According to Reuters, these anti-government extremists “may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.”

Routine encounters with police can turn violent “at the drop of a hat,” said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI’s counterterrorism division.

“We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement,” he said.

In May 2010, two West Memphis, Arkansas, police officers were shot and killed in an argument that developed after they pulled over a “sovereign citizen” in traffic.

Last year, an extremist in Texas opened fire on a police officer during a traffic stop. The officer was not hit.

The heightened concern against “sovereign citizens” is the result of the rise in legal convictions from 10 such cases in 2009 to 18 cases in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

“We are being inundated right now with requests for training from state and local law enforcement on sovereign-related matters,” said Casey Carty, an FBI supervisory special agent.

The Sovereign Citizens United website describes the movement this way:

Sovereign Citizens United is a citizens group dedicated to protecting private property ownership and the freedom and liberty that is our birthright as American citizens. We are a clearing house of information and tools to facilitate and promote those goals in every community in America…

We do NOT endorse non-payment of taxes or violence to achieve these changes. We do NOT endorse giving up a social security number and we do NOT endorse violence against the police or the government.

How many “sovereign citizens” exist in the United States is hard to say, reports Reuters.  However, J.J. MacNab, a former tax and insurance expert whose published works have appeared in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s publications, estimates that perhaps 100,000 citizens consider themselves part of the sovereign citizen movement.

Reuters notes that, “Sovereign members often express particular outrage at tax collection, putting Internal Revenue Service employees at risk.”

The collective of hackers known as Anonymous attacked numerous government and recording industry websites this evening, shutting the sites down for hours as of this posting.

The attacks stem from a two year investigation into content sharing website Megaupload.com.  The Department of Justice unsealed an indictment today (after waiting an extra day to avoid coinciding with the SOPA protests), shut down the Megaupload website and arrested up to eight people in connection with the bust, including Megaupload founder Kim “Dotcom” Schmitz.  The actions provoked anger and triggered retaliation from Anonymous, according to Twitter accounts that regularly tweet news related to the collective of hackers.

The list of affected targets includes the Department of Justice, the FBI, Recording Industry Association of America, UniversalMusic.com, and others.  There are also reports that the US Patent and Trademark Office may have been targeted as well.

From the Washington Post:

Federal authorities Thursday indicted two firms and shut down one of the Web’s most popular sites for sharing illegally pirated material, triggering a quick response from hackers who claimed credit for taking down the Web sites of the Justice Department, Recording Industry Association of America and other media companies in retaliation.

The grand jury indictment, which caps a two-year investigation, charges seven people and Megaupload.com and other related sites with running an international organized criminal enterprise. Investigators said the group generated more than $175 million in income and cost copyright owners more than $500 million.

Justice Department officials said yesterday that the timing of its indictment was coincidental and had nothing to do with a debate on Capitol Hill over a bill that took aim at piracy online.

“This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States,” the Justice Department and FBI said in a statement.

Nevertheless, the federal action angered hackers, escalating the growing battle between the Web’s powerbrokers, both legitimate and illicit, and Washington, which has been seeking ways to clamp down on pirated content.

The Department of Justice released a statement on its website tonight, stating in part (since the DoJ site is down, portions of the statement are available at Mercury News, Silicon Valley):

“The Department of Justice web server hosting justice.gov is currently experiencing a significant increase in activity, resulting in a degradation in service,” the agency said in a statement. “The Department is working to ensure the website is available while we investigate the origins of this activity, which is being treated as a malicious act until we can fully identify the root cause of the disruption.”

…

“Our website and many others, including the Department of Justice, were attacked today and the hacker group Anonymous is taking responsibility for the attacks,” the statement read.

“The motion picture and television industry has always been a strong supporter of free speech,” the statement added. “We strongly condemn any attempts to silence any groups or individuals.”

You can read the complete 72-page indictment here or below:

Megaupload Indictment –

This story is still developing, so be sure to check back with Big Government for more on Anonymous’ activity and on the Justice Department’s investigation and indictment of  Megaupload.com.

The book, The Border Challenge, authored by T. Michael Andrews, a former adviser at the Dept. of Homeland Security’s counternarcotics office, is scheduled to be released in bookstores in early February.

Andrews has suggestions for how federal drug enforcement agencies can reshape their strategies along America’s northern and southern borders, and he explains how government bureaucracy and shifting goals have made winning the drug war impossible thus far.

“One of the problems with having so many offices in the federal government directed at a common cause is direction and leadership,” Andrews wrote. “The scope of bureaucracy can be overwhelming. If one department wants to take a different policy direction from another, this could lead to an immediate bureaucratic tie-up and in some cases pushback among the many agencies.”

According to Andrews, bureaucracy comes from partisan politics, lack of consistent focus, and jurisdictional conflicts within competing law enforcement agencies that are not working together.

“One of the problems we always had–even today, I’m sad to say, are that there are still problems between the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement),” he said during an exclusive interview conducted from his home in northern Virginia.

“Those are really the two agencies that have drug enforcement power. ICE is charged with stopping any and all contraband coming into the United States under Title 18, and the DEA is charged with both domestic and international drug enforcement under Title 21.”

“The problem arises when once someone crosses over into the United States. Is it ICE or DEA? You’ve got two agencies that need to coordinate operations between one another. There’s already an inherent conflict with two different offices with two different missions that intersect. ICE will tell you that their job is securing the border. DEA will tell you their job is stopping drugs and if it’s at the border then they’ll be there, too.”

Andrews explained that one major problem is that ICE currently lacks independent authority to investigate smuggled drugs that end up in the U.S., but that the DEA has that authority. In order for ICE to pursue an investigation based on a Title 21 crime of drug trafficking, the agency must request approval to continue their investigation.

“The FBI is the only law enforcement agency that has total authority on each and every crime,” he explained. “ICE should have the same authority as the FBI in order to handle the Title 21 drug trafficking infractions much more effectively.”

Andrews said the federal government has also failed to develop effective long-range objectives and that foreign cartels are using the American legal system against itself.

“There’s no cohesive and long-range goal to fighting drugs,” he said. Every two years the goals change. If the goal shifts constantly the government can’t achieve it because it keeps moving. The goal shifts because of partisan politics and also the reality of the day we live in. Drug trafficking has been bumped off the radar screen for counter terrorism. There are limited resources to go around, so the same resources we were once using to fight drugs are now being used to fight terrorists.

“The Mexican cartels have some of our own people,” he explained. “Some of them know our laws better than we do. They have U.S. educated lawyers working down there. I learned that while working in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. There are cartels that have U.S. law firms on retainer. They know all about the attorney-client privilege and they use it for money laundering.”

In his book, Andrews examines each president’s leadership in the drug war from George H. W. Bush through Barack Obama.

“Clinton came off really soft and that really hurt him,” Andrews explained. “But then he found a hard charging drug czar named Barry Mccaffrey, and under his leadership that was the first time you had established goals. McCaffrey said we’re going for outcome measures, performance measures, and an end game, and then he established a lot more drug agencies, which got more overall drug control funding.”

Andrews said that under President George W. Bush, the budget to fight the drug war increased from $10 billion in 2002 to $13 billion in 2008, but because of the Sept. 11 attacks the mission changed and the drug war suffered as a result.

“The focus changed,” Andrews explained. “I don’t blame him because we were just attacked. We weren’t able to worry about the street thug selling dope because we had to go to war against terrorists. So, even though the national drug budget increased, it didn’t lead to more success.”

Andrews explained that under President Bush, dedicated drug enforcement money was now utilizing the drug trafficking budget to fight terrorism in the Middle East.

“There was a legitimate nexus between drug trafficking and terrorist activities,” he explained. “George W. Bush was the first president to focus on the nexus between the two, that terrorists were selling drugs to buy weapons of mass destruction… but it depleted resources from fighting drugs on the border.”

As a result, Andrews said that drug activities at America’s borders increased.

“We used to have helicopters that were dedicated to combat drug runners in the Caribbean,” he explained. “Those assets were redeployed in the Middle East to assist in our counter-terrorism efforts there. As a result, we lacked those dedicated resources for the Caribbean corridor. There were less resources there to combat the drug runners.”

Andrews said Obama has downgraded the former drug czar cabinet position to a diminished role within the White House (Office of National Drug Control Policy).

“It gives the role less stature – it’s tough to say you speak on behalf of the president when you’re not cabinet level. You’re really just a glorified cheerleader. It doesn’t give the position the weight it merits.”

Andrews’ examination of the drug war is insightful because it touches upon the problems our government has in fighting a perpetual war that will not go away. To successfully combat drug trafficking, however, the government must work to structure its own legal code and law enforcement agencies so that they are in sync and can finally work together instead of apart from one another, and in some cases perhaps against one another.

From the People’s World;

With the Iraq war officially over, leaving 4,500 U.S. troops and 100,000 Iraqis dead plus tens of thousands wounded, the soldiers who fought and experienced the horror are returning home. They’re stepping out of one war zone and into another.

Faced with high rates of unemployment and discrimination in hiring, many are coping with horrific injuries and post traumatic stress disorder, fueling drug and alcohol abuse, and divorce and record suicide rates.

The experience is causing veterans to draw basic conclusions about the real nature of U.S. foreign policy and even capitalism.

Understandably there’s been an influx of veterans, including combat veterans, into the ranks of the Communist Party USA and Young Communist League.

Among those who joined recently, and are organizing a new CPUSA veterans committee, is Greg, who served as a military police at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan.

He said he still gets nightmares from what he witnessed travelling back and forth between Bagram, Kabul and Kandahar.

“A lot of veterans like myself go to war and want to do the right thing for our country,” he said.

“We come home and can’t even find jobs, not even part-time. I’ve found a lot of companies are hesitant to hire veterans, because veterans may have mental or physical issues. That shouldn’t be.”

Greg said he’s also experienced racism and ageism.

“When I got home my old company hired me back like they were supposed to. But soon after, that they laid me off which happens to a lot of veterans,” Greg said.

“That really pushed me over the edge. I had read a lot of the history of the party. The next day I got on line and joined the CPUSA,” he said…

Another veteran, Frank, joined the CPUSA in September. He grew up east of Los Angeles, amid the foothills of the picturesque San Gabriel Mountains. Orange and avocado groves surrounded his hometown.

By the time he graduated high school they were replaced by a growing population and industry associated with the Vietnam War buildup.

Frank was drafted and spent two years in the Army. He was trained as a tank commander and saw combat in Vietnam, serving a tour of duty.

“Little by little, I realized in Vietnam, this supposed capitalist democracy wasn’t working. This wasn’t what the Vietnamese people needed. They would be much better off with socialism,” Frank said.

“When I got back there weren’t a lot of jobs for tank commanders and I had to deal with a lot of other things, nightmares of the things I’d seen. These young men and women returning [from Iraq] are dealing with similar things,” he said.

“There has to be a better way. Socialism is the way we have to go if there’s ever going to be equality between people and countries. And that’s what led me to join the CPUSA,” said Frank.

If tensions rise as far as expected in 2012?  If the left needs to use muscle to intimidate its GOP or Tea Party opponents, how useful could dozens, or hundreds of disciplined, battle hardened former soldiers be during strikes, marches,  occupations, or  riots?

How valuable could weapons trained veterans be too the communists, if things get really violent?

Trained saboteurs, snipers, drill sergeants, intelligence officers, reconnaissance experts – all trained by courtesy of the US taxpayer. Will they be turned by the communists against their former masters?

Why is the Communist Party USA deliberately recruiting US veterans? Veterans are generally more patriotic than the general public – not easy recruits for the left.

Why then are the communists going out of their way to recruit them?

Just how hardball does the left plan to play in 2012?

Is the FBI monitoring this development?

As Mr. Carney explains, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Securities and Exchange Commission now use wiretapping to conduct insider trading probes, a move Mr. Carney believes is “out of proportion” to the crime.   Furthermore, Mr. Carney points out that “Congress has signaled out a few categories of criminal activity that can be pursued by wiretaps—and insider trading isn’t one of them.”

Mr. Carney’s observations came in response to a Bloomberg News report by Patricia Hurtado that the FBI engaged in a five-year “historic, sprawling, nationwide insider-trading initiative” that “is the biggest insider trading investigation since the days of Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken, and the largest ever in the world of hedge funds.”

The bigger point, of course, is the hypocrisy and double-standard inherent in the system.

On the one hand, members of Congress have been free to engage in insider trading for the past five years (and beyond) and the SEC has never brought an insider trading case against a sitting member of Congress, despite the rampant abuses and conflicts of interest brought to light by 60 Minutes and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer.

But, on the other hand, the federal government spent five years and untold resources deploying the most invasive of crime-fighting tools–generally reserved for racketeering and terrorism cases–to investigate businesspeople thought to be engaged in insider trading.

Hypocrisy much?

NEW YORK (AP) – Federal authorities declined to pursue a case against an “al-Qaida sympathizer” accused of wanting to bomb police stations and post offices in New York City because they believed he was mentally unstable and incapable of pulling off the alleged plot, two law enforcement officials said Monday.

New York Police Department investigators sought to get the FBI involved at least twice as their undercover investigation of Jose Pimentel unfolded, the officials said. Both times, the FBI concluded that he wasn’t a serious threat, they said.

The FBI concluded that 27-year-old Pimentel “didn’t have the predisposition or the ability to do anything on his own,” one of the officials said.

The officials were not authorized to speak about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity. The FBI’s New York office declined to comment on Monday. New York City authorities said that the FBI was involved in the case, but did not specifically say they declined to pursue the charges.

“We just believed that we couldn’t let it go any further. We had to act,” said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.New York authorities said Pimentel was motivated by terrorist propaganda and resentment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Authorities said police had to move quickly to arrest Pimentel on Saturday—because he was approximately one hour from being able to detonate explosives.

“He was in fact putting this bomb together,” Kelly said. “He was drilling holes and it would have been not appropriate for us to let him walk out the door with that bomb.”

The suspect was being held after his arraignment on numerous terrorism-related charges. His lawyer Joseph Zablocki said his client’s behavior leading up to the arrest was not that of a conspirator trying to conceal some violent scheme. Zablocki said Pimentel was public about his activities and was not trying to hide anything.

“I don’t believe that this case is nearly as strong as the people believe,” Zablocki said. “He (Pimentel) has this very public online profile. … This is not the way you go about committing a terrorist attack.”

Authorities characterized him in a different way. The unemployed U.S. citizen was born in the Dominican Republic and later converted to Islam. They said he was energized and motivated to carry out his plan by the Sept. 30 killing of al-Qaida’s U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

“He decided to build the bomb August of this year, but clearly he jacked up his speed after the elimination of al-Awlaki,” Kelly said.

He plotted to bomb police patrol cars and postal facilities, targeted soldiers returning home from abroad, and also talked of bombing a police station in Bayonne, N.J., authorizes said.

New York police had him under surveillance for at least a year and were working with a confidential informant; no injury to anyone or damage to property is suspected, Kelly said. In addition, authorities have no evidence that Pimentel was working with anyone else.

“He appears to be a total lone wolf,” the mayor said. “He was not part of a larger conspiracy emanating from abroad.”

Pimentel, also known as Muhammad Yusuf, was denied bail. The bearded, bespectacled man wore a black T-shirt and black drawstring pants and smiled at times during the proceeding. His mother and brother attended the arraignment, his lawyer said.

Pimentel was accused of having an explosive device Saturday when he was arrested, one he planned to use against others and property to terrorize the public. The charges accuse him of conspiracy going back at least to October 2010, and include first-degree criminal possession of a weapon as a crime of terrorism, and soliciting support for a terrorist act.

Kelly said a confidential informant had numerous conversations with Pimentel on Sept. 7 in which he expressed interest in building small bombs and targeting banks, government and police buildings.

Pimentel also posted on his website trueislam1.com and on blogs his support of al-Qaida and belief in jihad, and promoted an online magazine article that described in detail how to make a bomb, Kelly said.

Among his Internet postings, the commissioner said, was an article that states: “People have to understand that America and its allies are all legitimate targets in warfare.”

The New York Police Department’s Intelligence Division was involved in the arrest. Kelly said Pimentel spent most of his years in Manhattan and lived about five years in Schenectady. He said police in the Albany area tipped New York City police off to Pimentel’s activities.

New York City remains a prime terrorist target a decade after the Sept. 11 attack. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there have been at least 14 foiled plots against the city, including the latest suspected scheme. The most serious threats came from Pakistani immigrant Faisal Shahzad who tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010 and is now serving a life sentence, and Najibullah Zazi, who targeted the subway system a year earlier. Zazi pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges and is awaiting sentencing.

Asked why federal authorities were not involved in the case, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said there was communication with them but his office felt that given the timeline “it was appropriate to proceed under state charges.”

In another state terrorism prosecution, two men were arrested in May after they allegedly told an undercover detective about their desire to attack synagogues.

A grand jury declined to indict Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh on the most serious charge initially brought against them—a high-level terror conspiracy count that carried the potential for life in prison without parole. They were, however, indicted on lesser state terror and hate crime charges, including one punishable by up to 32 years behind bars.

Attorneys for Ferhani said hate crime charges and a rarely used state terrorism law were misapplied to what they have called a case of police entrapment.

Alexis Smith, 22, who lives in an apartment in the same building as Pimentel, said she was shocked that he was a suspect in a terrorist plot. “He was always very courteous to us,” she said, adding that Pimentel helped her carry groceries and luggage into the building.

“It’s nice to know he was only working alone,” she said.

It is fashionable for the Left to co-opt Barry Goldwater as they have Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton called him a “patriot” and James Carville characterized him a “principled conservative,” at odds with today’s “loony right.” But this was not so in 1964. The mainstream media, not called that then, labeled him a fascist. Walter Cronkite said of him that “Goldwater was going places, among them Nazi Germany.” Psychiatrists lined up behind the Johnson campaign, declaring Goldwater “emotionally unstable.” Reporters were aware that LBJ was heightening the conflict in Vietnam, but said nothing while LBJ promised not to send “American boys nine or ten thousand miles from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

Journalists on the campaign trail saw Johnson drunkenly board a plane armed with nuclear weapons and then accidentally drop them on the United States. Luckily, by the grace of God, they did not go off. None of this was reported, while newspapers editors worked in overdrive to portray Goldwater as eager to push the button. Today, pundits argue that dirty tricks by Carville and Begalia were something new on the horizon for Democrats and were borrowed from decades of Republican campaigns. But Johnson was a pioneer of the Clinton War Room. He used the FBI to wiretap the candidate, bought political information from Goldwater defectors, and in an eerie foretaste of Watergate, put domestic CIA chief Howard Hunt on the White House payroll to infiltrate, even burglarize, Goldwater headquarters (with Democratic blessing, Hunt filtered his findings and received cash through a dummy corporation called National Press). What is striking about these tactics was how unnecessary they were. Johnson beforehand knew he was going to win, but he wanted “to crucify” Goldwater nonetheless.

Buried under this onslaught was a libertarian, not a big government Nazi (small government Nazi is a contradiction in terms. Without a huge government behind Hitler he would have been, in the words of Bill Buckley, “a street corner racist”). Goldwater was pro-choice, feared the rise of the religious right (he once said of Jerry Falwell that the Republicans should kick him out of the Party), and supported gays in the military (“it isn’t important for them to be straight, just to shoot straight”). Camelot merchants speak of what might have been had Kennedy dodged the bullets in Dealey Plaza: Vietnam would have been avoided, racial apartheid ended, and détente would have come a decade sooner. It is instructive to see what would have happened had Goldwater won.

While LBJ was authorizing secret maneuvers in the Gulf of Tomkin, Goldwater proposed sending Eisenhower to Vietnam, a proposal that worked in 1952, effectively ending the Korean War. Eleven years of bombing might have been unnecessary. Where Johnson imposed the draft, Goldwater wanted to end it, prefiguring campaign advisor Milton Friedman, successfully achieving this libertarian goal while an official of the Nixon administration. Perhaps no draft cards would have been burned. The draconian nature of the Great Society–using taxpayer money to fund the street theatre of the Black Panthers, CONTELPRO infiltrations into the far left, which Goldwater denounced–might never have occurred, and a white backlash avoided.

All of this is difficult to ascertain since Goldwater was, indeed, crucified. Even though Goldwater humbly thought, “I don’t have enough brains to be President,” he prophesized events the master politician LBJ did not foresee. He saw Vietnam as having the potential to become a “quagmire,” years before journalists applied the term. While LBJ was cutting deals with Nixon, Goldwater predicted that, if elected, Nixon would be “the most corrupt president in history.”

Not bad for an “unstable fascist.”