Garcia, from the Dominican Republic and scheduled to become a U.S. citizen yesterday, was arrested while driving his car yesterday. Police found 10,000 rounds of ammo in his car. After searching his home, police confiscated another 20,000 rounds of ammo, one .38-caliber and two 9 mm handguns, and $25,000 in cash.

So, where’s the crime? Garcia says the ammo is for target shooting. Police say that’s unrealistic. Is it? I don’t think it is and even if it is “unrealistic”, what’s the crime? Is it a crime to possess “too much” ammunition?

Police wonder if he isn’t selling the ammo back to people in his home country. Is he? Is that against the law? If it is prove it BEFORE you arrest someone and hold them without bail.

If police are going to begin arresting people for having 30,000 rounds of ammunition on hand, I have a feeling they could be busy. With the recent run on guns and ammunition, I suspect there’s a fair amount of stockpiling going on.

Have we really become a nation of lawlessness, where rights and the U.S. Constitution are disregarded? If this guy’s a crook, then do the investigation and then arrest him once you have proof. Because some police department thinks 30,000 rounds of ammo is “too much”, isn’t reason to arrest someone.

Tom Remington

Marshall Sage is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel who has enjoyed the freedom to hunt and fish throughout much of the free world. Most recently radio host for “Outdoor Life” a hunting and fishing program in Southwestern Idaho. A life member of SCI and the NRA. Contact at msage22@gmail.com.

Our founding fathers gave our nation a blueprint on how to avoid a centralized, authoritarian government from taking away our individual freedoms (endowed by our Creator) and rights (Bill of Rights). This blueprint was our Constitution. It’s no accident that in less than 200 years of following this blueprint the United States of America became the most prosperous and industrious nation on earth.

Since the 30′s under the Roosevelt Administration the elitist, intellectuals have been advocating “change” to the Constitution. Incrementally they have selectively chipped away at the Bill of Rights to suit their progressive agenda. They found a “separation of church and state” in the 1st Amendment where there was none. They tried and persist in claiming that the 2nd Amendment does not guarantee the right of citizens to be armed. They have used an all encompassing “commerce clause” to render the 10th Amendment impotent.

When you think about it, how would you achieve a centralized authoritarian government controlling the lives of everyone? Well you could disarm the people and then control them by force as has been done through out history (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro). You could take away their faith in God and their belief that their is a higher power than the state (Roman Empire, USSR, Communist China). In spite of the attempts to take God out of the public square, public schools, public media and discourse, the majority of citizens in our country remain people of faith although not politically correct. But the progressives have learned that they can control the people rather effectively by eliminating the sovereignty of the states as granted by he 10th Amendment. It only took a compliant Supreme Court to take God out of the public schools; the 10 Commandments off of public buildings; a ban on “assault weapons” etc.

Without the Supreme Court protecting the Constitution the Congress and the President have been able to take more and more of the states sovereignty away. The environmental extremists ( the “green” movement worldwide became the new home for communists/Marxists idealogs after the fall of the USSR ) have used the ESA to exercise federal control over our land, water, and individual/property rights by federal mandate. They accomplish the same agenda through federal bureaucracies ( unelected officials ) like the EPA, BLM, US Forest Service, USFWS etc.

Finally, we the people are beginning to say enough is enough. Thanks to the brave elected representatives from states like Oklahoma, Texas, and Montana, the people are demanding the enforcement of the 10th Amendment and the Bill of Rights. My hope and prayer is that Idaho will join this fight with the full support of our state. We can win this fight and reclaim our Constitution and our heritage if we are willing to fight for it. Remember freedom isn’t free.

Marshall Sage

See ya’ll later!

Here’s what disturbs me most and there’s nothing I can do about it, yet I refuse to be a part of it because I know it is wrong. I feel sorry for those who know not the difference. The majority of our society today finds socialism acceptable. They find loss of liberty acceptable. They find decadence and immorality just a part of modern day living, progress, part of the living liberalism. All of this and more has led people to say that those of us who cling to what we know is right and what made America great – the land of the free and home of the brave – are out of touch. We need to get with it and change our value system and join in the fun.

David Brooks, still referred to in the Main Stream Media as a conservative, today in his article in the New York Times, chastises what he calls republicans because they still cling to “freedom, individualism, opportunity and moral clarity”. He says it’s time to move on and morph into a political party that panders to the communistic way of life, with a focus on community and doing everything together, all for the common good.

Brooks accuses republicans of bringing forward to today the wrong lessons in history. Because of the party of the right’s track, he thinks republicans are too busy with “untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice”.

It seems to me that David Brooks has drank a little bit too much Kool-Aid. He’s all agog about community and being civic, sort of the same way that a totalitarian thinks of communism – it’s perfection.

I suppose it is for some of the reasons talked about here, that there is no real long term history of a republic or a democracy. History is soon forgotten.

While we can sing Kumbaya, hold hands and do group hugs, it might make us all feel good but in so doing we have forgotten the “freedom, individualism, opportunity and moral clarity”, that brought this nation to a point where people can choose to group hug and drink Kool-Aid.

As individuals living in a free society, we can choose which of those Currier and Ives villages Brooks seems determined to live in. Communities are a part of our lives as we have made them such but that shouldn’t mean that we can’t go home to the place of our choosing as well and be free, be an individual, while protecting opportunity. Do I need to surrender all that in order to live a lifestyle designed by Barack Obama and his followers?

Ultimate freedom, which once used to be a valued asset to life, is complete individualism. This once rugged individualism that Brooks now opts to ridicule and discredit as something only found in the movies of years gone by, prevented despots and dictators from ruining our way of life.

This current society has no vision of the past making them blind to the future. I suppose this will make my future a difficult road because I have a very clear knowledge of the past and with that I see a country heading in the wrong direction.

Tom Remington

According to Michelle Malkin, there have been reports from DHS on leftwing extremism.

I have covered DHS for many years and am quite familiar with past assessments they and the FBI have done on animal rights terrorists and environmental terrorists. But those past reports have always been very specific in identifying the exact groups, causes, and targets of domestic terrorism, i.e., the ALF, ELF, and Stop Huntingdon wackos who have engaged in physical harassment, arson, vandalism, and worse against pharmaceutical companies, farms, labs, and university researchers.

I tend to agree with Malkin but it certainly depends on who you talk to as to whether this report, being called a direct attack on conservatives and military veterans, is all that unusual.

Robert Schlesinger of U.S. News and World Report doesn’t think this report is anything that should upset conservatives. He actually asks why conservatives would put themselves in the same company of those being pointed out in the report.

Here’s my question: Why are prominent conservatives so quick to lump themselves in with genuine nuts and terrorists? Seriously.

Schlesinger also points out from a footnote in the report what he wants to use as a definition of who the report is targeting.

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

It is disingenuous to try to convince anybody that this is a definitive representation of what rightwing extremism is and is talked about in this report. It is all subjective and left up to the judgment of who? Janet Napolitano? Barack Obama? Or maybe the CNN reporter who yesterday, covering the Tea Party event in Chicago, called the event anti government, anti CNN and not fit for family viewing.

It needs also to be pointed out that nothing in this report addresses radical Islamic terrorists or any other terror organizations outside the U.S.

And this report follows in the footsteps of the Missouri Information and Analysis Center’s Strategic Report, “Modern Militia Movement“. Almost immediately after that report was made public a member of the Campaign for Liberty group was detained at length at a Missouri airport because he was carrying cash and brochures about his organization.

Yesterday on a local talk radio station here in the Tampa Bay area, I heard one host say that the DHS report on rightwing extremism wasn’t targeted at Tea Parties or conservatives because these reports were sanctioned under the Bush administration. Well, of course they were. It was under the Bush administration that the Department of Homeland Security was founded. The problem with that argument is that George Bush and his Secretary of Homeland Security didn’t write this report dated April 7, 2009. It was Janet Napolitano under the direction of her boss, Barack Obama. These two either knew exactly what they were doing or they need some remedial work on writing reports on national security.

We can argue forever on whether or not this report was directed at conservatives and any or all conservative movements. What we can agree on is that the document is a piece of poorly crafted bunk. It is non specific, it is written such that it will incite anger and does not define what they deem to be “extremism”. To read the report any honest person will come away believing that those who don’t espouse to the principles of abortion, bailouts, socialism, gun control, essentially all of Obama’s programs, you are a rightwing extremist. Not only that, about the only specific group pointed out is from our own military personnel. Shouldn’t we expect our military personnel to be angry and hurt?

This report went out to law enforcement agencies as an alert. It is so poorly crafted that it appears as an obvious target of anyone not in agreement with the president and his policies.

I don’t consider myself an extremist but after reading this report and being witness to the events taking place in this country today, I am left thinking I am on the DHS watch list.

Tom Remington

I hope you will take the time to read what I have shared with you today and take an extra minute out of your busy day to pay special attention to what our founding fathers had to say. They spoke from experience and personally, I believe they were inspired by the Almighty Creator. These are extremely powerful words that weren’t just pulled out of thin air.

I have taken the liberty to highlight a few statements that I believe are quite relevant to many things that are taking place today, in this the greatest nation on earth.

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When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

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Over the weekend, I listened to Rush Limbaugh’s address to the Conservative Political Action Conference. If you haven’t seen it, this link is one resource where you can.

Rush spoke of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness and what he said was that the only thing standing in anyone’s way of achieving such was government interference.

Government is too big, too powerful, secretive and lacking in consideration of the people. It steps outside the legality of the Constitution and yet we the people say nothing in objection. Isn’t it time to change that?

Tom Remington

Buried deep within the hundreds of pages of the new spending bill just passed by the Senate, is a provision to create a National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. This person’s job will be to once and for all, collect the health records of every American and store it for easy access on one giant government database.

The bill also contains provisions to create a health board that ultimately will decide whether you deserve funding for your health problems. As we move closer to nationalized health care, in which the government will dole out the money for your treatment and decide if you should get it, combined with this giant database of health records, one panel of people appointed by the President of the United States will make all the determinations of your health care and management.

Think about what this means as it pertains to your privacy and rights. Anyone who partakes of any health care that involves government dollars, will be scrutinized and subject to all the limitations of government. It doesn’t matter that you might be able to stay under the care of a private physician, they will be required to turn your health records over to Big Brother.

Presently, lawmakers have a difficult time stripping Americans of their right to keep and bear arms. Their outward approach of crafting anti-gun bills doesn’t always work and so they’ve learned how to slip small incremental changes into other bills. This is most easily done in two fashions – burying it in legislation in very large bills and writing the bills in the darkness of night hoping nobody sees it while they push to rush a vote on the bill.

So imagine if you will that you are now stuffed into this government database that contains everything you have ever had done to you for your health – both physical and mental. Place on this board that will make decisions for you, people like Bill Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Paul Helmke, Ray Schoenke, Carolyn McCarthy, or clones of them.

They could have the power to look at your health record and decide that you are unfit to own a gun, incapable of driving a car, unable to keep your job, the list can go on.

Soon hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of American have been stripped of their rights because government decides them for you. Is this what you want? Can this happen? Will this happen?

Remember the NICS Improvement Act of last year? This was an attempt to make sure anybody in America who had ever been treated for any kind of mental disorder, would be stripped of the right to own a gun. Presently there are about 150,000 war veterans who have been stripped of that right. One of the reasons that more haven’t been put on the list is because there is no central database to easily retrieve that information. Well, now there will be.

The left has been slowly pecking away at our rights, morphing this great nation into a socialistic-style country but this new administration is taking giant steps to end it all. Obama has said that the only cure for what ails America is a bigger more powerful government, one that can do everything for you. Evidently one that can decide that you no longer can have any rights.

Never in my lifetime have I witnessed such a bold and deliberate step toward the total destruction of this country by way of allowing for the massive power shift from the private sector to government. the people, which includes our defunct Congress, are lining up blindly ready to drink the Kool-aid and jump off the cliff.

Obama said the other night that it doesn’t matter whether you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV. If you’re heading for a cliff you have to change direction. He wants you to change to his direction. You better look ahead as to where you are headed because it is a bigger cliff than they one you just avoided.

I will not live a slave to any man!

Tom Remington