The fed isn’t only interested in seizing and holding state land they claim needs protection, they also go after the ‘little guy,’ as in the case of Michigan resident John Gutowski.

In 2013, federal authorities arrested Gutowski, charging him with conspiring to commit marriage fraud. The case: Too many marriage applications filed by immigrant residents living in apartment buildings he owned.

Evidently, Gutowski leased his apartments to Eastern European immigrants but the government alleged that he was actually helping them to find Americans willing to marry them so that they could stay in the country. They also confiscated over $250,000 in personal seized assets.

This goes against everything in that’s memorialized in Article IV of the U.S. Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Prosecutors were eventually forced to drop the charges. But they held on to the $250,000 in assets claiming the funds were the illicit proceeds of his ‘sham marriage operation’ though they lacked evidence. This goes to show that no criminal charges or convictions are necessary to strip you of your property.

In fact all the government needs do is show that the property was used in, or was the result of, a crime and it’s up to the owner to disprove to prove his or her own innocence. This differs from criminal law procedures where the burden of proof always rests with the government.

And under federal law and in most state laws, the law enforcement agencies that seize property get to keep and spend the proceeds. This gives them a financial incentive to seize property, even under questionable circumstances like Gutowski’s.

As Karl Marx wrote, “The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.”

Online talk show host Pete Santilli, who reported on the stand-off at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, will stay in federal custody until his trial. Arrested January 26 in Burns, federal prosecutors say he was a part of the conspiracy of threats and intimidation preventing federal employees from doing their jobs during the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Santilli used his Internet radio talk show to rail against government conspiracies and injustices. As a journalist, and all the reporting, interviewing and face-to-face confrontations he did during the takeover and occupation of the wildlife refuge falls under free-speech protections in the First Amendment.

Santilli spent nearly two months in Harney County supporting the wildlife refuge occupiers’ cause, but also expressing disagreement with the takeover and occupation. He’s the only journalist arrested in connection with the stand-off, even though several reporters, photographers, bloggers and freelancer writers came to Harney County to report on the situation.

U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman said that Santilli’s history “does not favor detention and that the weight of the evidence cuts in his favor,” he does believes the reporters admission to owning several registered and unregistered guns poses a risk to law enforcement. Mosman claimed that he did not consider Santilli — who lives in Ohio — to be a flight risk, but admission about the guns was enough to sway the decision.

Surprisingly, the ACLU of Oregon has come to Santilli’s defense:

“While many people might disagree with statements made by those involved in the Malheur takeover, Americans have a fundamental right to freedom of speech,” wrote Mat dos Santos, the legal director for the ACLU of Oregon, in statement posted to the group’s website.

So — whose next — and why isn’t the media up in arms over this?

Ten days before Christmas 2014 at around 9 a.m., the U.S. Marshals Service kicked in the door of an apartment intent on evicting the people living there because the buildings’ owner, Kent Carter owed the government more than $800,000. However, federal agents didn’t count on Eddy County, New Mexico Sheriff Scott London.

Called to intervene and upon arrival, Sheriff London stood between 20-year-old Wilson Baughman, a wife and mother to a one-year old child, and the Marshals Service despite being threatened with arrest. The sheriff reminded the feds that the case was still under appeal and that Carter and Baughman deserved due process.

On February 19 the IRS auctioned off three of the owner’s homes in Carlsbad despite the fact that the appeal had yet to be heard. Court documents showed that Carter had appealed the case but hadn’t had his day in court.

One of the houses was Carter’s personal home, while the two others were rental properties. Carter and his tenants were forced to move out in December in the midst of the legal battle.

London said the IRS violated Carter’s right to due process by selling off his property, even though Carter had a pending appeal. So before the auction took place, the sheriff sent a letter to the IRS notifying the agency that he wouldn’t allow the sale to move forward without proper due process.

“Thus I am notifying you that under the compulsion to my oath to the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of the State of New Mexico, I shall not allow the sale of these three properties on 19 February, 2015,” his letter reads in part.

After the story got out, London received letters of support from as far away as France, with many people offering to come to Carlsbad and help Carter defend his property. London said he feared a repeat of scenes like the one we saw last year in Nevada, when armed protestors clashed with the feds trying to seize Cliven Bundy’s cattle.

So he and Carter decided to back down and give in to the IRS. But while it’s too late for Carter to get his property back, London is now seeking a congressional review of the DOJ, the IRS, and all the judges involved in the case.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management plans to close 164 miles of logging roads by using heavy machinery to re-contour some, decommissioning another 109 miles, and allowing 55 miles to return to a natural state on their own in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument area east of Ashland, Oregon.

The BLM claims culverts and drainage ditches are failing, allowing sediment and other debris to wash into the local watersheds. The agency also says that many of the roads proposed for closure are all dead-end logging spurs that branch off from more-traveled routes.

The 2014 Oregon Gulch fire burned more than 35,000 acres in Oregon and California, including part of the area. Over the years, many of the roads have been kept open so firefighters would have access to battle blazes and because they serve as fire breaks.

The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument area was created by President Bill Clinton in 2000 to protect the Cascade, Klamath and Siskiyou mountain ranges convergence. Pilot Rock is inside this area, as is as a segment of the Pacific Crest Trail.

Meanwhile, the BLM has added thousands of acres to the area since its creation by acquiring (and not necessarily purchasing) private lands though it doesn’t have the budgetary finances to maintain what acreage it does have in its holdings.

The take-over of the Malheur National Wildlife Reserve near Burns, Oregon, may have ended but the federal land grab continues.

President Obama is granting national monument status to nearly 1.8 million acres of Southern California desert. In all, he will name three specific regions national monuments — Mojave Trails, Castle Mountains (both in the Mojave Desert) and Sand to Snow in the Sonoran Desert.

It’s a move the White House says will maintain in perpetuity the region’s fragile ecosystem and natural resources, as well as provide recreational opportunities for hikers, campers, hunters and others. The designations will also connect Joshua Tree National Park, the Mojave National Preserve and 15 other federal wilderness areas.

The designations nearly double the amount of public land that Obama has designated as national monument status since taking office. Meanwhile the Commander-in-Thief is in California this week for a fundraising tour.

One of the many part-time jobs I’ve had over the years was that of mortician’s assistant. Much of the job required me to be on-call at all hours of the day to pick up dead bodies from nursing homes, hospitals, private homes and the occasional crime scene or car wreck.

The hours, though difficult at times – like a full moon – were easy to get beyond and the pay was more than generous. But the hardest part of the job came when it was my turn to tend to preparing remains.

One morning I was called up to both pick up and prepare the body. I wasn’t emotionally ready for the sight of an eight-month old child, but I carried on, getting the job finished in a more than timely fashion.

For the next week I could not get that sweet, little baby’s face out of my mind. I dreamed it to the point that I had nightmares.

After two-weeks of sleepless nights brought on by this tiny one’s death led me to realize this job wasn’t something I wanted to do for a living – even part-time.

While en route to Las Vegas, I had to stop to fill up my trucks gas tanks and empty my coffee-strained bladder. After fueling up, I raced to the public restroom.

Already there were three people, each one occupying one of the four stand-up urinals. This included a grandfather, his grown son and his grandson of about 11 years in age.

As I sidled up to the empty stall, I heard the grandpa say to his boy, “It sure is cold.”

Chuckling, the young man responded to the obvious joke, “Yup, and deep too.”

The pair snickered at their hilarity, jus’ as the grandson piped up, “Ohh – brain freeze!”

I laughed so hard that I damned near pee’d on myself.

Time and time again — I’ve heard newscasters ‘ripping and reading’ the Associated Presses ‘FBI verses Apple’ story saying, “the San Bernardino Shooter.” It should be “…the San Bernardino TERRORIST.”

Syed Farook is a TERRORIST; his wife is a TERRORIST!

If he were jus’ a “shooter” at a post office, a “shooter” at a high school or the Uber “shooter,” the FBI wouldn’t give a crap about his iPhone and this wouldn’t be a story. It’s time to think, and rewrite where necessary, because words really do matter.

Having hit my teens in the early 70s, I often used comic books to escape from the worry of the Vietnam War, riots as seen on TV, Watergate and gas rationing. It was nice to read some form of cheap ‘fantasy’ and tune out the real world.

Those were the days when you would go to the local neighborhood grocery store, mine was the Woodland Villa Market, and there on the metal turnstile rack would be anything from the old standard favs of Superman, Batman, Spiderman and Captain America to the less popular G.I. Combat, Sgt. Rock, The Unexpected, or Plastic Man. Today, you literally have to go to a book store to find a comic book – or subscribe to them like one would for any magazine.

One of my favorites was Weird War Tales, published by DC Comics. The anthology series came with supernatural overtones with horror, mystery, fantasy and science fiction elements – and was “perfect for a growing adolescent mind,” as my old man would say.

Recently, I went to Barnes and Noble to have a look around and I happened upon the January edition of Captain America. In it, a super-villain named Viper complaining about American exceptionalism and saying, “Someone has to make America marvelous again.”

Kind of sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Viper also has the audacity to whine about “overreaching government” and even asks, “Where in the constitution is anyone promised clean air, anyhow?”

It leaves me wondering — when did I become the enemy of Captain America?

For that answer one has to go back to August 1973, where Captain America was battling a conspiracy that led all the way to the White House. In the end, the head of the evil Secret Empire was then-president Richard Nixon, who killed himself, preferring not be captured.

 

Good thing I still have a trunk full of Weird War Tales to help me escape this adult world of twisted propaganda.

Why do some radio and TV personalities include the call letters or channel number with their names on Facebook? Do they think that is how people identify them.

Has some consultant told them this is good for their career? Don’t these personalities think they can stand on their own without adding the channel number or call letters to their own name.

It’s a silly practice.