Archive for April, 2011

When you run down the list of issues the Oath Keepers are worried about, it reads a lot like a bill of particulars from the American Civil Liberties Union. The Oath Keepers don’t like warrantless searches. They’re upset that the executive branch has claimed the power to classify American citizens as enemy combatants, detain them indefinitely, and try them before military tribunals. They worry that a large-scale terrorist attack similar to 9/11 could lead to the mass detention of Arabs or Muslims, just as Japanese Americans were detained during World War II. They worry about crackdowns on political speech, protest, and freedom of assembly. They are concerned about the Army 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, a military unit that is training to deploy domestically in response to terrorist attacks or other national emergencies. And yet the group is a frequent target of the left.

Oath Keepers is proud to announce the sponsorship of a Lucas Oil Off-Road Race Team. http://www.lucasoiloffroad.com One of our members, Dow Woerner, is the owner and driver of Conquer Motorsports Team. For 11 years, Conquer Motorsports has been competing in several different racing series including the NASCAR Super Late Models, Legends and the NASCAR Whelen Series Modifieds. Dow also has Drag Racing and Motocross experience. For the 2008 season, the team finished 3rd overall in points in the NASCAR Whelen series with 5 wins.

The Off-Road Racing Series is viewed as becoming the next NASCAR in the motorsports industry. Races are presently aired on NBC, Speed, The Outdoor Channel, Versus, Mav TV, and Channel 22 out of Los Angeles, CA. Approximately thirty thousand spectators attend each event and are expected to dramatically increase.

To see the 2011 schedule click on http://www.lucasoiloffroad.com/schedule.htm

Conquer Motorsports is currently seeking Sponsorship. If you have personnel contacts that can benefit from nationwide exposure, please contact Stewart Rhodes. With enough sponsors, Oath Keepers will be represented on the team “free of charge” giving significant coverage across the nation.

Look up the phrase “a unique form of domestic terrorism” on a search engine and you will turn up a story about a man whom the US government is trying to cage from now until the time of his death.

And his crime? His unique form of terrorism? He minted silver and copper coins and sold them. In other words, he did what innumerable entrepreneurs from the beginning of time have done. He attempted to provide consumers with a store of value. No one was forced to buy. He met a market demand, and that’s it.

Whom did he hurt? No one. Unlike illegal drugs, which the government bans on grounds that it doesn’t want us to hurt ourselves, these silver coins did not endanger their users. They only gave people an option on what to do with their money. Did the proprietor attempt to claim that these were legal tender for monetary exchange? No, he sold them for what they are.

Could people use them for money? Yes, but people can use anything for money: shoes, shells, flash drives, or books. Whether something is money or not depends on the intentions behind the exchange. Do you acquire something to consume it? It is not money. Do you acquire something in order to trade it for something else? In that case, it takes on money-like properties.

The Thomas More Law Center announced today that it has filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan against the City of Coldwater on behalf of the Common Sense Patriots of Branch County and two of its members, Barbara Brady and Martin Lepper, alleging that the City’s recent ban of all signs in the Four Corners Parks violates their constitutional right to Free Speech.

The Common Sense Patriots was established in 2009 as part of the nationwide political, grass-roots movement of American patriots known as the TEA Party. They were motivated by the concern that the government was trampling on fundamental liberties. The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) is a national conservative Christian public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel for TMLC, commented, “The right to freedom of speech is one of our most fundamental constitutional rights and the City of Coldwater is trampling all over that right with this draconian sign restriction.”

Last year my wife and I attended a conference arranged by a good friend, Dr. Stanley Monteith. The four speakers were excellent, but it was Sheriff Richard Mack who impressed us most. Starting as a part-time “meter maid” he worked his way through college with hopes of following his father’s career with the FBI. Circumstances thwarted that direction and he found himself working for the local police department. In order to expand the department, the leadership demanded numbers, which meant citations and arrests. Not wanting to disappoint his superiors, he quickly became a by-the-numbers jerk. “I literally justified my existence on the backs of the citizens,” he told us.

After five years on the force, he was offered a one-year undercover assignment in narcotics. With 24 hours to decide, a wife and three young children to consider, he realized the consequences could be huge. He couldn’t be seen in public with his family, and he had to learn to drink, smoke, and party-hearty with the druggies. Being a strict, life-long Mormon, this would be his most life-altering experience yet.

Oath Keepers, what with all the bad news we are constantly bombarded with, I figured you could use a good laugh, especially at Mark Potok’s expense (he is one of our favorite people, even if he does have a dead marmot on his head in place of where most people have hair. Every time he goes on air to demonize us, we get a spike in Oath Keepers membership).

Humor is often the very best weapon, especially in the theater of the absurd we now see playing around us. As the below article lays out, there is no shorter path to being labeled a “domestic terrorist” or “extremist” than telling the truth, consistently standing for freedom, or asserting that people should simply act like free men and women. And God forbid you should advocate that we actually follow the Constitution. If you do that enough, you will end up on Mark Potok’s official hit list:

Of Boots And Boo-Boos

I have taken the oath to the Constitution on three different occasions in my life, I have felt the overwhelming pride, the overpowering sensation of belonging to a sacred, select, and solemn body of men and women who have done so over the course of history in this country, which forever binds us through the centuries for time immortal.

I have felt the sting of the slings and arrows of the foes who rise against this great republic, cast by those who would wish to see her utter destruction both from without and from within. This solemn oath is to me a sacred honor that few can live up to when storms rage, but many affirm in times of sunshine and clear skies.

The economy has already imploded and is now reinflated with volatile hydrogen-like fiat, just waiting for the right spark to bring the whole zeppelin crashing down in flames.
Giordano Bruno, Neithercorp Press

It is one thing to hold a theory that says something will happen, but it quite another to see it actually happening.
Jesse, Jesse’s Café Américain

It’s bad. Rigor and Mortis are running the housing industry, employment is still falling like a sack of concrete, finished goods prices are surging, the Treasury is borrowing back—with interest—the same dollars it gives away to the Federal Reserve, nuclear power plants are melting down and blowing up in Japan, month over month food prices shot up the most since Gerald Ford was President—that’s before our western farm land gets dusted with radioactivity, inflation is spooling up big time, only antiquarians talk about ‘consent of the governed’ any more, and hefty pieces of the economy are dropping off as it lurches like a leper to its final pratfall. Yeah, this will turn out well.

Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna says,

The Western welfare state is built out of enormous, unthinkable quantities of debt. It is the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, and its demise is mathematically inevitable. The only question is exactly when the scam starts to unravel in earnest.
Article, The Shadow Knows, Part 1

Meanwhile, our representative government is mainly representing itself. As Mat Negrin noted last week in Politico:

U.S. consumers face “serious” inflation in the months ahead for clothing, food and other products, the head of Wal-Mart’s U.S. operations warned Wednesday.

The world’s largest retailer is working with suppliers to minimize the effect of cost increases and believes its low-cost business model will position it better than its competitors.

Still, inflation is “going to be serious,” Wal-Mart U.S. CEO Bill Simon said during a meeting with USA TODAY’s editorial board. “We’re seeing cost increases starting to come through at a pretty rapid rate.”

The phrase “Black Swan” is really making the rounds these last few months. Uttering the term a year ago would have earned you a collection of confused looks and a general attitude of disinterest. Now, people behave as if they had learned about economic shockwave events and the global domino effect when they were in kindergarten. The problem is that when this kind of terminology hits the mainstream, in most cases it comes prepackaged with dumbed down and diluted definitions which promote an inadequate, cartoonish understanding of the circumstances.

To be sure, most Americans are well aware that the world’s political and economic foundations are about as stable as fresh pudding under a heat lamp. The problem is that they are now being conditioned by the mainstream media to view the idea of collapse as “cinematic”; a kind of live action fantasy in which we all get to play the part of the audience, watching safely from the dark in our cushy theater seats with a bag of overpriced popcorn, Dolby surround sound, and a hot date to keep us company during the boring parts. Three years ago, even mentioning the idea of a breakdown in society or a financial catastrophe beyond a minor recession earned you the label of “doom monger”; a rather inept and naïve attempt on the part of the MSM to silence any economic analysis that stepped outside the establishment Keynesian framework. Today, I turn around to look at a magazine stand at the airport and right in front of me is Newsweek openly declaring “Apocalypse Now”!