Bullet Baloney

The email cites a “drastic spike” in the Department of Homeland Security’s bullet purchases and asks: “What is the US federal government preparing for?” The email also claims that “federal management agencies are looking more and more like a military army every day.”

DHS has indeed ordered hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition. But there is less here than meets the eye. And that’s according to the National Rifle Association and the office of Republican Congressman Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia.

The Department of Homeland Security recently contracted to buy up to 450 million rounds over the next five years. But DHS was making a first-time bulk order for all of its law enforcement agencies to save money. Those agencies include the Secret Service, the Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement, among many others.

The NRA describes the assertion as “incendiary.” It says the suggestion that the Obama administration is “preparing for a war with the American people” displays “a lack of understanding of the law enforcement functions carried about by officers in small federal agencies.” The NRA, which is no fan of the Democratic president, concludes that “there is no need to invent additional threats to our rights.”

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Jeff Dillard, who runs National Armory in Pompano, Florida says, "I have never seen ammo so impossible to get."

Bruce A. Pelletier, owner of Pelletier's Sports in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, says in his forty-four years in business, he's never seen the shortage this bad.

"Customers have been buying it all at once. We've been at the point to limiting it to one or two boxes per person, so at least that more than one of our customers can have some."

At Sam's Outdoor Outfitters, which has locations in both New Hampshire and Vermont, rationing isn't even an option.

"We haven't had any ammunition that we can limit," says owner Stanley Borofsky.

"People are calling on a daily basis...I've been here since 1957, and I've never seen the shortage this bad," he said.

Tyler Boucher of Highlander Arms in Chesterfield believes that the "prepper" movement and rumors of the government buying up large quantities has exacerbated the run on ammunition.

"We have very, very little. Normally, it's readily available," he said.

Scott Morris, president and manager of Freedom Armory in Springfield Township says that after the shooting in Newtown, his store was "cleaned out within three days."

Morris says this is a long-term problem for both civilians and law enforcement.

"Right now, we're rationing ammunition...we have police departments that are scrambling," he said.

Denny Thomas, owner of B&B Sporting Goods in Hines, Oregon says that the shortage is as bad as it's ever been.

"Right now there's a real shortage on rimfire ammo."

Manufacturers, he says, "can't even keep up with making the cardboard boxes to put the ammo in."

Doug Toelke, store manager at Snappy Sport Senter in Evergreen, MT said, "It's tough for the manufacturers and the distributors to fill orders.

"The whole pipeline is dried up."

Toelke says that when the shop does get ammunition in, it disappears immediately:

"We'll put it on our shelves and we'll limit it to five boxes per customer and it might last an afternoon."

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Anti-Christian extremist Mikey Weinstein is now advising the Pentagon, helping set policy on religious tolerance in our armed forces.

Weinstein is anything but tolerant, attacking "fundamentalist Christian monsters" and calling Christians "pitiable unconstitutional carpetbaggers." He has directly compared Christians in the military to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Yet, the nation's military leaders at the Pentagon, which he refers to as the "Pentacostalgon," are actually consulting with Weinstein – relying on his input – as they create new policies that may roll back religious liberty – especially for Christians. - Jay Sekulow, ACLJ Chief Counsel

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Redstate

NRO:

“We’re concerned that this is more than an isolated incident,” he said. “We’d like answers. Is there a policy in the military concerning people of faith?”

Crews said that soldiers have religious liberty – and they should not be punished for being members of respected religious groups.

“This is part of a trend that is concerning us,” he said. “Several in the military have this belief that evangelicals and people who hold to traditional values seem to be a problem and need to be monitored.”

Perkins, a Marine Corps veteran, said it’s clear that “Army Values” have indeed changed.

“And it’s the values of Evangelicals and Catholics,” Perkins said. “It’s not the values of the vast majority of those serving in our nation’s military. I think it’s the values of this administration trying to superimpose upon our military.”

Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jerry Boykin, now an executive vice president of the FRC, told Fox News that all Americans should be concerned about the contents of the email.

“If this is the action of a single Army lieutenant colonel, it needs to be investigated,” he said. “On the other hand, if what he reflects is a shifting policy or attitude of the Army or DOD, then I think it is a much bigger issue.”

Boykin served more than 36 years in the military before retiring in 2007. Since 2008 he said he’s seen withering attacks on religious liberty.

Among the incidents:

-A War Games scenario at Fort Leavenworth that identified Christian groups and Evangelical groups as being potential threats;

-A 2009 Dept. of Homeland Security memorandum that identified future threats to national security coming from Evangelicals and pro-life groups;

-A West Point study released by the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center that linked pro-lifers to terrorism;

-Evangelical leader Franklin Graham was disinvited from the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer service because of his comments about Islam;

-Christian prayers were banned at the funeral services for veterans at Houston’s National Cemetery;

-Bibles were banned at Walter Reed Army Medical Center – a decision that was later rescinded;

-Christian crosses and a steeple were removed from a chapel in Afghanistan because the military said the icons disrespected other religions;

-Catholic chaplains were told not to read a letter to parishioners from their archbishop related to Obamacare mandates. The Secretary of the Army feared the letter could be viewed as a call for civil disobedience.

But Boykin called the newly-uncovered email the most “egregious” attack.

“That kind of rhetoric is isolating the institution of the military from a large sector of the American population,” he said. “This is an attack not only on the Christian faith, but on fundamental, traditional American values.”

Crews said the military is getting their information on domestic hate groups from the Southern Poverty Law Center. And the email written by the lieutenant colonel referenced the organization.

“This is disturbing that the military would use this list composed by the Southern Poverty Law Center when these organizations that are highly esteemed and respected in the evangelical community,” he said.

The Chaplain Alliance filed a Freedom of Information Act request – asking if the SPLC list had been widely distributed in the military or if had been used in a formal manner.

The response they got from the Dept. of Defense left Crews troubled.

“They told us they had no record of the SPLC list being used,” he said – even though the email clearly proves otherwise.

“This is part of a trend that is concerning us,” he said. “We believe it is more widespread than the military is acknowledging. We keep getting calls from military personnel telling us of their issues.”

What an outrageous suggestion that there might be a link between the Obama administration turning the US military into a christian hating body which sees christians as threat #1...

...and every agency in the government storing up completely unnecessary overkill hollowpoint bullets like there was no tomorrow.

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“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited

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If you spend every hour of your working life inventing new ways to attack Barack Obama or the government (or both), this is a very good week for you — or at least it should be. After trudging through the deserts of Benghazi and Fast and Furious for four years, trying to extract any tiny drop of scandal from stone, now suddenly comes manna from heaven, courtesy of the IRS and its misguided attempt to prevent political groups from taking advantage of the non-profit tax code. Then, even before you could digest the first course, the Department of Justice snoops on reporters. Glory be to Ronald Reagan’s ghost! The Promised Land of Impeachment can’t be far off.

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In an interview with WorldNetDaily — so we already know it’s going to be good — Bachmann said she thought the Obama administration intentionally released embarrassing news about the IRS targeting the Tea Party in some kind of elaborate Wag the Dog-style plot to distract from Benghazi:

Bachmann said the IRS announcement of misbehavior was intended to provoke conservatives and draw their anger and attention.

“I was in that Benghazi hearing,” she told WND. “I think the Obama administration is desperate to spin Benghazi, and they can’t. I think they saved this story up for a day like today so that conservatives would focus on this admission.”

It won’t work, she insisted.

“Conservatives can handle two shocking stories at the same time,” she said. “Both are equally unconstitutional and call into question the very president.”

This makes no sense, even for Bachmann. Why would the White House want to trade a 70 percent bogus scandal for a 70 percent real one? And if they did want to distract from Benghazi, there has to be a better way than manufacturing negative information about yourself. This is a bit like a child intentionally peeing himself to “distract” his classmates from the fact that his pants just fell down.

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Roger Aronoff, the editor of the conservative media watchdog group Accuracy in the Media worried that the IRS Scandal “threatens to overshadow Benghazi.” Rush Limbaugh laid out a related “theorem” on Monday, adding a splash of Obamacare. The idea is that media, at the behest of the White House, is being overly aggressive on the IRS scandal because it wants to get it over with so that the IRS then can be left to implement Obamacare.“The media is never on our side,” Limbaugh said of the negative coverage of Obama.

He also downplayed the AP snooping, predicting that the media is so sycophantic that “in two weeks, this will be forgotten, they will have made up over this and it’s not going to be that big of a deal.” He added that he hopes he’s wrong, but doesn’t expect to be.

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Why would Bachmann, Limbaugh, and Jones, who have never met an Obama conspiracy theory they didn’t like, pass up this one? Because the truth is way less sexy than fiction. When you’ve been claiming for years that Obama is willing to manipulate hurricane forecasts for political gain, or use Census records to round up political opponents, or deploy drones to kill journalists and political enemies, then asking a few dozen Tea Party groups from some extra paperwork is small potatoes.

And there’s little room to add value here — the dots are already connected, the mainstream media is on board, and the administration is taking action. The system seems to be working and you certainly don’t want to highlight that if your livelihood depends on convincing people the system is always rigged against them. What’s more, actual attention-grabbing scandals covered by the mainstream press may not be ideal, from a business perspective, for professional skeptics; if viewers can get coverage about them from regular news outlets, there’s less incentive for them to go to the conspiracists. Hence, it may be better for the Joneses and Limbaughs to publicly doubt the scandals’ veracity or relevance.

There’s also an intellectual poison pill that comes with the IRS and AP scandals. With Benghazi and Fast and Furious, conservatives insisted the media ignoring the controversies to protect Obama. But the media is all over these two newer scandals. “Why is the media hammering away at the IRS scandal?” Glenn Beck’s The Blaze asks, noting journalists were reluctant to make hay of out Benghazi at first.

Finally, it could also show that the media is doing its job by downplaying the mostly bogus Benghazi scandal and focusing on the mostly real IRS scandal, and that it’s willing to attack Obama when deserved. But it seems, ironically, they’d rather have the media ignore the scandals than pay attention to them, because at least that way it confirms their media bias narrative.

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