This statement is bothsiderism: "when conservatives railed against those federal law enforcement interventions at Waco and Ruby Ridge, but excused or even made light of abuses by local police... Democrats, meanwhile, had little to say about ATF or FBI abuses, mostly because they found the people on the receiving end of those abuses to be politically unsavory."
Not remembered is that *Clinton* routinely got blamed for both Waco and Ruby Ridge despite the fact that it was the Bush DoJ that started events in motion for both incidents and Ruby Ridge occurred exclusively under Bush. Janet Reno hadn't even been sworn in as AG when the DoJ disastrously attempted to serve a warrant at Waco and she had been in office a little over a month when the FBI decided to shoot its way into Waco. If there has been less than total sympathy to right-wing complaints about those abuses, it has been because they have told many lies, and those lies were told for political reasons: to hang the blame for these deaths on Clinton and Reno.
Nor has the right been honest about the fact that Randy Weaver and Vernon Howell's acolytes were heavily armed, resisted lawful (even if ridiculous) law enforcement demands and that in the initial service of a warrant, Howell & Co. had ambushed and murdered four federal agents (crimes for which they were never held to account), whereas almost all of the BLM protests have involved unarmed people who had not assaulted officers. In any way equating these incidents with bursting in on a completely innocent couple in the dead of night is...weird.
I don't see judgments on the degree of misconduct by law enforcement in the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents as a partisan matter. We have seen unequal enforcement of the law for generations, but (prior to Ferguson) the only time that disproportionate force has seemed to become an issue is when white people died. So, yes, law enforcement acted irresponsibly in both Waco and Ruby Ridge and innocent people died needlessly. But the lack of reaction probably wasn't because Howell&Co. and the Weavers were "unsavory." It's probably because they used deadly force in resisting law enforcement and especially because so many lies were told to whitewash their roles.
It's a good article except...
This statement is bothsiderism: "when conservatives railed against those federal law enforcement interventions at Waco and Ruby Ridge, but excused or even made light of abuses by local police... Democrats, meanwhile, had little to say about ATF or FBI abuses, mostly because they found the people on the receiving end of those abuses to be politically unsavory."
Not remembered is that *Clinton* routinely got blamed for both Waco and Ruby Ridge despite the fact that it was the Bush DoJ that started events in motion for both incidents and Ruby Ridge occurred exclusively under Bush. Janet Reno hadn't even been sworn in as AG when the DoJ disastrously attempted to serve a warrant at Waco and she had been in office a little over a month when the FBI decided to shoot its way into Waco. If there has been less than total sympathy to right-wing complaints about those abuses, it has been because they have told many lies, and those lies were told for political reasons: to hang the blame for these deaths on Clinton and Reno.
Nor has the right been honest about the fact that Randy Weaver and Vernon Howell's acolytes were heavily armed, resisted lawful (even if ridiculous) law enforcement demands and that in the initial service of a warrant, Howell & Co. had ambushed and murdered four federal agents (crimes for which they were never held to account), whereas almost all of the BLM protests have involved unarmed people who had not assaulted officers. In any way equating these incidents with bursting in on a completely innocent couple in the dead of night is...weird.
I don't see judgments on the degree of misconduct by law enforcement in the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents as a partisan matter. We have seen unequal enforcement of the law for generations, but (prior to Ferguson) the only time that disproportionate force has seemed to become an issue is when white people died. So, yes, law enforcement acted irresponsibly in both Waco and Ruby Ridge and innocent people died needlessly. But the lack of reaction probably wasn't because Howell&Co. and the Weavers were "unsavory." It's probably because they used deadly force in resisting law enforcement and especially because so many lies were told to whitewash their roles.