and subject to the exact same sort of degrading abuse as my brother’s girlfriend. This is something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while, and this recent experience inspired me to do so today. Many of you have no idea how bad things already are."

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Donald Trump Flaunts the Dangers of Presidential Power

"Barack Obama left office as the first two-termer in American history to have been at war every single day of his presidency. In his last year alone, U.S. forces dropped over 26,000 bombs on seven different countries. Trump blew past that tally nine months into his tenure. Indeed, this putatively 'isolationist' president has deepened entanglements on every battlefield Obama left him, ramping up airstrikes, kill-or-capture missions, and civilian casualties."

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Black helicopters and ‘Ride of the Valkyries’: The war on pot in California

"Still fighting the culture wars, Reagan and his advisers decided early on that marijuana was the biggest drug threat facing the country. And so a couple of years into his first term, federal and California officials came up with a battle plan to target cultivation in the northern part of the state. The phrase 'battle plan' isn’t much of an exaggeration here."

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