Did boastful rhetoric dissuade Washington, DC truckers protest?

This was to be a weekend to remember in our Nation's Capitol. On Sunday a group of veterans have planned a Million Veteran March On The Memorials to reclaim the privately funded memorials illegally closed by Barack Hussein Obama. The veterans from WWII, Korea and Vietnam, some of them in wheelchairs, won't be alone. They will have some back up as Belinda Bee the organizer of the Bikers Ride to Washington last month has called for many bikers to return to give them support. Recalling the two-million Tea Party tax protesters who gathered on the National Mall in Washington in 2010 and the one-million bikers (the official estimate by the Washington, D.C. Police) who rode to Washington on September 11, 2013 to counter the Million Muslim non-event that turned out only a dozen Islamic sympathizers, a group of truckers planned a massive drive-through today to clog the Beltway around the Capitol. But one of the truckers organizers made some boastful claims that may have persuaded many others to avoid the conflict.

One of the organizers of the protest, Earl Conlon, was quoted on US News but later retracted his comments.

"We are not going to ask for impeachment," Conlon said. "We are coming whether they like it or not. We're not asking for impeachment, we're asking for the arrest of everyone in government who has violated their oath of office."

Conlon cited the idea of a citizens grand jury – meaning a pool of jurors convened without court approval – as the mechanism for indicting the officials.

"We want these people arrested, and we're coming in with the grand jury to do it," he said. "We are going to ask the law enforcement to uphold their constitutional oath and make these arrests. If they refuse to do it, by the power of the people of the United States and the people's grand jury, they don't want to do it, we will. ... We the people will find a way."

But Steve Nelson, who reported the story wrote: "It's almost certain that anyone attempting to "arrest" a member of Congress would be arrested themselves for attempted kidnapping." While the boastful rhetoric proved to be just that, the accusations made were still true.

Conlon and Andrews say Obama committed "treason" by allegedly funneling weapons to al-Qaida-linked rebels in Syria. Members of Congress who support arming Syrian rebels, Conlon said, are accessories to the alleged crime. He identified House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., as politicians he will seek to arrest for alleged acts against the Constitution.

The Hill reported three days ago that Earl Conlon told The Washington Post that his boastful rhetoric was a ploy to get national attention. “The comments to U.S. News were designed to do one thing and one thing only: stir the feather of the mainstream media,” said Conlon, a father of three. “Nothing gets the attention of the mainstream media like some sort of disastrous threat. I knew it was going to ruffle some feathers.” But the statements about convening a Citizens Grand Jury to indict and arrest members of Congress sounded like a lynch mob and may have been taken seriously by a lot of other truckers who avoided the protest drive to keep out of trouble. Someone should have mentioned to Earl Conlon one rule of automotive mechanics: too much fuel causes a backfire.

A truck driver who called for protesting the government by backing up the Capitol Beltway says he made the threat to attract media attention.

Georgia-based truck driver Earl Conlon, who was behind the group “Truckers for the Constitution,” told The Washington Post he was hoping to use the threat of shutting down the Beltway to highlight the industry's frustration with federal regulations.

"The comments to U.S. News were designed to do one thing and one thing only: stir the feather of the mainstream media,” Conlon said. “Nothing gets the attention like the mainstream media, like some sort of disastrous threat. I knew it was going to ruffle some feathers.”

So as the weekend progresses we have, as usual, our aging veterans and patriotic bikers left to defend our liberties. God speed to both of these patriotic groups. Our younger generation, at least those who are not serving in our Armed Forces, are still too busy trying to figure our why their "free" ObamaCare healthcare isn't free.