While the New York Times focuses like a laser-beam on the disturbing trend of Iraq war veterans committing violent murders at about one-fourth the rate of average citizens, these men and women are frequently treated like so much annoying busy-work by those our government employs to help them.

Is the mainstream media simply populated with such pathetic wusses that they fear and must demonize the brawny sorts who provide them the safety to exercise their First Amendment right to disseminating partisan propaganda? What sort of neurotic, brain-damaged, pansy writes an article claiming our returning heroes are psychopathic killers, citing 121 cases of murder (20% of which involved drunk-driving) and never mentions to the reader that these 121 cases come to about 7.08 per 100,000, while the category of citizen New York Times reporters belong to (non-veterans) commits murder at a rate of 26.5/100,000?

How about a headline like “Iraq War Veterans: Most Peaceful Males in the Nation”?

This is what the media means when they claim they support our troops but not the war. What they really mean is they hate the war and they will throw our troops under the bus to make it look as bad as possible.

What about an expose on the fact that the federal bureaucracy fails miserably to take care of these men and women when they return from defending us with their very lives on the line? Inasmuch as combat veterans are the only people in this country who have ever genuinely risked their lives to protect the bastion of freedom that is the United States of America, they should be treated with the utmost respect and honor. They should never pay an income tax again, and instead of this make-work B.S. VA that the government has let rot for years, they need to be granted cash vouchers for the rest of their lives to pay for any medical treatment they require. The cost of the benefits and salary paid to the legions of doctors, staff, civilian workers and bureaucrats would diminish if a veteran could simply pay individually on a cash-like basis for his chosen medical care. 

The VA, with its captive clientele has no reason whatsoever (unless out of the goodness of their hearts) to treat our Veterans with the dignity and respect they deserve. Individual private-sector doctors would treat them well or lose their business. Those doctors would not turn away a client, because the client would be paying. 

This issue here is one of philosophy. As in all areas of progress, the Left believes Big Government can do it best. After all, how can you trust a man who defends liberty and defeats the enemy while risking life and limb, to choose his own doctor? The truth is the Left is categorically opposed to capitalism and deeply mistrustful of the profit motive (except when they are the profiteers). Maybe they are so arrogant that they are insulted by the idea that anyone would treat them well because that person is paid to. Maybe they are convinced their immigrant nannies and the sycophant Press just love them because they are so fabulous. Being Socialists at heart, they cannot admit that when you stick two parties in a forced transaction monitored by a third party, those two parties have no reason to please each other. Because they don’t recognize the fallen sin-nature of all human beings, they cannot admit that people are not generally going to try to please one another ‘just because’. Most people in the general populace, Veterans included, would be happy to receive good service even if the Benjamins they were forking over motivated the quality of it. 

But Veterans won’t have that choice because it would ruin the fun of the social engineers on the Left. So the next time you are getting crappy service at the Division of Motor Vehicle, count yourself lucky and say a prayer for our service members.  Their health, sometimes their life, is at the mercy of the very same bureaucracy.

It has seemed insane from the beginning to hand over what is approaching multiple trillions of dollars of our money to those who have so poorly managed the money of their own institutions. Even more of an insult is seeing the same Congressional ‘watch dogs’ who encouraged bad loans, hid crumbling systems and lined their pockets with money from the perpetrators, dole out our hard-earned cash and promise that they can be trusted to ensure it is properly used. While Americans must waste countless hours every year assiduously accounting to Big Brother for every penny they earned and spent, banks who recently walked out of the Capitol with billions of our IRS-confiscated income are brazen enough to announce that they simply will not or cannot tell us where they are spending their bailout money.

According to Washington AP, December 22, 2008:

"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."

The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest?

None of the banks provided specific answers.

"We're not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking," said Barry Koling, a spokesman for Atlanta, Ga.-based SunTrust Banks Inc., which got $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Some banks said they simply didn't know where the money was going.

"We manage our capital in its aggregate," said Regions Financial Corp. spokesman Tim Deighton, who said the Birmingham, Ala.-based company is not tracking how it is spending the $3.5 billion it received as part of the financial bailout.

Well. Try that with the IRS. “Sorry Mr. Auditor, but look, I don’t owe any taxes. Well no, I am not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking. I manage my income and spending in the aggregate and all I can say is I have nothing left so I must not owe a dime.”         

But we have all seen the anecdotal evidence which demanded action, some action, any action as long as it is expensive action. We must save Main Street! By bailing out Wall Street? We took a bunch of fat-cats who should have known better, who lost their clients’ life savings, and instead of using the money to maybe try and give these individuals (some of whom were probably the victims the press claims they all are)a second chance, we will give a second chance to the culprits. What brilliance! Yes, the penalty for malfeasance with other people’s money shall be to give you even more of the people’s money. This time without even the people’s consent. That’ll teach you!

Would that some conservative soul had shouted the words of Andrew Jackson in the halls of Congress!

Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out. 

And yes, had the banks all failed people would have been ruined. But now we have given the very culprits of those people’s ruin not only the ability (by saving them from failure) but the means (by flooding their coffers with taxpayer money) to continue unabated in ruining even more lives. 

And to those who offer more government oversight as the answer I have another fine quote:

The claims of these organizers of humanity raise another question which I have often asked them and which, so far as I know, they have never answered: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? – Frederic Bastiat

Why do people behave as though a legislator is less apt to be bribed than a CEO? What idiocy is it that pretends having the wolves in the Capitol protect us from the wolves on Wall Street is any sort of solution to the problem of fallen humanity and the greed and corruption that accompanies it? Why are we shocked that billions were mishandled, misappropriated and outright stolen? And where is the outrage that victims of corporate theft now line up to receive the largesse of bureaucratic theft?

Washington’s answer to the plight of those who willingly entered relationships with banks they thought they could trust and lost their shirts, is to steal the shirts off the back of every working American to give these investors and mortgage holders a second chance through the propping up of failing private enterprises with confiscated funds.

We have become a people who have traded the rights to the bread of our own labor for the fleeting sense of security provided by a government safety net.  William Pitt once said “The poorest man may, in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow though it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.” Today, in order to have a nicer home than we can rightly afford, a newer car than we can assuredly pay for, bigger grocery lists, better hobbies and the assurance that the ‘King’ will care for us as corn stalks in a money-bearing crop, we allow him to dictate what portion of our bread we may keep, what lessons our children shall learn, what words we may or may not use on a college campus, what safety devices we shall wear, what our preacher may speak on from the pulpit, and on and on. The king marches into our homes concealed in the pay stub missing 33% of our earnings and hangs over our shoulder demanding to know how we made what we did in a private transaction between our employers and ourselves. For some of us the King arrives in a monthly welfare payment or appears through our food stamp allowance, ensuring that for his meager crumbs we will dutifully bow like the herd we are and vote for yet more promises of security never thinking of how they encroach our liberty.

The men who signed the Declaration of Independence were men with much to lose, not only their money but their families and their lives. Many of them lost all of those things. Today we love the conveniences of our bountiful lives so much we are trod upon in the most disgraceful fashion by those whom we elect to be the arbiters of good government and we raise not a whimper. To all who read this I urge you to take sides now with those who would love liberty or those who would love convenience. I urge you with the words of Samuel Adams:

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.                    

As I tore through the new Coulter book, Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Attack on America, I knew the single mother chapter would draw fire. Having become a single mother at age 24, I read every book on the topic. I even read some of those cited in Coulter’s latest literary adventure. Looking back, I recall the uplifting stories of single-motherhood success that were meant to comfort the reader. Several well-known children of single mothers are paraded through the pages to assuage the reader’s fear that she has doomed her child to a life of fewer possibilities, greater challenges and harsher circumstances. 

That Bill Clinton is cited repeatedly as a success story should tell you all you need to know about how these authors judged success.

Was I encouraged by these books? Well the prospect that my child could become a serial adulterer, sociopathic drunk, compulsive liar and possibly a rapist did weigh heavily against the hope that he might juggle being President along with these other endeavors. The most useful advice came from just one book, which started out condemning the idea of victimhood. You needed to stop moaning about how you got where you were. It criticized the notion of blaming others, insisting the very first step toward healing and providing your child the healthiest home possible was to let go of blame, acknowledge your role in arriving where you had, and make adjustments to your behavior accordingly. This book talked about some of the most difficult sacrifices that many women never consider they will have to make before hopping into bed for a little recreational sex.  In my personal situation the father refused to tell his parents. He insisted I give the baby up. I refused. He moved several states away. He demanded a paternity test even though we had lived and worked together for six months. He saw us in a store one day and cooed at his son like he was some stranger’s child. My heart was filled with loathing for a man who had talked with me of marriage and children but ran when they were an eventuality. 

But I could not indulge that loathing. I had decided I would raise this child alone. Unlike many single mothers I have known through the years, I had no illusions that me and baby would coast through life on a cloud of happy peek-a-boos and powder scented naps. Maybe because I had siblings eleven and thirteen years my junior, I did not see my imminent motherhood as a fulfillment of myself or as an opportunity to have someone who would adore me unconditionally. Rather, I saw it as a logical consequence of my personal decisions. I recognized that these decisions had been influenced by an upbringing with an absentee, alcoholic, abusive father. More importantly I recognized that I could never change the circumstances of my life, only the decisions I made. I owned my wrongdoing. I admitted to myself that influence and coercion are two drastically different things. No one coerced me into a youth of promiscuity in search of affection; that was my decision alone. I recognized I had lived a self-destructive life and that self-destruction is self-indulgent.  I saw the pitfalls that lay ahead of a self-indulgent single mother: Expecting my child to fulfill me, clinging to him, denigrating his father to him, martyring myself…the list went on. When I decided I would raise my child alone I also decided that never again in my life could I be my first priority. While my child would not be spoiled, I myself would always have to come second to what was the best for him.

Things today are terrific but it has not been easy. In a desperate desire to make a ‘complete’ family, I married a man who descended into abusive paranoid schizophrenia. We had a son together before he became completely unstable and dangerous. He refused to work and I couldn’t trust to leave my children with him. There were times when we didn’t have electricity in East Texas at 105 degrees.  After I had him removed from the house there was a period when we couldn’t afford the bills and had to close down the house we lived in and sleep on a relative’s floor. Not only did I subject my son to a fatherless home initially, but when I had the chance to choose a father for him I was so panicked to ‘make things right I made a hasty and terrible choice subjecting him to four years with a terrible step-father. My next decision was to become completely self-sufficient, leaning only on God for support. Today I am happily married to a fine Christian man who treats my sons as his own. We have a two-year-old baby girl and she is the bees knees as far as her big brothers are concerned.

Yes things today are great, but there is always a shadow. Recently I had to explain to my nine-year-old what a biological father is, and how the man he knew from infancy was not his. I had to tell him that thousands of miles away lives a man who is his father but does not want to be known to him. I had to issue the ‘it’s not about you’ platitudes that I know feel hollow. I have a six-year-old and a nine-year-old versed in the consequences of paranoid schizophrenia, so they will understand that the daddy who had to leave them did so because he was ill and not because they are unlovable. Still they wanted for some time to know why he wouldn’t take his medicine if he loved them. I have heard my eldest at age five scream that he hates me because I made his daddy go away and now we are ‘poor’. I agonize over how to explain someday that sex before marriage is dangerous, that my promiscuity was a mistake, without making my eldest feel as if he was a mistake as well. So many things would have been different if I had followed God’s model of sex between one man and one woman within a covenant marriage. That seems so old-fashioned and out of date. I don’t care. 

People will say “You wouldn’t have them if things had been different.” I know that. More importantly, they wouldn’t have had me. Have I come through for them? Yes. My children are bright, well-behaved, loving and happy. But they have struggled to get here. I am sick of hearing how resilient children are. What a callous thing to say. Women leaving their husbands because they just aren’t in love anymore tell themselves and each other how ‘resilient’ children are. Lovely…let’s see how much they can take!

Is a single mother capable of raising a well-adjusted child? Yes, rarely, though I confess that I don’t believe my sons would be as happy without my husband. He is a daddy to them and they need it. Certainly there are women capable of going to the incredible lengths required to give their children everything they require financially, emotionally, educationally and spiritually. The problem is that the glorification of single motherhood;  the acceptability of a fifteen-year-old plopping her kid in the day-care facility at her high school, has attracted a deluge of pregnancies in those least prepared to care for someone else more than they care for themselves.

God Bless Ann Coulter for standing up for the children, mine included, who have suffered from the destigmatization of casual sex, unwed pregnancy and single motherhood.

It has been common knowledge in this campaign that you have harnessed previously unimaginable financial support. Although you promised the American People you would take public financing, you changed your mind when it became obvious it would not benefit you. In much the same way you changed your mind about your affiliation with a church you attended for over two decades once the Black Liberation theology preached there became a liability. Considering the distance you are keeping from Bill Ayers these days, this seems to be a pattern with you. One could say you always choose Political Expediency over Principle.

All over the country people are talking about Joe the Plumber and your candid reply to his question about why he should be punished with higher taxes for managing to become successful through hard work. You admonished Joe that it wasn’t intended to be punishment for success, per se, but that you wanted to ensure that the people behind him also had a chance to enjoy that success. The obvious implication here is that the more success Joe enjoys, the less those people can and conversely, the more of the fruits of Joe’s success you take away, the more ‘success’ you can dole out to others as you see fit. You said it is good for everybody to “spread the wealth around.” I am asking if you are willing to stand by those words. Are you as generous with your own success as you would force Joe to be with his? 

Show that you are more than talk. Walk the talk Mr. Obama. Declare today that for the remainder of the campaign you will spend no more than John McCain on your own efforts to become our President. The excess wealth you have amassed can be ‘spread around’ to the suffering individuals you claim to want to help with Joe’s comparatively meager earnings.

At Saddleback you gave a hesitant answer on the issue of how to deal with Evil when you encounter it, hedging that we must be “humble” when defining evil lest we do evil acts in the pursuit of good ends. This may be one of the few true statements I have ever heard from you, your attempt at a dodge notwithstanding. The question is do you believe this yourself? Where, Mr. Obama, is your humble nature when pursuing your vision of wealth redistribution? Do you feel no humility at all when you propose that the government, and in particular you, have far better plans for our charity than we do? Do you think yourself so very grand that all of these millions of dollars which could be spent to help people in need as you claim to want to do, are best spent on your ambition to become President? Do you believe you are so very wise that these millions are an investment in installing into the Presidency a man who knows exactly how to equitably assign the financial gains of the productive individuals of this country to other individuals not so productive?

And what of your other promises? You will end the war in Iraq without dangerous repercussions, but apparently our deluded military members there in the battle just don’t know what’s good for them since they oppose your election 3 to 1. Once again the humble Mr. Obama will do what is right even when those he is doing it to don’t see the genius of his reasoning. The humble Mr. Obama will lead the horse to water and make it drink. You will insure everyone in the nation although without mandates. How? The humble Mr. Obama must be counting on every single person coming around to his superior way of thinking by then. You will raise taxes on businesses but they won’t cut their workforce or move to friendlier tax climates. How? Will even the greedy bastards of Big Business be so overcome by your silver tongue that they suddenly desire less profits and more expenses? How will the humble Mr. Obama achieve this miracle?

Don’t fool yourself Mr. Obama. You wouldn’t know humble if it knelt at your feet. Mother Theresa was humble. A man once gave her a Cadillac so she wouldn’t have to walk everywhere and she sold it to feed and clothe the poor. Your supporters gave you hundreds of millions of dollars when you could have relied on the more restrictive public financing. You use it to self-aggrandize and dare lecture a plumber on sharing.

I had just spent several hours in the Emergency Room with my son who had a mild concussion and the call was on my cell phone so I was doubly annoyed. I know for a fact that I have never given out my cell number to any organization that could remotely be construed as supporting Barack Obama’s campaign. As those who know me can testify I am quick with my words and I responded curtly:

"No, I don't support him, your guy is a socialist who voted four times in the State Senate to let little babies die in hospital closets; I think you should find something better to do with your time."  I hung up. There was no argument or exchange of words. I simply stated my two biggest problems with the candidate this stranger was asking me to support and ended the call. Both my sons who are 6 and 9 and my husband heard the call. 

We stopped soon after at a diner we frequent and I related the exchange to a few members of the staff including the owner’s son, who later told me that when he saw the story in the paper he recalled me as saying exactly what I stated above. In all honesty, I was proud that I had been able to give a quick and clear reason for not supporting her candidate. I half hoped it would give her pause and maybe she would think long enough to look into the economic policies and moral quandaries of Senator Obama. Often times we have a confrontation and think, “I wish I had said…” but in this case, I had said exactly what I wanted to and I recall the words quite clearly.

Thursday, October 2, I answered the front door to two suited individuals, a man and a woman. The woman flipped open a badge at about waist level. My husband later said he saw that it had the words “Secret Service” on it but I didn’t get a good look at it.  They identified themselves verbally as being from the United States Secret Service.  Immediately I thought of the call and was furious that apparently you are not allowed to call Obama a Socialist without the Secret Service coming to investigate.  This was my thought pattern because in that instant it never occurred to me that someone may have lied about my statement. They confirmed that I had received a call from the Obama Campaign the previous day. I expected, frankly, to see them off my steps promptly as I had done nothing wrong. I was shocked when they asked me about the following comment, relayed by the Obama Volunteer of Texarkana who called me, unsolicited on my cell phone:

"I will never support Obama and he will wind up dead on a hospital floor."

My husband, who had come out the door with me sort of laughed, the whole thing being so unbelievable, and told them “No, she called him a socialist but she never said a word about him dying.” I gave them my actual quote and informed them that both my husband and my two sons had heard me take the call.

At this point I believe the female Secret Service Agent (later identified as D. Morris) began to overstep her bounds. She asked me in what I considered an accusing way, “Oh really? Well, why would she make that up? What would she have to gain?” As if it was so obvious that the caller was telling the truth and I ought to just admit it.

I replied that I supposed she wasn’t happy about my opinion of her candidate and the Agent said “That’s right, you were rude!” This is a ridiculous statement for a Law Enforcement Officer to make. The last time I checked being rude wasn’t a crime in America. Indeed, her phraseology suggests that she believed me in my statement of what I had said, and additional evidence to support this idea arose throughout the questioning.

I noticed that the female Agent was holding a file with my name outward and I commented on it, asking them if there was anything in my history to indicate I was some loon who would make a death threat.

They said no. At this point they are accusing me of a death threat in what could be at best described as a she-said/she-said situation. Indeed, I have on my side the presumption of innocence (or so I thought), two children, and my spouse, all of whom heard what I said. I expect them to leave. What more can they ask me than what I said? What my husband heard? I invited them to ask my kids what I said.

Instead, the male agent got out a pad and asked me what I thought of Obama, how I felt about him.

That was my limit.  I told the Agent in no uncertain terms, “My thoughts are not pertinent to your investigation.  This is America and the last time I checked I am allowed to think whatever I want without being questioned by the Secret Service.”  I also stated that in fact, even if I had said what she claimed, that isn't a threat. She didn’t claim I said I would kill him. She claimed I said he would ‘wind up dead on a hospital floor.’ What kind of stilted, ridiculous threat is that? Some people have claimed that she perhaps misinterpreted what I said through a bad cell connection. Well I can state unequivocally that she did NOT repeat exactly what she heard since I never used the words ‘wind’, ‘up’, ‘dead’ or ‘floor’. At the very least she took a lousy connection and exaggerated and lied about what she did in fact hear. 

The male agent attempted to disarm me so I would talk about my thoughts saying, “Hey, haven’t you ever been in a car accident? Didn’t the police officer ask you if you had been drinking or on your cell phone?” He wanted to compare those questions to his questioning my thoughts and feelings about a candidate. I replied, “Yes, he would, because those are questions pertinent to the event. He would not ask me what I think of red Chevies, or how I feel about speeding. He would ask me about facts, and I gave you the facts. I told you what was actually said; my husband told you what was actually said. That is pertinent. Not my thoughts.”

At this point, I started to think there must be a tape of the call that these agents simply had not bothered to listen to. In retrospect, it is unlikely since the Obama Campaign would have not made the call if they had proof of its illegitimacy. I now assume that if there was a tape it is long gone. In the moment however, I thought that of course the campaign must have at least claimed they had some evidence or else this interrogation would not be happening at all.  I asked the agents, “Where is the tape of this call? Just listen to it and you’ll know I never said any such thing!” They told me that there is no tape. At this point the flimsy nature of the allegation which brought them to my home really started to sink in and I was completely outraged.

 I said, "So on the word of a ticked off Obama supporter you are on my porch with no other evidence and you want to question me about my thoughts!?"

The female agent actually said “You have no evidence that the complainant is an Obama supporter.” This is insane. The woman called me from an Obama Volunteer center and this is not evidence that she is an Obama supporter, while the unsubstantiated word of a partisan is apparently enough evidence that I am a danger to Barack Obama to get me interrogated at my home in America.

The male agent tried to say they were trying to help me out and he alluded to the fact that they came to me first instead of asking all of my neighbors and family embarrassing questions. I take that as a not very veiled threat to humiliate me.

I told them to be my guest and talk to whomever they wanted but they weren’t going to investigate my thoughts on my porch.

I think it was at this point I went inside and got a notepad. As I said earlier, I had not actually seen their identification. I let that slide when I believed they were there about my actual statement, but now I felt the female agent was behaving very inappropriately and the man was making threats to humiliate me if I would not comply with answering questions about my thoughts. I came back out and said, “Okay, now I want to see your I.D. and I want your badge numbers or a card.” Both refused to show me their badges. The female agent rolled her eyes, shook her head and said, “You’re not going to get a card.” She laughed. The male Agent gave me a card and told me I could contact the Houston office with any questions.

I also said that I wanted to file a counter complaint against this person who had filed a false report, I have witnesses to what I actually said. This woman falsified a very serious charge against me but the Secret Service agents told me I can’t since I don’t know who the complainant is. 

At this point I asked, “Don’t I have the right to face my accuser in America?” The male agent, I think trying to scare me said that we were not in a court of law and that’s a good thing. He asked me to agree with him saying, “Right?” I said no its not. I’ll go to court, I want to go to court. I have rights there. My accuser has to get up on a stand and take an oath before she lies about me, not just remain anonymous and send the thought police to my door.

The male agent was trying to be ‘good cop’ and said “Look, even my partner said on the way up here that this is a wasted trip.” He alluded again to the fact that they were well aware that I was no threat and this was a bogus complaint.

Finally they told me that the next time a volunteer calls I should say, “’Yeah Yeah I love him, count me in’, and hang up.” This way they don’t have to drive up from Houston again.  I said, "Look, someone calls me unsolicited on my cell phone to ask me to support their candidate and I can't tell them why I don't?"  I said I was sorry they made a wasted trip but if they had a problem with some made up lie they needed to go talk to her about it because it wasn't my fault they had to drive from Houston for nothing.

Later it occurred to me that if they had driven straight to me from Houston as they said, that means they never even spoke to this girl face to face. They had no idea whether she was a credible person, yet here they were, harassing me at my home.

The fact that the volunteer lied, the fact that the Secret Service came to my house to question me about my thoughts and feelings and threaten to embarrass me to my neighbors and go to court if I didn’t cooperate is not really the tragedy here. Because I don’t believe for one minute that girl on the phone has the pull to send the Secret Service to my home on her own. Someone higher in the ranks of a campaign working for a man who may be the next President of the United States of America felt comfortable bringing the force of the Federal Government to bear on a private citizen on nothing but the word of a partisan volunteer. The rude behavior of the female agent combined with their allusion to having known all along that this was a wasted trip leads me to two possibilities. Maybe she was an Obama supporter who knew I was innocent but didn’t like my views and welcomed the opportunity of an officially sanctioned harassment of me for them, or maybe they make many of these bogus trips and they’re sick of it. This whole episode has led me to question how many of the ‘death threats’ the Obama Campaign is publicizing are the sort of lies that this one was. 

These things must be known. I want to file a counter complaint that false charges were made, that a false report was given to a peace officer. The Secret Service told me I cannot because they will protect the identity of the complainant. I have also heard from a friend that on the Federal level there is no charge to bring against this girl on my own behalf. Is this to say that anyone can sit around making up stories to the Secret Service to get the people they don’t like investigated and put on a watch list? 

The reporter for the LDN said that when she called the head of the Texas Obama campaign, he had just replaced whoever was there last week when this happened. I don’t know if that has to do with this but I wouldn’t be surprised. Also, he told the reporter that the incident is still under investigation and he can’t comment which is disgusting. At this point, he ought to be saying, “I’m sorry, it was a misunderstanding”. The Secret Service is also still considering my case “Under Investigation.” What on earth is there to investigate?

I want this entire issue brought to court in order to expose it to the light of day. I want everyone: from the volunteer who took my call, the person who reported me, the agents themselves, everyone to have to account for the procedures followed. I want to know if they went by the book. Anywhere they did not, I want the violator to suffer repercussions for their fascist and un-American violation of my rights as a law-abiding citizen. If this is by the books, if this is how America runs today, then the book needs to be rewritten to comply with the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of the citizens of the United States of America.

Furthermore, if this campaign or any campaign wants to make unsolicited calls to citizens and reserve the right to bring government force to bear against those citizens as a result of their calls then they need to have a better documentation than some partisan campaign volunteer, they need to have a tape or a monitor on the other line, to ensure that these incidents to not occur.

Posted by Jessica Hughes on Saturday, September 27, 2008 12:00:00 AM