Hallstead – W.D.B. Ainey was appointed chairman of the public service commission of Pennsylvania. Mr. Ainey, who was appointed a commissioner when Gov. Brumbaugh sent the names of the present commission to the senate of 1915, the night before the adjournment, has been acting chairman, being the junior member of the commission. The position carries with it a salary of $10,500.
S. Ararat – During the bad storm, on Saturday, the house of Titus Shaver was struck. The bolt hit the chimney and demolished it. The stove pipe was torn to pieces and thrown around the room. The bolt went through the floor and into the cellar and made its escape through the cellar wall. The carpet was set on fire and some things were broken. Mrs. Shaver was somewhat shocked, but aside from that all escaped harm.
Dimock – There was said to be the greatest number of automobilers on the Camp Ground this year, on Sunday, that was ever seen in a bunch in the county before.
Glenwood – The Hartley-Marcy reunion was held on Potters Island last Friday and the same place on Saturday.
Thompson – The Potter reunion, which was held at Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Potter’s, of Jackson, Aug. 19, was well attended, 160 being present. They came from Lestershire, Endicott, Union, Port Jervis, Moscow, Scranton, Forest City, New Milford, Clarks Summit, Susquehanna, Gibson, Jackson, Uniondale, Ararat and Thompson. The day was fine. Everybody seemed happy and the invitation that was given by Frank Shepardson, of Gibson, to meet with his family at the old homestead, was unanimously accepted for the third Thursday of August 1916.
Susquehanna – C. R. Carrington and Jack Palmer went to Elmira, Monday, for the new auto fire truck for the chemical engine. It’s a beauty. ALSO The ball game was well attended, but all of Susquehanna’s friends were sorry that Camp Susquehannock defeated the Erie Team. We will, out of courtesy, suppress the score. An eyewitness counted 76 automobiles leaving Athletic Park after the game (These figures have no reference to the score.)
East Rush – Sneak thieves entered the home of E. A. Jenner last Wednesday or Thursday night and turned things up side down and helped themselves to whatever they wanted. Mrs. Jenner says they took dishes, tablecloths and silverware. The house stands just above the church. Mr. and Mrs. Jenner moved their household affects there last spring, but on account of Andrew Jenner’s wife being poorly and having to have some attendant, the old people went to help take care of their son’s wife, so have not been keeping house as yet. It is reported that quite a number of people along the state road have been missing articles out of their cellars, some have lost a quantity of canned fruit.
Forest City – Catherine Gardner, four year old daughter of Garrett Gardner and wife, died of cholera infantum at their cottage at Lewis Lake, Saturday night. The little one had been suffering for a few days when called by death. ALSO The other evening, to while away a lonesome hour, a dozen or more Forest City men, held in Montrose by pending litigation, dropped into the C-nic, the county seat’s moving picture house. A three-reel production, “Sallie Singleton, Southerner” was being put on the screen. It was a melo-drama of the Civil War. One of the “leads” was a hot-headed young Confederate lieutenant and at first glance I thought his face had a familiar look. When he smiled I placed him. It was our own Pat O’Malley. As Rothapfel has made his mark as a manager of moving picture houses, so O’Malley is making a reputation as a character in the films.
Brooklyn – The toot of the trolley horn’s hourly announcement of the arrival and departure of the car for Scranton is music to the ears of many Brooklynites. Many of our people patronize the road, very few go via of stage to Foster [Hop Bottom].
Forest Lake – Forest Lake, with its eighteen cottages filled to overflowing, is one of the liveliest summer resorts in this part of the State. A number of cottages have been erected recently, among them Register and Recorder, Birchard’s new cottage, “The Bee Hive,” which is often swarming with guests.
Montrose – Friends of the library will be pleased to learn that a fund for the purchase of a Victrola has been started by generous, local people and it is hoped that it will soon grow to such proportions that an instrument may be purchased. If you are interested—well, you know what to do.
Uniondale – The Suffrage Liberty bell, scheduled to reach this place on Wednesday of last week, at noon, failed to appear on account of a breakdown. ALSO L. B. Thomas and Frank Westgate have secured the agency for the Hollier automobile. They will take a shipment of cars at once. Mr. Thomas is an expert in the automobile business, having been the possessor of the first car brought to this town. He drove a car from San Francisco to this place about two years ago.
– Oscar Bailey, one of the three veterans of the Civil War residing here, is recovering from a long siege of illness and gets around with difficulty. With his father he enlisted in the 101st Regt. N. Y. Volunteers in the early part of the war. Ill health compelled him to return to his home in Hancock, N. Y., and after a short time spent in his native heath, he sought enlistment again, becoming connected with the 72nd Regt. N. Y. Volunteers. He saw much fighting in the Army of the Potomac, serving under General Daniel E. Sickles. He escaped without injuries until the capture of Richmond when he was wounded in both legs. Late in the fall of 1865 he was mustered out. He was young when he entered the service and has not reached seventy years.
News Briefs: Druggists who sell whiskey and brandy will have to take out retail liquor licenses after Jan. 1, 1916. After that date whiskey will no longer be known as a medicine. ALSO A single gallon of gasoline will do wonders almost anywhere, but nowhere is it applied to better purposes than on the farm. Here are some of its stunts: It will milk 300 cows, bale 4 tons of hay, mix 35 yards of cement, move a ton truck 1 mile, plow three-fifths of an acre of land and make enough electricity to keep electric lights in the farmhouse for thirty days.
Periodically, a concerned citizen will call the office to report suspicious activity potentially associated with the sale of controlled substances. The concerned citizen makes the call and expects that something will be done about it – and then there is often a frustration that builds when the concerned citizen does not observe anything occurring. The concerned citizen may return a call to express anger or disappointment over the perceived lack of any police response.
It is important to thank the different members of our community for taking the time to provide this information to us – and my detectives get a lot of it. We keep track of it – but we cannot promise you that it is something that we can immediately use. There are some important – constitutional – reasons for the perceived inaction.
When someone provides us with suspicious information, it does not mean that we can simply go breaking in doors and looking through drawers. This seems to happen quite a bit on television and in the movies – but reality is a different place. We cannot enter a private residence without a search warrant, and a search warrant requires probable cause to support it.
A private tip rarely provides enough information for a search warrant. The reason is pretty simple: the courts require some indication that the informant has provided reliable information in the past to law enforcement. In other words, the officer has to indicate in the search warrant application that this particular informant has demonstrated a track record of providing good information in past investigations. Most average citizens are not in the business of being confidential informants to law enforcement – precisely because they are not involved in criminal activity and generally do know much about what is occurring within criminal circles.
In the absence of an existing track record for an informant, the courts would expect law enforcement to do some confirmation for the information provided in order to develop and strengthen the idea of probable cause for a search warrant. Depending upon the nature of the tip, we may or may not be able to do some additional work to confirm its reliability.
There are times when we receive more than one tip from multiple, independent sources – and this would be another means to demonstrate reliability of what is being said. If more people are saying something – and they are saying it without any connection to each other – the logical conclusion is that those statements have greater reliability. This is precisely why it is helpful to receive information – even general information – from concerned citizens. If we can tie the tips together, then we could build up probable cause.
Of course, the information that we receive often does not lead directly to probable cause of criminality. A common complaint would be that there are people “going in and out” of a particular house. Even when we confirm that the people going “in and out” have criminal backgrounds, this does not automatically equate to probable cause that criminal conduct is occurring inside the residence. To put it bluntly, people with criminal records commonly hang out together – they tend to run in the same circles and have the same friends.
Moreover, even if we are able to get some information that drug activities may be occurring in a particular residence – the courts then look to the “freshness” of the information. We can say something happened last week – but can we say that it is still happening today? Historical information is great – but we also need real time information to be able to represent that criminal conduct is occurring now or that contraband will be present now – not yesterday.
We understand that it is frustrating for those who report things to not immediately see results from law enforcement, but there are reasons for the lack of response, most of which simply relate to the inability to immediately do anything with the information. For those who provide such information, please know that it is appreciated and used – even if we cannot immediately follow through on the complaint. Identifying people and places is an important part of the investigative process – and concerned citizens can and do help in that process by simply keeping their eyes open and reporting suspicious behavior.
Please submit any questions, concerns, or comments to Susquehanna County District Attorney’s Office, P.O. Box 218, Montrose, Pennsylvania 18801 or at our website www.SusquehannaCounty-DA.org.
From the mid-1960’s to December 1971 I attended religious services at the Presbyterian Church in Susquehanna. You DO remember the brick church under the shadow of St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, don‘t you? My Sunday School teacher for much of that time was a very wise and loving person. Her name was Jesse Keyes. Under her tutelage I learned many lessons, those of Scripture, of doctrine, and of life. One of those lessons involved “particularism,” a concept I’ll return to in due course.
Americans of the 1960’s were jolted awake by at least two big movements, the Civil Rights and the Vietnam War/Anti-war movement. While they took center-stage few took much note of a destructive seed then planted, but bearing bitter fruit ever since. What seed was that? On October 3, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Hart-Celler Immigration Bill. The bill instituted a new system to supposedly put people of all nations on an equal basis for immigration. Additionally, it eliminated the various nationality criteria on which the nation had previously relied.
The Hart-Celler Immigration Bill created the structure of America’s immigration policies that exist even to present day. It was seen as a liberalization of immigration policy and a logical add-on to the civil rights legislation previously enacted in 1957, 1960, 1964, and 1965. Those civil rights laws were meant to end discrimination based on race and ethnicity; Hart-Cellar was portrayed as an extension (symbolically) of that same evolutionary trend. Making the link explicit was Rep. Phil Burton (D-CA) who stated in the Congressional Record, “Just as we sought to eliminate discrimination in our land through the Civil Rights Act, today we seek by phasing out the national origins quota system to eliminate discrimination in immigration to this nation composed of the descendents of immigrants.”
The previous system was one of quotas based on historic immigration patterns, thereby favoring peoples inhabiting northern and western Europe, most notably the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany. Hart-Celler‘s implementation inaugurated a new era of mass migration, with a preference system based on one’s relationship to an American citizen or to a permanent resident alien.
Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) was the Senate Immigration Subcommittee Chairman in 1965. He reassured critics with the following soothing words, “First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same . . . Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset . . . Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia . . . In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.” It should be clear that each of these statements by Senator Kennedy proved false over the following years.
One clear-eyed critic of Hart-Cellar was Senator Spessard Holland (D-FL). Here are his words as recorded in the Congressional Record of September 1965, “What I object to is imposing no limitation insofar as areas of the earth are concerned, but saying that we are throwing the doors open and equally inviting people from the Orient, from the islands of the Pacific, from the subcontinent of Asia, from the Near East, from all of Africa, all of Europe, and all of the Western Hemisphere on exactly the same basis. I am inviting attention to the fact that this is a complete and radical departure from what has always heretofore been regarded as sound principles of immigration.”
Sound principles of immigration—they were discarded in 1965 when Hart-Celler became law. Today our Federal government makes no pretense of any immigration principle being sound. Illegal immigration equals or exceeds legal immigration year in and year out. Immigrants who are admitted legally routinely originate from countries fundamentally dissimilar from America. President Obama, through his Executive Memoranda and Executive Orders, currently shields an estimated 87% of illegal aliens from deportation.
As early as 1981 it was evident that America had lost control of her borders. It took until 1986 for the Federal government to act. The response, “The Immigration and Reform Control Act (IRCA) of 1986. The Act provided a three-legged solution: amnesty, sanctions on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, and increased inspection and enforcement of U.S. borders. Unfortunately, the amnesty was fully implemented, while few employers were ever prosecuted (key word “knowingly” being an impediment), and Congress refused to appropriate funds to seal and enforce our nation’s borders.
If border control was lost before 1981, the post-1986 era has only seen the acceleration of illegal immigration. Illegal aliens rightly came to understand that by not applying for legal entry they may be promoted to the head of the line simply by virtue of their ability to cross onto American soil. They realized that politicians of both parties and virtually every stripe have absolutely no political will to do anything that is difficult. Removal of illegals is difficult, much too difficult for those who are spineless, but also for those who find it in their political or financial interests to not act responsibly.
Eventually, that which is illegal will be made legal and those who reward them with monetary benefits will be happy to do so, since YOU, not they will be handed the bill for the illegals’ free ride. Amnesty will come, illegals know; if not tomorrow, then the next day; if not the next day, then the day after that. They can await a lethargic leviathan unwilling to act and unresponsive to citizens who fail to hold them accountable. Even aliens who enter legally and over-stay their visa understand that there is virtually no chance they will be compelled to return to their home country. Again, the political class has no will or motivation to do the right thing, i.e., act to protect the American people and enforce American law.
In my Sunday School Class Mrs. Keyes asked one day, “Who do we treat better, our family members or outsiders?” I took a long moment to think about the answer. I knew, and I think she knew that we often treat others better than our own family, though that is not as it should be. Too often we take those closest to us for granted; we may even return their kindnesses and generosity with thoughtless resentment and insensitivity. Right behavior, as Mrs. Keyes noted, embraces “particularism,” hierarchical levels of devotion and commitment (love) to those with whom we are most intimate, and descending thence to those we know as friends, eventually proceeding to those with whom we are least acquainted. (One might think of the concentric circles emanating from a pebble thrown in a still pond.)
To make particularism real, just consider your family. You have obligations, responsibilities, and commitments of affection to your spouse, children, and parents. You take care of them, provide for them, and hopefully treat them with more love and respect than anyone else in your life. If Aunt Ethel comes from faraway to visit for a week you would gladly put her up and meet her needs—because of particularism. If a traveling salesman shows up at your door and it looks as though he has some interesting wares, you might admit him to your house; you would have a level of responsibility for him while in your home, but not nearly so much as for your family or for Aunt Ethel.
Now just imagine you rise one morning and wander downstairs to find a stranger in your house. You would take immediate steps to determine what he was doing in your house and to straightway remove him from the premises. A homeowner wouldn’t feel overwhelmed by a sudden obligation to feed an “uninvited guest” who entered by a side window, even had the window been left unlocked or open. Nor would the homeowner feel obligated to clothe “this guest,” nor to provide for his medical care, nor to expend limited wage income for his upkeep and comfort, even while reducing the standard of living for himself and his own family. And the homeowner most certainly would not feel obligated to take out a second mortgage and raid little Suzie’s college savings fund all for the benefit of ensuring his uninvited guest could bring his wife and children to move in too! I’m sure you grasp the analogy. Our government does not.
While America slept those who took our government captive have forgotten why particularism matters. It’s bad enough that the Federal government refuses to enforce immigration and border security laws (President Obama, the nation’s chief executive calls this “prosecutorial discretion.”); the Federal government actively prevents state and local subdivisions from enforcing or assisting in enforcement through the legal doctrine of “preemption.” Meanwhile, sanctuary cities are given unrestricted federal funding with a wink and a nod to openly flout Federal laws.
What becomes of the illegal aliens themselves? In many states they are now placed on Obamacare, given welfare benefits, provided EBT cards, and have their children enrolled in schools. Now America is a generous country, but are there no limits? Should everyone in the world be permitted to reside here, so long as they can fly here or hoof it across mountains, deserts, and rivers? Is residency in America available to anyone who self-immigrates? If so, can we deny residency, and ultimately citizenship, to anyone?
Does American citizenship mean anything? Does a country which refuses to enforce its borders even qualify as a country? Typically a country bears the characteristics of a defined geographic area with common language, culture, or purpose. Does America qualify, or is it just a conglomeration of individuals where a class of many seek to live at the expense of the productive? You have to ask yourself, is America being erased as a nation? What happens when there are separate sets of laws dependent on class? And what will be the end when illegals (as a class) are treated as having the equivalent of diplomatic status, while citizens can be prosecuted under any law? Is that not a formula for chaos, collapse, or revolution?
Our government’s refusal to fairly enforce our laws, truly enforce our borders, and carry out its constitutionally mandated duties with fidelity is antithetical to the principles of good government. It is conducive only to that swift and certain destruction of what remains of our economic and political system. That dwindling productive sector of our economy which still exists is even now being drained of its life-blood in support of a ravenous parasitic state. Americans have big hearts, but they’ve been played for chumps for 50 years while the politically powerful run a self-enriching scam of gargantuan proportions.
If you value your family, your neighbors, your community over those who claim you owe every other person in the world a living, then you too must claim particularism as your own. But it’s up to you and you alone. If you take no action to enforce your belief soon enough your beliefs will be of value to no one in particular. Let America sleep no more; rouse yourself; rouse those you love.
P.S. Might I suggest two recent books “Plunder and Deceit,” by Mark Levin, and Ann Coulter‘s “Adios America!” Both books are heavily footnoted to primary source documents and both clearly show the irreparable harm being inflicted on the civil society and our sovereignty due to illegal immigration. Do your own research; the facts are out there.
