American parents are organizing to fight racist critical race theories being taught in their kids’ schools. Attorney General Merrick Garland, once touted as a moderate, has responded by asking the FBI to treat them as domestic terrorists.
As befits the Biden administration, this over-the-top authoritarianism is accompanied by the stench of corruption, as it turns out that Garland’s son-in-law is in the business of selling educational materials on CRT.
Garland’s self-dealing and thuggery are grounds for resignation. But that isn’t the worst thing that’s happened. Bad as it is, the Biden administration’s poisonous combination of graft and authoritarianism can be remedied by getting rid of the administration — something that, if polls are any indication, is eminently doable.
The bigger problem is that school boards all over America seem to be growing ever more authoritarian themselves. Instead of serving as bastions of small-scale representative democracy, boards seem to regard themselves as above accountability to the voters and parents.
It was, after all, the National School Boards Association
that, citing shaky claims of “threats,” asked the administration to
investigate anti-CRT parents as “domestic terrorists,” specifically
invoking the Patriot Act in its letter.
People hold up signs during a rally against critical race theory being
taught in schools at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg,
Virginia on June 12, 2021. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
That claim of “threats” is an old move. Some readers may remember a story from Brooklyn five years ago, in which a father was arrested after complaining to a teacher. The teacher had refused his son permission to go to the bathroom and kept the son sitting in his own excrement for hours. When the father, quite understandably, showed up to complain, the teacher told police she felt “threatened”; the father was arrested, charged and subjected to an order of protection.
The magic words “I feel threatened” are now used by bureaucrats to escape accountability for their own misbehavior. That’s what the NSBA has done, on a larger scale, in the face of widespread parental dissatisfaction with curricula that tell white and Asian students that they are inherently racist and black students that they are permanent victims.
The go-to response: How dare you criticize us, peasant!
In Shakopee, Minn., the superintendent reported a single mother to her employer for the crime of taking to Facebook to criticize how the board chairwoman handled testimony from the mother of a special-needs child at a hearing. The complaint led to her suspension and possible firing, causing Minnesota state Rep. Erik Mortenson to accuse the chairwoman, Kristi Peterson, of “abuse of power” and “straight-up bullying.”
Public education is justified on the grounds that it has a civilizing influence. Behavior like this by its leaders makes me wonder.
And as I’ve noted in these pages before, teachers and administrators in Loudoun County, Va., ran a mailing list aimed at taking action against parents who took issue with their system’s commitment to CRT. One of them, school-board member Beth Barts, now faces a special prosecutor investigating her for misconduct. Barts is accused of asking members of her group to target, harass and even hack parents opposing the teaching of CRT.
The campaign of intimidation doesn’t seem to be working: Groups representing 427,000 parents responded to the NSBA letter, and they weren’t having any of it: “NSBA cites a tiny number of minor incidents in order to insinuate that parents who are criticizing and protesting the decisions of school boards are engaging in, or may be engaging in, ‘domestic terrorism and hate crimes.’ NSBA even invokes the Patriot Act. The association of legitimate protest with terrorism and violence reveals both your contempt for parents and your unwillingness to understand and hear the sincere cries of parents on behalf of their children.”
But it’s a disgrace that such a campaign exists at all and that our public schools are under the control of people who think such a response to criticism justified or appropriate.
As some Americans focus on cleaning things up at the national level, it’s also clear that people need to be paying a lot more attention on the local level. Want to make a difference? Run for school board.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.[SOURCE]
Paul Vaughn testified about the Biden administration's targeting of pro-life activists.
A Christian pro-life father of 11 described before Congress on Wednesday the armed FBI raid on his home in Tennessee after the Biden administration brought charges against him over a peaceful pro-life protest.
Paul Vaughn, of Centerville, Tennessee, appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on the Constitution and Limited Government on Wednesday to speak about his experience being prosecuted by the Justice Department under the FACE Act. The FACE Act is a Clinton-era law that was supposedly to protect both abortion facilities and churches from violence. In practice, the law has been used by the Biden administration to prosecute peaceful pro-life activists across the country.
The FBI arrested Vaughn on October 5, 2022, after he was involved in a peaceful protest at the Carafem abortion facility in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, in March 2021, where protesters prayed and sang Christian hymns. Vaughn was charged with violating the FACE Act and engaging in a conspiracy against rights, a Reconstruction-era charge meant to crack down on violence by the Ku Klux Klan.
“My house was assaulted, my wife and children were terrorized, and I was kidnapped at gunpoint by four armed men,” Vaughn told lawmakers of the arrest. “I had just sent three of my children to the car so I could take them to school when the house began to shake from a loud banging near the front door. I heard men shouting from my front porch, ‘Open up! FBI!’”
Vaughn said that he saw two unmarked SUVs with flashing lights outside his home and men with automatic rifles and a pistol aimed at his door.
“I opened the curtains on my front door to find three men with guns trained on the front door,” he said, adding that the federal agents did not identify themselves.
“I later learned at the same time three of my children, ages 12, 14, and 18, were being detained in the side yard on the edge of the woods by a fourth armed man. I was taken without the presentation of a warrant or identification when requested. Make no mistake: this was an armed conflict and I was unarmed. Lethal force was abused to abridge my God-given and constitutionally secured rights.”
Vaughn said that the FACE Act was passed as a tool to “stifle free speech and abuse the rights of Christian conservatives.” Data show that 97% of all prosecutions of the FACE Act since its inception have been against pro-lifers. Under Biden, the Justice Department has brought 24 FACE Act cases with all but two coming against pro-life activists.
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“The FACE Act was ostensibly passed because of violence. But as my family knows very well, all it did was give violence the cover of law and place it in the hands of the government,” Vaughn said.
Paired with the felony conspiracy charge, the activists have faced over a decade in prison and hundreds of thousands in fines. Multiple pro-lifers are currently serving prison sentences, including Cal Zastrow, one of Vaughn’s co-defendants in Tennessee.
Vaughn, who was convicted in January, was sentenced over the summer to three years of supervised release and has been prohibited from leaving the Middle District of Tennessee. He was given a special exception to travel to D.C. for the hearing.
Other testimony during the hearing came from Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Erin Hawley and Thomas More Society lawyer Steve Crampton, who has served as lawyer for many of the pro-life defendants prosecuted under Biden.
The hearing was led by Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Dan Bishop (R-NC). Roy has consistently called for the FACE Act to be repealed and demanded that the Justice Department keep its records of the pro-life prosecutions.[SOURCE]
Congressional Republicans said on Wednesday they want answers from FBI Director Chris Wray about the tactics his agents used last Friday to arrest Roger Stone, a longtime adviser and confidante to President Donald Trump.
Stone was taken into custody, and his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home searched, in a pre-dawn raid by a swarm of agents in armored vests and brandishing long guns. The raid came after a seven-count indictment brought by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Since then, Stone and some in the conservative news media have criticized the FBI operation as heavy-handed. Stone called it "Gestapo tactics." Former Republican governor and ABC News contributor Chris Christie characterized the handling of the arrest as "overkill," although other former law enforcement officials have called it standard procedure.
Trump told the Daily Caller on Wednesday he would "think about" asking the FBI to review its use of force and cited concerns over the number of agents and types of vehicles on the scene for an alleged white collar crime suspect.
"I thought it was very unusual," Trump said.
Other Republicans have demanded answers.
"I am concerned about the manner in which the arrest was effectuated, especially the number of agents involved, the tactics employed, the timing of the arrest, and whether the FBI released details of the arrest and the indictment to the press prior to providing this information to Mr. Stone's attorneys," Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote in a letter to Wray on Wednesday. Graham’s committee has oversight of the FBI.
Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote Wray on Wednesday as well, asking for information on the raid and suggesting that "such a show of force may also unnecessarily place agents’ lives at risk by potentially heightening the risk factor for everybody involved."
The FBI and special counsel’s office declined to comment.
Following his arrest and initial court appearance last week, Stone told reporters gathered outside a federal courthouse in Florida that agents had "terrorized" his wife and dogs.
"They could simply have contacted my attorneys and I would have gladly surrendered voluntarily," Stone said.
Prosecutors wrote in court documents that alerting Stone in advance of an imminent indictment would risk "the defendant fleeing and destroying (or tampering with) evidence."
"While I firmly support law enforcement taking into account threats to officer safety, flight risk, and the need to ensure evidence is preserved," Graham wrote, "I am leery that a subject of the Special Counsel’s investigation, who had retained counsel, had publicly stated that he believed that he would at some point be indicted, and was apparently willing to surrender voluntarily, was arrested in a pre-dawn raid at his home."
"Although I am sure these tactics would be standard procedure for the arrest of a violent offender, I have questions regarding their necessity in this case," Graham continued. "The American public has had enough of the media circus that surrounds the Special Counsel's investigation. Yet, the manner of this arrest appears to have only added to the spectacle. Accordingly, I write to seek justification for the tactics used and the timing of the arrest of Mr. Stone."
Stone’s indictment includes five counts of lying to Congress, one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, and one count of witness tampering. He faces up to 50 years in prison if found guilty, but Stone insists he’s innocent and has pledged to fight the charges.
Stone is scheduled to appear again in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Friday.
ABC News' Mariam Khan contributed to this report.
Editor’s Note: This story previously misidentified the statutory maximum for Roger Stone’s crimes as 20 years in prison. The actual maximum is 50 years in prison. We regret the error. [SOURCE]
