Federal investigators had \u201clooked at\u201d Sikh temple gunman Wade Michael Page more than once because of his associations with right-wing extremists and the possibility that he was providing funding to a domestic terrorist group, but law enforcement officials at the time determined there was not enough evidence of a crime to open an investigation, a senior U.S. law enforcement official said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The implication is obvious: Federal law enforcement knew about the guy and should have been investigating him as a domestic terrorist. If they had, they might have prevented this tragic incident.<\/p>\n
However, later in the article a rather key fact comes out. <\/p>\n
But the FBI is prohibited under federal law from collecting information on U.S. citizens not suspected of committing a crime. In order to open a domestic terrorism investigation, FBI agents must believe a suspect has threatened violence, has broken federal law and is trying to advance a political or social agenda.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So, the media states that federal law enforcement knew about the guy, thus implying authorities could (and should) have prevented the crime. But they later admit that federal law prohibits federal law enforcement from collecting information on US citizens who aren\u2019t criminal suspects. And the guy, while apparently a racist idiot, hadn\u2019t done enough to warrant suspicion of a crime – and thus an investigation. <\/p>\n
Great journalistic work, LA Times. Imply one thing in the lead-in, then undercut your own implications later in the same article. Sheesh.<\/p>\n
If the LA Times has a problem with the underlying law that bars federal US law enforcement collection of info on US citizens who aren\u2019t suspects, they need to state that fact. But that is also tantamount to sanctioning a police state.<\/p>\n
Gee, ya think that maybe that’s why the LA Times didn’t “go there”?<\/p>\n
And if you don\u2019t want to “go there”, LA Times – don\u2019t castigate law enforcement for obeying the law. That\u2019s rank hypocrisy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We all know the media lives on sensationalism. But the willingness of the media to manufacture … More Predictable Sensationalism from the Media<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}