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Waco week
To start things off, here is a BATF report of their activities on February 19, 1993, nine days before the first raid and gun battle.
Background: BATF claimed that the massive raid (80+ agents, three borrowed military helicopters, a large caravan of vehicles) was necessary because David Koresh was a paranoid recluse who never left the Davidians' building and thus could not be arrested peacefully.
To monitor the Davidians, BATF put several agents in what came to be called the "undercover house," across the street from the Davidian residence (albeit "across the street" here means a couple of hundred yards away). This report details what those agents did on February 19.
They went shooting.
With David Koresh.
They had all the guns. Koresh had one unarmed Davidian with him. Then Koresh went home, and the agents went back to planning the raid.
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Professor Hardy, perhaps it might be helpful for many of us less-familiar with the event to lay out a general overview and timeline of the whole mess so that we can follow the individual posts better. Thank you.
Waco was always a lie, an attempt by the government to put fear in the hearts of the people. Koresh went to breakfast in town pretty much every morning, according to a firearms writer friend of my father's who lived there. Worse, whatever Koresh did was a state issue. The feds have six (6) constitutional police powers. Counterfeiting, securing copyright and patent, treason, piracies on the high seas, felonies on high seas, offenses against the law of nations. All other federal criminal statues are pulled from thin air, created from whole cloth, usurped, or whatever term one wishes to use for unconstitutional actions. The N&P clause DOES NOT bring other associated powers into the hands of Congress. ANYONE who can read the granted powers can see the truth in this. Take coining money for an example. IF the N&P attached other powers then the separately granted power to regulate the value of the coins and the separately granted power to punish counterfeiting and not needed. An expansive N&P clause makes these original delegating clause wholly unnecessary and makes the Framers look like idiots since they could have left all that out and just put in the N&P. And why did the Framers see the need to grant punish power for counterfeiting but not for tax evasion or violations of commerce laws. MAYBE the Framers left those police powers TO THE STATES, in the REAL separation of powers.