The FBI’s war on Catholics
The FBI’s pursuit of supposed Catholic terrorists [emphasis mine]:
The Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have been investigating the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) categorization of certain Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists. While the FBI claims it “does not categorize investigations as domestic terrorism based on the religious beliefs — to include Catholicism — of the subject involved,” an FBI-wide memorandum originating from the FBI’s Richmond Field Office did just that. Under the guise of tackling the threat of domestic terrorism, the memorandum painted certain “radical-traditionalist Catholics” (RTCs) as violent extremists and proposed opportunities for the FBI to infiltrate Catholic churches as a form of “threat mitigation.” The FBI’s Richmond memorandum is a startling reminder that Americans’ civil liberties and core Constitutional rights must be vigorously guarded against government overreach, including in this case from an overzealous law enforcement agency.
The FBI has been mighty busy lately, hasn’t it?
The documents received pursuant to the Committee’s subpoena show there was no legitimate basis for the memorandum to insert federal law enforcement into Catholic houses of worship.
• The basis for the Richmond memorandum relied on a single investigation in the Richmond Field Office’s area of responsibility in which the subject “self-described” as a “radical-traditionalist Catholic” (RTC). However, FBI employees could not define the meaning of an RTC when preparing, editing, or reviewing the memorandum. Even so, this single investigation became the basis for an FBI-wide memorandum warning about the dangers of “radical” Catholics. …
• The two FBI employees who co-authored the memorandum later told FBI internal investigators that they knew the sources cited in the memorandum had a political bias — sources including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Salon, and The Atlantic.
• The documents received pursuant to the Committee’s subpoena show that the FBI singled out Americans who are pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists. The memorandum recognized “the run-up to the next general election cycle” as a key time frame and cited the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade as a flash point.
More at the link.
The FBI has become a very dangerous institution.
“ The FBI has become a very dangerous institution.”
Let us not forget that Trump nominated FBI director Wray. To be fair, all of the Republicans in the Senate voted to confirm him. He was wholeheartedly endorsed by Trump‘s attorney general. Jeff Sessions. Sessions was a good senator, but a terrible AG. Another in the long line of disastrous Trump appointments.
More despicable behavior by a despicable, unconscionable, power-mad (and unfortunately, fearless) regime.
Just why they have no fear WRT their unstinting efforts to destroy the country, its institutions and “preferred” individuals as well as groups is open to conjecture.
(But TRUMP….)
yes wray was a slithy tove, but about as much as you could get out of the possums like corker bennett, fidelious flake, et al, besides mccabe, strzok, laufman et al were of the same stripe, just as with weasel weissman and franky fig on the outside, (the last was counterintelligence who let a known Russian asset in the special forces, linger in the intel community, peter dobbins,
The biggest story out there is Venezuela/Guyana. If Venezuela invaded the implications are staggering. Sorry about being O/T but I had to say something.
well they would be significant for guyana, but in the big scheme of things,
It’s another part of the brief for six propositions:
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1. The federal penal code needs to be briefer, to be more circumscribed in its scope, to define offenses precisely, and to have penalties calibrated according to the medians of state codes.
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2. Each federal investigatory service requires a specialized book. They are properly to be found in a half-dozen different departments.
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3. Consultative services to local police are the responsibility of state police. If rarefied skills are needed, state police will requisition them from federal agencies.
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4. Federal prosecutors must to proceed with a case secure an information from a judge or board of judges and should, in some cases, have to participate in an adversary process so to do. Trial judges must be selected from outside the ranks of those who signed the information.
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5. Federal prosecutors are debarred from initiating investigations or conducting them. They have to receive referrals from congressional committees or federal agencies, and vet the dossiers these referring agents forward.
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6. The FBI is dissolved. Management level employees and agents employed in the Washington office are debarred for life from federal employment.
@miguel cervantes.
I’d say the risk of plunging the Western Hemisphere into another hot war and possibly even a rerun of the Cuban Missile Crisis is a big deal.
Let us not forget that Trump nominated FBI director Wray.
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Wray was recommended by Rod Rosenstein. Wray also worked for the Bush crew. Mueller, Comey, Wray, Rosenstein, McCabe, and Sztrok are an indictment of the permanent government and the Bush-era Republicans.
Vivek is right. The FBI needs to be abolished. He has an actual plan.
Wray was recommended by Rod Rosenstein. Wray also worked for the Bush crew. Mueller, Comey, Wray, Rosenstein, McCabe, and Sztrok are an indictment of the permanent government and the Bush-era Republicans.
Trump was naive. He was foolish enough to trust the recommendations of careerist deep state creatures recommending other deep state creatures… who of course would then go on working to undermine him once they were safely ensconced.
As a complete political outsider, Trump had no notion of the opposition he would face. To be clear, I’m not trying to make an excuse for Trump. He should have known better. But it is an explanation. If he’s fortunate enough to be elected next year, I only hope that he has learned from these past experiences. I can’t say if he truly has though. Trump seems to be more of an instinctual operator than a deliberative one.
The questions are:
1. How much do people really care about Guyana?
The answer to that should be pretty clear.
2. How much will “Biden” wish to alienate his pals in Caracas (and Teheran).
Should be pretty clear as well.
The “Bidenesca” optics might be of some interest, OTOH…
(Unless it’s all a charade: by giving Biden a chance to declare !NO PASARAN! Maduro (and the Mullahs) are just engaging in a ploy to enable “Biden” to shore up “his” wonky international credentials….)
With all the Islamist and Chinese Communist threats, the Powers That Be insist on claiming that the largest threat to the country is from white Christian nationalists and, of course, Trump voters. Willful blindness.
His political endorsements since 2020 convince me that he has not learned anything. They lost the Republicans the senate and nearly lost the house. The man is a fool and a narcissist, and will trust anyone who butters him up.
Let’s hope that DeSantis beats him in Iowa and Haley in New Hampshire. At that point he will melt down. Who Knows what he will do?
To understand the grotesque perversity that’s at play here, one really ought to (try to) read—it’s clearly presented but tough to digest—the recent Gadi Taub article in “The Tablet” to which sdferr linked in the “Sympathy for Hamas” thread:
“Why Israel Is Target #1 of the Global Left;
“The attack on Israel’s legitimacy is part of a larger assault by the global left and global capital on the democratic nation-state”—
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-human-rights-advocates-became-antisemites
Topsy-turvey Alice in Wonderland-style perfectionism utilizing a distinct and despised target to ensure the haters’ elevated moral stature…
File under: We are all Kulaks now…
I am very concerned about proximity to vital water ways ( canals). Gaza ( Suez) Guyana (Panama). Perhaps I’m into conspiracy, I don’t think so.
Considering all the horrid things; drugs, crime, riots, assault, arson, terror, human trafficking murders, that we currently face, I’m wondering why the interest in Catholics and/or Christian Nationalists.
It must be something they’re planning on doing. Which is worse, presumably. Wonder what that is. Wish the feds would tell us.
See bolded text.
An interesting and informative essay until this final “value statement”
Un-effen-believable.
What kind of insane, self-destructive psychology and moral sensibility is behind that attitude, I cannot even begin to guess.
One cannot even “dignify” it with the contemptuous spitting out of the term “G#dd@()*d masochism”
You might as well invite an arsonist into your house and hand him a book of matches because your tenth great grandmothers once lived two streets apart in Piddlingville.
I hope to Gaia I have somehow misread the author’s intended meaning.
A shopworn allusion …
Patient: “Doctor, help me. It hurts when I raise my arm like this!” (Stabbing himself in the eye with a fork)
Doctor: “Removing the fork from your hand before making that motion should help significantly.”
Patient, stares silently back in a state of deliberate incomprehension.
I think this is where somebody cracks, “Inconceivable!”
“Perhaps I’m into conspiracy…’
In Venezuela’s case, they clearly want the oil.
But they also believe they were humiliated 150 odd years ago by the British when the borders of then British Guyana were drawn up to Venezuela’s detriment and Britain’s advantage, and are apparently still sulking.
So it can be presented by Maduro as “the principle of the thing”.
And who knows? They may even believe it….
Either that or they believe that the timing is propitious. Dictators have this funny habit, though, of totally misreading situations. Alas, not always…
Would seem, though, that Brazil, having a northern border with both countries (together with Surinam—which, interestingly, also has some territorial disputes with Guyana, though they’re much smaller), may feel provoked in some way by Maduro’s ambitions, so one wonders if that might give him pause…
His political endorsements since 2020 convince me that he has not learned anything.
If Trump could plan, he would have worked to promote the party and selected younger people to carry on the fight. Instead, he has attacked both. His record is so mixed, it is hard to say if it is a net positive or negative. We will see.
Six weeks to neural activity, a 50 state legal standard for viable life.
One man, one woman, and our Posterity.
Sex: male, female is genetic. Gender: masculine, feminine, respectively, is sex correlated attributes (e.g. sexual orientation). Trans- refers to a state or process of divergence from normal.
Dress is selected by society to normalize a favorable juxtaposition of the sexes and in context.
The Catholic religion recognizes a diversity of individuals, not color or class. Of men and women who are equal in rights and complementary in Nature.
The Judeo-Christian philosophies emphasizes science, places their faith in God, and behavior that is self-regulated through individual choice following the principles of their religion.
Guyana is in the other direction from panama of course chavez destroyed their own petroleum infrastructure
Your post, n.n reminded me of Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture, which I know I’ve posted here before.
https://familyofsites.bishopsconference.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/07/BXVI-2006-Regensburg-address.pdf
But in light of this thread, and current events, it seems appropriate to link to again. Nothing makes me prouder of my Catholic faith than this. I really miss Benedict. I wish he could have reigned for decades.
“The basis for the Richmond memorandum relied on a single investigation in the Richmond Field Office’s area of responsibility in which the subject “self-described” as a “radical-traditionalist Catholic” (RTC). ”
One wonders if the subject had self-described as a Democratic Strategist if the FBI would have issued an FBI-wide memorandum. Republican Strategist?
Also, one wonders what the outcome of said investigation was. Was the subject charged with a domestic terrorism crime?
Maduro is likely emboldened by our President’s cognitive state, and the fact that diplomatic pressure has recently been lifted. The state of Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is desperate from neglect, abuse, and under-investment, at this point. Guyana’s gift of hydrocarbon reserves is very significant – it is huge – their GDP has tripled in a few years, and will triple again in a few more.
Venezuela is desperate for cash, and desperate for light hydrocarbons. And they have attacked hydrocarbon operations in Guyana’s national waters before, and been rebuked by the UN for doing so. Pay attention to this one. It is an aggression over oil, on the pretext of an old boundary dispute – which is resurrected whenever there is a fresh temptation over oil.
Regarding the FBI, it’s always interesting to see blame laid about FBI appointments who are behaving badly, as it turns out. Interestingly, the person laying the blame never states what it is that they saw at the time of the appointment that revealed to them questions of a candidate’s suitability. But somebody is to blame, nevertheless. Interesting, that.
Had he not resigned he almost would have.
Had he not done so, a sly anti-American Peronist syncretist would not have had a dozen years to work his havoc.
Had he appointed sound cardinals during that time the Catholic Church would not have been increasingly solidified into a roost for sexually disordered males.
I dont know how a normal grown man can sit through a performance by one of those lilting voiced all are welcome milqetoasts with their covens of assistant presiders, who now occupy the pulpits of what once was my mother’s church.
And as they have control of the real property, I am sure they don’t mind the absences.
” The abomination of desolation”
Never knew what that referred to.
Still interested in trying to figure it out.
“I really miss Benedict.”
Even us Protestants miss him.
He knew. I suspect He also knew he was outnumbered.
Bob Wilson: Trump’s choices “lost the Republicans the senate and nearly lost the house. The man is a fool and a narcissist, and will trust anyone who butters him up.”
And I’m absolutely positively certain that Biden’s EO to push every Fed agency to GOTV for Dems had nothing to do with that! /s
Benedict was at least Catholic.
I miss Benedict, too.
Looks to be something weird/wrong with that initial link, Neo. It’s preceded by some junk that invalidates it. Maybe a Chrome issue.
Stripping off the first part of it, you get this, which appears to be just fine:
https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2023-12-04-the-fbis-breach-of-religious-freedom-the-weaponization-of-law-enforcement-against-catholic-americans.pdf
Anyone else seeing this?
The demand for right-wing terrorism from the elite greatly outstrips the supply. It’s worth pointing out again how profoundly unusual it was for two of the three defendant groups in the Whitmer kidnapping case to prevail on a defense of entrapment.
You could say that this is “narrative buliding,” but I think that Reagan hit the nail on the head. It’s not that our friends on the left don’t know anything, it’s that they know so many things that aren’t so. If you “know” that the “real threat” is from the right, you try to neutralize that threat, fit every fact into that framework, and ignore the facts that are inconvenient, i.e., “fiery, but mostly peaceful protest.”
I actually don’t think that this is about mendacity for most lefitsts. I think it’s more akin to brainwashing. They’ve been indoctrinated into such a rigid ideology that they can’t think anymore.
Trump was naive. He was foolish enough to trust the recommendations of careerist deep state creatures recommending other deep state creatures…
Who else was he to choose? DC is a den of thieves. I am sure he trusted those who advised him but “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”
The Catholic Church is working diligently to destroy itself, it doesn’t need the help of the FBI for that.
During my recent sojourn in hospital I took confession and communion from an Opus Dei priest. A real hardliner and a monumental jerk. E.g. he told me my marriage to my wife of 43 years was not valid in the eyes of the Church because she was a (lapsed) Episcopalian. He said we would have to live “non-conjugally”, i.e. no sex, until we had rectified things with the Church. Until that rectification, he said, having sex would be a mortal sin. I nearly booted him out of my room on his ass. I was so angry.
Next day I took communion from a jolly Chicago Irish Catholic diocesan priest, who also did the anointing of the sick thing with me. Great guy. Loved him, and he was a real comfort. I told him what the Opus Dei creature told me about my marriage, and he rolled his eyes and said that Fr. Opus Dei was full of shit. “That’s Opus Dei for you,” he said, laughing.
I too miss Benedict.
AG Sessions was naive.
IrishOtter49, unless you or your wife are divorced and didn’t get church annulments, the Opus Dei guy is full of it, even in Catholic canon law. I was non-Catholic when I married my Catholic husband; an Episcopal priest and a Catholic priest presided jointly. What was that Opus Dei priest doing asking you about the validity of your marriage when you’re in the hospital in serious condition?
Now, Joe Biden is not validly married in the eyes of the Catholic Church, because Jill was divorced, and it’s not clear that it was even a Catholic marriage ceremony.
“What was that Opus Dei priest doing asking you about the validity of your marriage when you’re in the hospital in serious condition?”
Not that I’m an expert on the topic or anything (though O.D. does seem like a most intriguing organization)…but whatever he did, it seems it was extremely therapeutic…for which we’re all very glad, I’m sure…
(Reminds me that my French, never very strong, would get a whole better when I was really angry… Now THAT might be an idea to run by the Second Language Acquisition racket—ever eager for new methodologies! Huxley? Get ANGRY!!! GRRR!!! And watch yer spoken French take off!)
You might be right, Barry, about anger making IrishOtter stronger. On the other hand, it could have had the reverse effect. That priest could use a course on pastoral care.
Well…we always knew my mother was doing OK as long as she’d get irritated…
(And we’d get kinda worried when she wasn’t…)