Government, by its very nature, engenders some pretty idiotic news stories. This is one of the dumbest I’ve read in years. Intent is no longer an issue in the giant plantation of subjects we called the United States of America. Nancy Pelosi, being one of the overseers, must be protected, even when no one is trying to harm her.

Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley said 29-year-old Joseph Calanchini of Pinedale, Wyo., faces a charge of unlawful carrying of a weapon after police officers at the Grand Hyatt hotel noticed him carrying a rifle-type case while checking in. Calanchini did not have a concealed weapons permit, said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety.

Wiley said authorities were not releasing information about whether the weapons were loaded because the case remained under investigation. Wiley said the charge is the same whether the weapons were loaded or unloaded.

Pelosi and other guests briefly evacuated the hotel but were never in danger, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said.

The charge of unlawful carrying of a weapon is ridiculous. Carrying a rifle in a rifle case is perfectly reasonable by anyone’s definition, unless you’re dealing with the government. Since government makes up the rules as they go they don’t have to be reasonable.

Authorities were investigating a report that Calanchini was in town on business and had had the weapons worked upon to prepare for the trip.

“The speaker was never in any danger and she appreciates the quick and professional response of the police,” said Daly.

So what we have is a situation where Speaker Pelosi appreciates “the professional response” of armed thugs. If these police were professional they wouldn’t be charging Joseph Calanchini with anything. They would have simply determined that he was a hunter passing through the area and let him go about his business. Unfortunately we are being treated as subjects instead of citizens by our government. That’s why Calanchini had to be charged with something. He needed to be reminded that he isn’t really free, and America isn’t really the home of the brave.

David Olofson is sitting in jail. Like many non-violent citizens who represent no threat to anyone, Olofson is a victim of paper pushers and their endless rule books.

There are several ways for a person to unintentionally commit a felony, but most of them are looked at by prosecutors, judges, and juries as the accidents they are and dealt with accordingly. Such is not always the case however, especially when firearms are involved; for the past 2 years David Olofson has been learning that the hard way. Olofson is a regular guy who happens to be fond of AR15 style sport-utility rifles. He loaned a rifle to a friend. While the friend was shooting it he moved the safety switch to a point beyond the Fire position. The rifle fired a couple of short bursts and jammed. Someone at or near the club called the police to complain about machinegun fire. The police notified the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and David Olofson was subsequently charged and convicted of illegally transferring a machinegun.

You may not be a weapons collector, as Olofoson was, and as I am. You should still be worried. If the government can arbitrarily make up its intrepretation of its own unconstitutional rules as it goes to the point where the intrepretation doesn’t match the reality of the situation then it isn’t just people who collect guns that are in trouble - we’re all subject to the whims of dishonest bureaucrats who believe they are demigods.

As the years pass I find myself having a harder and harder time respecting the rule of law. That is because the rule of law is increasingly corrupt. Intent used to matter. That is no longer the case.

The cornerstone of this charge is the government’s contention that it doesn’t matter whether a gun fires multiple shots as a result of malfunction or modification because the law defines a machinegun as; “… any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” While on the witness stand, firearms expert Len Savage asked the Assistant US Attorney prosecuting the case if that would make his grandfather’s old double-gun a machinegun if it malfunctioned and fired both barrels with one pull of the trigger. The AUSA responded by paraphrasing the legal definition of a machinegun with emphasis placed on “any weapon which shoots… more than one shot… by a single function of the trigger.”

What I or any reasonable person would call a weapons malfunction is being used by our federal government to put a non-violent citizen who represented no threat to anyone in a cage and hold him there for a period of years. That is unconscionable.

These people intend to control us all one day, from the moment we are born until the moment we stop breathing. By these people I mean petty bureaucrats. I mean the enemies of freedom. I mean the faceless men and women who, by typing something on a keyboard thousands of miles away are able to turn you into a criminal in the eyes of the law without you even knowing anything just happened. These are the modern evil wizards of our time, and they are plotting to take over the kingdom.

If you care at all about freedom in America, I encourage you to donate whatever you can to David Olofoson.

So what exactly is the legal status of the nearly 20,000 people who forgot or simply didn’t want to present ID in order to fly?

The TSA began storing the information in late June, tracking many people who said they had forgotten their driver’s license or passport at home. The database has 16,500 records of such people and is open to law enforcement agencies, according to the TSA.

Asked about the program, TSA chief Kip Hawley told USA TODAY in an interview Tuesday that the information helps track potential terrorists who may be “probing the system” by trying to get though checkpoints at various airports.

Do officials and authorities consider these people to be troublemakers? Terrorists? Future felons? After all, according to Mr. Hawley, it is likely many of these people were “probing the system.” The usual response is that government bureaucrats will “probe their systems.”

Later Tuesday, Hawley called the newspaper to say the agency is changing its policy effective today and will stop keeping records of people who don’t have ID if a screener can determine their identity. Hawley said he had been considering the change for a month. The names of people who did not have identification will soon be expunged, he said.

Civil liberties advocates have been fearful that the database includes passengers who have done nothing wrong yet may face extra scrutiny at airports or questioning by authorities investigating possible terrorism. “This information comes back to haunt people,” said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Frankly, there is no security oriented reason to present ID in order to fly. If you’ve been physically screened then you present very little security threat once you have boarded the plane. Knowing who you are serves no security purpose. Should you decide to cause trouble on the flight, it is very easy to land the plane and find out who you are for the purpose of putting you into the “bad people” databases that have sprung up in the last 30 years almost as fast as tax rates have increased.

I think it is great that the TSA has the common sense to realize that lack of ID doesn’t automatically represent a threat to airport or in-flight security. Now when in the hell will they develop a screening program so I no longer have to wait in the retarded lines and go through the idiotic boarding process? It’s been seven years since the towers went down. How long does it take to identify the 99.89% of passengers who represent a zero risk of terrorism? Is Homeland Security just a big jobs creation program or is it a massive exercise in permanent stupidity?

Scientists sometimes introduce a predator into an ecosystem in order to take care of a pest that is threatening say, the potato crop. These experiments often go wrong - the predator turns out to be more dangerous than the pest. Social engineers do the same thing as scientists, except with human beings. One example is China’s one child policy to control overpopulation. The jury is still out on whether or not that policy will benefit the world or China in the long term. It certainly doesn’t benefit human freedom.

In the United States, our greatest social engineering experiment is something most people called The War on Drugs. The War on Drugs is actually a war on freedom, when thought about literally. It is also an experiment in introducing a predator to take care of a pest. What do you do when the predator you introduced to take care of the pest turns out to be much worse than the pest?

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The violent assault on Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home late last month was certainly not the first bungled raid by a government SWAT team, but the bad publicity it generated should make it the last time these trigger-happy squads target innocent civilians. Tracking a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been addressed to Calvo’s wife, Trinity Tomsic, Prince George’s sheriff’s deputies forcibly entered the mayor’s home on July 29 and killed his two dogs before handcuffing him and his mother-in-law.

But like so many other SWAT team raids across the country, this one turned out to be a big mistake. After reviewing the case, State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey acknowledged that the Calvos were victims of a multistate drug ring that used innocent people’s names and addresses to hide shipments of contraband drugs. But the mayor and his family were also victims of a home invasion by the SWAT team, based entirely on what turned out to be a false premise.

Some of you who read these words may want to argue with me. The police are here to help us you’ll say. Yes, some of them help some people some of the time. Unfortunately the helping is on the decline and the abuse is on the uptick. Survey 100,000 random citizens of the United States before the so called drug war began on their level of trust in the police. That would probably be a pretty high number. Survey 100,000 random citizens now. Most likely the numbers will be pretty low. Chances are that a lot of these people know someone who has been locked up for a consensual non-violent crime. You only have to be beaten up once by uniformed authorities to develop a lifelong distrust of all authorities. You only have to be locked up for a few months to learn to lie to the cops when they come around. After all, they are not your friends. They protect and serve only themselves. That is the lesson many have learned.

Public servants do not shoot family dogs. Peace officers do not initiate violence, they are supposed to prevent it. SWAT teams should be used so sparingly that when they are used, people are amazed. Instead, they are used so frequently it is almost like a car alarm going off - no one pays any attention. We’ve learned to ignore the sights and sounds of our freedom going away.

When the men in masks come to your neighborhood with concrete barriers and rolls of concertina wire just remember that they are there to protect you from yourself. If your family dog gets shot or you get beaten while trying to stop them from raping your daughter or your wife it is your own fault for questioning the authorities. They are just here to deal with pesky drug addicts and you got in the way.

Hmm. Maybe you shouldn’t have been so willing to give away the Constitutional rights of others. Maybe it is time to stand up and let your government know that you aren’t going to tolerate this sort of behavior.

I complain often that bureaucrats have purposefully made complying with gun regulations so onerous because they want to discourage individuals from defending themselves at all. Sheep are easier to control than wolves and bureaucracies are all about control.

The recent ruling that I cannot take my gun into a “non-secure” area of the airport is unfortunate. I am now a criminal in waiting, according to the bureaucrats.

U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Shoob refused to grant a preliminary injunction that would have stopped the city from enforcing the airport gun ban. Shoob ruled against gun-rights group GeorgiaCarry.org and state Rep. Timothy Bearden (R-Villa Rica).

Bearden sponsored House Bill 89, which became law on July 1 and permits people with firearms licenses to carry guns in state parks, restaurants that serve alcohol and on mass transit.

But Shoob said allowing concealed weapons into non-secure areas of the world’s busiest airport will make the airport less safe and require it to substantially revise its security procedures.

I live 70 miles from the Atlanta airport. I carry a gun at all times, and I am licensed to carry the gun by state bureaucrats. I am a pistol expert, according to the U.S. Army. Yet bureaucrats do not want me to carry my gun if I pass through the airport. Apparently, I am supposed to find somewhere off the airport property to store my weapon if I need to pick up a passenger or drop one off. This is impractical, unrealistic and burdensome. It degrades my respect for the law, and makes me wonder what in the hell happened to common sense. When the law abiding are treated as if they are the enemy they eventually become the enemy.

I will continue to operate “under the radar” if possible. I am not going to stop carrying a gun with me at all times. I’d rather take my chances and fight any resulting charges in court. If some bureaucrat wants to remove a productive citizen from the tax rolls because of a stupid rule so be it. When the system becomes obtuse enough that it creates too many political prisoners it will collapse under the weight of its own unthinking idiocy.

What we do in the name of “public safety” is increasingly creating an atmosphere of distrust and resentment of the privilege of authority. It’s an us against them mentality fostered by egocentric and arrogant bureaucrats who think they own everything and know better than everyone. It’s dangerous, counterproductive and ultimately destructive to the fabric that holds our society together.

When will we finally be safe enough? When we are all chained together and naked as we shuffle through the airport with our heads down waiting to be tasered if we dare to question the authority of the men and women in their polyester suits with their shiny badges and their rule books thick and weighty? Go to hell you damn bureaucratic overlords of the kingdom of banal mediocrity. I don’t need you and I reject your demands that I become your myrimidon.