Video: Mark Kessler rants on YouTube

The police chief of a tiny borough in Pennsylvania’s coal country, who also heads a militia formed to oppose any new federal gun control measures, has been suspended for 30 days after he posted a series of profanity-laced videos to YouTube in which he angrily fires several automatic weapons and uses the word  “libtards” in reference to liberals.

The Gilberton Borough Council voted 5-1 during an executive session last night to suspend Mark Kessler, saying he did not have permission to use the weapons he fired in the videos, The Patriot-News reported. The council did not suspend him because of the content of his videos. “It was just the misuse of borough property,” Gilberton Mayor Mary Lou Hannon said. ( continue to full post… )

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes has always trusted his intellectual pedigree to keep him above the fray.

Boasting a Yale Law School degree and a smooth-talking manner, Rhodes from the start described the group he formed in 2009 — made up largely of law enforcement officials and past and present members of the military — as merely standing up for the Constitution and American liberties. When he urged his members to resist orders to impose martial law or create detention camps, he said, his were merely theoretical worries. After all, he said, Hessian mercenaries once did help the British during the American Revolution and Japanese Americans were rounded up and detained in internment camps during World War II.

He was no conspiracy theorist.

But nearly four years later, if there were any questions still remaining about what the Oath Keepers really are, an event the group has planned for this weekend should lay them all to rest. Starting on Friday at the Farragut State Park outside Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, the Oath Keepers are hosting the Northwest Patriots and Self Reliance Rally. The lineup of participating allies is revealing. ( continue to full post… )

LUDOWICI, Ga. – The suspected leader of a murderous militia of military men was the last to be interrogated that mild Georgia winter evening 18 months ago. Although he was only 20 at the time, United States Army Pvt. Isaac Aguigui played it cool and defiant. “You can go to hell,” he told an agent from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). His tough-guy act didn’t last long. Within 20 minutes, Aguigui deserted his rigid military discipline and whimpered, “I’m just going to end up in a jail cell alone for the rest of my life.”

Today, his tearful prophecy came true.

The now 22-year-old soldier was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to the murder of Tiffany York, 17, and her boyfriend, Michael Roark, 19, a former soldier who served with Aguigui at the Fort Stewart Army base in Hinesville. Georgia state prosecutors say the young sweethearts were shot to death in the woods not far from the sprawling military facility to keep secret Aguigui’s video-game inspired militia and its delusional plans to overthrow the government of the United States through a torrent of bombings, kidnappings and political assassinations. ( continue to full post… )

The FBI has arrested a Utah man who is accused in court documents of making machine guns and discussing the bombing of an Internal Revenue Service building and other government facilities.

Keith Max Pierce, 34, of Provo, Utah, currently is only charged with three federal firearms charges – failure to register as a firearms dealer, illegal possession of machine guns and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

Officials have not said what Pierce’s motivations may have been. ( continue to full post… )

Tony Perkins

As barriers to equality for the LGBT community continue to fall, the Family Research Council (FRC), an influential Christian Right group that has been propagating anti-gay pseudo-science for decades, is broadening its message by adopting the language of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement.

Case in point: This week, less than two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the federal government cannot discriminate against legally married same-sex couples, the FRC circulated an online fundraising appeal that urges recipients to “Seize this Opportunity to Stop Tyranny in America!” ( continue to full post… )

At a day-long conference in Austin organized by anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Texe Marrs, a series of speakers revealed who really killed JFK, explained the evils of Obamacare and ranted about the “New World Order,” but steered clear of spewing overt hatred against Jews. Sponsored by Power of Prophecy, Marrs’ Austin-based “end-times ministry,” the Liberty & Truth Conference hosted about 80 people at the Airport Hilton on Saturday. The audience was overwhelmingly white and over 40. Many of the attendees were from out of state. ( continue to full post… )

HINESVILLE, Ga. – FEAR goes on trial today.

Court-martial proceedings against Pvt. Isaac Aguigui (right), the accused ringleader of FEAR, an antigovernment gang of active-duty American soldiers, are scheduled to begin here this morning on the Fort Stewart Army base where, military prosecutors charge, the young soldier murdered his wife nearly two years ago.

Sgt. Deirdre Wetzker Aguigui, a promising Army linguist, was found unconscious on July 17, 2011, on the sofa in the living room of the Aguiguis’ home on the sprawling base and later pronounced dead at a post hospital. She was 24 years old and five months pregnant.

Aguigui allegedly financed the Fort Stewart-based gang – including a frantic two-month buying spree of $87,000 worth of military-grade weapons – with $500,000 in life insurance money he received shortly after his wife’s death.

A few months later, state prosecutors say, the gang murdered two teenagers to keep secret its plot to overthrow the government through a torrent of kidnappings, bombings and political assassinations. The murder weapon was one of the guns purchased with Deirdre Aguigui’s insurance proceeds. ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s Note: On Tuesday, June 25, Stewart Rhodes, head of the Oath Keepers, wrote Hatewatch to say that he had spoken to another scheduled speaker at Freedompalooza 2013, Delaware Sheriff Jeff Christopher. Rhodes said Christopher cancelled his appearance after learning of its organizer’s Holocaust denial views.

The organizer of the upcoming Freedompalooza 2013, “an annual festival committed to the fight for freedom” and “restoring our Republic,” is a man who says the Nazi Holocaust never occurred, that “Bolshevik” Jews should be removed from American cities, and that it might be time to drop a nuclear bomb on Israel.

But that hasn’t stopped Paul Topete, lead singer of a band called Pokerface, from claiming a long array of speakers at his July 4-6 event in Kintnersville, Pa., including former members of Congress Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and James Traficant of Ohio. Neither McKinney nor Traficant could be reached, though both have trafficked in the kinds of conspiracy theories that are popular in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement of which Topete is a part. ( continue to full post… )

Lewis Pollard

The investigation continued Thursday into another violent confrontation between authorities and a suspected antigovernment  “sovereign citizen,” a 61-year-old Navy veteran who was shot and killed by police early Saturday morning in the small Colorado town of Fruita.

Authorities say Lewis Pollard, a longtime Fruita resident, brandished a handgun and pointed it at a police officer at his home shortly after he fled a routine traffic stop at 12:40 a.m. Three officers opened fire, striking Pollard multiple times, according to media accounts that quoted a statement from the Fruita Police Department. ( continue to full post… )

A federal judge in Seattle had a short, simple message for a 70-year-old “sovereign citizen” accountant who persuaded other antigovernment activists to file fraudulent tax returns that called for refunds equal to their personal debts.

The tax fraud cost the government $700,000 in erroneous payments. For his work, Bell received a 10 percent cut of the refunds paid to others and a flat fee for each bogus return he filed. He also received a fraudulent refund on his own taxes of approximately $35,000.

“Your scheme … is fraud at its core,” U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton told Raymond Leo Jarlik Bell. “You are hurting people intentionally, regardless of your adherence to [your beliefs].” ( continue to full post… )