Hey, I know that guy!

Yep, that is Bill "Dropzone" Fulton marching with folks who want more comprehensive gun laws in this country.

Man has he come a long way since he was this guy.

To be fair Bill was more or less working undercover at this time infiltrating Right Wing militia groups for the FBI.

Still, he did kind of like guns.

However over the years he has mellowed out a ton.

In fact lately he has been calling for a repeal of the 2nd Amendment on his Twitter account.

Just goes to show that people can grow and evolve, you know if you believe in all that evolution hooey.

Here is the article that accompanied the video up above.

In it you can read how Mudflats "broke nearly every single Sarah Palin related news story."

Hmm, who knew?

Convicted domestic terrorist Schaeffer Cox is getting a new sentence hearing.

Courtesy of the Newsminer: 

A panel of 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges has reversed one of Fairbanks militia leader Francis Schaeffer Cox's convictions but affirmed others. 

A six-page unpublished memorandum filed on Tuesday states Cox will get a new sentencing hearing. It's not yet clear whether the decision will affect his total prison sentence of 26 years. 

Cox, 34, was a one-time Alaska Legislature candidate and leader of a Fairbanks gun rights organization until his arrest in 2011. He has advocated the "sovereign citizen" ideology that disavows the legitimacy of the U.S. government, although he has rejected the label as a pejorative term in writings from prison. 

This week's appeals court ruling came less than two weeks after three appeals court judges heard oral arguments in Cox's case in an Anchorage courtroom. 

Cox is serving his sentence at a federal prison in Illinois after an Anchorage jury convicted him in 2012 on charges including conspiracy to murder federal officials, solicitation to murder federal officials and charges of owning illegal weapons.

It is very unlikely that this new sentence will have any significant impact on Schaeffer's prison time.

If you want to learn more about this you can actually read a great new book about the case called "The Blood of Patriots," written by Bill "Dropzone" Fulton and fellow Alaska blogger Jeanne Devon.

I received an early copy and read it a few months back.

It is a gripping tale, full of heretofore unknown details, and after reading it you will want Schaeffer Cox to stay in jail for as long as possible.

(You can order your copy here.)

Drop Zone Bill's book is finally available for pre-order.

Here is the blurb from Amazon:

For Bill Fulton, being a soldier was his identity. He was called to protect and serve. So when the Army wanted to send him to Alaska, he went—they had never steered him wrong, after all. 

After an involuntary medical discharge, Fulton was adrift until he started a military surplus store in Anchorage, where he also took on fugitive recovery missions. He was back on his feet, working with other badasses and misfits he considered brothers. He took pride in his business, with a wife and daughters at home. His life was happy and full. 

But when a customer revealed he planned to attack a military recruiting station, Fulton had to make a choice: turn a blind eye and hope for the best or risk his safety, his reputation, and his business by establishing contact with his customers’ arch nemesis: the FBI. 

He chose the latter, and his life changed forever. 

Fulton would soon find himself tumbling down a rabbit hole, learning of a militia movement afoot called “sovereign citizens” who believe themselves to be above the law. The FBI classifies this domestic terrorist group as the number-one threat to law enforcement in the country. 

Set against the vast, rugged, and sometimes lawless backdrop of Alaska, The Blood of Patriots is the story of an ideology gone bloody in the distorted belief that murder is patriotic. It is the true story of how Fulton wrestled his demons and became an undercover confidential informant for the FBI, helping to bring down a militia whose charismatic leader was plotting to kill federal judges and their families and law enforcement officers. 

Gee that is quite a glowing description, now I almsot feel bad about once calling Bill a "jack booted thug."

Nah, no I don't.

Actually our history is fairly bizarre and complicated.

In the beginning I was calling him out for roughing up a journalist during a Joe Miller rally, and then later outed him as the FBI informant who who helped get Schaeffer Cox arrested, and then even later he became a good friend and a reliable source of information. 

One thing about Alaska, you find friends in the oddest places.

This book has been pushed back so many times that I began to think it was never coming out.

Glad to see I was wrong.

The release date for the book is still not until May of 2017, but if you want to reserve your copy you can do so now. 

I am certainly going to read it, and I am sure I will love it.

The writers at Cracked wonder if an actual civil war in America is even possible. Do a little research and find that yes it is. Yes it most certainly is.

Courtesy of Cracked: 

Over the last few weeks a growing number of people have started wondering, "Is it possible the United States is heading for a new civil war?" Granted, most of those people are writers for sites like Russia Today or the Huffington Post, and thus slightly less credible than a handful of Bazooka Joe gum wrapper comics. But Donald Trump has made a few tinpot dictator-ish statements recently.

And we did just see an anti-government militia get off scot-free for occupying a federal building and pooping just, everywhere.

The reporter, Robert Evans, then post a number of chilling headlines and interviews a number of  experts on militia groups, former government employees, and educators.

One expert on insurgencies had this to say:

Colonel David Couvillon, a Marine Reserve officer who governed the Wasit province of Iraq after the start of the occupation, pointed out that insurgents can win without convincing anyone that they're "right." It'd be enough to push most Americans into the "both sides are evil" camp, which ... isn't an unfamiliar place for most of us to be.

"If you undermine the moral authority that the government or the military or the police forces have, you win. Then they become the enemy to everybody ... it may not goad you into armed insurgency, but it will goad you into a certain acceptance. And once the guerrillas reach acceptance, they have a path to win."

Good luck sleeping tonight with those thoughts running through your mind.

One of the experts on militias that Cracked interviewed for this story is a guy very familiar to IM readers.

Bill Fulton, an expert on the American militia movement and informant for the FBI, has far more than 170 groups on his list of "armed, violent organizations that might take a shot at the Federal Government". That's out of an estimated 1,360 "radical militias and anti-government groups" in the United States in 2012 (note that there were just 149 four years before) 

"You have a lot of different people who believe the world should be different ways and once the gloves come up like they did in Iraq then all of those rise to the surface...I think depending on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go, we could end up with three or four hundred solid, different groups under probably twenty or so ideological banners."

Trust me the rest of the article is just as troubling, and by the end of it you will probably be crawling through your house closing all of the blinds. 

One of the things in the article that I found noteworthy is that none of the people interviewed seemed to think that Donald Trump would be terribly involved in an insurgency.

Oh he would be perfectly willing to incite the violence, but he has no stomach for the actual fighting.

Remember?

So is this a serious threat?'

Boy I would certainly like to say that it wasn't, but after reading this article I am not so damn sure anymore.

All I know is that our first step in preventing something like this is to keep Cheeto Jesus out of the White House. So let's do that first shall we?

Bill "Drop Zone" Fulton's book is finally happening.

From my e-mail: 

Bill Fulton with NYT best-selling author and cowriter Jeanne Devon's "THE BLOOD OF PATRIOTS," set against the vast, rugged, and sometimes lawless backdrop of Alaska, the true story of Army veteran Bill Fulton, who went from leading fugitive recovery missions to capture felons straight out of a Coen Brothers movie, to going undercover for the FBI to take down a private militia group plotting to assassinate judges and law enforcement officials.

You can read more about the book over at Jeanne's Facebook page.

This book has been a LONG time in the making.

In fact it was supposed to be published way back in 2014, but there were all kinds of unforeseen obstacles which delayed it until now.

I actually know quite a bit about what will be in the book, and I have to say that it should prove an entertaining read.

And yes I'm sure there will be a little in there about a certain half term governor and a vaguely bearded wannabe Senator.

Man attempts to hire hitman to kill Sarah Palin's lawyer, and, surprise, it has nothing to do with Sarah Palin.

"Wait, you mean everything's not about me?"

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:  

A former Fairbanks chiropractor who pleaded guilty to possessing illegal weapons tied to a murder-for-hire plot has been sentenced to three years in federal prison. 

Guy Christopher Mannino, 56, offered a machine gun and silencer to an informant for use in shooting attorney John Tiemessen, the attorney for former Gov. Sarah Palin, in a matter unrelated to Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president, federal prosecutors say.

Okay so wait, if this has nothing to do with Palin then just what does it have to do with?  

Tiemessen represented another Fairbanks chiropractor in a lawsuit filed by Mannino, who claimed the other chiropractor during a courtesy adjustment had seriously injured his back. 

"The defense, essentially, was that the lawsuit was fraudulent, and though the adjustment occurred, the injury never occurred," Tiemessen said. 

Mannino thought he was going to lose the case, Bottini said at sentencing Wednesday. He solicited a fellow firearms enthusiast and occasional employee to carry out the murder. 

The murder plot was not carried out. The man called Alaska State Troopers and agreed to act as an informant.

So just to make things even more bizarrely coincidental, it turns out that this Mannino fellow was also tied to the Schaeffer Cox trial.

I wrote about it right after Mannino's indictment over that explosion was dismissed by a jury in Fairbanks.

Here is a snippet of a conversation about Mannino recorded by then FBI informant Bill Fulton: 

VERNON: I was going to ask you, you don’t deal with an Mannino, do you? 

FULTON: Who’s Mannino? No. 

VERNON: Okay. 

FULTON: Who is he? 

OLSON: He’s a dealer. 

VERNON: No, no, no, no, no, no. He’s a tour president and everybody — he’s in the ‘dot gov’ thing. He is a worm … 

FULTON: Okay, who is this asshole? (…) 

OLSON: He’s a chiropractor. 

VERNON: He’s the one that — he’s a meddler. 

OLSON: He’s got class three. 

VERNON: Oh, yeah, he’s got — he’s got explosives and everything. But, if you try to buy… 

OLSON: Don’t deal with him. 

VERNON: If you try to buy something from him, all of a sudden you make the list, on his list, and all of his buddies are the cops, FBI, everything. He is such a smartass. 

"All of his buddies are the cops, FBI, everything." Hmm.

I have no idea if this connection means anything, but I did say at the time that it was bizarre that the explosion caused by this guy did not earn him at least some time in jail.

Well clearly his "luck" did not hold out this time around.

A little update on what I am working on.

"Uh oh."

So as I mentioned a while back I have been in contact with a source who has been providing me with fascinating information recently. Some of it simply reinforcing what we already know, and some of it quite new, and a little startling.

Before I start sharing, the first thing to get out of the way is all of this iceberg talk.

The term "iceberg" was coined by my friend Dennis Zaki, and at the time he felt that what was about to be revealed qualified as an iceberg that would literally sink Palin's political career.

As all of you know instead she resigned and the iceberg simply melted away. Much to our frustration.

I would not characterize what I am working on as an iceberg, mostly because Palin's political career already sank into the icy depths, and because there is not yet any way to determine what kind of impact this will have on what remains of her, for lack of a better word, "career."

The second thing I want to remind all of you about is that protecting my sources is job one in my eyes. So no matter how often commenters badger me to hurry up or risk losing my credibility, or suggest that I don't deliver on my promises, or simply mock me as if we are on an elementary school playground, none of that will make things happen any faster. 

As for my credibility remember that even though I was reporting interesting behind the scenes information about  Schaeffer Cox, I did not divulge that I was getting that from Bill "Drop Zone" Fulton until the FBI allowed him to come out of the shadows.

Even though he helped to shape our understanding on this blog about Palin's secretive nature, and revealed that Palin was not met by her security detail when she arrived back from Texas that April night in 2008, nobody knew that I had been talking to her security chief Gary Wheeler until Joe used his name in "The Rogue."

And that is going to be true in this case as well.

Which means that what I can share has to be weighed against what it reveals about the source. If it is something that only a handful of people could know, then it can only come out when the source themselves decides that they want to as well.

That could very well be what happens here. But it is still in the negotiation phase.

So what I can reveal at this point is that I have finally had a face to face meeting. That the person is very credible, and that there is documentation to back up their story.

What has been shared is quite a lot about the Palin's parenting styles (Spoiler alert: It's really terrible.), Palin's struggles as mayor, fighting within the family, and Todd's philandering. (It is worse than you think.)

There is more (Oh boy is there!), but that has to be kept on the down low for right now.

If you are not patient and want to run away and never visit this blog again, please feel free to do so and you really don't need to tell us about it in the comments.

If you are a troll who thinks that proclaiming I am liar, or a tease, or that I never follow through with revelations, then know that it will really have no significant impact. (However it's a free country so bash away if you must.)

Keep in mind though that Beldar has appropriated your job as IM's resident troll and has moved trolling to new heights that I seriously doubt that the majority of you are intellectually suited to attain.

Now I cannot provide a timetable as to when things are going to break because that is not the way things work. As I am sure most of you realize.

If you want to know my opinion on what I am hearing I will tell you this, when it gets posted it is going to make troll heads explode all over the damn place.

Oh yeah, all over the damn place. 

Ex-FBI informant, and the man who helped put domestic terrorist Schaeffer Cox behind bars, has a blog.

I received a call late last night from our friend Bill Fulton.

"Hey Jess, guess what, I have a blog."

And sure enough he does. And it is a little intense:

Understand this if you are an extremist if you look to harm innocents regardless of your political affiliation we will find you we will dig you out from under whatever rock you hide under and put you in front of a jury and you will receive justice. I have dedicated my life to finding you exposing you and dragging you out into the light of day I don’t care what side left or right you cling to my job is to protect the innocents and I will do all in my power to accomplish it.

As some of you may, or may not know, Bill is currently down in the lower 48, working undercover with the FBI and helping to catch bad guys.

As you can see he takes his job very seriously. Which is why I had to use an old photo at the top, because he is not able to reveal what he looks like today or else he will tip off the militia members, KKK members, or motorcycle gang members who think he is one of them, and he might get shot in the face.

Now you may be asking yourself, "Hey if he is undercover why would he start a blog?"

Good question and the answer to that is coming my friends. And oh, are you going to like it when you hear it.

You know sometimes my job is just too much fun.

Republican party in Alaska in complete disarray as Chairwoman kicked out after locking party officials out of the Alaska Republican Party headquarters and threatening to have them arrested. Dammit, am I out of popcorn?

Ex-Chairwoman Debbie Brown.

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:

 Locked out of the less-than-lavish headquarters of the Alaska Republican Party in a snowstorm, state leaders of the Grand Old Party adjourned to a comfortable, Midtown Anchorage office complex Monday evening and decided they’d had enough of the antics of party chairwoman Debbie Brown.

Officially, money -- or the lack thereof -- was the reason for Brown’s ouster. Like recently fired predecessor Russ Millette, who never officially made it into the chairman’s seat, Brown was accused of being unable to raise any. 

Money that is. She seemed plenty good at raising the blood pressure of the party leadership. 

First she tried to fire members of the party’s state executive committee. When they refused to go, she changed the locks on the party headquarters in Midtown Anchorage and left the state. When the executive committee called her up on charges of failure to meet her responsibilities as chair, she refused to appear. 

Reports as to her whereabouts varied, but there seemed agreement she was still out of state, apparently on vacation or preparing for the Republican National Committee meeting in Hollywood, or both. Republican national committeeman Ralph Seekins from Fairbanks noted the RNC meeting starts Wednesday. 

Much discussion was had about the whereabouts of Brown, normally a resident of Kasilof on the Kenai Peninsula, and the appearances of trying her in absentia. Attorney Wayne Anthony Ross -- or WAR, as he is commonly know -- sent the executive committee a wordy, six-page letter citing his lengthy party credentials, questioning the fairness of the hearing, and warning the actions “by these members who I call the ‘old guard led by our former chairman (Randy Ruderich), seriously lessen the credibility and effectiveness of the RPA to Republicans.”

Wow they even brought WAR in to try and hang onto control. Yeah. like HE is ever any help!

Just to bring all of you up to speed as to the cause of this recent kerfuffle among the Alaska Republicans, it was sparked by Joe Miller's attempt to implement Sarah Palin's 2008 plan of overthrowing the Alaska Republican party. (You remember that, right? That was when Joe Miller introduced FBI informant, Bill Fulton, to future Alaska domestic terrorist Schaeffer Cox.)

Miller, using ties to the Teabaggers in the state, and some die hard Ron Paul supporters, managed to insert his guy, Russ Millette, into the chairmanship. That did not go over very well with the Alaska GOP hierarchy and he was quickly ousted to be replaced by another Miller  acolyte, Debbie Brown.

Well now she is out, and Miller and his ragtag group of assholes are fuming mad.

This was written by one of his "reporters" over on his blog (Yes he also has a blog) the other day: 

The Republican Party is in a war for its very spirit. Will a small cabal of political machinists continue to run the party for personal interest while continuing to lose ground to the conquering socialists like the corrupt Chiang Kai-shek did before Mao Zedong? Or will the party be returned back to its grass roots supporters? Your action or inaction will be the deciding factor for the future of unborn millions. Grass roots Republicans have a once in a generation chance to let light shine out of the darkness. The Republican Party must once again wield the torch of freedom that guided the footsteps of our Founding Fathers. 

Currently the Republican money  in Alaska has been squirreled away in Juneau, where Miller and his motley crew cannot get their hands on it. So as of right now the Republican party has no leadership, no money, and no clear vision for the future.

Essentially it is like the Alaska version of "Lord of the Flies."

Hang on I think my popcorn's done.

Things that you cannot get put in jail for in Alaska, exploding 300 lbs of explosives that do $15,000 of damage. Really? Even if you are named during the trial of a domestic terrorist?

I know that many of you read about that huge explosion near Riverbanks that happened earlier this month, because I received the link about a dozen times.

I am sure that you would naturally assume that causing such a monster explosion and doing so muhc damage would result in a conviction for SOMETHING. But you my friend would be oh so wrong.

Courtesy of Newsminer:  

The criminal case has been dismissed against a Fairbanks man who was accused of setting off a destructive explosion last month in the Chena Ridge neighborhood. 

Following the explosion, Fairbanks chiropractor and business owner Guy “Chris” Mannino was charged with felony criminal mischief, the crime of recklessly putting the property of others at risk. 

Neighbors said shockwaves from the blast, which was heard as far away as North Pole, did at least $15,000 in damage to windows and other property. 

Alaska State Troopers said there was evidence Mannino detonated the blast and recommended a felony charge under the theory that blowing up more than 300 pounds of explosives put more than $100,000 in property at risk. 

A Fairbanks grand jury disagreed last week. Asked to indict Mannino to continue the prosecution, the grand jury returned a “no true bill” instead of an indictment. 

“The grand jury, after careful deliberation, decided that Mr. Mannino’s conduct was not criminal in nature,” Fairbanks District attorney Michael Gray said by e-mail. 

Because the grand jury failed to indict, the state cannot again pursue the case unless new evidence emerges. In some cases the state can pursue misdemeanor charges if the grand jury does not indict, but in this case the misdemeanor version of criminal mischief corresponds with the crime of intentionally damaging up to $500 worth of property, not Mannino’s alleged reckless conduct.

Now look I live in Alaska, and I know that there are a lot of things you can get away with up here that would have your ass in jail for years down in the lower 48. You know like firing your weapon into the air at night, driving your snowmachine down the middle of the road, raping a reindeer, you know things like that.

However you might assume that setting off an explosion that does $15,000 worth of damage and puts $100,000 worth of property at risk, would get you SOME time in jail. Right?

So I thought to myself who does this Guy Mannino fellow know? And why is his name vaguely familiar?

And I found that answer in a transcript of the Schaeffer Cox trial put together by our friend Jeanne Devon over at the Mudflats. This is from a portion of an FBI surveillance tape that was played in court, of a conversation between FBI informant Bill Fulton, defendant Lonnie Vernon, and the other FBI informant JR Olson:  

The next snippet of conversation talks about grenades and fuses, C4 explosive, and silencers, which are also called ‘supressors.’ This conversation takes place the night after the convention. 

 FULTON: That whole — that’s what I’m saying, but you also want good ones… They have to be brand new but off the books. I know a couple of gun shops in the area. That’s not a problem. 

VERNON: Really, no kidding? 

OLSON: That’s all I want to know. 

FULTON: That’s prepay, and you’re going to wait six months for it. 

VERNON: Really, no kidding? 

FULTON: Yeah. because they’re going to want cash, and in order to make it clean it’s got to get lost… It’s not like they can just order one up. 

VERNON: You can’t grind the numbers, weld over it and that kind of stuff? 

FULTON: No, no, no, no, because each one of those is accountable. 

VERNON: Oh, I gotcha. 

FULTON: You see what I’m saying? So, let’s say that I go to him and I give him a thousand dollars, okay? It’s going to take a while for him to order the piece to begin with, because it’s not like anybody stocks them. Order it, get it shipped, do the paperwork, get it lost, and then get it to me, yeah. 

VERNON: I was going to ask you, you don’t deal with an Mannino, do you? 

FULTON: Who’s Mannino? No. 

VERNON: Okay. 

FULTON: Who is he? 

OLSON: He’s a dealer. 

VERNON: No, no, no, no, no, no. He’s a tour president and everybody — he’s in the ‘dot gov’ thing. He is a worm … 

FULTON: Okay, who is this asshole? (…) 

OLSON: He’s a chiropractor. 

VERNON: He’s the one that — he’s a meddler. 

OLSON: He’s got class three. 

VERNON: Oh, yeah, he’s got — he’s got explosives and everything. But, if you try to buy… 

OLSON: Don’t deal with him. 

VERNON: If you try to buy something from him, all of a sudden you make the list, on his list, and all of his buddies are the cops, FBI, everything. He is such a smartass. 

Here is what Jeanne wrote about the guy they were talking about: 

The twerpish, wormy, meddling, smartass, chiropractic asshole turns out to be a Dr. G. Chris Mannino from Fairbanks – a chiropractor who also happens to be a Class 3 gun dealer. If he is the same G. Chris Mannino that has (or had) a business called Arms & Equipment, and was listed as a Class 3 dealer in Fairbanks.

Okay so now do you get it?

Perhaps if you are a regular Joe Blow in Alaska, and you blow a giant hole in the state, you might go to jail. But if you are a gun dealing chiropractor, with ties to certain militia members, and lots of cop buddies, well....

Things that make you go, hmmm.

Joe Miller reappears from the shadows to dip his vague beard back into Alaska politics.

Courtesy of Mudflats

From the National Review:  

Joe Miller, a former Republican Senate nominee in Alaska, is seriously considering a return to politics. 

This week, in a series of meetings with Republican officials on Capitol Hill, Miller signaled his interest in challenging Senator Mark Begich, a Democrat, who is up for reelection next year. 

According to several sources, Miller huddled with Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He also stopped by the office of Senator Lisa Murkowski. It was the pair’s first encounter since Murkowski, running as an independent, beat Miller in 2010. 

Miller, a favorite of grassroots activists and tea-party conservatives, will likely make a decision in the coming weeks. If he runs, sources say, he’d launch his campaign soon, since there may be a crowded primary. Mead Treadwell, Alaska’s wealthy lieutenant governor, has already formed an exploratory committee.

You know there was a time in the not too distant past where I would have bet big money that Joe would NEVER show his face in the political realm as a candidat3e again. However that was before he managed to hijack the Alaska Republican Party.

During my talks with Bill Fulton he often expressed his feelings that Joe would be taking a serious risk to run for office again.

I tend to agree based on what I know, but then again Miller is not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Having said that, with the connections he now has in the party, and with outside money once again financing his campaign (Yes Joe we know about the contributions from California!) he could give Begich a run for his money. After all the teabaggers LOVE him!

Of course the one person who could probably stop Miller in his tracks is Lisa Murkowski. She is, for all intents and purposes, bulletproof and has a deep and abiding dislike for the Vaguely Bearded One.

If she were to give Begich even the tiniest bit of support it would be enough to make a lot of Republican supporters walk away from Miller, and take their money with them

I have to say though that my favorite possible scenario is the one that sees Begich win yet another Senate race due to his opponent facing charges from the FBI. And THAT is not an out of the question possibility.

Bill Fulton answers your questions.

As promised here is FBI informant Bill Fulton's response to your questions.

Courtesy of 2emptynest: First of all, thank you, Mr. Fulton, for doing our country a great service. We need people like you infiltrating these groups to expose these people for what they truly are and many thanks to Gryphen for his forum and his unending search for the truth. My question is a general one - do you think that there is a connection, or any centralized organization, between the militia groups found in various states? Do you think that the current threats of gun control will make them more radical?

Fulton: Have you heard of the internet?  Not to be flip but of course they use social media, just like the rest of us.

And to your second question, yes I do think the talk of increased gun control makes them more radical. No doubt about it.

Courtesy of Deb:  Since the issue of gun control is now front and center of our national debate, I do hope this is one of the questions that you will take and elaborate on. What has been the general consensus among your colleagues and yourself as to what they are hearing or what concerns them if some measure of gun control is passed? What is being discussed in regards to how these militia groups might respond if some gun control laws are passed? Personally, what type of gun control laws, if any, would you like to see pass?

Fulton: In my view again the wrong question is being asked, gun control is a symptom of a much larger issue.

The one thing that nobody seems to be looking at here is that maybe we need to sit down like adults raise the debate a little and have a serious discussion on weather or not the Constitution as written is working anymore. Gun Control is a small part of that. Does the 2nd amendment guarantee a right to own guns I believe yes. Do we need the second amendment anymore is a question that we should be asking, and people much smarter than myself need to be debating.

While were at it we should debate all of it. We are not a country where only rich, educated, white, male, land owners get to vote and hold office anymore. Maybe we need to sit down and figure out if we should allow the country to be run by the document those men produced. I have sworn an oath to defend the Constitution and in no way am I saying we should just toss it away. What I am suggesting is that it may be time for all of us to grow up a little and just deal with it.

I don't know if that's possible since we live in a world where most of our information is spoon fed to us in 30 second sound bites by networks we choose to watch because they agree with our point of view.

As for the second part of your question, I can't really discuss that.

And as to the last, I refer you to the first part of my answer.

Courtesy of Gles:  Thanks for doing this interview, both you and Jesse. Can you discern the difference between a really serious threat as opposed to someone that is a blowhard or is that left up to superiors? I ask this because there may be a time when instincts dictate there is no time to wait for backup. Are you empowered to act?

Fulton: I don't actually identify threats. That is the job of my supervisors, though I can bring them information and leave it up to them to decide if it is actionable.

And yes I am allowed to act in order to defend myself.

Mudflats digs deep in Bill Fulton interview.

Bill was very impressed with Jeanne Devon's reporting during the Schaeffer Cox trial, and in response reached out to her to see if she would be interested in an interview.

She was.

That interview can be found here.

I think one of my favorite parts is this explanation of the part he played in radio shock jock Eddie Burkes' run for office:  

And I like Eddie. I don’t believe everything that he believes, but I kind of like Eddie. He’s a big, gruff, kind of rude guy, a Navy vet with lots of good stories. And I kind of used him as my… what do actors use to get ready for their roles? He was my case study. Eddie Burke was good for business at the shop, and he was deeply embedded with the fringe right wing, which you know. And if one is playing in the world of the fringe right wing, there’s nothing better than helping their poster boy run for public office.

 Of course my interactions with Burke were far more adversarial as he was an aggressive Palin defender who did everything he could think of to destroy my credibility after the Splitsville story broke nationally. The things he did on behalf of Sarah Palin, to a number of people, were some of the ugliest things I have ever seen.

Just another example of the things that Bill I have agreed to disagree about.

Of course there is much more to Jeanne's post. so I urge to take the time to read it.

Bill Fulton's interview with the LA Times.

Courtesy of the LA Times:  

Fulton, who had long worked with Army criminal investigators through his surplus shop, had gone to the FBI in 2010 about a potential domestic terrorism case when the FBI learned he knew Cox. 

"The wheels started turning: How can we use this to our advantage, to try to get more information? Is Cox really going down that path? Which inevitably, he was," said Sandra Klein, a supervisory special agent who became Fulton's chief handler. 

Fulton's first assignment was to attend a gun and military surplus sale intended as a fundraiser for the Interior Alaska Conservative Coalition, which Cox had helped establish in Fairbanks. Cox had been trying to get in touch with Fulton, who had ignored him "because I thought he was an idiot." The night before the event in August 2010, Fulton invited Cox to meet him at his hotel. The militiaman arrived with Les Zerbe, a retired missionary ranked as a captain, and another associate. 

Cox had been accused of assaulting his wife, and worried that state authorities were trying to take his son away. He talked about Fulton serving what he called common-law warrants on the officials he thought were out to get him. 

"He said these guys need to be arrested and brought to trial," Fulton recalled. "I said, 'What are you going to do with them?' He said, 'We'll either fine them, or we'll hang them.'" 

Cox and company discussed how they were going to go to the homes of selected enemies, cut the electricity to the house, and make enough noise to lure their main target onto the front porch, where he could be shot. Then the windows and doors would be boarded up, and the house, with the rest of the family inside, would be set on fire. "Collateral damage" is the way Fulton said they described it. 

After Cox left, Fulton phoned Klein. "I'm like, 'Help! What am I supposed to do? Do I need to get my family out of here?' And she's like, 'We'll handle it. Just try to figure out as much as you can.' She was really good at calming me down, but even for her, I could tell it was stressing her out."

I understand that Bill has a few more of these coming out, including at least one with another Alaska blogger.

I want him to go on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow but he is hesitant due to some statements made  about him after the Hopfinger kerfuffle that he believes were out of line.

I have reminded him that I was the one that kept referring to him as a "jack booted thug" but he says that is different.  Anyhow I hoping he changes his mind.

He says he might.

I am hoping to get the next post up answering your questions in the next day or two. I have some work obligations and Bill is in demand for interviews, not to mention working to catch the bad guys, so we have to work around each others schedules.

My interview with FBI informant Bill Fulton.

Over the past year I have had a number of conversations with Bill Fulton, and we talked about a number of different issues. At that time ALL of them were officially off the record, with only a few considered okay for publication on the blog under the label "anonymous sources." Bill was not my only anonymous source of information but he was one of the more interesting.

In the beginning we approached each other with wariness and a healthy amount of mistrust, however over time we began to get along fairly well and had a number of fascinating, and often combative, conversations about politics, Alaska, and current events.

Before we began this Q and A Bill warned me that some questions were still off limits, due to the fact that there were still ongoing investigations, and that in fact I had to avoid even asking him anything relating to them. Because an answer of "no comment" is still an answer. (Trust me, I find this just as frustrating as you do.)

One of the big questions I wanted to ask is about the possibility that certain people, not to be named here of course, might soon see some jail time. But even that received a "Gryph we talked about this" response.  So even something as vague as that was off limits.

So here are the questions that we agreed I COULD ask, and his answers to them. (Since a number of them had already been answered during the Salon interview and the Huffington Post interview I tried to avoid covering the same ground)

Q: First things first, why are you coming forward now with your real name and offering to answer questions after staying in the shadows for so long? What has changed?

Fulton: Well the short answer is that Schaeffer Cox got convicted.  And the people who asked me not to speak, no longer care that I speak. So now I would like to take this opportunity to clear my name.

Q: Are you happy with the sentence that Schaeffer Cox and his militia buddies received? And please elaborate as why or why not.

Fulton: I'm happy with the Coleman Barney sentence. He was essentially a good guy that got in with a bad crowd.

As for Lonnie Vernon and his wife I am somewhat indifferent. He was a dangerous guy, and really did pose a threat to the community, and he got the sentence that I think he deserved, He will most likely never get out of jail alive due this age.

However Cox is a different story, I would really like to have seen him get more time, I think he deserves it.

You have to remember that he started this whole thing Gryph. He started the 2nd Amendment task force out in Fairbanks and that is still active, as is the one it spawned in Anchorage.

He also started the Alaska Peacekeepers Militia and through that presented a clear danger to the public. 

I consider him "Hilteresque" in his ability to find gullible people and manipulate them toward evil. So yes I think Cox could have used a few more years locked away, and I really do worry that he may emerge even more dangerous than before.

Q: Now in an earlier conversation that you and I had you informed me that you were in a hotel room during the 2008 Republican Convention when Frank Bailey and Joe Miller introduced you to Schaeffer Cox for the first time. Could you explain the significance of that meeting?

Fulton: Well the significance was that here I was meeting this young kid, who was being touted as this up and coming conservative star (He was so naive he even brought his wife into the room with him) , and he was being introduced to me by Sarah Palin's Chief of Staff and the a man who would someday be the Republican candidate for the Senate. There was no way to know at the time where all this was heading, but it was a pivotal moment for everybody who attended that meeting.

Q: Well that's an understatement, however could you please elaborate on why this meeting, which was ostensibly about forcing Randy Reuderich out of the Alaska GOP Chairman's seat and taking over, suddenly changed direction?

Fulton: Well yes the original intent was to shitcan Reuderich and replace him with somebody else. But then they decided not to do that it so that it wouldn't distract from the last minute decision to run Sean Parnell against Don Young.

Q: What changed?

Fulton: I'm not entirely sure, but it had something to do with the fact that Sarah Palin was going to be tapped as the VP candidate.

Q: Really? This was happening in March of 2008, according to Palin, AND the McCain campaign, they did not choose her until the very last minute, late in August of 2008, which is why they did not have time to vet her carefully.

Fulton: Bullshit. Frank Bailey and Joe Miller discussed the nomination as if it was a done deal, and claimed that she was already being vetted.

Q: In March of 2008?

Fulton: Yes, in March of 2008.

Q: And this was only about a month BEFORE she gave birth to Trig

Fulton: Well I don't know anything about all that, but yes this was in March of 2008.

Q: You are probably best known for handcuffing Tony Hopfinger after that Joe Miller speech. How do you feel the media treated you after that incident, and how frustrating was it for you to deal with that kind of negativity knowing that you were in fact on the side of the angels?

Fulton: Well I don't feel I was treated fairly that's for sure. The media dug up minor facts, like that I was late renewing my business license on Drop Zone, and blew it way out of proportion. And when they could not find facts they simply made them up. 

I still feel that the bust was legitimate, and my people and I had done the same thing at various events and concerts all over town. However because of who Joe Miller was, and the way the media was portraying him, the arrest served as the perfect catalyst to give the media permission to define him as somebody who would hire jack booted thugs to rough up reporters who tried to question him. 

In fact I performed my duties to the best of my abilities, and would do so again in similar circumstances.

The funny thing is that both the Left and Right in the media got it wrong. To the left I was a neo-Nazi trampling on a reporter's First Amendment rights, but to the Right I was a hero finally treating the Left Wing media the way they always secretly wanted them to be treated. Go figure.

Q: And on that note how do you think Joe Miller feels now knowing that you were working with the FBI while you were also working on his security detail?

Fulton: I KNOW how he feels. He has been writing about it on his blog. He thinks I was a plant that was dedicated to sabotaging his campaign from within. 

Q: Were you?

Fulton: No. I just did what Miller hired me to do. He also has complained that my version of fitting him for body armor in the bathroom due to his paranoia is an exaggeration and that I had "followed him around the convention center warning him of threats."

Q: And did you?

Fulton: Hell no! Nobody needed to help Joe Miller feel paranoid.

Q: In earlier conversations you claimed that after the Hopfinger debacle you received some rather vicious death threats, can you elaborate?

Fulton: Oh hell Gryph, they came by email calling me every name in the book, phone messages with bomb threats, people stopping by Drop Zone to threaten my employees, it was really bad for awhile.

Q: And exactly who were the people that were sending these threats?

Fulton: Well I guess you would categorize them as the Left Wing. People who were upset about the handcuffing of a reporter. You know Gryph the crazies are on both sides of the aisle. I know you don't believe that but it's true.

Personally I think it is time to stop all of this name calling and partisan bickering, and to start communicating in an honest fashion. It does no good to have extremists from both sides defining the debate, and that seems to be what is happening right now.

Q: Well speaking of extremists let's return to Sarah Palin for a bit. When was the first time you met her?

Fulton: I met her a couple of times at social events.  Nothing very memorable.

Q: Do you think she would EVER risk running for office again?

Fulton: No I don't. She is just too polarizing to successfully run for office. I doubt that anybody except the very fringe would support her.

Q: Well as you know the plan that was hatched way back in 2008 to take over the Alaska Republican party, has now been realized. What are your thoughts on that?

Fulton: Not good. When you pander to extremists to get their support, you reinforce their beliefs, and that just makes them more dangerous. So this group led by Joe Miller getting control of the Republican party is not a good thing, for anybody.

Q: Okay well finally I suppose I should ask you what's next for Bill Fulton?

Fulton: Well I am looking to teach a law enforcement course dealing with extremists and infiltrating their ranks. I am also planning to write a book about my experiences in Alaska, and with the militia up there.

Q: Sounds good Bill, thanks for your time, and good luck with that book.

Now as  I mentioned before Bill will answer some of YOUR questions next.

What we have worked out is that you can submit them in the comment section, he will choose the ones he feels he can answer, and then I will type them out in a later post, either tomorrow or the next day depending on time constraints.

Please remember that there are still certain questions that Bill will not be able, or willing, to answer.

With that in mind I am confident that you all can come up with some good questions that perhaps did not occur to me, or the reporters at Salon or HuffPo.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes those words are misleading. Sally Heath and the "terrorists" edition.

Way back in December of 2011 I posted the picture below.

The picture had been sent to me by FBI informant Bill Fulton, who had found it among his things and thought I would like to post it.

Of course at the time Bill was still deeply in the FBI witness protection program and did not want to be identified as one of the people in the picture, nor did he want his then employee or the name of his business revealed either. Which is why they have been fuzzed out.

At the time he and I both thought that it was kind of telling that this woman, the mother of the Governor of Alaska, would feel so comfortable surrounded by assault weapon toting strangers. But clearly she was.

Now what neither Bill nor I knew at the time was that there was another version of this picture already posted on the internet, which you, my tenacious little pain in the asses, found.

So here was a picture that clearly showed the name of Bill's business, Drop Zone, his face, and the face of the employee who had NO idea that Fulton was working for the Feds or that he would some day be tied to militias and terrorists organizations.

Some of you may remember that on that day I ignored repeated requests to confirm that it WAS Fulton, or to elaborate on where I got the photo, because at the time I really couldn't say anything.

I contacted Bill and told him what had happened, and surprisingly he thought it was funny, and laughed it off.

I asked him if he knew that the picture was already posted and he said no, in fact he only had a vague recollection of some woman handing it to him and telling him he might like to have a copy of it.

This was fairly early in our interactions and the only thing that Fulton cared about was that I had kept my promise to keep his name out of it and protect his anonymity, which I had.

So now that there are no more secrets to keep let's be clear about what this picture shows.

Sally Heath is actually NOT standing with two militia members or terrorists. She is standing with two guys running a booth at a Tea Party event in Wasilla. So let's put that to rest right now.

However now the question remains, who did she THINK she was posing with, and WHY she would have felt it appropriate to pose with them? This was NOT a picture that Bill asked to be taken, this is a picture that Sally Heath WANTED to pose for.

So though in reality there may have been nothing terribly scandalous about the picture, there are in fact some rather interesting things to take away from its existence.

Don't you agree?

Current FBI informant, and one time Joe Miller bodyguard, Bill Fulton breaks his silence.

Drop Zone employee, Sally Heath (Sarah Palin's mom), and Bill Fulton

In September of 2010 Bill Fulton was perhaps the single most misunderstood man in Alaska.

Vilified as a "Jack booted thug" after he handcuffed Alaska Dispatch reporter Tony Hopfinger, and  forced to watch news report after news report flay him to the bone mercilessly, Fulton wanted nothing more than to call them up and explain that he was one of the good guys. In fact he was AT THAT TIME working for the FBI and helping them to build their case against Schaeffer Cox. (And possibly a few others.)

However Fulton was unable to tell anybody his side of the story, because he was undercover with the Feds, and they kind of frown on that sort of thing.

Then later in 2011 after Schaeffer Cox was arrested, Fulton was directed to disappear, which he did. And again the speculation started about why he disappeared? Was he the Alaska militia's weapons supplier?  Was he himself part of Schaeffer's militia group? Or even whether or not he had been assassinated to keep him quiet.

During this time, now newly relocated out of state, Fulton scanned the internet reading about the investigation and the opinions of various news agencies and blogs, hoping that somebody would put two and two together and realize that HE was the FBI informant and not one of Schaeffer's lackeys.

And one day somebody did:

So Cox traveled to Anchorage to make the purchases with this "person" who they believed could hook them up with grenades, silencers, and automatic weapons? Now isn't that interesting? 

Isn't Drop Zone in Anchorage? I do believe that it is. 

And isn't the owner of Drop Zone, William Fulton, the guy Joe Miller hired as "security" to rough up a local journalist? 

And isn't William Fulton referred to as the "supply sergeant" because he is the go-to guy for militia members seeking weapons and supplies? 

And isn't Fulton currently MIA?

This may seem a like an obvious conclusion, but until this post NOBODY had been willing to voice it out loud.

So finally Fulton had some hope that people would start to realize that he was NOT a jack booted thug roughing up reporters at Joe Miller's request and selling weapons to militia members determined to overthrow the government. But that instead he was a patriot doing a very difficult, and very dangerous, job.

And now Fulton felt that he had somebody he could each out to. He wasn't exactly supposed to, but something about that arrogant liberal blogger, who always seemed to be keeping people's secrets for them, seemed like a person he could trust. And so he did.

Now I receive a lot of unsolicited e-mails, many of them are not exactly on the up an up.

For instance I have been contacted by George Soros. (Only not really.) Sarah Palin. (Nope.) Todd Palin. (Not hardly!) And various folks claiming to work for newspapers, federal agencies, and one nice gentleman from Nigeria who offered me the chance to make a million dollars. (I really DO need to get back to that guy.)

However I have also been contacted by somebody who knew all about Willow Palin's night of  housebreaking. (They did.) A guy who claimed he worked as Sarah Palin's head of security. (He was.) The BBC asking for an interview. (They got one.) And this guy named Joe McGinniss who wanted to ask me some questions for a book he was writing. (Well you know how that one turned out.)

So when I received an e-mail from some guy claiming to be Bill Fulton, I thought "Could be him." And indeed it was.

Fulton was impressed that I had figured out that he was the informant, but also wanted to correct me on what I got wrong. But only if I promised to keep what he told me to myself.

And I have.

So from there Bill and I began to have a number of e-mail exchanges and phone calls, often late at night, where he could finally get things off his chest that he couldn't share with anybody else and also tell somebody, sort of in the media, what was really going on.

Well not EVERYTHING of course, because Fulton is not allowed to talk about ongoing investigations, but enough for me to begin to understand some very interesting things about the Republican party in Alaska, the behind the scenes stories concerning the Miller campaign, and a certain ex-Governor's involvement in both.

Of course while THAT allowed Bill to get things off HIS chest it also burdened ME with information that I could know but never use on the blog. Lucky me right? (Though there WERE a few times when it was agreed that some of Fulton's information could find its way into a blog post or two.)

During this time Fulton always said that after the trial, and after Schaeffer Cox was sentenced, he would go public. Schaeffer has now been sentenced, and true to his word Fulton has started talking.

First to Salon.

And then to the Huffington Post. (You gotta love that story about paranoid Joe Miller and the bullet proof vest!)

Also part of our agreement was that I would have the opportunity to officially interview Bill on the record, which I have. All or part of that interview is scheduled for a post on Monday.

However Bill felt he owed me a little something extra, so, and this was totally his idea, he has volunteered to answer some of YOUR questions as well.

I will have more information about how that will be structured for you by Monday.  But until then simply think up what you would like to ask a man who was in the room when Sarah Palin's surrogates planned to take over the Republican party, was deeply embedded in Joe Miller's failed campaign in 2010, and who had to listen as members of a lunatic fringe plotted to murder federal agents in rural Alaska.

And they say blogging is boring.

Joe Miller, Sarah Palin butt-boy and puppet master behind the takeover of the Alaska GOP, has accepted a payoff to settle his lawsuit.

Courtesy of the Alaska Dispatch:

On Monday, Miller accepted a $5,000 judgement against the borough and former Fairbanks Mayor Jim Whitaker. The judgement was offered by the borough. 

The borough mayor, Luke Hopkins, said it offered the judgement because it was in the "taxpayer’s best interests to put a stop to this litigation and legal expenses with this low monetary offer." 

Hopkins was also surprised that Miller accepted, given that he initially said that he would do so for $50,000, and then $25,000. He originally claimed that he had over $160,000 in damages. 

You know I'm kind of surprised as well, since Miller is a pugnacious asshole who will go to great lengths to make a point. I wonder what could have convinced him to settle for such a comparative pittance?

After Miller lost in the general election to Murkowski’s write-in campaign, he sued the borough, claiming that someone in the office illegally leaked information about Miller’s time at the borough. 

The judgement admits to none of this, however, and for all the time and money involved in the case, the only salient fact that seems to have emerged is that the former mayor of the borough, Jim Whitaker, had a meeting with Renee Broker, Miller’s supervisor, about Miller's time at the borough and what could be said to the press about that time. 

When deposed about the meeting, Broker claimed attorney-client privilege, even though Whittaker was no longer the mayor. Whether or not Broker and Whittaker could claim such privilege was scheduled to be argued in front of a judge next week. 

The borough contends the law is very specific that former mayors can seek advice about events that occurred while they were in office. 

Miller still believes that someone at the borough leaked the information, his lawyer John Tiemessen said. “But every case has a point of diminishing returns,” he said. “Maybe you haven’t beaten under every bush and overturned every rock, but you’ve done enough that you have a pretty good idea of what’s going on,” he said. 

Miller sought legal fees, but he refused to provide information about whether or not he or his leftover campaign coffers were footing the bill for those fees. He had said that until January 2011, his lawyers were paid a flat fee of $10,000 a month. Since then, however, he’s denied that his campaign has paid for the legal fees. 

The judge ordered him to provide such information by Monday, but he accepted the judgement instead.

Aha! So the real reason that Miller suddenly decided to walk away from a lawsuit which he has pursued doggedly for well over a year now is most likely because he simply did NOT want to divulge who was footing the bill for his legal costs.  Well that is too bad because THAT would be a question well worth finding the answer to.

Especially since we recently learned during the domestic terrorism trial that Miller was the person, along with Palin Chief-of-Staff Frank Bailey, who introduced FBI informant Bill Fulton to, future convicted terrorist, Schaeffer Cox.

It is also an important question because this lawsuit pertains to an incident that happened back in 2008, which is now connected to the recent overthrow of the Alaska GOP by Miller and his minions.

Personally I am hoping that since the recent successful conviction of the militia terrorism squad, that the FBI is now ready to turn their sights on Miller and HIS very interesting connections to certain questionable activities, not to mention his connection to a certain half term Governor which apparently goes back to her days as the mayor of Wasilla.

Schaeffer Cox explains that just because he's paranoid, doesn't mean everybody's not out to get him.

"I'm sorry you'll have to speak up. The voices in my head are drowning you out."

As many of you know by now Schaeffer Cox is an extremely paranoid individual who actually took to wearing bulletproof vests and having friends carrying guns stand in as security while conducting visits with the Office of Children's Services.  This has led many to ponder the state of Cox's mental health.

Well ponder no more.

Yesterday Cox was asked just WHY he thought he was the target of a Federal hit squad:

Cox has gotten a lot of mileage out of his story about how federal agents had been dispatched to arrest or kill him. On Wednesday, he finally got the chance to explain how he came up with the theory and the curious string of events he said have given him pause. 

First, he'd had a run in with the Office of Children's Services. He couldn't figure out why the agency was intent on interviewing his 18-month-old son, who wasn't speaking yet. Suspicious vehicles were driving by his house. Out of the blue, an airport police officer pulled him over, not to make a traffic stop but to hand Cox a manila envelope containing Cox's domestic-terrorist profile. The officer never acknowledged what he'd handed to Cox, saying only, "Hang in there, buddy. There's a lot of us pulling for you." 

For months, Cox believed a six-man team from Aurora, Colo., had been sent to Alaska to kill him. According to Cox, he now knows he was wrong about it. He'd misinterpreted short hand notes on the supposed domestic terrorist file. A "Squad 6" in the paperwork wasn't a six-person hit team, but a reference to "squad #6" -- a unit within the FBI. The report had been generated in Aurora, but Cox was convinced that was the hometown of the imaginary agents he thought had been dispatched to deal with him. 

He also claims that around the same time, the summer of 2010, someone from the electric company that services his home called to warn him that the FBI had asked the company to flag Cox's residence as a danger zone and to prevent workers from going on the defendant’s property. A pastor at Bible Baptist Church also spoke to Cox about visits from FBI agents who asked "all kinds of questions" about the defendant. 

And the stories kept coming. Cox claimed he'd heard from a military police officer on Fort Wainwright that U.S. Marshals had stopped in and were talking about a plan to use Cox's son as a way to provoke Cox to act violently, giving them an excuse to shoot him and get rid of the "Schaeffer Cox problem." And finally, Cox heard rumors that a Fairbanks FBI agent had been overheard at church discussing his dislike of Cox. 

 "These things just keep adding up. I just kept not believing, but there becomes a time when you have to," Cox told the jury. "It was enough to make us scared."

Now just to sum up, Cox claims he was tipped off that he was under investigation by an airport police officer who handed him his "domestic-terrorist profile," by an electric company employee who said his residence was a "danger zone," by a pastor who said the FBI was asking questions, and by a Fort Wainwright police officer who warned him that "U.S. Marshals had stopped in and were talking about a plan to use Cox's son as a way to provoke Cox to act violently."

I hate to be a doubter, but this sounds like just about the most unbelievable set of circumstances imaginable. Not one, but TWO officers of the law put their careers in jeopardy by sharing classified information or warning Cox that he was about to be set up by the Feds?  Really?

To me this sounds like the rantings of a paranoid schizophrenic. That may not be a completely accurate diagnosis but I have to say that any doubt of Cox's mental illness should be put to rest after reading this.

Clearly the guy is a nutjob.  A nutjob who was actively attempting to purchase military style weaponry, and plotting the murder of law enforcement officials.

I can't imagine that the jury will have much difficulty deciding that Schaeffer Cox presents a clear and constant danger to his community and that he needs to be put away for a very long time.

And as for this idea he has that he was a target of the FBI? From what I understand Cox was considered nothing more than an irritating insect by law enforcement, a small man with an inflated sense of his own importance. Even after he started his little militia group he was not considered any sort of threat. That is right up until he started talking about kidnapping judges and killing State Troopers in their homes. Then things got real, and Schaeffer's paranoia finally had a reason to exist.

However here is something that people seem to be missing.  Back in 2008 when future FBI informant Bill "Drop Zone" Fulton first met Cox, Schaeffer was just some big mouth kid with no history of violence, and still two years away from his first brush with the law.

Do you remember WHO introduced Fulton to Cox?

I think it's safe to assume that Fulton had no idea at that time he would someday be instrumental in building a case against the skinny kid in the newsman's hat, so exactly WHAT was Fulton doing hanging out with Joe Miller and Frank Bailey in 2008?

Was that just a coincidence, or did Schaeffer Cox's criminal activities suddenly pull attention away from where the FBI was focused at the time?

Personally if I were Joe Miller, Frank Bailey, and Sarah Palin that would be EXACTLY what I would spend my sleepless nights worrying about right now. Especially if I were Joe Miller.

Schaeffer Cox takes the stand in the hopes of demonstrating to the court that he is essentially harmless. I think he may have demonstrated something else entirely.

As I mentioned on Monday, Schaeffer Cox is now serving as his own co-counsel and has, in his infinite legal wisdom, decided to put his best character witness on the stand. Himself.

Now there is probably no sweeter sound in the word to Francis "Schaeffer" Cox than the sound of his own voice (They do not call him "the preacher" for nothing.), and you can see that for yourself by visiting You Tube and watching video after video of the domestic terrorist wannabe demonstrating a seemingly affable, if perhaps kooky, personality, while openly discussing "standing up to the Federal government."

Cox clearly has a great deal of confidence in his persuasive capabilities. (After all didn't he talk this rag tag group of idiots to help him plan to kidnap and kill law enforcement in Alaska?)

So having sat in relative silence for a week, Cox was anxious to explain away all of this silly nonsense about him being a dangerous person in front of the courtroom. I don't think it went the way the thinks it went.

This from Alaska Dispatch:

On Tuesday Cox blamed everybody but himself for his predicament, in which he faces a possible life sentence if convicted of the most serious charges. 

He told the court he believed he was the target of twin murder plots. He thought a man now known to be a government informant would kill him if Cox didn't instigate violent conflict. And he believed that federal agents had sent an out-of-state hit squad to Alaska to murder his family, a government plot to end Cox's outspoken ways. He believed government feared his rising influence and would go to any lengths to stop him. (In fact there was NO plot to murder Cox.  A fact that should be obvious to all except those suffering severe anti-government paranoia. Which indeed MOST 2nd Amendment quoting sovereign citizens types suffer from.)

Schaeffer Cox with his fellow Alaska Peacekeepers militia members.

He'd had a brush with the Office of Children's Services, brought about by a domestic violence incident he had with his wife. As a result of the case, the child welfare agency was required to make sure Cox's young son was safe in the home. Cox believed it was a ruse to get him to use force to prevent anyone from taking his child, thus sparking the conflict federal agents needed as an excuse to kill him. Cox took steps to protect himself. He wore body armor. He carried a gun. He traveled with an armed security detail at the ready. He didn't want a shootout, but he was ready for the fight if he found himself in the middle of one. (The Office of Children's Services employees do NOT carry weapons and are certainly not going to engage a parent in a shootout, especially since their focus is protecting the safety of a young child. I cannot imagine the jurors not being horrified to hear Cox's response to their concern for his son's well being.)

"There were U.S. Marshals that were trying to corner me and my wife into a shootout to fix the 'Schaeffer Cox problem,' and using my son to do it," he told jurors, explaining that the scenario was his "greatest fear."  (And the theme continues.)

But Cox was also facing, he said, life and death pressure to instigate the very violence he claimed an aversion to. Bill Fulton, a weapons dealer from Anchorage, who was later found out to be one of the government's paid informants, pushed Cox hard to lash out at the government in retaliation for any effort by state officials to go after his toddler-aged son, Cox said. 

In one breath, Cox boasted and bragged about his gun-toting force of militia members. In another, he espoused the ethics of non-violence. He wanted, he claimed, to be more like Ghandi than Rambo. But with Fulton in his face, a Ghandi-like approach could prove his undoing. 

"I was instilled with a very real fear that if I kept trying to pull a Ghandi, Bill Fulton would kill me, blame it on the feds and try to start a war," Cox said on the stand Tuesday. (I have a feeling that Cox compares himself to Ghandi simply because that is the most peaceful character he can conjure up, with apparently no understanding of Ghandi's absolute insistence on non-violent responses to aggression.)

Cox often speaks in extremes, something he's done when addressing judges and state troopers alike. He told a state court judge people would rather kill her in her bed at night than quibble with her in court, and he once told a state trooper he could have law enforcement "outmanned and outgunned." 

These were threats, investigators and prosecutors suggest. Cox answers that they were merely a "communication technique," a tactic of saying something shocking to get people off balance and "pull them out of their comfort zone and into a new frame of thought." After making a statement about his available force, or some impending conflict, Cox generally follows up with a line about how he doesn't want that to happen, about how it's preventable if both sides work toward peace. (So in the mind of Schaeffer Cox threatening judges and law enforcement with a violent response or murder is simply his way of opening a dialogue?)

There's more but I think you probably get the drift.

I have to imagine that THIS is why Schaeffer's legal team kept him off of the stand.  They had to have realized that he was suffering from severe paranoia and that having him on the stand would certainly NOT convince a jury that he was harmless, but would in fact have quite the opposite affect.

I think this testimony has probably had a chilling effect on the jury, and would not at all be surprised that they want to make sure this guy stays caged up for as long as possible.

The interesting thing is that Cox's entire defense was predicated on the idea that the plans to kidnap judges and engage law enforcement in a firefight were REALLY coming from the FBI informants, even claiming that he was "held hostage in Alaska" and was unable to leave because one the the informants would not provide transportation out of the state, and that HE was the one trying to calm everybody down and take the path of a peaceful outcome (You know, like Ghandi.)

That is a hard case to make once you admit to wearing bulletproof vests while visiting with OCS employees and having armed security accompany you everywhere, and then suggesting that you made violent threats against law enforcement in order to "pull them put of their comfort zone."

Well I have to imagine that hearing this kind of testimony has pulled the jury out of their comfort zone as well, and that Cox is possibly looking at a very uncomfortable couple of decades of his own.

And the truly troubling aspect of all of this is that lunatics with a very similar mindset to Schaeffer Cox are now in charge of the Republican party in Alaska. I worry that our troubles may just now be starting here in the Last Frontier.