Lately I have been getting a foreboding feeling of unreasonable governmental intrusion at all levels. What accelerated it was the Supreme Court's recent and, I believe, horrific Kelo decision regarding eminent domain. The Supreme Court, in its continuing need to legislate, sanctioned the seizure of private homes by municipal governments for private economic development. As a result, a fierce firestorm of backlash has broken out among the people and in dozens of state legislatures and in Congress. You will be hearing a lot more about this one. Alas, New Hampshire's David Souter voted in the majority. So much for that state's motto of Live Free Or Die.

Politically correct groups of people, many of whom live in other communities and towns, continually try to tell us on a local basis what is best for us. Incredibly, we now have the specter of people from other towns attending our selectmen meetings to argue for issues that increase our taxes but not theirs! Far, far worse, however, is that if you own a pit bull within the city limits of Denver, the authorities will soon be coming to your residence to take it away and put it down. What next? A Doberman? Rot? Lab? Min Pin? Reasonable? Hardly, and where will it end? But these are simply representative of the many ways intrusion is making its mark. The intrusive don't want anyone to smoke, drink, eat meat, wear leather, fish, own guns, hunt or shoot. We are told what books to read, what religions to follow, what parts of history to rewrite, what movies to see, what words to use, what television shows to watch, and what safety equipment to wear. Heck, maybe we should just sit in a corner like a plant, devoid of free will and the ability to think or discuss controversial issues or express intellectual curiosity unless, of course, we are attending appropriate community meetings, thinking politically correct thoughts, or listening to holier-than-thou politicians spew their duplicity.

New Jersey is playing with legislation that would ban smoking in cars. What is a cigar smoker named Tony to do? Across the Hudson, you now can be randomly searched in subways which, of course, will lead to costly racial profiling lawsuits. Roadblocks are randomly set up within 100 miles of our borders with Mexico and Canada. I recently was stopped at a roadblock in New York and given a ticket for not wearing my seatbelt. My fault; but it used to be my choice. It still is in New Hampshire, but for how long? The A.C.L.U. wants to have all crosses removed from Federal property but does this include the cemetery in Arlington? I don't hunt, but "I have more guns than I need and not as many as I want," and being a strong advocate of the Second Amendment, I love to target shoot. I am beginning to wonder for how long. With spam and virus spreaders proliferating, an entire industry has developed around the technical ramifications of intrusive detection vis--vis the computer.

It's not that major rights are being stripped from us in one fell swoop; it's more like little chinks are being chiseled one at a time and from different directions and at different levels. Each time we lose a right, we lose a battle. Someday we may wake up and find that all the little chinks and all the lost battles now add up to one massive chunk ... something that might make the Patriot Act pale in comparison.

Now I am all for reasonable and realistic homeland security (with the emphasis on reasonable), in fact, I admit to having owned some explosive-detection and anti-missile stocks. However, my dad fought close up, and was severely wounded and highly decorated in the St. Mihiel Offensive and in the Ardennes Forest during World War One. My late brother left college and enlisted as an innocent young man the day after Pearl Harbor and came home a grizzled veteran five years later to finish college. They, along with millions and millions of others, paid a terrible price to protect my unalienable rights. So I'll be darned if I'll let some pontificating, spineless politicians take away those rights I hold so dear and do this in the name of homeland security. I'll be darned if I'll let some bureaucrats take my dog in the name of what's best for me. I'll be darned if I'll let municipal governments take my home in the name of economic improvement. And I'll be double-darned if I'll let the terrorists or extremists prevail by backtracking on my rights. I would rather retain my right to privacy and my right to live as a free person in a free country and take my chances traveling on the jetliner or subway. Otherwise, who really wins? I would rather die than give up those rights my dad and brother and all the others fought for. I would rather die than not live free with those rights.

I used to smirk and snicker at those "kooks" who lived in that sliver of land north of Coeur D 'Alene, Idaho, and in and around Bonners Ferry. I used to smirk and snicker at Charlton Heston when he proclaimed, "from my dead, cold hands." I don't do that anymore.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men...are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..." Declaration of Independence