MIAC Militia Report Retracted

The now-infamous (well, if you run with the same crowd politically as I do) report on citizen militias produced by Missouri's MIAC bureaucracy has been retracted. It controversially lumped together antisemitic and/or racist fundamentalist Christians and "New World Order" conspiracy theorists with people who support 3rd party candidates, people who strongly oppose the income tax, and people who believe that the US military is preparing for active-duty deployment domestically (for "disaster relief").

On that last point, apparently readers of Time Magazine, the Washington Post, and Stars and Stripes are probable members of dangerous citizen militias.

Should the Military Be Called in for Natural Disasters?
Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security
Specialized teams to train for possible WMD attacks

Our protections against devolving into a fascist state are falling away all the time. The John W. Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2006 gutted the Posse Comitatus Act, which prevented the military from participating in domestic law enforcement.

The Campaign for Liberty, one of the organizations named in the MIAC document, sent the following e-mail to its mailing list.

March 28, 2009


Dear Friend of Liberty,

Although it sometimes seems that freedom is shrinking everywhere we turn, the fact is a powerful grassroots stand can still stop Big Government bureaucrats in their tracks.

That is exactly what happened to the Missouri Highway Patrol this week after being forced by your vocal outrage to retract the incendiary Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) report.

This report identified peaceful, freedom-loving Americans as possible security threats, simply for supporting Ron Paul or opposing tyrannical government.

Faced with an overwhelming public outcry, Missouri officials quickly started backpedaling, removing references to Ron Paul and Campaign for Liberty.

Then, just hours before Dr. Paul’s plane touched down in St. Louis to lead our Celebration of Freedom rally Friday night, the Missouri Highway Patrol officially retracted the entire offending document.

The Missouri Highway Patrol will be performing an investigation into the origin of the report. Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder has even called for the suspension of the Director of Public Safety until those responsible have been identified.

Click here to read the news report.

It is no surprise that oversight and accountability are in short supply at the MIAC, a Big Government “fusion center” combining federal, state and local agencies into an unconstitutional mess of a bureaucracy. But government disorganization is no excuse for making political profiling and persecution into official policy.

This victory for the grassroots freedom movement, coupled with this weekend’s Campaign for Liberty Regional Conference in St. Louis, marks a great moment for liberty in Missouri and all of America.

This week we saw that politicians still respond to the voices of their constituents.

This week we saw that freedom can triumph over tyranny when we unite to take a stand.

In Liberty,

John Tate
President, Campaign for Liberty

That's a fairly good summary of the issue. I don't know if I'd ever join a citizen's milita--as strongly supportive of the 2nd Amendment as I am, I can take or leave guns--but I'm glad, to an extent, that they exist. The government should be afraid of us, not the other way around. On top of that, political profiling of the type MIAC participated in is simply indefensible.