Helot on Wheels

What an unalloyed blessing it is to live under a government describing itself as a constitutional republic!


Unlike undisguised tyrannies of various flavors, the government ruling us often -- but not always -- briefly pretends to defer to the written document from which it derives a set of limited, revocable powers, before its enforcement and judicial personnel dispense with those limitations altogether and inflict whatever atrocities they choose on the rest of us.


Sure, the outcome isn't materially different from what we'd experience if we lived under an absolute monarchy, or any of a number of dictatorships. But ours is the singular privilege of knowing the specific constitutionally protected "unalienable" rights that are being violated by the government that blights our society.


Cue Lee Greenwood: "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free" -- a phrase that must qualify as one of the most puerile, "clap for Tinkerbell"-style acts of self-delusion ever recorded.


The U.S. Constitution and the constitutions of the various states purportedly offer ironclad, black-letter protection against unreasonable searches and compelled self-incrimination. Yet any American who operates an automobile may be stopped at any time by a uniformed tax-feeder and compelled to undergo a blood test -- if the donut-grazer in question affects to believe that the driver is intoxicated, whether or not there is evidence to support that belief.


Witness the case of Jamie Lockard, a 53-year-old resident of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, who was stopped last March on suspicion of driving while intoxicated (DWI). A roadside Breathalyzer test determined that Lockard's blood alcohol was under the legal limit.


Since incriminating Breathalyzer results are regarded as infallibly conclusive for the purpose of securing a conviction, a negative result offers immediate exoneration -- correct?


One would think so. And one would be wrong.


You see, Officer Brian Miller, being not only a hero (they're all heroes, don't you know) but something of an oracle, just knew Lockard was drunk, despite the reading on his otherwise infallible device. So Miller obtained a "warrant" from a complaisant judge (a warrant being a permission slip from one government agent to another authorizing the violation of a citizen's rights) that authorized the kidnapping of Lockard for the purpose of forcibly extracting bodily fluids -- blood and urine. The former was drawn by a needle. The latter was siphoned from Lockard's body through the forced insertion of a catheter.



Those tests both confirmed what the initial roadside test had demonstrated: Lockard was, for purposes of the law, as sober as Carrie Nation. So the matter ended here -- correct?


Of course it didn't. Because Lockard had, in some unspecified and ineffective way, protested Officer Miller's actions, the uniformed pest vindictively charged him with "obstruction of justice" -- meaning that Lockard had the temerity to be legally sober and to maintain his innocence while undergoing the criminal indignities inflicted on him by Miller and his partners in official crime.



"He [Miller] took it too far," complained Lockard after filing a lawsuit in protest of his treatment. "He thought he could do whatever to me... that he wanted to."


Unfortunately, under what our rulers are pleased to call the "law," Miller is objectively right, even if the Constitution says otherwise. The prevailing assumption, as recently expressed in a Washington state supreme court ruling, is that by obtaining a driver's license an individual gives "implied consent" to searches of both his vehicle and person, and that refusal to do so constitutes revocation of the "privilege" of driving.



A year and a half ago, Dallas-area police announced that the Memorial Day and Independence Day holidays would be "no refusal weekends," during which officers would deal with "a suspect who is arrested on suspicion of drunk driving does not voluntarily submit to a breathalyzer or blood test" by asking a county judge "to immediately approve a search warrant to draw blood...."


Texas state law supposedly prohibits police from forcibly extracting a blood sample except in cases where an accident has occurred involving serious bodily injury. However, the most recent Texas state appeals court ruling on this subject pronounces, with the smug, hypocritical piety of a philandering priest, that this provision doesn't really recognize the right of an individual to refuse a blood sample.


This is because the implied consent law actually permits the taking of blood without a warrant or explicit consent, because this is "another method of conducting a constitutionally valid search.... It gives officers an additional weapon in their investigative arsenal, enabling them to draw blood in certain limited circumstances even without a search warrant." In substance, that statement means that any invasion of an individual's person is "constitutionally valid" if the government says so.



Naturally, a search warrant nullifies the protests of the victim of a compelled blood test, since it would be issued based "on `the informed and deliberate determinations' of a neutral and detached magistrate'" -- for instance, the officious gavel-fondlers who rubber-stamp every warrant request, sight unseen, made by a cop during a "no refusal weekend."



All of this is the noxious fruit of a diseased tree -- namely, the whole system of licensure governing the "privilege" of operating a motor vehicle. This is among the nastiest versions of the familiar trick in which government redefines a right -- in this case, freedom to travel, which is recognized in Anglo-Saxon Common Law at least as far back as Runnymede -- into a revocable "privilege."



What this means in practice is that traffic police are distant but unmistakable kindred to the Krypteia, a cadre of bully-boy secret police who were authorized to lurk at roadside to prey on the enslaved Helots, plundering and killing them at will.



Accordingly, the moment any of us steers a car onto a public street or highway, he becomes a Helot on Wheels, as it were.



An increasing number of police are permitted to draw blood themselves, rather than suborning competent medical professionals into criminal assaults on citizens under clinical conditions. With the support of money extracted at the gas pump, the federal government is actively abetting this practice -- which began in Arizona and Texas about a decade and a half ago -- through a special program training policemen to act as "officer phlebotomists."



Nampa, Idaho, an otherwise pleasant and attractive community of about 80,000 people, is afflicted with a federally subsidized pilot program in which ten officers have been authorized to draw blood from motorists who refuse a breath test. Not surprisingly, this program -- through which several dozen people have been assaulted so far -- is abetting unhealthy appetites on the part of the "elite" officers who have gone through the training.



When he pulls up alongside a driver, Officer Daryll Dowell admitted, he finds himself "looking at people's arms and hands, thinking, `I could draw from that.'"



The advertised purpose of the phleboto-officer program is to induce unwilling people to submit to breathalyzer tests -- which, as we've noted, are not considered definitive if they provide an exculpatory result. And as with every other policy that involves the violent imposition of force by police on citizens, the primary concern here is officer safety, not the well-being of the victim.



According to Nicole Watson, an instructor from the College of Western Idaho who trained Nampa's "officer phlebotomists," police "will draw blood of any suspected drunk driver who refuses a breath test. They'll use force if they have to, such as getting help from another officer to pin down a suspect and potentially strap them down...."


A helot displays the Krypteia's handiwork: Arizona resident Brian Sewell, who resisted when ordered to undergo a roadside blood test, displays some of the injuries he received when the police assaulted him with a Taser.


If all else fails to subdue an individual who refuses to permit this bodily violation, police can always deploy their preferred implement of punitive torture, the Portable Electro-Shock Torture device (PEST, more commonly called a Taser). That's what happened to Arizona resident Brian Sewell in May 2007. Officers demanded a blood draw after the motorist failed a field sobriety test. They didn't even deign to offer Sewell the option of a breath or urine test. When Sewell, who has a deathly fear of needles, refused to cooperate, he was repeatedly shot with a Taser, leaving scars that were visible weeks after the attack.



James Green, a resident of Pinal County, Arizona, was forced to undergo a needle stick by an inept Sheriff's deputy despite the fact that the traffic stop occurred within walking distance of a hospital. Two maladroitly administered needle sticks later, the officer had claimed his sample -- and left Green with an infection that lasted for months, causing him to miss work.


"Protected"? Nope -- infected: James Green, who fell into the hands of a particularly inept and sadistic cop, displays the infection he received from a needless roadside blood test.


This isn't surprising: Traffic enforcement officers are not medical personnel. While they are given rudimentary first aid training, they are not competent to conduct blood exams and aren't bound by Hippocratic ethics.



In fact, their primary mission is not to protect the public, but rather to extract revenue from it: Police-generated revenue is how, in the words of one prominent law enforcement contractor, the governments that hire police officers get a "return on investment."



After many decades of metaphorically bleeding the public, police are now permitted to do so literally. At some point, one can hope, the public is going to start returning the favor.


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Dum spiro, pugno!

"You Can't Do This to People": Robin McDermott's Resistance

Battle-weary but resolute, American freedom fighter Robin McDermott stands in front of the Springfield, Missouri City Hall, the redoubt of a criminal clique she has been fighting for roughly a dozen years.








It is incredible how soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say ... that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement. --

Etienne de la Boetie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude



As a 45-year-old single mother of two who cared for a crippled brother, Robin McDermott was well-acquainted with adversity. When Robin's brother woke her up early in the morning on January 23, 1998 to tell her that her older son, Morgan Smith, was being arrested on a DUI charge, she knew things were about to get just a touch worse.


The resident of Springfield, Missouri most likely did not anticipate being needlessly attacked by a police dog, hauled off to jail, and spending the next decade in a lengthy legal struggle with a corrupt and abusive municipal government -- simply because she failed to demonstrate the cringing, reflexive submission expected from those of us who don't wear government-issued costumes.


Bleary-eyed from lack of rest, clad in slippers and a nightshirt, Robin turned on the porch light and stepped outside to learn what was going on. She asked the officer who had conducted a field sobriety test if Morgan could briefly speak with her inside the house; she wanted to satisfy herself that her son had indeed been driving while intoxicated.


"He said, `Well, it's a little late for that. He's going to jail,'" Robin recalled in an interview with the Springfield News-Leader, mimicking Officer Tom Royal's smug, officious tone.


Understandably offended by the dismissive tax-feeder (or, to use her preferred description, "donut-burner") in her driveway, Robin found her mood worsening as the police deployed a drug-sniffing dog named Caesar to search Morgan's vehicle. She went into her house, put on some jeans, made a 911 call to protest the officers' behavior, and then went back out to her porch to confront them again.


As a student of constitutional law who was well acquainted with police tactics, Robin was justifiably suspicious that the officers -- five in all -- were looking for a pretext to forfeit the pickup truck and anything else on which they could put their hands. Her suspicion was sharpened when the police allowed the dog off its leash to roam freely around the property -- a violation of the city's "dog at large" ordinance.


Knowing that it was possible to tow the pickup truck to another location to continue the search, Robin ordered the police off her property. The officers refused, despite the fact -- confirmed in subsequent legal proceedings -- that they had already summoned a tow truck and had thus had no reason at all to conduct the search in the driveway.


By this time, Robin's fuses were thoroughly blown, a fact reflected in the increasingly salty language she used to demand explanations from the police -- particularly regarding the large, potentially violent dog that they were permitting to run loose in her front yard.


Robin never budged from her front porch -- meaning that she was more than thirty feet away from the scene of the search. As a federal court would observe later: "At no point did she offer any force or violence, or threat thereof, nor did she seek to close the distance between herself and police."


Nonetheless, Robin was thrown face-down on the ground by Officer Royal, handcuffed, and arrested under a city ordinance forbidding citizens to "resist or obstruct a city officer making an arrest or serving any legal writ, warrant or process or attempting to execute any other duty imposed on him by law."


No, not that Springfield -- although Springfield, Missouri's municipal, while just as inept as the one depicted in The Simpsons, is much more corrupt.



Robin's "resistance" or "obstruction" consisted of heckling a knot of self-important armed bureaucrats who were acting as petty tyrants by seeking a pretext to expand their DUI-related search.


Her "crime" was to display insufficient docility in the face of armed aggression by agents of the state. As she commented in a telephone interview with Pro Libertate, "I wasn't cordial enough for their tastes when they invaded my property."


"You would beat up an old grandma?" Robin protested as Royal rudely cuffed her wrists.


"If you're a grandma, why don't you act like one?" Royal reportedly replied.


While Royal assaulted and taunted her, Robin endured an even greater violation of her person: Caesar, who had been permitted to run free, vaulted onto the porch and bit Robin several times in the thigh and buttocks, leaving her with severe puncture wounds. She was shuttled to a local hospital and then to jail in a police wagon the interior of which was drenched in urine; this helps explain why the wounds inflicted by Caesar (and, indirectly, by his criminally negligent handler) would become infected and fester for weeks.


Released from jail the following morning, Robin's inchoate anger had been catalyzed into resolve.


"I went to bed that night thinking I was at least secure in my own bedroom, my own property," she recalled to Pro Libertate. "The next thing I know there are police -- armed men -- strutting across my property and arrogantly dismissing my rights. They just can't treat people that way."


As is the case with all ordinances of its kind, Springfield's edict against "resisting and obstructing" a police officer was designed to give cops a bludgeon to harass, intimidate, and punish people who annoy them without committing an actual crime.


Representing herself, with a public defender in an advisory role, Robin requested a jury trial -- which was heard in a county court, rather than by a Springfield municipal judge. She won acquittal on the charge of obstructing an officer and a second charge of third-degree assault (arising from an uncorroborated allegation that she bit one of the arresting officers while in the hospital, which, if true, would have required that Robin receive treatment for rabies).


Exonerated of any "criminal" behavior, Robin proceeded to give the city of Springfield unshirted hell.


With the benefit of a smattering of legal education and a full, foamy head of righteous rage, Robin filed a civil rights lawsuit against Springfield, Police Chief Lynn Rowe, several officers, and the assistant city prosecutor. This began a legal war of attrition that would last nine years, cost Springfield an estimated $11,587.16, exhaust the services of six city attorneys, and -- more importantly -- claim countless hours of Robin's life that she could have put to much better use had she not been needlessly assaulted on her own front porch that chilly January morning.




A wonderful creature perverted into a weapon of terror and repression: Police abuse of dogs both at home (left) and abroad (below, right).

On two occasions, Robin's suit was dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Dean Whipple, who ruled that she had been properly arrested.



Referring to Judge Whipple, Robin commented to Pro Libertate: "He's the onriest, most willful old cuss -- he's just as stubborn as I am. In spite of everything, I just adore him, because he was fair. He understood that I'm not an attorney, and he was willing to help me understand many of the difficult legal issues, but he didn't give me any latitude; he forced me to make my case. I think it would be fun to play a round of golf with him, or maybe spend some time shooting pool."


After each dismissal, Robin -- displaying the tenacity of a Pitbull -- filed another appeal. On her third attempt she succeeded in getting a jury trial. In an odd turn of events, the same Judge Whipple who had twice dismissed Robin's case ruled that the Springfield anti-obstruction statute -- Ordinance 26-17 -- improperly allowed the police to criminalize constitutionally protected speech. This resulted in a judicial order that Springfield pay Robin $25,000 as punishment for violating her rights.


Displaying a dishonest child's gift for depraved creativity and a pathological indifference to truth, the Springfield municipal government had restructured its ordinance code; by the time Judge Whipple ruled against Springfield, the measure in question was not listed as Ordinance 26-17, but rather 78-32(1). This supposedly meant that the ruling didn't apply to the current law.


(The city government had earlier played a similar trick with the municipal "dog at large" ordinance, quietly revising it subsequent to Robin's arrest to provide an exception for the police.)


Not only did Judge Whipple not buy that argument, he was offended that Springfield was trying to sell it: On August 13 he issued an order barring enforcement of the ordinance, by whatever designation the city chose for it.


And yet, Springfield continues in its dilatory tactics.


"They haven't paid a cent," Robin reported to Pro Libertate. "They're trying to get me to sign a settlement document that would hold them `harmless,' and refusing to release the money to me until I do. They've gone so far as to send me a scanned copy of the check for $25,000 and said that all I have to do is get it is to sign a document dismissing any further claims against the city `with prejudice.'"


Robin is smart enough to understand that the officials making that offer are not negotiating from a position of strength, where the legal issues are concerned.


"I've filed a motion for civil contempt," she explains. "I'm requesting that the court impose a continuing penalty of $1,000 a day until they pay me what they owe me." Regrettably, those costs will be passed along to the productive residents of Springfield, rather than being extracted from the representatives of the parasite class responsible for the violation of Robin McDermott's rights -- but she isn't responsible for that fact.


Robin's long-sought and hard-won triumph shouldn't engender unrealistic hopes that we can beat the statist system by using that system; her happy outcome is a blessed anomaly. Had the same incident occurred in 2008, rather than 1998, it's entirely possible that some overgrown adolescent in uniform would have shot or tasered Robin to death.


During the decade that Robin battled for her rights in court, overkill has become institutionalized -- a fact of which she is painfully aware. "Our local Sheriff just applied for a grant to buy a grenade launcher with drug forfeiture funds," she complained to me. "Just what on earth does the Sheriff need with a grenade launcher?"


Robin McDermott, a small woman with burdens that would have daunted Atlas, is a "real American" -- an individual who, in the words of former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper, is willing to meet the police "at the threshold at home and [say], `no, you can't come in. Show me your warrant.'"


In this age of collectivist conformity, real Americans are tragically thin on the ground. One of them lives in Springfield, Missouri.

Video Extra

The Praetorian Presumption in full, malignant flower: "We're not on the same level. I'm up here, you're down there":




A note of thanks --

It is impossible for me to give adequate expression to the gratitude I feel, on behalf of my family, to all of you who have offered prayers, kind words, and many very generous gifts to us during our recent month from hell. I earnestly hope that I will be able to express thanks in a more personalized way.


My health is improving (I'm at about 80 percent right now -- not ready for a cage fight, certainly, but at least I'm no longer bleeding to death) and we've found a suitable new home at literally the last minute. With those concerns taken care of, our other problems will become tractable. Thank you, once again, for helping us in our time of dire need. -- Will


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Dum spiro, pugno!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

UPDATE --

I'm grateful beyond expression for the kindness and generosity shown by so many of you; this is among my largest blessings.


Unfortunately, it looks very much like I'm headed back to the hospital. I earnestly hope this isn't the case, but right now it looks like I'm headed for another bout with (not bout "of") C.Dif. Please pray for me, and especially for Korrin and our children. As some of you know, Korrin has been very sick for a long time herself and she simply can't manage without my help, so please pray (or for those who don't pray, keep a good thought) that I'll be restored to full health soon.

For denizens of the dino-media, August is traditionally a slow news month. For me, it became downright torpid when I suddenly found myself laid low by a microbial assault.


As a result, an informative, if unwelcome, opportunity presented itself: I spent several days examining, in detail, the bowels of our much-discussed health care system. The system spent that time returning the favor.



The assailant that stole the better part of a fortnight from my life is commonly called C.Dif (colostrium difficile). Typically, that bacterium is content to bide its time lounging among our intestinal flora, playing shuffleboard or whatever it is that amuses the tiny livestock each of us constantly carries in blissful ignorance of this potentially lethal symbiosis.


From time to time, however, C.Dif gets riled up in reaction to a person's exposure to an antibiotic, or is summoned from dormancy through contact with an infected host or a tainted environment. As one would expect of a pathogen whose name sounds a bit like the showbiz handle of a Gangsta Rapper, C.Dif is a truculent and destructive organism once something gets its attention.


About two weeks ago, the Diffster made its presence known shortly after a swimming excursion with my kids.


As my stomach bloated and unbearably malodorous gas began to emerge in irrepressible burps, I assumed that I was being paid a visit by my old friend, amoebic dysentery, whose acquaintance I made in Guatemala back in '83. Then I suspected I had picked up cryptosporidium from the swimming pool, something I experienced as a child. (You wanna talk about me and intestinal parasites? Don't get me started!) With weary resignation I bought the usual suite of over-the-counter palliatives, assuming that, ah, this too would pass, as it were.


Except it didn't.


Now, assuming that you're still reading an essay devoted to an affliction involving bodily functions most people politely ignore unless paid extravagantly well to deal with, I offer the following advisory: From here on, things are going to get really rough. Caveat lector.


The Tuesday morning following the onset of first symptoms (bloating, runs, insurmountable fatigue) dawned innocuously enough. I was tired, but not abnormally so. My stomach wasn't complaining, as it had over the previous two days. Our family planned to go house-hunting and then visit an amusement park in fulfillment of a promise I had made to our children before the closing of the blessed parenthesis we call Summer Break.


Given all of this, I was stunned and troubled to discover during my routine morning ablutions that I had, ah, deposited something the color of borscht (my apologies to anyone who has enjoyed that Slavic delicacy or any other porridge made from that noble and misunderstood tuber, the beet).


What I had left behind was blood -- a lot of it. I wasn't terrified; my reaction was one of weary annoyance coupled with a mixture of resignation and regret.


Regardless of what else was to come, this much was certain: Sometime, in the near future, an endoscopic camera was going to take a long, scenic tour of my intestines -- sort of like the voyage of the Starship Enterprise through V'Ger, I suppose, although I doubt that V'Ger felt degraded and violated by the experience.


My initial experience was repeated several times that day. Each time I got weaker and more light-headed. Yet, displaying the obtuse stubbornness that is my most salient trait I persisted with our schedule. We went and inspected our would-be new dwelling, and then I took the family to an amusement park in Meridian (a suburb of Boise).


I found myself increasingly weary: In the 90 degree-plus weather, my legs strained to carry me as if I were wading hip-deep in rapidly coalescing hot tar; breathing became an exhausting chore, a feeling I experienced a number of years ago while doing calisthenics from above the clouds during a visit to Colorado's Rocky Mountains. But we were at sea level, and the most rigorous thing required of me was to walk while carrying our seven-month-old child, Justus.


Still, idiot that I am, I insisted on taking a couple of rounds at the batting cage.


The most challenging machine at that particular facility is set to pitch at between 75 and 80 miles per hour, which means I usually compensate by standing about three feet in front of the batter's box.


On this particular day, I took 48 pitches -- two dozen right-handed, and two dozen as a lefty, a nicely bi-partisan allotment. Every pitch I beat right into the ground, a sure sign of exhaustion (my legs were too tired for me to make the appropriate adjustments in my swing). With each pitch, my breath grew shorter and my heart rate escalated -- which is not a normal state of affairs.


I had bought three batting tokens; I offered the third to our ten-year-old, Isaiah (who acquitted himself with distinction against the 65 MPH machine). I walked woozily over to where Korrin was sitting and sat down. I caught my breath, but it soon managed to break free of my grasp. The visible horizon started to wobble ever-so-slightly, and a cold sweat began to ooze from me.


"Dad, you look white," William said, his brows conjoining in concern.


"Honey, we've got to get to a hospital right now," I gasped to Korrin. She helped me round up our offspring and we made a beeline to the nearest hospital, which -- praise God from Whom all blessings flow -- was about fifteen minutes away.


As I was admitted to the ER, I looked at William and we carried out a ritual that became familiar during my years on the speaking circuit.


"William, while I'm away...." I began.


"I know -- I'm Daddy ex officio," replied my Firstborn with the same quiet confidence displayed by Mr. Spock as he assumed command in Captain Kirk's absence.


For the next several hours, Korrin and our children waited while I was poked, prodded, interrogated, scoped, and -- most unnervingly -- examined in the time-honored fashion of victims of alien abduction.


That last experience prompted me to make a wisecrack (pardon the expression) about the title of Led Zeppelin's last studio album.* That sortie didn't reduce the ER staff to puddles of mirthful admiration, nor did several others in the same vein ("Mr. Grigg, do you suffer from constipation?" "Actually, I rather enjoy it" -- drum kick). "Man, this is a tough room," I complained as the grim-faced staff tried to figure out why an overweight but otherwise healthy man was apparently bleeding to death from his retreating aperture.


It took just a few hours for the lab to report a positive result for C.Dif, which -- given some of the other possibilities -- actually left me relieved. I was admitted overnight for observation and treatment and put in a room subject to isolation protocols. I was also immediately put on an IV antibiotic following a second positive lab finding for C.Dif.


Within a day, the bleeding stopped, and I was permitted to eat actual food. A day and a half later I was discharged.


Two days after that, I was hospitalized again following a relapse that left me so weak and breathless I could barely stand -- even though I insisted on walking into the ambulance, rather than being carried on a stretcher.


Through a gathering hypoxia-induced fog, I tried once again to crack wise: "Please tell me we're not going to Bethesda Naval Hospital," I croaked to the competent and personable paramedics, who didn't understand the allusion and couldn't have cared less to have it explained to them.


During the next four days, I was given six units of blood. I was also given the privilege of consuming a gallon of something that tasted like a cocktail of liquid copper and film developing solution in preparation for the dreaded colonoscopy.


"If copper bullion were actually a broth made from metal cubes," I commented, "it would probably taste like this."


My nurse, who was polite enough to pretend that I was amusing, told me that I could have some ice if lukewarm electrolyte solution was difficult to choke down.


"No, thanks," I replied, "I prefer my electrolyte solution `neat.'"


The product in question, incidentally, is called "Go-lyte-ly," which struck me as both a really bad pun and a very inappropriate allusion to Breakfast at Tiffany's -- or to any meal at any location, for that matter, given the purpose of that purgative.


Following a night of torrential outpourings that brought to mind a passage from the Book of Jeremiah ("My bowels, my bowels!... I cannot hold my peace..." -- Jer. 4:19, KJV, sort of), I underwent the dreaded inspection, which -- as experiences of that kind go -- was relatively painless and brief.


The most difficult part of the experience, of course, was waiting for the results. After a couple of hours on tenterhooks, I was told that the examination had found nothing.


Just a few hours later I was told that I would have to undergo a barium X-ray. That procedure would be much less invasive. The "prep," however, involved the consumption of 1200 ml of a heavy concoction, the progress of which through my innards would be followed in search of unauthorized detours -- the slightest of which would divert my life onto a new and unwelcome path.


"This is a remarkable concoction," I commented to the X-ray tech as I swilled the irradiated milkshake, a viscous brew the color of rotting bathroom caulk that tasted a bit like a mixture of government-grade powdered milk and chalk dust with just a soupcon of metal filings and a dash of strawberry flavoring added as a contemptuous concession to human tastebuds.


For thirty-five minutes I was photographed by the X-ray tech. For another twenty minutes I was examined by a specialist in radiological medicine. And then I spent another two hours in anxiety waiting to learn what, if anything, had been found.


Eventually a nurse was dispatched to offer the news:


"The tests were all negative," she said. "They didn't find anything."


"Well, it's certainly not for a lack of looking," I replied in an homage to the cinematic Patron Saint of investigative journalists, Chevy Chase's Fletch.


It has been said that there is no stronger force in nature than necessity. Human beings, designed as we are to adapt and learn, can re-adjust their perceptions of necessity very quickly, and with those adjustments comes a reconfiguration of one's subjective perceptions of value.


To put this in practical terms: Given the fact that people can and do die from C.Dif, I now find myself pathetically grateful -- literally, to the point of offering prayers of thanksgiving -- for a normal BM, one that doesn't involve passing blood.


As someone who only recently managed to overcome a lifelong aversion to hypodermic needles, I found myself willing, and even eager, to undergo the poke-and-burn necessary to restore my blood volume when sudden symptomatic anemia left me bug-eyed, pallid, tremulous, and dying.


The past month has been unusually freighted with unsought "learning experiences" for our family.


Just days before my illness, we were subjected to an anonymous, and malicious, "child endangerment" report that upended our affairs for several days.


The morning before my hospitalization I received a letter from the thuggish parasites at the IRS (who are easily as loathsome as, and even more potentially lethal than, C.Dif) informing me that they had decided I owe them more than a thousand dollars more than I had paid in 2007 for the privilege of living under a government that is destroying the economy and waging war against freedom and human decency.


Our home of the past four years is being foreclosed out from beneath us because our absentee landlord decided to walk away from the mortgage -- not only on that property, but on his own home as well. Since no legal action has been taken yet to seize the property, we could stay on it rent-free for up to six months or more. However....


There is a very good chance that some plumbing issues left un-fixed by that same former landlord created the environmental conditions that led to my recent sickness. I can't permit Korrin -- who, as I've mentioned before, is an invalid -- and our children to run the risk of similar exposure. So we're technically homeless at present, living as refugees in my parents' home in eastern Oregon while trying to find another dwelling in Payette County, Idaho.


A long-running freelance gig (arranged by a man of angelic generosity and supernal kindness) that has kept our family alive and solvent for nearly two years ended while I was in the hospital. This means that, for the first time since I was thrown to the wolves by former friends and professional associates in October 2006, I am now completely unemployed.


"Honey, the van is running funny and may be about to break down," Korrin told me during the phone call in which I reported that my tests were negative and I was coming home -- wherever "home" might be at the time.


"Oh, that's a relief," I replied. "For a moment I was afraid that we were running out of problems."


Indeed, this past month has had a flavor that reminded me of the five scariest words in the first chapter of the Book of Job: "While he was yet speaking...." That refrain refers to the multi-partner tag-team of messengers who reported the cascade of disasters that took place during a particularly crowded morning.

Job didn't wake up that day suspecting that he would be destitute and bereaved by noon. But after being pummeled in rapid-fire by losses that no human being should be able to bear, Job still knew that his Redeemer lived, and that He remained sovereign over the universe.


Apart from the genuine agony I feel as I watch Korrin suffer, and the anxiety I experienced wondering if I was going to be taken and leave her to raise our six children alone, what I've experienced is -- at most -- a bit like a trite sitcom based loosely on the sufferings of Job.


Our family has been fortified by countless prayers offered by our friends and family. My parents are, as they have always been, gently and quietly heroic. Several friends have distinguished themselves through their caring and generosity; I would make public and particular mention of several of them, but in doing so I might thoughtlessly slight others, given that so many have taken an interest in our welfare and given of themselves with an eagerness that has left me astonished and, sometimes, ashamed of myself.


I won't minimize the magnitude of the challenges our family faces. This much I know: My sense of necessity has been permanently re-defined. The experience of being left breathless, even though my lungs are filled with air, has fortified my sense of determination and re-focused my attention on the essentials.


Sure, we're still in a lot of trouble. But at least now, after several days when doing so was a challenge, I can truly breathe -- and while I breathe, I fight.

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*For those of you who don't know -- and, really, why should you? -- the name of the last original Led Zeppelin LP was, for some reason, "In Through the Out Door."