The insurrectionist sheriff
by digby
Ian Millhiser of Think Progress unpacks the letter the Sheriff of Roseburg Oregon, a gun proliferation activist, sent to Vice President Joe Biden in the wake of the Newtown massacre of 20 tiny 6 year olds. He goes over the language of the letter, which echoes Oath Keeper rhetoric, and then notes:
Hanlin’s letter also blurs the line between a matter that is lawfully within state officials’ discretion and something much more akin to insurrection. Under the Supreme Court’s “anti-commandeering doctrine,” states may refuse to enforce federal laws that they do not wish to devote their resources to enforcing. For this reason, provided that state law gives him the discretion to do so, Hanlin is permitted to deny his department’s resources to federal officials seeking to enforce federal gun laws.
What Hanlin may not do, however, is unilaterally assign himself the power to decide what is or is not constitutional and then refuse to “permit the enforcement” of federal laws by “federal officers within the borders of Douglas County Oregon.” This rule stretches back at least as far as the late nineteenth century, when California charged a United States Marshal with murder after the marshal shot and killed a man who threatened the life of a sitting supreme court justice. In ordering the charges dropped, the Supreme Court explained that a federal official who “is held in custody in violation of the Constitution or a law of the United States, or for an act done or omitted in pursuance of a law of the United States. . . must be discharged.”
If Hanlin believes that the federal government is acting unconstitutionally, he can file a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s action. But local sheriffs are not permitted to use the powers of their office to thwart federal officials trying to carry out their own duties.
The reason why local sheriffs do not have this power should be obvious. If local law enforcement did have the power to decide on their own what the Constitution says, and then to enforce their idiosyncratic notions about our founding document against federal officials, then this would be a recipe for armed conflicts between federal and local officials.
This isn't about some nonsensical conspiracy theory that the Feds are confiscating guns and putting real Americans in FEMA camps. This is about whether or not some sheriff decides that his view of what the constitution differs from that of the government and the courts and decides which laws to enforce on that basis. It's very radical stuff.
But then this sheriff is a radical conspiracy theorist:
The sheriff in charge of investigating a mass shooting at a community college in Oregon removed a video that raised questions about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre from his Facebook page on Friday afternoon.
The video opens with text that reads: "In this video I will prove to you there has been a lot of deception surrounding the Sandy Hook shooting. This is a simple, logical video. No aliens, holigrams (sic), rituals or anything like that, just facts." It then intersperses news clips from the time with text raising questions about the "official story" presented in the media, including whether there was more than one shooter and whether grieving parents were actually so-called "crisis actors."
The viral video was quickly debunked in arenas as disparate as The Huffington Post and Glenn Beck's website TheBlaze, however.
Two days after posting the debunked video, Hanlin sent a letter to Vice President Joe Biden in which he expressed his view that stricter gun control measures would do nothing to prevent future massacres.
He kept that post on his Facebook page until yesterday.
Let's just say that it's a good thing that some real law enforcement is investigating the shootings yesterday along with this local kook. It certainly seemed to me that in each of his appearances he's sounded irritated that the national media is following the story and that the sheer number of people gunned down yesterday requires that the federal government be involved.
He's quite the piece of work.
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