By Guest Column Stewart Rhodes——Bio and Archives--August 22, 2012
American Politics, News | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
He's a good-to-go Marine who understands he is in a situation where he is watched at all times and he knows they are looking for anything to use as a justification for what they are doing to him. He is disciplined, but please pray for his patience, and his stalwart faith. He knew that when he spoke up something like this could happen. He sensed it was coming, and yet he knew he had not just a First Amendment protected right, but also a DUTY to speak out. We had conversations about what is going on in our country and then decided to do something about it. We formed the Richmond Liberty movement and held a rally November 15, 2011 and have been very active in the community since. We were always speaking out against legislation threatening rights, such as SOPA, and writing our legislators. We thank every single man and woman in Oath Keepers for honoring the Constitution and we appreciate your support. - Cathleen Thomas. [turns out Cathleen is a subscriber to our email alert list, and has been a fan of Oath Keepers for some time].As a dangerous assault on our Constitution, this is very similar to the New Hampshire "baby snatching" case, where a newborn baby was taken from her parents by child protective services only hours after birth, and one of the reasons listed in the affidavit was that the father, Jonathan Irish, was a "member of the militia group, Oath Keepers" (he was not actually a member, but he had been signed up on our free Ning page, and no, we are not a militia, but regardless, we could not let them get away with that use of the father's constitutionally protected free speech and political associations to take his child). That too was a camel's nose under the tent, and if allowed to stand would have been a very chilling precedent of using child protective services as a weapon against unpopular dissidents, to punish them for their speech and association by taking their children. That would have resulted in people chilling their own speech, sitting down and shutting up, for fear of losing their children. We called for a rally of Oath Keepers outside the courthouse, and Oath Keepers from around the country responded with boots on the ground The family had very competent local legal counsel, but there is no doubt that by holding a rally there we helped to put serious public pressure on the officials in New Hampshire to do the right thing.And they did, returning the baby to her parents. We intend to do much the same here.There are already local liberty activists protesting outside of the Veterans Administration hospital in Salem, Virginia (where Brandon Raub was transferred last night, after a local magistrate rubber stamped his "preventive detention" and extended it for 30 more days).
View Comments
Items of notes and interest from the web.