Podcast: January 6 Persecutions, Covid Crackdowns, and School Follies with FFF

Here’s a fun podcast with Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling of the Future of Freedom Foundation. [I bought a new webcam and am working out the glitches. Next time will be less vexed.]

The key to the January 6 Capitol Clash: Biden prosecutors are presuming that “trespassing + bad thoughts = terrorism.” These prosecutions of January 6 protestors is a grave danger to libertarians. Anyone who vigorously opposes federal power can get tarred as an extremist.

Even the chief federal judge for D.C., Beryl Howell, said that the Justice Department prosecutors were “almost schizophrenic” – claiming that the protestors were domestic terrorists and then settling cases with misdemeanor plea bargains for parading in the U.S. Capitol. This is the same judge who dropped the hammer on the protestor who sat at Nancy Pelosi’s desk because he later told a New York Times reporter that he had “scratched my balls” in Pelosi’s office.

A federal judge ruled this week that a congressional committee is entitled to see papers from Trump’s aides regarding that clash. The federal judge wants full disclosure on January 6 – except for the FBI informants and the 14,000 hours of videotape from inside the U.S. Capitol that day. The Capitol Police and FBI are withholding a lot of information, some of which will probably make them look far worse. Defining down “gross negligence”?

The acting Capitol Police chief said there were “tens of thousands” of terrorists at the Capitol on January 6. Apparently, any Trump supporter who was in that zip code that day was a terrorist. This level of official vilification is not going to have a happy ending.

After January 6, tens of thousands of National Guard troops came into D.C. and the barbed wire fences surrounded the Capitol. To see how easy it was to completely militarize the District of Columbia was chilling. It is a dangerous precedent. What will happen next time if the troops don’t leave after a few months?

Jacob Hornberger raised the question of what role the FBI may have had for setting up the protest. “How do we know that didn’t happen here? If the FBI informants were inciting people to go inside, Americans need to know about it.”

I mentioned that the FBI ran COINTELPRO operations – massive entrapment, incitement, and surveillance – for 15 years before it was exposed. “Are there other COINTELPRO operations going on right now and it will be 15 years from now until we hear about it?”

Talking on the Covid mandates – The Labor Department’s OSHA came out with a 490 page rule. But the Secretary of Labor went on NPR and insisted that the new regime was not a “mandate.” All the fines, all the threats – those are what – simply good intentions personified?

Biden’s Covid mandate ignores natural immunity from people who had Covid and recovered. I guess Joe Biden gets to rewrite the medical books as well as the law books.

Biden started out claiming that his mandate applies to any company with more than a hundred employees but administration officials are signaling that they may go after smaller companies as well. I am sweating that they soon go after freelance writers.

Jacob Hornberger & Richard Ebeling mentioned that the vax mandate was unconstitutional. I replied, “It would be great fun to buttonhole members of Congress and ask them to explain the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of warrantless searches and seizures and how that relates to the power they are seizing. I think of most of them would simply have a blank look on their faces. They don’t care about it as long as they get re-elected.

Discussing the Virginia gubernatorial election and the Loudoun County School Board ruckus, I pointed out that the lesson was not to trust government schools. Richard Ebeling pointed out that the school shutdowns were propelling the growth of home schooling. I mentioned that the teacher unions spurred the school shutdowns. In Montgomery County, MD, the school shutdowns devastated Black and Hispanic families but that will not stop politicians from boosting property taxes to “close the achievement gap” – the same promise they have used for decades to justify higher school spending.

Jacob Hornberger mentioned that my new article on my experience as a two-time college dropout was “fantastic.” I said that government schools had destroyed my love of reading and it revived as soon as I exited compulsory schooling. Jacob mentioned that his love of learning revived after the end of his government school. I responded that it was good that his passion for knowledge could revive even though he was raised in Texas.