We weren’t playing war games for fun. The possibility of a third world war erupting across the Fulda Gap and the North German Plain was very real. If it had happened, hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of people in Western Europe would have died in the opening weeks. Entire cities and vast stretches of West and East Germany would have been turned into battlefields and killing grounds.

And that was assuming the war stayed mostly conventional, with no nuclear weapons involved — only tanks, planes, massed infantry, and the occasional use of chemical weapons to create breakthrough opportunities (actual Red Army doctrine at the time).

That was the world we trained for every single day.

The Chemical Antidote Loop

If the Soviets hit us with nerve agents like Soman or Sarin, the official solution was clinical madness in two easy steps:

First, you inject yourself with a massive dose of atropine — enough to stop the nerve agent from killing you, but itself a powerful poison. Then, because that huge atropine dose can kill you if left unchecked, you immediately follow it with Tri-Pam Chloride.

Tri-Pam Chloride is what we called the actual chemical compound 2-PAM Chloride or pralidoxime chloride during that era.

And just to make it even more ridiculous, you carried three complete sets of the antidote. If you were still symptomatic after the first set, you were supposed to hit yourself with the second… and then the third if necessary.

Oh — and here’s the best part: you were instructed to stick the used needles through the flap of your MOPP suit pocket and bend them over so other people could see how many times you’d injected yourself.

Yes, really.

So there we were — young soldiers being carefully taught how to poison ourselves in a very specific sequence… in order to survive the enemy poisoning us first.

And you were supposed to turn yourself into a walking scoreboard of how many times you’d poisoned yourself to keep fighting.

The Reality of MOPP 4

And that was just the chemical part.

Then there was the practical side of operating in full MOPP 4 — mask, hood, gloves, overboots, and the heavy charcoal-lined suit.

Mission Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) — the military’s wonderfully bureaucratic name for “wear all this shit so you don’t die from nerve gas.”

One of the craziest things? Almost no heat escapes the gear. You start sweating immediately, and that sweat causes the lenses of your protective mask to fog up so badly that you can barely see.

So there you are, trying to move tactically, load rounds, communicate, or even just walk in a straight line… while essentially blind inside your own mask, drenched in your own sweat, and breathing through a filter that makes every breath feel like you’re sucking air through a wet sock.

It was exhausting, uncomfortable, and psychologically wearing — but it was also deadly serious. We trained like that because we genuinely believed the threat was real.

The World Then

The world then felt different.

Every night on the evening news, you heard about new tensions between the US and the USSR. Proxy wars, arms buildups, spy scandals, and saber-rattling were constant background noise. The threat of World War III wasn’t some abstract history lesson — it felt like a real possibility that could break out at any time. Kids practiced “duck and cover” drills in school. Families built fallout shelters or at least talked about where they would go if the sirens went off. The phrase “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) wasn’t just a policy acronym; it was a grim reality we all lived with.

And those of us in uniform trained day after day for scenarios that could have ended civilization as we knew it.

Today

Today, we don’t face that same level of existential nuclear and chemical threat. The Cold War ended, the Wall came down, and the immediate danger of massed tank armies and chemical strikes rolling across the Fulda Gap has receded.

And yet… some of the deeper lessons remain.

The world can change quickly. Threats can re-emerge in new forms. And the fundamental truth we lived with back then still holds:

A free republic must stay vigilant.
Its soldiers must be ready for hard, sometimes absurd realities.
And its citizens must never take for granted the fragile machinery — especially the ballot box — that keeps the worst outcomes from becoming inevitable.

Because if the day ever comes when we need those young soldiers again, they deserve to know they’re fighting for something real.

→ The Four Boxes of Freedom Are Out of Balance

The Vietnam War ended 51 years ago. When it ended, I was 8 years old and World War 2 was just 30 years in the past. I grew up with World War 2 and Vietnam War vets around me, and their wives and daughters raising my brother and I, and my cousins. I knew I would also serve in the military somehow, and it was understood that I would probably serve in war as well …. I did, of course, in Desert Storm and beyond. I like to think I did it fairly well, I hope to the standards of my family and all the other millions of Americans who have served this country in wartime.

But today is not that day, it is the day to remember and thank my father, my uncles, my mother, my aunts, and all the others that spent 12-13 months in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the South China Sea) fighting and dying to stop communism.

These men and women came home with no ticker tape parades, no victory marches.

At least for this one moment, on this lonely substack, you get remembered and stood up for and thanked!

If you’re new here, you’ve probably noticed this place doesn’t fit neatly into one box. That’s on purpose.

I’m a retired Army tanker with combat experience, a background in security, and a lifelong habit of thinking about how things actually work — and when they don’t. I also enjoy good cigars, real BBQ, decent whiskey, and cooking for my family. Sometimes all of those things show up in the same week.

This Substack is basically a 2003-style blog that happens to live in 2026. I write about whatever is genuinely on my mind:

• Security and military topics

• The health of a republic — past, present, and future — often through the lens of history and the classics

• Cigars I’ve enjoyed (and why)

• BBQ experiments, recipes, and weekend smoking sessions

• Occasional thoughts on life, culture, and the general state of things

I don’t stay in one lane because I don’t live in one lane. Some posts will be light. Some will be heavier. That’s just how it is.

What this isn’t:

• A tightly focused “brand” newsletter

• Purely political or purely lifestyle content

• Sanitized so nobody gets offended

I try to be direct and honest. If something matters enough for me to write about it, I’m going to say what I actually think. You’re always free to disagree — or unsubscribe if it’s not your thing. No hard feelings.

If you enjoy authentic writing from a guy who’s spent decades in uniform, worked in security, and still likes smoking a good cigar while wrestling with big questions… then you’re probably in the right place.

Stick around if you want. I write when I have something worth saying, not on a strict schedule.

Thanks for being here.

— Eric

You know what that means… it was time to smoke. Both meat and cigars.

Knowing nice weather was coming, I pulled a pork belly out of the freezer on Tuesday — Still tons of snow on the ground — and broke it down into four 2-pound slabs (with another 1.5 lbs left in the freezer for future belly burnt ends). Those slabs went straight into a maple-whiskey cure so they’d be ready to smoke on Sunday.

Sunday turned out to be a gorgeous day — mostly sunny and right around 55°F. I fired up the Slow ‘N Sear kettle with the Slow ‘N Sear insert, filled the water tray, and got the temperature stable at about 240°F. I hit the slabs with a good coat of coarse black pepper, then onto the smoker they went with several chunks of apple wood from Fruitawood.

And what does a man do while his bacon is smoking on a sunny spring Sunday? If you guessed “enjoy a Montecristo Churchill with a couple drams of good whiskey,” you’re correct. I dug around in the back of the liquor cabinet and found an unopened bottle of Macallan 15 Year Double Oaked Single Malt that had been waiting for the perfect moment.

Two and a half hours later, the Montecristo was finished, the bacon had a beautiful color and bark, and my wife was inside making adobo-marinated pork chops, sticky rice, and green beans for dinner.

All in all, a damn near perfect way to kick off spring.

Maple Whiskey Pepper Bacon

Ingredients (for one 3 lb pork belly)

• 3 lbs pork belly

• 3.5 grams Prague Powder #1 (weigh accurately)

• 4 tablespoons Morton’s kosher salt

• 4½ teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• ¾ cup distilled water

• ½ cup good maple syrup

• 2 tablespoons whiskey (plus one extra ounce for the cook)

Curing
Mix all cure ingredients in a 1-gallon ziplock bag. Add the pork belly, squeeze out the air, seal, and massage the cure thoroughly into every surface. Place the bag on a cookie sheet in the fridge. Flip and massage twice a day. Cure for 5–7 days.

Optional: You can omit the black pepper here and add it right before you smoke the bacon. Works either way.

Smoking
Set up your grill/smoker for indirect cooking and stabilize between 225–250°F. Add fruitwood or oak and get the smoke rolling well, then put the pork belly on. Smoke the cured belly until it reaches an internal temperature of 155–160°F and has a nice bark (about 2½–3 hours).

Finishing
Cool completely (optional: freeze for 10–15 minutes to firm up). Slice thin and cook as you would any bacon.

Frederick Douglass taught that a free republic rests on four essential boxes: the soap box (free speech), the ballot box (voting), the jury box (fair trial), and the cartridge box (the right to keep and bear arms).

The Founders wrote three of them into the Bill of Rights. After the Civil War, the generation that fought to end the ultimate denial of rights — the enslavement of millions of human beings who were stripped of all four boxes and every other protection the Constitution was meant to provide — added the ballot box through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.

We should jealously guard all four.

Yet today we treat them with glaring inconsistency.

The cartridge box (2nd Amendment) receives serious upfront controls: background checks, ID at purchase, and routine ATF audits of gun dealers — many unannounced.
The jury box demands strict eligibility screening and oaths.
The soap box is bounded by laws against libel and incitement.

But the ballot box — the most powerful in the long term because it decides who controls the government and every other right — remains the weakest in practice.

In too many states, registering to vote still relies heavily on self-attestation: simply checking a box that says “I am a U.S. citizen,” with no routine requirement to show documentary proof of citizenship. Ballots are mailed out based on those registrations, often with only signature verification as the safeguard. Independent audits of the voter rolls are rare and frequently resisted.

This is exactly backwards.

The ballot box is not just another right. It is the peaceful mechanism that peacefully transfers or consolidates enormous power over decades. One compromised or distrusted election cycle can reshape the entire republic far more enduringly than almost anything else.

The result is now clear and dangerous: roughly 100 million armed American adults, along with tens of millions more, have growing doubts about the integrity of the ballot box. They see self-attestation, bloated inactive rolls, easy automatic registration, and resistance to transparent audits — and they conclude the system is vulnerable to fake registrations and undetected fraud.

That is no longer a minor policy dispute. It is a massive social legitimacy crisis.

Douglass understood the risk. If the people lose confidence in the ballot box, the cartridge box inevitably begins to look more relevant to more people.

We do not audit banks, stores, or Federal Firearms Licensees because we assume everyone is dishonest. We audit them because high-stakes systems require independent oversight to maintain trust.

The solution is straightforward and consistent:

• Require documentary proof of citizenship (or mandatory SAVE/REAL ID verification) to register.

• Require photo ID to cast a ballot (with free IDs for those who need them).

• Mandate routine, independent, adversarial audits of the voter rolls.

Let the legitimate chips fall where they may — regardless of which party benefits or loses.

The ballot box is tactically the weakest today, but strategically the most powerful of Douglass’s four boxes. A free republic that fails to guard its most consequential lever with the same vigilance it gives the others is playing a dangerous game with its own future.

We must do better. The Founders and Douglass demanded nothing less.

Some of these attacks were Iranian forces directly, like the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) or Quds Force. Others were by Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, or Shiite militias that were trained, funded, and sponsored by the IRGC or Quds. Either way, it’s Iran that did it.

This list is not inclusive, it’s what you could consider 20 of the worst attacks on us by the Mullahs. There were literally hundreds of battles from 1979 to the present. A 47 year war with us that we have refused to fight. Until now. I was one degree of separation from much of this.

Seize the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, hold 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

US Embassy Bombing, Beirut, 1983 - 63 Americans killed

Beirut Marine Barracks bombing, 1983 - 241 American Marines killed and a second attack just a few minutes later killed 58 French soldiers

US Embassy Bombing, Kuwait, 1983 - 5 Americans killed

US Embassy Annex Bombing, Beirut, 1984 - 24 people killed including 2 Americans

CIA Station Chief William Buckley kidnapped, tortured, killed, Beirut, 1984-85

Kuwait Airways Flight 221 Hijacking, plane landed in Iran and praised by the Ayatollah, 1984 - 2 American passengers were killed

TWA Flight 847 hijacked, 39 Americans held hostage for 17 days, US Navy Diver killed, 1985 (this happened in very close proximity to my decision to join the US Army and was one of the things that I considered)

Paris Bombings, Department stores, a train, metro station, and other public spots attacked, December 1985 - September 1986 - 20 killed, 250 wounded …. I was stationed in Germany and we spent much of these 9 months at ThreatCon Alpha or Bravo (now called Force Protection or FP for short) rather than ThreatCon Normal

Israeli Embassy Bombing, Argentina, 1992 - 29 killed, 200 injured

AMIA Jewish Center Bombing, Argentina, 1994 - 85 killed

Khobar Towers Bombing, Saudi Arabia, 1996 - 19 American Airmen killed, hundreds injured …. I stayed in Khobar Towers in 1991 after Desert Storm before we shipped home.

Iran’s Quds Force trains and arms Shiite militias in Iraq, roadside bombs supplied by Quds are used in bombings over an 8 year period of time, 2003-2011 - at least 603 American soldiers killed

Karbala Attack, Iraq, 5 gunmen linked to Iran’s Quds Force attack a US Facility, 2007 - 5 American soldiers killed

Plot to kill Saudi Ambassador in Washington, DC by Iran’s Quds Force using a car bomb, 2011 - if it was successful it would have killed an Ambassador on US soil and dozens, or more, Americans

Burgas Bus Bombing, Bulgaria, 2012 - 6 people killed, including 5 Israeli tourists

Iranian Missile Strike on a US Base, Iraq, 2020 - over 100 US Sailors and Airmen were significantly injured

Drone attack, Jordan, 2024 - 3 US Soldiers killed, 40 more wounded

Hamas attacks Israel, Oct 7, 2023 - over 1200 people killed, including 48 Americans. Hundreds of hostages taken, including Americans.

180 documented drone, rocket and missile attacks against US bases in Iraq and Syria, Oct 2023-2025 - killing several US soldiers and wounding over 180 more.

Every U.S. President, going back to the Founders, has acted on the belief that they have constitutional authority as Commander in Chief to use military force against enemies—foreign or domestic—without needing Congress to declare war first (or sometimes at all). The use of military force against an enemy is, indeed, waging war.

Here’s a short over view.

• George Washington (1794): Called up militia to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion (an armed tax protest in Pennsylvania). No declaration of war—treated as an internal rebellion.

  

• Thomas Jefferson (1801–1805) and James Madison (1815): Launched naval campaigns against the Barbary Pirates (from modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya) to protect U.S. shipping and citizens, who were being kidnapped, ransomed, and enslaved. No declaration or specific authorization; Jefferson even sent ships before Congress reconvened.

  

• Abraham Lincoln (1861): While Congress was out of session at the Civil War’s start, he called up 75,000 militia, blockaded Southern ports, and suspended habeas corpus. Congress later ratified most of it, but he acted first unilaterally.

• Woodrow Wilson (1916–1917): Sent General Pershing and thousands of troops into Mexico on the Punitive Expedition to chase Pancho Villa after border raids. No congressional authorization.

  

• Harry Truman (1950): Committed U.S. forces to the Korean War as a ‘UN police action’—no declaration of war, no specific congressional vote to start it (though Congress funded and expanded the military later).

• Ronald Reagan (1983): Ordered the full invasion of Grenada (Operation Urgent Fury) to oust a Marxist regime and protect Americans. No prior congressional authorization.

• George H.W. Bush (1989): Invaded Panama (Operation Just Cause) to remove Noriega. No specific congressional approval.

• More recent ones that come to mind every day: Clinton’s air campaign in Kosovo (1999, no specific authorization); Obama’s 2011 Libya intervention (airstrikes/no-fly zone, no vote); Intervention in Syria against ISIS; Trump’s 2020 drone strike on Iranian Gen. Soleimani; various airstrikes in Syria, Iraq, Yemen under the broad 2001 AUMF (post-9/11), but without new congressional votes for each.

  

• The Indian Wars: For nearly a century (roughly 1817–1898), Presidents waged the ‘Indian Wars’ across the frontier—dozens of campaigns against Native tribes—with no declarations of war and usually no specific congressional authorizations. They were framed as suppressing rebellions, protecting settlers, or enforcing federal authority, much like Washington did in 1794.

Dig deeper, and there are literally hundreds of smaller cases (naval landings to protect Americans abroad, bombardments, interventions)—documented in Congressional Research Service lists—where Presidents used force unilaterally under their Commander in Chief powers.

Like it or not, this means a President can launch a significant military campaign (e.g., against Iran) without it being unconstitutional. Congress’s main real check is cutting funding (which is politically tough mid-crisis), passing resolutions (often non-binding or vetoed), or impeachment (rare and extreme). The 1973 War Powers Resolution tried to limit this, but Presidents from both parties have interpreted it loosely, and courts rarely intervene.

Even our most revered Founders, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, agree and used military force to wage war without a Declaration of War.

That said …. Rest in peace Charlie Kirk …. Damn, seriously … if my hearing was left in Iraq, what is left here?

i have so much to say, but not going to say it

Rest in peace brother

Christmas Decorations

Fitness

Elections

Wildly Inappropriate

No Theme, Just Fun

And Girls With Guns

This was a shelter in place disaster that tested my wife and I, but we won. :-)

We don’t have power, but our stove and water heater are gas and we have a fireplace. We have a freezer full of food and a pantry full of dry and canned foods. Plus bbq’s that use charcoal and several bags of charcoal.

No problem at all for us to shelter in place for several days while everything recovers. This is the first internet access I’ve had since Tuesday night, but rest assured that we are doing fine.

We did discover a couple items we need to update in our preparedness, but nothing major. More to come on that front.

We did get out to a place that was open last night and had a beer and dinner. :-)

Just a couple pictures of the outage map and some trees that are down

and a funny!

If you are in Western WA with me, stay safe and warm!

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And of course you found Girls with Guns

Return the Federal Government to its core purposes as outlined in the US Constitution. Stop having it be a nanny for all us citizens. If a nanny is needed, a state or local government should be doing that.

Here’s some ideas about what that means and looks like.

No more grants to NGO’s. No more tax breaks, subsidies, etc. No more Federal government funding state activities. Meaning that the Federal government will not allocate money to states for education, for example, or for road construction, or mass transit systems. If a state needs to do that, they can raise the revenue to do it and the citizens of that state can decide if it should be done, or not. This was a major aspect of the Founders being upset about taxation without representation.

The military. Let’s start by reducing the Flag Officer ranks of the military until you have the same ratio of Flag Officers to all other ranks as you had at the end of WW2. Then get rid of all the staff officers and NCO’s that supported that bloated Flag Officer corps. Or send them back to be shooters. If they don’t like that, they can retire. The primary purpose of the military is to fight wars, so get rid of all the stuff the military does that is something other than fighting wars. And start with all those people in the Pentagon that are not contributing to shooting our enemies in the face.

Stop agency mission creep. Sell all the arms and ammunition that all the agencies have stockpiled and use the funds from that to pay off federal debt. Eliminate all armed sworn LEO positions in the Federal government that are not part of the FBI, Secret Service, US Marshals, Coast Guard, or Department of Defense. If the IRS needs to arrest someone, they can get a warrant and have local cops or Marshals do the work.

More on agency mission creep. Make NASA an oversight and regulatory agency only and have all space flight and operations conducted by private companies. If the US government needs a space mission, they can pay SpaceX or Blue Origin for it. OR the DOD can conduct it for actual military operations.

in fact, no more quasi defense agencies outside the DOD. NASA, NRC, and so on. They need to be regulatory agencies and any operational mission should be transferred to the DOD, a state, an actual LE agency, or a private organization. No more operational agencies where there is no explicit Consitutional authority. HHS should not be administering health benefit programs. And so forth.

I have no idea how much money this would save. But it damn sure would get the US government much closer to its proper sphere of agency and authority. And probably save $2 Trillion a year without even breaking a sweat. If that money needs to be spent, the citizens of the individual states can decide to do it for their state. They know better, after all, what is needed in California than DC knows.

The Federal Government is not meant to do things for us. It is meant to provide the guard rails necessary to enable us to run our states, society, and economy ourselves.

I don’t really have anything else to say here about Veteran’s Day. Plenty of others will say plenty of words. But I do want to thank my family, my friends, and all the other soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen that I have served with over the years. Thank you for being my comrades in arms!

Here’s some pictures from over the years of my own life and times.

Have a great Veteran’s Day. I will be attending the dedication of my small town’s Veteran’s Memorial. And tonight I will be raising a drink to my missing comrades.

And you expect me to be normal?

I’m afraid this gonna come true

Which would mean ….

Okay, okay, a couple Peanut the Squirrel memes

Random Fun!

No Girls with Guns. But Here’s Some Conan

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I was given permission from an early age to manage myself as much as I was capable of and to stretch beyond what considered okay at that age. For example, At some point around age 8 or so, I was getting interested in the Napoleonic Wars. The librarian was very concerned about me checking out a book intended for high school students. My mother told her that it was just fine and I would figure it out. I was able to choose when I was going to be home and when I was going to spend time with my friends. And just, generally, led a Generation X childhood.

This ability to govern myself has shaped my perspective on culture, politics, family, philosophy …. And governs my observations of this election as well.

I have some strong first thoughts on the election of 2024 regarding what I will call the worker class and the builder class.

It is important to understand that this is a re-alignment election. I have now experienced two of these in my life. And no, 2008 was not a re-alignment election. New coalitions were not built and a new approach to politics was not stood up. But in both 1980 and 2024 boy did we see re-alignment. In 1980, Reagan built a coalition of western libertarians, southern conservatives, and christian evangelicals. This coalition impacted the GOP and its political structure for 30 years. By the 2008 and 2012 elections, of course, it was wearing a bit thin and the fractures in it were exploited by Obama.

What led to the re-alignment of 2024, where Trump built a worker class and builder class coalition? The economy (it’s always the economy, stupid).

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First, the worker class (which includes blue collar and white collar folks), the people that work hard on the daily at jobs that produce value for their companies, the country and themselves, felt deeply that they were left behind. Academia, Wall Street, Hollywood, and Government had stable, well paying jobs while the worker class were struggling daily. Paychecks were flat, inflation was steep. Groceries, gas, houses, cars, education, vacations, and all the other sundries of a modern life cost more and more every year, but their income was barely breaking even. Or worse.

Next, the builder class (entrepreneurs, inventors, engineers, etc), the people that create factories, businesses, and new ideas, were also struggling. They were strangled by taxes and bureaucracy. Getting a new business going is extremely difficult today. And that is crazy in a country whose entire economy had been built on being able to start a business and turn it into something that would stand the test of time while employing people and earning money for the founders. In many cases, the bureaucracy was being weaponized against the very people that were supposed to be creating the next big thing.

Meanwhile, folks that are important to creating the infrastructure, foundations, and guard rails of the economy and society were transforming themselves into the managers of society. They really contribute very little to the progress of humanity, but they are necessary, confined to their proper sphere, to enable order and prepare the next generation. Academia, Hollywood, Wall Street, Government, were doing well living off the past great creations of the builder class rather than enabling the future great creations.

The coalition that was built for the re-alignment was not based on gender or race or place of origin. It was based on the worker class and the builder class aligning with each other to charge forward into the bright future that is possible if we are just willing to take the chances and reach out to grab them. Rockets to Mars, mining the asteroids, solar power in space, fantastic buildings and engineering on earth. Heck, we have an our own D. D. Harriman to help us get there! Yes, Robert Heinlein would look at Elon Musk and see Delos Harriman, just as I do.

And Trump is a builder as well. He did start with wealth, but he became a billionaire through his own work and toil. He is wealthy because he built hotels and golf courses and resorts, not because he traded stocks on Wall Street. And that gave him insight into the lives and values and needs of those working class folks who actually build his hotels.

This economic combination of stagnation for the worker class and inability to create for builder class led them to see that their needs, values, and wants for the future were aligned with each other. And Trump has created the new Republican Party out of that.

The Democrats were too focused on their Progressive Utopian vision to remember the working class that was the foundation of FDR’s great re-alignment in the 1930’s. They were enthralled by the possibility of achieving their Progressive vision aided by the soft power of Hollywood, Academia, and Bureaucracy.

But America is not a country that kowtows to the elites. We are a country of people like me that reject authority that tells us what we must do. And once it became clear that those elites were trying to rule us rather than help and support us, we found our champion and we put him in power.

And now for the future ….

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This guy in New York had a squirrel that he rescued as a baby when the squirrel’s mother was killed by a car. He named the squirrel Peanut. Peanut became the mascot of Mark Longo’s animal rescue farm that successfully saved several hundred animals. Peanut lived with Mark Longo, the man that rescued him, Mark’s wife, and Fred the Racoon, another rescue animal. Mark’s wife is a German immigrant. A legal immigrant.

The New York State government showed up on Mark Longo’s doorstep, forcibly detained Mark, entered his home, ransacked it for hours searching it, took Peanut and Fred out of the home and then killed both of them. No warrant was issued for this. No writ in a court. No nothing. They just stormed Mark Longo’s home and forcibly detained Mark and killed two animals.

And they spent a bunch of time grilling Daniela Longo on her citizenship and immigration status. The State of New York is not at all worried about illegal immigration. But man, those legal German immigrants! Can’t be too careful there.

Why did all this happen? Because they might have rabies. That, apparently, gave the government of New York the power and authority to enter and search this citizen’s home without a warrant and without any sort of authority from a judge.

Forget about illegal immigration, 10,000 homicides a year in the big cities, homeless populations skyrocketing, drug addiction crisis, and all that stuff. What’s important is to make sure Peanut the Squirrel is not potentially going to give Mark Longo rabies.

The real reason, though, is that our governments have become the very thing our Founders feared. Big. Authoritarian. Pervasive. Involved in all aspects of our life. Bureaucrats exercise fearful powers and petty tyranny on a daily basis.

Enjoy!

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On the topic of being a man

Let’s just have fun

You made it to the end!

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