Here’s an interesting example of a group exercising their “Right to Petition”, and you may have heard about this.

Governors across the country, including Pennsylvania’s, have received letters ordering them to step down from office in three days — the first step in a quasi-religious, “freedom movement” group’s elaborate plan to disband parts of the U.S. government, according to the group’s website.

Interesting.  This was the copy found in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  Note the inclusion of “including Pennsylvania”.  So…

Governors across the country — including Ohio’s Ted Strickland — have received letters ordering them to step down from office in three days, the first step in a quasi-religious, “freedom movement” group’s elaborate plan to disband parts of the U.S. government, according to the group’s Web site.

It is always good to insert the local angle into the AP copy.  Usually I see it in the headline, though.

The group, calling itself the Guardians of the free Republics, describes the plan as a nonviolent and legal attempt to “restore the true Republic.” Department of Homeland Security and FBI officials said there did not appear to be an immediate threat of violence.
Just a demand to quit within three days, in order to implement –?

“Everything is going to be orderly and no one is going to be harmed in this movement,” said Billy Ray Hall, a man who identified himself as a follower of the Guardians of the free Republics. “It’s going to be really good. There’s going to be funds enough for everybody.” […]

Funds enough for everyone?  What is this — the Diggers?

Guardians of the free Republics emphasize the peaceful nature of their proposed revolution, although their wording is at times opaque and foreboding.  The group believes that an act of Congress passed in the late 1800s effectively transformed the United States into a corporation, Hall said. Since then, the American people have been serving corporate masters.

The plan to restore America begins with the assembly of “de jure grand juries” in all 50 states, according to the group’s Web site. Followers were asked to sign a “covenant of office” and are described as “elders.” The group must act quickly to avert some impending enforcement of martial law, said group leader Sam Kennedy on his Internet radio program.

So you now have a choice between … oh, Christine Gregorie or Ted Strickland or Rick Perry or whoever – or these guys?

Kennedy, who said the group was attracting followers in droves from the so-called freedom movement, described this plan as a “revelation” and compared the coming events to “a time to parallel the storming of Jericho and all the great Biblical events of history.”

“Calamity is coming for this world,” he said on the radio program, adding that it would be peaceful. “We forgive all who repent for their crimes against mankind. You could also expect that many of those people will not repent, and if they are recidivists we will deal with them accordingly.”

Meanwhile, in Yakima, Washington:

Actually this has little or nothing to do with the Guardians of the free Republics — perhaps there’s something to be made in individuals guarding the free republic —  it’s just that I’ve always had a desire to tap in an incongruent “Meanwhile, in Yakima, Washington.”  I don’t know why.
The Stranger, the alternative paper in Seattle, has a beat reporter milling about the Yakima Valley — apparently in search for the whole energy of this Selah fellow…

A 63-year-old Yakima County man has been charged with threatening to kill U.S. Sen. Patty Murray over her support of the health-care overhaul.The FBI and local police arrested Charles Alan Wilson at his Selah home early Tuesday. Wilson was scheduled to make an appearance in U.S. District Court in Yakima, and he will then be transported to Seattle, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

According to the charges, staffers in Murray’s office in the Jackson Building in downtown Seattle had become concerned over a series of phone calls by an unknown man over the past several months. The calls came from a blocked number, and often were made in the evenings or on weekends.

Usually, according to a staffer identified by the initials “M.G.,” the calls were merely vulgar and harassing.

But on March 22, “the caller began to make overt threats to kill and/or injure Senator Murray,” according to the complaint signed by FBI Agent Carolyn Woodbury.

In that message, a man the FBI says it has identified as Wilson stated, “I hope you realize there’s a target on your back now … Kill the [expletive] senator! I’ll donate the lead.”

In several other vulgar and profanity-laced messages left over the next week, the caller repeatedly threatened the Democratic senator’s life and said he “hopes somebody kills” President Obama as well, according to portions of transcripts in the complaint.

We will see, I suppose an odd little connection between the conspiracy spewing Truther Tea Partier amped around the similar circumstances surrounding the Presidency of James Garfield and friends with Obama to the threatener of Patty Murray.  Maybe I should go ahead and defend the conspiracy Truther Tea Partier right here and now.  Or maybe I should wonder why I tossed the religous end times “Dissolve the Government” freaks into this picture.

Well, I suppose the Stranger article is all about Local Color.  A bit of background for explanation.

The tanks are still there, 177 in all, packed with 53 million gallons of radioactive waste. One million gallons have leached into the desert soil.
A decade from now, this byproduct of the atomic age at Hanford nuclear reservation was to be turned into 14-foot-long glass rods, loaded in steel canisters and shipped to Nevada, where it could sit forever beneath a mountain. An additional 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel would go with it.
But now the worst waste from the country’s most polluted place has nowhere to go.
The Obama administration’s recent decision to withdraw licensing to build a high-level nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain leaves future storage of the Manhattan Project’s nastiest goop undecided. Some worry the move means waste could remain at Hanford indefinitely and that nuclear garbage from elsewhere might even join it. […]
“A lot of us were quite confident way back in 1995 that we would probably end up right at this spot,” said Todd Martin, former chairman of the Hanford Advisory Board, an independent, nonpartisan group that attempts to advise the Energy Department on Hanford cleanup. “I’m much more concerned about when we’re going to make our first teaspoon of glass.”

It’s the by-product of living in a Vast Nuclear Wasteland.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Doc Hastings and the 4th Congressional District of Wash, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.