Stormtroopers and Child-Snatchers (Update, April 14)

The Nanny State Goes to War: Paramilitary Police lay siege to Maryanne Goldbodo's Detroit Home.

Ariana Goldboldo, a mentally handicapped 13-year-old, was abducted from her home at gunpoint on March 24. Her captors have systematically poisoned her through injections of a dangerous psychoactive drug. There is also reason to believe that Ariana, who has reportedly tested positive for an STD, has been molested during her time in captivity.


Ariana's mother, Maryanne, made a valiant but futile effort to protect her daughter. As a result, she may end up in prison. If this happens, Ariana almost certainly won't survive.

Godboldo, a college dance instructor, had attempted to school her daughter at home, but eventually decided to place the youngster in a local government school. This meant that the girl would have to undergo a government-dictated suite of vaccinations. 

Shortly after receiving the injections, the girl experienced severe side-effects, including behavioral problems she hadn’t previously experienced. 

When Godboldo consulted with local health and welfare officials, she was told that her daughter would have to receive regular injections of Risperdal, supposedly to counteract the effects of the other government-mandated vaccinations. This is a bit like prescribing cancer to treat diabetes. Among the documented side-effects of that drug are tardive dyskinesia (difficulty with basic motor skills) and severe emotional problems – including suicidal thoughts. When Godboldo’s long-suffering child began to display those symptoms, the mother refused to continue with the injections.

The local “child protection” bureaucracy – which, like all other agencies of its kind, subscribes to the totalitarian assumption that children are the property of the state – decreed that Godboldo was "in denial about her daughter's mental health issue." 

There's no evidence that Godboldo disputed the seriousness of her daughter's condition; as Ariana's primary caretaker, she understood it very well. She had very reasonable doubts about the competence of the therapeutic officials who were forcing Ariana to undergo injections of a potentially lethal drug. But it is impermissible for parents to entertain such reservations about the wisdom of those clothed in the purported authority of the State, or to resist their prescriptions, whatever their efficacy. 

Sure, Ariana might die or be driven irretrievably mad as a result of government-mandated treatment -- but this was a decision for the Anointed Ones to make, and for parents to accept with proper docility. Accordingly, the CPS authorized itself to “liberate” Godboldo’s daughter in order to continue poisoning her with Risperdal injections. A small team of government kidnappers – CPS workers and Detroit Police officers – materialized on Godboldo’s doorstep, demanding that she surrender the child. 

Nied preens in Iraq.

"They broke into my home illegally in an effort to take my daughter," Godboldo recalls. "They had no documentation that said they were allowed to enter my home."

Godboldo, acting on her natural authority as a parent to protect her child, refused to let the kidnappers take her daughter. 

When Godboldo refused to let CPS take her daughter, a home invasion team -- led, appropriately, by a veteran of the Iraq occupation, Lt. Michael Nied -- forced its way into the home.  Nied claims that Godboldo fired a gunshot that sprayed him with drywall residue and made his little heart quiver. He and his fellow heroes retreated and called in a "barricaded gunman situation." A ten-hour siege then ensued.

Prudential considerations aside, Godboldo would have been within her rights to gun down the kidnappers, had she possessed the means to do so. She hadn't committed a criminal offense, and the police didn't bother to bring along one of those cunning little permission slips judges reflexively issue any time police want to invade a home. In moral and legal terms they were no better than any other gang of armed intruders.

Eventually a paramilitary SWAT team – complete with automatic weapons, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters – was dispatched to surround Godboldo’s home. The mother eventually surrendered and was put in jail on a $500,000 bond. Although Maryanne was released on bail, her daughter remains in the custody of her abductors, undergoing forcible injections of a drug that is slowly destroying her body and mind -- and, quite possibly, being subjected to sexual violation as well.

Godboldo can take a small measure of comfort in the fact that Ariana -- unlike Aiyana Jones, who was murdered by a Detroit SWAT team in a gratuitous raid staged for a "reality TV" program a year ago -- is still alive. But the risk to that child increases with every minute she remains in the custody of Michigan's child "protection" service.

Last year, Detroit ABC affiliate WXYZ presented a detailed report on the murder of 10-year-old Johnny Andron, a child suffering from epilepsy and cerebral palsy who was seized by the state and starved to death in what was referred to as a "foster care facility." Johnny's mother Elena, a single parent, devoted most of her free time to caring for her wheelchair-bound son. 

After she lost her factory job, Elena made the tragic error of seeking "help" from the child "welfare" system, which makes a federally subsidized profit each time it steals a child from his parents. Johnny was made a "temporary ward of the state," a judicial designation that was tantamount to a death sentence. The same was true of Elena's parental rights, since the same ruling placed her on a central registry of "abusive" and "neglectful" parents. She was placed inside the hamster wheel of government-approved "parenting classes" taught by profiteering busybodies who've attached themselves like boxcars to the federal gravy train.

For months, Elena struggled to find and keep a new job while dutifully attending classes that did nothing but clutter her schedule. During the same period she watched her son, who had been a hefty child but -- considering his disabilities -- a healthy one, slowly waste away through deliberate criminal neglect. 

Infuriated that her child was being tortured to death through starvation, Elena dared to complain. This action was taken as evidence of her unsuitability to be a parent. She was summoned to court and informed by a black-robed functionary that she wouldn't be permitted any further visits with her son. She had no further contact with Johnny, and no updates on his status until a representative of the criminal syndicate that had taken him hostage announced to her that he had died.

Mike Ratte nearly lost his seven-year-old son into Michigan's foster-care gulag after mistakenly allowing the child to take a sip from a beverage called Mike's Hard Lemonade during a Tigers game in 2008. Ratte, a professor of archeology at the University of Michigan, didn't know that the product contained alcohol. Since the sign advertising the drink described it only as "Mike's Lemonade," Ratte assumed that it was merely an overpriced soft drink.

Leo took a sip of the beverage, immediately found it distasteful, and place the bottle on the floor near his bleacher seat. Shortly before the game ended a Comerica Park security guard waddled over, picked up the bottle, and asked Ratte if his son had been drinking from it. 


Although Reed was puzzled by the question, he replied in the affirmative. His puzzlement mutated into alarm when he was told that the "lemonade" was actually an alcoholic drink. The guard demanded that Ratte and his son remain seated while a scrum of his buddies assembled to escort them to a police substation located in the stadium.


When questioned by the police, Ratte admitted -- once again -- that Leo had taken a swig of the drink, repeating as well his insistence that this was an innocent mistake. Anybody burdened with even a particle of common sense would recognize this as the truth. If Mike Ratte were perversely determined to get his son drunk, would he do so in public? If questioned about this, would such a person admit that his son had sampled the forbidden libation?

Anybody capable of making an EEG needle twitch would recognize that this was an honest mistake, not a crime. (Another Michigan family recently had a similar but scarier experience, due to a mix-up at an Applebee's restaurant.) This was made all the more obvious when an exam confirmed that Leo wasn't intoxicated. But this didn't prevent the police from doing what they are programmed to do in such circumstances, which is to use any available pretext to kidnap the child.


As described in a civil complaint filed on behalf of the family, Mike and Leo were forced to take an ambulance ride to a nearby hospital, where Leo was forced to endure a blood test that confirmed the absence of alcohol in his body. While his son was being needlessly bled and perforated, Mike was taken to a separate room and questioned by Officer Celeste Reed of the Detroit Police Department's Child Abuse Division. This wasn't an investigation; it was a dilatory maneuver. Reed was simply waiting until the child-snatchers had worked out the details of the abduction. 


When she finally acknowledged to Ratte that she and her comrades were going to steal his son, Reed played the Nuremberg Defense card, blaming a superior who was "pushing this case to impress her new boss." Once Leo was in custody, however, Reed took the initiative, perjuriously claiming in her report that officers had "observed [Leo] to be intoxicated." 


Leo was sequestered from his family and put into temporary foster care while the CPS bureaucracy labored to find some way to make their abduction permanent. The "referee" assigned to the case announced that she would keep it open for a week. However, Mike and his wife -- unlike most of the families victimized by the child-snatchers -- were people of means and influence. With the help of a capable attorney they were able to free their son after a mere two days' captivity. 

 "Class has something to do with the fact that the child was only in care for two days," points out Don Duquette, a law professor at the University of Michigan and director of the university's child advocacy center said. "If you're not sophisticated, the system isn't set up to give you very much of a chance to work against the ritual that's ordinarily done."

The "ritual" Duquette refers to is a form of bureaucratic child sacrifice: Families are destroyed, and children are abused under the color of supposed government authority, in order to placate the demands of the tax-feeding class. That ritual can commence at any time, for any reason. And any family can be selected as sacrificial victims. All that is required is the conjunction of an anonymous complaint and a willing bureaucrat. I write those words as a father who has confronted that prospect face-to-face.

Damn straight.

 The kidnapping of Leo Ratte occurred because his father made a trivial mistake involving a government-restricted mood-altering substance that inflicted no measurable harm on the child. 

By way of contrast, Elena Andron and Maryanne Godboldo have been traduced as "neglectful" parents because they sought to preserve their handicapped children from state-sanctioned harm. As a result, Elena's son Johnny is dead, and the same people responsible for that atrocity will quite possibly kill Ariana unless Maryanne is able to rescue her from the child "protection" system.





If Maryanne goes to prison, her daughter will die. At present, her prosecution on assault charges is being held in abeyance pending a ruling from the Michigan State Supreme Court in a case "that will determine if residents have the right to defend themselves from police officers entering a home without proper authority," reports the Detroit News. 

Embedded in this delay is a critical admission by the prosecution -- namely, that Godboldo is correct in claiming that the CPS raid was conducted without legal authority. Unfortunately -- albeit predictably -- the Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled that it is, in all circumstances, a "felony" for a Mundane to obstruct or resist the aggressive violence of a police officer acting without lawful authority. 


In a 1999 ruling (People v. Wess), the Michigan Court of Appeals, citing the state legal code, admitted that citizens had a right, explicitly protected by state statute, "to use such reasonable force as is necessary to prevent an illegal attachment and to resist an illegal arrest." However, in the dicta of that ruling the court all but begged for either the legislature or the state Supreme Court to change the law:


"We share the concerns of other jurisdictions that the right to resist an illegal arrest is an outmoded and dangerous doctrine, and we urge our Supreme Court to reconsider this doctrine at the first available opportunity.... we see no benefit to continuing the right to resist an otherwise peaceful arrest made by a law enforcement officer, merely because the arrestee believes the arrest is illegal. Given modern procedural safeguards for criminal defendants, the `right' only preserves the possibility that harm will come to the arresting officer or the defendant."

The line about "procedural safeguards" is unfiltered codswallop, of course -- but remember it, because we'll return to it anon. 


In 2002, the Michigan state legislature modified the relevant section of the state code (MCL 705.81d) by removing the clause recognizing the common law right to "use such reasonable force as is necessary to prevent" an unlawful arrest (that is, an armed kidnapping) by a police officer.  

 In a 2004 ruling (People v. Ventura) that dealt with a self-defense claim against an unlawful arrest, the Court of Appeals, in a perfectly nauseating display of mock humility, proclaimed that "it is not within our province to disturb our Legislature's obvious affirmative choice to modify the traditional common-law rule that a person may resist an unlawful arrest." 

Of course, the legislature made that "choice" after being invited to do so by the same Court of Appeals.

Maryanne Godboldo (center) with liturgical dancers at her church.

In the 2008 case headed for the state Supreme Court (People v. Moreno), the Appeals Court observed that "we find no reference to the lawfulness of the arrest or detaining act" in the statute, which "states only that an individual who resists a person the individual knows or has reason to know is performing his duties is guilty of a felony."


As the Michigan Court of Appeals acknowledged, the Common Law recognizes an unqualified right to resist an unlawful arrest. The Constitution -- for whatever it's worth -- reinforces that right by placing due process impediments (such as the necessity of obtaining search warrants) on the ability of armed hirelings in government-issued costumes to inflict themselves on their betters. But the Court of Appeals -- like every statist body of its kind -- insists that the costume trumps the Common Law and the Constitution. 


Now let's return to the notion that the right to resist arrest has become "outmoded" because of the "procedural safeguards" that supposedly protect criminal defendants. Ariana Godboldo has never been charged with a crime; neither had her mother, until she engaged in a heroic but doomed effort to protect her child from an assault on their home that the prosecution now tacitly admits was unlawful. 

As Elena Andron and countless other parents have learned, there are no procedural safeguards for parental rights or the individual rights of children once the CPS intervenes. 

The federally subsidized child "protection" universe is a joint production of Lenin, Kafka and Salvador Dali in which power means everything, facts and law mean nothing, and the contours of "reality" are warped in the service of  self-enraptured bureaucrats. 

Unless a parent is a person of means and influence, like Mike Ratte, active resistance
may be the only way to keep his child or children from disappearing into the CPS Archipelago once the family comes to the attention of the child-snatchers. Ideally, this would mean pro-active measures to conceal a targeted child, or to provide for the child's escape in the event the child-nappers arrive.

As the abduction of Ariana Godboldo demonstrates, the child "protection" apparatus is literally at war with American parents, and police are prepared to murder any parent determined to keep his children out of the hands of those who can drug them, starve them, and molest them with impunity.  

Update: No crisis, no crime, but the prosecution will proceed

"Authorities have determined there is no emergency need for [13-year-old Ariana Godboldo] ... to be on medication, after the girl's mother was accused of medically neglecting her by not giving her a psychotropic drug," reports the Detroit Free Press. "Though officials said Wednesday that there was no immediate need to give the girl medication, Michigan Assistant Attorney General David Law said he may reintroduce the issue later if the need arises."


Assistant Commissar for Official Persecution Law is not referring to any "need" on the part of Ariana. This entire exercise never had anything to do with her welfare. This official determination has validated Maryanne's refusal to poison her daughter with Risperdal -- but that doesn't matter, either: She is scheduled to go on trial June 8 for the supposed offense of refusing to permit her daughter to be seized at gunpoint and forcibly injected with a drug the state now admits did her no good.

 Thanks so much for your generous help to keep Pro Libertate on-line! God bless. 

Dum spiro, pugno!

The Nanny State Goes Nazi

“Whenever you hear a man prating about the Constitution, spot him as a traitor.” This instruction was given by President Andrew Johnson during the military occupation of the conquered southern states as a means of winnowing out the real troublemakers for special treatment.

Today, being described as a “constitutionalist” can have fatal consequences – as in death-by-government consequences.

The precise definition of “police state” may be elusive, but this one is suitable for our purposes: A police state exists anywhere an innocent, law-abiding family can have its home violated, and their lives threatened, by a paramilitary strike team -- who abducts one of the children at gunpoint -- as the result of an anonymous phone call. Boiled down to its essentials, this is what happened to the Shiflett family of New Castle, Colorado.

Glenwood Springs Post-Independent

Last Thursday (January 3), 11-year-old Jon Shiflett fell and hit his head while attempting to grab the handle of a moving car. His father, 62-year-old Tom Shiflett, is a Vietnam veteran with adequate medical training to deal with minor emergencies of this sort. He's also something of a curmudgeon, a bearded patriarch who has raised ten children, home-schooling them all and raising them in commendable isolation from our depraved popular culture.

A few years ago, Tom reportedly chased away one of his daughter's undesirable suitors with an axe. He was charged with felony menacing, but the case was dismissed under Colorado's “Make My Day” law, which may be one of the more enlightened enactments in the history of that or any other state. The young male in question reportedly trespassed on the family's property and spent a half-hour making threats before Shiflett chased him away. And it was Shiflett, not the supposed victim, who called the Sheriff's Department.

As the father of two young daughters, I understand Tom's reaction and admire his restraint: If a two-legged predator were lurking near one of my daughters with malign intent I doubt I'd give him a warning and a fifty-yard head start.

After Jon injured himself, local paramedics materialized at the Shiflett home and entered it uninvited. Tom was reportedly curt with them, but allowed them to examine his son. As the medical personnel described the incident, Tom was abusive and threatening.

This account was disputed by a neutral eyewitness, Ross Talbott, who manages the Apple Tree Mobile Home Park where the family lives. Talbott told the local paper that it was the paramedics, not Shiflett, who acted “belligerent,” and that Tom – his undeniable crustiness notwithstanding – didn't yell or otherwise abuse the uninvited visitors.

In that adjective -- “uninvited” -- the problem resides. Tom was capable of caring for his son. He didn't call the ambulance, and wasn't interested in incurring a huge service fee for an unnecessary hospital trip. The paramedics arrived because some local resident, impelled by civic-mindedness – or by the buttinski instinct, which is pretty much the same thing – called 911.

But Jon was already receiving competent medical help from a loving and highly motivated caregiver. Tom and his family (wife Tina and six children still at home) didn't want outside help, and “help” inflicted on an unwilling recipient is sometimes better considered a form of abuse.

So the ambulance service turned to the local magistrate and department of official child abduction and got a court order to take Jon in for a medical evaluation. Two social workers materialized at the Shiftlet's door to inform Tom that his son had to be taken in for treatment. It's not difficult to imagine Tom's reaction, which – given the fact that the government pests were able to leave under their own power – was another miracle of self-restraint.

Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario (who, appropriately enough, shares a name with a Genovese mob family kingpin) claims that Shiflett's reaction left him with no alternative but to dispatch the Garfield County “All-Hazards Response Team” to enforce the treatment order.

“Our history with him [Shiflett] shows that he can be violent,” commented Sheriff Vallario. “I knew he wasn't going to comply with us, I knew that he had to comply with this order, so I felt like for the safety of everybody that the All Hazards Team should be called and help to support the Sheriff's Office in this.”

See if you can wrap your mind around what passes for Vallario's reasoning here:

An 11-year-old boy got a bump on his head. His father is a retired Army medic who prefers to be left alone with his wife and several other children. There's a court order requiring that the child receive competent medical treatment. So rather than making a low-key visit to ask if the youngster is all right, you send in the jackboots late at night, locked, cocked and ready to rock.

Yeah, that's the safer approach. Everybody knows that the best way to see to a child's safety is to fill his small living space with masked, armed strangers who throw his father, mother, and siblings to the floor and seize him by force.

In fact, according to a letter Tina sent to WorldNetDaily (which broke this story), the Sheriff actually pretended to be making a friendly, informal visit as a way of luring Tom into letting him talk with Jon.

(Continues after jump)

Garfield County's "All-Hazards Response Team," a fully-funded subsidiary of the Department of Homeland Security: You remember all the engineered hysteria about "citizen militias" a decade and a half ago? How we were told it was dangerous for middle-aged white guys to deck themselves out in military drag and play with guns? Well ... the citizen militias pretty much evaporated, but outfits like this -- the Garfield County "All-Hazards Response Team" -- have pullulated across the countryside like mushrooms in cow manure. Not a single person was ever killed by a member of a "citizen militia," but people are killed every single week by gun-toting onanists like these guys.

“As soon as Jonathan was visible to the sheriff, a SWAT team appeared shining lights on Jon's face and others were bashing at the door with a ramming device,” recounts Tina. “My daughter resisted and pushed against the door to stop them as she didn't know who they were. I told her to back up and not try to fight them. They then entered our home, held a gun to my daughter's face and others of them, five or more, rushed into the living room and forced my other children to the ground.”

Such heroism.

The assailants seized Jon – who was utterly terrified -- to take him to the hospital, warning that if his parents or family tried to visit him “criminal charges would be pressed against us.”

Jon was returned about three hours later. The government-licensed health care workers certified that the youngster had been getting adequate treatment at home. Not a particle of evidence was found that the boy had suffered abuse or neglect. Drawing from the “Well, Duh” handbook of basic first aid, hospital officials recommended that Jon ice his injury, drink plenty of fluids, and receive Tylenol to relieve pain and inflammation. All of this was being done by Jon's father, mind you, but since it didn't have the government's imprimatur, it didn't count, or something.

None of this was necessary. But all of it was inevitable. In justifying this attack, Sheriff Vallario – who really needs the kind of attitude adjustment the likes of Chuck Liddell could administer – claimed that the use of a strike team was necessary because Tom Shiflett is a "self-proclaimed constitutionalist.” Which means he's a law-abiding man who is both reluctant and willing to use force when necessary and proper.

Tom Shiflett, seen through the door that was forced open with a battering ram during the police assault on his home.

Glenwood Springs Post Independent

Remember this well: The primary reason our country is afflicted with SWAT teams is not to protect the public from violent crime. At present, the primary mission of SWAT, as is the case with most of what we call “law enforcement,” is the collection of revenue, primarily through the lucrative, murderous fraud called the “War on Drugs.” On occasion, SWAT or tactical teams actually conduct hostage rescues or intervene to protect the public from violent criminals, but that's a mere lagniappe.

An important secondary purpose of SWAT teams that will eventually become their primary function in the emerging Homeland Security State is the role they play in beating down people who don't grovel. I can't say it any plainer than that.

And let there be no misunderstanding here: This was an assault by the Homeland Security State, because nearly all of the funding for the Garfield County All-Hazards Response Team comes from the Department of Homeland Security.

Sheriff Vallario, who heads a local joint drug task force called TRIDENT and has experience with the DEA and training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia on his resume, is typical of the new breed of “local” sheriffs and police: His role is to administer the Regime's policies, not to protect the rights and property of those living in his community. His histaminic reaction to a “constitutionalist” illustrates this perfectly (as does his enthusiasm for incremental civilian disarmament).

Beginning about thirteen years ago, police agencies across the nation have been catechized about the dangers of “constitutionalists” -- that is, people who have no gift for groveling. The most notorious example of this indoctrination was a pamphlet distributed by the Phoenix FBI office in 1999 and publicized in late 2001 by firearms activist Angel Shamaya. That document instructed police officers: "If you encounter any of the following, call the Joint Terrorism Task Force."

The very first category listed in the document - and, presumably, the single greatest danger - was "Right Wing Extremists," specifically "'defenders' of US Constitution against federal government and the UN (Super Patriots)." Interestingly, although peaceable disciples of Madison were listed as potential terrorists, radical followers of Mohammed didn't make the cut.

Several years earlier – April, 1996 to be exact – a consultant named John J. Nutter of the Ohio-based Conflict Analysis Group held a seminar in Oklahoma City entitled "Criminal Justice and Right-Wing Extremism in America." About 500 law enforcement personnel attended the event.

The syllabus from Nutter's seminar describes "right-wing extremism" as a "lightning rod for the mentally disturbed" and a movement which threatens "assassination, mass murder, and armed uprising." To help law enforcement deal with the "danger" from the right, Nutter offers an extensive list of "Potential Warning Signs." "Each of the following indications by itself might not mean an individual is active in an extremist group, or planning violent or criminal activity," the outline stresses. "However, if you observe one of them, better look for others."

Symptoms of someone suffering from incipient terrorism syndrome, according to Nutter, include "militia symbols" such as "firearms lapel pins, bumper stickers or window decals about the New World Order ... 'I fear the government that fears my gun' ... or 'Don't Tread on Me' flags."

Other stigmata of extremism listed by Nutter include expressing concern about a loss of national sovereignty, collecting gold or silver coins, or expressing contempt for the Federal Reserve and a desire to restore the gold standard. So presumably a “Ron Paul for President” yard sign would be considered a warning sign under this standard, as well. (Nutter went so far as to list The Law by Frederic Bastiat -- a tract that reflects its author's comprehensively non-violent views -- as the type of literature a potential right-wing terrorist might possess. Oh, and he listed one of my books, as well.)

Similar profiles were presented in Project Megiddo, the immensely foolish FBI report (is there any other kind?) published in 1999, as well as more recent documents distributed by the state governments of Alabama and Virginia(.pdf). And now we see the Sheriff of Garfield County, Colorado actually acting on that assumption in a SWAT raid that needlessly terrorized an innocent family and endangered the lives of six children.

A not-entirely-gratuitous plug....

The incident in Garfield County is a timely illustration of the central themes of my new book, Liberty in Eclipse: The War on Terror and the Rise of the Homeland Security State. It's available for sale on-line at e-bay, and will soon be available (I promise!) through Amazon and other major retailers.

Dum spiro, pugno!