Officers told her 'rights' were 'only in the movies'

January 10, 2008 - The mother of an 11-year-old boy abducted by SWAT team members and taken to a hospital after he was bruised while horsing around is warning members of her community of the "Nazi" tactics she endured, including a statement from the officers that her "rights" were "only in the movies."

The case involves Jon Shiflet, who injured himself while trying to grab the handle of a door on a car his sister was driving. He slipped and fell to the pavement, hitting his head. His parents treated him for the injury and rejected paramedics' demands that they be allowed to take him to a hospital.

Nearly 36 hours later, SWAT team members broke into the family home in western Colorado near New Castle and took Jon to a hospital, where a doctor said the family should keep ice on his bruise, exactly the treatment the family already had been providing.

Tina Shiflett, Jon's mother, has written a letter to the editor of a local newspaper, the Post Independent, "to awaken, alert and appall any who read it and hear the bells ringing."

"A fully armed SWAT team broke into our home, slammed my children to the floor face down with their hands behind their backs and shoved a gun in my daughter's face and handcuffed her…" her letter said.

During the attack, she wrote, "One (officer) grabbed my daughter Beth (18 years), who also had a gun to her face, slammed her down and kneed her in the back and held her in that position… My sons Adam (14) and Noah (only 7) lay down willingly, yet they were still forced to put their hands behind their backs and were yelled at to keep their heads down.

"My daughter Jeanette was coming out from the back bedroom when she was grabbed, dragged down the hallway, across a couch and slammed to the ground," she said. "The officers then began throwing scissors and screwdrivers across the room (out of our reach, I suppose) and going through our cupboards.

"I asked if I could make a phone call and was told, 'no.' My daughter asked if that wasn't one of our rights. The reply was made, 'That's only in the movies,'" she told WND.

"The armed men in black masks took my terrified son against his wishes to Grand River Hospital, where he was examined by a doctor and interrogated by Social Services. No evidence was found that he had not been properly taken care of. Upon his return, we were told to keep ice on his head," Tina Shiflett's letter to the editor said.

"To the SWAT Team members … how far will you go in 'just doing your job?' If you feel no guilt bursting into an innocent family's home, traumatizing young children and stomping the security found therein, will you follow more horrific orders?" she wrote.

"May I remind you that in Nazi Germany, outrageous, monstrous crimes were committed by soldiers 'just doing their job?' What will be next? Where will this stop?" she wrote.

"Fathers, mothers, families and countrymen, I challenge you to consider our story and ask yourself the question, 'If this was my family, what would I do?' For it very well could be you … next!"

Ross Talbott, the owner of the Apple Tree Mobile Home Park who rents to the Shifletts, called the SWAT team actions "gross irresponsibility and stupidity."

"Is this Russia? I don't know what we're coming to when they think your kid needs medical help and they send a SWAT team," he said.

SAN FRANCISCO, California - January 10, 2008 - The California State Court of Appeals announced today their decision to overturn one of the most restrictive gun bans in the country, following a legal battle by attorneys for the National Rifle Association (NRA) and a previous court order against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

“Today’s decision by the California State Court of Appeals is a big win for the law-abiding citizens and NRA Members of San Francisco,” declared Chris W. Cox, NRA’s chief lobbyist.

In 2005, NRA sought an injunction against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to prevent them from enacting one of the nation’s most restrictive gun bans. NRA won the injunction, but the City’s mayor and Board of Supervisors ignored the court order and approved a set of penalties, including a $1,000 fine and a jail term of between 90 days and six months, for city residents who own firearms for lawful purposes in their own homes.

“We promised our California NRA members in 2005 that we would fight any gun ban instituted by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and we haven’t given up that fight,” continued Cox. “Today we see our second win for the Second Amendment against the San Francisco gun ban. We beat them once in court and the City’s attorney appealed based on his personal disagreement with the court’s first decision to overturn the ban. Now we’ve beaten them again. The California State Court of Appeals has upheld the state preemption law.”

Today’s decision came in the form of a 3-0 opinion in favor of the lower court ruling overturning the gun ban.“This decision is a thoughtful and well-reasoned legal opinion,” concluded Cox. “I'd like to thank our approximately 4 million members, including the hundreds of thousands of members in California, for their continued commitment to protecting our cherished freedoms.”

ANNAPOLIS, Missouri - January 9, 2008 - A rural school district's long-standing practice of allowing the distribution of Bibles to grade school students is unconstitutional, a federal judge has ruled.

An attorney for the southeastern Missouri school district said Wednesday he will appeal the judge's injunction against the practice.

For more than three decades, the South Iron School District in Annapolis, 120 miles southwest of St. Louis in the heart of the Bible Belt, allowed representatives of Gideons International to give away Bibles in fifth-grade classrooms.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit two years ago on behalf of four sets of parents. In August, a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a temporary injunction against the practice.

The district altered its policy, saying the Gideons and others were still welcome to distribute Bibles or other literature before or after school or during lunch break, but not in classrooms.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry ruled both practices were illegal and granted a permanent injunction.

The purpose of both practices "is the promotion of Christianity by distributing Bibles to elementary school students," Perry wrote. "The policy has the principle or primary effect of advancing religion by conveying a message of endorsement to elementary school children."

Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based law group that represented the school district, said he would appeal.

"I think the current policy creates an open forum that allows secular as well as religious persons or groups to access the forum to distribute information," Staver said. "The court has clearly misread the First Amendment and the cases regarding free speech."

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island - January 7, 2008 - A tech company with ties to a school district plans to test a tracking system by putting computer chips on grade-schoolers' backpacks, an experiment the ACLU ripped Monday as invasive and unnecessary.

The pilot program set to start next week in the Middletown school district would have about 80 children put tags containing radio frequency identification chips, or RFID chips, on their schoolbags. It would also equip two buses with global positioning systems, or GPS devices.

The school and parents will be able to track students on the bus, and the district hopes the program will improve busing efficiency, Superintendent Rosemarie Kraeger said. The devices are intended to record only when students enter and exit the bus, and the GPS would show where the bus was on it's route.

Parents could opt out of the program, Kraeger said.

The pilot program, made by MAP Information Technology Corp., is to run for several months at the Aquidneck School, she said. The district, which serves about 2,500 students, is the company's only client, said Deborah Rapp, the company's director of marketing and communications.

Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, sent a letter to Kraeger and members of the school committee calling the plan "a solution in search of a problem" and saying the school district should already have procedures in place to track where its students are.

On Monday, he said the program raises enormous privacy and safety concerns.

"There's absolutely no need to be tagging children," he said. "We are not questioning the school district's ability to use GPS to monitor school buses. But it's a quantitative leap to monitor children themselves."

ILLINOIS - January 7, 2008 - Motorists in Illinois have little ability to challenge massive fines imposed on the state tolling authority.

Motorists wrongly accused of skipping payments on Illinois toll roads face thousands of dollars without a realistic opportunity to challenge the charges before an impartial hearing. In a multi-part expose, the suburban Chicago Daily Herald newspaper detailed the plight of motorists accused by state agencies of cheating the system. Last year, 26,282 vehicle registrations and 8055 driver's licenses were suspended over toll skipping allegations. Toll skipping is big business, generating $46 million in violation bills since July 2006.

Innocent motorists often receive these bills as tollway violation cameras are unable to distinguish various specialty license plates available in the state. There is no penalty for a violation contractor when it guesses the wrong plate number. This same problem has led to false accusations of cheating in other parts of the country as well.

Whether or not the initial accusation is accurate, the system often sends violation notifications to the wrong address because it uses the vehicle registration database instead of the driver's license registry which is considered more up-to-date. A motorist who would have paid up immediately if informed of the problem has no recourse if the notification was never sent or never received.

Leslie Boudreau found this out the hard way. She told the Daily Herald that she was a regular I-PASS user for several years. When her credit card failed to replenish her I-PASS account last year, she unknowingly failed to pay $179.50 for dozens of trips to work. She never knew about the credit card problem because the tollway failed to send notice to any motorists between July 2006 and August 2007 as it switched toll collection contractors. This delay allowed late fees and penalties to grow.

On September 25, the tollway demanded Boudreau make payment in full of $4619.50 within 14 days. Boudreau refused, filing an appeal to the circuit court. The tollway quickly reversed its position and offered a settlement - she could get off the hook if she paid just $679.50. Had she refused this deal and lost the appeal, the agency could have forced her to pay $15,739.50.

Failure to pay the fines within defined time periods - regardless of notice - escalates both the financial penalties and results in license and vehicle registration suspensions. The tollway's appeals process is designed to prevent the overturning of its decisions. The hearings are conducted by an attorney paid $50 an hour by the tollway to decide whether it is "more likely than not" that a motorist is guilty. Under this civil procedure, the tollway prohibits the hearing officer from considering whether the motorist ever received notification of the alleged offense or whether the toll road's violation detection may have malfunctioned.

The only realistic defenses allowed are: "respondent was not the registered owner of the vehicle in question at the time of the violations; or respondent has already paid all of the fines and penalties in full."

Appealing the ruling of a tollway hearing to a circuit court costs $247 in "fees" that are not refunded even if the motorist is found innocent.

Ed. Note: The last official act of any government is to loot its citizens, and it appears that Illinois is well on the way to doing just that.

DETROIT - January 6, 2008 - Cars that drive themselves - even parking at their destination - could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say.

GM, parts suppliers, university engineers and other automakers all are working on vehicles that could revolutionize short- and long-distance travel. And Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner will devote part of his speech to the driverless vehicles.

"This is not science fiction," Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview.

The most significant obstacles facing the vehicles could be human rather than technical: government regulation, liability laws, privacy concerns and people's passion for the automobile and the control it gives them.

Much of the technology already exists for vehicles to take the wheel: radar-based cruise control, motion sensors, lane-change warning devices, electronic stability control and satellite-based digital mapping. And automated vehicles could dramatically improve life on the road, reducing crashes and congestion.

"Now the question is what does society want to do with it?" Burns said. "You're looking at these issues of congestion, safety, energy and emissions. Technically there should be no reason why we can't transfer to a totally different world."

GM plans to use an inexpensive computer chip and an antenna to link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. The first use likely would be on highways; people would have the option to choose a driverless mode while they still would control the vehicle on local streets, Burns said.

He said the company plans to test driverless car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018.

Sebastian Thrun, co-leader of the Stanford University team that finished second among six teams completing a 60-mile Pentagon- sponsored race of driverless cars in November, said GM's goal is technically attainable. But he said he wasn't confident cars would appear in showrooms within a decade.

"There's some very fundamental, basic regulations in the way of that vision in many countries," said Thrun, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering.

The Defense Department contest, which initially involved 35 teams, showed the technology isn't ready for prime time. One team was eliminated after its vehicle nearly charged into a building, while another vehicle mysteriously pulled into a house's carport and parked itself.

Thrun said a key benefit of the technology eventually will be safer roads and reducing the roughly 42,000 U.S. traffic deaths that occur annually - 95 percent of which he said are caused by human mistakes.

"We might be able to cut those numbers down by a factor of 50 percent," Thrun said. "Just imagine all the funerals that won't take place."

Other challenges include updating vehicle codes and figuring out who would be liable in a crash and how to cope with blown tires or obstacles in the road. But the systems could be developed to tell motorists about road conditions, warn of crashes or stopped vehicles ahead and prevent collisions in intersections.

Later versions of driverless technology could reduce jams by directing vehicles to space themselves close together, almost as if they were cars in a train, and maximize the use of space on a freeway, he said.

"It will really change society, very much like the transition from a horse to a car," Thrun said.

The U.S. government has pushed technology to help drivers avoid crashes, most notably electronic stability controls that help prevent rollovers. The systems are required on new passenger vehicles starting with the 2012 model year.

Vehicle-to-vehicle communication and technology allowing cars to talk with highway systems could come next.

Still in debate are how to address drivers' privacy, whether current vehicles can be retrofitted and how many vehicles would be need the systems to develop an effective network.

"Where it shakes out remains to be seen but there is no question we see a lot of potential there," said Rae Tyson, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jack Blood - Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

A CALL TO ARMS - NATIONAL ACTION FOR THE 2nd AMENDMENT

WHEN: JANUARY 11TH 2008 12 PM

WHERE: STATE CAPITOLS EVERYWHERE, THE WHITE HOUSE

WHY: STOP H.R. 2640 AKA: THE VETERAN'S DISARMAMENT ACT 2008

In an unrecorded voice vote the gun grabbing bill once known as H.R.297, H.R.2640 also known as "The Veteran's Disarmament Act" by pro-2nd Amendment grass roots organizations across America, passed, and will soon be on the way to President Bush for signature or veto.

The bill calls for a guilty-before-being-proven-innocent program of determining which Americans may realize the 2nd Amendment and which may not. According to the bill, any past, present, or future "thought crime" may threaten your right to purchase or own a firearm. Without a trial!

The core of the bill's problems is section 101(c)(1)(C), which makes you a "prohibited person" on the basis of a "medical finding of disability," so long as a citizen or veteran had an "opportunity" for some sort of "hearing" before some "lawful authority" (other than a court). Presumably, this "lawful authority" could even be the psychiatrist himself.

* Note that unlike with an accused murderer, the hearing doesn't have to occur. The "lawful authority" doesn't have to be unbiased. The citizen or veteran is not necessarily entitled to an attorney - much less an attorney financed by the government. Children with past diagnosis for ADHD, people diagnosed with Alzheimer's, veterans dealing with PTSD and who seek psychiatric help, men and women who are charged or suspected of domestic violence, and anyone currently under medication for any psychiatric reasons whatsoever... they are all targets of H.R.2640.

We are forcing people choose between what may be essential mental help and counseling and their 2nd amendment rights.

Funding for implementation on a state level is based on a "secret formula" set by the U.S. Attorney General in order for the states to obtain the funding necessary to pay for this very expensive database.

We have alerted the public to the nascent no-fly lists and the coming no-work lists, and now we must alert you to the no-gun list. We have in effect become a nation of lists, in the order of Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, and Mao's China. Unless we want to realize the communism, socialism, or fascism of these failed prison states, we must act NOW or lose everything the united States of America and its Constitution stand for.

So where is the National Rifle Association in all of this? It was in fact the NRA that helped legislate this bill! They own this lock, stock and barrel! Here is what NRA spokesperson Rachel Parsons had to say about supporting H.R.2640 along with Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein, Frank Lautenberg, and Carolyn McCarthy: "We want a clean bill. If this becomes a Christmas tree of gun control, we will absolutely remove support from this bill." Three months later they did NOT remove support.

And this is exactly what we ended up with. A Rockefeller Center style Christmas tree lit up with more gun CONTROL than all previous gun control bills combined. Like thieves in the night, in a secret vote, with NO PUBLIC debate, with no mention by all but one of the Republican presidential candidates (Ron Paul), with no coverage by the big 5 media companies, without a care for liberty and the Constitution... Our 2nd amendment rights have been put in the hands of George W. Bush.

Every indicator seems to show that Mr. Bush, an alleged conservative, will sign this nightmarish bill.

We might have time to stop him and we certainly have time to let the president know that we want this bill vetoed until such a time when Americans can have a thoughtful debate on what we are getting into with H.R.2640.

We still have (not much) time to send a message to the Senate Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell to reconsider sending this to the president, and we have the entire year to challenge each of the candidates running for president on where they stand on such a bill. This is especially important if those running are sitting senators and congressmen who voted for this bill while posing as supporters of the right to keep and bear arms.

We ask you this week to call into radio talk shows, write your newspapers and television networks to ask them why they have not addressed this issue before their audiences, and where they stand on the issue. We ask you this week to ask all of the candidates for President in 2008 to clarify where they stand on the issue of H.R.2640, have they read the bill, and did they support it yes or no? We ask you this week to call you senators, congressmen and the White House to tell them that you do NOT support H.R.2640 or anyone who endorses it.

We ask you on Friday January 11th 2008 at 12 Noon in your time zone to go to your state capitols, halls of government, media outlets, and the White House, with signs, banners and leaflets to alert the public to H.R.2640 and to ask for their help in stopping it. Our goal is to get media attention in order to get this bill before the public eye. WITHOUT YOUR HELP WE WILL LOSE!

If we do not do anything it won't be long before, on the smallest of pretexts, YOU will lose your rights to legally own a firearm, and it won't be long before, just like in the United Kingdom, the government will come for your butter knives.

RESOURCES:

Owners Get Stabbed In The Back - Veterans Disarmament Act on its way to the President http://www.gunowners.org/a122007.htm (703)321-8585 Larry Pratt - Director

McCarthy and NRA ambush gun owners, sneak Gun Control through Senate and House http://nationalgunrights.org/alerts/2007-mccarthynra.shtml (FULL TEXT OF THE BILL HERE) NAGR Phone: (888) 874-3006 - Dudley Brown - Director

Sept 6th 2007 interview Jack Blood with Rachel Parson of the NRA: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=175415874751235706

Jack Blood covers NRA backed Gun Control with Dudley Brown of NationalGunRights.org and Larry Pratt of GunOwners.org http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1529101058692499496&hl=en

GEORGE W BUSH CONTACT INFO: BY PHONE - Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414 / FAX: 202-456-2461

MITCH McConnell's SENATE OFFICE, DC 361-A Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 Phone: (202) 224-2541 Fax: (202) 224-2499 http://mcconnell.senate.gov/ http://mcconnell.senate.gov/contact_form.cfm email

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Congressman RON PAUL'S action notice:
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/gunowners/write-your-senator

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Sample Email Opposing HR 2640:

Dear Senator [Senator's Name Here],

I am very disappointed that the Senate Judiciary Committee passed out H.R.2640 on and unrecorded vote, just as the House did. This bill will solve nothing but will expose hundreds of thousands of private medical records to organizations that have already proven they cannot be trusted to accurately deal with personal information. Furthermore, the liability that people face when accused of being mentally incompetent to own a firearm will discourage people with personal issues from seeking medical help. I strongly urge you to reject the Senate version of H.R.2640.

Very truly yours,

[Your Name Here]

Send emails to your appropriate Senator.
Email forms for all Senators can be found at: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm


Source: Restore The Republic 3149 Dundee Rd. #176 Northbrook, Ilinois [60062]