OK, back to the fight. "Once more into the breach!" A sitrep plus some random thoughts on journalistas and militia training.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!' --Henry the Fifth, William Shakespeare.

First, thanks for all your prayers, folks. They worked.

Second, a sitrep:

It is hard to over-estimate how behind I am at this moment. I have over 1,300 emails in my in-box (and that doesn't count the ones already easily deleted by subject line/sender). For those of you readers who have been thinking I just deleted yours without seeing it, that is not the case. They're just stacked up there, waiting for the mythical time when "things slow down." You have my sincere apologies for the failure, but there it is.

Were the blog the only thing I am doing at this point, it would be easy to catch up with the email flow, but it is not. The final product of Absolved continues to be difficult and I am spending 90% of my available time on that. I am learning that manuscripts are EASY, but the editing back-and-forth is HARD. Especially when things must flow. There are gaps in story line, "continuity issues" that must be hammered out, etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Should be done with that after this weekend. I may pull out a previously-secret chapter and post it here just to satisfy you ravening wolves. I DO understand your frustration.

There also is the very real cold war of maneuver, intelligence gathering and deception that must be played with various rogue agencies of a rogue regime. Just because you haven't read lately of Little Jimmy Vann and the thugs of the ATF's Chief Counsel's Office doesn't mean that CPT R.A. Bear, CPT Jonathan Tuttle and ATF deep-cover mole "Waldo" aren't out there doing their best to flip on light switches where the cockroaches and the rats congregate.

The case of Len Savage and "the arrested upper" continues to languish, awaiting a federal judge's decision on whether to go to trial. You have not heard much about that because that is how Len wants it. He is not a publicity hound, just a firearm designer and manufacturer who is trying to get along making a living without the ATF continuing the retaliatory "economic Waco" they have inflicted upon him as punishment for testifying as an expert witness against the agency in various other federal cases such as Olofson and Freisen. I suspect that the judge may be waiting for the SCOTUS decision in the Chicago case.

If the black robes rule that firearm ownership is a civil right, that could have huge implications. For one thing (and I don't believe they'll leave this hair unsplit or unencumbered by statist "emanations and penumbras" -- witness the Heller decision), if firearms ownership IS a civil right, civil rights cannot be taxed. Thus, the entire panoply of federal schemes of gun control -- NFA '34, GCA '68 and all the little lovely add-on tyrannies -- go flying out the window. Don't hold your breath, but it IS a slim possibility. Cheap automatic weapons for the law-abiding without federal restriction -- what a concept.

David Olofson has transitioned to a half-way house from the FCI he has been languishing in. Hopes are that we will soon be released, having lived through the experience of being railroaded by the ATF for a malfunctioning semi-auto rifle. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT FERAL AGENTS SUCH AS JODY KEEKU HAVE DECIDED TO LEAVE HIM BE. They would be well-advised to, but then there's no accounting for the agenda-driven morons of the Chief Counsel's Office, whose chapped lips bear a remarkable resemblance in size and shape to a chafed spot on Charlie Schumer's ass.

I continue to get requests for interview, etc. Some I grant, others I refuse. One thing is certain: all the journalistas in the world (and some who merely pretend to be journalistically inclined), are looking for militia units who are willing to be photographed/interviewed while training. Here is what I told one of them, who was disappointed about one unit's refusal and was seeking the approval of another:

Yer barkin' up the wrong tree with (REDACTED), too. That well was poisoned long ago by unscrupulous reporters and editors in the 90s. No one, and I mean no one who is smart and serious about this sort of thing, is going to let you cover their training. It is not that they are doing anything illegal or immoral (less so than the average political party caucus, I can assure you) but simply the use to which such images have been put in the past.

For the same reason, there are few large, public units these days. Everyone (again, everyone smart and serious) is organizing on a small scale to prevent having to deal with:

a. agents provocateur.
b. snitches.
c. loons.

Often marksmanship training takes place in civilian clothes at public ranges and all other classes which can be done indoors in private or outdoors in civilian clothes is done that way: first aid, map and compass, etc. Only fire and maneuver instruction takes place in full kit and outdoors and then almost always on posted private property or in very obscure portions of the national park system. You may thank the Southern Preposterous Lie Center and the "Narrative of 1995" for that.

"Fool me once, shame on you," as they say.

There are others, especially recently-separated veterans, who have no intention of compromising their personal and unit security by training in front of the press. More so than inexperienced armed citizens, they are obsessively zealous about OPSEC, operational security. I suppose because they have seen first-hand what happens to guerrillas in the sandbox who aren't.

Remember, whoever lets you see their training are not the most serious and committed of the current bunch of constitutional militia. Keep that fact firmly in mind.

Of course there are necessary places for both public units (who can interface with local peace officers in search and rescue ops, etc.) and small, non-public neighborhood defense organizations made up of family, friends and trustworthy neighbors. But ALL of us should be mindful that the "press" is almost universally NOT our friend. SPLC has been known to use "reporters" like kleenex to provide details capable of being twisted into their lying, conflationary tales. The staff of SPLC is rife with "reporters" who burned their "unbiased" journalistic bridges in return for SPLC's larger paychecks.

Anyone who thinks that they have a "friendly" reporter in the bag is almost always fooling themselves -- and ONLY themselves.

And with that said, "once more into the breach."

Mike
III