What follows is a summation of my coverage of the story of John Shipley. [More]Think of it as the "CliffsNotes version" of a convoluted story that spans years, takes all kinds of bizarre twists and turns, and is still unfolding.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query John Shipley. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query John Shipley. Sort by date Show all posts
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
The Strange Case of FBI Agent John Shipley
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Shipley makes appeal to overturn gun convictions
“It is lamentable that the government seems to argue that the fabricated story of Shipley’s firearm killing a Mexican military officer was a fair inference from the evidence,” the brief explained. “Again, after the jury verdict and before sentencing, the United States conceded that these representations were fabricated.Today's Gun Rights Examiner report brings the latest chapter in a story with bizarre twists that I first started covering in 2009. True to form, if you do a Google News search for "John Shipley," the only one reporting on his case is me.
Think of what that means. [More]
Friday, August 31, 2012
No Firearm Owner is Safe
Jeff and Chris Knox tell WND readers about the case of John Shipley. [Read]
Monday, August 20, 2012
Armed American Radio
I was on in Hour 3 and set up the background for the John Shipley series in the first half of the hour, and brought listeners up to date in the last half.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Durbin shows as much respect for First Amendment as he does for Second
Think who it was who not only filed the initial reports on Fast and Furious “gunwalking,” but who cajoled and wheedled and begged for almost two months to get the media and political establishment to notice. Now recall who did not think the story was particularly noteworthy.Today's Gun Rights Examiner report notes that what "legitimate media" doesn't report is often as telling as what it does (and how it does it). That "progressive" politicians want to use the power of the state against those it does not favor should be all we need to know about their intentions, and should also be a pretty good indicator of why they demand control of all the guns.
Reflect on the virtual media blackout for updates on the case of the Reese family. And then remember what they didn’t tell you about John Shipley, or David Olofson, or Lawrence Mirsky or many others.
And if you’ve never heard of Wayne Fincher, don’t blame me. [More]
Monday, January 10, 2022
Speaking of 'Shall Not Be Infringed'...
According to the plea agreement, undercover agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, with the help of a confidential informant, purchased 14 firearms from Goldman’s vendor booth at a flea market... [More]
Who? Goddam weasel...
That said, I've seen vendors like this at flea markets and marveled that they were so apparently unconcerned with "the rules"...
Some day I need to find the time to get Wayback Machine links for my John Shipley articles.
[Via Remarks]
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Is FBI Agent Charged with Illegal Gun Dealing Just a Collector?
Perhaps this will present an opportunity to increase visibility for Oath Keepers, and to develop allies. But at the very least, the record will show that while the government and media have been universally painting a federal LEO as guilty, it was the "anti-government right wing gun extremists" doing the reminding that we need to consider his innocence until the burden of proof requirement has been satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt.I'm as surprised as anyone to find myself concerned about a federal LEO/FBI sniper, but this case just doesn't smell right. When I hear from a source that the US Attorney leaked the affidavit to the press, my antennae go up.
If we want that for ourselves, we must demand it for John Shipley. [More]
Here is today's Gun Rights Examiner column, which includes a link to the affidavit as well as information on this case the "Authorized Journalists" won't tell you about.
Also see the latest cuckolding of gun owners by Kirsten Gillibrand and hear her competitor in Constitutional sabotage use a word generally associated with racists.
Tell a friend?
Check out the latest from other Gun Rights Examiners:
- Atlanta: You bet it's personal!
- Austin: Why do children need guns?
- Boston: Sotomayor: Unfit to serve
- Charlotte: Sotomayor: Where for art thou, NRA?
- Chicago: National right-to-carry reciprocity can't touch Chicago, but can it pass?
- Cleveland: National ccw reciprocity bill vote likely
- DC: Sotomayor: the abstract justice?
- Denver: Lessons from "bring your guns to church day"
- Los Angeles: On Sotomayor: The Judiciary Committee needs to get it, too.
- Minneapolis: Lies, damn lies, and VPC statistics
- Seattle: Outrage over national concealed carry misplaced while Seattle looks for a killer
- St. Louis: The Brady Campaign to create 'gun crime'
- Wisconsin: Party like it was 1773
Wednesday, May 02, 2018
We're the Only Ones Unlicensed Enough
Court Docs: Former deputy arrested for selling guns had been warned by ATF [More]24 guns over two years?
Are we sure this isn't another John Shipley case?
[Via Mack H]
Friday, June 05, 2015
New Examiner "Review" Criteria May Explain What Staff Refuses To
Long-time readers who have supported my work deserve an explanation, so here's an update for those of you who have been wondering what's going on with Gun Rights Examiner. Sorry it's so long -- there are many pieces to consider.
I've been writing for them since 2008, and never had a column pulled before. Now they've sunk two in a row, and have clammed up on their reason, to boot.
A full week after Examiner.com "unpublished" my Hastert column, and five days after they torpedoed my follow-up column about a media subscriber news service including that story in an alert to members, they still have not responded to multiple inquiries asking why. That's in spite of their instruction to "Contact support with any questions."
That they would let a content provider spend hours researching, writing, publishing and publicizing an article, pull it, and then go into hiding, is indicative of the "leadership" routinely endured over the years, and leads to natural speculation as to what "offense" against "standards" could have possibly occurred this time. If tough to know what's allowable when anti-gun "progressives" are permitted to outright lie and call gun owners who believe in their rights "ammosexuals" (that's actually a keyword tag on the Examiner site).
It looks like that assumption was wrong -- albeit with no explanation followed by the silent treatment, it was an understandable conclusion to jump to. They just sent out an email to their list defining new criteria for both acceptability of an article as "newsworthy," as well as general editorial criteria for all articles.
Understand that Examiner does not submit all articles to the Google news feed. They have requirements, like the story must be under 48 hours old, you have to link to sources they consider credible, you can't reference other Examiner links, you can't use the first person, etc. That's been understood, even if it's self-defeating for those of us who actually dig out stories on our own, as opposed to linking to what someone else has uncovered and rewording it to take advantage of keyword and topic trending. In other words, those of us doing investigative journalism, where we are the ones breaking stories, and where we have nothing else to refer to as a source but our own prior work, are penalized for deviating from the content farm model.
They now appear to be extending that to all articles, not just the ones submitted to the news feeds. And it appears not complying with "review criteria" they just sent out today may be the reason behind "unpublishing" articles published a week ago.
Their criteria, incidentally, corroborate the valuing of search ranking manipulation over content. Case in point, from the Examiner Support Center "Basic Editorial Requirement writing Tips":
Yes, my Hastert story contained a link to one of my articles from 16 years ago, an open letter I wrote to him (that was subsequently published in a Libertarian Party publication at the request of one of their officials), and that necessitated a first-person reference. It couldn't be helped.
Everybody and his brother are "reporting" on the Hastert scandal and charges the guy's got himself embroiled in. Not one writer was informing gun owners about his betrayal of their interests when he was Speaker, and how in spite of that, he was still given an "A" rating from NRA. That's legitimate information for a gun rights advocacy readership to be aware of. It's not my fault no one else knew about and was reporting that. I guess the Examiner solution for original and unique offerings is to "unpublish" and suppress them.
Using that criteria, that reference to self or to prior works of original investigative journalism is verboten, let's look at some of the other stuff, allowed in the past, but now evidently in violation of the new criteria:
My FOIA-based exposé on the fake Ceasefire "PSA" that yielded a permit saying “Actors are interviewed on camera in a fake gun store” comes immediately to mind. It included my email correspondence with the Mayor's Office and also linked to my piece at The Shooters' Log. Is that "self-promotion" or is that telling and expanding on a dimension of a national interest story no one else is? And for that matter, if they're going to be consistent why hasn't that article been "unpublished"?
How about my other stories resulting from FOIA requests I filed? Who is going to report on those if not me? We know the "partial response" I got from ATF proved a whistleblower had been called on the carpet for talking to the Senate. We also know the Senate was publicly pressured -- by me -- to interview and protect Gunwalker whistleblowers in the first place.
As a matter of fact, look at all the reporting Mike Vanderboegh and I did on this before anyone in major media said word one about Fast and Furious. By Examiner's "review criteria," this all needs to be pulled from the site. And future stories -- and Mike has arranged to share documentation with me on a huge one -- cannot, as a matter of their "rules," appear there.
So what else, just off the top of my head, must go?
It looks like I can't tell readers how ATF claimed -- to me -- an Administrative Procedures Act exemption from their recent ammo ban "framework" trial balloon. Nor can I tell them how -- after my reports -- the "real reporters" discovered the B. Todd Jones leaving ATF for NFL story, or the Armatix management split story, or how an anti-gun "filmmaker" broke the law regarding bringing imitation firearm onto school premises without permission, or...
Nor can I include links in future articles to information vital to understanding a complex and ongoing story that appears nowhere else, such as the series of reports I have done containing exclusive information on the Reese family case, John Shipley, ATF's Vince Cefalu and Jay Dobyns, the '68 GCA and other legal challenges, and those are just off the top of my head as topics where I have to refer and link to earlier reports I posted in order to validate claims. And who knows what this will do to the innumerable source documents I alone have archived on Scribd? How is linking to my account there not "self-promotion"?
I guess I can forget about telling you things I'd like you to help be a force multiplier for. That's a major reason I do this, to provide information that no one else does or will, and to then rely on activist readers to help me bypass "legitimate media" gatekeepers. And sometimes, the action just happens to center on my activities. So if I interview Rand Paul, or appear on a television panel, or get interviewed on a network show, or help write lyrics to a song for a political video produced by a multiple-award winning filmmaker and premiering on a nationally-syndicated radio program, or give a speech in front of a state house, those are all things I'm evidently no longer allowed to tell regular readers about in my column -- a column I started and expanded to a national presence on the premise and promise that I could.
That's in spite of a pledge made to me by Examiner only three months ago after one of their reviewers had rejected my ATF ammo ban piece from news feed submission on the grounds that I did not link to a recognized news source.
"As for the main premise of my story having no link, what am I supposed to do when this is original investigative journalism based my telephone conversation held today with an ATF official identified as the point of contact on a new proposed rule?" I asked. "There IS no other source to link to, as no one else has this development but me. I repeat: What am I to do?"
This was the last official word received on the matter:
I guess the "welcome" has been pulled back, or at least my being able to identify myself as the one who made the story happen in the first place, and to reference and link to an exclusive in follow-up reports.
Several of you have reached out to me, asking if I want you to do anything, maybe write to Examiner. Thanks, but no. These conditions are intolerable. I'm probably going to need to post a bare minimum article once a month just to keep them from declaring my account inactive and not sharing page view revenues from past articles, but it looks like their rules will no longer allow me to do much of the original stuff that requires self-referencing and linking.
How this will play out and if I'll land anywhere else is anybody's guess, but it doesn't look promising. Ultimately, I have to admit the failure to figure a way out of the box is mine, as my stuff is unacceptable to big boy media as well as to "lobby groups." That's because I do this to say what I want to say.
I'll keep writing for the magazine as long as they want me, and also do occasional contract assignments that don't dictate information-stifling restrictions, but without a replacement gig, this is probably going to require stepping back and refocusing energies on something that values my efforts enough to actually pay the bills. For now, look for this blog and all of my social media activity to be limited to dreaded "self-promotion."
UPDATE: Well, that was quick. At least it shows they can move when motivated. They fired me, and warned me not to show anyone the termination notice because that would violate a confidentiality agreement. I'll match their agreement violations over the years against mine if they want to pursue this, because I maintain this is definitely in the interests of pursuing a story about cheesy Examiner.com practices:
I've been writing for them since 2008, and never had a column pulled before. Now they've sunk two in a row, and have clammed up on their reason, to boot.
A full week after Examiner.com "unpublished" my Hastert column, and five days after they torpedoed my follow-up column about a media subscriber news service including that story in an alert to members, they still have not responded to multiple inquiries asking why. That's in spite of their instruction to "Contact support with any questions."
That they would let a content provider spend hours researching, writing, publishing and publicizing an article, pull it, and then go into hiding, is indicative of the "leadership" routinely endured over the years, and leads to natural speculation as to what "offense" against "standards" could have possibly occurred this time. If tough to know what's allowable when anti-gun "progressives" are permitted to outright lie and call gun owners who believe in their rights "ammosexuals" (that's actually a keyword tag on the Examiner site).
It looks like that assumption was wrong -- albeit with no explanation followed by the silent treatment, it was an understandable conclusion to jump to. They just sent out an email to their list defining new criteria for both acceptability of an article as "newsworthy," as well as general editorial criteria for all articles.
Understand that Examiner does not submit all articles to the Google news feed. They have requirements, like the story must be under 48 hours old, you have to link to sources they consider credible, you can't reference other Examiner links, you can't use the first person, etc. That's been understood, even if it's self-defeating for those of us who actually dig out stories on our own, as opposed to linking to what someone else has uncovered and rewording it to take advantage of keyword and topic trending. In other words, those of us doing investigative journalism, where we are the ones breaking stories, and where we have nothing else to refer to as a source but our own prior work, are penalized for deviating from the content farm model.
They now appear to be extending that to all articles, not just the ones submitted to the news feeds. And it appears not complying with "review criteria" they just sent out today may be the reason behind "unpublishing" articles published a week ago.
Their criteria, incidentally, corroborate the valuing of search ranking manipulation over content. Case in point, from the Examiner Support Center "Basic Editorial Requirement writing Tips":
Please refrain from using one-sentence paragraphs, paragraphs consisting of only a few short sentences or paragraphs made up of incomplete sentences whenever possible. Google rejects pieces that are formatted that way.Compare that to Purdue University's Online Writing Lab, teaching journalism students how to write:
Tips for Writing a Lead ... Brevity: Readers want to know why the story matters to them and they won’t wait long for the answer. Leads are often one sentence, sometimes two.The "review criteria" also list some of the "sins" committed in my Hastert and follow-up articles:
Self-promotion: Not allowed in article content. No click-baiting or product marketing is permitted ... Third Person: Avoid first-person references ("I," "me," "my," etc.) The focus of the article should be on the story, not on the person writing it.That depends on the meaning of the term "self-promotion." and the qualifications of the person making that assessment. My columns never contain "click-baiting or product marketing." What they do contain are references to original work that no one else has uncovered, and if not called to reader attention, will remain unknown to everyone but me. We certainly know the "mainstream media" has no interest unless it's to take a story uncovered by small fry, bigfoot it, and claim it as their own.
Yes, my Hastert story contained a link to one of my articles from 16 years ago, an open letter I wrote to him (that was subsequently published in a Libertarian Party publication at the request of one of their officials), and that necessitated a first-person reference. It couldn't be helped.
Everybody and his brother are "reporting" on the Hastert scandal and charges the guy's got himself embroiled in. Not one writer was informing gun owners about his betrayal of their interests when he was Speaker, and how in spite of that, he was still given an "A" rating from NRA. That's legitimate information for a gun rights advocacy readership to be aware of. It's not my fault no one else knew about and was reporting that. I guess the Examiner solution for original and unique offerings is to "unpublish" and suppress them.
Using that criteria, that reference to self or to prior works of original investigative journalism is verboten, let's look at some of the other stuff, allowed in the past, but now evidently in violation of the new criteria:
My FOIA-based exposé on the fake Ceasefire "PSA" that yielded a permit saying “Actors are interviewed on camera in a fake gun store” comes immediately to mind. It included my email correspondence with the Mayor's Office and also linked to my piece at The Shooters' Log. Is that "self-promotion" or is that telling and expanding on a dimension of a national interest story no one else is? And for that matter, if they're going to be consistent why hasn't that article been "unpublished"?
How about my other stories resulting from FOIA requests I filed? Who is going to report on those if not me? We know the "partial response" I got from ATF proved a whistleblower had been called on the carpet for talking to the Senate. We also know the Senate was publicly pressured -- by me -- to interview and protect Gunwalker whistleblowers in the first place.
As a matter of fact, look at all the reporting Mike Vanderboegh and I did on this before anyone in major media said word one about Fast and Furious. By Examiner's "review criteria," this all needs to be pulled from the site. And future stories -- and Mike has arranged to share documentation with me on a huge one -- cannot, as a matter of their "rules," appear there.
So what else, just off the top of my head, must go?
It looks like I can't tell readers how ATF claimed -- to me -- an Administrative Procedures Act exemption from their recent ammo ban "framework" trial balloon. Nor can I tell them how -- after my reports -- the "real reporters" discovered the B. Todd Jones leaving ATF for NFL story, or the Armatix management split story, or how an anti-gun "filmmaker" broke the law regarding bringing imitation firearm onto school premises without permission, or...
Nor can I include links in future articles to information vital to understanding a complex and ongoing story that appears nowhere else, such as the series of reports I have done containing exclusive information on the Reese family case, John Shipley, ATF's Vince Cefalu and Jay Dobyns, the '68 GCA and other legal challenges, and those are just off the top of my head as topics where I have to refer and link to earlier reports I posted in order to validate claims. And who knows what this will do to the innumerable source documents I alone have archived on Scribd? How is linking to my account there not "self-promotion"?
I guess I can forget about telling you things I'd like you to help be a force multiplier for. That's a major reason I do this, to provide information that no one else does or will, and to then rely on activist readers to help me bypass "legitimate media" gatekeepers. And sometimes, the action just happens to center on my activities. So if I interview Rand Paul, or appear on a television panel, or get interviewed on a network show, or help write lyrics to a song for a political video produced by a multiple-award winning filmmaker and premiering on a nationally-syndicated radio program, or give a speech in front of a state house, those are all things I'm evidently no longer allowed to tell regular readers about in my column -- a column I started and expanded to a national presence on the premise and promise that I could.
That's in spite of a pledge made to me by Examiner only three months ago after one of their reviewers had rejected my ATF ammo ban piece from news feed submission on the grounds that I did not link to a recognized news source.
"As for the main premise of my story having no link, what am I supposed to do when this is original investigative journalism based my telephone conversation held today with an ATF official identified as the point of contact on a new proposed rule?" I asked. "There IS no other source to link to, as no one else has this development but me. I repeat: What am I to do?"
This was the last official word received on the matter:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Several of you have reached out to me, asking if I want you to do anything, maybe write to Examiner. Thanks, but no. These conditions are intolerable. I'm probably going to need to post a bare minimum article once a month just to keep them from declaring my account inactive and not sharing page view revenues from past articles, but it looks like their rules will no longer allow me to do much of the original stuff that requires self-referencing and linking.
How this will play out and if I'll land anywhere else is anybody's guess, but it doesn't look promising. Ultimately, I have to admit the failure to figure a way out of the box is mine, as my stuff is unacceptable to big boy media as well as to "lobby groups." That's because I do this to say what I want to say.
I'll keep writing for the magazine as long as they want me, and also do occasional contract assignments that don't dictate information-stifling restrictions, but without a replacement gig, this is probably going to require stepping back and refocusing energies on something that values my efforts enough to actually pay the bills. For now, look for this blog and all of my social media activity to be limited to dreaded "self-promotion."
UPDATE: Well, that was quick. At least it shows they can move when motivated. They fired me, and warned me not to show anyone the termination notice because that would violate a confidentiality agreement. I'll match their agreement violations over the years against mine if they want to pursue this, because I maintain this is definitely in the interests of pursuing a story about cheesy Examiner.com practices:
 |
| [Click to enlarge] |
Monday, February 27, 2006
MMM Gallery IV
If you don't yet know what the Million Moon March is about, click here and check out some of the links--you'll soon get the idea.
And now for the latest submissions to the Control Arms Campaign:
Cowboy Blob got the first acceptance of the week with a couple of tourists to "The Happiest Disarmed Place on Earth."
M-I-C: See you real soon!
K-E-Y: Why? Because they like him!
It really is a small world after all!
Free Constitution tells us Million Facers Mao, Vladimir and Hideki all have good reasons to respectively be safe from armed violence, invoke arms trade treaties, and provide no arms for atrocities. After all, why spoil a sweet deal with competition if you don't have to?
Be sure and let us know if they make the cut, OK, Stan?
Do you remember that old peace song from the 60's, "Abraham, Martin and John"? Well Captain of a Crew of One posted his own version of today's peace leaders over at the Million Faces campaign: Robert, Muhammad and Omar.
I understand Sailor Curt may have mixed up Muhammad's geography a bit, but hey, we're all gonna be one great big peaceful disarmed world anyway, right? Just one question for Dion about his 60's peace hit, though--how come you didn't sing anything about "my old friend Bobby" wiretapping "my old friend Martin"? And isn't working with Phil Spector a blast?
But I digress. Fortunately, The Mad Hatter (aka "Jeremy H") reins things back in with three (count 'em!) successful posts, and the wry observation that someone over at Control Arms just might be one toke over the line (I thought we might be on a 60's song kick for a second, but then noticed Brewer & Shipley didn't record this 'til '71...) Anyway, say "Hello" to my li'l friends, the "unpredictable" Hermann...uhhh...Manuel, the "neighborly" David (aka Dylan, and I don't mean folksinger Bob, and the "handy" Anderson, who just needed to tone down a bit on the emotions to gain acceptance.
Meanwhile, Oscar Poppa treats us to a plea from south of the border, where Vinnie shows he's crazy like a Fox by encouraging the loco gringos to disarm. Doesn't this picture just scream "Trust me"?
Speaking of trust, Ride Fast & Shoot Straight has earned it two more times from the Million Facers, who agree with Martin's demand to "Get tough on arms," as well as Vidkun's plea to "Make me safe from armed violence" (especially the firing squad kind, eh Viddie?)
Finally, we have correspondent Cliff Reed, who has been trying mightily to introduce Charley M to the list of Control Arms-approved Predators on Parade.
Keep trying, Cliff. Based on the gallery of thugs they've posted to date, they're probably just concerned that he's not bloody-handed enough to join such august company--at least without first being vetted by the admissions committee.
UPDATE:
I owe SteamDragon a BIG APOLOGY. He got a bunch of good pictures in, and in my haste yesterday, I overlooked posting them here.
SD--I'm sorry. I'll do an exclusive gallery on your successful posts tomorrow.
And now for the latest submissions to the Control Arms Campaign:
Cowboy Blob got the first acceptance of the week with a couple of tourists to "The Happiest Disarmed Place on Earth."
M-I-C: See you real soon!
K-E-Y: Why? Because they like him!
It really is a small world after all!
Free Constitution tells us Million Facers Mao, Vladimir and Hideki all have good reasons to respectively be safe from armed violence, invoke arms trade treaties, and provide no arms for atrocities. After all, why spoil a sweet deal with competition if you don't have to?
Be sure and let us know if they make the cut, OK, Stan?
Do you remember that old peace song from the 60's, "Abraham, Martin and John"? Well Captain of a Crew of One posted his own version of today's peace leaders over at the Million Faces campaign: Robert, Muhammad and Omar.
I understand Sailor Curt may have mixed up Muhammad's geography a bit, but hey, we're all gonna be one great big peaceful disarmed world anyway, right? Just one question for Dion about his 60's peace hit, though--how come you didn't sing anything about "my old friend Bobby" wiretapping "my old friend Martin"? And isn't working with Phil Spector a blast?
But I digress. Fortunately, The Mad Hatter (aka "Jeremy H") reins things back in with three (count 'em!) successful posts, and the wry observation that someone over at Control Arms just might be one toke over the line (I thought we might be on a 60's song kick for a second, but then noticed Brewer & Shipley didn't record this 'til '71...) Anyway, say "Hello" to my li'l friends, the "unpredictable" Hermann...uhhh...Manuel, the "neighborly" David (aka Dylan, and I don't mean folksinger Bob, and the "handy" Anderson, who just needed to tone down a bit on the emotions to gain acceptance.
Meanwhile, Oscar Poppa treats us to a plea from south of the border, where Vinnie shows he's crazy like a Fox by encouraging the loco gringos to disarm. Doesn't this picture just scream "Trust me"?
Speaking of trust, Ride Fast & Shoot Straight has earned it two more times from the Million Facers, who agree with Martin's demand to "Get tough on arms," as well as Vidkun's plea to "Make me safe from armed violence" (especially the firing squad kind, eh Viddie?)
Finally, we have correspondent Cliff Reed, who has been trying mightily to introduce Charley M to the list of Control Arms-approved Predators on Parade.
Keep trying, Cliff. Based on the gallery of thugs they've posted to date, they're probably just concerned that he's not bloody-handed enough to join such august company--at least without first being vetted by the admissions committee.
UPDATE:
I owe SteamDragon a BIG APOLOGY. He got a bunch of good pictures in, and in my haste yesterday, I overlooked posting them here.
SD--I'm sorry. I'll do an exclusive gallery on your successful posts tomorrow.
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