The arrest of Shawn Christy. Was the FBI justified?

As many of you know Shawn and his father, Craig Christy, were arrested on August 18th.

Courtesy of The Daily Beast:

But Shawn and Craig, 47, are accused of being interested in technology as well. On Aug. 18, the day after a federal grand jury in Alaska indicted the pair, agents at the FBI office in Allentown, Pa., arrested the father and son and charged them with making hundreds of harassing, expletive-filled, and threatening phone calls to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's attorney John Tiemessen and employees of his law firm in early August.The calls were placed after Tiemessen and Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee and potential 2012 presidential candidate, obtained restraining orders against the two men in the last year because of what they said was harassment, including text messages and phone calls to Palin family members and friends. 

Shawn Christy reportedly admitted in court to having threatened to rape Palin, and sending her numerous emails and gifts. Following their arrest, Craig and Shawn appeared in U.S. district court in Allentown. "There's a level of obsession here that elevates the conduct from merely creepy to truly threatening," Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gallagher reportedly said in arguing for the men to be held until they're transported to Anchorage for further court hearings. They face up to two years in jail, U.S. Attorney Retta-Rae Randall tells The Daily Beast.

I had written about Christy two times in April. Once essentially calling Sarah out for publicly playing the victim over these phone calls rather than handling it quietly (Like President Obama would) and then again later in the month after Christy lost his job, possibly over this same publicity.

I spoke to Shawn on the phone and though I did detect some difficulty separating reality from fantasy, I did not believe that Shawn posed a viable threat to the Palin family at that time. (An assessment also shared by the FBI, Secret Service, and Alaska law enforcement.) I did however tell Shawn that he should NEVER come to Alaska again, and that he needed to stop making any calls, or sending any e-mails, to the Palin family or friends. He agreed that was a good idea.

However clearly he did not take that "good idea" to heart.

In an affidavit dated Aug. 12, FBI Special Agent Jacqueline DeCou details the quite disturbing calls that the father-and-son duo allegedly made to the offices of Tiemessen and his family members. In an Aug. 1 call that Shawn allegedly left Tiemessen, he says: "... are you just a little fucking Semite kike that likes to get a dick up your ass and likes to fuck people over? Well, surprise, for the first time in your life, John, somebody small, some little dick fuck from McAdoo is going to ram it up your fucking ass and take everything away that you ever fucking—everything you fucking love ..." 

On Aug. 4, Craig allegedly left Tiemessen a death threat, according to the affidavit, in which he said: "I tell you, motherfucker, you're playing with the wrong fucking boy. I tell you what, you want to play fucking games like that, I'll fucking kill you. There's a fucking threat now, fucking bring it on, motherfucker. You got that? You wanna fuck with my boy like that, I will come and fucking kill you ..."

I am sorry, but there is just NO excuse for making these kind of threatening phone calls, or sending e-mails with a similar content.

I also spoke to Shawn's mom, Karen Christy, about the situation (Before I knew anything about the above exchanges.)  I chose to talk to Karen instead of her husband because I believed she was the most rational person in the family.

I talked to her about getting Shawn counseling, but she said he had passed a psychiatric evaluation with no problem, and that Shawn only had problems stemming from his exposure to Lyme disease.  She spoke about his gentleness and intelligence, and seemed to believe that the REAL problem stemmed from Sarah Palin and her family. Sadly there seemed to me to be a certain disconnect for Karen when it came to her son and husband's behaviors.

Anyway after that phone call I severed my communication with the Christy family.

Listen I know that it is very natural for those of us who have watched Sarah and her crazy antics all of these years to almost automatically take the side of anybody with whom she has a conflict.  But if what is described in the above affidavits is accurate, and I am sorry but it is hard to believe at this point that it is not, then as rational people we have to recognize that in this circumstance Sarah Palin might actually have really been the victim.

In other words, to answer the question posed in my headline, yes, it appears that the FBI was probably justified in their arrest of Shawn and Craig Christy.   I may wish that such were not the case, but all of the evidence seems to suggest that they had little choice.

Travesty of justice.

Courtesy of ADN:

Ben Stevens has been told he's off the hook in the rapidly fading Alaska political corruption investigation, according to people with knowledge of the case. 

Family friends of Stevens, the former Alaska Senate president and son of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, say he's recently received a letter from federal prosecutors that he won't face charges. A government source who spoke only on background confirmed that the letter was sent and that the long-running investigation has concluded without an indictment. 

At the door of their family home in South Anchorage on Wednesday, Stevens' wife, Elizabeth, reviewed a draft of this story and said Stevens would have no comment. 

Stevens, 52, was one of six state legislators whose offices were raided by the FBI on Aug. 31, 2006. Four were eventually charged and convicted. 

In 2007, Stevens was identified as the recipient of bribes in the charges to which two officials of Veco Corp., Bill Allen and Rick Smith, pleaded guilty. 

While Stevens served in the Legislature, he disclosed that Veco, an oil field services company long active in Alaska politics, paid him $243,250 between 2002 and 2006 for "consulting." But he never would say what work he did for the money, even after a citizen complained to the Alaska Public Offices Commission that the fees were thinly disguised bribes. 

On the witness stand in the 2007 trial of former House Speaker Pete Kott, Smith, a Veco vice president, was asked which state senators he had bribed. 

"That would be Ben Stevens and John Cowdery," Smith testified. (Cowdery pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2008.) 

Federal authorities also investigated Stevens over the hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees paid to him by fishing interests that benefited from legislation promoted by his father in Congress. 

This is devastating news for Alaskans, like myself, who have been working to see the corruption in this state cleaned up.

Ben Stevens was considered by most of us to be a slam dunk for the FBI. He had his fingers in everything, and was considered one of the most egregious of the "Corrupt Bastards Club."

With the dropping of Stevens investigation, and Pete Kott and Vic Kohring starting to wriggle out of the grasping fingers of justice, it appears that there will be NO real deterrent to prevent the Republican party from continuing in the future to take kickbacks from oil companies, ensure sweetheart deals for their donors, and keep right on screwing over the people of Alaska.

As some of you may remember the investigation against Rep. Don Young was dropped last year, but as surprising as that was, having Ben Stevens walk away from this whole thing smelling like a rose is almost unthinkable.

Of all of the corrupt bastards the FBI was after, Stevens seemed like the easiest case to make. Hell, essentially EVERYBODY had sold him out!

Personally I find this very unsettling.  And for those of you who were still holding out hope that the long rumored federal investigation against Sarah Palin might bubble to the surface in the near future, I would suggest that you not hold your breath on that one either.

This state is filled with awe inspiring beauty, but there is a great ugliness running through our politic system, and apparently for the time being it is here to stay.

FBI might be prepared to investigate News Corps under RICO statutes. In other words the same statutes they use to investigate the Mafia.

Courtesy of AdWeek:

Well-sourced information coming out of the Department of Justice and the FBI suggests a debate is going on that could result in the recently launched investigations of News Corp. falling under the RICO statutes. 

RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, establishes a way to prosecute the leaders of organizations—and strike at the organizations themselves—for crimes company leaders may not have directly committed, but which were otherwise countenanced by the organization. Any two of a series of crimes that can be proven to have occurred within a 10-year period by members of the organization can establish a pattern of racketeering and result in draconian remedies. In 1990, following the indictment of Michael Milken for insider trading, Drexel Burnham Lambert, the firm that employed him, collapsed in the face of a RICO investigation. 

Among the areas that the FBI is said to be looking at in its investigation of News Corp. are charges that one of its subsidiaries, News America Marketing, illegally hacked the computer system of a competitor, Floorgraphics, and then, using the information it had gleaned, tried to extort it into selling out to News Corp.; allegations that relationships the New York Post has maintained with New York City police officers may have involved exchanges of favors and possibly money for information; and accusations that Fox chief Roger Ailes sought to have an executive in the company, the book publisher Judith Regan, lie to investigators about details of her relationship with New York police commissioner Bernie Kerik in order to protect the political interests of Rudy Giuliani, then a presidential prospect. 

Here is where the RICO logic comes in. The usual path of a criminal investigation follows the crimes back to the source—that’s what happened to News Corp. in the U.K. when the royal family discovered that its voice mail messages were appearing in the press. But in a RICO investigation, you are really following the ethos and methods of operation of a group or organization to the crime. In other words, criminal activity is not seen as an isolated or particular event—as News Corp. has desperately and unsuccessfully tried to portray the crimes that occurred in the U.K.—but as an established pattern of conduct. 

As it happens, much of this pattern of conduct at News Corp. has long been hiding in plain sight. How the company has gotten away with such behavior is, in fact, a subtext of the investigations that are now unfolding. 

Partly, the company has escaped legal scrutiny because this is a boys-will-be-boys sort of story. News Corp.’s by-any-means aggressiveness has become so much a part of its identity that it seemed almost redundant to find fault with it. Everybody knew but nobody—for both reasons of fear and profit—did anything about it; hence its behavior has become, however unpleasant, accepted. 

And partly, it’s because the fundamental currency of the company has always been reward and punishment. Both the New York Post and Fox News maintain enemy lists. Almost anyone who has directly crossed these organizations, or who has made trouble for their parent company, will have felt the sting here. That sting involves regular taunting and, often, lies—Obama is a Muslim. (Or, if not outright lies, radical remakes of reality.) Threats pervade the company’s basic view of the world. “We have stuff on him,” Murdoch would mutter about various individuals who I mentioned during my interviews with him. “We have pictures.” 

Similarly, the Post and Fox News heap praise and favors on partisans, who in turn do them favors (the police, in New York as well as London, receive and return the favors). 

This reward and punishment has translated into substantial political power, both in terms of regulatory advantages and, too, in the ability of the company to shield itself from the kind of scrutiny that it has taken a perfect storm of events to have it now receive.

Use the same methods to investigate News Corp that the FBI used to investigate, and imprison, Mafia members? 

Considering what we know about how Fox News has used its influence to control elections, cover up for their favorite politicians, and attack competitors, it makes perfect sense to me.

2nd Amendment - Attacks on Our Rights: Operation Fast and Furious (video)

From:  2ndamendmenttv.com  Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 Subject: Attacks on Our Rights: Operation Fast and Furious

     Whatever their reasons for doing so, the actions of the ATF project Gunrunner have been used to demonize the Second Amendment, American gun dealers, and American gun laws. Months ago we found out that the ATF was allowing, and even encouraging, large gun sales to individuals for the purpose of taking them across the border to arm Mexican drug cartels. Taking their cue from the Obama administration, news outlets have been citing the 'failure of American gun laws' for arming these killers in Mexico, but as more and more comes out about Operation Fast and Furious we learn now that American gun laws would have stopped these transactions had not the ATF and the FBI deliberately subverted (read BROKE) the law and allowed these sales on purpose. 

Video:  http://www.2ndamendmenttv.com/page/4508.html

"Feds Silent on How Convicted Felons Bought Guns"

Goodman Green,  2ndAmendmentTV.com

"I believe that a person's moral compass can be determined by how he references free men the right to defend themselves." --Ted Nugent 
 P.S.  Please forward our links or share on Facebook to help us grow.  2nd Amendment TV, 2380 California St., San Francisco, CA 94115

---

We knew it was coming! Fox News has "Brain Room" where the phone records of Americans are being hacked.

Courtesy of Business Insider:

A former producer with Fox News claimed in a lengthy essay gaining new traction this week that the conservative television station has a "Brain Room" in its New York headquarters, which enables employees to view private telephone records with ease.

Though published years ago, the allegations have returned to relevance in the wake of the phone hacking scandals that have rocked News Corporation to its very core, threatening to topple one of the world's largest and most powerful media conglomerates.

According to former Fox News executive Dan Cooper, whose gripes with his former employer run quite deep, Fox News chief Roger Ailes allegedly had him design the so-called "Brain Room" to facilitate counter-intelligence efforts and other "black ops."

In a lengthy 2008 diatribe said to have doubled as a book pitch, Cooper claimed his own phone records had been hacked by Fox News employees, who he says used them to pinpoint him as a source used by David Brock, who founded liberal watchdog group Media Matters.

"Ailes knew I had given Brock the interview," he wrote. "Certainly Brock didn't tell him. Of course. Fox News had gotten Brock's telephone records from the phone company, and my phone number was on the list. Deep in the bowels of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, News Corporation's New York headquarters, was what Roger called the Brain Room. Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News. But unlike virtually everybody else, because I had to design and build the Brain Room, I knew it also housed a counterintelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie."

See?  I told you it would lead back to Fox News!

My fervent hope is that the FBI get themselves a search warrant and GAIN ACCESS TO THAT ROOM!

Ladies and gentlemen I would bet my house that if they could get in there THAT would be the end of Fox News, Roger Ailes, and Rupert Murdoch.  There is no doubt in my mind.

You know the part that really pisses me off?  That I already KNEW about this story, and even wrote about it, but it completely slipped my mind until I read this article.

Some investigative reporter I turned out to be.

FBI begins probe to investigate allegations that News Corp hacked phones of 9-11 victims. Well now, things just got a LOT more interesting!

Courtesy of the LA Times:

Responding to allegations from several Washington lawmakers, the FBI has opened an investigation into whether Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. attempted to hack into the telephones of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the families of those who died.

According to federal law enforcement sources, the decision by the FBI's field office in New York to launch the criminal probe came after several members of Congress raised concerns in letters to FBI headquarters, questioning whether reporters for the media empire may have tried to compromise Sept. 11 victims just as they reportedly hacked into the phones of numerous individuals in England.

"We are doing this based on their requests," said an FBI source, who asked not to be identified because the investigation is just getting underway. "But after reviewing the letters and their allegations, and after consultation with the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, we are proceeding."

At the Department of Justice, officials also acknowledged they are "reviewing" the allegations by Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and others that Sept. 11 victims and families may have been put at risk by News Corp.

"If these allegations are proven true," King wrote in his letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, "the conduct would merit felony charges for attempting to violate various federal statutes related to corruption of public officials and prohibitions against wiretapping. Any person found guilty of this purported conduct should receive the harshest sanctions available under law."

I have to imagine that there are those working at Fox News right now who are trying desperately to clear their email trash bins and clean up their hard drives before the investigation leads the FBI right to their door. Because folks, you just KNOW that this was not something that just took place on the other side of the Atlantic.

I also have to imagine that there are some disgruntled ex-News Corp, and Fox News employees that are more than willing to help the FBI with their case.

Remember when I promised you that this would be a great summer?

Well to be honest there was really NO WAY I could have imagined that it would be THIS great!

2nd Amendment - POTUS involved: Impeach/Indictment/Fire/Charge

"Fast and Furious" and "Operation Gun Runner" ...BATFE, DEA, FBI, DOJ, and POTUS

If 'the man' lies (even if by omission) over a botched operation such as this, what else is he concealing and lying about? -- rfh

---

also, see the video below.

article source: http://our-motivation.co.cc/Utube/gr.php 

From: kd Subject: Oblama knew Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011

Obama needs to be fired - Absolute Proof Obama knew about Project Gunrunner

see it for yourself: http://our-motivation.co.cc/Utube/gr.php

Obama signed funding for Project Gunrunner into law This information was found at http://www.freerepublic.com So Obama did not know anything about this, but he signed $10,000,000 in funding for the program. This thing would stink on a dung pile. It is time for indictments. First he tried to pass H.R.495 Southwest Border Violence Reduction Act of 2009, Read the Bill Click Here: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h495/text, asking for 15,000,000 for Project Gunrunner.  But it never made it out of committee. So he rolled into the stimulus package a month later, H.R.1 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, For an additional amount for State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance, $40,000,000, for competitive grants to provide assistance and equipment to local law enforcement along the Southern border. $10,000,000 shall be transferred to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Salaries and Expenses for the ATF Project Gunrunner.  What does $10 million pay for here?  They did not hire any new agents. Read this Bill Click Here: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h1/text?version=enr&nid=t0:enr:232  "Fast and Furious" and "Operation Gun Runner" ...BATFE, DEA, FBI, DOJ, and POTUS

How could this be if President Obama and AG Holder are telling the truth when they say they knew little or anything about the operation[s]?  All these agencies and U.S. dollars involved and the White House knew nothing? "The evidence gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in those activities," Issa and Grassley wrote. We would like to see Eric Holder and Ken Melson testify side by side to answer these and one other important question: What did the president know and when did he know it?

It is time to demand it be investigated.      Unwilling to be made a scapegoat in the affair, which resulted in the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry using one of the trafficked guns, Melson, acting ATF director since April 2009, testified behind closed doors on Monday before two congressional oversight committees. He appeared with his own private attorney, rather than lawyers from the Department of Justice. His explosive testimony needs to be heard loudly and publicly.      ABC News reports that Melson wanted to appear before oversight committees earlier, but Eric Holders Justice Department sought to delay his testimony. Pressured to resign and unwilling to take the fall, Melson seized the opportunity to tell his story.      "If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand," the letter said. "That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation."      Among the things that made Melson ill was the discovery of the activities of other agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, perhaps even the U.S. Attorneys Office and the Department of Homeland Security.      Learning not only that guns were allowed to "walk" into Mexico after being bought by straw purchasers acting on behalf of criminals, but also that the purchases may have been financed with taxpayer dollars is enough to make anyone queasy. That Holders DOJ would lie to Congress and hide what it knew and when it knew it is, well, absolutely criminal.      At an oversight hearing last month, three federal firearms investigators testified that they wanted to "intervene and interdict" the guns at the border, but were repeatedly ordered to step aside and let the traffickers proceed.      "Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals this was the plan," John Dodson, an ATF agent, told the panel. "It was so mandated."      Agent Olindo James Casa said that "on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms."      Just how high up did this order originate? Just which federal agencies were involved and what were their roles? Did taxpayer dollars buy the guns for the criminals? Why did DOJ cover this up?

---