The Epoch Times has an article about Steve Baker, journalist arrested for some trumped up somethingorother related to the Jan 6 not-an-insurrection. Steve Baker, on the Jan. 6 Front Lines and in the DOJ’s Crosshairs | The Epoch Times
Worth a read, but here I don’t want to go deep into Mr. Baker’s case or why he was arrested. None of that. It is all too disturbingly tyrannical an abuse of process. Not much to be said, really. The whole thing is un-American, evil, shameful and what else? There is, however, one point from the article I want to key in on. What is the definition of ‘journalist?’ This to me is a big deal, a big red herring, and all of us should get that linguistic nonsense straight in our collective American mind. The Constitution is pretty clear. One of the enumerated freedoms is freedom of the press. But the ‘press’ is a machine, a technology, in the same manner as the ‘arms’ to which we have an enumerated right to bear. The freedom wasn’t assigned to any group or category of people. It is a freedom all of us have. There should be absolutely no category of people with some enhanced right to observe, record or report on the activities of our government. Here and there the practicalities of space and time might excuse a limitation on access. We can understand some reasonable management of access to certain events and people. But not because the individuals seeking the access are more or less ‘journalists.’ There is no such constitutional category. We should consider ‘journalist’ a legal non-thing. We are all journalists, constitutionally-speaking. The abuse of Mr. Baker should not revolve around some false category of rights-holder. He had a right to be where he was, or to any extent he didn’t, it was the most minor of access infractions. The contemptibles at the DOJ didn’t arrest him for that, did they? They arrested him because he exercised the freedom of opinion, broadcast and publication that we all have. They abuse all of us along with Mr. Baker. We need to find out and not forget the specific names of the individuals who ordered his arrest. When it becomes physically possible, those individuals need to be investigated and prosecuted for abuse of process and violation of rights.
How do you recapture or liberate the judiciary to enable just prosecution?
Ivan, as you will heartily agree, a first step for our action (after getting folk to recognize that the problem is urgent, and needs solved) is to make a map. I’m slowly working on it. I think it will be the map our FBI, were it not owned at the top by the dark side, would have. I’m relearning some GIS, seeking the available data sets and hope to launch before the end of the year at latest. It will have not only county boundaries, but all court jurisdictions as well. The overlaps will be fascinating. I hope you will help me mark every county in America with a G, B or U. The Good, the Bad, and the Unresolved. You thought I was going to say ugly, eh!? You know, if I had a couple billion lying about, I would give away around 500 nice sheds to good people, sheds in which there were very nice 3-D printers, basic materials, tools and some appropriate comms gear. I wouldn’t hint or tell any of the 500 what to do with any of it. Ok, maybe 500 is not enough. 1000. A thousand sheds.
Oh, and a good lawyer. Every shed will have a guardian lawyer. Not a guardian like the Cleveland kind, either. A lawyer with a fistful of motions and a flamethrower mouth.