Anyone remember Janet Reno, the infamous Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), and their pliant allies in the MSM? I had thought that stuff like harassing gun shows and shaking down people who'd broken no laws was mostly behind us, but this incident evokes memories:

Annette Gelles, owner of gun show sponsor Showmasters.us, told Cybercast News Service that at least 30 agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) along with nearly 500 Virginia State Police, Henrico County Police and Richmond City Police officers were assigned to the ATF operation targeting her gun show on Aug. 13 and 14 at the Richmond International Raceway and Fairground Complex, outside Richmond, Va.

Gelles said four marked police cars were stationed at the main entrance to the raceway parking lot and more than 50 marked and unlabeled but obvious law enforcement vehicles were positioned just outside the public entrance to the building. The officers' presence, Gelles said, was intended to intimidate her customers.

Gelles explained that, when gun dealers took the paperwork to the Virginia State Police on-site office to complete the background checks on prospective buyers, ATF agents copied the names, home addresses and telephone numbers of the applicants.

Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, told Cybercast News Service that he has received numerous complaints alleging that as handgun buyers were waiting for their National Instant Check System (NICS) background investigations to be completed, ATF was secretly conducting the so-called "residency checks."

According to the complaints he received, Van Cleave said officers were dispatched to the homes of the prospective gun buyers to speak with family members, asking for example: "Gee, did you know your husband was going to a gun show today? Do you have his cell phone number? Did you know he was buying a gun?

"If people weren't home they, in some cases, went to neighbors" to ask the same questions, Van Cleave said.

"I'm not an attorney but, I'll tell you what, in my opinion that would be a violation of federal law," Van Cleave said. "To go off on a fishing trip with that information, much less sharing information like that with neighbors, there's no way that's legal."

Title 18 Section 923 of the U.S. Code concerns the licensing of gun dealers and appears to support Van Cleave's position.

(Above link via InstaPundit, although I first heard about this on the G. Gordon Liddy Show.)

But so far, the MSM has a big fat nothing.

A news blackout, perhaps? Brings back more memories.

(In the old days, of course, there'd have been faxes and emails sent from gun nut to gun nut.)

It would be redundant to ask why this is happening under a Republican administration, but I'm beginning to think that things like this have little or nothing to do with who's president. After all, if President Bush lacks the power to fire the bureaucrats who handed visas to Mohammad Atta and company, what could he possibly do to discipline a government agency which has been fraught with problems for many years?

I don't think Bush is fully in charge, and I can't think of a better argument against the Patriot Act (especially the attitude in law enforcement it tends to encourage) than the conduct which occurred here. It really doesn't matter what you think about guns, either. The law enforcement agents behaved illegally, exceeded their authority, and without obtaining warrants, harassed innocent citizens who were never accused of committing any crime.

All it would take, I'm afraid, would be one dirty nuke, and our freedom would topple. That's because agencies like the BATF couldn't care less about the Constitution, and the Patriot Act has given them powers with which they cannot be trusted -- and a green light to use it. Fortunately, the courts still function, and that plus the theory that the new laws are intended only to fight terrorism have tended to restrain the use of the Patriot Act (and its accompanying Homeland Security apparatus).

I've tried to support expanded powers to fight terrorism, because we are at war, and they are needed. But when I see innocent Americans being treated like this, I'm worried about the long term.

Because, if this country's enemies manage to trigger a dirty nuke -- even a small one -- all bets are off. The psychological aftershocks will be so profound that it will mean a crackdown on freedom everywhere and in every sphere.

Funny thing I'd say sphere. As things stood after 9/11, the bad guys almost could have done it. Almost everything was in place for what might have been a new power grab involving a government partnership with Big Media. Had there been more 9/11 type attacks, terrified citizens would have been left with the television and their daily newspapers as their main sources of information. A one-way stream of whatever the newly restructured powers that be might have deemed fit to broadcast.

The blogosphere as we know it today sprang into being just in the nick of time. By a hair. I really believe it was that close. That's one of the reasons the blogosphere is so feared. The government cannot team up with big media and monopolize the information/communication game all to themselves.

They are being monitored and supplemented by the citizenry.

Wait! I almost left out talk radio. In many ways, talk radio anticipated the blogosphere, because it was two way communication and allowed not only the dissemination of information from alternative sources, but direct participation from the citizenry.

But talk radio is subject to control, even what borders on censorship -- not only by government (via the FCC) but by organized political groups who can succesfully silence alternative voices in ways the government could not do directly. Talk radio host Michael Graham -- whether you agree with him or not -- was yanked permanently off the air by his company, even though his listeners liked his show and it was commercially viable. His company caved to pressure from the Islamist advocacy group, CAIR. (More from James Joyner.) But -- CAIR or not -- private companies can do anything for any reason (including making sweetheart deals with the government).

Michael Graham was silenced in ways bloggers cannot be.

Yet.

They might try, but I'd say the blogosphere is ready.

UPDATE (08/31/05): When I said "the blogosphere is ready," I wasn't engaged in hyperbole. Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that Michael Silence and Ravenwood have already produced the goods on the BATF. (See this FOIA pdf document.) Say Uncle has been on this story for a while, and Blake Wylie asks, after his analysis,

what do you do when a Federal agency breaks the law?

The BATF (which long operated under the Treasury Department) is supposed to be a revenue agency, not a SWAT team. Their charged with making sure that cigarettes and alcohol (and certain firearms) are taxed, and since 1968, with making firearms licensees pay their taxes. They were never intended to be a SWAT team, and they've been out of control for far too long. In 1982, the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution excoriated the ATF for engaging in:

conduct which borders on the criminal... Enforcement tactics made possible by current firearms laws are constitutionally, legally and practically reprehensible... Approximately 75 percent of BATF gun prosecutions were aimed at ordinary citizens who had neither criminal intent nor knowledge, but were enticed by agents into unknowing technical violations.

Considering that their previously poor track record hasn't changed, I'd say a good case can be been made that the BATF has utterly failed to earn the new power with which they've been entrusted. They're a liability to the Justice Department, and a disgrace to Homeland Security. I'd vote for sending them back to Treasury, taking away their guns, and putting them back to work collecting taxes.