Liberty's Last Stand (5 page)

Back in my younger days, when I thought the day might come when I wanted to leave town in a hurry—like today, for instance—I had stashed thirty grand in cash in the box, along with a couple of false driver's licenses in various names, credit cards, and a genuine false passport. Getting that paper had taken time and money years ago, but I did it and kept the stuff.
Of course, the credit cards had long expired, but they added heft to my wallet and looked good to anyone who happened to glance into my wallet while I had it open. Some people think that people with credit cards are more trustworthy than those without.

Under the money at the bottom of the drawer was another 1911 .45, an old Ithaca made during World War II with brown plastic handles and most of the bluing gone from the slide, plus two extra magazines and a box of cartridges. The pistol was marked “United States Property M 1911 A1 US Army.” It had either been liberated from the army's clutches many years ago or sold as surplus. It was serviceable, although it didn't have the good sights and fancy grips of my Kimber.

If there is a possibility that you might get shot at, you should at least be prepared to shoot back. In this brave new world that Emperor Soetoro envisioned, I thought the odds of getting shot at would be increased for a great many people, me included. I emptied the metal box into my briefcase, then with the help of the vault lady, who had discreetly faded while I plundered my treasure box, put the box back into its slot where it would rest undisturbed, safer than a pharaoh's sarcophagus, for all eternity, or until my annual box rent was due and I wasn't around to pay it, whichever came first.

As I was leaving the lobby with my now-bulging briefcase, Barry Soetoro was on the television high in the corner, reading from a teleprompter. That was, I had long ago concluded, his one skill set. The audio on the TV was off, so I was spared his mellifluous tones. There were people standing behind him, but since I knew Jake Grafton wasn't among them, I didn't bother to check out the crowd of toadies. I walked out of the bank with my money—earned, not stolen, with taxes paid on every dime. I kinda wished I had stolen it, then I would have felt better about this whole deal. I was just too goddamn conventional.

To hell with all of it! I walked out of the bank into the rest of my life.

Barry Soetoro's declaration of martial law stunned the nation. His reason—the need to protect the nation from terrorism—met with widespread skepticism. After all, at least three of the Saturday jihadists had entered with Soetoro's blessing,
over the objections of many politicians and the outraged cries of all those little people out there in the heartland, all those potential victims no one really gave a damn about.

His suspension of the writ of habeas corpus went over the heads of most of the millions of people in his audience, since they didn't know what the writ was or signified. He didn't stop there. He adjourned Congress until he called it back into session, and announced an indefinite stay on all cases before the courts in which the government was a defendant. His announcement of press and media censorship “until the crisis is past” met with outrage, especially among the talking heads on television, who went ballistic. Within thirty minutes, the listening audience found out what the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus meant: FBI agents arrested select television personalities, including some who were literally on camera, and took them away. Fox News went off the air. Most of the other networks contented themselves with running the tape of Soetoro behind the podium making his announcement, over and over, without comment.

During the day FBI agents arrested dozens of prominent conservative commentators and administration critics across the nation, including Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Michelle Malkin, George Will, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Ralph Peters, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Matt Drudge, Thomas Sowell, Howard Stern, and Charles Krauthammer, among others. They weren't given a chance to remain silent in the future, but were arrested and taken away to be held in an unknown location until Soetoro decided to release them.

Senators and congressmen, from both sides of the aisle, were told in no uncertain terms that they too would be arrested if they publicly questioned the administration's methods and motives.

Plainly, life in America had just been stood on its ear. All the usual suspects who had supported Barry Soetoro for seven and a half years, no matter what, through thick, thin, and transparent, rushed to find a reporter with a camera so that they could say wonderful things on television about their hero, the self-proclaimed messiah who had said when he was
first elected that he would lower the level of the sea and allow the earth to heal.

While all this was going on, Jake Grafton was fired as director of the CIA. Two White House aides arrived in Langley with FBI agents in tow and delivered a letter from the president. Grafton was summarily relieved and the assistant director, Harley Merritt, was named acting director.

As Grafton departed with the FBI agents, the two White House aides remained for a talk with Merritt about what was expected of him.

The FBI took Grafton to a federal detention center that had been set up at Camp Dawson, a National Guard facility near Kingwood, West Virginia. Grafton should have been surprised to find that the holding facility had concertina wire, kitchens, latrines, and a field full of erect army tents containing a dozen cots each, but he wasn't. Obviously someone had done the staff work to have facilities ready and waiting, with only the date that they were to be used remaining to be selected.

Grafton arrived in time to shuffle through the lunch line, which contained about forty people. Most were men in their twenties and thirties, with here and there a few women salted in. The women huddled together. Everyone was in civilian clothes. He recognized several of the other detainees, or prisoners: two army four-star generals and a couple of former cabinet members. He picked up an aluminum tray from the stack, and a soldier in uniform spooned out mashed potatoes, mystery meat, and corn. At the end of the food line, he could select paper napkins and plastic tableware. No one trusted the detainees with real knives or forks.

Afterward Jake was given a plastic Walmart bag for his stay, one containing a disposable razor, soap, a towel, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. The tube of toothpaste was small, TSA size, and he hoped that was an indicator of how long he would be here. He suspected it wasn't.

He still had his cell phone, but he had no charger, so he turned it off in the car on the way here. He had managed a call to Callie before he left the Langley facilities, so she knew he wasn't coming home this evening, even if she didn't know where he was.

He sat on the side of the cot he had chosen in his assigned tent. He was the only occupant of the tent, so far, but he expected plenty of company. Finally he unrolled his sleeping bag and stretched out on it.

Barry Soetoro had just decapitated the American government in a coup d'état. Furthermore, Soetoro and his aides knew that Grafton was politically unreliable. How long they would hold him, if indeed he would ever be released, was unknowable.

Jake Grafton was a political prisoner.

The suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and declaration of martial law in the United States stunned the world. Abraham Lincoln did both during the American Civil War in the 1860s, so there was precedent. The Constitution itself, Article 1, Section 9, stated: “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Clearly, this past week there had been no rebellion, as there had been during the Civil War. What there was, Soetoro declared, was an “invasion by terrorists,” and in Soetoro's opinion, “public safety did indeed require martial law.” During the Civil War Lincoln had also declared martial law, claiming he had a right to do so to preserve the Constitution; his actions were quickly ratified by Congress and the Supreme Court. Army officers arrested several politicians, including one prominent one, Ohioan Clement Vallandigham, and closed down several newspapers. Lincoln's generals caused him more trouble than the people they arrested; the newspaper editors were quickly freed, and Vallandigham, a copperhead Democrat, was taken south and handed over to the Confederates, who didn't want him either. He wound up in Canada, slipped back across the border, and ran for governor of Ohio. Lincoln ignored him and told his generals to do likewise. Vallandigham lost the Ohio governor's race of 1864.

The Constitution was silent on Soetoro's two other declarations: the adjournment of Congress until he recalled it and suspension of all federal cases in which the government was the defendant. There was absolutely no precedent for either action, which hadn't been attempted in the history of the republic, which spanned a civil war and two world wars. Critics immediately claimed that Soetoro had unconstitutionally attempted to seize power, subordinating the legislative and judicial power to that of the executive. Strident voices compared him to Hitler and Napoleon, both of whom took over the government and made themselves dictators. Soetoro's supporters—including ardent white leftists and more than ninety percent of black Americans, who had backed everything he had done in office since his first election and damned his critics as
virulent racists—loudly supported him now. Amazingly, those who cheered his actions were given space in newspapers and time on television, while critics weren't. Those editors and producers who were not inclined to fall in line, and most of them were, were threatened with arrest. If that didn't make them behave, they were hustled away to detention camps.

Social media websites also received government attention and were told if they allowed “criticism of the government” on their websites, they would be shut down. Since they had no way to stop the wired-in public from posting anything they wanted, these websites were soon shut down by their corporate owners. Pirate social media websites quickly sprang up, but unhappy people could make little noise on them in the near future. Mouse squeaks, someone said.

The result of all this in much of America was an ominous silence that afternoon.

The news that Soetoro had declared martial law and suspended the holy writ arrived like an incoming missile in Austin, Texas. Legislators crowded the governor's office and all wanted to talk to the governor, Jack Hays. And they all wanted to talk at once.

State Senator Benny “Ben” Steiner copped a seat in a corner and listened. The consensus was that Barry Soetoro had declared himself dictator.

“Anybody have any idea of when America will get its Constitution back?” Charlie Swim asked. He was the most prominent black politician in the state, a former Dallas Cowboys star. He was, arguably, also one of the smartest and most articulate politicians in Texas.

The hubbub subsided somewhat. Everyone wanted to know what Charlie Swim thought. “The problem here is that Washington politicians haven't had the guts to impeach Soetoro. And I'll tell you why. He's black. They're afraid of being called racists. If Soetoro had been white, he'd have been thrown out of office years ago. Rewriting the immigration laws; refusing to enforce the drug laws; siccing the IRS on conservatives; having his spokespeople lie to the press, lie to Congress, lie to the UN; rewriting the healthcare law all by himself; thumbing his nose at the courts; having the EPA dump on industry regardless of the costs; admitting hordes of Middle Eastern Muslims without a clue who they were. . . . Race in America—it's a toxic poison that prevents any real discussion of the issues. It's the monkey wrench Soetoro and his disciples have thrown into the gears that make the republic's wheel turn. And now this! Already the liberals are screaming that if you are against martial law, you're a racist; if anyone calls
me
a racist, he's going to be spitting teeth.”

Charlie Swim wasn't finished, and his voice was rising. “The black people in America were doing all right, working their way up the ladder, until drugs came along. Then welfare, and payments to single mothers—when you pay poor people not to work and not to marry they are going to take the money. Barry Soetoro had a real chance to do something about what's taken black America down—drugs, welfare rather than work, kids without wedlock—but he didn't bother.” Swim's voice became sarcastic. “Climate change is his cause, and discrimination against Muslims. And expensive golf vacations.” His voice rose to a roar. “I'm sick of this self-proclaimed black messiah!”