A protester on private property well outside the security perimeter established for Barack Obama's town hall meeting yesterday carried a pistol in an exposed "tactical" thigh rig hours before the President arrived in New Hampshire. He got quite a bit of attention for his rather foolish effort.

There was absolutely nothing illegal about his actions, much to the consternation of the media, but it was still a pointless bit of provocation. In addition to being armed, he was holding a sign that said "It's time to water the tree of Liberty," an obvious reference to the famous Thomas Jefferson quote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

So who and what is William Kostric?

The sign itself provides the first clue about what kind of person Kostric is and who he associates with, with the URL to restoretherepublic.com printed prominently at the bottom. The site clearly identifies itself as part of the fringe "free state" movement, and actively promotes various conspiracy theories... and of course, Ron Paul.

A left-wing blog claims to have found his MySpace page, and it appears to confirm that Kostric is—well,—what most of us would call nuts.

All that aside, like Gaius, I'm curious...

...Why is Captain Conspiracy wearing an earpiece?

The possibility of him being a purposeful diversion seems legitimate, if you factor in that another man, Richard Terry Young, ended up being arrested at the same event for having an unlicensed, loaded handgun in his vehicle. Young was first stopped because of a pocket knife he had as he tried to enter the event, and the gun was discovered in his vehicle in a subsequent search.

It is quite possible that both men were acting independently, but if I were in charge of the President's security, I'd want that verified for certain.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 327 words, total size 3 kb.