law enforcement | Ain't Complicated

Family SWATted

Lighthouse Trails Research reports in their blog:

On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years.

There were agents from the Department of Agriculture present, one of them identified as Bill Lesho. The search warrant is reportedly supicious-looking. Agents began rifling through all of the family’s possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family’s personal stock of food for the coming year. All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were taken, as well as phone and contact records. The food cooperative was virtually shut down. There was no rational explanation, nor justification, for this extreme violation of Constitutional rights.

What’s the rest of the story, I wonder.

Here. I’ll do a quick Google news search. (A regular Google search actually yields more results than the three I just got with that one.)

Fencing Fantasies

Waxing Reaganesque — “Mr. Bush, take down this fence!”

Happy talk aside, relations between the two neighbors have worsened since Bush last year signed a law calling for construction of fencing along the long border the two countries share. Calderón has ridiculed the fence, likening it to the Berlin Wall.

Since I’ve already posted on this subject here and here, I’ll not say anything further.

However, there’s also this:

Church groups led marches along both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border to protest the use of fences to stop migrants.

Nearly 100 members of churches in Arizona and Mexico marched Sunday on either side of a wall near the town of Naco, which straddles the border.

On the Mexico side, Father Guillermo Coronado of La Iglesia San Jose in Naco, Sonora, said more people need to organize similar demonstrations.

“This is a sign of what needs to be done in all the border states rather than rejecting and ignoring other human beings,” he said. “The greatest gift we have is that we are human beings with a mission to love and be happy. God has no borders.”

Señor Coronado, a question, please.

Does your church have any borders?

Also, does your church take any action to stop activity it deems immoral?

And finally, do you see any valid parallels between your answers to the previous questions and what you’re protesting against?

More Time for Redemption?

I’m sure you’ve already read/heard:: September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui should spend his life in prison instead of being executed for his role in the hijacked airliner attacks, a U.S. jury decided on Wednesday.

I’m left amazed and wondering.

I wonder if his (potentially) longer life will result in his spiritual redemption.

I wonder if that was a jury of his peers (and if it wasn’t, will a mistrial be declared).

I wonder if this is how the war on terror(ism) is to be fought.

I wonder why I thought he should get the death penalty.

I wonder how his case was so much stronger than Timothy McVeigh’s.

I wonder if this means McVeigh got a bum rap (or if McVeigh’s jury would have “hung” Moussauoi).

I wonder how many Christians will (still?) pray for his salvation.

I wonder how many Christians will (still?) wish for his death.

I wonder what the just sentence would be.

I wonder how many people are genuinely happy with the verdict.

I wonder what kind of comments his Al-Qaeda pals will make.

I wonder what Moussaoui truly thinks.

I wonder what I’m supposed to think.

I wonder what you think.

I wonder what God thinks.

Berlin Wall

Yeah, I know — we’ve heard this before about the proposed wall on the US southern border.

Critics compare it to the Berlin Wall and say it goes against the American spirit of openness, sending the wrong message to the rest of the world about the United States.

The Berlin Wall? Where’s the historical accuracy in that comparison?

I haven’t heard that the House bill includes shoot-to-kill orders.
I haven’t heard that the intent of the House bill is to keep Americans in the US.
I haven’t heard that the House bill acknowledges that the current border between Mexico and the US is an artificial, foreign-imposed border dividing a single country from itself.

Berlin Wall, indeed.

And as far as sending the wrong message to the rest of the world about the US . . . . Protecting national sovereignty, promoting national security, and enforcing domestic laws are all part of a wrong message? Yes, if you believe that the concept of nation-states is an antiquated idea that must give way to the new world, one world order.

How about a bit more from the story:

But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security described the planned barrier, which would run for 698 miles, as a “stupid fence . . . .”

Oh wow!

Immigrant welfare groups are also critical of the proposal, and point to the fact that past policing crackdowns such as “Operation Gatekeeper” in the San Diego sector in 1994 only succeeded in rerouting the flow of immigrants to more remote and dangerous areas of the border.

“Nothing has actually succeeded in slowing down the number of migrants crossing the U.S. border,” said Rev. Robin Hoover, president of Tucson-based welfare group Humane Borders.

“The fence is just another gimmick that will just expose migrants to greater danger,” he added.

Does the fact the illegals make the choices that expose them to greater personal danger somehow obligate the US to make their illegal deeds less hazardous?

In that case, the logical conclusion is that the Border Patrol’s big buses ought to be used to ferry illegals north from the border instead of south to the border. Have the US agents meet the illegals at the normal (ie, safe) crossings, not with entry applications, but with bus tickets, meal vouchers, and motel passes.

OK. 😯

Two Southern Borders

In comments obviously for national consumption, Mexican President Vicente Fox . . .

denounced as “disgraceful and shameful” on Wednesday a proposal to build a high-tech wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to stop illegal immigrants.

Concerned about the huge numbers of illegal immigrants streaming across the border and worried it could be an entry point for terrorists, a U.S. lawmaker has proposed building two parallel steel and wire fences running from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Coast. But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said a wall running the length of a border would cost too much.

Mexico has expressed indignation at the idea.

Fox, speaking in Tamaulipas state across the border from Texas, said such extreme security measures would violate immigrants’ rights.

He again called for the easing of U.S. immigration laws to benefit millions of undocumented Mexican fruit pickers, waiters and janitors working north of the border….

Señor Presidente, una idea, por favor. (“Mr. President, an idea, please.”)

Treat the illegals on your southern border as you would have the US treat illegals on its southern border.
How about easing your immigration laws to benefit those Central Americans entering (and wishing to enter) through your southern border?

Perhaps you should show the US how it’s done.

Just a (wild) thought.

DISCLAIMER: I have no ill-will for Mr. Fox nor his countrymen (there or here). For the record, Mexico is the land of my infancy, childhood and youth, though not quite of my nativity. I also served there five years as a missionary. I love Mexico and her people.

Borderline Parallel

The Miami Herald’s headline for the story is interesting (Remember Berlin Wall? Now, think Mexico) yet deeply flawed as an historical parallel.

My recollection of the Berlin Wall is at least three-fold:

It was an intra-national wall.
It was built by the government whose people were “voting with their feet.”
It was there to keep people in.

So when should anyone think of the Berlin Wall when a US-Mexico border fence is discussed?

When the thinker believes the US-Mexico national distinction should not exist. In said case, the thinker would see the fence as an intra-national fence rather than an inter-national fence.
When the thinker believes the fence is to be built by Mexico to keep its oppressed people from choosing freedom in the US.
When the thinker believes the purpose of the fence is to keep people in the United States.

In my view, the parallel the Miami Herald expounds is borderline at best.

If you haven’t yet, at least scan the article/editorial. Notice the words and expressions that serve to plant and foster and anti-fence bias.

Oh, and why should a conservative Anabaptist care about the issue?

Good question. 🙂

Ignoring a Certain Common Thread

OK, so a bunch of “youths” have been busy burning cars and buildings in France.

Agence France Presse offers us this update:

More vehicles were set alight in suburban violence in France after President Jacques Chirac said the country needed to learn lessons from two weeks of unrest.

Rioters torched 463 cars in France overnight and police made 201 arrests, figures nearly identical to the previous night, the national police said Friday.

Overnight Thursday 482 cars were torched and 203 people arrested.

At the peak of the trouble on Sunday night some 1,400 vehicles had been torched and 395 people arrested across the country.

Wow!

I suppose I shouldn’t be in this day and age, but I continue to be amazed at stories like this that not once mention the religious-cultural element that many of these “rioting youth” seem to have in common.

Islam.