In the 1946 move, “Terror by Night,” Sherlock Holmes assures Lady Margaret that, while he and Dr. Watson would be hanging around, “we’ll be as unobtrusive as possible.” Lady Margaret correctly responds “That would be a novelty from a policeman.” That scene came to mind when Attorney General Merrick Garland testified in Congress to assure members that he does not believe that parents protesting at school board meetings are domestic terrorists. He insists that there was nothing to be worried about because the FBI would simply be monitoring what these parents say or do at school meetings. Promises of such “unobtrusive” investigations or operations ignore the obvious: any national enforcement or monitoring effort is by definition obtrusive, particularly when it comes to free speech.
Garland’s testimony came after the Justice Department announced that it would be creating a national effort to “address threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” including “open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.” It came shortly after the National School Boards Association asked for such action, including the possible use of the Patriot Act against individuals deemed threatening to board members. While the Justice Department memo itself does not mention domestic terrorists or the Patriot Act, the Justice Department’s press release pledged to include the National Security Division in the effort.
Garland repeatedly assured the members that he knows of no basis for alleging domestic terrorism in these school board meetings. He further pledged that he will not use such laws against parents objecting to critical race theory or other issues at these meetings. However, those answers only begged the question of why the Justice Department has pledged this broad effort to monitor and respond to threats at these meetings. If these are not matters of domestic terrorism, why is the Justice Department implementing this effort? The letter does not cite any pattern of criminal threats or their interstate or federal profile.
There is no question that any such threats need to be aggressively prosecuted. Moreover, some threats using interstate communications or interstate conduct can satisfy federal jurisdiction, but such local threats are rarely matters of federal enforcement. Indeed, I raised the same concerns when the Justice Department took over rioting cases in Wisconsin, Washington, and other states.
When asked about alleged sexual assaults in Loudon County, Virginia in school bathrooms involving a transgender student, Garland insisted that such violence sounds like a “local case” and the Justice Department would not be involved. Yet, the Justice Department just announced it would get involved with any such threats or violence in school board meetings. These meetings involve core political speech on issues that are deeply dividing the country. If the Justice Department is going to launch a national effort to address possible crimes in such meetings, it has a heightened duty to explain the basis for an effort based on federal criminal conduct.
State and local laws offer ample means to address criminal threats or violence. Only a handful of such cases have been cited, largely cases of unruly or disruptive conduct in the meetings. While General Garland pledges fealty to the First Amendment, there is a fair concern over the impact of his memo on such free speech activities. First Amendment cases are often more concerned with the “chilling effects” on free speech as opposed to direct government action. Recently, the Supreme Court struck down a California law requiring the reporting of charity donors. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the Court that “When it comes to the freedom of association, the protections of the First Amendment are triggered not only by actual restrictions on an individual’s ability to join with others to further shared goals. The risk of a chilling effect on association is enough.”
Telling parents that the Justice Department is monitoring school board meetings creates an obvious chilling effort on speech. It is like a police car following you on the highway for miles just to see if you violate any law. It has an impact on how you act. Indeed, the purpose of the National School board letter seemed designed to have that effect. The Justice Department then amplified that effect by quickly announcing it would carry out the national effort and released a press statement referring to various departments being brought into the fight, including the National Security Division. While Garland may pledge to be as “unobtrusive as possible,” it would be quite a “novelty” to succeed.
“Garland repeatedly assured the members that he knows of no basis for alleging domestic terrorism in these school board meetings.”
~+~
His source: The Waterboard of Education
I’m more concerned that our Attorney General seems to be, frankly, an idiot! He actually said he had heard nothing about leftist climate terrorists committing an insurrection at the Interior department at which over 50 people were arrested. The notion that somehow someone has to recommend Anthony Fauci be investigated for lying to Congress when he did it in front of the entire nation live on TV is beyond bizarre…unless Garland straight up takes orders from the DNC. The fact he had no knowledge of any cases going on as part of the “Summer of Love,” in which 3 dozen people lost their lives, billions in damage was done, shole city blocks held hostage, and a federal courthouse attacked on a nightly basis while our now Vice President donated money to bail criminals out is beyond stupid.
The only credit I can give him is that when some Democrat tried to talk about eliminating the filibuster you could see him fight back the urge to tell her that the filibuster is a Senate thing and that they needed a civics class because that had nothing to do with him. There was also the moment when someone else said something about the DOJ only going after Georgia for election laws. There too I could almost see him wanting to say that while some of the voting laws other states may not be his preferred ones they are within the bounds of the Constitution.
Democrats have plain lost their minds and now think any laws they don’t like means they violate the Constitution, are illegal, or are some bizarre humans rights violations. If you are the party that wants to take guns away from people you might not want to be the party that has lost their minds at the same time…
Two things please:
One, I am embarrassed to say that I actually bought into the Obama lie that Garland was a “moderate”. I try to follow the Supreme Court but I admit that I have never followed the D.C. Circuit very closely. I was glad that McConnell held up his appointment, but I did think the guy was a moderate. The guy is no moderate and in fact he seems to be a corrupt partisan hack. Corrupt because his daughter’s husband make millions off of CRT and a partisan hack because he was probably in cahoots with the WH in deciding to have the DOJ release the now famous memo. He also says he didn’t know about the rape in the VA school, didn’t know about the INVASION of Interior Dept by climate radicals and never seems to have an opinion about the border. Garland will surely go after Bannon for the contempt of Congress charge, which leads me into my second point.
Two, if anyone thinks that Bannon should be indicted then please tell me how you felt about Eric Holder and his CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS.
The FBI and DOJ will be unobtrusive only as long as the school boards want them to be. As long as the parents stay in their place.
This is the grownup version of the pleasure that was interacting with the middle school vice principal: “The choice is yours Epstein. You can follow the rules or you can lose your lunch privileges. Conduct yourself accordingly.”
The issue will be resolved by the next school board election. To bad the communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs) have paid bribes to voters out of the public treasury, fixed the voting population by importing hyphenates, fixed the voting procedures and fixed the elections. It’s hard to win in a one-party communist state that has abrogated the Constitution by omission of the Supreme Court and judicial branch.
We have one party with 2 wings.
Just came into my email account.
The National School Board Association communicated with the White House before releasing a letter requesting federal intervention to investigate whether alleged threats leveled by parents against school-board members qualify as domestic terrorism under the Patriot Act.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/national-school-board-group-communicated-with-white-house-while-crafting-letter-likening-parents-to-terrorists/
“Unobtrusive” means “undercover” and if the past is any guide, agents provocateurs as well, I would rather they obtrusively make themselves known so innocent people would’ve able to judge how to act.
I am supposed to feel better that the FBI and DoJ attorneys will be undercover? Good Lord they think we are all idiots!!
Prof Turley’s remark about the monitoring itself being chilling in terms of suppression of free speech reminds me of a series of incidents during William Donald Schaefer term as governor of Maryland. He was elected in the 1980’s in a landslide election and we all had a fairly high opinion of him, being very good at fiscal matters. But he turned out to have a thin skin. When some people criticized him for some policy he would send a photograph of that person to the person in the mail at their home. These were closeups of the individual who irked him when they were in public, especially at meetings and at demonstrations. There was no explicit threat to that person in the letter, just the picture said enough: “We are watching you who are criticizing us.” Prof Turley’s following police car example is a good comparison, and having the FBI staring at you is an even more intimidating than Schaefer’s photographs. I think I remember that when enough people alerted the public to this subtle harassment, Schaefer curtailed the behavior.
Schaefer also had Maryland State Troopers gather photos of license plates of “dissidents” to monitor their travel and intimidate them. He was a good Mayor but became increasingly paranoid as Governor.
There are parents who are making violent threats against school board members. Violence or threats of violence to push a political goal is the definition of terrorism. So there is validity to this.
Yeah, who?
So you thought all of the fun last summer were terrorists too, correct?
Like the guy who’s daughter was raped by the “trans” boy who was protected by the school and transferred to another school where he raped again?? That guy who got arrested, and they used to so they could call parents Domestic terrorists?? WOW. Get your head out of your butt, and see what is really going on here.
Rape? She was sodomized (i.e. sexual), bur was she rape-raped (i.e. sex)? Sustaining the pride of the transgender spectrum through a handmade tale for social justice is more important than his daughter’s dignity, agency, and life. That said, forward-thinking people control the vertical, the horizontal… This may, in fact, be an episode of The Outer Limits.
n.n.,
For simpletons like me, YOU are “The Outer Limits!”
Just sayin’…
It’s a game, right?
I live in Virginia. It has been reported here that the girl was sodomized both orally and anal -y ( not sure of spelling?).
List a date and name or your post is a mere shiny object obfuscating Garland’s boot-jack methods of returning political favors to the USA’a #1 DNC voting block, the teacher’s faculty unions. .
OMG!
Anything but the lazy, greedy, boot-jack, teachers union thugs, with school boards as accomplices and complicit facilitators, the bane of America’s existence.
Be careful George, the FBI might come calling. Better lawyer up.
How about Maxine Waters…is she a domestic terrorist by means of your own definition?
This case of DOJ getting involved in such a local is issue is troubling. What is even more so, is that large chunk of the media, charged with critically reporting on the government, has largely ignored the story. Suppose a GOP administration had dispatched the feds to monitor parents demanding CRT be taught or pushing for an expansion of transgender rights, would we have the same level of media silence?
Vandalize and cause thousands of dollars of damage rioting and you are labeled a “peaceful protestor”.
Passionately and non violently voice concern about your childs education and you are labeled a terrorist.
This country is barely recognizable any more.
Oh come now nothing to see here. Pay no attention to that G-man behind the curtain. What a bullet we dodged when the Senate wouldn’t consider this schmuck for SCOTUS.
“…schmuck for SCOTUS.”
That’s what I’m talkin’ about!
Professor Turley,
Could you include the relevant link to AG Garland’s testimony in which he acknowledges the FBI would be monitoring what these parents say or do at school meetings? I am having trouble finding it on my own. I think I might have found it, but I want to be sure we’re on the same page.
One Loudoun County man who was held up as an example of a “domestic terrorist parent” is Scott Smith, who showed up to a Loudoun County school board meeting to let the board and fellow parents know his 9th grade daughter was raped in the girls’ bathroom by a supposedly “gender-fluid” boy in a skirt. Scott Smith went to the meeting to voice his concerns about the schools’ dangerous transgender bathroom policy, which allows males into female-only spaces, as well as the fact that the school had covered up his daughter’s rape. The school and the district superintendent apparently covered up the rape not just to protect themselves from criticism but also to push the transgender bathroom policy through the approval process. Scott Smith was arrested before he could speak and consequently labeled a domestic terrorist, while the rapist was moved to a different high school in the district, where he raped another girl. From CRT to boys in the girls’ bathrooms, to the covering up of rape, to allowing the rapist to remain in a regular school with other students, the Loudoun County school district is the eiptome of what’s wrong with public schools today.
“It’s the [treasonous Supreme Court], stupid!”
– James Carville
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The goal is the full imposition of communism.
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“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
– Barack Obama, Community Organizer (Communist Party USA)
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The communist institution of public schools cannot be attacked; the uninterrupted continuation of its mission is imperative.
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“Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.”
– Vladimir Lenin
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The language is changed by communist media from local “disturbance of the peace” to the federal “domestic terrorist,” ostensibly legally enabling the communists to deploy the full force and weight of the federal government against the people. Of course, it is an actionable unconstitutional act to deny constitutional rights, freedoms, privileges and immunities to citizens. The threat to America is communism. If Congress were steadfastly American, the AG would have been impeached, convicted and penalized, commensurate with defection and treason and with extreme prejudice, for subversion, insurrection, dereliction, abuse, and usurpation of power.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
The singular America failure is the judicial branch and Supreme Court whose sole duty and charge is to assure that actions comport with the literal “manifest tenor” of statute and fundamental law.
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“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what they forbid.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
This is a great article that puts that sexual assault into proper perspective. It’s appropriately titled: When Did Sexual Assault In Schools Become A Partisan Issue?
Ensuring the safety of young girls — in their places of learning and elsewhere — should not be controversial. But the loudest voices on the left, the same ones who screamed “Me Too” from the rooftops of their Hollywood mansions, are too allegiant to the fringe demands of transgenderism to speak up. Many voices in the middle, even, seem too cowardly to come to the defense of young women like Smith’s daughter.
In a widening partisan divide, if we can’t agree that young girls being raped at school is an outrage, what can we agree on? Does the left hate conservatives with such vitriol that, once voices on the right speak up for a young girl’s right to bodily safety, that issue is suddenly anathema, tainted by the fingerprints of concerned parents slandered as domestic terrorists?
Plenty of other common-sense perspectives that any Democrat nominee would have supported up to a couple of years ago have suddenly become “radical” conservative positions too: funding police departments, not segregating kids in school based on race, having international borders, or allowing people to make their own medical decisions without government coercion. Any of these should have been enough to make Americans stop and wonder why the rules of the game are changing so drastically — and who is changing them.
https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/21/when-did-sexual-assault-in-schools-become-a-partisan-issue/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_federalist_daily_briefing_2021_10_21&utm_term=2021-10-21
There are also Constitutional issues here: Since when does the Federal government have any authority to interfere in local events? The answer – it doesn’t.
Agree.
If federal laws are being broken, the Feds can investigate in any and all states, city, county.
There aren’t any applicable federal laws to protect school boards, while there are several that protect the students and parents.
There aren’t any applicable federal laws to protect school boards, while there are several that protect the students and parents.
William,
Am I correct that the DOJ got involved because some people expressed feelings that they were threatened with violence? Has there been any evidence provided that proves these threats exist beyond what would normally be incidents handled by local law enforcement? Conversely, there is evidence of sexual assault, pornography and curriculum that parents are legally trying to be heard to protect their children. If the DOJ was actually concerned about equal justice, at a minimum, they should be monitoring the school boards and schools for these violations of civil rights.
If federal laws are being broken,
The question is WHAT FEDERAL LAW? The DoJ has no constitutional jurisdiction.
Agreed.
Answer: Never.
Now see? You’d have an elementary case were the Supreme Court to ever do its sworn duty to support the “manifest tenor” of the U.S. Constitution.
The Constitution not supported but abrogated by the Supreme Court and judicial branch.
Congress has the power of impeachment for this very transgression; Congress won’t impeach because it is in complete agreement.
Chilling to day the least. But, hey, it can’t happen here
How on earth did this mediocrity of a man come to be supported for elevation to the Supreme Court?
Many scholars spoke so highly of him. He is everything they accused Barr of being and more.
prime example of the Lefty’s attitude towards free speech.
You can say anything that you want to say, but we will monitor your speech, and if we don ‘t like what you say, we are here to act on it.
Imagine if the Lefties have the “Justice” Department for a few years.
We have to stop them.
what you described about speech is classic Leninism as described by Gary Saul Morson in his article “Leninthink” on the New Criterion magazine website.
And the Democrats wanted this fascist on the Supreme Court!
Why yes, they did.
Each school district needs a connection with the Mafia. If some person poses a threat to the kids, teachers, board members, staff, then have the person punished.
I often wondered why this guy wasn’t appointed to the Supreme Court, after listening to part of his testimony I now understand why. His was asked several times about his daughter and son-in-law’s making money pushing CRT in schools and completely ignored the question.