(Dobbs) He Wasn't Shooting. But He Was Shot Dead.
Any American who doesn’t find it sickening ought to move to a country where this kind of behavior by government forces has always been the norm.
Another citizen of Minneapolis is dead. Another American citizen, shot to death this morning by federal agents during what they call a “targeted operation” against illegal immigrants. But neither of those who’ve died since the feds came to town were the targets. They just got in the way. And got killed for it.
What the Department of Homeland Security said in a post is, “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” What they don’t say is that he was shooting at them.
Because he wasn’t.
Giving DHS the benefit of the doubt, which it seldom if ever deserves anymore, the dead man was armed with a 9-mm handgun and intended to start shooting. But in view of the fact that he didn’t, the more plausible explanation is, he was armed because he knew what the stormtroopers are capable of. Renee Good, who died two-and-a-half weeks ago in the seat of her car, is irrefutable proof of that.
The DHS says in its post, “The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming.” Again, maybe it’s true. But after all the lies— all the situations where DHS claimed something happened one way until actual video turned up to prove that it happened another way and federal officials were flat-out lying— I don’t believe a word this government says. It saddens me to say that but it’s true.
A case in point: Donald Trump’s bloodthirsty deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. Only a couple of hours after today’s shooting, he went on social media and called the dead man “a domestic terrorist”— he jumps to conclusions before seeing a shred of evidence as fast as Kristi Noem— and went on to charge, he “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.”
Yeah, right. Just like Renee Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer” who killed her, according to Donald Trump. Except most cameras that recorded the scene show that she didn’t. Or as JD Vance put it, “You have a woman who aimed her car at a law enforcement officer and pressed on the accelerator. Nobody debates that.” Except, yes we do. She turned her wheels away from the officer, not toward him.
These people show no regard for the truth. Nor for the 1st Amendment that is supposed to allow us to protest things we don’t like, the 4th Amendment which is supposed to protect us against unreasonable searches and seizures, or the 14th Amendment, which is supposed to guarantee due process. These people trash these once sacred protections as they trash the Constitution.
The examples keep mounting up. Like the American citizen arrested and marched from his home in underclothes and crocs.
And the protesters shot with pepper spray at point-blank range.
And the five-year-old boy shipped with his father to a detention center in Texas while his mother was still home in Minneapolis.
Agents from ICE and Customs and Border Protection have been caught on camera breaking people’s windows and dragging them from their cars based on suspicions, not warrants or evidence. And violently wrestling people to the ground who haven’t shown any sign of resistance.
And now, they actually break into homes without judicial warrants on the pretext that to arrest illegal aliens, warrants aren’t required. The trouble is, sometimes they find American citizens inside, not illegal aliens.
But none of that deters the enforcers. The chief of Customs and Border Protection, Gregory Bovino, told a news conference in Minneapolis just yesterday, “Operations continue unabated here in Minneapolis, several illegal alien criminals taken off the street yet again over the past 24 hours. Again, that is what we are here to do, and we’re not going to be deterred in doing that, we are going to take these criminal illegal aliens off the street and make America a safer place, make Minneapolis a safer place, again, that is why we’re here.”
In other words, he’s saying, we have not yet begun to fight. No matter that two American citizens are now dead. His story is, we came to do a job and we’re not leaving until it’s done. And no matter that Minneapolis is not a safer place, it’s a more dangerous place for anyone with the gall to protest what they see happening in their city.
But it’s a safe bet that even after what happened today, Gregory Bovino hasn’t changed his tune. Nor Donald Trump. Trump’s troops won’t leave Minneapolis.
It might be a while before we have any kind of irrefutable evidence of what really happened this morning when the man was shot dead. The few pieces of information that Minneapolis’s police chief released at his first briefing was, the man was “a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry,” and that his only known interaction with law enforcement was “for traffic tickets.”
Sure sounds like a domestic terrorist to me. Don’t lots of Donald Trump’s supporters carry guns too?
Of course Trump is incapable of showing sympathy for the victims, because they weren’t on his side. His response today was, “The Mayor and the Governor are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric!” He ended with “LET ICE PATRIOTS DO THEIR JOB!”
There’s some deja vu going on here, reminiscent of the day Renee Good died. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz says he has seen videos of today’s death and that the story from DHS “is nonsense and it’s lies.” He wrote on X, “Minnesota has had it. This is sickening.”
Any American who doesn’t find it sickening ought to move to a country where this kind of behavior by government forces has always been the norm. I’ve worked in plenty of them. I’ve seen lots of it. Maybe then they’d appreciate how lucky we’ve been to have the constitutional protections that were always our norm. Until now.