May Day! Notice all the Che pictures! (Gateway Pundit)

But every day at Obama’s Houston office is Commie Day.

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.

This is an interesting article that I stumbled upon this morning. It’s worth reading the whole thing. I might add some commentary when I get back later.

Why We’re Losing Our Right to Speak Out
By Chuck Colson
Thursday, May 1, 2008

David Woodward is a political science professor at Clemson University—one who has first-hand experience on how dangerous it can be to speak out in favor of traditional values: He almost lost his job over it.

In 1993, Woodward was asked to testify about the political power of homosexual groups in American life. He agreed to serve as an expert witness for the state of Colorado, which was fighting to defend the recently passed Amendment Two, which made it illegal to give protected status based on sexual orientation.

In his new book, Why We Whisper: Restoring Our Right to Say It’s Wrong, co-authored by my friend, the able South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, Woodward writes, “In that one decision, I unexpectedly jeopardized my academic career and entered . . . into the fiercest battle of the emergent culture wars.”

To publicly oppose the campaign for same-sex “marriage” and gay rights was, he writes, “the equivalent to being sent to the university Gulag.” He was denied an administrative position on the grounds that he was “ideologically incompatible” with the values of the university. He often found the word homophobe scribbled on his office door. The press viciously attacked him for his views.

But in private, Woodward was hearing a different message. People would call to whisper encouragement. So did parents and university staffers. Some students came into his office, carefully closed the door, and whispered their support. “The one thing they all had in common is that they were all scared, and they all spoke in whispers,” Woodward writes.

Homosexuality is not the only issue Americans can no longer speak freely about: Speaking up in support of any traditional belief will earn you attacks from secular elites. “Whether individual, parent, church, or business, Americans holding traditional values are trapped in a ‘whisper zone’,” Woodward and DeMint write, “surrounded by invisible electric fences that threaten to ‘shock’ them if they cross unmarked legal lines.”