Foodforthethinkers's Blog

By Doug Newman – email me

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Posted at Liberty Calling, Reddit, Veracity Voice, The Free Thought Project, Liberty Crier and Daily Paul. I update this periodically, as I become aware of new stories. Therefore, if you want to post this elsewhere, please just link to this URL instead. Thanks!

It is easy to stand up and cheer for your favorite government activity. It is quite another to acknowledge what it means in the real world.

Me. Ricky Recruit. 1983.

I almost never try to speak for other people. However, I think it is fairly safe to say that the average military recruit firmly believes that he joins the military so that you and I can live and breathe in freedom. To be sure, he had other reasons for joining, but I think the defense of liberty is a fairly common characteristic.

That is certainly what I thought when I was in Navy boot camp in Orlando, Florida, in 1983. After all, this is what I had been told all my life: sailors, soldiers, airmen and marines defend freedom.

But is this actually what they do?

Consider the following:

• This Marine lost both legs in an IED blast in Iraq. He claims he was forced by TSA to remove both prosthetic legs before he could board an airplane in Phoenix.
• This Vietnam veteran in Spicewood, Texas, had flashbacks to his combat experience during a marijuana raid at a friend’s house. What police claimed was marijuana turned out to be ragweed.
• Jared Goering, who served 19 years in the Army, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was kicked off the boardwalk in Wildwood, N.J. for walking with his service dog, Gator.
• Emily Yates, who served two tours with the Army in Iraq, was violently arrested by park police in Philadelphia for asking why she couldn’t play her banjo under some shade trees.
• Lee Carroll Brooker is a 75-year-0ld disabled Army veteran who used medical marijuana to treat some chronic health conditions. He faces life in prison under Alabama’s draconian marijuana laws.
• Dimitrios Karras is a Marine Corps veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Read about the ATF raid on his business in National City, California.
• Martin Goldberg of Brooklyn is a World War II veteran whose apartment was subject to a drug raid. Later, the cops realized they had raided the wrong apartment. His 83-year-old wife was hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat as a result of the raid.
• In 1997, four sailors from the USS Saipan (LHA-2) were falsely accused of the rape and murder of a Norfolk, Virginia, woman. One spent eight-and-one-half years in prison while the other three were sentenced to life in prison. These three were pardoned in 2009. Even though the actual killer is serving a life sentence, four innocent men are still required to register as sex offenders and are still fighting to clear their names.
• Charles Loeks was 18 and fresh out of Marine boot camp. On a trip home to Covina, California, he was hanging out with a few friends when he was arrested for resisting arrest and nothing else. He spent 21 days in a Los Angeles County jail, even though he had harmed no one.
• Carlos Jaramillo is a former Marine combat instructor who lives in Onslow County, North Carolina. Watch what happened when he recorded a sheriff’s deputy who arrested him for no apparent reason.
• Vietnam veteran Jose Oliva needed shoulder and throat surgery after being assaulted by guards as he peacefully entered the VA hospital in El Paso.
• Yvona Rodriguez, who served with the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, faces deportation for smoking marijuana to treat his PTSD.
• Army veteran Bradford Bates was beaten senseless by cops in Pasadena, Texas, who entered his home without a search warrant. He was wrongfully charged with felony assault and spent a year in prison.
• Noel Polanco was an unarmed 22-year-old National Guardsman who was shot and killed by New York City police at a traffic stop near LaGuardia Airport.
• John Laigaie, a retired Army master sergeant, was threatened at gunpoint by police while legally carrying a gun in a park in Bellingham, Washington.
• Bobby Daniels was a Navy veteran and a private security officer. When Atlanta police were summoned to deal with a hostage situation that Daniels had already defused, they fatally shot him.
• Douglas Ponischil, a 94-year-old World War II Navy veteran in Charlotte, was arrested for felony possession of marijuana.
• Homer Wright is an 80-year-old Army veteran who was charged with felony gun use after he shot a burglar who entered his home in Englewood, Illinois.
• Mark Schmidter, a Vietnam veteran who lives in Orlando, is served 145 days in a cage for passing out jurors’ rights information on the steps of a local courthouse.
• Justin Ross of Ankeny, Iowa, was recently discharged from the Army. Police used a battering ram to enter his home executing a warrant for some items purchased with stolen credit cards. They did not find any of these items.
• Air Force veteran Saadiq Long was placed on a TSA no-fly list. He had to battle for months to be removed from this list just so could fly home from Qatar to visit his ailing mother.
• Michael Funk, a Vietnam veteran, was fatally shot by police in Neenah, Wisconsin after Funk had escaped a situation where he was held hostage.
• William Wingate, a 69-year-old Air Force veteran spent 25 hours in jail after he was falsely accused of swinging a golf club at a Seattle police officer.
• During World War II, baseball legend Joe DiMaggio served three years in the Army Air Corps. His parents, however, were designated as “enemy aliens” because of their Italian ancestry and forbidden from traveling outside a five-mile radius of their home in San Francisco.
• Chuck Benton of Long Grove, Iowa, served 22 years in the Army. He was arrested and charged simply for living in the same house with his son who was growing medical marijuana.
• While 69-year-old Navy veteran Philip Williams was on an extended visit to Florida for surgery, town officials in West Hempstead, N.Y. had his home demolished.
• “Our young men and women are being destroyed in endless wars and tossed aside like useless trash in our dysfunctional courts.”
• Cody Donovan is a former Marine MP who lives in New Milford, N.J. He was charged with unlawful possession of a weapon after carrying a loaded gun into the Garden State Plaza mall when he attempted to help police apprehend the shooter.
• In 1932, 17,000 veterans marched on Washington to demand payment of bonuses they had been promised as a result of their service in World War I. Two were shot and killed by police. 55 were arrested and 135 were injured when the United States Army became an instrument of domestic law enforcement. Two of the chief enforcers were named MacArthur and Patton. Yes, those two.
• Mark England, an Army combat medic who saw action in Iraq and Kosovo was beaten and tasered by police at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas.
• Deanna Robinson, who was decorated for bravery while with the Air Force in Iraq, was beaten by sheriff’s deputies in Hunt County, Texas, even though she had not committed any crimes.
• Lucas Jewell, a Navy veteran, was pulled over by a tank in Jacksonville and charged with a whole lot of bogus nonsense.
• Air Force Staff Sergeant Matt Pinkerton of Glen Burnie, Maryland, faces second degree murder charges after fatally shooting a home intruder in September.
• Nicholas McGehee, an Army sergeant and Purple Heart winner was fatally shot by Tooele County, Utah, sheriff’s deputies after his wife called 911 because he head injured his foot.
• Leo Hendrick, an army veteran who lives in Northwood, Iowa, faces up to 30 days in jail and a $600 fine for raising chickens in his yard.
• Yes, the cops had a search warrant. However that in no way excuses their vandalizing the home of Army veteran Dan Neary of Lakewood, Washington.
• Air Force veteran Anthony Hill was naked and unarmed when he was shot dead by DeKalb County, Georgia, police.
• Eddie Lowery, a soldier at Fort Riley, Kansas, spent 10 ten years in prison for a rape he did not commit.
• These World War II veterans were threatened with arrest for visiting a closed war memorial in Washington, D.C. during the 2013 “shutdown.”
• These Vietnam veterans actually were arrested for visiting a New York City war memorial after curfew.
• Denis Reynoso was a disabled veteran who saw action with the Marines in Iraq. He was shot dead by police in his Lynn, Massachusetts, apartment.
• Nick Morgan, an Iraq veteran, was pulled out of a crowd by police in Hempstead, New York, and trampled by their horses.
• Gary Shepherd of Broadhead, Kentucky was a Vietnam veteran. He used medical cannabis to relieve the pain in his left arm, which was crippled during the war. Shepherd was shot dead by a SWAT team, after they had threatened to cut down his cannabis plants.
• Mark Brewer served with the Air Force in Afghanistan. Sheriff’s Deputies in Douglas County, Nebraska seized over $60,000 in cash from him even though they never charged him with a crime.
• James Brown, who served two tours with the Army in Iraq, reported to a jail in El Paso to serve a 2-day sentence for DUI. He was beaten to death by riot police.
• Marine Sergeant Manuel Loggins was fatally shot by police in San Clemente, California, after giving an officer a “‘mean’ expression”.
• Tommy Yancy served in the Army in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was beaten to death by police near Imperial, California, after being pulled over for a missing front license plate.
• Douglas Dendinger is a disabled Army veteran in suburban New Orleans. He was recently acquitted of totally trumped up charges that would have landed him in prison for up to 80 years.
• Valente and Manuel Valenzuela of San Antonio produced sufficient documentation to enlist, respectively, in the Army and Marine Corps. Both fought in Vietnam, where Valente won a Bronze Star. Now they are facing deportation to Mexico because of erroneous entries on their birth certificates.
• These veterans say they were required to prove they are worthy of gun rights. Our rights are gifts from God that are inherent in our very humanity. We never have to prove to anybody that we have them.
• William Wingate, a retired Air Force veteran, was arrested and jailed after a Seattle cop told him to put down his golf club, which he used as a cane.
• Watch how police in Winston-Salem, N.C. harass and threaten Marine Corps veteran James Goins for exercising his First Amendment right to film them.
• Bill Swan, 80, of Lone Jack, Missouri, is an Army veteran who took issue with utility crews digging on his property. He called the police, who proceeded to beat him leaving him bloodied with several broken bones.
• Jerome Murdough, a homeless Marine Corps veteran, died in a jail cell on New York’s Rikers Island after being arrested for trespassing. A heating malfunction caused the temperature in the cell to soar to 100 degrees.
• Marine veteran Gene Vela was shot at three times by Austin police who had banged on his door without identifying themselves. He was ultimately acquitted after being charged with assault on an officer, a charge that carries a sentence of five years to life.
• Kenneth Chamberlain was a retired Marine and Vietnam veteran living in White Plains, New York. Early one morning he set off his medical alert device. The first responders in this case were not medics, but rather police, who proceeded to kill Mr. Chamberlain.
  

  Colorado veterans say LEGALIZE!

• This group of combat veterans in Colorado organized to help legalize marijuana during the 2012 elections. They claim – and I believe them – that marijuana helps mitigate PTSD. If you support any punishment whatsoever for a combat veteran who heals himself with a plant that grows wild in some form within a few miles of you, I don’t care what you tell me. YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN FREEDOM!
• Stanley Gibson, a 43-year-old Gulf War veteran was shot dead over a total non-crime by Las Vegas police in December, 2011.
• Army Specialist Michael Sharkey returned home from deployment in Afghanistan to find his home in New Port Richey, Florida, unlawfully occupied by two squatters. The local sheriff says that Sharkey has no grounds upon which to evict them.
• Dwight Edwards, a disabled Marine veteran of Afghanistan, says that cops in Queens brutally beat him for no reason.
• Army Staff Sgt. C.J. Grisham, who won the Bronze Star with Valor, was forcibly disarmed for no good reason by a policeman while on a hike with his son not far from Fort Hood, Texas.
• Brandon Raub, a Marine who was decorated for bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan, was forced to spend a week in a Virginia mental hospital over some “anti-government” Facebook posts. (His interviewer here, John Whitehead, is a constitutional attorney, Vietnam infantry veteran and superlative anti-police state blogger.)
• Air Force Captain Nicolas Aquino was assaulted by sheriff’s deputies in Monterey, California, even after he had provided ample evidence that he was not a trespasser.
• Anthony Hill, a mentally ill Air Force veteran, was shot and killed after being seen walking around naked by police in DeKalb County, Georgia.
• Raymond Schwab of Garden City, Kansas, is a Navy veteran of the Gulf War who uses marijuana to treat his PTSD. When he moved from Kansas to Colorado for easier access to medical marijuana, he and his wife lost custody of their children.
• Decorated Air Force veteran Tim Arnold faces up to 25 years in prison after being convicted on totally bogus charges of, among other things, manufacturing firearms without a license.
• Marine Corporal Alexander DeVillena, who had harmed nobody, was fatally shot by Palm Springs, California police officers, who were later cleared of any wrongdoing.
• Read about the ordeal of Marine veteran Tyler Truitt as he struggles with authorities in Huntsville, Alabama, for his right to live off-the-grid.
• Alex Horton, an Army veteran of Iraq, was on the receiving end of a warrantless no-knock raid by police in Alexandria, Virginia.
• James Howard Allen was a 74-year-old Army veteran living in Gastonia, North Carolina. When family members called the police to check on how he was doing after surgery, they shot and killed him.
• Operation Vigilant Eagle is a project of the Department of Homeland Security that has led to numerous Iraq and Afghanistan veterans “finding themselves under surveillance, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, or arrested, all for daring to voice their concerns about the alarming state of our union and the erosion of our freedoms.” Indeed, merely being a “returning veteran” can have you designated as a potential terrorist.
• We will never know the whole truth about Navy veteran and former Los Angeles cop Christopher Dorner, who was the subject of a police manhunt and media witch hunt in 2013. He never got the chance to tell his story in court.
• Hector Barrios came to America in 1961. He was drafted and served as an infantry soldier in Vietnam. In 1996, he was busted for possessing marijuana, which he used to treat his PTSD. As a result, he was deported to his native Mexico where he died.
• Michael Giles, a six-year Air Force veteran who had served in Iraq, is serving s 25-year sentence for firing two shots in self defense outside a Tallahassee bar.
• Carlos Martin, a 10-year Army veteran, was beaten and pepper sprayed for calling a Columbia, South Carolina, police officer “Dude”. This officer recently gained national attention for assaulting a 15-year-old girl in her school.
• Matthew Corrigan of Washington, D.C. was a first sergeant in the Army Reserve and a veteran of Iraq. His home was destroyed in a SWAT rampage because it was reported to the police that Corrigan had a gun.
• Raymond Keith Martinez, a homeless and, more importantly, harmless, Marine Corps veteran was shot and killed in cold blood by a cop in West Monroe, Louisiana.
• Ronnie Hankins is an Iraq veteran. Look at the warrantless search that police performed on his vehicle in Dickson County, Tennessee.
• 81-year-old Navy retiree Herman Crisp was brutally beaten and left overnight without medical care by police in Georgetown, Texas, who were serving a search warrant for his nephew, who apparently wasn’t present at the time.
• Jamie Dean was an Army veteran of Afghanistan was diagnosed with PTSD. Upset about his impending deployment to Iraq, Dean had an intense emotional outburst at his Maryland home in December 2006. Even though he neither harmed nor threatened anyone, he was shot and killed by a local SWAT team.
• Bennie Coleman, 76, is a retired Marine who lost his Washington, D.C., home because of a $134 tax lien that District authorities had sold to an investor.
• Jeremy Usher is a former Navy hospital corpsman who lives in Greeley, Colorado. He faces jail time for using medical marijuana to treat his PTSD.
• Mack Worley, an Air Force veteran, was arrested by police in Vancouver, Washington, for lawfully carrying his rifle in public.
• Brittany Ball, a 23-year-old soldier at Fort Jackson, S.C., was manhandled by a cop at a local bar, even though she had done nothing wrong.
• Alejandro Natividad, an Army veteran, had two La Quinta, California, police pull guns on him while he was filming an arrest.  He has been called America’s “Tank Man.”
• Air Force Airman First Class Michael Davidson was shot in the stomach by police in Opelika, Alabama, at the scene of a traffic accident.
• Benjamin Wassell sustained traumatic brain injuries while with the Marines in Iraq. The Buffalo-area resident was the first person charged with illegal gun sales under New York’s new SAFE Act.
• Erik Scott graduated from West Point in 1994 and served as a tank platoon leader. In 2010, he was gunned down and killed by police as he peacefully walked out of a Las Vegas Costco.
• Scott Olsen saw action with the Marines in Iraq. Later, he would join the Occupy Oakland movement. In October, 2011, suffered a fractured skull after being hit in the head with a projectile fired by police.
• Derek Hale served honorably with the Marines in Iraq. Although, he had committed no crime, he died after being tasered three times and then shot three times by police in Wilmington, Delaware.
• Roderick King, an Iraq war veteran, was arrested in Philadelphia after he and his friends had criticized a cop’s driving.
• Howard Dean Bailey, a Navy veteran, was deported to his native Jamaica when immigration authorities discovered he had taken a plea bargain in a marijuana case in Norfolk, Virginia.
• To be sure, the recently deceased folk singer Pete Seeger could not have been more of a leftist. However, he did serve three years in the Army after being drafted during World War II. He was sentenced to one year in jail after refusing to reveal his political connections to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956. He appealed this sentence, citing the First Amendment, and ultimately spent only four hours behind bars.
• Larry Kirschenman of Nogales, Arizona, served 22 years in the Army and was decorated for bravery in Vietnam. He was brutalized by Border Patrol agents when asking why he was subjected to a warrantless search.
• Kristoffer Lewandowski of Geronimo, Oklahoma faces life in prison for using marijuana to heal his PTSD.
• Look at this Facebook group of veterans who, while here in America legally, were accepted into the military, served honorably and yet still were deported. Also, read this article about the Deported Veterans Support House.
• We will never know for sure what happened in Army veteran Matthew Stewart’s Ogden, Utah, apartment one night in January 2012, as he will never have his day in court. He was in prison awaiting trial on charges of shooting and killing one of the police officers who raided his apartment searching for marijuana. Stewart, whose guilt was never proven, committed suicide in his cell.
• Coast Guard veteran Walter Scott was unarmed when he was shot and killed while running away from a police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina. (This video went absolutely viral.)
• Arnold Abbott of Fort Lauderdale won two Purple Hearts as an infantry soldier in World War II. He faces possible jail time for feeding the homeless.
• Isiah James is an Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. A cop in Riviera Beach, Florida, smashed his iPhone 6 even though he was legally parked in a handicapped parking space.
• Sergio Arreola is a cop in Los Angeles who served with the Marines in Iraq. He was beaten by the police in suburban Pomona for no reason whatsoever.
• This former Army paratrooper is appealing to the New York state legislature to legalize medical marijuana. He has severe multiple sclerosis and is “forced to break the law to have some semblance of a bearable existence.”
• On May 5, 2011, a Tucson SWAT team approached the home of Jose Guerena, who had served two tours with the Marines in Iraq. Guerena grabbed his AR-15 as is his right, but did not fire. The SWAT team let loose with 71 rounds, 60 of which perforated Guerena’s body.
• Marty Maiden lived a few blocks from Guerena in Tucson and saw action with the Army in Afghanistan. He posted a suicidal note on Facebook which prompted a call to the police, who shot him dead.
• Bob Jordan of Parrish, Florida, is a disabled Vietnam veteran. His wife, Cathy, suffers from ALS and mitigates many of the symptoms with marijuana, which is illegal even for medical purposes in Florida. The Jordans face possible jail time.
• Dakota Serna, a Marine combat veteran who uses medical marijuana to combat PTSD, was not allowed to finish his testimony before the Michigan State Senate opposing a tax increase. Watch the video in this article.
• Steve Lefemine is a West Point graduate who was arrested for protesting against abortion in a “no-demonstration zone” outside the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court justified the arrest based on a “compelling state interest in security”.
• Eileen Erickson’s husband Sid served in Vietnam and died of Agent Orange exposure. Erickson is now in the crosshairs of authorities in Venice, California, who want to tear down the tree house Sid built before he died.
• Listen to this disabled Navy veteran plead with then-Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) about the benefits of medical marijuana. Listen to the totalitarian response.
• John Wrana, a 95-year-old Army Air Corps veteran of World War II, was tasered and then shot to death by police in Forest Park, Illinois. His “crime”? Refusing medical attention.
• John Colaprete saw action in Vietnam as a Marine Corps officer. In 1994, his Virginia Beach home and restaurants were the object of paramilitary-style raids by the IRS. The raid was prompted by a false accusation by a former employee. While you need to watch this documentary in its entirety some time, for now just pick it up for a few minutes starting at the 55:40 mark.
• Boxing legend Joe Louis was also tyrannized by the IRS. The Brown Bomber enlisted in the Army in 1942 saying “Let us at them Japs.” Louis never saw combat, as he was assigned to the Special Services Division. While still a civilian, Louis fought some charity bouts and donated the proceeds to the Navy Relief Society. The IRS, however, viewed these proceeds as taxable income. IRS problems would plague him all his life. Please watch this video starting at the 53:17 mark.
• Adam Arroyo is a Hispanic veteran of the Iraq war who lives in Buffalo. Police shot and killed his dog while executing a drug warrant for a black man.
• Henry Taylor, a retired Air Force veteran in Louisville, Tennessee, who was shot dead by a local sheriff’s deputy while investigating a burglary at a rental property he owned.
• This is a fascinating article: When Johnny Comes Marching Home … He Goes to Jail. It is absolutely tragic how we chew up and spit out so many of those we send to “fight for our freedom.”
• William Livsey is an 84-year-old retired four-star Army General whose accolades include Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He says he is “ashamed to be an American” after he was brutally arrested following a minor disagreement with a delivery person in Fayetteville, Georgia.
• Adam Kokesh won the Navy Commendation Medal as a Marine in Iraq. In recent years, he has been arrested several times for various non-violent protests. His most recent arrest happened after he loaded a shotgun in public in Washington, D.C. on July 4, 2013. On July 10, police violently raided his home and arrested him. He was incarcerated for four months without bond, bail or trial. He is currently on probation for two years. You may not like Kokesh’s demeanor or approve of all of his antics, but he has been very courageous when so many of his critics can’t be bothered to put down the remote.
• James Moore, my brothah from anothah mothah, walked away from a very lucrative engineering position in San Jose to re-enlist in the Army following 9/11. He sustained significant physical injuries as well as PTSD while serving in the Special Forces in Afghanistan. On the afternoon of March 25, 2008, Moore, who had done absolutely nothing wrong, was beaten to the point of flat lining by Denver police.
• Antonio Buehler graduated from West Point in 1999, earned his Ranger tab, and saw action in Kosovo and Iraq. (He also sports a Stanford MBA and a master’s degree from Harvard.) Early in the morning on January 1, 2012, Buehler was arrested for taking a few pictures of Austin police manhandling a young woman outside a 7-11. Buehler has been arrested four times since. He heads the Peaceful Streets Project, whose members work to expose abuse, brutality and overreach both in Austin and across the nation.

There are no doubt numerous other injustices against veterans that I do not know about. Enough to fill a book. None of these things would have happened if America were a free society. As Kokesh puts it, “The greatest enemies to the Constitution are not to be found in the sands of some far off land but rather right here at home.”

I cannot speak to the specific political beliefs of most of the veterans I have mentioned here. Some may be pacifists, while others may make John McCain look like a hippie in Haight-Ashbury. No matter what their individual views may be, the freedom they risked their lives for was flagrantly violated on the streets of the land they fought to protect.

With a maximum capacity of 192 nuclear warheads, just one Ohio-class American submarine is the world’s sixth largest nuclear power.

Society endlessly applauds sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines for “fighting for our freedom”. It is in no way disrespectful to say that this is not what they do. No foreign government or terrorist group poses any threat to our liberty. America accounts for about half of the world’s military spending. We have 400 ships in our Navy, plus thousands of planes, tanks and nuclear warheads as well as 300 million firearms in private hands. Nobody is going to invade us.

In a constitutional country, which America ceased to be 100 years ago, the job of the military – a vital and most noble one – is to defend the borders, shores and airspace. It cannot protect you from being tyrannized domestically. Indeed, throughout history, armies have been instruments of domestic tyranny. Our Constitution forbids a standing army for just this reason.

Keeping’em free, baby.

Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia had enormous military establishments.  How did things work out in these countries?

I am a Christian who believes liberty is a gift from God – Leviticus 25:10; II Corinthians 3:17; Galatians 5:1. To quote Jefferson, liberty is preserved not by military might, but by “eternal vigilance” against one’s own government at all levels. It is the grossest form of disrespect to send young men around the world to “fight for freedom” while relinquishing that freedom on the home front. For several years, America has had the world’s highest incarceration rate. Since 2001, Americans have gladly accepted previously unthinkable intrusions on their freedom in the name of “safety” and “security”. These include, but are not limited to: warrantless searches and spying, the suspension of habeas corpus, sexual assault as a condition of travel, rampant police brutality, indefinite detention without any semblance of due process, severe restrictions on peaceful protest, massive ammunition purchases by DHS and surveillance drones in our skies watching our every move. Can predator drones be far behind? And in every election 98 percent of voters put their stamp of approval on perpetuating this monstrosity.

Watertown, Massachusetts, on the 238th anniversary of the “shot heard ’round the world.”

On April 20, 2013, Boston and several surrounding towns got a serious taste of martial law. How many military veterans were on the receiving end of this?  Is this what they signed up to fight for?

Stop thinking in clichés. Have a good hard look at everything your media and government tell you. This includes media outlets and parts of the government that you like. Study. Read. Ask questions. And learn that the defense of liberty is not the duty of the military. Rather, it is your duty and mine. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• Special thanks to Radley Balko and William Grigg for providing several of the above stories.
• Read this article by John Whitehead.
• The Free Thought Project catalogs numerous instances of police abuse of veterans.