High Desert Highwaymen: More Scenes from the Drug War in Treasure Valley

In his private life, Justin Klitch of Payette, Idaho may be kind, personable, generous, and compulsively honest. While on the clock, however, he's a professional thug – in the original sense of the expression.

The Thugs of India were a nomadic, secretive order of highway robbers notorious for gaining the confidence of travelers before ambushing, plundering, and sometimes killing them. Klitch plays a similar role as a patrol officer with the Idaho State Police, conducting pretext stops of drivers in order to search their vehicles for drugs or large amounts of cash. He does this in the tacit but provable hope of justifying the “forfeiture” – that is, the theft – of their vehicles and anything else of value he and his comrades can find.

A third-generation ISP officer, Klitch patrols an area laden with potential lucre, a stretch of I-84 in western Idaho bordering Oregon, where medicinal marijuana use is legal. Forty percent of all pot confiscated in Idaho is medicinal marijuana legally obtained in Oregon. Kendall Jeffs, a medical marijuana user who lives in western Idaho, describes the anxious trip home from Oregon as being akin to “crossing the Berlin Wall. It's like going into another country.”

Klitch’s function is comparable to that of an East German border guard, and the routine he follows in identifying and preying upon travelers was widely publicized when one of his victims, Washington businessman Darien Roseen, filed a lawsuit against the trooper and several of his comrades.

As recounted in the lawsuit, in January 2013 Klitch conducted a pretext stop of Roseen, who had attracted the costumed predator's attention by driving a vehicle with Colorado license plates. Colorado is one of two states that have largely decriminalized the recreational use of marijuana. The other is Washington. Roseen, a retired real estate executive, lives in Washington and has a second residence in Colorado.

On the day he was waylaid by Klitch at a roadside rest stop, Roseen was driving a late-model pickup truck en route to Colorado with a cargo of gifts for a baby shower. Klitch – who was lurking beside the interstate listening to 1980s “hair metal” -- noticed the plate, aggressively trailed Roseen into the rest stop, and saw the driver – flustered and probably annoyed by the tailgating trooper -- bump against the curb in the parking lot. Having contrived a pretext for a traffic stop, Klitch triumphantly activated his lights and siren.

Klitch demanded to know why Roseen had pulled into the rest area, a question he was not legally entitled to ask and one Roseen was not legally obliged to answer. When the victim explained that he needed to go to the bathroom, the implacable predator – implicitly claiming the power of clairvoyance – insisted: “You didn't have to go to the bathroom before you saw me – I'm telling  you, you pulled in here to avoid me. That's exactly what you did.”

Avoiding a police officer is always a good idea, and doing so is not evidence of criminal behavior or intent.  Klitch's behavior validated the belief that innocent people should do whatever is necessary to avoid an encounter with a cop.

The trooper demanded Roseen's license, which he glanced at while interrogating the victim about his occupation and activities – questions, once again, the driver was not required to answer.  He accused Roseen of having “glassy eyes,” barraged him with leading questions, and pelted him with accusatory remarks. 

Without running Roseen's license, or citing probable cause of any kind, Klitch announced that he would be conducting a drug sweep with a police canine. He then bulldozed the intimidated driver – over his initial and repeated objections –into allowing a warrantless search of the vehicle's trunk.

The instant Roseen opened the trunk, Klitch lied – or, to use his occupation’s preferred expression, exercised his “prerogative to use artifice” – by pretending that he could smell a “strong odor of marijuana” and that this unsupported claim gave him probable cause to search the vehicle and its contents. He announced that he was abducting --  or, to use his euphemism, “detaining” – Roseen, placing him in the back seat of his patrol car and not permitting him to call an attorney. At this point Klitch turned off his vehicle's dashboard camera and began to rifle through Roseen's truck while an accomplice to the crime, Sgt. Eric Christensen from the Fruitland Police Department, arrived to assist.

The 68-year-old man, who had no criminal record of any kind, was helpless as Klitch and Christensen hijacked his truck, taking it to the “sally port” of the Payette County Sheriff's Office. Roseen was told he was free to leave – but that his vehicle and property would remain in the custody of the violent armed strangers who had ambushed him. For several hours Roseen was held hostage while at least seven officers ransacked his truck and pawed through his property. Despite mangling and mutilating Roseen's belongings, no contraband was found.

Roseen survived the encounter with Klitch and his fellow thugs, but before being set free he was handed a ransom note in the form of a spurious citation for “inattentive driving” – an infraction Roseen supposedly committed by coming to an abrupt stop against the curb in the parking space after Klitch rode his bumper all the way into the rest area.

In entirely predictable fashion, the ISP has invoked the pernicious principle of official impunity – more commonly called “qualified immunity”– in demanding that Roseen's lawsuit be dismissed. The trooper himself appears to have been ordered into purdah: He has ignored  my repeated requests for comment about his conduct during the encounter, particularly his decision to turn off the dashcam rather than recording what he insists was a perfectly legal and routine search of Roseen's vehicle.

Such reticence is unusual for Klitch, who was something of a media darling until one of his victims fought back.

A July 2012 AP story described Klitch as an embattled paladin of public order on the Oregon-Idaho border. A few months earlier he was briefly profiled in a report by a Boise TV newscast that was a shameless valentine to his father Shawn Klitch, who was retiring from the ISP after three decades. Justin's grandfather was also an ISP officer; another grandfather was a city cop in Ohio, and his mother has been a “correctional officer” at the Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario, Oregon.

After trying unsuccessfully to find honest work in the productive sector, Justin decided to follow his parents and grandparents into the family business. Currently being paid $52,000 a year (a very healthy salary by local standards), Klitch is six years into what will probably be a lucrative career – unless it is brought to an end by Roseen’s lawsuit, or a subsequent one filed by another of his victims. One woman who was on the receiving end of Klitch’s attentions has accused him of misconduct serious enough to merit not only a civil suit, but criminal prosecution.

 

Would dad be proud?

“He, during a traffic stop, stood in front of the camera, with his back to the police car, and me in front of him, without a female officer present, searched my body for drugs,” the woman (who requested that her name not be used) recounted to me. Klitch allegedly “put his hands under my bra, and brushed both of my nipples with the backs of his fingers. He already had my significant other in custody in the back of the police car. If I said a word, at the time, my man would probably still be in jail.”

Klitch “sexually violated me,” the woman contends, “and the way he did it – I can only assume he had done it before, he was slick about it…. When I talked to another police officer about what I could do, I was told to move out of Idaho.”

I relayed the woman’s allegations to Klitch, who declined to comment about them.

The woman remains understandably terrified of Klitch, whom she describes as a “one of those `mad dog’ officers who will justify [their] behavior, no matter what…. I feel that I am just one of many people that this man has abused.”  She isn’t willing to leave the state to avoid him, but is keeping a very low profile in order to avoid bringing “heat to myself or family.” Clinging to a fraying thread of ingenuous trust in the institution of law enforcement, she insists that Klitch’s “abuse of power shames the rest of Idaho’s state troopers.”

That assessment is excessively generous. The Idaho State Police – particularly Patrol District 3 –works very closely with the High Desert Drug Enforcement Task Force (HDDE),  a federally subsidized, multi-jurisdictional entity that includes law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Idaho-Oregon border. As I’ve reported previously, the HDDE routinely coordinates pretext stops of Idaho-bound vehicles in order to conduct drug searches and property seizures.

The task force’s most notable accomplishment in recent years was the prosecution of sixteen people who belonged to the 45^th Parallel, a medical marijuana co-op in Ontario, Oregon. That operation began with several pretext stops carried out against the co-op’s founder, Bill Esbensen, by officers from three different law enforcement agencies – the Oregon State Police, Payette County Sheriff’s Office, and the Idaho State Police.

In March 2012, Esbensen, a used car dealer who was driving a camper to Boise for delivery to a buyer, was swarmed at the border of Canyon County by a throng of state police, sheriff’s deputies, and DEA agents. The lead officer, State Trooper Christopher Cottrell, followed exactly the same script used by Klitch, insisting that he “smelled a strong odor of marijuana” emanating from the vehicle. A search by a drug dog failed to confirm Cottrell’s mendacious claim, but a patently illegal search of a sealed briefcase produced a single joint.

Despite the fact that possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is a misdemeanor in Idaho, Esbensen (who had a medical marijuana card) was arrested, and his briefcase – which contained detailed financial and membership information about the medical marijuana co-op – was illegally opened, and its contents copied.

The information wound up in the hands of Boise-based DEA agent Dustin T. Bloxham, who – acting beyond his jurisdiction – targeted the 45^th Parallel for a sting operation.  Esbensen and his partner, Raymond Kangas, were convicted following a bench trial of “delivering marijuana for consideration,” although their actions most likely would not be prosecutable under Oregon’s revised medical marijuana statute. They are immured in the Malheur County Jail awaiting sentencing, which is scheduled for June 23.

Bill Esbensen was not the only member of his family targeted by the task force. His wife Diane, who had no connection to the 45^th Parallel, was subjected to the same multi-layered harassment – three pretext stops by officers from three different agencies on both sides of the border – while driving from Ontario to Boise in early May.

“They did the same thing at each stop -- they pulled me over and demanded to search the car,” Mrs. Esbensen told me in an interview at the Malheur County Courthouse during her husband’s trial. “They kept asking me accusatory questions. After the second stop my son, who was in the passenger seat, told me, `They’re going to stop us again’ – and a few minutes later, they did. I was very frustrated and intimidated, especially after what happened to Bill.”

All of the evidence presented by the prosecution in the 45^th Parallel was collected by the HDDE, which refused to disclose the identities, qualifications, and activities of its constituent officers. The task force is literally a secret police organization – or, what is much the same thing, a band of highwaymen.

“The government does not … waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets,” wrote 19^th century abolitionist Lysander Spooner, describing the difference between a government agent and a highwayman. “But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful… [H]aving taken your money, [the highwayman] leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will, assuming to be your rightful `sovereign,’ on account of the `protection’ he affords you.”

Few if any have been more perceptive than Spooner in analyzing and describing the depravity of government. In this case, however, Spooner’s imagination actually fell short of anticipating the conduct of Justin Klitch and his comrades in the War on Drugs, who are government-licensed highwaymen authorized to prey upon innocent travelers, and kill any who resist their unwanted attention.

 Dum spiro, pugno!

Road Pirates and Prohibition Profiteers: Scenes from the Drug War in Treasure Valley

ISP Trooper Justin Klitch conducts a pretext stop, searching for weed.

One of the risks of operating a medical marijuana dispensary is the possibility of attracting unwanted attention from violent, dishonest people willing to defraud and even kill others in order to indulge their addiction.

When a man calling himself “Dustin Hankins” showed up at the 45^th Parallel, a medical marijuana co-op in Ontario, Oregon, the staff received him in good faith. “Hankins,” who had made a 70-mile trip across the state line from Boise, presented an Idaho driver’s license and paperwork from his doctor claiming that he suffered from severe pain as a result of a work-related shoulder separation. He had previously contacted the clinic by telephone to find out how he could obtain medicinal marijuana.

Once “Hankins” had arrived at the clinic the staff inspected his documents and filled out the necessary paperwork for him to receive an Oregon Medical Marijuana Program card. A staffer named John Turner explained the importance of complying with Oregon regulations before “Hankins” could obtain medicinal marijuana. Once all of the legal details were in order, “Hankins” paid $165 to purchase a small amount of a cannabis strain called “Super Lemon Haze.”

Nothing about this August 14, 2012 transaction seemed out of the ordinary to the people running the 45^th Parallel. The clinic staff believed that they had provided a service to a man suffering from persistent pain and muscle spasms. 

The letter “Hankins” provided from Dr. Clinton Mallari, a Boise pain specialist, emphasized that the patient was not “a surgical candidate for his condition” and that he was “reluctant to perform any more injections on him.” “Hankins” presented all of the necessary documentation, and the marijuana was provided in strict compliance with Oregon law.

What the 45^th Parallel staff didn’t know was that “Hankins” had committed interstate wire fraud, suborned Dr. Mallari into falsifying medical records, and obtained a counterfeit Idaho driver's license. Nor did they know that “Hankins” was an alias used by someone who about ten years earlier had shot a man in the head, leaving the victim paralyzed for eight years before he finally died from complications of the shooting. Most importantly, the staff at 45^th Parallel had no idea that Hankins and his accomplices had cased out their operation and intended to steal its assets.

“Dustin Hankins” was actually Dustin T. Bloxham, a Boise-based agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The money he paid for the cannabis was provided by the Malheur County Sheriff's Office, which has been rewarded with a huge windfall in fines and other proceeds from the clinic.

Acting beyond his jurisdiction, and without authorization from US Attorney for Idaho Wendy Olson, Bloxham contacted Detective Brad Williams of the Malheur County Sheriff's Office in Vale, Oregon to organize an undercover operation targeting the 45^th Parallel.  That operation culminated in a September 11, 2012 raid on the co-op and  marijuana growers associated with it.

Sixteen members of the coop were indicted. All but two – co-founders William Esbensen and Raymond Kangas – were eventually given probation; they were also required to pay fines directly to the Malheur County Sheriff's office. On June 6, Esbensen and Kangas were found guilty on multiple counts of “racketeering.” In essence, they were convicted of a conspiracy to offer a legally recognized medicine to people who needed it. They are presently confined at the Malheur County Jail awaiting sentencing. Kangas, who had no prior criminal record, is on suicide watch, which means that he is in danger of becoming Bloxham's second victim.

In March 2012, Esbensen, who owned a car dealership and a construction business in addition to the 45^th Parallel, was the subject of multiple “pretext stops” by officers from multiple agencies associated with the High Desert Narcotics Task Force (HDDTF).

“I decided to sell a camper on Craig's List,” Esbensen explained in an interview several weeks ago. “After I got an offer, I put a dealer plate on the rear of the camper and drove it from Vale to the clinic in Ontario, where I cleaned it up and got it ready to deliver to the buyer in Boise.”

Press conference in Vale following 45th Parallel bust. Where's the weed, Brian?

 By that time, the 45^th Parallel was under relentless surveillance by the HDDTF, which was constantly intercepting Idaho-bound traffic from the clinic. When Esbensen left the parking lot, the officers put their well-rehearsed plan into action.

“A few blocks away from my clinic, I was stopped by an Oregon State Trooper,” Esbensen continued. “He told me that a taillight wasn't working, so I fixed it there by the side of the road. While I was working, this guy goes, `It kind of smells like pot.' I called his bluff, telling him he was lying. He didn't know what to say, so he let me go.”

Esbensen made it to the I-84 exit, and was just barely across the state line when he was stopped by two Payette County Sheriff's deputies for a supposed “license plate violation” for displaying a single dealer's plate, as state law requires.

“Sure enough, as soon as they got near the vehicle, one of them said, `Hey, it kind of smells like pot,'” Esbensen recounted, his voice laden with weary disgust, Esbensen once again told the officers they were lying.

“You must think I'm really stupid,” he told the deputies. “Why would I be bringing pot into Idaho?”

The Payette County deputies let Esbensen go, but trailed him all the way to the county line – where they handed him off to an even larger contingent of costumed pests.

The moment he reached Canyon County “I was pulled over again – and this time there were five state police cars, in addition to the DEA, sheriff's deputies, and a K9 officer with a police car. The moment they stopped me, one of the officers shouted, `Get out of the car – it smells like pot!' I told him he was lying, and they sat me down in the back of a cop car while they ran the drug dog all around the camper.”

In his affidavit, ISP Trooper Christopher Cottrell claimed that when Esbensen rolled down his window, “I could immediately smell the strong odor of marijuana coming from the vehicle.” That was a lie, of course:  The drug-sniffing dog – which was trained not only to detect marijuana, but to follow prompts – absolutely failed to “alert” to the vehicle, much to the frustration of the road pirates who anticipated a headline-snagging bust and a lucrative forfeiture haul.

“They couldn't take it,” Esbensen recalled with a chuckle. “They didn't have any probable cause, and I had explicitly refused to consent to a search, but they went into the trailer anyway and searched it for 35 minutes. They found nothing but the cleanest trailer they had ever seen. And they also went into my personal effects – which they had no legal right to do – and they eventually found a single joint.”

“A search of the vehicle revealed a marijuana joint insider a black knap sack [sic] on the passenger seat,” in addition to “residue” in some baggies found therein, Cottrell later stated in his official report, in which the trooper implicitly claimed to possesses olfactory powers worthy of the Last Son of Krypton: His uniquely acute sense of smell detected a “strong odor” from a single joint that had eluded detection by a trained drug-sniffing dog.

“We got it!” snarled Cottrell to Esbensen, his face contorted in triumph as he held aloft the solitary, forlorn joint. “There you go – it's pot! Your ass is going to jail!”

“For a single joint?” Esbensen replied, shaking his head in resigned disgust. “That's a single ounce of marijuana, which is a misdemeanor. Write me a ticket.”

Although this well-coordinated operation failed to find evidence of any criminal offenses by Esbensen, it did yield some valuable intelligence.

“The one thing they found was my briefcase, which they held on to for several weeks,” Esbensen points out. “This case got passed along to three or four prosecutors, who didn't want to touch it. Eventually a judge ordered them to give me back my briefcase `before [I] sued someone.'”

The briefcase had a security lock to prevent unauthorized access. When Esbensen retrieved it, he discovered that the lock had been forced, and all of the privileged information in the case had been copied.

“They had access to our client list, our tax records, and all of our business information,” he summarizes.

That illegally acquired information was provided to DEA Agent Dustin Bloxham in Boise. Despite the fact that the 45^th Parallel was located in another state, the prospect of seizing its assets was irresistible.

“Attached is a copy of some evidence that was seized from [Esbensen's] vehicle,” Bloxham wrote in a March 29 2012 email to Marc Haws, an assistant US attorney for Idaho. “Thought maybe if you guys had a moment, you might be able to look through it and see if they are doing some pretty good business. I had glanced over it and it appears to me that some decent money is coming out of that business.”

Missing from that missive was any allegation of criminal behavior on the part of Esbensen and his associates – for very good reason: They were doing their considerable best to operate strictly within the law, as it was commonly understood.

“Our books were in order and they proved that we were selling all of our medicine at the legally defined price,” Esbensen told me. “We were one hundred percent transparent. We were part of the local Chamber of Commerce. We held town hall meetings and invited the cops.”

Esbensen's unabashed promotion of cannabis as a medicine earned the resentment of prohibitionists in Malheur County, and the malevolent attention of Agent Bloxham, who later testified that he first learned of the 45^th Parallel's operations through the media. It also attracted the attention of clients living in Idaho and other nearby states that still treat marijuana consumption as if it were a crime.

“I've dealt with people from both Idaho and Oregon who have sought help for cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, epilepsy,” Esbensen attests. “We had at least 100 to 150 patients who came to us trying to get off prescription pain pills – sometimes up to twenty-five pills a day. This included Oxycontin and other dangerous drugs. Many of them were sent over from Idaho – and even up from Utah – by doctors who couldn't help them, but wanted to see them get better. And if medical marijuana were widely accepted, the government and its allies in the pharmaceutical companies wouldn't get their pinch.”

Bloxham didn't just want a “pinch”; he wanted to grab everything he could from the 45^th Parallel. He pitched the idea to US Attorney Olson, who – in a display of unwonted restraint – declined to approve the investigation.

Bloxham was asked about jurisdictional issues during his testimony in the bench trial of Esbensen and Kangas. Undaunted by the fact that he had neither authorization from the Justice Department, nor an invitation from the Malheur County Sheriff's Office (which would have to deputize him to operate in its jurisdiction), Bloxham simply ran the investigation as a freelancer. He later claimed on the witness stand that “My jurisdiction is the entire United States.” To validate that claim he cited his previous work with a specialized DEA task force in California that operated in neighboring states as well.

Bloxham's handiwork: Barron, after being shot in the head.

Rather than demonstrating Bloxham’s professionalism and competence, his record in California suggests that he is an opportunistic killer.

On April 17, 2002, Bloxham took part in a military-style assault on the Santa Paula, California home of 22-year-old Edward Barron, who had allegedly sold meth to an undercover cop.

“The officers used a `Trojan Horse maneuver’ in which an unmarked car cruised by the house to divert [Barron’s] attention,” summarizes a 2007 appellate court ruling.

Fearing that he was being set up for a drive-by shooting, Barron told his girlfriend into his house, grabbed a gun to defend himself and his three young children, and went back outside. The decoy vehicle drove by again. As it did so, an unmarked DEA van pulled up and disgorged four agents, Bloxham among them. The masked agents approached Barron with drawn guns.

Barron tried to retreat into his home – an action dishonestly described by the police as “advance[ing] towards the house – and allegedly reached for his gun. Bloxham fired three shots, two of them hitting the victim in the back. The first severed his spinal cord, leaving him a quadriplegic.

During a March 2004 preliminary hearing, Bloxham – who doubtless describes himself as a trained observer – claimed that Barron, who was right-handed, fired his gun over his left shoulder while retreating into the house. When that account didn’t comport with the physical evidence, Bloxham was allowed to revise his testimony: During Barron’s trial, the DEA agent claimed that the victim had “held the gun pressed to his chest” and pointed it at the officers.

On the basis of this self-contradictory testimony, Barron was found guilty of “assault with a firearm” and given three years’ probation. The prosecutor generously offered a discounted sentence because Barron, who suffered from incurable total paralysis, was entirely dependent on his family. He died in June 2010 at age 30 of pneumonia, which was an outgrowth of his condition.

The Ventura County Medical Examiner ruled Barron’s death a “homicide.” The killer was  Dustin Bloxham, who was rewarded with a federal “Medal of Valor” and the DEA’s Badge of Valor. He eventually returned to his native Idaho, where he carries out undercover operations on behalf of the local prohibitionist apparat – which Bill Esbensen characterizes as a “syndicate.”

“I'm convinced that there are drug dealers with badges in the Treasure Valley,” Esbensen told me a few weeks before being sent to jail. “The day we were raided, police on both sides of the Snake River hit a total of 11 grow areas in two states. They claimed to have seized seven hundred mature marijuana plants – each of them the size of a Christmas tree, basically. This was enough to fill a parking lot. Yet we've only been able to account for about one-tenth that number. So what happened to all of the rest? Did they end up in the hands of people who are working both sides of the law? Did somebody in law enforcement steal enough confiscated pot to fill a parking lot?”

Esbensen’s suspicions have merit. During his trial, Detective Williams testified that all of the confiscated marijuana plants had been taken to the nearby Lytle Landfill and buried. The manager of the landfill told me that he believes the marijuana plants were dumped into “a really big hole” but had no records confirming that this happened. When I inquired about this at the Solid Waste Disposal department, I was again told that no records of the burial exist and directed to “ask the Sheriff’s Office” – whose uncorroborated story was already a matter of record.

 

Deputy Williams: Where's the weed, Brad?

“These guys are racketeers – the state police on both sides of the river, the Malheur County Sheriff's Office, the Payette County Sheriff's Office, the DEA, they're all mobbed up and running what amounts to a syndicate,” Esbensen contends. “They get money from the Feds for every seizure, whether or not actual trafficking is taking place. And as I said, nobody can account for all of the marijuana they actually confiscate.”

Some of the seized marijuana may have found its way into the possession of a disaffected former 45^th Parallel associate,  a woman with a criminal history who is now operating a medical marijuana facility -- or as she would describe it, a "wellness center" --  in Ontario that is located within 1000 feet of a school.

The owner, Tricia Gardner, was among the chief witnesses against Esbensen. She filed paperwork to open her clinic the day prior to the raid on the 45^th Parallel, and her business is a carbon copy of the one that had been operated by Esbensen and Kangas. She was arrested and charged along with fifteen of her associates, and agreed to a deal involving a $6000 fine (which, like the others, was to be paid directly to the sheriff’s office) and probation. A pending forgery charge against her was also quietly dropped.

Gardner’s meth-related criminal record disqualifies her from operating that clinic, which is also illegal under a city medical marijuana moratorium that recently went into effect. Its proximity to a school would normally attract the attention of the DEA.  She clearly enjoys the protection of the “syndicate” Esbensen describes – and whose activities we will continue to examine in our next installment.

Notes and Asides  

My friends, this is a very substantial story, and I hope you will follow it to the end. I certainly intend to do so -- and I can use your help. The blessing of being a free agent is that I can immerse myself in stories of this kind and report them without being filtered by timorous editors (so far, not a word about any of this has been published in the local press). The curse of my condition is that I have no resources to fund my work and pay my expenses. I'm grateful beyond measure for the generosity so many of you have displayed, and earnestly hope you can continue to help. Thank you so much!

The inimitable Jeffrey Tucker, founder of the Liberty.me online community, recently interviewed me about police militarization, the Drug War, and related topics. The interview can be seen here.  

Listen to or download the most recent Freedom Zealot Podcast here. 

Once again, I could really use your financial help -- and we are grateful for your generosity. God bless. 

Dum spiro, pugno!