This episode is made possible in part by the new Nullification Movie. Now available for order at tenthamendmentcenter.com/movie

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From JG Vibes, via LewRockwell.com, we learn of another case of successful jury nullification – this time in Minnesota. A man charged with violating the state’s restrictions on raw milk sales was acquitted in what he and his supporters called a victory for consumer freedom.

Over the past two years, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture has illegally raided Alvin’s van, warehouse, and farm resulting in the multiple charges that were decided upon in court last week. Technically, Alvin was guilty of breaking the laws in question, even though the laws are totally ridiculous and unjust. Luckily this jury was informed about the process of jury nullification, and their legal right to rule in favor of the accused for breaking unjust laws.

According to the Fully Informed Jury Association “Minnesota has long had highly visible FIJA Activists volunteering their time and efforts to educate every potential juror in Minnesota about the right of the people to veto bad laws through the use of the Juror Veto, or, as it is commonly called, Jury Nullification. As laws become more and more invasive, punitive, and draconian, prison populations become more and more peopled by harmless, productive people, who have harmed no other person. Jurors can stop the enforcement of bad laws. Jurors have stopped bad laws since freedom of religion was defended by jurors, and by later jurors who refused to enforce slavery. We, the owners of all government, retain the peaceful, lawful right to refuse to enforce bad laws made by some judge or politician. Courageous jurors have always stood firm – for the human rights of their families and neighbors – by refusing to sanction bad laws. The right of the People to drink the milk of their choice, and to feed their children healthy foods, is a human right.”

This news comes just weeks after a jury in New Hampshire dropped felony marijuana cultivation charges against a Rastafarian man because they believed that punishing him for the offense would be unjust. Hopefully what we are seeing is a trend, and as more people become informed about jury nullification there will be less nonviolent people put in cages for breaking unjust laws.

From the CATO institute, Tad DeHaven tells us about the “No More Solyndras Act” charade. The House of Representatives recently passed the “No More Solyndras Act” on a mostly party-line vote. However, instead of terminating the Department of Energy loan guarantee program that subsidized Solyndra and other boondoggles, the bill allows applicants who filed before the first of this year to still receive handouts.

The DOE will still have $34 billion in remaining lending authority to issue new loan guarantees. And as Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) explains, there are going to be plenty of opportunities for taxpayers to get fleeced again:

“It was recently revealed that approximately 50 applications sit active in the queue. The projects include an $8.3 billion loan guarantee for nuclear reactor project in Georgia and a nearly $2 billion loan guarantee for a liquid coal facility in Wyoming. There’s a $1.7 billion loan guarantee for a coal gasification plant in Indiana plus more than 15 solar projects in the pipeline!”

“Some of these applicants are clear losers for taxpayers. This bill would allow a $2 billion loan guarantee for a uranium enrichment project to remain on deck, ready to receive a loan guarantee despite the fact that the company has received a delisting notice from the New York Stock Exchange. Talk about taxpayers striking out, the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) is currently in line to receive a loan guarantee for its enrichment facility in Piketon, OH. On the other hand USEC hit a home run with a $100 million giveaway in the continuing resolution.”

DeHaven points out that what’s really disgraceful is that an amendment from Rep. Tom McClintock which would have completely terminated the loan guarantees wasn’t even allowed to be debated and voted on. According to TCS, the House Rules Committee “sidelined” McClintock’s amendment. Why? Because the Republican leadership was apparently only interested in using the bill to score political points against the administration. Having a bunch of its own members argue and vote against completely killing the notorious corporate welfare program (again) would have been an embarrassment.

As Rep. McClintock said on the House floor, the bill should be renamed “The 50 More Solyndras and Then We’ll Stop Wasting Your Money — Really — We Promise Act.”

Joe Wolverton at the New American Magazine reports that police consolidation is potentially driving things towards the end of localized law enforcement. Nationwide, towns and cities are jumping on the consolidation bandwagon. According to the latest data, there are about 18,000 state and local law-enforcement agencies in the United States. Of those, more than 150 have undergone some level of consolidation.

Those pushing for the consolidation of police forces into regional or metropolitan agencies typically cite budget shortfalls as the best reason for closing down local forces and combining resources to form a consolidated force.

Self-serving bureaucrats inside the U.S. government are tirelessly trying to obliterate local police forces answerable to local citizens and promote the consolidation movement as a step toward federalization of law enforcement.

Take for example the information contained in a White Paper presented earlier this year to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In that report, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is encouraged to embark on an “evolving mission” away from its ostensible purpose of fighting terrorism, toward becoming the administrators of an enormous domestic intelligence agency resulting from an integration of the country’s local and state law-enforcement agencies.

This report was written by the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group, co-chaired by former DHS chief Michael Chertoff. The blueprint promoted in the White Paper pushes Congress toward green-lighting the growth of DHS and the dissolution of local police and sheriffs.

The organization described in the paper, entitled “Homeland Security and Intelligence: Next Steps in Evolving the Mission,” is reminiscent of more draconian governments. For example, one section of the report calls for a transition in the mission of DHS away from protecting the country from the “terrorism” of foreign militants and toward “more specific homeward focused areas.” Additional sections of the report lay out the plans for building a DHS/police hybrid agency that can monitor Americans in any town and prevent threats from fellow citizens.

In order to achieve their ultimate aim, they demand that DHS or some other federal agency take control of the personnel decisions currently made by local police chiefs and county sheriffs. “As the threat grows more localized,” the report claims, “the federal government’s need to train, and even staff, local agencies, such as major city police departments, will grow.” Put another way: The federal government will run your local police department and sheriff’s office.

In many cities and towns there is still time to stop the march toward consolidation. State and local sovereignty is the solution to consolidation. Constitutional sheriffs and conscientious police chiefs are the last line of defense of the traditional mission of American law enforcement and should be jealous of their responsibilities, and should never permit politicians to hand those duties over to companies, cabals, or federal agencies.

Citizens should be concerned because they will lose direct control over their neighborhood law enforcement through the right to elect their sheriff, and because every large law-enforcement agency divorces itself from the local community. The further away a government bureaucracy is from the direct involvement of the local citizen, the less responsive it becomes to the local citizen.

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