These two stories are the latest in moonbattery here in Illinois.

Here is one about a Vietnam Veteran; a former marine, with a funny t-shirt, who was arrested by the Island Lake cops. I personally love the t-shirt he’s wearing. He’s been wearing it to Island Lake board meetings.

Greg Kachka, 60, faces a pair of misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges after Trustee Debbie Herrmann and Village Clerk Christy Kaczmarek complained they felt threatened by his actions.

Kachka, of 3221 Hyacinth Terrace, said the trouble started March 13 when he questioned the board’s legal fees while wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a Marine Corps sniper and the words, “Don’t Move. If You Run, You’ll Only Die Tired.”

But police said the charges have less to do with the T-shirt.

“It is what he was doing with his right hand,” Sgt. Anthony Sciarrone said. “Both of our complainants stated he made gestures where he had his index finger and thumb in a fashion portraying a handgun.”

They were afraid because he pointed his fingers at the Hermannator.

Sciarrone said police have a picture of Kachka making the gesture, taken from the board meeting videotape.

“I would not have signed a complaint if I did not feel just cause to do so,” Herrmann said. “We’ve got a job to do up there and we shouldn’t have to worry about residents being adverse to what we are doing.”

Hermann should get a life. She was making faces at Kachka the whole time, and from what he says, she is notorious for her face-making at residents. Kachka’s arrest didn’t happen immediately after the board meeting, it took them some time to build enough of a case to arrest him. Police called Kachka to tell him to turn himself in, he said he wasn’t going to turn himself in because he didn’t do anything wrong. Your fingers are not weapons! But that didn’t phase police, because the next thing you know, they’re banging at Kachka’s front door, demanding that he let them in. They put him in handcuffs and didn’t allow him to take his medicine for diabetes until after they’d arrived at the station. They were rough with Kachka, and used the reasoning that - he didn’t voluntarily turn himself in, so now they’re going to do it ‘the hard way’.

The other weird story is the one from Prospect Heights, where a little old lady was ordered by a judge to stop feeding the birds. Now we should all remember that the homes in this area sit on about a half acre, and these people are surrounded by woods….and the next door neighbors have bird feeders up, which makes this seem even more ridiculous.

From the Tribune on April 3, 2008

Halina and Richard Rogulski said they just wanted to enjoy the freedom of watching birds feed outside their Prospect Heights home.

But on Thursday, they emptied their five feeders and agreed to comply with a six-month ban on putting out birdseed—an order from a Cook County judge who ruled against them in a neighborhood dispute.

“I was born in communist Russia, and in Russia, there was no freedom to pray . . . but not the birds. We could feed the birds,” said Halina Rogulski, 73, a Polish immigrant who came to the United States after spending three years as a child in a German labor camp during World War II.

Neighbors John and Alice Gornick had complained the Rogulskis’ feeders, as well as the dish of bird food and bread that was put out for ducks, was a health hazard because it attracted too many birds and raccoons, opossums and other critters.

The only neighbors that complained were a pair of grouches whose yard backs up to the Rogulski’s. Johnny B from the Loop went over there yesterday, and cops followed him. Johnny B was saying this whole thing is ridiculous, but when he got there and saw that the homes are surrounded by woods, and that the Rugulski’s neighbors have bird feeders in their yards, it made the complaints even more stupid, and the judge’s ruling seem like simple fascism based on the complaints of some nasty neighbors who took over 400 pictures of the Rugulki’s backyard. Johny tried to ask the complaining neighbor to let the Rugulski’s feed the birds, but the neighbor was only interested in Johnny B being escorted away from their property and refused to engage in conversation.

This reminds me of Nazi Germany where neighbors reported their neighbors and as a result, people would get carted off by the Nazi stormtroopers in the middle of the night; never to be heard from again.