Failed Democrat Pol Sues Critics for "loss of livelihood"

Failed Democrat Pol Sues Critics Over Election Loss - Peter Roff (usnews.com):

When voters in Ohio's 1st Congressional District threw Democrat Steve Driehaus out of office after only one term, he did not bow out gracefully. No, he decided to get even. So he did what anyone does in today's culture: he sued somebody.

Charging that its activities contributed to his defeat and thus to his "loss of livelihood," Driehaus is suing the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that supports pro-life candidates for Congress and which has been one of the leading and most effective organizations involved in the fight to cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood.

During the 2010 elections the Susan B. Anthony List engaged in a campaign to identify and call out a group of allegedly anti-abortion-rights members of Congress who provided the margin that allowed President Barack Obama's reform of the nation's healthcare system to get through the U.S. House of Representatives. The Susan B. Anthony List said their vote in favor of the law, which did not include any pro-life protections, amounted to a betrayal of their pro-life principles.

According to Driehaus, who was one of that group, what the Susan B. Anthony List said in its public communications amounted to a malicious lie that contributed to his defeat. Amazingly, rather than laugh the suit out of court U.S. District Court judge Timothy S. Black, an Obama appointee, is allowing it to go forward. ...

Driehaus's suit is breaking new legal ground and may already be having a very chilling effect on political speech. It goes directly at the heart of our First Amendment protections and criminalizes what is at least a difference of opinion. And it's curious that the case has not received more attention from the national press.

What is equally curious, however, is why Judge Black has allowed the case to move forward and why he did not recuse himself from it since, as Barbara Hollingsworth reported Friday in The Washington Examiner, he apparently is the former president and director of the Planned Parenthood Association of Cincinnati. As seeming conflicts of interest go this one is a real humdinger.

As I posted, "Democrats to America: Just Shut Up!"

It's no surprise that Judge Black decided to hear the case. Democrats on the bench are neither appointed nor sitting to apply the laws fairly and impartially. The "progressive" agenda does not allow for it. Instead, the entire progressive array embraces "anarcho-tyranny."

The late Samuel Francis coined and defined the word "anarcho-tyranny":

What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny—the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny. [...]

The laws that are enforced are either those that extend or entrench the power of the state and its allies and internal elites ... or else they are the laws that directly punish those recalcitrant and "pathological" elements in society who insist on behaving according to traditional norms—people who do not like to pay taxes, wear seat belts, or deliver their children to the mind-bending therapists who run the public schools; or the people who own and keep firearms, display or even wear the Confederate flag, put up Christmas trees, spank their children, and quote the Constitution or the Bible—not to mention dissident political figures who actually run for office and try to do something about mass immigration by Third World populations.

There is on the whole not much to admire about Francis's body of work, but he hit the 10-ring here. Considering that he died in 2005, it is impressive how he was a precursor to much of today's criticism of the political class.

Obama v. Clinton for "first black president" title

Which is the real "first black president?" Douglas Wilder ponders the question.

L. Douglas Wilder was governor of Virginia from 1990 to 1994. He was America's first elected African-American governor. On Politico he asks whether Obama is better for blacks (politically) than Clinton was. And Wilder doesn't think so.

I asked back in August, "Is Barack Obama a black president?"

I trust the reader will see that the question posed by this post's title is unrelated to President Obama's ancestry, but, rather, with his American ethnic identification.

That Obama is an African-American is not the question. The question is, Is Barack Obama a black American? And to this question, I think the answer is at best open.

Consider the president's biography. He has no ancestor who was part of the historic black experience in America. His mother was white and his father was Kenyan. What do I mean by the "black experience?" I'll let black Americans answer that.

And I quoted some prominent black Americans on what it meant to live the black experience in America. This is an experience that Obama never lived.

The black American "two-cultures" environment, which was (and still very much is) so central to their lives, was absent from Obama's upbringing. He lived in Hawaii from birth to high school graduation, where the racial friction has always been between Hawaii natives and whites rather than between whites and blacks. Second, he spent ages 6-10 in Indonesia. This is not the childhood the the black experience in America, in which blacks grow up in and spend adulthood in a black culture that "is heavily southern American," even for northern blacks.

The experience of being raised in a distinct black culture, surrounded by whites and significantly controlled by them, is to be immersed in a culture with its own historic baggage of slavery and subsequent racism and Jim Crow, a culture with its own music and coded jargon and Southern Gospel religious heritage. This is a culture that has never been part of Barack Obama's experience. It is literally alien to him.

Even in 2007, this disparity led Time Magazine to ask, "Is Obama Black Enough?"

And so Gov. Wilder now ponders,

Yet here we sit, more than three years after Obama’s win, and too many people are pulling me aside in private to ask why his standing in the African-American community has softened since his Inauguration. They also question whether the reduced excitement among young and new voters — with that lack of enthusiasm from African-Americans — might hinder Obama’s 2012 campaign. ...

Obama was elected in a flourish of promise that many in the African-American community believed would help not only to symbolize African-American progress since the Civil War and Civil Rights Acts but that his presidency would result in doors opening in the halls of power as had never been seen before by black America.

Has that happened? I am forced to say, “No” — especially when comparing Morrison’s metaphorical first black president to the actual first black president.

Obama was elected in a flourish of promise that many in the African-American community believed would help not only to symbolize African-American progress since the Civil War and Civil Rights Acts but that his presidency would result in doors opening in the halls of power as had never been seen before by black America.
Has that happened? I am forced to say, “No” — especially when comparing Morrison’s metaphorical first black president to the actual first black president.

Like I did in my post, Wilder cites Toni Morison's claim that Bill Clinton was America's "first black president." But Wilder, while understanding her point, does not embrace it. Nonetheless,

By birth and life experience, Clinton cannot lay claim to the title of first black president — as Morrison knighted him. But Obama needs to work harder to make it less obvious that Clinton, in governing deed, actually deserves it more that the 44th president does.

A lot of whites voted for Barack Obama in 2008 because he would be the first black American president. But as Gov. Wilder implicitly acknowledges, he's not in any respect except skin tone, and this has done nothing to improve the lives of black Americans economically or politically. Will this make a difference in 2012? I think it will, and not only among whites.

Not standing with the 99 percent - at least not downwind

Mark Steyn, as usual, just nails it:

I don’t “stand with the 99%,” and certainly not downwind of them. But I’m all for their “occupation” continuing on its merry way. It usefully clarifies the stakes. At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical. But the formal convergence in Oakland makes explicit the movement’s aims: They’re anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life — just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth. What’s happening in Oakland is a logical exercise in class solidarity: The government class enthusiastically backing the breakdown of civil order is making common cause with the leisured varsity class, the thuggish union class, and the criminal class in order to stick it to what’s left of the beleaguered productive class. It’s a grand alliance of all those societal interests that wish to enjoy in perpetuity a lifestyle they are not willing to earn. Only the criminal class is reasonably upfront about this. The rest — the lifetime legislators, the unions defending lavish and unsustainable benefits, the “scholars” whiling away a somnolent half decade at Complacency U — are obliged to dress it up a little with some hooey about “social justice” and whatnot. ...

At heart, Oakland’s occupiers and worthless political class want more of the same fix that has made America the Brokest Nation in History: They expect to live as beneficiaries of a prosperous Western society without making any contribution to the productivity necessary to sustain it.

get that? Only the criminal class is actually honest about what it is up to.

"Where do we find the angels?"

Milton Friedman tutors Phil Donohue in 1973. Milt speaks directly across the decades to exactly the issues troubling us today. This is the long version, more than 10 minutes. A 2-1/2 minute snippet is here.

Labor secretary sexually harasses protesters

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis personally called conservative protesters a sexually derogatory term at Florida Democratic Convention over the weekend. But the media will be exclusively concerned with what Herman Cain is said to have done about 15 years ago, with no attribution or confirming evidence. Of course. As we learned during the Clinton administration, only conservatives can commit sexual misdeeds or crimes.

What Washington really thinks about you

It's simple, really:

Writing over at National Review, Josh Barro of the Manhattan Institute makes the horrible mistake of writing what he really thinks: Washington is smart, and the rest of you people are imbeciles.

Yep.

Pollster misses his own point

POLLSTER DOUG SCHOEN: In interviews, protesters show that they are leftists out of step with most American voters. Yet Democrats are embracing them anyway. [link]

"Yet?" Schoen misses the point. The sentence should not read, "Yet Democrats are embracing them anyway."

It should say, "That's why Democrats are embracing them."

War on photography and its face

The Knoxville News-Sentinel's Michael Silence reports what happened to Nashvillian BillHobbs when Bill went down to cover an Occupy Nashville protest and Legislative Plaza, which as you might expect from the name, is public property. Here's Bill's video:



Needless to say, as Michael pointed out, photographing in public is legal. At the Youtube page there are some comments, including these two.

I want to add my voice as someone from the Occupy Nashville group that this is absolutely NOT in the spirit of the OCcupy group. I would like to add my invitation for you to return and take all the pictures and videos you want. this incident was discussed last night in committee meetings and the general assembly, and there was unanimous agreement that this sort of behavior is not representative of the group and that you should be invited back.

Bufflo55

To which Bill replied,

Thank you to those from OccupyNashville who said I'm welcome to be there, and that you have taken the issue up with "Mr. Goon." By the way, he has been identified - police provided me his name, Steve Reiter. He has previously been arrested and charged with simple assault in a similar situation involving a downtown resident who was photographing homeless people. Mr. Reiter is a "homeless advocate." He was acquitted at trial. His attorney happens to be Patrick Frogge, also OccupyNashville's atty.

I've known Bill practically since I started blogging in 2002, though I have not spoken with him in quite some time. Glad he came through this all right!

Occupy Wall Street v. Tea party marchers

For the answer, click here.

HT: Never Yet Melted

"What has Wall Street Ever Done for Us?"

What has Wall Street Ever Done for Us? @ AMERICAN DIGEST:

I mean, aside from financing millions of miles of fiber optic cables that enable the protest marchers to use their iPhones and Androids to organize the marches, and financed the airlines and transportation companies that the marchers used to get to New York or other cities, and financed the agri-conglomerates that raised, brokered and marketed the very food the marchers eat at the restaurants along the route, and the chemical companies that produced products to prevent massive losses of crops and harvests from insects and spoilage and vaccinations of food animals against all kinds of nasty diseases ...

I mean, apart from all that, what has Wall Street done for us?

Nothing! So Down With Evil Corporations!

"Protest" marches just like a day in the park

Spend a day in the park and you go home feeling better than before. And so it is with the "Occupy" marches being held in New York and elsewhere. Katherine Ernst talked to some of the Wall Street marchers.

I chatted with some of the throng. All wanted me to know they were speaking only for themselves, not the group. So what’s the endgame here? “Uh . . . that’s hard to explain,” said Moses, a nice young man. His answer was a nonsensical roundabout, but he used the phrase “socio-economic” a lot. He implied he was unemployed, so I inquired about a dream job. “To be a decent human being . . . to not live in reaction to a market.” Gotcha.

Becca, a sweet “organic gardener” from Brooklyn, was there to “end a capitalist system that treats people like cattle” and live in an America where everyone has “equal wealth.” She wanted a country with a “high tax,” a la “Sweden and Finland,” to ensure “personal well-being.” (Those Scandinavian examples both have a much lower corporate tax rate—26 percent and 26.3 percent, respectively— than the U.S.’s 35 percent rate, but let’s not get hung up on details.) Then the irony gods flexed their muscles as a friend interrupted Becca; she handed him her Visa card to order something over the phone. The revolution will not be televised, but it will be magnetized.

Most everyone is aware of how unserious Occupy Wall Street is. The New Republic mocks it. Salon laments its fecklessness, and then curses Fox News for noticing it. Mother Jones sheepishly dubs the childish schizophrenia “The Kitchen Sink Approach” in a piece on the movement’s inertia. Nicolas Kristof of the New York Times, who must’ve seen Zuccotti Park through beer goggles, concedes: “Where the movement falters is in its demands: It doesn’t really have any. . . . So let me try to help.” He then offers some straight-laced financial bullet points, some nice tax n’ trade talk, as though the protesters just needed Dad to take off the training wheels so they can speed off by themselves into adulthood.

As I explained yesterday, the protests are just fantasy theater.

Obama urges revival of the CCC

Obama’s Bridge Collapse:

President Obama made a swing through the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati area today to stand near a bridge and call out Speaker Boehner and Senate Minority Leader McConnell (whose states, by “pure coincidence,” the bridge just happens to connect) for not passing his ‘jobs bill’ already.

Jay Carney set the stage last week, saying, “It’s pretty clear that this bridge could benefit from a little repair and renovation.” Saying the bridge is “in such poor condition that it has been labeled functionally obsolete,” the President today demanded immediate passage of his ‘jobs bill’ to put people to work right now. But this kabuki dance is less about bridges than those dastardly Republicans:

“It desperately needs rebuilding, as do substandard roads and bridges all across America,” White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said. As the two most powerful Republicans in Washington, Speaker Boehner and Senator (Mitch) McConnell can either kill this jobs bill or help the president pass it right away.”

“Instead of looking for every excuse to justify doing nothing about the damaged infrastructure in their states, we believe it’s in their interest and the country’s interest to act as soon as possible and put people back to work.”

In the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt founded the Civilian Conservation Corps, CCC, as a make-work organization for men 18-25 whose families were on relief. Wikipedia:

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families, ages 18–25. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments. The CCC was designed to provide employment for young men in relief families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression while at the same time implementing a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory. Maximum enrollment at any one time was 300,000; in nine years 2.5 million young men participated. Reserve officers from the U.S. Army were in charge of the camps, but there was no military training or uniforms.

But even FDR had to deal with the unions.

To end the opposition from labor unions (which wanted no training programs started when so many of their men were unemployed)[9] Roosevelt picked a union official, Fechner, and took William Green, head of the American Federation of Labor, to the first camp to demonstrate that there would be no job training involved beyond simple manual labor.

Now, bridge repair or construction involves not much unskilled labor and you can bet that the unions are solidly behind such work. But Obama's "jobs" bills is essentially an updated version of FDR's CCC: federal spending to funnel federal dollars to private pockets. Only Obama is being far more careful about who would get the money. But Obama's appearance before the bridge today was just Potemkin theater: his "jobs" bill has nothing to do with the bridge in the background.

For one thing, the river crossing in question is already slated for a new bridge. It’s been in the planning stages for years; the project is currently barely into the public comment phase. In fact, Obama’s own FHWA doesn’t expect it to start construction in 2015 or be completed until 2022. 

The President did not explain how his ‘jobs bill’ will alter time so that the project can start creating jobs “right now.” Worse, Obama, Carney, and Brudnage are flat-out wrong. The I-75 corridor is indeed outdated, but the bridge itself doesn’t actually need repairs:

It’s got decades of good life left in its steel spans. It’s just overloaded. The bridge was built to handle 85,000 cars and trucks a day, which seemed like a lot back during construction in the Nixon era. [Ed. - the bridge opened five years before Nixon was elected President.] Today, the bridge sort of handles more than 150,000 vehicles a day with frequent jam-ups. So, plans are not to repair or replace the Brent Spence Bridge. But to build another bridge nearby to ease the loads.

But when there are unions to appeased and political demons to be made, why let the facts get in the way?

Update: Although terminated as a federal program after American entered World War II, there is a modern CCC operating today - the California Conservation Corps, motto, "Hard work, low pay, miserable conditions ... and more!"

"Bill Keller’s Idiotic Questions"

The Captain's Journal » Bill Keller’s Idiotic Questions: Herschel Smith nails the ignorance behind Bill Keller's questioning of Michele Bachmann. The question in question:

You have said that watching the film series “How Should We Then Live?” by the evangelist Francis Schaeffer was a life-altering event for you. That series stresses the "inerrancy" ­— the literal truth — of the Bible. Do you believe the Bible consists of literal truths, or that it is to be taken more metaphorically?

Herschel goes on to disassemble the simplistic presumptions behind Keller's question, observing, among other things, "Any thinking Christian has to answer Keller’s question, yes and yes. It is both-and, not either-or."

Quite. But Keller doesn't know what he's talking about in another way,too. Keller thinks biblical inerrancy means "the literal truth." That is, to believe that the Bible is inerrant means that its texts must be read at face value only. And of course, fundamentalists do stress that.

But inerrancy does not have to mean only that. I believe the Bible is inerrant but I do not believe that literalism is a faithful reading of the Scriptures in every case or verse. In fact, literalism is not even possible in countless cases because of translation nuances. In many cases we cannot know what the verse "literally" says, and in countless others the cultural contexts are so lost that we can only guess what they might mean.

Even so, one can hold the Scriptures to be inerrant in the way that John Wesley did, but focusing on what he called the great chains of interconnected spiritual truths throughout the Bible.

Another point, that Herschel touches on as well: the form of the literature of the passages concerned is crucial to interpreting them. Historical passages should be taken at face value, For example, the story of young David slaying Goliath is a straightforward, historical account and there is no reason to doubt that it happened pretty much the way it is presented. But consider Jesus's parables throughout the Gospels, for example the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Is the parable literally true? Or did Jesus tell a stylized story to drive home a religious teaching? The story is parabolically true without regard to its "actually happened" truth. We do not have to take the Bible literally to take it seriously.

Tell ya what, Mr. Keller: I assert the inerrancy of the Bible a lot more confidently than you can assert the inerrancy of the New York Times.

Blame the doctor!

Source. Hat tip: Gerard

Obama 2012 logo unveiled

And it's just right!

Shamelessly ripped from Glenn's site.

Shut them up, he explained

John Kerry: Media Has "Responsibility" To "Not Give Equal Time" To Tea Party | RealClearPolitics

John Kerry seems to think that not even MSNBC is living up to its presumed responsibility to be the official propaganda organ of the Democrat party.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: "And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it's exercising today. The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual."

Well, since the administration's efforts to Alinsky Fox News Channel didn't work, a new tack, I suppose. Just get the media to ignore everyone who doesn't toe the party line.

We've gone from "Shut up he explained" (Ring Lardner, The Young Immigrants, 1920) to "'Shut them up,' he explained" (John Kerry, 2011).

Well, Senator Kerry, I promise to do my part for your call to action. I will not invite someone to post here who "says something which everybody knows is not factual." Sorry, no invitation to you.

Obama's oil release long gone

Remember just this week when President Obama ordered the release of 30 million barrels of oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

Looks pretty good, yes?

On the right is the SPR release. On the left is America's daily consumption of petroleum in all its products, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Do the math:

Daily consumption - 18,771,000 barrels per day (actually almost 3 million bpd less than it was before the recession).

SPR release - 30 millions barrels.

How long before the SPR release is all used up - 1.6 days, which is to say, yesterday.

The administration claimed that it was releasing the oil because of disruptions of supply from Libya (talk about a self-inflicted wound!) and other countries. But this is a canard. According to the US Energy Information Administration, worldwide consumption lags production daily by almost 117 million bpd. There is no meaningful disruption of supply.

So why release the oil from the Reserve? One thing we can discount right away: it could not possibly have anything to do with the 2012 election. Nope, not at all.

Gingrich's entire senior staff resigns

Newt Ginrich's entire senior presidential campaign staff has resigned en masse. Developing...

Update: The AJC reports,

AP: Newt Gingrich’s staff resigns en masse
2:51 pm June 9, 2011, by jgalloway

The Associated Press has just moved an alert reporting that GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s staff has resigned en masse.

Ginrgrich press spokesman Rick Tyler told AP that he’s resigned along with campaign manager Rob Johnson, senior strategists and aides in key early primary states. More to come.

No doubt Gingrich’s decision to go on a seven-day Mediterranean cruise was a factor. Larry Sabato of Crystal Ball fame posted the following this morning:

At the end of May, Gingrich took a previously scheduled two-week vacation while other candidates campaigned. All told, one can not only question the execution of Gingrich’s campaign, but also the commitment of the candidate to it.

Remember when failed Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley took a vacation between her primary victory and the special election against now-Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA)? Inviting comparisons to Coakley, who shockingly lost Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, is obviously not any campaign’s objective.

My personal opinion is that Gingrich threw his hat into the presidential ring not because of a burning desire to run, but because he just doesn't know what to do with himself. But whatever it is, he is driven to garner attention. Well, he's got plenty now.

Update: More from Politico, "The Newt Gingrich campaign implosion:"

The mass resignation was, one source said, “a team decision.”

“We just had a different direction in which we wanted to take the campaign,” said a second source.

Gingrich was intent on using technology and standing out at debates to get traction while his advisers believed he needed to run a campaign that incorporated both traditional, grassroots techniques as well as new ideas.

One official said the last straw came when Gingrich went forward with taking a long-planned cruise with his wife last week in the Greek isles.

Well, presumably the candidate is in charge of the campaign and how it will be conducted. If his staff don't agree with how the candidate wants to do that, then the staff either sucks it up and takes orders they think are ill-advised or they bail.

But how does the vacation figure in? I am guessing that the staff believed that it indicated an un-total commitment to the campaign that Gingrich's low-level campaign directions seemed to indicate.

Shock poll not so shocking

Drudge main headline this morning:

The accompanying story in the WaPO says:

The survey portrays a broadly pessimistic mood in the country this spring as higher gasoline prices, sliding home values and a disappointing employment picture have raised fresh concerns about the pace of the economic recovery.

By 2 to 1, Americans say the country is pretty seriously on the wrong track, and nine in 10 continue to rate the economy in negative terms. Nearly six in 10 say the economy has not started to recover, regardless of what official statistics may say, and most of those who say it has improved rate the recovery as weak.

New Post-ABC numbers show Obama leading five of six potential Republican presidential rivals tested in the poll. But he is in a dead heat with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who formally announced his 2012 candidacy last week, making jobs and the economy the central issues in his campaign.

The poll also underscores Sarah Palin's (deserved) weakness as a presidential candidate:

Almost two-thirds of all Americans say they “definitely would not” vote for Palin for president. She is predictably unpopular with Democrats and most independents, but the new survey underscores the hurdles she would face if she became a candidate: 42 percent of Republicans say they’ve ruled out supporting her candidacy.

More than six in 10 Americans say they do not consider Palin qualified to serve as president. That is a slightly better rating for the former governor than through most of last year, but is another indication of widespread public doubts about a possible presidential run.

The bad news for Obama v. Romney is that "independents split for Romney 50 percent to 43 percent."

More:

Actually, Revere did warn the British

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: So Now All These People Will Apologize to Sarah Palin About Paul Revere, Right?

Seems that Paul Revere's personally-written account of his famous ride includes his admission that he did, in fact, warn the British that American militia were waiting for them in force.

As long-time readers know, I am not a fan of Sarah Palin (link and link), and as Prof. Jacobsen points out, her words on the YT vid are not altogether clear. Ben Smith transcribes them thus:

"He who warned, uh, the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed."

Revere's own written account says this of his conversation with a British officer:

He demanded what time I left Boston? I told him; and aded, that their troops had catched aground in passing the River, and that There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up. He imediately rode towards those who stoppd us, when all five of them came down upon a full gallop; one of them, whom I afterwards found to be Major Mitchel, of the 5th Regiment, Clapped his pistol to my head, called me by name, & told me he was going to ask me some questions, & if I did not give him true answers, he would blow my brains out. He then asked me similar questions to those above.

Revere seems clear.