It’s Been A Very Long Week.

Our last article was published on Saturday, March 19. The hiatus has been due to a family emergency in which my middle son, aged 20, contracted pneumonia. Apparently, this is a particularly aggressive and somewhat antibiotic-resistant strain. It had been diagnosed the week before and he was sent home with medication. As opposed to healing he got progressively worse… culminating in a high fever and coughing up blood. We rushed him back to the hospital.



He is a healthy and athletic six foot one inch kid, and this stuff nearly killed him in less than a week in spite of him being treated with antibiotics. Here’s the scary part… that pneumonia spread throughout both of his lungs in a matter of days.

To be fair to the medical professionals involved, I saw those first X-rays. They clearly showed a limited infection. The subsequent ones were enough to scare a few years growth out of any parent… both lungs were completely infected. This was confirmed by CAT and MRI scans. The machines were both located in the main hospital building, only a hallway away from my son’s room. I can only describe the care he has received as superb.

I can’t help but contrast this to the planned destruction of our medical health system by Barack Obama and his Marxist minions. I’ve done several articles illustrating the scarcity of medical services and diagnostic equipment in both the UK and Canada. You remember them, right? Those are the MRI and CAT diagnostic machines, of which there are only six in all of Canada? If someone as critically ill as my son had to be transported hundreds of miles to a magnetic resonance imaging machine he might not have survived, and we’d be planning his funeral instead of preparing for his his return home from the hospital next week.

The more likely scenario would have been, should we have found ourselves unfortunate enough to be trapped in one of the Charnel House socialist single-payer systems, that my son would have been shunted off to some waiting room and left on a gurney or left to die waiting in an ambulance, as has been repeatedly reported out of England. Thank God for the skilled and dedicated people in our health care system.

Under ‘normal’ circumstances my editor, Dee, would have stepped in to cover for me. Her work schedule has been brutal recently and she became ill herself. The easy part of this operation is the writing part. Dee does all the heavy lifting from the editing to distribution and research to screening new sites to add to our affiliates. She keeps track of all the mail and responds when she can. If it sounds like a lot of work, it is.

Events all over the world are challenging this country. We, and the world, have had a chance to see how quickly events can spiral out of control without the United States of America in a clear leadership position. Every single policy, every single law, tax and regulation that Barack Obama has been involved with has been clearly detrimental to the national security and the economic stability and future economic, military and social fabric of this nation.

I’m starting to put more credence to some of the conspiracy theories. Obama may indeed be someone’s Manchurian Candidate. In such an unhappy happenstance would you say treason?… and then there’s sedition. Heavy stuff.

We have an even greater battle in front of us, friends and fellow Patriots, than we had putting the Republicans in the majority. Though I’m having some real reservations about the leadership, we cannot allow this to distract us from the upcoming 2012 elections. We have to really turn up the heat and keep it turned up.

Talk to every single person you know and keep talking. Get to know your neighbors (what a concept). Don’t be discouraged unless the individual is a hope-to-die Marxist. Some of the liberally-challenged are starting to see the light. Stick to facts and the simple truth. Now go out there and do it.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

Rads, Rads, Nothing But Rads – Or How To Wake Up In The Morning With That Healthy Green Glow.

Fresh from their triumphal Japanese invasion, the lame stream media is confident that its nightmarish ‘news reporting’ has changed your perception of nuclear power forever. Some of that so-called journalism, or much of it, manufactured to fit the stated leftist political goal of the destruction of our ability to provide for our country’s energy needs. Do that and you’ve destroyed our economic base and our ability to defend ourselves… or to project the kind of power anywhere in the world that ensures our safety from the many who would harm us, or our friends.



The LSM, in haste to out-proclaim each other for the title ‘most irresponsible network reporting’, are doing the bidding of their leftist masters who view the Japanese catastrophe as possibly the last best chance to destroy the nuclear industry once and for all.

Now, Japan’s engineers and truly gutsy crews have succeeded in getting a power cable back to reactors at the Fukushima plant to start the pumps again. Nowhere near out of hot water yet (no pun intended), but much to the visible disappointment of the LSM the Japanese, far from being the negligent perpetrators of the aftermath of a world-class event, have in deed and in fact been the largely unsung heroes of this entire past seven days.

The LSM, in another spectacular goofball stunt, decided to panic the west (left) coast with the fear of ‘the imminent’ arrival of a toxic nuclear plume of huge proportions. The result was entirely predictable. Every hypochondriac in the nation ran to get ‘the pill’. In fact, Barack Obama’s own surgeon-general went on record as advising people to obtain the potassium iodide tablets.

Factually, which obviously none of the bobbleheads bothered to check, was that the possibility of a toxic plume from those reactors traveling six thousand miles to irradiate America were slim and none. Taking potassium iodide today will not protect you tomorrow… but you wouldn’t know that from the news reports which were rich in surrealistic speculation and very light on hard science, as it applies to these reactors. Chernobyl this wasn’t. Tragic though it has been, it was nothing like Chernobyl.

Let’s not tell the lefties that they’re being irradiated by their breakfast bananas. Yes! The delicious yellow fruit is naturally radioactive. The Rads are coming! The Rads are coming! Not to fear. Two bananas and a salmon steak will supply enough potassium iodide to repel the rads you’ve been picking up from the radiant dial on your wristwatch, which has been sitting on your nightstand next to your head punching gamma-ray holes through your brain all these years.

And while you’re waking in the morning to your healthy green glow, don’t forget to catch the left’s new agitprop video, “Attack of the Strontium Bananas”.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

The Real Tragedy Of Japan And What We Should Take From It.

The Japanese people have become as fierce an ally and friend as they were an enemy. As a young Marine I studied the campaigns of the Pacific War, where American Marines and Japanese Imperial soldiers threw themselves at each other in some of the most savage battles in the history of armed conflict. I saw a couple of those islands, actually walked some of the places where the battles were fought.



During a training cycle I had occasion to spend some weeks in Japan. I traveled the countryside when I could. I met many ordinary Japanese people in their day-to-day lives. I talked to an English teacher… a fisherman… a tank commander in the Japanese home defense forces… farmers, students and businessmen. Without exception they were sincere, friendly people. I was invited into complete strangers’ homes and treated like an honored guest… It occurred to me that perhaps it was because I made a sincere effort to learn the language and customs, and I exhibited a lively curiosity which they were only too happy to satisfy.

We are watching a people who have just suffered one of the great tragedies of the modern era… the death toll is going to be horrendous. Far higher than the figures we’ve seen up to now. What has been remarkable has been the response of the Japanese people to an event which would have prostrated many other countries outright. Grieve?… Hurt? Yes, they grieve and they hurt, but they immediately begin the long path to recovery. There are no bleating cries for others to do for them what they can do themselves.


There’s no looting. Imagine a situation like this in Oakland or Los Angeles, where looting has been rampant during disturbances… where the only stores that didn’t get looted were those owned by Korean and Vietnamese, who were defending their properties with M-16 rifles and shotguns. (Amazing how the bad guys avoid stuff like that).

We can take a lot from this if we’re willing to listen and learn. Our Lame Stream Media has screamed every irresponsible headline they could fabricate, starting multiple layers of conflicting rumor. The Japanese are playing the whole nuclear thing rather close to their vests… but they’re not wont to deal in fiction or rumor either.

We don’t have a press any more. They spew just exactly what their Marxist bosses want them to. And right now that’s to gin up nuclear fears, in preparation for walling atomic energy away for ever in the dungeons of the environmental radicals and the EPA… who, by the way, is scrambling like crazy to implement cap and tax before our timid Mr. Boehner can summon up the testosterone to cut the EPA’s feet out from under it.

So while our President plays golf, goes to Rio or whichever vacation du jour he is on, and our majority leader takes time to figure out he has a majority, the Japanese people will go quietly about putting their lives together. Of course, we’ll help. What good friend wouldn’t? But it will be the Japanese, with the same indomitable will and sense of purpose that enabled them to return from the devastation of World War Two, that will pull them through.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Japan.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

My Tempestuous Teapot Boileth Over.

It has taken us two days to catch up with the comments we received from our article, ‘To Primary Or Not To Primary.’ This, more than any argument anyone can come up with, has indicated to me that the mood out there is every bit as charged as I thought it was.

Reps. Jim Jordan and Tim Huelskamp said they would vote against the spending bill.

You’ve stood up and said in none too uncertain terms that you were not going to be fooled again, as we were during the Bush years… hoping that when the time came our side would step up and do the right thing. Well, they never did and the result was Barack Obama and the pillage of the American economy during the Marxists’ headlong rush for power.

We’re engaged in the most critical conflict since our Revolutionary War. Right here. And right now. Some of the criticisms we’re hearing are very pointed, and directed to and about specific members of the leadership. To be fair and balanced, which I’m not (that’s why I do opinion editorials), unlike our leadership, I am an outspoken partisan for my cause.

Watching the Republican leadership fumbling the damned ball again was mentioned by many readers. Not to say that the establishment leadership didn’t have their defenders, but it was unscientifically running at around 20-1. Boehner, Cantor, McConnell and the others are starting to feel the backlash created by their cupidity which, as you can see, neatly rhymes with stupidity.

It’s also been duly noted that the Republican ‘strategy’ for this year is to permit one hundred and five billion dollars in Obamacare funding. There’s a whole bunch of people beefed by that one too. All in all, a pretty dismal performance by our guys.

Not surprisingly, some of the new freshman Conservatives are drawing a line in the sand, stating unequivocally that they will not sign any budget amendment bill that does not address the 1.7 trillion dollar deficit for 2011 alone. ‘Bully!’, as Theodore Roosevelt would have said. Keep those cards and letters coming guys… we love it. That’s me, not Teddy!

I think the leadership is going to find more and increasing resistance from the Conservative wing of the party as the year progresses and the amount of pressure you, the American Patriot, can generate increases rapidly. Hey, guys and gals, we swung an entire election. We can certainly rein in our leadership until we determine if or when to replace them.
The leadership has got to step up now. As one reader put it, “If not now, when?”

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

To Primary Or Not To Primary.

It should be apparent to even the mildest-mannered, laid-back conservative that things just aren’t working the way they should if we had Congressional leadership.

John Boehner at CPAC, February 10th, 2011.

What do I mean? We have outstanding leadership, don’t we? Well, we thought we did anyway. I’ve been wary of John Boehner since he was on the campaign trail. He made all the right conservative noises, but he’s turning out to be a cap pistol instead of a cannon.

The cowardly bunch is literally afraid of its own shadow. If the Republican leadership can’t hack it, let the new young conservatives take over. They’ve already shown a willingness to buck the establishment leadership, a surprising but welcome indication that we, at least, had chosen well.

It’s our own fault. We’re being victimized by our own success. We swept our candidates into office wholesale… and re-established the power of the old guard leadership.

It’s no secret that the Tea Party conservatives we worked so hard to put in place are also frustrated and disappointed with the party leadership’s timidity on just about any matter you can think of… the latest and most egregious being the issue of the continuing resolutions. While we’re playing around with two and three week extensions, part of the monies being authorized are going to fund Obamacare.

The bill has an unknown number of hidden triggers and preset spending authorizations for a plethora of as yet unnamed, unelected and untouchable boards and commissions. While we’re playing at reducing the deficit, this monstrosity is embedding itself and spreading like gangrene, like a slow poison… that’s why it needs to be stopped now.

Watching our Republican leadership reverting to their old ways is disappointing, for sure. I had that sinking feeling that I got when I realized that George Bush was not going to rein in his government or his Congress… that what we had was, in fact, a big government Republican who had made distinctly conservative noises during the election campaign, only to revert to type later.



Mark Levin has called for one of his really effective ‘surges’, where he has his audience call House and Senate members… and keep calling, letting them know how very disappointed we are in the timid, tentative approach of the so-called ‘old-bulls’ of the party. We’re faced with a 14 trillion dollar debt. Several trillion upside down this last year alone, and we’re farting around with a sixty or hundred billion dollar proposed reduction? Excuse me for saying, “What!?!”

We’ve got a lot of eager, bright conservative people in Congress and there will be more soon. I think we need to tell the Republican leadership that this is the last chance. Stick with your usual weak, deal-making, accommodating ways and we’re going to primary you.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

Our Future Depends On Our Energy.

The leftists have worked long and diligently to bring themselves, and us, to where we stand today in this country with regard to our national energy picture. I’ve been out of the news cycle for three days now, and in the new media that’s several lifetimes.



That includes Scott Walker’s stunning victory in Wisconsin, which has the public sector unions and the Democrats in the State Senate changing their depends frequently. It’s a template for states all over the country. The public sector unions and their bought-and-paid-for Democrat party are losing it all over the country. Because they are essentially Marxist ideologues first and foremost, they’re blind and deaf to the rising anger in this country towards people who live at the expense of us all, then make unremitting demands for ever more.

Even in California, that great outdoor lunatic experiment headed up by Mr Moonbeam himself, Jerry (union made) Brown, is beginning to get the message that Californians, at long last, are getting the picture. At least, the Republicans in the State Senate are… they’ve refused to sign on to Brown’s tax grab planned for California’s special election this coming June.

Among other things, Brown was hoping to continue a ‘temporary’ sales tax that’s due to sunset. Jerry Brown will have to face his union bosses alone. The people of California have had it with taxes, fees and regulations which are destroying the state.

By the way… California has oil… California has lots of oil. Did you know that? Combine that with all the other vast sources of petroleum and natural gas in the continental United States… We are rich in resources.

Obama has a war on our oil, our own resources. We are world-class rich in coal, which technology has advanced to the point where coal-burning power plants, as with the production of coal itself, is virtually pollution free. Obama has a war against coal, as any coal miner or producer can tell you. He wants to cut us off from our own resources.

The same with oil shale, of which we have one of the world’s greatest known reserves. Obama and the DeMarxists don’t like this one either, no more than they like nuclear or hydro-electric energy sources. They’ve worked hard and diligently for many years to bring this to fruition.

There’s only one reason the left, in all of its many manifestations, would so desire this country’s complete dependence on energy from foreign, hostile sources. That purpose would be to damage the country’s economy and energy sectors, creating the required chaos for them to breed more treason.

The Democrats and their penultimate weapon, Barack Obama, are waging war against America on every front.
It’s up to us to stop them.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

The Guard Tower.

A rifle shot rings out across the desert, a voice yells “Rider coming in!”. The location – somewhere in the Arizona Territory, the time – sometime in the 1870s. Pedro, as vigilant as ever in the guard tower, warns the occupants of The High Chaparral of a possible threat to their safety.



This was a work of 1960s television fiction, of course. The tale of a rancher who, in this lawless west, takes a stand against any and all who would destroy his vision of the future. Having lost his first wife to an Apache arrow shortly after moving to their new home, he steels himself for the task ahead when many would give up.

With Apache raids from the north and Mexican cattle rustlers from the south, vigilance is the keyword in the survival of his family and loyal ranch hands. As a side note, I always felt sorry for Pedro. Maybe he was unlucky in drawing straws for guard tower duty.

Fast forward about 140 years to modern day Arizona. No longer a ‘territory’ but a fully-fledged state, with laws and agencies in place to protect the citizens against incursion by hostile forces. There is only one problem…

Big John Cannon would have welcomed the creation of the Border Patrol. So would Pedro, not having to spend so many hours up in that tower under the blazing sun. I don’t think they would be so impressed by a federal government that takes the teeth away from an agency designed to protect them. Or the fact that those gunless wonders in Washington are willing to sue their elected state officials for attempting to help them.

What goes around, comes around. Well, it sure does in the case of Arizona. From lawless, dangerous, hostile territory to safe, civilized, law-enforced state… and back again.

It’s a sad and deeply tragic state of affairs. The world’s only superpower, in the guise of the Obama administration, can not defend (or is not willing to defend) its own people against the constant threat from across the border. This is a threat far more dangerous than has been seen at any time in history. In the 1870s it was small groups of bandidos, armed with revolvers that were pretty inaccurate even at point-blank range. In 2011, they are heavily armed with automatic weapons… and they are highly organized.

In a recent news report, it was revealed that the Mexican drug cartels obtained weapons due to a botched operation by ATF, whereby they knowingly supplied firearms to drug smugglers in an attempt to trace them back to source. That really inspires confidence.



Inability, incompetence, unwillingness… Is it surprising that with these all too familiar hallmarks of federal authorities that people, like Richard Humphries, are forced to take drastic measures to protect themselves? Mr Humphries, a rancher, has built a watchtower on his 75 acre ranch in an attempt to monitor the movements of illegals.

Perhaps it’s time for the president and his administration to watch more ‘High Chaparral’ and less ‘West Wing’, in order to understand the real America.

(Editor Dee is in for Skip today)

It’s All About Energy.

The DeMarxists are fumbling all over themselves to cover for Obama’s growing exposure to the energy disaster that his party and his politics have brought to fruition. Fair enough, he didn’t start it. He has been, and is, the ultra-left radical environmentalists’ poster-boy for advancing their death grip on America, Americans and the American economy.



Good gravy, we all saw this stuff happening… at least I did. I was fortunate enough to see through the environut thing in the beginning, which made for some lively and heated discussions on my college campus. I wasn’t very popular with the liberals because I kept writing rebuttals, shredding their pet nutcake theories in the college paper which, to their credit, they published… although they leaned left in much of their other content.

Perhaps it was this early disbelief that has kept me paying attention to the way the ‘environmental movements’ et al have fostered the slow but steady degradation of our ability to be energy independent. No matter which energy ‘front’ you care to examine… nuclear, natural gas, coal, oil, oil shale, oil sands or hydroelectric energy… they are against it. That is, they’re against us using our own energy resources. It’s just dandy with the radical environmentalists if we’re held in thrall for our energy requirements by foreign governments, who definitely don’t have our best interests at heart.

The radical environmental groups are uniformly leftist and pro-socialist. The Green Party’s published policy paper reads like the Communist Manifesto. These communist groups, in the guise of ‘concerned environmentalists’, have been active in the halls of government for well over forty years. Government officials and politicians have been bought wholesale by the EnviroNazis, fostering for instance the emergence of the single most destructive agency in Washington, the EPA.

When you next go to the gas pump, just think to yourself… “From Obama with love”.
And then just think how lovely it will be to bid the unlamented, feckless Obama “adieu”.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

Obama’s Energy Trap.

If you have purchased fuel in the last week or so, you’ve seen prices steadily climbing with apparently no ceiling in sight. You’re experiencing that not-so-slow boil, as you pay more and more while making less or nothing at all. The jobs report being bleated about by the DeMarxists just ain’t that hot, brother.



If all the government’s magic math is taken into account, figuring in the huge number of people who ‘have stopped looking’ and those who are living in the new ‘underground cash’ economy, then unemployment is at 20% or more. Any progress towards an improving economy and job growth is going to be sucked out of the air by out of control energy prices.

It’s just what he wants… It’s what he’s wanted all along… No one can say that he didn’t tell us exactly what he intended. We have it on tape, Obama, and we’re not forgetting.

This is one of the prime assaults on America. This attack goes all the way back to the emergence of the environmental movements and their campaigns of misinformation. Rachel Carson produces a work of virtual fiction, based on poor and incorrect research, and millions of African people die unnecessarily from malaria.
It’s incredible how the left consistently makes judgments based on emotion. They perceive only the prevailing political wind and how it can be ideologically manipulated. Invariably, such thinking has disastrous results.

We can’t look at the energy war against America without identifying the players. Unfortunately, weakness and lack of principle is nothing new to our nation’s politicians, nor are nefarious dealings galore, as we have had so vividly illustrated with the blatant grifting of the Obama presidency.



There’s been much written about China’s monopoly on strategic rare earth minerals. Why is this? I mean, why is it that they have this monopoly? Is China the only land blessed with these materials? The short answer is no. Where is one of the planet’s world-class rare earth deposits? It’s right here. The Chinese knew it and they didn’t like the competition.

Remember the late Senator Alan Cranston and the ‘California Desert Protection Act’? Well, that was back in 1992. A close friend and political ally of Senator Cranston was Dianne Feinstein, who took up his mantle of ‘desert protection’, effectively greatly restricting prospects for new rare earth deposits in the desert areas that Feinstein and her environmental radical friends have restricted.

The area has proven deposits of these and many other minerals important to industry and the economy. The Chinese undercut the world price of rare earth back in the early 90s. That, and the insanely restrictive policies set in place by politicians in the pay of the environmentalists, effectively closed the one operating rare earth mine here in California.



Oh, did I mention that Dianne Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, was one of the early big players in China? Let’s see… Chinese… Richard Blum… rare earth… Dianne Feinstein… desert… deal… Locking away our own arguably strategic resources…. The Chinese really hate competition….

A US Senator working directly against the best interests of her country and using the environmental lobby to mask her true relationship to the Chinese through her husband, who is at least as culpable as she is. It wasn’t the last time that Dianne got caught with her hands in the pot either… sweetheart deal after sweetheart deal for Blum and his partners.

This is just one example of the way the left and their allies have acted in a manner clearly detrimental to our security. My ‘conspiracy’ theory is beginning to sound all too feasible.
More later…

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

America In The Crucible.

The farther I try to stay from conspiracy theories, the more they seem to present themselves to me. Or perhaps I’m a little more curious than the average… Lord knows I used to drive my grandparents, and any available adult, crazy with questions. It’s led to a lifetime study of history and the traditions that have made America the shining beacon of freedom to the world that it is.

Not a bad avocation this, proclaiming the truth of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and our Bill of Rights. It’s just that sometimes the urgency of it all, amongst all the purposeful misinformation out there, makes things difficult to discern and put into place with any certainty. Yet we persist. We stand for liberty and freedom, and unequivocally state the truths to be found there to be self-evident. This is the standard we flock to. This is the American Patriot Movement.

That our country has been under assault is not up for question. And here’s where I start tangling with my dislike for conspiracy theories. A recent report by financial analyst Kevin Freeman, funded by the Pentagon, stated his belief that America is, and has been, under a carefully planned and executed three-phase economic assault.



It’s a report that’s easy to ignore. After all, Mr Freeman does not cite a single fact or figure in his report except in relation to dates. His initial premise is that the 2008 crash was the result of outside players ‘tipping the cow’, with a horrendously upside-down mortgage market driven by greedy loan merchants looking to take advantage of the little guy. No! It was your US government and its symbiont, the DeMarxist party.

But it was an inside job and we’ve talked about those players often enough. In a sane world, every one of them would be in the Grey Bar Hotel. I think the 2008 mortgage crisis put into action plans that had been long in the making.

I think Mr Freeman is right. Part of what makes me lean towards belief is the rapidity of the left’s assault on him. My only suggestion to Mr Freeman would be that you didn’t go far enough with it.

I see geopolitical events, going back to the Vietnam war, as being the long-prepared bed upon which this immense and multi-faceted assault on America was planted. As Freeman points out, there’s an external enemies list with all kinds of desperados, big and small, on it who would just love to stick it to us… and thanks to the incredibly weak, ineffectual ideologue Barack Hussein Obama, many of them are doing it to us right now.

Others are waiting in line. We don’t have to look very far beyond our borders to find an enemy, either. As a matter of fact, we don’t have very far to go at all. The left, in all of its manifestations, has been an active fifth column in this country for far, far too long. We’ve woken up to it as a country without a moment to spare.

The left can only blame itself. This last two years of the reign of Hussein the First (and Last) has lifted the torpor of the American people and exposed the left, in all its devious and lying glory, to the citizens of this country. This subject is really too big for one article so I’ll keep on developing it, but I have a feeling that this is not the last we are going to hear regarding this and other ancillary reports as they come in.

We’re fighting a war. We’re fighting it with the Marxist enemy within and the Islamo-Fascists without… to say nothing of the Chinese and the Russians, both of whom are more than capable of mischief on their own.

What is becoming apparent is that the battle for America has shifted to the unions’ assaults against meaningful reform, as they attack lawmakers and patriots alike… practicing their leader’s ‘new tone’. The unions aren’t going to like the push back that’s coming behind this.
As Drudge would say… developing…

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

New Hampshire Vs. TSA.

In Skip’s article of February 28th., he wrote about the abuse of the powers granted to the TSA. Skip credited me with the idea for the article, which in turn was inspired by a ‘Back to Basics’ piece by Gonzalo Lira, which depicted the search of a totally innocent looking family after traveling by train.



I guess the title was down to me. After reading Mr Lira’s article I said to Skip, “What the heck is up with the TSA?” My actual thoughts were slightly more Bidenesque, along the lines of “This is a big ******* deal!” However, call me old-fashioned if you wish, but I leave those expletives to the opposition.

You can imagine our delight yesterday, when we read about the New Hampshire bill which was read to a house committee in Concord. If passed, invasive pat-downs where private areas are touched, or images of such areas are viewed, would be regarded as sexual assault. Anyone found guilty of such acts, without probable cause, would be added to the State Sexual Offenders Registry.

The new act would essentially be the addition of Subparagraph (d), which states:
“When the person, acting in his or her role as a security agent of the federal, state, or local government, touches the genitals or breasts of any other person or touches or views with any technological device the genitals or breasts of any other person without probable cause for such touching or viewing. For purposes of this subparagraph, the following shall not constitute probable cause: discussing or possessing a copy of the Constitution, discussing the security apparatus of an airport, being on the premises of an airport, possessing an airplane ticket or any other type of ticket for access to mass transportation, driving a motor vehicle on a public way, or ownership of firearms.”

Interesting wording… It makes it sound as though a Constitution carrier is regarded by some people (Federal, perhaps) as more of a risk than a Koran carrier.

The TSA have consulted with their lawyers and sources have indicated that their response is that Federal law supersedes State law. Well, TSA lawyers, the Fourth Amendment is Federal law. If you’re not familiar with it, you are welcome to check it out on our website.

While I wholeheartedly support this move in New Hampshire, it should not be necessary. Why are states being forced to introduce new laws when they are already covered at the federal level… in this particular case, by the Fourth Amendment? The same question can be applied to the Arizona immigration bill.

While the White House and the Senate are controlled by those who have little or no regard for the freedom of the individual, or for the Constitution that guarantees that freedom, there will be many more state bills to come after New Hampshire’s. Meanwhile, we await the president’s next executive order with bated breath.

(Editor Dee is in for Skip today)