... Jim. I don't disagree with any of the implications of your examples. I admire WWII vets (my Dad fought all the way across the Pacific and my father-in-law landed in the first wave at Omaha Beach). I went to Vietnam and my brother died in a Vietnam related operational training exercise (in the sinking of the USS Frank E. Evans). I was a Deputy DA for 10 years and would happily have prosecuted any of the criminal activities you described.

Keep in mind, however, that our great county was born of civil disobedience and defiance of authority. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Hancock, Nathan Hale, etc., etc., MADE this a country by defying the established authority (and, in fact, by any definition, committing treason).

Others who have defied authority in this country include the operators of the underground railroad prior to the Civil War, Martin Luther King and others who fought the battle for racial equality, early labor union leaders and the suffragettes, to name just a handful.

The history of the world is also replete with examples of those who blindly followed their authority figures: the Nazis, Russian communists, Cambodians under Pol Pot, the followers of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, the Boers in South Africa and so on.

You tell me -- with which of these groups of people, the defiers or the followers, would you like to be associated with?

----- jim o\-S