The devastating incident occurred the evening of September 24, 2014. David Hooks and his wife of 25 years, Teresa, had settled in for the evening; Mr. Hooks was asleep and his wife was upstairs in her craft room.
At approximately 11:00 p.m., she noticed a vehicle abruptly race down her driveway. She saw men jump out of the vehicle and approach her home, donning black and camouflage clothing, shrouded in hoods.
Mrs. Hooks bolted for the bedroom to alert her sleeping husband. “The burglars are back,” she insisted. Earlier that week, the couple’s home had been burglarized and an SUV stolen from the driveway.
Mr. Hooks, a 59-year-old businessman, sprang from his bed and picked up a firearm, then took a defensive stand to protect his wife and home from the intruders. As he exited his bedroom, the back door of the house was breached, and gun-wielding home invaders charged in.
What happened next was described as “chaos.” The intruders used their weapons to send a hail of gunfire into the residence; a total of 16-18 shots from rifles and .40 caliber handguns.
When the gun smoke cleared, it became evident that the intruders were actually a Drug Task Force and members of the Laurens County Sheriff’s Response Team (SRT). Mr. Hooks was killed without returning fire.
The officers claimed to be looking for methamphetamines. After searching the home forty-four (44) hours, not a single trace of narcotics was retrieved.
The warrant — which was acquired only 1 hour before the raid — had been founded on information provided by the very same burglar who had stolen the Hooks’ Lincoln Aviator SUV two nights prior. The self-described thief and meth-addict was Rodney Garrett, who alleged that he had obtained drugs from inside the vehicle he had stolen from David and Teresa Hooks.
Laurens County Magistrate Judge Faith Snell was presented with this information and readily signed the warrant, granting the sheriff’s department the permission it needed to launch a mid-night assault on the unsuspecting couple.
News story here.
dear nation statists. we want off your frozen cartoon world. let it go.
A moment’s contemplation of the ongoing threat of a Whiskey Holocaust reveals just how simple this really is.
And why this site is so far advanced beyond lewrockwell, reason, and most of the other top libertarian sites.
Whisky and other alcohols are both a commodity and currency.
In a free market, each farmer might belong to a cluster of farms with a distillery and a pipeline to a centralized “alcohol bank.”
They would have no need of greenbacks, gold, or anything else. They could produce enough whiskey and grain alcohols to pay for everything they could need.
This is what a true sound money system would look like.
There would be complete anonymity and freedom for all involved. You input alcohol into the system that passes the required tests, and that’s the end of it.
Just like bitcoin, but far better, because it would be real and not mere cyphers.
You produce 1000 gallons of whiskey, you get a 30 digit alphanumeric code that represents this transactions. The transaction goes into the blockchain for all to see.
That’s how true sound money operates. No planners. No overlords. No middleman. That’s pure isonomy that the ancients spoke of. The rules apply to all who produce.
The production and transport of alcohol is the sum total of the law and the means of cooperation. Alcohol fueled Society would be whatever’s required to keep everything pure and well stored.
And transported and delivered to whoever wants to purchase the products for fuel or consumption.
The whole political ethanol appartus is a cynical monstrosity. Nothing to do with the free market. The free market doesn’t want poisoned alcohol, and multiple blends that serve only to fulfill various politically motivated specifications.
That’s why China is already richer than America. Their prices are so much lower. As a group, their economy gets them more goods and services than America, right now. Mostly due to bureaucracy and funny money warmongering.
You have to divide the annually produced goods and services wealth over more people of course. China has many more mouths than America. On China’s side, you can add Russia, Brazil, maybe even Germany. The New World Order is here, and America isn’t even in the lead group anymore.
Already America fades into the sunset just like France, who was the last nation to rule the world before the Anglo-American alliance took 1st place.
The gunvermin was supposed to have been “tied down with the chains of the Constitution.” What we have today (and have had at least since 1865) proves that:
A) It was incapable of doing what it was intended to do.
B) the Federalists were lying about what it was intended to do
or
C) both
I’ll choose “B.”
Hamilton and his ilk only acquiesced to the Bill of Rights as a sop to the Jeffersonians, to placate them (for the moment). They also deliberately constructed the Constitution in such a way as to guarantee the Bill of Rights’ usurpation, by using lawyer-shyster terms such as “general welfare” and so on.
Probably true. Some say Hamilton’s support of the ‘Revolutionary’ War was not an objection to empire as such, only to the British Empire, because he wanted the US to have its own. Well it’s here, big time.
Hamilton was a cretin. An opportunist of the first magnitude. He saw war as a way for him to get ahead; to acquire fortune and fame (not necessarily in that order). He married a Schyuler for her name and money. He sucked up to Washington for the power. Just a despicable bastard.
Burr did the country a service.
Only, too late.
At the risk of being “radical” and “irrelevant” I 100% agree with you on Burr.
The more I learn about Thomas Jefferson the more I miss him. I can’t say the same for Hamilton.
THere’s still a substantial part of me that does like Washington, even though I don’t agree with him much on ideology. I think his intentions were at least good. I don’t really feel the same way about Hamilton. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Amen, David – if you’ll pardon my use of that term!
I’ve read a great deal about all the Founders. Hamilton was brilliant but utterly corrupted by his insecurity, which imparted a need to achieve status – which he associated not just with wealth but also with power. Like many such disturbed people, he could be very kind to those “on his side” – and incredibly callous and cruel to those he deemed to be not on his side. Meaning, those who did not support him absolutely. Or who were not useful to him.
I am not a great fan of John Adams, but one thing he did do was save the country from an insane war with France that Hamilton by himself (acting as a British agent within the U.S. government) very nearly got the country into. If that had happened, he – Hamilton – would have been the commanding general (Washington was in name only, being too old to hold the reigns) and America – as a mostly free republic – might have been extinguished before the proverbial ink was dry on the Bill of Rights, etc.
Washington, in my reading of history, was essential to the success of the American bid for independence. An atrocious field commander, he was nonetheless a deft political general who held the mess together long enough for France to enter – and for England to become exhausted. His instincts were much better (in a moral-ethical sense) than Hamilton’s, but he allowed himself to be led by Hamilton – who exerted Dick Cheney-like influence over him. Bear in mind that Washington, of all the founding fathers, was not a reader, or particularly intellectual. He was a practical man. Overall, though, a decent man I think. Like Jefferson. And even Adams.
Unlike Hamilton.
The 4th Amendment – not that TPTB pay any attention to it – requires PROBABLE cause to issue a warrant. Anonymous tips, or info from known criminals, should not qualify.
Hi Phillip,
True. It also prohibits unreasonable searches.
Yet utterly random/arbitrary searches absent even the flimsiest assertion of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing have been approved by the courts, rendering “unreasonable” meaningless.
The Bill of Rights is toilet tissue. Worthless.
eric, Grits for Breakfast, a Tx. legal blog(and good one if there is such)has been pushing for less laws forever. There has recently been a push for rollback of laws, such as the ones where schools simply call the cops on students. In it’s first year the record of arrests has fallen by 83%.
This would make Hamilton cringe. He was for Hamilton, via his King he wholeheartedly supported for no more reason than for his personal gain, a narc of the first degree…..or last…..however you want to qualify it.
In a nutshell, Hamilton was nothing more or less than a neocon even though the name didn’t exist. He was amoral, a psychopath of the first order.
Indeed, Eight.
He was a son of a bitch, in every negative sense.
He was an instinctive authoritarian who held others in contempt as a peons who ought to defer to their “betters” (that being him).
I’m sure you know this story – but most Americans do not:
He wanted to execute the rural PA farmers who objected to his “sin” tax on their home-brew.
The average American found himself “owing” more tax after the Revolution than before.
eric, the irony of the Whiskey Rebellion should be clear even to the most cloverific. The “father” of our country, enabled by those who do no real work, produce nothing but misery for everyone(of course, with the exception of their evil buddies…..can just see a guy hanging out that looks just like the Shrub, waiting for his handout), pass a law designed to basically tax the farmer, the productive people at the time, for their own grandeur. So his ragtag bunch of mercenaries and he ride off to attack the hardest working, most productive people of the time with a “tax”, a got damned unreasonable tax to boot, for their own aggrandizement and Un-Constitutional folly.
No wonder it was never taught in pubic school. Young kids would catch on right away, smell the skunk, dis the book for certain. Pubic schools certainly don’t want to let the truth get in the way of an edgy cashun.
As an aside to that, I saw a survey a couple years ago that showed people my age, 60’s and up, are the most accepting of the new govt. crackdown on freedom. I’ve heard it with my own ears too. They sit in front of the friggin boob tube and suck the lies up just like they did when they were kids. It’s easy to tell by speaking with someone for a few minutes if you’ll direct the conversation to the latest govt. scandal if they get anything from the internet…..or anything but their govt. support checks via the USDA or the AF of L, CIO. Makes me know I was right to take all those ass-whippings growing up for not being a “team” player. But the team got together and finally came after me with brute force….and so it goes. Govt. is a big hammer and I was most obviously a nail sticking up.
I try not to be bitter But, the other day when backing up on a construction site I caught a fleeting glimpse of something in my spot mirror on the passenger side and instinctively slammed on the brakes. This dip was looking at another piece of equipment and talking to the operator who did see him. If someone had spoken in my ear though and said “Hey, recognize that guy? He’s been to your house”, I think I might have been just a tad late on stopping. Sadly though, you’ll never see that type even remotely close to “work”.
Ever point out to them that their opinion comes from the TV? That makes them really really mad.
Anyway, they are heavily vested in the system. It’s intentionally set up that way by the government. It’s like the essay on the LRC blog the other day… those that vote for independence are the ones being screwed by dependence. That is the plow and wagon pullers are ones that vote to go on their own, not those riding.
Clover,
“Reasonable” in the context of the 4th Amendment was specifically defined as individualized suspicion based on specific probable cause.
It does not get any more unreasonable than forcibly detaining people at random, arbitrarily, without even an assertion of specific/individualized probable cause.