Monday, January 03, 2011

DE PROFUNDIS: IMPRISONED BIRTHER SOLDIER WHINES FROM PRISON

Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin refused to deploy to Afghanistan because he considered the deployment order illegitimate -- in Lakin's view, President Obama has not demonstrated his eligibility by birth to be commander in chief. Last month, Lakin was sentenced to a whopping six months in prison. He'll be free any day now, but that doesn't mean you can't contribute to his legal defense fund, buy T-shirts, trucker hats, and other novelty items, and read -- no, I'm not joking -- his prison diaries:

...We now get two hours of 'rec time' in the morning and afternoon. Rec time is cell door open to a common pod area with a four-seat table, an exercise bike that does not work, a flat-screen TV that we cannot watch, and two showers. Activity is playing cards or a few board games, working out in my cell between meals, reading the rulebook, Bible, and now writing letters. Looks like the routine for the next several weeks. We have limited stamps, envelopes, and I am writing with a small, soft plastic (almost rubber pen) that is not to comfortable.

An uncomfortable ballpoint. Oh, the humanity!

After getting more integrated in January (hopefully minimum security) we may have more privileges. There will not be much use of a computer, limited phone, news, or TV. We have to order our own health and comfort supplies from a small provided list. We are allowed one order request per month and not more than $35 per month.... I'm hoping to get a small radio with ear buds so I can get some news radio....

I'll understand if you're reading this and thinking about accused WikiLeaker Pfc. Bradley Manning -- who, though so far convicted of nothing, is confined to a 72-square-foot cell for 23 hours a day, according to his attorney, and denied real bedding or the opportunity to exercise in his cell -- and thinking Lakin doesn't have it so bad.

The people running Lakin's Web site include a prominent link on the hopmepage to a Lakin support site run by the American Patriot Foundation, which posts a letter from a supporter essentially comparing Lakin to German citizens who lived under Nazi rule:

...I have a song on my i-pod, one I've known since I was a child, it is sung by Pete Seeger and it is called "My Name Is Liza Kalvelage." You may well know it, but it relates the issue of a "regular German citizen, questioning the trying of her Nation for not rising up against Hitler, and she suggests in it, her then current protest of the Vietnam war was a proper response to what she questioned as to the propriety of that war, and the necessity, shown by the Nuremburg Trials, of citizens to be active in questioning authority, and demanding answers as our right....

We don't merely have the right to question the provenance of our leaders, but as Sovereign Citizens, it is a moral obligation to do so....


I'm so sick of these people. I know we're supposed to ignore them, but I'm sorry, there's a continuum with these people at one extreme and mainstream pundits who question whether Obama's life experiences are "exotic" rather than "relatable" at the other. A pox on all of them.

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