Byron York reports that Politically correct Portland rejected feds who saved city from terrorist attack
In 2005, leaders in Portland, Oregon, angry at the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror, voted not to allow city law enforcement officers to participate in a key anti-terror initiative, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. On Friday, that task force helped prevent what could have been a horrific terrorist attack in Portland. Now city officials say they might re-think their participation in the task force — because Barack Obama is in the White House.
Portland city officials are basically saying they’ll trust federal law enforcement and anti-terrorist agencies during Democrat administrations, but not during Republican ones. Really.
“[Mayor Adams] stressed that he has much more faith in the Obama administration and the leadership of the U.S. Attorney’s office now than he did in 2005,”
This brings to mind all sorts of possibilities.
How about if state and local governments run by Republicans simply opt out of federal redistributionist programs, during Democrat administrations? Maybe Republican state and local governments that believe in low taxation should just refuse to cooperate with all federal attempts to collect taxes? Maybe refuse the use of any local law enforcement cooperation? After all, you just can’t trust those Democrats not to be wasting our money.
I think this whole concept has legs.
Whenever they are in local or state political office, racist, bigoted Republicans, who are well-known to hate all minorities, should refuse all cooperation with federal civil-rights authorities, if the president is a Democrat. After all, during Democrat presidential administrations it’s a near certainty that there will be over-zealous civil rights prosecutions.
And then there are all those pesky federal education regulations. During Democrat administrations, Republican led states should just sort of look the other way.
And here’s a good one: red states should just refuse to enforce the crazier federal gun laws, or at least they should refuse cooperation with ATF during Democrat administrations, since ATF is bound to over-reach when ideological gun rights haters are in power.
I think I’ve just scratched the surface here about the levels to which state and local non-cooperation with the feds could aspire.
I suppose we could call it un-civil disobedience. But what I’ve described here is no more outrageous than “sanctuary cities”, or Portland’s decision during the Bush administration to jeopardize the safety of its citizens for the sake of sticking it to a Republican administration.
Or, as long as we’re talking about failure to discharge responsibilities according to a higher law, the Obama administration’s unwillingness to defend our borders (and, by extension, our citizenry) certainly seems to be a prime example.
