Hundreds of Americans, young and old, are regularly going to prison, sometimes for months or years or decades, for nonviolently resisting U.S. militarism.

They block ports, ships, submarines, trains full of weapons, trucks full of weapons, and gates to military bases. They take hammers to weapons of mass destruction, cause millions of dollars worth of damage, hang up banners, and wait to be arrested. They cause weapons systems to be canceled, facilities to be closed, and Pentagon policies to be changed. They educate and inspire greater resistance.

The people who do this take great risks. U.S. courts are extremely unpredictable, and the same action can easily result in no jail time or years behind bars. Many of these people have families, and the separation is usually painful. But many say they could not do this without their families or without their close-knit communities of like-thinking resisters. A support network of several people is generally needed for each resister.

Dear Ms. Rhimes:
You are one of the bravest, most extraordinary women on TV and you are going to help save us from election fraud.

Thank you for creating the ABC television series "Scandal," -- and in particular for taking on the bedrock of democracy, voting rights. All of our other rights rest upon voting rights.

I also applaud your diverse cast, which includes many women in leading roles.

Over the last ten years, I, like many others, have written to numerous media and entertainment outlets to implore them to help us get rid of all electronic voting machines and bring democracy to our voting system and our country. To no avail, alas.

And then I saw a recent episode of "Scandal," entitled "Defiance," which did just this, in part, by addressing charges of election fraud in Defiance, Ohio in a fictional format.

The Second Amendment does NOT guarantee the right of any and all citizens to own any and all kinds of guns.  

It DEMANDS, in the name of national security, that we regulate it.  

NEVER let assertions of the so-called "sanctity" of the 2d Amendment bully you into thinking it guarantees unregulated weapon ownership.  

It does NOT.  

Contrary to the propaganda perpetrated by the gun lobby, the 2d Amendment is the most heavily modified, curbed, explained, complex and contradictory of all the first ten Amendments.  

The slaughter of small children along with teachers, a principle and so many other innocents was the furthest thing from James Madison's mind when he wrote the Bill of Rights.  

He compiled it from a wide range of documents, including the Bills of Rights of Virginia (co-written with Thomas Jefferson) and other states to pacify the new nation's grassroots abhorrence of a strong federal government.  If our basic rights were not clearly and explicitly guaranteed, Americans were ready to rise up for a second revolution.  

PREAMBLE
Whereas the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not self-enforcing,
Whereas statement of the inherent dignity and of the equal and supposedly inalienable rights of all members of the human family achieves little without a struggle against greed, injustice, tyranny, and war,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights could not have resulted in the barbarous acts that have outraged the conscience of humankind without the cowardice, laziness, apathy, and blind obedience of well-meaning but unengaged spectators,

Whereas proclaiming as the highest aspiration of the common people the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want doesn't actually produce such a world,

Whereas nonviolent rebellion against tyranny and oppression must be a first resort rather than a last, and must be our constant companion into the future if justice and peace are to be achieved and maintained,