The proper role of the county sheriff

Richard Mack first came to national attention when, as sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, he successfully brought the lawsuit Mack v. United States (re-named Printz v. United States, when Mack’s suit was joined with that of Sheriff Jay Printz of Ravalli County, Montana), arguing Congress had no legitimate power to order local law enforcement officials to conduct background checks under the 1993 Brady Bill, or “Handgun Violence Prevention Act.”

Mack and Printz won a significant Supreme Court victory for states’ right and limits on federal power, though many authorities now argue the decision had little practical effect, since most police agencies seem pleased as punch to earn a profit charging law-abiding citizens to submit to fingerprinting and other indignities in order to be licensed to exercise what was previously considered their “right” to keep and bear arms.

(Effect in “preventing handgun violence”? Since criminals seem little deterred from carrying without permits, while the hassles and expense of complying with the law do presumably disarm at least some crime victims who might otherwise carry, the law has accomplished the opposite of its stated purpose, of course.)

Sheriff Mack, a Utah native who’s now running for Congress in Texas (21st District, against Lamar Smith, who the sheriff describes as a “Republican in Name Only”), also serves on the board of Oath Keepers, an outfit supporting government officers who vow to keep their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution, even when ordered to do otherwise. (God bless ’em.)

A former undercover narc, he’s authored books and does public speaking on gun rights, states’ rights, and “the farce otherwise known as the drug war.”

Best of all, I’ve never known Richie Mack to put on any airs.

Mack is one of the organizers of an all-day event — not open to the public — on the proper role of county sheriffs under America’s scheme of “dual sovereignty,” to be held for county sheriffs and other top law enforcement officers in Las Vegas Monday. Among the presenters Monday will be former IRS special agent Joe Banister, who was told by the IRS to pack his things and get out when he asked why he and his cohorts weren’t regularly reading their Miranda rights to taxpayers before asking them to provide information which could be used against them in court (along with some even more inconvenient questions about who precisely owes the personal income tax, given that many of the statutes used in IRS enforcement refer specifically and only to federal employees.)

Former Libertarian presidential candidate and constitutional expert Michael Badnarik is also expected.

But while Monday’s event is law-enforcement-only, the group has scheduled an open-to-the-public event from 6 to 10 p.m. on “the proper role of the county sheriff” at the Tuscany Hotel & Casino, 255 E. Flamingo, (Las Vegas) 893-8933.

Presenters at the Tuesday evening public shindig will include Sheriff Mack himself, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America (who promises to address gun-running crimes committed by the Obama Justice Department under the rubric of “Fast and Furious”), and sheriffs Joe Arpaio of Phoenix and Bradley D. Rogers of Elkhart county, Indiana.

Libertarian historian and economist Thomas Woods, author of the 2009 book “Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse,” and the more recent “Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse” (now there’s an optimist) is scheduled to speak on state supremacy and nullification at a closed, Monday banquet. It appears neither Mr. Woods nor Mr. Banister will be present Tuesday evening.

Pre-register for Tuesday evening at $10 at www.cspoa.org, or pay $15 at the door; for more information contact Sam Bushman at [email protected] or 801-756-9133.

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Behind all the smoke screens about whether the Keystone XL pipeline jobs now blocked again by Barack Obama would be “temporary” or “permanent” (It seems to me the Obama administration got all excited about borrowing and taxing to fund “home weatherization” jobs – which would be far from “permanent” even if they ever actually existed), let us lock eyes with the gorilla in the room: If they’re “focusing like a laser” on jobs, it appears to be the kind of laser that vaporizes whatever you point it at.

Barack Obama and the far-left multicultural dwarves with whom he has stacked his cabinet embrace the nihilist mythology and/or aim to buy the votes of “green” lunatics who believe the shale fracture technology used to extract Canadian “tar-sand” oil will produce dreaded “greenhouse gases” (primarily carbon dioxide, necessary to life on earth) that will fry the planet, despite the facts that a) The globe has not substantially warmed since 1997; and b) mankind’s contribution to global warming is so minimal that nothing short of the eradication of our species is likely to affect global temperatures by as much as a single degree – even if the Indians and Chinese were on board with this “let-them-shiver-in-the-dark” lunacy, which they’re not.

(By the way, if we don’t agree to refine the oil, it’ll still be produced – the Canadians will just ship it to Red China.)

National Public Radio (or is it now “American Public Media”?) brings us endlessly repeated droning interviews with people who want to discuss whether Mitt Romney is an evil capitalist and whether he pays “enough” taxes, while their investigative teams evince a complete lack of interest in the fact that the CURRENT president learned his economics (by his own published declaration) at the knee of communist Frank Marshal Davis, and started his political career in the living room of former Weather Underground member William Ayers, who told the New York Times in September of 2001, “I don’t regret setting bombs. … I feel we didn’t do enough.” (I believe he lost a perfectly good girlfriend that way.)

Who is Barry Soetoro? Why haven’t people who write entire books about Romney’s years at Bain Capital found out for us whether Mr. Soetoro/Obama’s high-school nickname was really “Barry the Stoner,” who paid his college tuition, whether he applied as a foreign student — whether, in fact, he ever attended classes, at all?

Irrelevant? This president won his first elections in Illinois not on the issues but by disqualifying his opponents, spent an inordinate amount of time in Springfield voting “present” on any remotely controversial issue, and is now clearly intent on destroying America’s free-market economy.

That’s not worth a look?

Do you realize oil production on the “public lands” (which the federal government has no right to own or control in the first place) is down 40 percent since this gang moved in (per both Bloomberg and Heritage), while new offshore drilling permits are essentially at zero? And this in the very decade when new oil, coal and gas fields adequate to keep us well supplied for CENTURIES have been newly discovered, ON THIS CONTINENT.

Gasoline prices should be tumbling.

It takes years to develop new energy resources. Ergo, the absurd diversion of vast funds into unworkable “green energy schemes” will not merely cause electric bills to skyrocket- purposely further crippling our economic recovery – but will take years to recover from, even after sanity is restored.

Grill the GOP hopefuls, by all means. But do you mean to tell me the issues above aren’t worth as much investigative energy as Newt Gingrich’s serial marriages, or the fact that Mitt Romney earned $21 million, paid $3 million in taxes, and gave another $3 million to church and charity? (Oh, the bounder!)

One Comment to “The proper role of the county sheriff”

  1. R. Hartman Says:

    “the fact that the CURRENT president learned his economics (by his own published declaration) at the knee of communist Frank Marshal Davis”
    There are strong indications that communist Frank Marshall Davis is actually communist Obama’s biological father. Whatever the truth, Obama’s not constitutionally qualified for POTUS, which makes him a usurper.