SPOCK: Captain Tracey mentioned there was once a considerable civilisation here. The only reasonable explanation would be a war. Nuclear devastation or a bacteriological holocaust.
KIRK: That’s a very interesting theory. The yellow civilisation is almost destroyed, the white civilisation is destroyed. Keep working on the window if we’re ever going to regain our freedom.
CLOUD: (The male Yang, with a very deep voice.) Freedom? Freedom?
KIRK: Spock.
SPOCK: Yes, I heard, Captain.
CLOUD: That is a worship word. Yang worship. You will not speak it.
KIRK: Well, well, well. It is our worship word, too.
Star Trek, The Omega Glory
Language advisory to the above video. Bravo Mr. Kauffman. The FBI minions were sent with the intent to intimidate him, and he turned the tables on them. Note how their main concern was that he stop video taping them so they could have a “friendly chat” about something he posted, and Kauffman was having none of it. On another note, I can recall when FBI agents used to wear suits and ties rather than dressing from a rag barrel. Well, if they are seeking to trash the Bill of Rights I guess that is appropriate. Unless we each stand up for our rights, they might as we be written on thin air.
Root and branch. Shut it down and rethink whether these agencies are even necessary in this day and age. Others here (Art D for one) have proposed a strictly limited Fed law enforcement structure nothing like the cancer we now see. Such limits should be imposed as soon as possible.
They’re telling us (1) they don’t have enough work to do or (2) they’re not bothering with actual work in order to do this. (These two aren’t from the odious Washington HQ of the FBI, either). Note also that we have a specialized agency in the federal apparat whose book is dignitary protection. The FBI is begging to be shut down.
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I should note one other thing. The police department in Slidell, La will record interviews with suspects, but the FBI refuses to do so; all interviews are memorialized by agents afterward in written notes. Federal prosecutors routinely charge people with lying to the FBI. (A retired FBI agent who appeared in my office to do a background check found this amusing; he said in his day they just assumed the people they talked to were lying to them). In New York law (and I assume this is the norm among the states), perjury and related offenses require you be sworn or that you affix your signature to a document with a jurat attached, and the penalties are modest unless you demonstrably lied in oral testimony. So, FBI agents have free rein to misrepresent what you tell them and then the local U.S. Attorney’s office prosecutes you. Here we see another effort at dishonest information management when they refuse to identify themselves under circumstances where they cannot lie about it later. \
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In my years as an office employee, I never showed up to work in a get up like that. That is apposite for certain venues, but not police work.
If they didn’t give their full names or show any ID, how do we even know they were really FBI?
OTOH, if he really posted “why haven’t there been any assassination attempts against the current president”, I’m not terribly surprised that he attracted the attention of law enforcement, because it could be interpreted as a threat or incitement for someone to try it. Maybe he could have phrased it this way: “Our current administration claims that MAGA folks are a significant domestic terrorist threat, but there haven’t been any assassination attempts against the current president or vice president. Yet there have now been two attempts in two months against Donald Trump. Anyone want to explain that?”
<i>if they didn’t give their full names or show any ID, how do we even know they were really FBI?</i>
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He can run the license plate.
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If the FBI wishes to contend they’ve been traduced by the activity of imposters, they can have one of their PR people issue a statement to that effect.
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<i>OTOH, if he really posted “why haven’t there been any assassination attempts against the current president”, I’m not terribly surprised that he attracted the attention of law enforcement, because it could be interpreted as a threat or incitement for someone to try it.</i>
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Only by an idiot or someone looking for an excuse.
Didn’t Douglass Mackey get jail time for posting a meme?
The folks who stomp all over the Constitution while accusing others of being threats to democracy are shameless.
“The folks who stomp all over the Constitution while accusing others of being threats to democracy are shameless.” – CAG
No. They are far worse than that. They are domestic terrorist. They are the true insurrectionist. They are the threat to America.
They can rot in hell if they continue to undermine the very foundations of our country with these bully tatics.
They are communist.
If this happened to me, with two men who won’t show me ID wanting to question me, I would be calling my local police immediately to report strange men harassing me at my home.
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I saw on Twitter/X that some (presumably) Democrats were gleeful that his refusal to cooperate with these two men meant that the USSS would be visiting soon and would slap the phone right out of his hand, take him down, rough him up, etc., etc.
I don’t think the USSS has any more right to violate the Bill of Rights than the FBI, but I’m not really privy to the delusional thinking of the Left.
Personally, I think that it’s a good idea to be as polite as possible, though always firm and unyielding to tyranny; but at the same time, when federal agents try to subvert the Constitution, it’s hard to be patient with those knuckleheads.
Agreed, Fr. J. I can be polite as one could imagine while I tell the agents “I’m afraid I can’t let you in without a search warrant. As for answering any questions, please wait here while I call my attorney. Thank you.”
I liked how Art Carney put it in a movie in the Seventies: “I don’t have to let you into my house without a warrant, unless I made a mistake and woke up in Russia or China!”