90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Amish Farmer Gets Prison Sentence for Processing His Own Meat

Processing meat on your own property in the U.S. can now lead to jail time, as has been proven by an Amish man from Pennsylvania who has been threatened with a hefty prison sentence and issued a whopping $250,000 fine for doing just that.

Amos Miller says he is being persecuted by the Biden administration for practicing his religious freedom to raise and prepare food the way he believes God intended food to be raised and prepared.

Miller practices rotational grazing on his independently owned, holistically managed, century old farm in Bird-In-Hand Pennsylvania. His heritage-breed cows are raised on organic pastures.

Ourorganicwellness.com reports: Around 4000 customers of his private, members-only, food buying club are dependent on his meat, eggs and dairy products, as well as fermented fruits and veggies… and are willing to spend top dollar to get it shipped to them all over the country, as they don’t trust food from the grocery store.

But a couple of weeks ago, a federal judge told Miller to cease and desist all meat sales, and sent armed U.S. marshals to search his property, farm store and freezers. They took an inventory of all his meat to make sure he doesn’t sell any or slaughter anymore animals.

Last summer, the judge also ordered Miller to pay $250,000 for “contempt of court,” and said he will also have to pay the salaries of the USDA investigators assigned to his case, $50,000 of which was due last week as a “good faith” payment to avoid jail.

(The court’s next hearing on Miller’s case will be this Tuesday, April 12. Please show up if you can. Details below.)

So what exactly is Miller’s crime?

Slaughtering and processing the meat he raises on his own farm and selling it fresh-frozen to members of his private food buying club, who’ve all signed contracts stating they understand the meat is not processed in USDA-inspected plants, or treated with USDA-required chemical preservatives… because that’s how they want it, and the very reason they are willing to go to such great lengths to get it.

But the USDA thinks his customers are too stupid to think for themselves and need them to come in and protect them from themselves.

You probably don’t know (because I didn’t until Miller told me) that all USDA-licensed processing plants are required to treat ALL meat (even the local, grass-fed, organic variety) with synthetic preservatives.

“Often they use citric acid, which you’d think comes from oranges or lemons, but it’s a modified substance made from corn… and they don’t even have to label it on the meat,” Miller said.

“The USDA processing plants require the meat to be treated with a chemical cocktail of citric acid, lactic acid and peracetic acid,” said a customer who handles Miller’s website and other modern communications (because he’s Amish).

“The peracetic acid is toxic and the citric and lactic are GMO.”

“It’s not lactic acid coming from the fermentation of sauerkraut. It’s all created in a dish in a lab. It’s a synthetic sterilizer that causes many health problems,” Anke (who preferred not to use her last name) told me.

“Our members don’t want any of that,” Miller said. “They want fresh, raw meat, with no additives. Our members want it straight from the farm with no preservatives on it.”

“As a farmer, you could invest all your energy and money producing the most healthy, nourishing meat and at the end of the day, you are ruining your meat sending your animals to a USDA facility for slaughter,” Anke added.

Additionally, USDA-approved processing plants aren’t allowed to sell certain organ meats and glands for human consumption. “The very nutrient-dense organs, that seem to help people, they want to ban,” Miller said.

Even if the USDA didn’t require preservatives and allowed the sale of organ meats, it still would still be nearly impossible for Miller and other small farmers to make a profit with Big Meat processors acting as middlemen. And the cost of becoming licensed by the USDA to process their own meat is too steep.

“The rules and regulations are such that you have to get into debt $100,000 before you ever sell your first pound of meat, and the market’s not guaranteed,” Miller said. “There’s no option for farmers to start small and add on and buy...

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Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #385

Is Francis Really the Pope?

Why some say “no.”

Many in the Catholic media tend to cover-up for Pope Francis either by putting the best possible interpretation on his actions or else by failing to report news that might be damaging to his image.

One of the main stories that the Catholic media covers-up is that a debate has arisen among Catholics as to whether or not Francis is really the pope.

Since those who claim that he is not the pope constitute a small minority, the Catholic media has, by-and-large, chosen to avoid the topic. It’s a hot-potato issue and those who get caught on the wrong side of it might pay a heavy price.

To claim that the pope is not the pope is like claiming that the president of the United States is not really the president. One would have to be very sure of his case before going out on that limb. As we have discovered, claiming that the election of Joe Biden was rigged has turned out to be a risky proposition.

Yet one of the reasons that some Catholics believe that Francis is not pope is the claim that his election was rigged. The charge was leveled, by the way, about eight years before anyone thought to make a similar claim about the election of Joe Biden.

According to this version of events, a group of high-ranking liberal prelates who met regularly in Saint Gallen, Switzerland, managed to engineer the election of Jorge Bergoglio by employing various devious tactics. For example, it’s said that they were responsible for manufacturing a scandal around the name of the other chief “contender” for the papacy, Cardinal Angelo Scola. For more on the “St. Gallen Mafia” see here.

Another reason that is often given for the claim that Francis is not pope is that the resignation of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI was not valid. But this is a very complicated topic, the resolution of which depends on one’s interpretation of canon law, and on discerning the intentions of Pope Benedict.

But the whole issue of the validity of the papal election would probably never have been raised except for another problem with Francis—namely, that he seems to many to be a bad pope, a very bad pope.

A “bad pope” can mean that a pope is corrupt and immoral, or it can mean that he holds erroneous beliefs, or it can be a combination of the two. In the case of Francis, the “bad pope” charge usually refers to erroneous beliefs rather than personal immorality (although the fact that Francis surrounds himself with corrupt people has raised suspicions about his character).

Interestingly, the charge of “bad pope” is far less contentious than the charge of “not pope.” In fact, many of those who defend the validity of the Francis papacy are quick to admit that he is indeed a bad pope.

For example, this is the position of Michael Voris, the head of Church Militant—a popular website that has a large following among traditional Catholics.

Church Militant has been highly critical of Francis and has exposed numerous scandals related to him, yet Voris strongly rejects the argument that Francis is not the pope. Like other defenders of Francis’s legitimacy, he points out that Church history reveals many cases of popes who were guilty of simony, or sexual immorality, or of adhering to erroneous belief.

The latter category is the most problematic since it calls into question the doctrine of papal infallibility. But, as Voris and others point out, there’s a difference between holding an erroneous view and teaching it as a doctrine that must be believed by all Catholics.

Thus, personal views expressed by a pope—such as Francis’ off-the-cuff, in-flight remarks to reporters—do not qualify as infallible pronouncements. And some canon law experts say that none of the official documents signed by Francis meet the strict conditions for...

Documents made public last week by the Federal Election Commission reveal that Hillary Clinton campaign payments to Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Donald Trump were not treated as legal expenses. These newly released documents eviscerate the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign’s attempts to hide behind attorney-client privilege in the special counsel’s criminal case against former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann.

Sussmann, who awaits trial in a D.C. federal court later this month on the charge that he made a false statement to former FBI General Counsel James Baker, is currently fighting to keep prosecutors from seeing 38 documents withheld from the grand jury based on claims of attorney-client privilege. In early April, Special Counsel John Durham’s team filed a motion to compel those secreting the documents to provide them to the court to allow the judge to assess, in camera, whether they were properly withheld. In response, Sussmann argued the special counsel had waited too long to force the issue and that his criminal case was the wrong forum to litigate the question.

The day after the former Clinton campaign attorney filed his response opposing in camera review of the material, his “fellow Spygate hoaxers sought to join in Sussmann’s efforts to keep the documents concealed” by seeking to intervene in the case. Last week, the trial court granted the flurry of motions to intervene, authorizing tech executive Rodney Joffe, Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie, the DNC, and the Clinton campaign to file briefs opposing disclosure of the documents.

On Wednesday the court will hear oral arguments on the special counsel’s motion and decide whether the 38 documents must be turned over, initially to the court and then eventually to prosecutors. While Durham’s team previously had a strong case that the documents were not protected by attorney-client privilege, a document dump last week by the FEC further strengthens the prosecutor’s position.

A little more than a month ago, news broke that the FEC had fined the DNC and the Clinton campaign more than $100,000 related to those organizations’ reporting of fees paid in 2016. Those fees were paid to Fusion GPS for opposition research but marked on financial disclosures as legal expenses remitted to its law firm, Perkins Coie. Until Thursday, however, the basis for the FEC’s conclusion that probable cause existed that the DNC and Clinton campaign had misreported the purpose of those disbursements remained buried in the bureaucracy.

The now-released file about the FEC’s investigation into the DNC and the Clinton campaign contains a bevy of material. It includes, most relevantly, memoranda prepared by the FEC’s Office of General Counsel and approved by the FEC.

The memoranda conclude that probable cause supports a finding that both the Clinton campaign and the DNC misrepresented the purpose of the payments to Fusion GPS. While the political organizations reported the payments to Fusion GPS as “legal services” or “legal and compliance consulting,” the FEC concluded probable cause existed that the expenses instead related to...