Posted on 06/12/2011 11:04:21 PM PDT by Nachum
HERE’S a story that is so screwy it sounds like a script from “The Simpsons,” but it’s real, and it’s about our federal government at work. That’s what makes it so scary.
At 6 a.m. last Tuesday, a good citizen, Kenneth Wright of Stockton, Calif., was awakened by the clamor of about 15 armed SWAT team members breaking through the front door of his house.
Wearing only his boxer shorts as he came downstairs, Wright was grabbed by the neck and put down on his lawn with an officer’s knee on his back.
His kids, ages 3, 7, and 11 were terrified. Wright, confused and upset, was handcuffed, stuffed into the back of a hot police cruiser and held there for six hours while the agents searched his home.
What’s going on here?
The commandos were armed agents of — really — the U.S. Department of Education. And they bashed their way into his house and held him and his children while they apparently searched for evidence of alleged student loan fraud involving Wright’s estranged wife.
Amazing. Alarming.
Why does the U.S. Department of Education need a SWAT squad? And why would they need to bash their way into an ordinary person’s house and terrorize everyone there at 6 a.m., just to look for student loan paperwork?
Those are good questions for the uber-bureaucrat who requested the search warrant, one Special Agent Howard Nance of the Education Department’s Office of the Inspector General.
But Nance isn’t answering questions. And his Education Gestapo is refusing public requests to explain themselves, citing an ongoing criminal investigation.
Unbelievable. Now faceless bureaucrats can tear up the Fourth Amendment and bash their way into your house brandishing heavy weapons in search of paperwork. And they refuse to explain themselves.
Your papers had better be in order, citizen.
Back in March 2010, I was puzzled to read an obscure account of the Department of Education seeking to buy a couple dozen short-barreled shotguns. Now we know what that was about.
Other unlikely federal bureaucracies have their own armed agents, too, including the Small Business Administration and even the Railroad Retirement Board, according to Quin Hillyer, writing in the Freedom Line Blog at the Center for Individual Freedom, based in Alexandria, Va.
Dealing with government bureaucrats is bad enough, but Americans are really in danger when the bureaucrats can send gunmen to break down your door for any stupid reason they can get a deranged judge to sign off on, as Kenneth Wright and his kids discovered this past week.
There’s no reason for these agencies to have their own little armies. And there’s even less reason for those agents to confront citizens with deadly weapons. Somebody is going to get killed, if for no other reason than negligent handling of those firearms. Check out the YouTube video of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agent who shot himself in the foot while telling a classroom audience he was the only one in the room qualified to handle the pistol he was holding. Now imagine 15 jumpy, macho Education Department commandos with loaded shotguns milling around in your living room.
Apparently all these bureaucratic armed squads in the Executive branch of government have their roots in a law adopted in 1978 setting up Inspector General offices. Shame on Congress for not thinking that one through. Now Congress needs to undo that damage.
Similarly, President Obama needs to tell the Department of Education and all the other oddball armed Inspector General units in his Executive Branch to stand down and turn in their guns before they hurt somebody.
Obama might be a little gun-shy right now, though. That’s because tomorrow, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa of California is to open a congressional hearing into the Project Gunrunner Operation Fast and Furious scandal that has barely made the national news yet.
That’s the scandal in which the U.S. Department of Justice led by Obama crony Eric Holder has been stonewalling congressional inquiries into why the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed hundreds of firearms to be purchased illegally in the U.S. and taken into Mexico supposedly for tracking to narco-gangsters, and how some of those guns the ATF lost track of turned up in connection with the murders of two U.S. agents and who knows how many Mexican citizens.
Whistleblowers indicate that the OK for this insanity went high up into the Justice Department. How could such a dangerous international operation get started without approval of the attorney general or the White House?
And how could anyone who is competent and in their right mind, possibly allow such a ridiculous and potentially deadly scheme to go ahead?
So far, Obama has said only that he and Holder did not authorize the Gunrunner Fast and Furious scheme, which falls short of saying they knew nothing about it.
The answers Rep. Issa is seeking could be, well, explosive.
Meanwhile, make sure not to fudge your college loan paperwork, lest you get a rude awakening at the end of a Department of Education shotgun.
America, what is happening here?
Tom Skoch is editor of The Morning Journal and www.MorningJournal.com, where his Tell the Editor blog appears. He is on Twitter as MJ_Tom_Skoch and can be contacted by e-mail at tskoch@morningjournal.com.
had = has
Thanks. He might actually be ok (says the DOE should be disbanded) but he just got a hair up his butt on this one and won’t let go. I think he’s honestly convinced that “there’s nothing to see here”.
Oh, well. I’m getting ready to watch tonights debate while holding my dinner down watching The Willard and The Newt and am moving on from this issue... for now.
(BTW, Viva Las Vegas. I used to live there.)
I'm looking forward to the day I can say the same thing!
I like Nevada alright but Vegas leaves much to be desired.
Say, is the debate on CNN, do you know what time?
http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/06/12/cnn.debate.preview/
I think they’re idiots to agreeing to debate on the Commie News Network, but there you have it.
Nah, he'll wait to see if he gets re-elected first. Conservatives would openly rebel if 0bama tried to pull such a stunt before the 2012 elections...
That is what we call a ‘goad’.
Nope. Not biting ‘dude’.
Looks like its on at 5:00 Pacific....just for irony, I thing I'll order some chink food for delivery.
They are idiots and out of touch, continuously reaching across the aisle, even for the media. I wonder would CNN sit on a Pubbies hostile remarks like CBS is for BO? Not a chance, they’d stick it in their ad and call it journalism.
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