Royal Douche Award 04.30.10

This is going to be unconventional because I have two winners.





Winner #1 is: Sergeant Kody Lamb of the Sheridan Police Department in Wyoming for the ARMED bullying of a law abiding citizen, a blatant abuse of authority.


examiner.com

The Sheridan police are either unable to make proper judgment calls, or they believe in extreme authority opposite of constitutionally protected rights, you decide…

It was Sunday after spending the weekend in Sheridan for the local Tea Party, we were leaving the hotel to head back home, while driving only 100 yards away, there were two police officers coming up the hill on foot carrying AR-15 rifles.

As we approached them they stopped my vehicle and the officers yelled “put up your hands” to myself, wife and my little girl, then I was ordered to step out of my vehicle. (while armed of course)

The officer demanded my I.D. to which I responded “you aren’t getting anything, I didn’t break any law”.

The part that really sticks in my head is this- in one of his hands (Sgt. Kody Lamb) was an AR-15 Rifle and his other free hand shuttered like he was on an extreme adrenaline rush, I thought to myself he better keep his finger off the trigger.

I told Lamb “he had a duty to protect my rights and not act on the whim of a tourist that doesn’t know it’s legal to have firearms here”. I also asked him if he "read our Constitution”, Lamb said he was aware of what it said” then I said to him “didn’t you take an oath to uphold it?”

Then there's this- when the officer Sgt. Kody Lamb realizes he doesn’t have a beef, he threatens me with “disturbing the peace”. To which I responded “I was on private property with the owner’s consent”, and then Sgt. Kody Lamb stated it was a place frequented by the public.

This has become the norm, for police to twist things around when they want to bully someone.

I told Lamb “I want to speak to your supervisor”, Lamb responded with “I am the supervisor”, It was at this point that I knew the Peter Principle was in play, a philosophy that in a Hierarchy “Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence”.

Why would officers respond in this manner to a “man with gun call” when their own report states about me- “is not seeming to be a threat just standing there”.

Why didn’t they ask more questions BEFORE ARRIVING, like this simple one- Has he threatened anyone?

Hell no, let’s just storm in there because we have a badge, guns and adrenaline.

Maybe this is a response to my speech at the Sheridan Tea Party, by the way when we were setting up for the event, a police officer questioned me about the way I was carrying my firearm. (holstered, cocked and locked and in plain view) I told him I always carry this way. he responded to me with "That's not what I asked you" citing this “he had a duty to protect the public”. I later asked him how he felt about “concealed carry without a permit” like Arizona just passed into law, he said no one should be allowed to carry without a permit. Are you seeing the anti-gun police union agenda? You know the "only ones" mentality.

The next day after the incident the police refused to let me have the dispatch recordings unless, I "have a subpoena", also I was told that the police report wouldn’t be available for a week, but apparently they handed their reports over to the local newspaper within hours of telling me otherwise. Does any of this sound suspect?
I also contacted Evidence Technician Stephen Johnson inquiring about exactly what statute they are using to deny the dispatch recordings, he has refused to return my call.

Wyoming statute states that “the person in interest” is allowed to have access to the recordings, but the the City of Sheridan would rather flex their power. The City Attorney Mia Mikesell said "she didn’t have to cite statute" to me and "it was their policy" to ask for a Subpoena, she then hung up on me.

It is these lawless Bureaucrats, Police and Attorneys that are nipping away at the Republic on a daily basis.

The question is- are we going to be silent and just let it happen?

The City of Sheridan web-site says: they have been voted #1 Western Town of the Year for its truly special qualities…“Enjoy a frontier spirit that values friendship – and independence”, really? NOT SO MUCH!

Area Citizens should call and tell them you don’t appreciate this kind of treatment and expect more from the police officers that work for “we the people”.

Tourists- call them and tell them you will skip Sheridan, tourism dollars will be spent elsewhere.

Sheridan City Hall (307) 674-6483

Robocop's Comment:

I have worked with a few cops who have the "only us" mentality when it comes to firearms. Experience tells me these are the same police officers who would be later investigated for civil rights violations of some sort. I have a respect for my colleagues as a whole, but Sgt. Kody Lamb, and officers like him need to be taken off the street ASAP. He is indeed a Royal Douche.

Winner #2:

Governor Rick Perry of Texas. He is all about kissing the asses of the illegals that he actually opposes Arizona's model for dealing with Illegal Aliens. Forget the Texas crime rate, economy, and sovereignty.



Fox News

Gov. Rick Perry said in a statement: "I have concerns with portions of the law passed in Arizona and believe it would not be the right direction for Texas."

AUSTIN, Texas -- Arizona's tough new illegal immigration enforcement law would not be right for Texas, Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday, upholding the state's long-held tradition of rejecting harsh anti-immigrant policies.

The Arizona law will require local and state law enforcement officers to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally, making it a crime for them to lack registration documents. The law also makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally.

"I fully recognize and support a state's right and obligation to protect its citizens, but I have concerns with portions of the law passed in Arizona and believe it would not be the right direction for Texas," Perry said in a written statement.

"For example, some aspects of the law turn law enforcement officers into immigration officials by requiring them to determine immigration status during any lawful contact with a suspected alien, taking them away from their existing law enforcement duties, which are critical to keeping citizens safe."

The Arizona law has been hailed by conservatives as long overdue and two Texas lawmakers have said they'll introduce similar immigration measures when the Texas Legislature meets next.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a U.S. Senate hearing Tuesday that a Justice Department review is under way to determine the Arizona law's constitutionality.

Though Texas is ruled by conservative Republicans, top GOP leaders from former Texas Gov. George W. Bush to Perry have rejected harsh and punitive immigration policies.

Bush continued his moderate approach to immigration once he got to the White House, often to the dismay of his conservative base.

"We need to uphold the great tradition of the melting pot that welcomes and assimilates new arrivals," Bush said in his 2007 State of the Union address. "We need to resolve the status of the immigrants that are already in our country without animosity and without amnesty."

Perry took heat during this year's Republican primary for backing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, saying in a debate that the students are on a path to citizenship.

"Texas has a rich history with Mexico, our largest trading partner, and we share more than 1,200 miles of border, more than any other state," Perry said Thursday. "As the debate on immigration reform intensifies, the focus must remain on border security and the federal government's failure to adequately protect our borders.

"Securing our border is a federal responsibility, but it is a Texas problem, and it must be addressed before comprehensive immigration reform is discussed."

Criminals For Gun Control 2

Hold the VAT -- Taxpayers May Prefer Spending Cuts

by Michael Barone

The Obama Democrats' stealth strategy for increasing the size and scope of the federal government is well underway, despite huge voter backlash. Federal spending has been increased from a 30-year average of 21 percent of gross domestic product to 25 percent, and a bipartisan commission tasked with reducing the deficit may recommend tax increases.

Presidential economic adviser Paul Volcker has already called for a value-added tax, a form of national sales tax, and presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs has declined to rule it out.

The assumption in some quarters is that a tax increase is inevitable and that the public won't allow any significant decrease in public spending. But there's reason to question that assumption.

Spending cuts have proved politically sustainable in other advanced countries. Economist Tyler Cowen, writing in The New York Times, notes that in the last two decades Canada, Sweden and Finland all cut government spending 20 percent within a few years when faced with structural budget deficits. It may have been painful, but no one saw starving people in the streets of Ottawa, Stockholm or Helsinki.

We may also be seeing some examples in American states. The focus in Washington has been on the federal budget deficit, but state and local government spending amounts to more than 10 percent of gross domestic product and grew faster than the economy over the last decade.

When revenues crashed, congressional Democrats sent one-third of the money in their $862 billion February 2009 stimulus package to state and local governments. The stated reason was to prevent interruption of services.

The political motive was to maintain existing state and local payrolls -- while the private sector has shed 8 million jobs, the public sector has shed zero -- and to keep the dues money flowing to the public employee unions that were so generous to Democrats in the 2008 election cycle.

But that was onetime relief. As New York's Democratic Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch notes, "The stimulus package just raised higher the cliff from which we all will have to jump off." Revenues continue to lag beneath the trajectory of spending. Improvident pension promises are coming due. Crunch time is arriving sooner in the states than in Washington.

Some states and localities have responded by raising taxes. But the two governors elected in November 2009 have not.

In Virginia, Republican Bob McDonnell has shepherded "painful cuts" in spending through a divided legislature. In New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie, facing an $11 billion deficit, has used his office's unusually great powers to cut spending way back.

In the process, Christie has taken on the teacher unions. That required some guts. In 2005, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed ballot propositions to reduce the power of public employee unions. The unions spent something like $100 million -- every dollar ultimately provided by taxpayers -- to drive Schwarzenegger's numbers down and beat the propositions, sending California state government toward insolvency.

That came at a time when surging prosperity seemed likely to continue forever. After losing on the ballot propositions, Schwarzenegger -- like his predecessor Gray Davis -- was unable or unwilling to stop the public employee unions and obedient legislators and local officials from spending every dollar available and many more. Lenders in California and the three other "sand states" -- Nevada, Arizona and Florida -- were busy pumping out the subprime mortgages to uncreditworthy homebuyers that produced the financial crash in 2008. Revenues crashed, and California state government faces something like insolvency.

In today's dire economic climate, Christie seems to be marshalling more voter support than Schwarzenegger was able to in prosperous 2005. He points out that teachers are getting pay raises when most people are not and that they pay zero percent of health insurance premiums. And that the head of the state teachers union makes $550,000 -- all it of derived from taxpayers -- and refused to fire a county union head who wrote a poem calling for Christie's death. Last week, New Jersey voters turned out in large numbers and defeated 260 of 479 local school budgets -- usually 70 percent are approved.

Barack Obama's project of turning the United States into something more like Western Europe has stirred strong opposition and generated much less enthusiasm. What's happening in states like Virginia and New Jersey -- and what happened not so long ago in Canada, Sweden and Finland -- suggests that voters may support spending cuts more than most American politicians and pundits have assumed. And much more than a value-added tax.



Copyright © 2010 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

"Peaceful" Libtards

Some peaceful libtards showing their true nature when it comes to true Americans voicing genuine concerns about this country's leftward spiral:

Sandwich Shop Sign Turning Heads

News 4 Jax.com

JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. -- The owner of Angie's Subs in Jacksonville Beach turned many heads with a sign posted outside the business.

The marquee outside the sandwich shop read the owner is a "Bible thumpin', gun totin' capitalist pig."

Ed Malin said he has had many people asking questions about the sign. He said he got the idea from attending a local tea party rally last week. He said he is a fiscal conservative who could probably agree with President Barack Obama on many levels. He said, however, he does not agree with the direction politicians are taking the country.

"I figured out my taxes, and 65 percent of my income was going to some taxing district," he said. " Federal, state, local, 65 percent! That's not America. That's not why I work 90 hours a week."

Malin said he has been changing the sign almost every day in the past 11 years. He said he has never had so many responses about a sign since he put the quote up last week. There are some who agree, and some who do not.

"I think he went a bit too far," one customer said.

"I pulled my car up and I went, 'Yes! The truth!' The truth will set you free," said John Tipton, a longtime shop customer.

Malin said he's sure some people would not come to the shop because of the sign.

"Oh well, I lost some customers," he said. "I also gained some customers. I maybe doing the wrong thing, but we'll see."

Malin said he's changing the sign Tuesday for an employee's birthday announcement. He said, however, he will put the quote back up as soon as the night is over.


Copyright 2010 by News4Jax.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

See VIDEO

Robocop's Comment:

You Go!

WANTED: Mandatory Prison Sentences for Child Sex Offenders

Fox News

There should be a MINIMUM 20-year sentence for the violent, sexual assault of a child.

Chelsea King was a straight-A college bound senior who went for a run in the park and never came back. Amber Dubois was a 14-year-old member of Future Farmers of America who disappeared on her way to school. Candice Moncayo was tackled at the end of a jog by a man who tried to rape her and threatened to kill her -- she escaped. What do these 3 events have in common? They were all committed by John Albert Gardner III, a violent sex offender who recently plead guilty to raping and killing Chelsea and Amber. He received consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole. This in and of itself is bad enough, but it gets worse. He was convicted in 2000 of assaulting (repeatedly punching her in the face) and molesting a 13-year-old. A court appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Mathew Carroll, recommended the maximum 30- year-sentence, stating that Gardner showed no remorse and that he would continue to be a danger to underage girls. The prosecutor in that case opted for a plea deal for 6 years in order to spare the young girl from a trial. Gardner served 5!



Here’s the deal: Doing a psychiatric evaluation on a sex offender is not rocket science. In terms of assessing relapse potential you want to see them take responsibility for their actions, not make excuses, admit what they did was wrong AND most importantly show regret and remorse. That’s it! If you don’t get that then I’ll bet you a million bucks they will relapse. On top of that, violent sex offenders may have a progressive course that goes from molesting to rape to murder. Their recidivism rate is the highest for all crimes and is 400% the rate of other convicted felons. As for prison, pedophiles tend to serve easier time because they are sometimes kept out of the general population for their own safety and are often released early for good behavior because…guess what, here are no kids in prison! Add to this the fact that there is no generally accepted treatment/cure for this condition and you end up with only one conclusion: If you’re convicted once of the violent, sexual assault of a child then you need to be in prison for a LONG, LONG time.

Right now, there are a staggering 704,777 registered sex offenders in the U.S . The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (Adam’s Law), passed in 2006, separates sex offenders into 3 tiers based on the severity of their offense and requires registration. The problem is that the sheer numbers have overwhelmed the system. It’s estimated that as many as 100,000 offenders may be off the grid and not accounted for. Right now there are several groups (ACLU, NAMBLA), as well as states and various lawyers challenging the law, stating that it’s unconstitutional. In addition, many sex offender prosecutors offer plea deals, even with a rock solid case, to “protect” the victim from testifying and some judges will hand out a mere slap on the wrist for these crimes against kids.

The answers are quite clear: There should be a MINIMUM 20-year sentence for the violent, sexual assault of a child. -- This rule alone would take the sympathetic judges out of the equation. Also, those in the legal system must understand that until there is a proven, effective therapy for this condition that rehab can only be considered in conjunction with prison time, not as a stand alone treatment. Adam’s Law is a good start, but needs to place more emphasis on the Tier 3 sex offenders, especially who are the worst of the worst, and focus our legal/monetary resources there. Prosecutors need to know that it’s far better to have a child testify in these cases than let even one of these offenders get off easy on a plea deal.

Now is the time to take a stand, NOW! We must draw a line in the sand and make it very clear to politicians, judges, prosecutors and organizations that our children are our future and that we will do everything in our power to protect them from these sexual predators. What do you think the punishment should be for the violent, sexual assault of a child?

May Amber and Chelsea R.I.P.

Dr. Dale Archer is a psychiatrist and frequent guest on FoxNews.com's "The Strategy Room." For more, visit his website: Dr.DaleArcher.com.

Support Is Growing For Openly Carrying Permitted Weapons

Hartford Courant

April 18, 2010

An eruption in a simmering dispute over gun rights occurred when James Goldberg, wearing camouflage clothing and a holstered — and licensed — pistol on his right hip, walked into a Chili's restaurant in upscale Glastonbury, where he intended to pay for a takeout order.

According to Goldberg, a college-educated, occupational safety engineer, a restaurant employee, concerned by the sight of an armed customer, called the town police department. A goggle-eyed luncheon crowd watched three officers roll up, confront Goldberg and handcuff him.

"What can we get him for?" Goldberg, 32, says one of the officers asked his colleagues.

The answer, as it turned out, was nothing.

A state Superior Court judge dismissed the breach of peace charge police ultimately filed against Goldberg, forcing law enforcement experts to concede that, absent extenuating circumstances, there is nothing in Connecticut law to prohibit licensed gun owners from conducting their lives visibly armed.

The judge's decision was treated as a vindication by some gun owners in traditionally gun-shy Connecticut. They are joining groups elsewhere in asserting, as Goldberg does, what they say is the right to carry sidearms openly, in public, for protection.

The "open carry" movement is growing at a time when the federal courts have been looking more favorably on the rights of gun owners than on the authority of governments to restrict gun ownership.

There are three federal lawsuits pending in Connecticut that challenge the way the state enforces gun laws. In one, Goldberg is suing Glastonbury over his arrest three years ago, claiming he was charged even though there is no state law against openly carrying a sidearm.

In the other two, Goldberg and M. Peter Kuck, a member of the state Board of Firearms Permit Examiners, argue separately that arbitrary enforcement of state gun laws by biased police officers has denied or delayed the issuance of handgun permits, resulting in a denial of due process rights to gun owners.

Kuck, as a member of the board that hears appeals from gun owners who have been denied permits or whose permits have been revoked, is indirectly attacking the work of his board. Goldberg argues that he was wrongly denied a pistol permit for nearly two years after the dismissal of his arrest.

A federal judge in Hartford dismissed both permit suits. But in late March, a federal appeals court in New York overturned the dismissals and sent the cases back to Hartford for further review.

Balancing Interests
Goldberg's arrest, the success of the lawsuits and an increasingly vocal open-carry movement have attracted the attention of state law enforcement experts and policymakers who are concerned with balancing the potentially conflicting interests of openly armed gun owners against those who may become alarmed by the sight of guns.

"I think people have the right to bear arms," said state Rep. Stephen D. Dargan, D-West Haven and co-chairman of the legislature's public safety committee. "How they bear those arms in public is another issue. If I'm a store owner and I see someone walk in with a gun, maybe I pull out the gun I keep under the counter. Maybe I call the police. Maybe they come running in with their guns drawn, because they don't know what's going on."

In the past two years, open carry has become part of the national gun discussion. The Starbucks coffee chain put the issue before a broad audience earlier this year when it decided to allow obviously armed customers into its stores in states that permit open carry. Virginia, Tennessee and Arizona have enacted laws allowing openly armed patrons to drink in barrooms.

Student gun clubs at Connecticut's state universities joined a national push earlier this month to compel public universities to permit armed students to attend classes.

Also this month, Connecticut gun owners staged a Second Amendment rally at the state Capitol.

No one in Connecticut is predicting that the suits or the evolving discussion of gun rights will result in a spike in the number of armed shoppers at suburban malls. But the talk alone has law enforcement officers and policymakers re-examining the existing law and how it should be enforced.

Even through it may be legal for a permitted gun owner to carry a pistol or revolver in public in Connecticut, the officials say every case is not necessarily legal and they will closely examine those brought to their attention.

"There is no law that expressly prohibits the open carrying of a firearm by somebody who has a permit to carry it, in and of itself," said Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane. "But there are statutes that could very well be violated, depending on the evidence and the circumstances. And that could lead to arrest, confiscation and forfeiture of firearms that are displayed in violation of those statutes."

The circumstances to which Kane refers involve how gun owners carry weapons and how members of the public react to an openly carried weapon. If citizens panic and call the police, Kane said, there will be an investigation.

"Depending on the circumstances, it could constitute a breach of peace, or it could constitute a threatening or it could constitute a public disturbance," he said.

Business owners can also post signs prohibiting the carrying of weapons on their premises.

State Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven and co-chairman of the legislature's judiciary committee, acknowledged inconsistencies in the way gun laws have been enforced.

"People come into this with very doctrinaire views on guns," he said, "and I think that leads to problems with enforcement. I think sometimes people on both sides overlook things that should not be overlooked. They have preconceived notions of what is right and wrong and they act on those."

When Connecticut gun laws are correctly enforced, Lawlor said, they are among the nation's best in terms of balancing the right to own and bear arms against the maintenance of public order.

He said the "mature" use of a handgun, something implicit in the law, should protect against public panic.

"What about people who push this right and they go into a McDonald's wearing a camouflage outfit and a gun?" Lawlor said. "There are people who do this. The criminal law says it is a crime to either intentionally or recklessly create alarm in public. For the same reason it is against the law to stand up in a movie theater and cry 'Fire,' you should be arrested."

Knowing The Law
Glastonbury Police Chief Thomas J. Sweeney, in a deposition he gave last month as part of Goldberg's suit, said the arrest at Chili's was the result of concern raised by restaurant staff.

"You want to walk in, have an open carry, but if people get upset by the manner in which you act and comport and carry yourself, you run the risk of being arrested for it," Sweeney said in the deposition. "I think there are issues when you're inside buildings where you're running a risk of a reaction of other individuals, I think that's problematic, and you may scare people, frighten people, cause alarm."

Goldberg called his arrest an overreaction by a police department unfamiliar with state handgun laws, something he said happens regularly in Connecticut.

"In my circumstance, no one pressed any charges, no one was interviewed," he said. "The woman who called 911 called to ask what the concealment law is in the state of Connecticut. And the dispatcher didn't know. If the dispatcher was educated or trained, and answered that you can carry openly or concealed in Connecticut, it should have ended right there. It was unfortunate that what happened to me had to happen to me."

Goldberg said he is a trained firearms instructor, sells guns at a Newington gun retailer and runs a business that provides security for business executives and entertainment industry celebrities.

He said he needs a gun for his work and believes he needs to carry it every day, for a variety of reasons: to maintain his familiarity with weapons, for protection, for business reasons and to "stand up" for something that is permitted under the law.

"I think if you are going to carry a firearm, you should go all the way and carry the firearm so you are comfortable with it," he said. "It becomes something that is a part of you. It's not foreign. If you do it every day as a daily mantra, it's something that becomes an extension of your body.

"To me, guns are not dangerous. It is an inanimate object. It won't do anything until someone with either good or negative intentions picks it up. We live in a state where we can carry openly or concealed. I don't have a problem with civilians carrying firearms or seeing civilians with firearms."

Goldberg said his arrest and the arrests of others in similar circumstances show a misunderstanding of the law by members of the public, who think it is illegal to openly carry a weapon in public in Connecticut. He also blamed police officers who are "just uncomfortable with civilians having firearms and people having the right to carry."

"The state needs to be educated and the people who live in the state need to be educated and know that you can carry openly or concealed and just because you see a firearm doesn't constitute that person breaking the law," he said. "There are a lot of great arguments for open carry in Connecticut."

On the other hand, he said, anyone who uses a gun incorrectly or uses one to intimidate or frighten people, should be arrested.

"This was really upsetting to me because in my career I dedicate myself to protecting other people," Goldberg said. "To be construed as someone who is deemed to be unsuitable to carry a pistol, just because someone happened to see it, was very disheartening."

In past years, the state police have pushed for revisions to state handgun laws that would allow the concealed carrying of weapons but outlaw open carry. The efforts have failed, and there is no similar legislative effort this year.

Key lawmakers said they will wait for the resolution of the pending gun cases in Connecticut before deciding whether the law needs to be revised.

"It is definitely opening up a hornet's nest when you try to add on to or modify the laws that govern gun ownership in Connecticut," Lawlor said. "And I think, on paper, we have the most sensible system in the country. I think it is appropriate to have this discussion. And maybe the legislature should weigh in. Maybe not."

Copyright © 2010, The Hartford Courant

Wish List 04.25.10

Well, another year has past, and my wish list for personal toys changes once again. Here is this year's wish list. There is no particular order, and I already know there is no way I will acquire this whole list. But hey, everyone has a dream.:

>Bushmaster M15A2 20" 5.56mm



>Bushmaster ACR 5.56mm



>Bushmaster ORC 5.56mm w/ EOTEC sight



>Glock 22 Gen 4 .40 S&W



>Glock 17 OD 9mm NATO



>Ruger LCR .38 S&W Special



>Kimber Warrior .45 ACP



>Arsenal AK 7.62x39



>Beretta 90-Two .40 S&W



>Mossberg 590 12 ga.

Royal Douche 04.24.10

And the winner is: Richard Clarke who deceitfully stated that the recent Gun Rights rallies commemorated the Oklahoma City Bombing. Enough said.

See video HERE.

Arizona Governor Signs Controversial Immigration Enforcement Bill

Fox News

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Friday signed into law a controversial bill that seeks to crack down on illegal immigration.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Friday signed into law a controversial bill that seeks to crack down on illegal immigration.

The sweeping measure will make it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally. It will also require local police officers to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are in the country illegally.

It takes effect 90 days after the current legislative sessions end in the next several weeks.

Before signing the bill, Brewer called the measure "another step forward in protecting the state of Arizona."

She said the bill "represents another tool for our state to use as we work to solve a crisis that we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix -- the crisis caused by illegal immigration."

Earlier, President Obama called the bill "misguided" and said it could violate people's civil rights. He said he's instructed the Justice Department to see if it is legal.

The bill's Republican sponsor, state Rep. Russell Pearce of Mesa, said Obama and other critics of the bill were "against law enforcement, our citizens and the rule of law."

Civil rights activists have said the bill would lead to racial profiling and deter Hispanics from reporting crimes.

Brewer said she wouldn't tolerate racial profiling.

Hundreds of protesters gathered at the State Capitol complex Friday calling on Brewer to veto the legislation.

Demonstrators have been camped outside the Capitol since the measure passed out of the Legislature on Monday. Their numbers have grown steadily throughout the week, with buses bringing protesters from as far away as Los Angeles.

About a dozen supporters of the measure also gathered.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Robocop's Comment:

I am starting to like Arizona. First they pass Constitutional Carry, and now this. As a son of LEGAL immigrants who had to jump through hoops to have the right to be here, I applaud this measure. As a Jailer who sees plenty of bed space wasted on illegals who crossed the border to earn a dishonest living, I applaud this measure. As a taxpayer who has to pay to house, feed, educate, and medically treat these illegals, I applaud this measure. Now if only Texas, and the rest of this country could follow this example...

Now the Libtards are taking this law to court. It will be an interesting irony to see the courts strike down a law that merely enforces existing immigration laws. Nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to judicial activists.

Bill the Tea Party basher

Clinton forgets Obama counts the violent among his friends

Washington Times

Not so long ago, there arose on the American political scene something called the "angry left." It was an indignant group of ritualistic liberals whose appearance, the mainstream media apprised us, augured well for Democratic victory in 2008, and so it did. The angry left turned out the vote for the Prophet Obama. At the time, do you recall any public figure on the right stepping forward and warning against possible violence from the indignados of the angry left? Did, say, the Honorable Newt Gingrich step forward at a conservative forum, say the Heritage Foundation, and remind his fellow Americans of the bombings of government buildings, the burning of university libraries, the robbing of banks by angry leftists in years gone by? I cannot recall any such warnings from any conservative eminence.

It is not as though such lawlessness is unknown in American history. Politically motivated bombings, burnings and bank robberies actually have been committed in America by leftists. Some of those leftists are still with us - for instance, Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, who were fugitives from justice for such antics and went on to become friends of the present president of the United States. In fact, lawlessness on the left is still being committed, for instance, at universities where speakers who offend the left - the angry left or simply the "fastidious left" - are regularly shouted down or barred from scheduled appearances, as Ann Coulter recently was, at least, in Canada. Yet Mr. Gingrich has remained mum about the danger posed by the angry left, and it is not easy for Mr. Gingrich to remain mum.

Now, just the other day, ex-President Bill Clinton - some of us still call him "the Groper" - rose up at the Center for American Progress and drew parallels between the Tea Partiers (call them the caffeinated right) and the homicidal maniacs who participated in the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 persons and injuring hundreds more. Mr. Clinton's charge was typically duplicitous. "This Tea Party movement can be a healthy thing if they're making us justify every penny of taxes we raised and every dollar of public money we spend," Mr. Clinton opined. "But when you get mad, sometimes you wind up producing exactly the reverse result of what you say you are for," said the president famous for, among other things, his temper tantrums. He also said, "Before the [Oklahoma] bombing occurred, there was a sort of fever in America," which I guess depends on the meaning of the word "fever." I recall no fever, but then I was not impeached for lying and obstruction of justice.

A long-standing conceit of American liberals has been to lecture conservatives on how to conduct themselves. They are famous for telling us what we can and cannot say. They tell us we cannot call them socialists even when they take over industries and transform the federal budget into a simulacrum of European social democracy. Yet they can call us racists and enemies of the poor when we advance alternatives to such failed policies as affirmative action or welfare. In fact, much of the liberals' stance toward conservatives in our ongoing dialogue with them is an insult. The most recent politician to dabble in race-baiting was not a conservative, but Bill Clinton, in the 2008 Democratic primaries.

What Mr. Clinton depicts as a precursor to more bombings modeled on the vile Oklahoma City bombing is nothing more than a civic upheaval inspired by American constitutional liberties. The Tea Partiers are no cause for alarm. For Mr. Clinton to suggest that these generally peaceful and good-natured libertarians are opening the door to domestic terror is Mr. Clinton at his reckless worst. In doing so, he has given would-be bombers cover for their evil acts. If more bombings of federal buildings follow, we can thank Mr. Clinton for his speech of encouragement. Ironically, federal investigators looking for the perpetrators might begin their investigations with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. No Tea Partier I know has their record of violence.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is the founder and editor in chief of the American Spectator. His new book is "After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery" (Thomas Nelson, 2010).

Tea Party Marine Sticks by His Guns

Fox News

A U.S. Marine whose Facebook posts led to a refresher course last week on the Pentagon's directives on political activities is not running for cover as he continues to post or support material critical of the government and President Obama.

A U.S. Marine whose Facebook posts led to a refresher course last week on the Pentagon's directives on political activities is not running for cover as he continues to post or support material critical of the government and President Obama.

Sgt. Gary Stein created the Facebook group "Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots" four weeks ago to voice his opposition to Obama's health care overhaul. Superior officers asked the 24-year-old Marine to review directives on political activities before he was interviewed on TV, and Stein removed the Facebook group -- only to see it revived by a civilian member of a local Tea Party group hours later. Stein now serves as an administrator of the group, which has more than 9,100 members, including some soldiers on active duty.

According to Department of Defense directives, military personnel on active duty are prohibited from sponsoring a political club, writing anything that solicits votes for a political cause or speaking at any event that promotes a political movement. They may also not participate in any "radio, television, or other program or group discussion as an advocate for or against a partisan political party, candidate, or cause" or distribute "partisan political" literature.

In one of his recent posts to the Facebook group, Stein asked members to voice their opposition to the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, a Senate financial overhaul bill introduced by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn.

"In short it grants permanent, unlimited bailout authority to the Federal Reserve," Stein wrote on Tuesday. "It's like TARP forever without the nasty, unpopular debates and votes in Congress."

He provided contact information to eight Republican senators who have "not yet 100% opposed" the bill and asked members of the Facebook group to spread the word to local newspapers.

"Once again it's up to us, you and your fellow Tea Party Patriots, to defend America from out of control government," wrote Stein, who lives in Temecula, Calif., with his wife, Ashley, and their 2-year-old daughter. He is a meteorologist for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton in Southern California.

Attorney Eugene Fidell, a senior research scholar who teaches military law at the Yale Law School, said that while military brass tend to "avoid creating martyrs" regarding issues of free speech, Stein should seek legal advice.

"This young man should consult an attorney," Fidell told FoxNews.com. "He's tempting fate here. But that's the territory. You can do it, but you may pay a penalty."

The Facebook group Stein created carries a disclaimer that any views expressed on the page are "not endorsed or shared by the Military or the [Department of Defense]." It also includes at least 100 photos, including a satirical shot of President Obama on a fictitious "Dancing With The Czars" advertisement, complete with inset photos of celebrity judges Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., White House reporter Helen Thomas and actor David Hasselhoff. Another altered photograph depicts Obama with a large red "X" over his mouth and the word "LIAR" across his forehead, while a graphic depicts the "socialist brain of the liberal Democrat."

Yet another graphic on the page recalls Obama's reported mispronunciation of the word "corpsman" while speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast in February.

"What's your major malfunction numbnuts?" reads the graphic, which features the vociferous drill sergeant from the 1987 war classic "Full Metal Jacket." "You're a Harvard grad and don't know the difference between CORPS and CORPSE? You flunked lunch at Harvard, didn't you?"

Camp Pendleton spokeswoman Maj. Gabrielle Chapin told FoxNews.com last week that the Marine Corps had not filed charges against Stein. She said Stein was not disciplined, and he received the same "one-on-one mentorship and guidance" provided to all Marines.

Camp Pendleton officials on Wednesday referred inquiries to the Department of Defense, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Stein says he's confident he will not be reprimanded by the military, but he acknowledges that his outspokenness may hurt his military career. He insists that his participation in the Facebook group remains as a civilian.

"It was written by Gary Stein," he said. "People need to understand this. When I post something on the Facebook page, it is as Gary Stein and has nothing do with the Marine Corps and has nothing to do with Sgt. Gary Stein. As long as I'm coming to the people as Gary Stein, then I'm OK."

In a statement released on Tuesday, Stein commented on remarks made by former President Clinton that antigovernment rhetoric can lead to violent results.

"The Tea Party movement does not condone the formation of violent militias or individuals that are plotting against the government. This 'Revolution,' that we speak of is when history will repeat itself as the American people, once again, unite to fight for their freedom. This time we will be fighting on a new battlefield without bloodshed, but the result will be the same," Stein wrote.

Stein told FoxNews.com on Wednesday that he released his latest statement to counter critics who suggested that "silence" from Tea Party members regarding antigovernment rhetoric could be construed as condoning those messages. Stein, who remains on active duty until July 2012, said he did not consult an attorney prior to releasing his statement.

"I wanted to make sure our views are heard," he said. "I wanted to make sure that if any Tea Party went on the record that it was the Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots."

Stein said he's received hundreds of e-mails from active and retired servicemembers on his postings. Every "single one, except one," Stein said, supported his right to speak out. The lone dissenter, a fellow Marine, claimed Stein is "making a mockery" of the Marines, he said.

Asked if he's considering a career in politics after he leaves the military, Stein said nothing is out of consideration.

"President Obama was a community organizer and now he's president of the United States," he said. "Anything can happen. I know there's a lot bigger and better things out there for me."

Robocop's Comment:

The Libtards are the first to parade around a deserter. Let this honorable man defend his country in his own way, which is through his words.

Gun Advocates Open a New Front

Wall Street Journal

By VANESSA O'CONNELL

Some gun owners, saying that the National Rifle Association isn't battling hard enough for their rights, are taking the fight into their own hands.

The 4.3 million-member NRA, one of the most powerful and well-funded lobbying groups in Washington, has for 35 years dominated the push to expand gun rights.

But its strategies aren't aggressive or imaginative enough for some gun owners who want to openly carry holstered pistols in public places, or to exploit loopholes in state gun laws to purchase semi-automatic rifles.

They are coming together in smaller, loosely organized groups that recruit on the Internet and find inspiration from the tea party movement.

On Monday, several thousand gun owners plan to mount two protests—a march in Washington and an "open-carry" rally in Mount Vernon, Va.

"More and more the gun-rights movement is moving toward a stand-up-and-shout approach," said Jeff Knox, director of the Firearms Coalition, a for-profit, loose-knit coalition of activists. "There's a lot of general frustration with NRA not taking a hard enough line."




Data on how many owners are joining the splinter groups are scant, because many are newly organized, and tend to seek contributions over formal memberships. In addition, some gun owners join more than one group. Mr. Knox estimated that the splinter groups had one million to 1.5 million members or regular contributors.

The NRA is "no longer absolutely the 800-pound gorilla" in the pro-gun movement, said Gary Marbut, a life member of the NRA and president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, an NRA affiliate. "The NRA is running the risk of becoming insignificant, of fading into the background."

Supporters of the second amendment gathered in a rally in northern Virginia carrying assorted firearms. Video courtesy of Fox News.

"You're really seeing a fragmentation of the gun-rights movement," said Joshua Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, a gun-control advocacy group. "There are many different types of gun owners, and the NRA tries to be the home for all. But it's difficult."

To be sure, the rise of the new groups hasn't hurt the NRA in terms of membership or revenue. Fueled by an increase in gun ownership, its membership is 25% to 30% above typical levels during the tenure of President George W. Bush. Altogether, an estimated 80 million people in the U.S. own guns.

The NRA's political action committee has taken in $10.25 million for the 2010 elections, and ranks sixth in terms of receipts among all federally registered PACs, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks Federal Election Commission disclosures. The NRA's total revenue, including member dues, investment income and contributions, rose to $307 million in 2009, from $268 million a year earlier.

"The NRA approval ratings are the highest they have ever been," said NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. Gun ownership "is a freedom the overwhelming majority of Americans support," he said. "There's different voices under that umbrella of freedom. And that's a good thing."

The NRA has pushed its agenda mainly by building strong relationships with Republican candidates and a system, dating back to 1975, for grading lawmakers and candidates based on how often they side with the NRA's legislative priorities.

These strategies helped lead to gun-rights victories such as the passage of laws last year to allow people to carry guns in national parks, and the so-called Amtrak bill, which will make it legal to travel with guns on trains, as checked baggage, by December.

"The NRA is a highly professional lobbying organization that's much less interested in spontaneous social expression than it is in lobbying in legislatures, and in endorsing certain litigation in the courts," said Stanford University law professor Robert Weisberg, an expert on gun law.

But Ben Cannon, 29, of Healdsburg, Calif., a founding member of the board of Calguns Inc., an Internet-based organization founded in 2002, said some younger gun owners felt that because the NRA must cater to all gun owners, it didn't embrace their own interests enough.

Calguns aims to fashion itself as a hipper pro-gun group. It has two entities—a free Web forum with 40,000 registered members that makes revenue from advertising, and a two-year-old nonprofit arm that raises money through donations. Most supporters are in their 20s and 30s, college-educated and urban dwelling.

Mr. Cannon claimed his group was responsible for advancing gun rights in California by discovering an obscure legal path to circumvent the state assault-weapons ban without breaking the law. The group noticed that AK-47, AR-15 and other styles of semi-automatic rifles would be legal to buy, build and own as long as they weren't models specifically listed as banned and didn't have a detachable ammunition magazine. He has posted online a letter from the state's firearms division confirming that certain purchases are legal.

After using the Internet to share advice for purchasing altered rifles that comply with the law, Calguns is seeking to identify plaintiffs and lawyers willing to file lawsuits it believes will further gun rights in the state.

Another alternative group gaining momentum with young gun owners is Opencarry.org, a six-year-old Internet-based organization with an estimated 22,000 registered users dedicated to openly carrying handguns in public in the 43 states where doing so is legal.

The open-carry movement has succeeded in small yet visible ways. Businesses, including Starbucks Corp. coffee shops, have resisted pressure from gun-control advocates to ban the practice in their stores.

The NRA hasn't endorsed the campaign, which it fears may divert attention from its goal of expanding rights to carry concealed weapons for self-defense, or trigger a backlash against guns.

The NRA isn't sponsoring, funding or providing NRA speakers for Monday's rallies. An NRA spokesman said the group had helped to spread word about the march in Washington.

But Dudley Brown, executive director of the National Association for Gun Rights, an NRA competitor that has filed paperwork to form its own political action committee, said that wasn't enough, adding that the NRA had been too quick to compromise with gun-control advocates.

He pointed to the association's endorsement of a law to check mental-health records in background checks for gun purchases following the killing of 32 people in 2007 by a suicidal gunman at Virginia Tech.

"Philosophically, we all agree with the same idea of gun freedom," said Mr. Brown, 44. "The question is strategy."

Write to Vanessa O'Connell at vanessa.o'connell@wsj.com

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved




Write to Vanessa O'Connell at vanessa.o'connell@wsj.com

Old Time Wisdom

Royal Douche 4/15/10 Follow Up

This is a follow up for our last Royal Douche.


Tea Partiers Seek 'Teachable Moment,' Not Oregon Teacher's Job

Fox News

The Tea Partiers are taking the high road. Just because Oregon middle school teacher Jason Levin has publicly denounced them as a bunch of "racists, homophobes and morons," they say that's no reason for him to lose his job.

All Levin really needs, they say, is some sensitivity training and some anger management therapy.

Levin, who declared his mission to "dismantle and demolish" the Tea Party on his "Crash the Tea Party" website, was placed on administrative leave last week while a state education board and his school district investigate whether the technology teacher promoted identity theft against Tea Party activists and misused school property.

But the Oregon Tea Party seems to be sipping chamomile. It doesn't want his neck -- just an apology from Levin and the Beaverton School District.

"We don't want to see Jason Levin fired, we want to see him helped," said Oregon Tea Party founder Geoff Ludt. "We want to reach out to him and we want to use his actions to create a teachable moment."

Levin, a media lab teacher at Conestoga Middle School, was placed on leave last week pending the conclusion of an investigation by the Beaverton School District into whether he used school hours or computers to work on his anti-Tea Party website, and if his political activity was appropriate behavior for a teacher of 6th, 7th and 8th grade students.

He is also being investigated by his state's teachers licensing agency, which was inundated with complaints after his incendiary statements became front page news.

In recent weeks, Levin announced his intention to embarrass Tea Partiers by attending their rallies dressed as Adolf Hitler, carrying signs bearing racist, sexist and anti-gay epithets and acting as offensively as possible -- anything, he said, short of throwing punches.

In an interview with Talking Points Memo, Levin said, "Our goal is that whenever a Tea Partier says 'Barack Obama was not born in America,' we're going be right there next to them saying, 'Yeah, in fact he wasn't born on Earth! He's an alien!'"

And in a now deleted post on website, Levin called on his supporters to collect the Social Security numbers -- among other personal identifying information -- about as many Tea Party supporters as possible at the numerous rallies that took place last Thursday.

"The more data we can mine from the Tea Partiers, the more mayhem we can cause with it!!!!" he wrote.

But the Oregon Tea Party says the teacher's actions are cause for a "teachable moment," not a trip to the unemployment line.

Ludt said his group sent out a press release to both the state agency and school district -- the same school district Ludt attended as a child -- on Monday in which they listed their demands.

The group is calling on the Beaverton School District to:

-- Apologize for inadequately supervising their teacher

-- Issue a written pledge to thoroughly investigate whether Levin encouraged his students to repeat overtly racist statements

-- Send a letter to all staff reminding them of district policy prohibiting teacher engagement in political activity on school time or using school resources

Despite being called “that loose affiliation of racists, homophobes, and morons” among a litany of other offensive names, the Oregon Tea Party says that as long as Levin successfully undergoes anger management and sensitivity classes, they see no reason why he shouldn't be allowed to teach.

"Levin sees us as enemies. We see him as a fellow human being who is obviously very angry and troubled. Political dialogue will never advance if we are unable to treat each other decently as human beings," Ludt said.

"Folks are out there are essentially rooting for the football team -- they're more interested in the games and not really looking at the issues. What we're trying to do is focus on the issues and the best way we can see to do that is to rise above the games.”

As for Levin's website, it has crashed and burned. The home page that once invited readers to help him demolish the Tea Party at all costs now simply reads: "Want to Show your support for Jason Levin? BUY A TEA-SHIRT."

Robocop's Comment:

The Tea Party has more tolerance for this "man" that I do. I would have been a little more easy going up until his idea about gathering social security numbers. This is encouraging criminal activity. In my eyes, he will always be a Royal Douche.

Confederate History Month

I normally take for granted Confederate History Month, but I ran across an old 2007 article that brings it some meaning from the St. Petersburg Times.

In defense of his Confederate pride

Nelson Winbush is intent on defending the flag of his grandfather. It's just surprising which flag that is.

By STEPHANIE GARRY, Times Staff Writer
Published October 7, 2007

KISSIMMEE -- Nelson Winbush rotates a miniature flag holder he keeps on his mantel, imagining how the banners would appear in a Civil War battle.

The Stars and Bars, he explains, looked too much like the Union flag to prevent friendly fire. The Confederacy responded by fashioning the distinctive Southern Cross -- better known as the rebel flag.

Winbush, 78, is a retired assistant principal with a master's degree, a thoughtful man whose world view developed from listening to his grandfather's stories about serving the South in the "War Between the States."

His grandfather's casket was draped with a Confederate flag. His mother pounded out her Confederate heritage on a typewriter. He wears a rebel flag pinned to the collar of his polo shirt.

Winbush is also black.

"You've never seen nothing like me, have you?"

* * *

Winbush's nondescript white brick house near Kissimmee's quaint downtown is cluttered with the mess of a life spent hoarding history.



Under the glass of his coffee table lie family photos, all of smiling black people. On top sits Ebony magazine.

Winbush is retired and a widower who keeps a strict schedule of household chores, family visits and Confederate events. He often eats at Fat Boy's Barbecue, where his Sons of Confederate Veterans camp meets.

Winbush's words could come from the mouth of any white son of a Confederate veteran. They subscribe to a sort of religion about the war, a different version than mainstream America.

The tenets, repeated endlessly by loyalists:

The war was not about slavery. The South had the constitutional right to secede. Confederate soldiers were battling for their homes and their families. President Lincoln was a despot. Most importantly, the victors write the history.

But Winbush has a conceptual canyon to bridge: How can a black man defend a movement that sought to keep his people enslaved?

* * *

Winbush is one of at most a handful of black members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in the country. He knows skeptics question his story and his sanity.

To win them over, he pulls out his grandfather's pension papers, reunion photos and obituary. He also gives speeches, mostly before white audiences.

Winbush believes the South seceded because the federal government taxed it disproportionately. It was a matter of states' rights, not slavery, which was going extinct as the United States became more industrialized, he says. He denies that President Lincoln freed the slaves, explaining that the Emancipation Proclamation affected only the Confederate states, which were no longer under his authority.

"It was an exercise in rhetoric, that's all," Winbush says.

His views run counter to many historical accounts. Rev. Nelson B. Rivers III, the field operations chief for the NAACP, called Winbush's arguments illogical. Rivers spoke with Winbush by telephone a few years ago, intrigued by his position. Rivers remembers him being loud and sincere, holding fast to his convictions.

"I was courteous and respectful and respectfully disagreed with him," Rivers said. "This is America. He has a right to believe what he wants to."

At one speech, Winbush stood in front of the square battle flag that draped his grandfather's coffin, retelling the stories he has told so many times that the words emerge in identical iterations.

At the end of his talk, he held the microphone to a stereo and played a song by the Rebelaires, with a sorrowful, bluesy rhythm: "You may not believe me, but things was just that way. Black is nothing other than a darker shade of rebel gray."

Once other Confederates recognize that his story is real, they love him. Opponents often attack white Confederates as ignorant or racist. Winbush is harder to dismiss. If nothing else, the naysayers are more willing to listen.

"It kinda wipes out the whole segregation and hate and racism issue," said Christopher Hall, 29, commander of Winbush's SCV camp. "Coming from him, that really can't be an argument."

* * *

Winbush's views were once more widespread, even in the land of theme parks and turnpikes.

Florida was the third state to secede. Its Civil War governor, John Milton, shot himself rather than rejoin the North, telling the Legislature, "Death would be preferable to reunion." Former Gov. Lawton Chiles defended the Confederate flag in 1996 when black lawmakers asked for its removal from the Capitol.

"You can't erase history," Chiles said at the time.

But now neo-Confederates are losing this second war of culture and memory.

Confederate flags are coming down, especially from the tops of Southern statehouses, including Florida's in 2001.

The agrarian Bible Belt has become the Sun Belt, full of northerners with few deep roots in the area. Identification with the South as a region has declined since the World War II era, which united the country with patriotism and the interstate system. Areas of South Florida, for instance, are known better as the sixth borough of New York than part of the Deep South.

High school teachers don't preach the righteousness of the South. And historians, for the most part, agree that the Civil War was about slavery, undermining the standard neo-Confederate argument.

But Confederate loyalists are digging in. Winbush considers the South his homeland. And his family history, because it's rarer than that of white Confederates, is in danger of extinction.

* * *

Slowly, in his deep, rough voice, Winbush tells the story of a young slave from a Tennessee plantation named Louis Napoleon Nelson, who went to war as a teenager with the sons of his master.

"They grew up together," Winbush says.

At first his grandfather cooked and looked out for the others, but later he saw action, fighting with a rifle under the command of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader and plantation owner.

At Shiloh, a two-day battle in 1862 in which more than 23,000 American men were killed or wounded, the Confederate Army needed a chaplain. Louis Nelson couldn't read or write, but he had memorized the King James Bible.

He stayed on as chaplain for the next four campaigns, leading services for both Confederate and Union soldiers, before they headed back to the battlefield.

He also foraged for food. One time, he killed a mule, cut out a quarter and hauled it back to his comrades.

"When you don't have anything else, mule meat tastes pretty good," he would tell his grandson.

Some topics even the loquacious grandfather considered off limits. He wouldn't talk about the Union siege of Vicksburg, a bloody battle that captured an important Mississippi River port and effectively split the South.

After the war, he lived as a free man on the James Oldham plantation for 12 more years. Then he became a plasterer, traveling the South to work on houses.

Over the years, he went to 39 Confederate reunions, wearing a woolly gray uniform that Winbush still has.In photos, he stands next to two white men who accompanied him to soldiers' reunions until they were old men. Through the sepia gleams a dignity earned on the battlefield.

"When he came back, that was storytelling time," Winbush says.

His grandfather died in 1934 at the age of 88. The local paper ran an obituary that called him a "darky." Winbush is proud that his grandfather's death was marked at all.

* * *

Winbush grew up in the house his grandfather built in 1908, a two-story yellow structure with a wraparound porch in Ripley, Tenn. The Oldham plantation, where his grandfather was a slave, provided the wood in recognition of his loyalty to the family.

Winbush and his siblings lived in a family of educators. His grandmother and mother were teachers. He says he first went to school as a baby in a basket.

All three children went to college. Winbush studied biology in hopes of becoming a doctor but didn't have enough money for medical school. He switched to studying physical education.

Winbush moved to Florida in 1955, a year after the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision mandated school desegregation. Like many around the country, Osceola County schools remained segregated for several more years.

He didn't mind the divide because he felt both black and white students got a better education by not being able to use racial conflict as an excuse. When the superintendent, a friend of his, decided it was time to integrate in the late 1960s, Winbush agreed. The time had come, he thought, when people could accept the change.

Winbush thinks that people will get along if they know each other. He says he never suffered any blatant racism. The small Southern towns he lived in were familiar and accepting.

He remembers the "I Have A Dream" speech that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He respects King but disagrees with his reverence for Lincoln.

Winbush wasn't moved by the speech. King was just speaking the truth, he says, but it didn't change the daily reality of blacks.

* * *

Winbush's convictions about the war lay dormant until 1991, when the NAACP began an all-out campaign against the Confederate flag, saying it was a symbol of hatred. It vowed to have it removed from public places by the end of the decade.

Winbush saw it differently, and he was retiring. He no longer worried about what some "Yankee boss" would think.

"I got fed up about all this politically correct mess," he says.

He joined the Sons and started speaking at their events. He twice appeared before the Virginia Legislature to dissuade them from taking down the flag. He collects clippings of newspaper stories written about his speeches. One shows him posing in front of a statute of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Winbush acknowledges that misuse of the Confederate flag has made it a symbol of hate in some people's eyes. But he says the American flag is just as racist. Troops of color are sent to die disproportionately in American wars, he says, and the Stars and Stripes flew above slave ships.

Rivers, the NAACP official, said people like Winbush need to let go of their family history and admit that all people, even those now dead, are imperfect.

"Just because your grandfather was wrong does not mean you can't break the generational curse and not be wrong too," he says.

* * *

Winbush is the last direct link to his grandfather, someone who heard the stories firsthand and felt the passion.

He feels the legacy of Confederate soldiers like his grandfather won't survive unless the history is passed within families, from one generation to the next.

But it's not easy. Even Winbush's son, a Naval Academy graduate who works for IBM, once suggested Winbush donate his Confederate collection to a museum.

"This is the only way some people will find out what did happen," he said. "The history books leave it out."

Winbush knows he won't be around forever. He only hopes that someone will continue to tell the stories.

Robocop's Comment:

Remember, The American Civil War was not about slavery, it was about the States resisting an overbearing Federal government. Let us not forget.

Activists Rally in Washington in Support of Gun Rights

Fox News

Hundreds of activists rallied in Washington, D.C., in support of gun rights Monday, urging people to vote for candidates in the upcoming elections who will loosen firearm restrictions.

Hundreds of activists rallied in Washington, D.C., in support of gun rights Monday, urging people to vote for candidates in the upcoming elections who will loosen firearm restrictions.

The rally in the nation's capital coincided with another rally in northern Virginia, where dozens of activists holstered handguns and slung unloaded rifles over their shoulders. The gun-toting protesters in Virginia were within the bounds of the law, and promised to keep the weapons unloaded.

Those in Washington, D.C., though, chose not to carry any firearms in compliance with the District's strict gun laws, even though many believe the rules are unconstitutional. The Supreme Court overturned part of the District's gun policy in 2008, when it struck down the city's handgun ban.

Among the activists in Washington Monday was James Everett, 71, a gun owner from Battle Creek, Mich., who said he came to the rally on a bus with nearly 40 others.

He echoed the speakers' message, saying he wants lawmakers to stop infringing on his right to bear arms.

Signs reading "Which part of 'shall not be infringed' confuses you?" and bright orange stickers saying "Guns save lives" dotted the crowd at the Washington Monument.

Across the Potomac River in Alexandria, former Alabama Minutemen leader Mike Vanderboegh told the crowd armed confrontation should be reserved only for instances of the government threatening people's lives.

However, he said it might be justified if people face arrest for refusing to buy insurance under the health care reform package recently passed by Congress.

"If I know I'm not going to get a fair trial in federal court ... I at least have the right to an unfair gunfight," Vanderboegh said.

As the group made its way from a staging area to Gravelly Point Park, gun control advocate Martina Leinz dismissed Vanderboegh as a bully.

"If they wanted to have dialogue, they don't need to bring a big weapon with them," she said of the protesters.

Organizers said it's the first armed rally in a national park since a law passed allowing people to carry firearms in national parks.

Ken Garvin of Newville, Pa., said he came because believes the government is overreaching. He stressed that the people attending the rally "are not a bunch of crazed thugs ... they're just people."



The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ranting The News

Why does opening a news page have to contribute to a migraine? Because the Libtards are mostly running things for now. How does reading the news contribute to a migraine? Let's see..

>"Judge: Prayer day violates U.S. law"

This story from the Washington Times give another example of another judicial activist who has no clue about interpreting the US Constitution. The only good news is that this ruling does not affect the whole country, and it is open to appeal to the highest court in the land.



>"Critics Slam Decision to Name Navy Ship for John Murtha"

Remember that defeatist senator who calls our men and women in uniform war criminals? The US navy is naming a warship after him. This is akin to naming a battered woman's shelter after Ike Turner. This is like naming an elementary school after Michael Jackson. They say critics are slamming this decision. Add me to this list. I slam thee.



>"Tenn. city elects dead man mayor"

If this does not exemplify voters' protest, nothing will.

>Marine Says He'll Continue to Post on Tea Party Facebook Page

We are lenient on deserters, we can lay off a Marine with an HONEST opinion. Enough said.



>"Police: Voices told man to kill pregnant wife, nieces and son"

I hear voices in me head, and the majority opinion involves either a rope, or a firing squad.



Well, enough of the migraines for now.

Now for encouraging events on Tax Day 2010: