"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
Renee Jensen of Elkins, West Virginia, likes to express herself.
She has put up as many as a dozen signs in her yard over the past year, protesting the war in Iraq, Bush and Cheney, and the crackdown on civil liberties.
Some of her signs have said:
"Mr. Bush, You're Fired."
"Mr. Ashcroft, We Prefer Our America Remain the Home of the Free and the Brave."
"Mr. Cheney, What You Sow You Shall Reap. Those Who Destroy the Earth Will Be Destroyed."
"Mr. Rumsfeld, Human Beings Are Not Just Collateral Damages, but People with Hopes, Dreams, Relationships, and Lives to Live."
"O, Evil Doers, Bush and Cheney Are Destroying America. I Cry Liberty and Stand for Our Constitution."
"Love One Another: War Is Dead Wrong."
Her vigorous exercise of free speech has not been well received.
One day in early January, her signs were vandalized.
"I had gone to the movies, and when I came back, all my signs were stolen," she tells The Progressive. "And one had been turned over, and someone wrote, "We love George Bush" on it."
The mayor of Elkins, Judy Guye, tried to use a city ordinance to make Jensen take her signs down.
"Guye had said she believes Jensen's signs pose a potential traffic hazard, since people driving by her house often stop or slow down to look at them," Paul J. Nyden wrote in an article for the Charleston Gazette on January 16. Nyden pointed out that the mayor, "a Republican, had a pro-Bush sign in her own front yard."
Guye backed off.
But those were the least of Jensen's problems.
In the fall, the Secret Service gave her a call.
"They said they wanted to ask me some questions," she recalls. "I said sure. They said someone called them and said I had signs up in my yard that were threatening the President. I said I did have some signs in my yard, but I wasn't threatening the President. The worst I've ever said was that he's an Evildoer. And this Secret Service man specifically asked me about the sign about Mr. Cheney. He said, "That's from revelations." I said, "Yes, I have no desire to destroy anybody. I'm just quoting out of the Bible." His name, she said, was Agent Brian Atkins.
Federal judges are a more serious threat to America than Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorists, the Rev. Pat Robertson claimed yesterday.
"Over 100 years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings," Robertson said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
"I think we have controlled Al Qaeda," the 700 Club host said, but warned of "erosion at home" and said judges were creating a "tyranny of oligarchy."
Confronted by Stephanopoulos on his claims that an out-of-control liberal judiciary is the worst threat America has faced in 400 years - worse than Nazi Germany, Japan and the Civil War - Robertson didn't back down.
"Yes, I really believe that," he said. "I think they are destroying the fabric that holds our nation together."