Breeding us a thousand more Carl Dregas

[John/az2]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR> FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 4, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Breeding us a thousand more Carl Dregas

"Why are so many Americans going nuts?" our desperate statist overseers keep asking. "It must be the guns!"

Yeah, sure. And the answer to the snakebite problem is not to teach our kids to cut your average cantankerous rattler a wide berth when spotted in the woods, but rather to launch a billion-dollar federal program to capture, anaesthetize, and de-fang every venomous reptile on the continent.

(Well, perhaps not all at once. We could start with "reasonable, modest" reptile control -- only scale-printing and registering the serial numbers of the biggest, meanest-looking snakes, while requiring that manufacturers provide each new hatchling with a "fang lock.")

Shall we take a fresh try at explaining what's going on, here?

Many thought it was an exaggeration when a government bureaucrat in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" explained to the hero that the bureaucrats' plan is to make everything illegal, the better to control honest citizens who will then live in constant fear of being charged with a "crime" for merely going about their daily lives ... especially should they ever cross an "officer."

But Ms. Rand -- nee Alissa Rosenbaum -- watched Comrades Stalin and Trotsky bring collectivism come to her home of St. Petersburg in the years after the First World War. She knew precisely how socialism works.

Presumably the idea no longer seems far-fetched to Jim Howard, either. The 30-year resident of Kyle Canyon -- a rural mountainside 40 miles northwest of Las Vegas -- just spent 14 days sitting in the county lockup, and could be facing another 40 days after county inspectors -- outraged that they've been made to look bad by recent press coverage of the case -- papered him with new summonses, including one for "operating without a business license," just before his latest scheduled court appearance.

Is Mr. Howard some kind of armed desperado, or despoiler of the young and defenseless?

Well, no. What happened is that one of Mr. Howard's neighbors -- they've all moved in since he set up housekeeping, you understand -- complained to the county that Mr. Howard had added a dormer to his house, years ago. They also complained that -- since his business is digging septic tanks and clearing snow in the winter -- he was storing a dump truck and a backhoe on his property.

The nerve of this man.

And some cars. Jim Howard collects cars. A few years ago the snow collapsed the roof of his 10-car garage, so he had 14 vehicles lined up on the property, covered with tarps.

That, and the dirt.

The "dirt" part sounds a little strange, until you realize that on rocky Mount Charleston it sometimes comes in darned handy to have a truckload of clean fill on hand to cover a septic tank or an irrigation pipe. The stuff commands a premium up there.

That's about it. That's why Dave Pollex, senior code enforcement specialist for the county's Public Response Office, was called in. Pollex cited Howard for having the cars and the dirt on his property. Howard paid the fine. But Pollex returned to cite him again, waving at the dormer and telling him to "get rid of that, too."

You see, Mr. Howard hadn't bothered to make the 80-mile round trip into town to get a building permit to add his dormer, all those years ago. Mr. Howard wasn't sure why he was supposed to get rid of the window, but he took the glass out and boarded it over.

That apparently outraged Mr. Pollex, who contends he meant Howard should slice the whole dormer off his roof, and that he should have known what was meant. (Though in fact, county regulations would appear to allow for a simple inspection of the structure, in such cases, to make sure it's "up to code.")

Justice of the Peace Nancy Oesterle -- whose campaign backers include a family that operates a competing snow-clearing business on the mountain -- found Howard in contempt of court and sentenced him to three days in jail, plus 22 under house arrest. Instead, he ended up serving 14 days in the clink. Some kind of "paperwork mistake," the authorities say.

For the cars. And the dirt. And the dormer.

Jim Howard has removed the dump truck and the backhoe with which he made his living. He's removed his cars -- most of which were in good running order. He even says he's removed the dirt -- though the county now wants him to remove another 500 cubic yards, which Howard says will mean hauling off topsoil that came with the property in the first place.

That's 500 more truckloads of dirt, a demand which leads columnist John L. Smith -- who broke the story of Jim Howard's trials in the Sept. 26 Review-Journal -- to quip "They've ordered him to remove the (start ital)property(end ital) from his property!"

We all know what Jim Howard's real "crime" was -- he got on the wrong side of an officious, "by the book" county bureaucrat.

This used to be the land of the free. When an old-timer is merely conducting his life as he has for decades, there comes a time when the appropriate response is: "Lady, you did move out to the country on purpose, didn't you? We do not put people in jail for maintaining a pile of dirt."

At least, we shouldn't.

Folks like Justice Nancy Oesterle and "county officer" Dave Pollex think they can shove, and shove and shove -- writing any of us a new flurry of citations or locking us up for "contempt" should we object -- and eventually we'll all bow our heads and fall into line.

But this is not Japan, and Americans are not ants. Even for patient and long-suffering men -- members of an armed populace accustomed to their freedom -- there are limits.

Judge Oesterle might want to inquire what happened to the local lady judge who kept shoving around a retired New Hampshire carpenter and recluse named Carl Drega -- cited and fined repeatedly over the years for "taking too long" to finish an "unsightly" tarpaper-covered barn on his property, for "filling without a permit" when he rebuilt the shoreline of his property, washed out by a flood of the Connecticut River ... that kind of thing.

The last straw for the long-suffering Carl Drega came when two local cops pulled him over in the parking lot of a local supermarket a couple years back, and started writing him a ticket for having "rust holes in the bed of his pick-up truck" ... a pick-up truck whose state-issued license plate read: "Live Free Or Die."

I'm not celebrating what Carl Drega did. I'm not predicting Nevada's harmless Jim Howard will follow in his footsteps -- nor am I encouraging him to.

I'm just saying that occasionally, one of these old-timers who only wants to be left alone can be pushed too far.

We can't ask the two cops who pulled Carl Drega over, that last time, what finally made him snap. Nor can we ask his long-term tormentor, the part-time judge and town administrator who Carl Drega sought out, downtown, after he was done with that traffic stop.

Because you see, Judge Oesterle, those cops, and that New Hampshire judge ... they're all dead. And no one's pushing Carl Drega around, any more.

Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is author of the new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping through Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127; or by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

***

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken [/quote]

------------------
John/az

"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!

www.quixtar.com
referal #2005932




[This message has been edited by John/az2 (edited October 05, 1999).]

[John/az2]

More on Carl Drega.

The site:
http://www.proliberty.com/observer/prt1097c.htm

The article:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR> Live Free or Die
by Vin Suprynowicz

Go where the land meets the water, anywhere in New England, and you will begin to understand how firmly the region of my birth lies in bondage to the Cult of the Omnipotent State.

Town and state governments throughout New England traditionally buy and dump tons of sea sand--or whatever will pass for it --along the shorelines of their municipal beaches and parks. It doesn't matter whether the shoreline of the lake, river or ocean cove in question was originally a reeded marshland, offering pristine habitat to waterfowl and a hundred other creatures--the kind of place I (for one) would far rather spend my time communing with nature during that nine months of the year when it's NOT "time to turn, so you won't burn."

No matter: What the majority of taxpayers want is a sandy beach for picnicking and sunbathing (in fact, precious little "swimming" ever transpires), and that is what they darned well get. What? The autumn storms and winter ice annually erode the sand away, as nature attempts to restore these areas to their normal, fertile condition, with beds of reeds and cattails to naturally strain away pollutants? Never mind; just bring back the sand trucks every spring, raking out a new sandy beach by Memorial Day. The state is never out of resources; taxes spring eternal.

Actually, the institutionalized destruction goes much deeper than this. "Urban Renewal," in New England, often includes development of new office complexes and highways on "unused" or "blighted" land. For 40 years now, the larger New England cities have bulldozed interstate highways through the "seedy, decrepit" areas of docks and profitable but low-rent private businesses which used to line their waterfronts, throwing small business owners on the dole and erecting their new throughways atop impassable 20-foot concrete embankments, until two whole generations have grown up within a mile or two of the ocean or the navigable Connecticut River in Hartford, Springfield, New Haven or Boston without so much as SEEING the water that gave their cities birth, except as a distant glitter far below the highway bridge they take to work.

But let a private citizen try to turn a slice of his own private, rocky shoreline into a boat dock, a sliver of sandy beach, or even a well-intentioned but "unpermitted" refuge for turtles and wood ducks (yes, I know of just such cases, in Connecticut and New Jersey)--let him try to similarly adjust nature to his needs or wishes--and suddenly the state authorities descend like locusts, seizing and destroying the privately-held turtles, demanding to see all the required permits, showering liens and injunctions like a freak April snow shower.

What's more, the very populace who blithely speed along on the shore-destroying freeways, who consider it their civic right to lie in pure white sand where geese and fox and a hundred other creatures used to raise their young, cheer with glee as these "greedy" private "despoilers of nature" are brought low, for daring to offend against the state-enforced religion of Environmentalism ... on their own property. How dare such troglodytes tamper with sacred resources belonging to all the people, doing whatever they please with no more justification than the fact they happen to hold some bogus "private deed"? Of course, the notion that one need only "apply for a permit" is nothing but misdirection, equivalent to telling the Jews as they boarded the trains to the East that they should be careful to "label your luggage carefully for when you return."

Big commercial developers who make big campaign contributions may well get some kind of hypocritical "certificate of environmental compliance" for THEIR plans to pave and channelize the local waterfront ... requiring yet more government seizure of private property for another big "flood control project," upstream ... but the little guy faces years of hoop-jumping as his permit applications are lost, or returned for re-filing on updated forms, before they're finally denied.

At which point, the poor sad sack will learn to his dismay that it's too late to declare, "Well then, your whole permitting process is bogus, and I'm going ahead anyway."

At that point, the long-suffering citizen will be advised by a stern-voiced judge that he waived his right to appeal the validity of the permitting process when he filed his application (way back in the days when he was told "That's all there is to it,") thus tacitly acknowledging the right of the state to either grant or withhold its permission for the project in question!

Just ask 67-year-old carpenter Carl Drega, of Columbia, N.H.

Laughed out of court

In 1981, 80 feet of the riverbank along Drega's property collapsed during a rainstorm. Drega decided to dump and pack enough dirt to repair the erosion damage, restoring his lot along the Connecticut River to its original size.

A state conservation officer, Sergeant Eric Stohl, claimed to have spotted the project from the river while passing the Drega property on a fish-stocking operation (the river's natural ecology harbored huge runs of shad and Atlantic salmon, as well as native pike, pickerel, and brook trout. So most New England state governments--these devoted acolytes of environmental purity--now routinely stock bass, and brown and rainbow trout, none of which is native and few of which survive long enough to reproduce).

The state hauled Drega into court, attempting to block his tiny "project." This was piled on top of earlier actions by the Town of Columbia, some dating back more than 20 years, and starting when the town hauled Drega into court and threatened him with liens, judgments and (ultimately) property seizure over a "zoning violation" which was comprised of his failure to finish a house covered with tarpaper within a time frame which the town considered reasonable, former selectman Kenneth Parkhurst told the Boston Globe.

Drega tried for years to fight the authorities on their own terms, in court. Needless to say, as a quasi-literate product of the government schools, and no lawyer, his filings became a laughing stock both in the courts and in the newspapers to which he sent copies, begging for help. "The dispute, punctuated by years of hearings and court orders, became an obsession for Drega," wrote reporters Matthew Brelis and Kathleen Burge in an Aug. 20 follow-up in the Boston Globe.

Drega "filed personal lawsuits against the state officials involved and contacted newspapers, including the Globe, imploring them to write about the injustice being done to him."

In court in 1995, the Globe reports that Drega explained, "The reason I'm like this on this case, when I started my project 10 years ago I was issued permits and everything I needed. When I reapplied 10 years later, that's when Eric Stohl came in and the Wetlands Board had absolutely no records. ... I am liable for everything that's done there. In the New Hampshire Wetlands Board, if it's not done according to the plan, they can take it out. And if I don't have the money to take it out, they'll take it out. And if I can't pay for it, they'll take my property."

I sort the incoming letters-to-the-editor for a major metropolitan newspaper. The receipt of such sheafs of heartfelt, illiterate pleadings from folks at their wit's end (child custody leads the list, though property rights also feature prominently), pleading for help from SOMEONE, has become an almost daily occurrence.

Since such tirades are too long, rambling, and "not of general public interest" to run as letters, I diligently forward them to the city desk, in hopes an editor there may occasionally assign a reporter to check them out. They never do ... unless the author shoots somebody, at which point there ensues a mad scramble through the wastebaskets. In newsrooms around the country, the running joke when a large number of such missives or phone calls come in on the same day is that "It must be a full moon."

Reporters cover the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is adept at putting out its version of events in reasonable-sounding, easy-to-quote form. Those who can't get with the program are generally ridiculed by reporters as "gadflies," "malcontents," and (more recently) "black helicopter conspiracy nuts." Their rambling, disjointed stories don't tend to fit into the standard 12 inches.

By 1995, it was obvious that Carl Drega was running out of patience. Town selectman Vickie Bunnell, 42 (since appointed a part-time state judge) accompanied a town tax assessor to Drega's property in a dispute over an assessment. Drega fired shots into the air to drive them away. (In New England, special property tax assessments are common, and especially cruel to senior citizens. The courts have ruled that if the town decides to run a municipal water or sewer line along a street fronting one's property, the property owner can be assessed the amount by which the town figures the property's value has been enhanced--usually in the thousands of dollars--even if the property owner has a perfectly good well and septic system, and opts not to tie into the new municipal lines. Failure to pay can eventually lead to eviction, and the property being auctioned off).

Carl Drega could see what was coming. He couldn't have been ignorant of the government tactics used to ambush and murder harmless civilians at Waco and Ruby Ridge. He bought a $575 AR-15--the legal, semi-auto version of the standard military M-16--in a gun store in Waltham, Massachusetts, a state with some of the most restrictive gun laws in America. He also began equipping his property with early-warning electronic noise and motion detectors against the inevitable government assault.

Too light a round

But they didn't come for Carl Drega at home. On Tuesday Aug. 19, at about 2:30 on a warm summer afternoon, New Hampshire State Troopers Leslie Lord, 45 (a former police chief of nearby Pittsburg) and Scott Phillips, 32, arrested Drega in the parking lot of LaPerle's IGA supermarket in neighboring Colebrook, N.H.

("Arrest" comes from the French word for "stop." Whenever agents of the state brace a citizen, stop him and demand to see his papers, he has been "arrested," no matter whether he has been "read his rights," no matter what niceties the court may apply to the various steps of the process).

Why was Carl Drega arrested that day? New Hampshire Attorney General Phillip McLaughlin pulls out his best weasel words, reporting the troopers had stopped Drega's pickup because of a "perception of defects." Earlier wire accounts reported they were preparing to ticket him for having "rust holes in the bed of his pickup truck."

But Carl Drega had had enough. He walked back to Trooper Lord's cruiser and shot the uniformed government agent seven times. Then he shot Trooper Philips, as the brave officer attempted to run away. Both died. Drega then commandeered Lord's cruiser and drove to the office of former selectman--now lawyer and part-time Judge--Vickie Bunnell, 44. Bunnell reportedly carried a handgun in her purse out of fear of Drega. But if so, she evidently had no well-thought-out plan to use it. Bunnell ran out the back. Drega calmly walked to the rear of the building and shot her in the back from a range of about 30 feet. Bunnell died. Dennis Joos, 50, editor of the local Colebrook News and Sentinel, worked in the office next door. Unarmed, he ran out and tackled Drega. Drega walked about 15 feet with Joos still clutching him around the legs, advising the editor to "Mind your own (expletive) business," according to reporter Claire Knapper of the local weekly.

Joos did not let go. Drega shot Joos in the spine. He died. Drega then drove across the state line to Bloomfield, Vt., where he fired at New Hampshire Fish and Game Warden Wayne Saunders, sending his car off the road. Saunders was struck on the badge and in the arm, but his injuries were not considered life-threatening.

Police from various agencies soon spotted the abandoned police cruiser Drega had been driving ... still in Vermont. As they approached the vehicle, they began taking fire from a nearby hilltop where Drega had positioned himself, apparently still armed with the AR-15 and about 150 rounds of ammunition. Although he managed to wound two more New Hampshire state troopers and a U.S. Border Patrol agent before he himself was killed by police gunfire, none of those injuries were life-threatening, either.

(Those preparing to defend themselves against assaults by armed government agents on their own property should take note that these failures do not appear attributable to Drega's marksmanship--after all, he scored plenty of hits--but rather to his dependence on the now-military-standard .223 cartridge, which has nowhere near the stopping power of the previous NATO standard .308, or the even earlier U.S. standard 30.06. Some states won't even allow deer to be hunted with the .223, due to its low likelihood of producing a "clean kill" with one hit).

Fertilizer and tractor fuel

Immediately, the demonization of Carl Drega began. A neighbor told the Globe about seeing a police cruiser pull up to the Drega house at 2:50 p.m., and leave at 3:10 p.m., minutes before smoke began to pour from the house. Ignoring the likelihood that a uniformed officer might have been sent to see if Drega had gone home, "Authorities believe the fire was set by Drega," the Globe reported on Aug. 20, thereafter reporting as a matter of established fact that Drega burned down his own home. Isn't it funny how they always do that?

Searching the barn and the remaining property later that week, "Authorities found 450 pounds of ammonium nitrate, the substance used in the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings, as well as cans of diesel fuel," came the breathless Aug. 31 report by Boston Globe reporter Royal Ford.

Trenches on the property held PVC pipe carrying wires to remote noise and motion detectors. No remote booby-traps were discovered, though the barn and a hillside bunker contained ammunition, parts for AK-47s and the AR-15, "and a few boxes of silver dollars," as well as "homemade blasting caps, guns, night scopes, a bullet-proof helmet (sic) and books on bombs and booby traps," as well as "the makings of 86 pipe bombs."

"The makings," eh? I wonder how many wholesale hardware outlets in this country currently stock "the makings" of 8,600 pipe bombs? The FBI was johnny on the spot, of course, helping New Hampshire State Police Sgt. John McMaster search the three-story barn, with its "concrete bunkers" containing not only ammunition, but also "canned food, soda, and a refrigerator."

(I wonder if my basement would suddenly become a "concrete bunker" if I had a run-in with the law? How about yours?)

But it was the 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate (the estimate kept dropping during the week) and the 61 gallons of diesel fuel in five-gallon containers that gave authorities the willies.

"Realizing the he had walked into the most dangerous private arsenal he had ever seen, McMaster began climbing the stairs to the second floor," reported Brian MacQuarrie and Judy Rakowsky of the Boston Globe on Aug. 22. "Halfway up, (State Trooper Jack) Meaney shouted for him to stop: He had just picked up a bomb-making manual opened to a chapter on how to booby-trap stairs...

"The large stores of dangerous materials, combined with the discovery of three instruction manuals on explosives and booby traps, helped persuade N.H. authorities that they should destroy the barn with a controlled burn and explosion," which they promptly did.

"Some federal agents initially questioned the plan to destroy the huge cache of evidence that may have shown whether Drega had links to militia groups or criminals," the Globe also breathlessly reports, though the paper at least had the decency to note no such affiliations were ever established.

(One wonders whether the newspaper would have given equal play to someone lamenting that they thus lost the chance to search for hypothetical links between Drega and the Irish Republic Army, Drega and the Ted Kennedy campaign staff, or Drega and the Buddhist nuns who laundered campaign contributions for Al Gore).

Ammonium nitrate is, of course, a common fertilizer, sold in 50-pound bags to anyone who wants it--no questions asked--in garden stores in all 50 states.

Farmers all over the nation store more than 60 gallons of diesel fuel at a time, and even know how to combine the diesel fuel with the ammonium nitrate to make a relatively weak explosive, useful in blowing up tree stumps. Purchase of blasting caps for this purpose is also perfectly legal. If this and a few hundred rounds of military surplus ammo constituted "the most dangerous private arsenal" the head of the New Hampshire state police bomb squad had ever seen, he must not get out much. Anyway, the buildings are all burned to the ground now--just like at Waco--and the newspaper reporters-- trained to just report the facts and never express opinions--had ruled within days that Carl Drega was "diabolical and paranoid."

The remaining question is, did government agents Vickie Bunnell, Leslie Lord, and Scott Phillips deserve to die? Did Carl Drega pick the right time and place to say "That's as many of my rights as you're going to take; it stops right here?"

Or IS that the right question? The problem with the question is that the oppressor state and its ant-like agents are both devious and clever: Except when faced with overt resistance and a chance to make an example of some social outcasts on TV, they rarely send black-clad agents to pour out of cattle trailers in our front yards, guns ablaze.

No, they generally see to it that our chemical castration is so gradual that there can NEVER be a majority consensus that this is finally the right time to respond in force. In this death of a thousand cuts we're ALWAYS confronted with some harmless old functionary who obviously loves his grandkids, some pleasant young bureaucrat who doubtless loves her cat and bakes cookies for her co-workers and smilingly assures us she's "just doing her job" as she requests our Social Security number here ... our thumbprint there ... the signed permission slip from your kid's elementary school principal for possessing a gun within a quarter-mile of the school ... and a urine sample, please, if you'll just follow the matron into the little room ...

"Those are the rules," after all, "everybody has to do it; I just do what they tell me; if you don't like it you can write your congressman." When ... when is it finally the right moment to respond, "I'll tell you what; why don't you take this steel-cored round of .223 to my congressman? In fact, take him a whole handful, and tell him to have a nice day ... when you see him in hell!"?

Carl Drega decided the day to finally say that, was the day they came to arrest him on the private property of a supermarket parking lot, supposedly for having rust holes in the bed of his pickup.

Does anyone believe that's really why they stopped Carl Drega?

Lots more coming

I am not--repeat, not--advising anyone to go forth and start shooting cops and bureaucrats. To start with, one's own life expectancy at that point grows quite short, limiting one's options to continue fighting for freedom on other fronts.

Most of us--unlike Carl Drega--also have families to think of. Third, there may be other solutions. Just as much of the farmland near Rome sat vacant by the fall of the Roman Empire--it simply proved cheaper to move on than to endure the confiscatory Roman taxes--so do James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg predict in their new book, "The Sovereign Individual," that Internet encryption may allow many to spirit their hard-earned assets beyond the reach of this newer, oppressive slave state, making "the tax man in search of someone to audit" the laughing stock of the 21st century.

And finally, such a course invites obvious risks of mistaken identity, collateral damage to relatively innocent bystanders (witness newspaperman Coos), and an end to due process ... a concept for which I still harbor some respect, even if our government oppressors do not. What I do know is, in little more than 30 years, we have gone from a nation where the "quiet enjoyment" of one's private property was a sacred right, to a day when the so-called property "owner" faces a hovering hoard of taxmen and regulators threatening to lien, foreclose, and "go to auction" at the first sign of private defiance of their collective will ... a relationship between government and private property rights which my dictionary defines as "fascism."

Carl Drega tried to fight them, for years, on their own terms and in their own courts. We know how far that got him.

What I do know is that this is why the tyrants are moving so quickly to take away our guns.

Because they know in their hearts that if they continue the way they've been going, boxing Americans into smaller and smaller corners, leaving us no freedom to decide how to raise and school and discipline our kids, no freedom to purchase (or do without) the medical care we want on the open market, no freedom to withdraw $2,500 from our own bank accounts (let alone move it out of the country) without federal permission, no freedom even to arrange the dirt and trees on our own property to please ourselves ... if they keep going down this road, there are going to be a lot more Carl Dregas, hundreds of them, thousands of them, fed up and not taking it any more, a lot more pools of blood drawing flies in the municipal parking lots, a lot more self-righteous government weasels who were "only doing their jobs" twitching their death-dances in the warm afternoon sun ... and soon.

When is the right time to say, "Enough, no more. On this spot I stand, and fight, and die"? When they're stacking our luggage and loading us on the box cars? A fat lot of good it will do us, then. Mr. Jefferson declared for us that "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People, to alter or abolish it."

Was Mr. Jefferson only saying we have a right to vote in a new crop of politicians every couple of years, as the pro-government extremists insist? No. The Declaration fearlessly declared that the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord had been right to shoot down Redcoats who were "only doing their jobs" in Massachusetts the year before. And it put the nations of the world on notice that Gen. Washington was planning to shoot, himself, a whole lot more.

"You must be kidding!" come the outraged cries. "This guy shot a fleeing woman in the back."

Oh, pardon me. Did Judge Bunnell propose to fight a straightforward duel with Mr. Drega, one on one, mano a mano, to determine who should have a right to decide whether he could build a tarpaper shack on his own property?

Of course not. The top bureaucrats generally manage to be sipping lemonade on the porch when the process they put in motion "reaches its final conclusion," with padlocks and police tape and furniture on the sidewalk ... or the incinerated resister buried in the ashes. Go watch "Escape from Sobibor." When the Jewish concentration camp inmates finally start to kill their German oppressors, tell me how long you spend worrying that they "didn't give the poor, jackbooted fellows a fair, sporting chance."

Each and every one of us must decide for him or herself when the day has come to stand fast, raise our weapons to our shoulders, and (quoting president Jefferson, this time) water the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots, and of tyrants. Give up the right to make that decision, and we become nothing better than the beasts in the field, waiting to be milked until we can give no more, and then shuffling off without objection, heads bowed, to the soap factory.

Carl Drega was a resident of New Hampshire. On the day Carl Drega decided was a good day to die--on the day they towed it away--the license plates on his rusty pickup still bore the New Hampshire state motto: "Live Free or Die."

Carl Drega was different from most of us, all right. He believed it still meant something.

Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127. © 1997 Vin Suprynowicz Editors note:

The national media finished off what the local media had begun a decade ago: Carl Drega spent the last ten years of his life defending his property from the bureaucrats who wanted to steal it. Instead of reporting the truth while one man fought valiantly to protect his life's work from those who would steal it, the local media chose to ridicule Carl Drega. Finally, after being forced to exhaust all of his resources in a futile attempt to defend his property and his innocence, Carl Drega had had enough. Unavailable in the courtroom, and with no help from the local lapdog media, Carl Drega had only one option left to find justice. Then he died.

After he was dead and after several others were dead, did the national media tell the truth? Or, did the national media paint Carl Drega as a kook with possible militia ties? Why is it the pattern and practice of the media to demonize people who believe that they have a right to protect their property from thieves?

What you just read is the truth. What you just read should have been how Carl Drega would be remembered. If what you just read had been written ten years ago, Carl Drega would still have his house and the corrupt individuals who tried to steal it might still be alive.

Any "news" person in New Hampshire who knew the truth and failed to report it should be ashamed. A piece of America died with Carl Drega. If the "justice" system and the media do not start seeking and reporting the truth, more pieces of America are destined to die. The above story is so moving that you may cancel your subscription to the Times. Remember Carl Drega as reported here--he deserves that much from all of us.

DWH [/quote]

------------------
John/az

"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!

www.quixtar.com
referal #2005932




[This message has been edited by John/az2 (edited October 05, 1999).]

[John/az2]

Here's another view:

The site

The article:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Paper’s deadline met after killings

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - Editor Dennis Joos died trying to protect the staff at his weekly newspaper from a man who had just killed a woman in the parking lot with a rifle.

With blood on the ground and police searching every inch of the building and grounds, the staff of The News and Sentinel in Colebrook then wrote the story and put out the paper - on time, with three bylined stories by the slain editor.

"This town expects us to put out the paper," said publisher John Harrigan.

Harrigan was not in the building Tuesday afternoon when Carl Drega shot Harrigan’s former girlfriend, Vickie Bunnell, and Joos, the publisher’s close friend. Bunnell, a lawyer and part-time judge, had an office in the same building.

Harrigan jumped into his car to drive to the paper after hearing on a scanner that two state troopers had been shot in Colebrook, a town of 2,600 just nine miles from Canada.

Harrigan called the paper from his car and office manager Gil Short told him two more people had been killed in the newspaper’s parking lot.

"The minute I heard there was a shooting here, I knew it was Drega," Harrigan said.

Drega, 62, who was killed by police, was well-known as a troublemaker who had threatened Bunnell in the past because of court rulings that went against him. Authorities found bomb-making manuals, weapons, hundreds of pounds of explosives and an elaborate system of tunnels on his property. They burned his barn to set off explosives.

As Drega arrived at the newspaper Tuesday afternoon in a cruiser stolen from one of the troopers, Bunnell spotted his checked shirt and the rifle from her window and ran through the newspaper offices shouting a warning. She then ran out the back door, followed by most of the News and Sentinel staff.

Drega ran behind the building and shot and killed Bunnell, 44, in the parking lot. Joos tackled him, but Drega wrestled free and shot the editor, then left. Joos died on the way to the hospital.

Joos, 51, was an Exeter native who made a 1970s back-to-the-land move to the North Country. His co-editor, Susan Zizza, said he once trained to be a Roman Catholic priest. He later married, and he and his wife, Polly, have a son attending college in Alaska.

The weekly paper was 80 percent complete when Joos was shot.

Harrigan, who also was friends with the dead troopers, ripped apart the paper, wrote an editorial headlined "Horrible, unbelievable, and other words that fail," and wrote the lead story on the shootings.

"I didn’t have to check facts," he said Wednesday.

Reporter Claire Lynch-Knapper, who rushed to the scene as soon as the troopers were shot, helped report on their deaths. Another reporter, Kenn Stransky, was designated as spokesman to answer questions from other reporters. Harrigan’s daughter, Karen, a correspondent for The Union Leader of Manchester, drove 140 miles north to help her dad. Local friends and relatives also came in to help.
[/quote]

Emphasis mine.
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John/az

"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!

www.quixtar.com
referal #2005932



[This message has been edited by John/az2 (edited October 05, 1999).]

[John/az2]

The site

The site has many links to related articles.

The opinion:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>NOTES: Earlier wire service reports used the spelling Draga, later reports used Drega. Related links follow the press release

Press Release - 9755
Public Intelligence Review and Newsletter (PIRN-9755)
Live Free or Die: He died. (Opinion)
media commentary by Richard Rongstad on the Reuter news story
"Gunman Killed after Shooting Spree in 2 States"

Tuesday, August 19, 1997, 11:45pm U.S. Eastern Time

A few hours ago Reuter filed a story from North Stratford,
New Hampshire detailing the shooting deaths of two policeman,
a judge, a newspaper editor and man alleged to be upset over
taxes. In addition, two Vermont state troopers and a New
Hampshire game warden were wounded by the frustrated, and
now deceased man who is alleged to have been, "anti-government".

Reuter called it a "shooting spree".

That is, an "anti-government...shooting spree".

I always figured that spree was more lighthearted, like in a
shopping spree.

So I checked my Random House Webster's College Dictionary with
250,000 definitions and nonsexist guidelines and sure enough,
there it was. Definition number one gave two examples, "eating
spree", and "spending spree". Now what could be happier than that?

Definition number two was "binge" or "carousal". I don't think
that fits either.

Reuter had to stretch all the way down to number three -- "a period
or outburst of activity". That's vague, and a stretch to boot.

Is a grammar school recess a spree?

Reuter made the running gun battle sound like a lark, a weekend
in the park. Their basic problem is to get the reader's attention.

Well Reuter does it, and hell, they all do it. I mean the news media,
the wire services, the networks, the reporters, the editors, the
anchors. They all want circulation, they all want ratings and they
all want attention. And there is one thing they want most of all,
peer approval. Editorial license is real.

Five people dead, and it's a spree.

Using Reuter's style guide, the deadly federal government assault
on the religious minority at Waco must have been a "joyous day long gala",
anticipating Janet Reno's long tenure in office.

But anyway, Reuter reported that 67 year old Carl Draga killed four
people, wounded three more and got himself shot dead for his efforts.

Reuter quoted local residents as saying that Draga was "anti-government"
and "militant". Both of those are heinous felonies I guess, judging from
the news media emphasis given to them. "Anti-government" and "militant".
Shoot fire Jim Bob! That's as good as a death sentence right there.

The police think that Draga was upset over a property tax problem.

Based on that alone maybe the police face a nation of Draga's.

Maybe the judge ruled against him. There are tyrants in black robes
you know. Ask almost any divorced American male.

Maybe the newspaper editor took sides against Draga and Draga didn't
like it. That's not hard to believe. Maybe newspaper editors' opinions
count for too much and it's gone to their heads. Letters to the editor
account for half a page, a page at the most in your typical daily. That
leaves about 20 pages for ads and maybe 40 pages of news the editor
allows to be printed. Maybe two out of three Americans would agree
with that.

I wonder what Draga thought about that made him "anti-government".

Draga probably didn't read the papers very much. Otherwise he would
have known you don't even have to be militant to get into trouble.
"Anti-government" is enough to get you killed.

Carl Draga probably never even heard of the Weaver family or the Branch
Davidians. Whoa! Now that's a thought.

But, from where I stand, Draga made a big mistake. He should not have
killed and wounded those other people unless he had a reasonable claim
of self-defense. Not just that it was very wrong, but that it was
very stupid.

When it comes down to tyrants in black robes, newspaper editors and
network anchors as ministers of propaganda, and cops caught between
a rock and a hard spot trying to do the right thing, citizens should
let their oppressors make the mistakes.

You just watch this story folks. No legs. It will all be gone and
forgotten in a day or two, the media gatekeepers will see to that.
What is missing is one of those dreaded "compounds".

I think this story will end up something like; "the crazy bad tax
resister gunman using even badder guns killed some nice people because
he didn't want to pay his taxes to the nice government so the nice
government killed him for us and the government got his property anyway".

But, if news gets scarce, the networks might send out a camera crew to
ferret out Draga's shadowy militia past. And if he doesn't have one,
insinuate one. You know, the state motto (also see attached item).

As for the cops they didn't just lose two dead. Once again, tax-paying,
property owning cops faced an angry citizen when all they wanted to
do was have a quiet shift and go home and live free. But nope. Screwed again.

In New Hampshire, the state motto is "Live Free or Die". Carl Draga
died.

(c) Richard Rongstad 1997. Contact [rhrongstad@aol.com],
or, don't contact him.
---- end @

Richard Rongstad is a former spotted owl spotter who sits on his behind
at his continental U.S. home looking at Gary Larson cartoons while
thinking; "Should I defrag now?"

This press release may be viewed online at URL: http://www.ccnet.com/~suntzu75/pirn9755.htm

ATTACHED ITEM:
The New Hampshire State Motto, "Live Free or Die," was written by
General John Stark on July 31, 1809. The state legislature formally
adopted Stark's words as the state motto in 1945 as World War II
approached a successful end.

General John Stark was New Hampshire's most distinguished hero
of the Revolutionary War.

The motto was part of a volunteer toast which General Stark sent to
his wartime comrades, in which he declined an invitation to head up a
32nd anniversary reunion of the 1777 Battle of Bennington in Vermont,
because of poor health. The toast said in full: "Live Free Or Die; Death
Is Not The Worst of Evils." The following year, a similar invitation (also
declined) said: "The toast, sir, which you sent us in 1809 will continue to
vibrate with unceasing pleasure in our ears, "Live Free Or Die; Death Is
Not The Worst Of Evils."

From the State of New Hampshire official World Wide Web Site at URL:
http://www.state.nh.us

[/quote]

------------------
John/az

"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!

www.quixtar.com
referal #2005932


[This message has been edited by John/az2 (edited October 05, 1999).]

[BTR]

Carl Drega was mistreated. But none of that excuses his murders. He was dealt with unfairly, and he got mad. So he murdered people. I'm sorry people, I don't think this man is some kind of hero or patriot.

[DC]

John...

Could you come up with some contact addresses (gov't e-mails, snail mail, phones) for the Kyle county incident? Its too late to help Drega, but I sure would love to take a run at those Nevada fasists.

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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!

[John/az2]

I couldn't help posting another one.

This is a blaring example of accuracy in the reporting media.

The site:
http://www.ccnet.com/~suntzu75/9755b.htm

The article:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR> Stats
Gunman Kills Four, Dies in Shootout (Reuter)
Tuesday August 19 11:24 PM EDT
Gunman Kills Four, Dies in Shootout

CONCORD, N.H. (Reuter) - A gunman who killed four people and wounded three during a shooting spree in two states died in a shootout with police Tuesday, police said.

The man, identified as Carl Draga, 67, was killed in a gunfight at a lumberyard in North Stratford, New Hampshire, after leading police from northern New Hampshire and Vermont on a chase over back roads through logging country south of the Canadian border.

New Hampshire state police said the shooting spree began Tuesday afternoon after Draga set fire to his home in Columbia, New Hampshire, a hamlet some five miles south of Colebrook, New Hampshire.

Draga tried to rob a grocery store in Colebrook, about 20 miles south of the Canadian border. When two state troopers, Leslie Lord and Scott Phillips, interrupted the robbery, Draga fatally shot them and stole their patrol car, police said.

He then drove to the offices of the local newspaper, the News and Sentinel, where he found Vicki Bunnell, a lawyer and part-time judge who also served as a selectman for Columbia.

Draga chased Bunnell through the newsroom and cornered her in the parking lot, where he killed her with one shot in the back, according to News and Sentinel reporter Ken Stansky. When editor Dennis Jois tried to intervene by tackling Draga, he was fatally shot too, Stansky said.

"(Draga) had a beef about taxes and had threatened (Bunnell's) life at that time and repeated times since then"; Stansky said. "She's been very fearful of him for years."

The state motto of New Hampshire is "Live Free or Die." The state is well known for its lack of an income tax, but property taxes are considered high by some residents.

Draga returned to the state police car and headed for the Vermont border, just minutes away. But before crossing the sliver of the Connecticut River that divides the two states, he shot and wounded a New Hampshire Fish and Game warden who tried to stop him.

After reaching Vermont along dirt logging roads, he ditched the patrol car and headed into thick forests, chased by police from two states using helicopters and foot patrols.

Draga doubled back and headed south and east to North Stratford, New Hampshire. Along the way, he wounded two Vermont state police officers. Cornered in a lumberyard, Draga died during a shootout with police.

People in the hamlet of Colebrook, which has a population of about 1,000, were stunned by the shootings.

"Townspeople are devastated by the shootings. One of (the victims) was the editor of the local newspaper, and another was a young lady attorney we all thought the world of. I'm just too upset to talk more"; Audrey Noyce, a longtime Colebrook resident, said.

Maj. David McCarthey, a New Hampshire state police spokesman, told reporters the killing of the two state troopers was "devastating."

"It was like losing one of your family members", he said.
[/quote]

Emphasis mine.

------------------
John/az

"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!

www.quixtar.com
referal #2005932

[John/az2]

BTR,

Maybe you should go to these links and do some reading.

http://www.tcsn.net/doncicci/histdoc/decindep.htm

http://www.tcsn.net/doncicci/histdoc/billrights.htm
------------------
John/az

"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!

www.quixtar.com
referal #2005932



[This message has been edited by John/az2 (edited October 05, 1999).]

[BTR]

Are you saying the constition gives us a right to murder cops who pull us over for stupid reasons?

Are you saying that it's ok to murder people because we were unfairly treated over property zoning?

Are you saying that murders are permissible if the murderer was treated badly by the goverment?

Trying to understand the man's motive, and decry his treatment is fine. But makinging a murderer out to be a hero, or someone to elevate as a patriot is foolish.

[John/az2]

Nope.

You're intelligent enough to draw your own conclusions.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." -DOI

That was the conclusion that Carl made after years of abuses.

DC-

I'm working on it.
------------------
John/az

"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!

www.quixtar.com
referal #2005932




[This message has been edited by John/az2 (edited October 05, 1999).]

[John/az2]

To all readers.

It was not my intent to make a hero out of Carl Dregas.

My interest was piqued when I read the first article so I performed a search and posted the results.

The purpose of posting so many articles was to draw to one place many different sources, and to show the disparity of reporting this particular case.

We talk about the media putting a spin on an article, well, here is some more proof.

I know of no way of establishing the facts without a great expenditure of time and money, something that I do not have an abundance of without neglecting more important facets of my life.

But, it appears to me, that Carl's line was crossed, and that is a question that comes up frequently here on TFL and other forums.


------------------
John/az

"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!

www.quixtar.com
referal #2005932

[zip]

while his actions cant realy be condoned thats alota crap he put up with but the problem is its not that unuseal there are a lot of state and cities whoes goverments that are corrupt

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oneshotonekill

[Matt VDW]

This is a tragic story -- tragic both at the personal level, for Carl Dregas and for the victims of his frustration, and at the national level, as it illustrates the perverse manner in which the ever-thickening volumes of legislation and regulation have undermined, rather than reinforced, the rule of law. The pursuit of justice through the courts has become such an expensive, confusing crapshoot that the average American is effectively at the mercy of the "authorities".

[BTR]

By murdering a pair of random cops and some personal enemies, did this man "throw off such government, and to provide new guards for future security"?

I don't like the seeming justification of murder. It's useful to find his motives, and condemn government injustice, but it is in no way appropriate to defend his actions. My apologies if you are not defending his actions, of course. It's certainly interesting and worthwhile to read about what the man went through.

[This message has been edited by BTR (edited October 05, 1999).]

[John/az2]

BTR-

We don't quite see eye to eye on this one, but that's okay. You've raised some very valid concerns and questions that many struggle with should they find themselves in a very simular situation.

If opportunity would permit, I would enjoy sitting down with you face-to-face to discuss it, because I would prefer not to continue in this line of debate here on the board, and not even in e-mail (as I doubt the security of that medium, as well).

With warm regards!


------------------
John/az

"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!

www.quixtar.com
referal #2005932




[This message has been edited by John/az2 (edited October 05, 1999).]

[DC]

John and I have not always seen eye to eye, however he is a rational and honorable and law-abiding man.
I understand his rationale for this post, and you will see he did not specify he advocates Carl Draga's actions....he merely posted multiple accounts of the story.

It is apparent to me that some people construe reading an account of injustice by the government, wherein the victim of that injustice takes an unacceptable course of action, damn the victim and the messenger of the account.

With apologies and no prejudice upon John, I will lock this thread. Not because of content but because of the beginnings of "killing the messenger". I appreciate you taking the high road John.



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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!