Fight For What You Believe In #OperationAmericanSpring #OAS

I've had three days to digest Operation American Spring and the heartburn is only getting worse.

It's not the numbers. or lack thereof, it's the reaction. The racist and sexist attacks have been a growing tsunami and no one's safe. The elderly, the infirmed, young, gay, Asian - the onslaught is not witty or ironic or good-natured snark. It's hatred. Pure bashyourfeckingfacein hatred.

And for what? Don't we all have the same Bill of Rights? Everyone's e-mails are being snooped, phones tapped, texts read, speech curtailed, protections infringed, media silenced, due process eroded, bags searched and consciences compromised.

I wish I'd been this engaged during the Bush presidency, because that was surely the sowing: Our government failed us on 9/11 and used it as a pretext for stripping civil liberties. Then they lied to us about a war and sent thousands of men and women into harm's way. Those lucky enough to return were branded domestic terrorists, permitted to die waiting on the V.A, and we were lied to again. Then the kabuki government which failed to protect us decided to fund, arm and train the very same group that attacked us and necessitated all these draconian measures in the first place.

But acknowledging your country's entire raison d'être is just SO gauche, right?

Anonymous is participating. Are they "teabaggers" and traitors, too?  The former insult is a sophomoric softball, but the latter really cofuses me. Separatists actually believe that Citizens standing up in defense of the Republic's rule of law, founding principles and protocols of governance are engaging in sedition. Meanwhile, the lawless apparatus that's subverting all of the same is somehow within due bounds. How can one reason with such blind faith, ignorance and apathy?

Do I agree with every stated goal of OAS? No, but I do appreciate the art of the possible. I will participate again soon, and I don't give a damn if there are 3 people there or 300 million. My founding charter tells me this explicitly:

When a lengthy series of violations are committed (which always have the same result of curtailing my natural abilities), I am empowered and obligated to reject the perpetrators and choose new, lawful representation. Those are Thomas Jefferson's words updated, and each forms the capstone of the Declaration of Independence. If adhering to these "obvious facts" makes me a domestically terrifying traitor, then that I proudly am.

In the meantime, I admire the resolve of those still in Washington and would be happy to post your stories, pictures and any other content related to OAS. I can be reached via e-mail here.

EDIT: How's this for instant validation? Immediately after posting this, I was accused of trying to overthrow the government, execute the President, deport all Muslims, and then lectured on living in the poor, bigoted South. Just as I said, there is no reasoning with madness. 

One Day Down #OperationAmericanSpring #OAS

Day 1 down, how many more to go? Citizens are reconvening at the Washington Monument at 8:00 AM, and the OAS expectation is that turnout will be even greater. The storms may have kept some away, but there are blue skies and it's the weekend, so perhaps they're right.

Turnout figures weren't even in the same galaxy as those being called for. It will likely be fodder for more separatist vitriol, which is reaching a fever pitch. I don't know that I've ever read more hateful, sexist, racist rubbish than I did today. Tolerance is a one-way street for some.

I'm pretty well cooked, so I'll keep this short:

I made it safely into DC, exercised my unalienable rights, covered a ton of ground and hopefully provided an objective window into the day. My countrymen and women were spirited, resolved, and as is always the case, responsible. Every area OAS traversed was policed for litter, and there wasn't a single incident to speak of.

Law enforcement presence was extensive, to say the least. D.C. Park, Metro and Capitol Police were aware of every move in real-time, and I'm still trying to digest the deployment of a drone. I'm not suggesting it was a Reaper or anything similarly offensive, but it's the principle. The apparent lack of cohesion between the respective police units is also curious.

The diversity present today was so nice to see. Women, minorities and millennials marched and made their voices heard. Constitutionalists are so often portrayed as old white men by extremists, and while I know that's hardly the case, it was very encouraging to see everyone represented today.

The most touching event was when the thousand or so marchers arrived at the Capitol. Hundred of schoolkids were visiting from Somewhereville, and they chanted "USA! USA!" as OAS arrived, their smiles beaming while their cheers rose in unison with ours. I thought I'd captured video, but I snafu'd it and recorded my feet walking away.

EDIT: I found someone else's video here.

Here's to Scarlett Sonja on Twitter for kindly sharing my updates. Most of all, I'd like to thank YOU: Over one thousand readers from all around the world checked The Third Lantern today. We shined on every state of the Union, plus D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, the U.K., Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, The Czech Republic, South Africa, Finland, Indonesia, Japan, Slovakia, Argentina, Belgium, Denmark, Egypt, France, Croatia, Hungary, Iran, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mexico, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Romania, Serbia, Russia and Sweden. I'm humbled to be able to reach you all and share the truth.

I'll leave you with a short video of the protest moving to the White House:

Veni, Vidi Veritas - #OperationAmericanSpring #OAS

The American Spring is a peaceful, unarmed assembly of Citizens in Washington, D.C., on Friday, May 16th, 2014.

We are a nation of laws, processes and protocols. Our system of government is not only sound, it's also the finest and fairest ever instituted among men. Our founding charters are explicit regarding every Citizen's rights and duties. We are a constitutional republic conceived in liberty, an exceptional union of sovereign states which must be preserved. To quote Bro. Richard Dreyfuss:

“We were responsible for the greatest revolution in the history of civilization. We gave to 98% of the human race freedoms that they have been lashed for, lost fingers for or had their heads chopped off for, and we gave it to them for free. We are the most revolutionary nation that has ever been and ever will be, and we don’t know enough about our Constitution or our history to know why we should be proud of it.

George Washington said the Constitution should be central, the party should be peripheral. Now we’ve got it all backed around, and now the parties are central and the Constitution is peripheral. We don’t know anything about why the Constitution is the most single greatest step toward humans improving civilization since the beginning of man’s sojourn on earth."

Awareness, appreciation and engagement are not extremism, racism, domestic terrorism or any other ill-fitting "ism". It is patriotism in a time of unprecedented peril.   

I am a son of liberty, a registered Independent, and my reasons for participating are twofold: To exercise our First Amendment right to petition the government, and to accurately convey to you what transpires along the way. I have no material support, no editor, no lobby and nothing to sell. I may not be a journalist, but no one has a monopoly on the truth. That's what this all comes down to for me:

Truth.

If there are seven people milling about the monuments, I will report it. If a million KKK members are jet skiing in the reflecting pool, I will share it. If thousands of law-abiding Citizens are peacefully protesting in support of the Constitution, you will see it. No partisan axe to grind, no ulterior motives, just the unbiased facts.

I don't know if I'll be underwhelmed or awed. I have no idea how the authorities may react, if at all. There are many good people involved, and there are some undeniably on the lunatic fringe. Some think it will be a bloodbath, while others have already deemed it a disappointing failure. 

In the event that data/voice connectivity becomes unavailable, arrangements are in place for an alternative source of updates here. Whatever transpires on Friday and for however long I may remain, I give you my word that The Third Lantern will be shining on Washington.

You Can Tell A Lot About Our Country By Who's On A Book Tour And Who's In Jail.

The Amerikan state-run media makes Soviet-era TASS look like Woodward and Bernstein.

With the release this week of further evidence that Washington is covering up their Benghazi cover-up, CBS inexplicably/predictably failed to report it. Hello, Sharyl Attkisson? Conversely, ABC's Jon Karl took the smug Comrade Carney to task over the surreal obfuscation and backpedaling the separatist regime is now engaging in, dude.

These latest revelations may prove to be the straw that at least got onto the camel's back: A House select committee on Benghazi, chaired by South Carolina's Trey Gowdy, finally appears to be happening.

Any moment now, DNC spokesmen Bill Maher, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will provide unbiased, in-depth analysis and set the record straight once and for all. It's such a strange time: journalists abdicate their purpose and integrity, while Citizens outsource their awareness to comedians.

In this video, Jeremy Scahill from The Intercept is right out in front on the sorry state of the semi-Republic's media apparatus:

"We're left with a bankrupt media culture in this country... If we lose the institution of investigative journalism, of fact checking, of peer review, of edited pieces of old-school muckraking, of document diving like I.F. Stone did, or going to the scene as Seymour Hersch did... if we lose that and we cede everything to social media, to this 'Ritalin Society', then we're going to be in far worse shape than we are now, and we're already at the lowest point in terms of media relevance to ordinary people in our society that we've ever been in... One of the premiere battles of our lifetime is to try to get these corporations out of our lives, out of our electoral process in this country, out of the domination of the media."

The point? There's a war on journalism, and they have realized metadata is the ultimum vas. My question is, who are "they, They, THE OMINOUS THEY"?

Kilo Tango 3 Lima Alpha November

I scored 31/35 on the Technician Class exam on Saturday. I've been hammering the FCC license website ever since, waiting for my call sign to (finally) pop up. Well, today all that F5'ing finally paid off: 

KT3LAN will be transmitting live from the streets of Washington, DC, during the American Spring. The following is a list of OAS frequencies and repeaters, so you'll likely find me somewhere in here:

2 meter simplex: 
146.520
146.580

2 meter repeaters:
W3ETX : 145.1100 (-.600 offset, no tone)
W3DOS : 145.1900 (-.600 offset, 151.4 tone)
K3VOA : 147.0450 (+.600 offset, no tone)

In the era of American state-run media, what a treat it is to follow Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald. Their cogent, unbiased and relentless research and analysis are beacons in the MSNBCABCCBSCNN darkness. They walk the walk, too: Scahill likened his "Dirty Wars" journey to a "three year counter-terrorism Truman show", and Greenwald was forced to fight the illegal detention of his boyfriend in the U.K on Snowden-related charges.

It gets even better. These two All-Stars have teamed up to form a journalistic equivalent of JSOC: A digital magazine called The Intercept was unveiled on February 10, and its mission is to provide "fearless adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues." That's badass. While the rest of the PC Amerikardashian media focuses on minutiae, our generation's Woodward and Bernstein are going to be a plasma torch on the genuine issues. 

This particular quote by Scahill makes The Third Lantern glow more brightly today:

"There's a reason why journalism is the only specifically cited job outside of government jobs in the Constitution. That's because if the three branches of power collude together against the interests of The People, the press is the fourth estate. Journalists have an obligation to take an inherently adversarial role toward those in authority, in the service of the public good."

Like Rome, America isn't a place so much as it is an idea. Hell, that was one of the coolest things about the Revolution: Men and women who'd traditionally identified themselves as stalwart New Englanders and proud Georgians (and every other colonial calling in between) joined together over a notion, a principle. They'd didn't all scramble to one location and proclaim themselves American; our germ was not geography, it was ethos.

Hearing the story about the California school banning American flags on Cinco de Mayo served as a reminder. The Republic isn't being assailed by armies and armadas, it's being subverted by a collective counter principle, an inverted ethos. It may not happen in a week or a year, but rights erode into privileges, and privileges into restrictions. How many intrinsically American tenets have changed since you were a child? 

Even stone gives way to wind. As Marcus Aurelius tells Maximus, "There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only... whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish. It was so fragile, and I fear that it will not survive the winter." 

Rome's successor has reached a similar crossroads. Will you be the philosopher, the warrior, the tyrant? Or will you be the Citizen who gave America back her true self?