About That "Civilian Security Force"

Guns and Learnin'

Perhaps the most difficult task of the thinking person is to try to reconcile the logic and rationale of the Left in America with any semblance of sanity. Where pacifism and education are concerned, the lines become blurred when combined with the Liberal notions of enforcement and learning.

For example, our classrooms today are cesspools of festering violent tendencies, where teachers fear that their best intended lessons will suddenly fall victim to an unwieldy student upset by his single mother's choice of bedmate the night before. In saner times, that teacher would be well equipped to either handle such a disruption or be assured that someone who could would be within ear shot. In this insane era, however, discipline by the teacher is forbidden, and corporal punishment is met with career death.

The United States Education Department (ED) was created as a stand alone Cabinet level department in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter signed Public Law 96-88, which split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services.   Ever since, Republican candidates have vowed to dismantle the department. President Ronald Reagan tried but failed with an opposition-controlled Congress, while both Bush's preferred to keep it with modifications. Both of them were wrong. Here's why.

The ED is not only about helping the kiddy-poos. What was once the smallest Cabinet level department has grown into a powerful arm of the federal government. Most people believe that the ED concentrates its efforts on better education for the children and also believe that the increased funding sought by every Democrat in office is designed toward that end. Fact is, there is much more that ED requires funding for now that it has grown beyond its conceived purpose.

One of the expenses of the ED is guns. Yes, guns, as in the shotguns with fourteen inch barrels they purchased a year ago. The law enforcement arm of the ED -- the Office of Inspector General -- purchased twenty seven brand new Remington Brand Model 870 police 12-gauge shotguns. If you're thinking that the acquisition of such serious firepower is somewhat incongruous with a department dedicated to learning, pat yourself on the back and give yourself a hand.

According to a blog piece by Valerie Strauss in the March 11, 2010 edition of the Washington Post the Office of Inspector General responded to her inquiry into the purchase by referring to the following statement by the office:

“The Office of Inspector General is the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of Education and is responsible for the detection of waste, fraud, abuse, and other criminal activity involving Federal education funds, programs, and operations. As such, OIG operates with full statutory law enforcement authority, which includes conducting search warrants, making arrests, and carrying firearms. The acquisition of these firearms is necessary to replace older and mechanically malfunctioning firearms, and in compliance with Federal procurement requirements. For more information on OIG’s law enforcement authority, please visit their Web site at : www.ed.gov/oig” 

Okay, so we're now thinking, "what would the Education Department need with these guns"? Considering that the department is now President Barack Obama's, the question bears closer scrutiny, particularly when one recollects then-candidate Obama's notion of a "civilian security force" that would be just as powerful as the United States military.

On July 2, 2008, Senator Obama gave a campaign speech in Colorado Springs, CO. A quarter of an hour into the speech, he uttered these words:

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." 

Ah, a clue then! What would the well-funded Education Department need with deadly weapons? Perhaps the answer lies in the recent story of a Stockton CA man who met those guns -- and the "educators" wielding them -- in his home at 6:00AM.

Kenneth Wright looked out his window one morning and saw fifteen uniformed officers on his lawn. According to the resident, the garb they wore caused him to think they were a S.W.A.T. team, although he had no criminal record and therefore no reason to expect that they would be concerned with him, so imagine his shock when, descending his stairs in his boxers to investigate, the officers kicked in his door and hauled him outside by the neck.

These "policemen" were not S.W.A.T. at all, but officers of the Office of Inspector General. They were seeking Kenneth Wright's estranged wife for delinquent student loan payments. Let's reiterate this; fifteen heavily armed and armored officers from the Education Department kicked in a citizen's door and forcibly removed him from his home. They cuffed the resident in his underwear, woke his young children (3,7,&11) and tossed them in a patrol car with their bound father and left them there for six hours while they searched the premises.

The perpetrator (Wright's wife) of their focus was not at the premises, and they never knocked to show the warrant. The worst aspect of the entire affair is not the tactics of the invasion team, however; the true travesty is the fact that the "crime" was delinquent loans, and that the offender was not even at the location.

Or maybe the true shock is that this operation was carried out by Barack Hussein Obama's Education Department. Is that segment of our federal government now the "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" force to which Senator Obama alluded on the campaign trail?

To be fair, perhaps not. Yet.

But who would dare to oppose funding for "education"? It is a sanctuary program for a potentially nefarious cause. I have seen little or no mention of the Stockton incident, though, which gives me great pause when considering such a prospect as the ED becoming Obama's secret police force.

Something to ponder.

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