After a look at the day's news, Author Jeanne Devon joins Nicole from Alaska, the setting of her new book, The Blood of Patriots: How I Took Down an Anti-Government Militia with Beer, Bounty Hunting and Badassery, a frighteningly and often funny true story of one man fighting sovereign citizens and militias.
Today on the show, we discussed the lessons we've learned thanks to the government's reactions to two completely different protest strategies. As the brilliant cartoon posted above shows, the nutjobs with guns get all the media attention, while the peaceful protesters demanding that we do something to insure the planet will still be inhabitable by humans when our grandchildren come of age are ignored. But that's the smaller lesson learned here. We also now know, thanks to actual events, that peaceful, nonviolent practitioners of civil disobedience as a means of protest against a corrupt system that reward the criminals and [...]
I honestly don't know what it's going to take to get people mobilized to fight back against the madness. Let's just look at some of the events from just this month, shall we? April began with the Supreme Court doubling down on it's heinous Citizens United decision by ruling in favor of McCutcheon in doing away with individual caps on contributions in any election cycle, giving us the ridiculous "money equals speech" paradigm. Unfortunately, the simple "If A=B, then B=A equation is proven false, as the IRS won't allow me to use speech to pay the $5750 penalty they're charging me [...]
Earlier this week, on the eve of Passover, a well-known and well-documented racist anti-Semite opened fire on two Jewish centers in Kansas, killing three people. And this week, egged on by the "Patriots" at Faux News and hate talk radio, scores of gun nuts showed up, weapons in hand, to fight back against the gubmint officials who dared to try to collect the million dollars in fees owed by a crazy rancher in Nevada for 20+ years of allowing his cattle to graze federal lands and ignoring the fees. Susie Madrak of Crooks and Liars pointed out that Sean [...]
I don't have enough time, enough space, or enough patience to list all of the hypocrites and their actions over the past few days - so let's start with a few. Texas parents want history book banned over Second Amendment 'militia' definition. Parents in one Texas school district are demanding that one commonly-used history book be banned because they say that the mention of the word “militia” in a sentence about the “Second Amendment” is indoctrinating children to believe they don’t have a right to own firearms. Guyer High School junior Brie Getts told KTVT that she was doing her homework with [...]
Aaron Swartz Adnan Latif (Photo: Wikipedia) Today's show highlighted some sad realities. I talked about two deaths in which the US government was undoubtedly complicit. Aaron Swartz, a brilliant young man who was being targeted by the DoJ for something many (including me) contend was not a crime, was facing decades in prison and battling lifelong depression, committed suicide. I didn't know Aaron and, although I knew of his work, did not know his name until I learned of his death. But I watch as Chris Hayes yesterday paid tribute to his friend and former classmate... [...]
**Updated Monday night... podcasts are now posted. Click on the player above for my regular show, and click here to hear today's Randi Rhodes Show (with me)*** It's another marathon Monday, as I'll be filling in for Randi Rhodes this afternoon, then doing my show too! It's baseball's opening day, Tiger Woods returns to the golf course, and it's Easter Egg Roll day at the White House. No, Randi Rhodes isn't attending any of those events. But she will be on Joy Behar's show tonight, so be sure to tune in. I've been keeping busy for the past few months. [...]
