All might find this interesting from the perspective that a Judge did not buy into a government claim that clearly showed a lack of integrity on its part. While the Administration can bluster all it wants about other people, it appears that it doesn't want that right extended to its population…..
Judge shreds case against 7 Mich. militia members
Ed White
Associated Press, 28 March 2012
DETROIT – A federal judge on Tuesday gutted the government's case against seven members of a Michigan militia, dismissing the most serious charges in an extraordinary defeat for federal authorities who insisted they had captured homegrown rural extremists poised for war.
U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts said the members' expressed hatred of law enforcement didn't amount to a conspiracy to rebel against the government. The FBI had secretly planted an informant and an FBI agent inside the Hutaree militia starting in 2008 to collect hours of antigovernment audio and video that became the cornerstone of the case.
“The court is aware that protected speech and mere words can be sufficient to show a conspiracy. In this case, however, they do not rise to that level,” the judge said on the second anniversary of raids and arrests that broke up the group.
Roberts granted requests for acquittal on the most serious charges: conspiring to commit sedition, or rebellion, against the United States and conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction. Other weapons crimes tied to the alleged conspiracies also were dismissed.
“The judge had a lot of guts,” defense attorney William Swor said. “It would have been very easy to say, ‘The heck with it,' and hand it off to the jury. But the fact is she looked at the evidence, and she looked at it very carefully.”
The trial, which began Feb. 13, will resume Thursday with only a few gun charges remaining against militia leader David Stone and son Joshua Stone, both from Lenawee County, Mich. They have been in custody without bond for two years.
Prosecutors said Hutaree members were antigovernment rebels who combined training and strategy sessions to prepare for a violent strike against federal law enforcement, triggered first by the slaying of a police officer.
But there never was an attack. Defense lawyers said that highly offensive remarks about police and the government were wrongly turned into a high-profile criminal case that drew public praise from Attorney General Eric Holder, who in 2010 called Hutaree a “dangerous organization.”
