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… )

A 24-year-old Minnesota man with ties to an antigovernment militia group is under arrest for what now appears to be a plot to bomb a local police department.

Buford “Bucky” Rogers, of Montevideo, Minn., only has been charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, but other federal charges – and possibly other arrests – may be in the works, authorities tell Hatewatch.

Rogers, a self-proclaimed member of the Black Snake Militia, was arrested by an FBI SWAT team on Friday when agents found homemade bombs and firearms at the home of the suspect’s father, Jeffrey Rogers. The father was not arrested. ( continue to full post… )

Federal prosecutors are attempting to block the pre-trial release of a Pennsylvania man with militia ties who faces a charge in Texas that he threatened to kill President Obama before or during the president’s inauguration.

William Mose Tucker, 20, was arrested in Oklahoma on Jan. 20, a day before inauguration. A Jan. 16 federal indictment says he “did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of and to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States.” ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s note: The author of this guest column, Ron Carver, is a former field organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He is currently an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPC). This piece was distributed via OtherWords, a nonprofit editorial service operated by the IPC.

I don’t hunt, but I have nothing against hunters or owners of rifles, bows and arrows, or boomerangs. However, I am against vigilantes and those, like the NRA leaders, who encourage them.

I had my own run-in with vigilantes when I joined the movement to end segregation and guarantee all citizens the right to vote.

After weeks of death threats delivered by phone to our Freedom House in Starkville, Mississippi, I was alone on a November night in 1964 when three armed and drunken Klansmen banged on the door of our two-room shack. I demanded to know who was there, and a chill ran through my body when the white men responded, “just us niggers.” ( continue to full post… )

Another former soldier has pleaded guilty for his role in an anti-government militia authorities say is responsible for the execution-style murder of two teenagers in the Georgia woods in late 2011.

Timothy Joiner, a 22-year-old Iraq War veteran, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Liberty County, Ga., to more than 30 charges of burglary, financial-transaction-card thefts, and violations of the Georgia Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act among other crimes, according to the Associated Press.

The AP quoted the lead prosecutor in the case, Isabel Pauley, as saying Joiner’s crime wave was an attempt to raise enough money to bail another member of the militia out of jail. Joiner was arrested before that could happen. ( continue to full post… )

Alaska Peacemaker Militia founder and gun-rights advocate Francis Schaeffer Cox — described by federal investigators as a “delusionally dangerous man” — will serve almost 26 years in federal prison, despite his show of last-minute contrition.

The 28-year-old defendant, who became a modern-day poster boy of sorts for the militia movement, was convicted by an Alaska jury last June of nine federal charges – seven of them illegal firearms counts — related to a conspiracy to kill a judge and law enforcement officers. He was acquitted of charges of carrying a handgun while conspiring to purchase destructive devices and possession of a handgun while discussing the murder conspiracy. ( continue to full post… )

As the investigation continues into a murderous Georgia-based militia group led by American military personnel who were plotting to overthrow the federal government, a former Navy recruit has become the 11^th person charged in the case that includes allegations of burglaries and car break-ins to support the group and at least two homicides to keep it secret.

It appears drug dealing should also be added to the list.

On Wednesday, according to the Associated Press, Georgia prosecutors said the former Navy recruit, Jeffrey Wayne Roberts Jr., 27, of Savannah, was being held in Bryan County after his arrest Tuesday on charges of illegal gang activity, including possession of cocaine, marijuana and ecstasy with intent to distribute. ( continue to full post… )

FEAR was afraid.

Hours after four members of FEAR, an anti-government militia largely made up of active-duty and recently discharged American soldiers, shot to death two teenage sweethearts in the Georgia woods last December, the group gathered around a backyard bonfire, desperately trying to destroy evidence of the crime.

“That didn’t work out so well,” prosecutor Isabel Pauley told a Liberty County, Ga., Superior Court judge Monday morning as a former Army medic became the second member of the dysfunctional band of brothers to agree to testify against his erstwhile comrades in the murders. ( continue to full post… )

Authorities in Nevada may have just aborted another mass shooting with the arrest of an 18-year-old, self-professed militia leader who authorities say planned to “conduct mass killings” and “bragged about plans to shoot people on the Las Vegas strip.”

Steven Matthew Fernandes, who claimed to be a member of the Southern Nevada Militia, was arrested by FBI agents last month after three separate informants provided information about the teenager building and exploding bombs, amassing “an arsenal of weapons” and boasting of his killing prowess. ( continue to full post… )

As he sits in jail awaiting sentencing in November, Alaska Peacemaker Militia leader Francis Schaeffer Cox may now be a bit more worried about his fate.

A co-defendant, Coleman Barney – found by an Alaska federal jury to be the least culpable in a murder-conspiracy plot hatched by Schaeffer and members of his militia – was sentenced Monday to five years in prison. ( continue to full post… )