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The Christian nationalist intentions of Project Blitz have also received much attention, but a remarkable episode in Minnesota this past state legislative session may be a harbinger of a more profoundly theocratic politics on the horizon.

In February, 2009, members of the Islamic Center of Irvine learned that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had hired Craig Monteilh, a 46-year-old fitness instructor and convicted con man, to infiltrate their mosque and keep it under surveillance. Members had wondered about Monteilh for a while. Back in 2007, the local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), alarmed by his talk of jihad and plans for a terrorist attack, reported him to Irvine police and secured a three-year restraining order against him.

This history clearly shows why most courts in the United States are reticent to accept brainwashing theories today. The science underlying such claims is faulty, and courts have realized that accepting such claims undercuts the very basis of the legal system, which is that individuals are responsible for their own actions.

Eridiana Rodriguez vanished during her shift cleaning the office building at 2 Rector Street in Lower Manhattan’s Financial District on Tuesday night, July 7. After four days, one hundred police scoured the building and discovered the body of this mother of three the following Saturday, bound with tape and stuffed into an air duct on the 12th floor, which was under construction and had restricted access.

Alito’s majority opinion is bereft of both principle and reason. He could have been more concise and lost little nuance by simply writing: ‘The 40ft tall Christian cross is really old and people will get upset if we remove it, so it stays.’

During the election campaign in 2008 it was clear some people on the political Right were becoming agitated about the potential for a Black man backed by liberals to become the next President of the United States.

With the Church of England changing its investment policy on medical cannabis, and given Meghan and Harry’s familiarity with it, some wonder whether the Queen, if not the Royal Family in general, can become one of the best ‘cannabis brands’ in the world.

The men who created the New Right chose the Republican Party as the party to attach themselves to, even if they didn’t agree with all of the GOP’s ideas, melding conservatives with the Christian Right.

If history is any guide, lax oversight and secrecy are a recipe for abusive political intelligence gathering by the FBI. Pervasive official secrecy continues to threaten our national values under the Obama administration, in spite of a declared willingness to increase transparency.