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Gyro-Copter Lands On West Lawn of US Capitol, Pilot Arrested
An anonymous reader writes that Doug Hughes, 61, a mailman from Ruskin, Florida was arrested for landing a gyro-copter on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. "A 61-year-old Florida mailman was arrested Wednesday after he landed a gyrocopter on the U.S. Capitol west lawn. The gyrocopter was carrying the pilot and 535 stamped letters for members of Congress urging 'real reform' to campaign finance laws. Doug Hughes told the Tampa Bay Times ahead of the afternoon stunt that he notified authorities 'well over an hour in advance of getting to the no-fly zone, so they know who I am and what I'm doing.' Capitol police sent dogs and a bomb squad to the scene. Nothing hazardous was found. A city block from the Capitol had been cordoned off."
Cut the guy some slack. He simply wanted to fly to D.C.; he had his own gyrocopter, and he really didn't feel like having his nuts groped by the TSA.
Can you really blame him?
I mean, I do not advocate the death penalty for stupidity, but I am shocked he wasn't hit by a sniper before he even crossed the property line.
A 61-year-old Florida mailman was arrested Wednesday after he landed a gyrocopter on the U.S. Capitol west lawn. The gyrocopter was carrying the pilot and 535 stamped letters for members of Congress urging 'real reform' to campaign finance laws.
So in other words, they arrested a Federal Employee on Federal Property for doing his job.
...is now the SECOND-craziest SOB ever to fly one of those things.
a drone
Campaign finance reform is a somewhat partisan issue. Some Republicans oppose limits on campaign spending. Money can buy many things in Washington, but it can't buy votes. Bloomberg found that out in Colorado involving gun control. I wonder if Hillary or Jeb will be able to buy the presidency in 2016.
So, this guy published the the fact that he was going to do this on his blog and in email before he did it. Here's the quote from "Thehill.com":
On the webpage thedemocracyclub.org, he wrote: ''My flight is not a secret. Before I took off, I sent an Email to info@barackobama.com. The letter is intended to persuade the guardians of the Capitol that I am not a threat and that shooting me down will be a bigger headache than letting me deliver these letters to Congress.''
Tell me again, what our incredible spying and surveillance program is supposed to be doing? Because, I'm pretty sure this is the definition of "intelligence failure" in all senses of the phrase.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Talk about direct MAIL service with a personal Touch..
So after informing the auth. of this issue, i bet he was still arrested, and charged with some mundane, not even remotely realistic reason, and will subsequently end up in a MAXIUM federal Pen with rapists, druglords, REAL TERRORISTS, and others of a truly unsavory character with a 100+ yr sentence..
Pathetic
535 stamped letters for members of Congress urging 'real reform' to campaign finance laws
Wouldn't it be simpler just to get rid of democracy instead? Whether you think democracy is a facade or real, it's past its use-by date, if it ever was a good idea.
Our failures of leadership need to have a little fear put into their hearts. Yes, anyone with a $500 drone, a gyrocopter, or the ability to climb a fence can get close enough to do some damage.
I would be happy to defend the good old USA by donating to this patriots defense fund.
> "An anonymous reader writes that Doug Hughes, 61, a mailman from Ruskin, Florida"...
I'm tired, and managed to somehow read that as "a mailman from Russia". I was pretty impressed with the guy's dedication, flying a gyro-copter all the way to DC!
I would love to see an organized protest (of anything) that involved a fleet of hundreds of quad-copters converging on the capital...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Simulated call...
Suspect: I'm going to deliver some mail by Gyrocopter on the west lawn of the capitol buliding. Here's my ID and flight plan.
Spook: Uhm, that's a no-fly zone...
Suspect: Thanks for letting me do this.
Spook: We'll have plenty of capitol police around you when you get there.
The US Government doesn't accept mail at sites anymore... they download it from Earth Class Mail.
One of the first produced autogyros was for mail delivery and landed on the White House lawn. That one got a trophy from Pres Hoover.
Here is the problem with the news and the comments above.
I went on to deliver letters for members of Congress urging 'real reform' to campaign finance laws but nobody will remember him for that.
He'll be remembered as the guy whom landed a gyro-copter on the Capitol's lawn. This is sad.
What a man. Even if you disagree with his message (I can't think of anyone who would) the sheer courage to go ahead with this plan is astounding. What a man. Can we donate to his legal fund yet?
Once he radioed in to tell them he was with the USPS the secret service knew for sure he could not possibly be an armed maniac.
Nullius in verba
Dear ___________,
Consider the following statement by John Kerry in his farewell speech to the Senate —
"The unending chase for money I believe threatens to steal our democracy itself. They know it. They know we know it. And yet, Nothing Happens!" — John Kerry, 2-13
In a July 2012 Gallup poll, 87% tagged corruption in the federal government as extremely important or very important, placing this issue just barely behind job creation. According to Gallup, public faith in Congress is at a 41-year record low, 7%. (June 2014) Kerry is correct. The popular perception outside the DC beltway is that the federal government is corrupt and the US Congress is the major problem. As a voter, I'm a member of the only political body with authority over Congress. I'm demanding reform and declaring a voter's rebellion in a manner consistent with Jefferson's description of rights in the Declaration of Independence. As a member of Congress, you have three options.
1. You may pretend corruption does not exist.
2. You may pretend to oppose corruption while you sabotage reform.
3. You may actively participate in real reform.
If you're considering option 1, you may wonder if voters really know what the 'chase for money' is. Your dismal and declining popularity documented by Gallup suggests we know, but allow a few examples, by no means a complete list. That these practices are legal does not make them right! Obviously, it is Congress who writes the laws that make corruption legal.
1. Dozens of major and very profitable corporations pay nothing in taxes. Voters know how this is done. Corporations pay millions to lobbyists for special legislation. Many companies on the list of freeloaders are household names — GE, Boeing, Exxon Mobil, Verizon, Citigroup, Dow
2. Almost half of the retiring members of Congress from 1998 to 2004 got jobs as lobbyists earning on average fourteen times their Congressional salary. (50% of the Senate, 42% of the House)
3. The new democratic freshmen to the US House in 2012 were 'advised' by the party to schedule 4 hours per day on the phones fund raising at party headquarters (because fund raising is illegal from gov't offices.) It is the donors with deep pockets who get the calls, but seldom do the priorities of the rich donor help the average citizen.
4. The relevant (rich) donors who command the attention of Congress are only .05% of the public (5 people in a thousand) but these aristocrats of both parties are who Congress really works for. As a member of the US Congress, you should work only for The People.
1. Not yourself.
2. Not your political party.
3. Not the richest donors to your campaign.
4. Not the lobbyist company who will hire you after your leave Congress.
There are several credible groups working to reform Congress. Their evaluations of the problem are remarkably in agreement though the leadership (and membership) may lean conservative or liberal. They see the corrupting effect of money — how the current rules empower special interests through lobbyists and PACs — robbing the average American of any representation on any issue where the connected have a stake. This is not democracy even if the ritual of elections is maintained.
The various mechanisms which funnel money to candidates and congress-persons are complex. It happens before they are elected, while they are in office and after they leave Congress. Fortunately, a solution to corruption is not complicated. All the proposals are built around either reform legislation or a Constitutional Amendment. Actually, we need both — a constitutional amendment and legislation.
There will be discussion about the structure and details of reform. As I see it, campaign finance reform is the cornerstone of building an honest Congress. Erect a wall of separation between our elected officials and big money. This you must do — or your replacement will do. A corporation is not 'people' and no individ
most americans agree with him
he could have chosen a better way to make his point. but he'll be prosecuted, and the corruption will continue
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Does not have any sense of humor at all.
if a fly so much as takes a shit behind the fences. Americans love to make themselves seem important in ways like these.
Balloon boy is going to be pisseddd
I heard they get you drunk first. Perhaps it is better for people that like the social lubricant.
It's gotta come from the right clearance to get there.
Come on, he had AT LEAST 100 feet of clearance. If that's not enough I don't know what is.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So instead of there being a helicopter in the air with a human at controls
What about an auto-gyro with 30 lbs or so of C4? Do you still want the "human at the controls"? You don't know what the intentions are, you just know it's very illegal to be there yet there he is.
At this point you'd have to be an idiot to be a terrorist and not try to pilot a small explosive laden gyro into some major target, since it's obviously so easy.
I can't believe the "no fly zone" over Washington is such a total sham with not even a monitoring aircraft on top of him. Just like the Pirate Code, the No Fly Zone appears to be more of what you would call guidelines than an actual rule...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Step 1) Call/email ahead and say you are totally harmless.
Step 2) Fly/Drive/Swim vehicle packed to the gill with explosives right into your target without bother.
Step 3) Prophet!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
yeah baby!
"And I will tell you completely honestly: I'd rather die in the flight than live to be 80 years old and see this country fall."
I'd think so....
What he is pointing out is the money corruption going on and making this whole political game a charade - just look at those faces... clowns?
It would be worth laughing about it if it wouldn'd be so sad.
Yes I am. I suggest you read beyond the first sentence to find out why.
I will donate $1000 to the first Super PAC willing to make federal gyrocopter subsidy a top priority. (Seriously those things are awesome, but we still don't have a good tipjet solution.)
You invoked thinking about the children, therefore your argument is invalid.
"most americans agree with him"
Nope. The guy is a union hack with a government job who was probably foaming-at-the-mouth after getting some new bit of propaganda from his union; I have a relative like this - totally ignores all facts and goes on wild rants against Republicans, Libertarians, the Supreme Court, etc every time his union spoon feeds him some more lies. Pay attention to what was in his letter! Like all these guys, his complaints are entrirely one-sided. He and his union want their politician-buying toys back..... WAAAAAAAAAH!
The thing that REALLY sets the unions off is the Citizens United supreme court ruling that, for the first time, declared that unions were not the only ones who could shovel massive piles of cash into campaigns. For decades, the nation's big unions have poured millions of dollars into every election cycle to elect Democrats and get Democrat policies enacted and get Democrat judges appointed while their opponents were forbidden from responding on equal terms. Unions could negotiate deals in big cities like Chicago that made it so their memeber got paid days off at election time so they could do huge get-out-the-vote activites (those enourmous campaign costs for all those man-hours of work were NEVER accounted for in campaign finance rules AND taxpayers of ALL parties were paying for it without knowing!). The Supreme Court makes ONE ruling that only PARTIALLY levels the field (corporations still cannot have thousands of their employees work full-time on get-out-the-vote activities while billing the costs to the taxpayers and not reporting any of or to the FEC as in-kind contributons!) and the Unions go insane.
The unions of federal employees (like the one this guy is from) have become VERY arrogant over the years, having negotiated (with the Democrats they helped elect using their pre-Citizens United unbalanced contributions) so-called "official time". There are THOUSANDS of federal government employees whose wages, benefits and retirement are paid by the taxpayers but who work FULL TIME, year-round on union matters and NEVER actually do ANYTHING for the taxpayers - in fact they are working against those very taxpayers by using their time pushing for higher wages and benefits, policies that make it harder to fire bad workers, etc.
In the wake of Citizens United, I doubt the GOP will ever let the Democrats turn the clock back to the one-sided campaign financing days; The ONLY way to undo Citizens United is with legislation and ANY deal in congress will have to get union money out of politics too (THAT is a form of "Campaign Finance Reform" the Democrats and this dude's union will NEVER accept)
The bigger picture is, ultimately .gov doesn't monitor and control the whole spectrum. .Gov I agree is adept at other popular parts of spectrum and hardware like mobile phones,
They might be able to jam some parts of it. and OWN others.
Haarp claims to jam entire global spectrum while set up own network, but _I ain't_ seen it proven.
Until proven, it remains a BRAGGING MYTH -
Personally I think they have moved on to the NEXTRAD stations with Spraying Compliments
but hey I am just a stupid derp and besides what the fuck could I do about it besides keep ranting
and blurting it out like a homeless mental patient
and maybe even desktop/laptops, but they hardly can't even really monitor everything at all times.
Even with unlimited budget. Some things you can't just throw money at.
Facts:
FCC would be most adept at tracking down rogue transmitter 2 second burst is enough to triangle you -VS- IF they are lookin. (this is key)
Military after that. If military is going after your transmitter - expect 2K bombs, Bombs DO destroy transmitters
So take today this win against these oath breaking enemies! .gov can't crack good encryption with good hygene .gov can't watch all frequencies all the time
a.
But is your hardware or firmware a compromised chain of custody?
b.
Even if they CAN for a segment of time, the chances of them
reacting with something that CONTROLS the custom signal is unlikely.
Surely they can only copy and replay back my existing commands, but if I
CHANGE them with TIME SYNC or something else, their defence just FAILED, and further more
my little TOY is a successful sortie regardless of expenses, at least until they find my patterns and time sync sources.
With that said, what they do watch they RECORD for PLAYBACK. This deserves a rant on it's own. Not my rant today.
It's time for .gov to not give a crap about TOY airplanes and helicoptors who are NOT a
TERRORISM THREAT. And NO BECAUSE YOU Do Not want to be filmed while you
BREAK YOU OATH doesn't give you a STATE SECRETS PASS to hide from toys trying to penetrate.
Do I think flying shit near the whitehouse is good Idea? No. But I also don't want over-reaction.
I am sick of IL-LOGIC. If it's ILLEGAL to spread state secrets in public, then there is already a LAW for governing the white house, so there is no need to PROTECT from TOY RC aircraft since your Classified DATA is in a fucking VAULT not openly displayed in the sunlight on the outside WHite House Grounds.
My Opinion: What we the people need more than your DRONE horseshit, is a few HIDDEN CAMERA to catch TREASON in your own OFFICE. Quit attacking your own country, and embracing those who ATTACK Americans or get the fuck out of office.
Corporate media wants to talk about Obamacare, Getting Vaccines, and Banning Guns. Americans (not these socialist/commie fucks) want to talk about TREASON, OATH BREAKING, the Constitution and bill of rights- It will come to a HEAD. You ain't going to keep fucking us much longer.
c. No/Bad data in, means no exploitable data back out
SADLY - The TREASON and framing and modifying DATA to target good people remains
There's a common theme here.
TREASON AGAINST AMERICA.
That's who runs shit.
It's EXACTLY THE WAY THEY WANT
Next time HIllary talks about Democracy, you tell that fuckin treasonous bitch fuck off this is a Constitutional Republic and the FOUNDERS WARNED AGAINST HER MOTHERFUCKING DEMOCRACY HORSESHIT
Now that I've witnessed this I demand that all my mail is delivered to me in this fashion.
Surely I'm not the only one who noticed the guard whose belly hung so far over his beltline that it jiggled as he trotted towards the scene. Surely there has to be some physical fitness requirements for his job.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
There is no democracy when corporations are allowed unlimited campaign donations, have the rights of 'people', and can direct their media/news to support their candidates..
If all the information most of the population get is from controlled sources, then theres no hope for "3rd party" and nothing will ever really change.. :(
Republican or democratic parties, Bush, Obama... Other than token issues theres no difference.
Remember folks the wealthiest 400(four hundred) people in the USA own more assets than the lower 150 million(150,000,000) people combined.
Like drop those same letters in a mailbox? Those were 100 to 1 against telecom immunity....D's and R's DGAF. This was a harmless stunt that got him worldwide press - doubt you could come up with something that would have got him more attention, as one man, peacefully.
So here we are with our mega-giga-buck super high tech defense system complete with a spy system that the gestapo would admire and we can't stop drones or gyro copters or even people from invading the White House. A couple of alert sentries with shot guns could have dealt with this before either the drone or the gyrocopter made it to the lawn. It reminds me of small people with black pajamas running the US out of Vietnam.
... as this man's actions were hardly a secret, and yet.
The truth is out there in plain sight, no need for super secret privacy invasion.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Gyrocopter FUCK YEAH!
coming to save the motherfucking day...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Who said it was a guy in 'drone'.
I think the guy was the drone.
Doug Hughes, 61, a mailman from Ruskin, Florida was arrested for landing a gyro-copter on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol.
headline should read :
Floridaman lands GYRO-COPTER on US Capitol lawn to save the Republic
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Florida Man, that says it all.
maybe April 15 wasn't a good day to pull a stunt like that, LEO could be nervous.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The downdraft of any reasonably large helicopter would have forced him down in short order.
*some dude flies a drone over D.C.* Wasn't this story in the Bible?
and most slashdotters, like most of the media, don't want to look.
However, tell me another way to get national attention to a protest if you're not Rupert Murdoch, or one of the Koch Bros. "Money equals free speech" means that if you ain''t a multimillionaire, and don' t have the right friends, your "free speech rights" are utterly meaningless.
Let me also note that the 22yr old who committed suicide on the Capitol steps was also protesting, asking Congress to tax the 1%.
Maybe these guys are doing it wrong. Maybe they needed to go to the Capitol steps, go into full lotus position, and burn themselves to death, and maybe *then* their protest would get attention. It certainly did during 'Nam, when the Buddhist monks did it....
mark
Video of autogyro landing on White House lawn. The President came out to greet the pilot.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
If only there were some meaning to that date which would explain why such stunts are more common on that date.
Learn to love Alaska
Of course we knew that. If he had nefarious intentions, he wouldn't have warned your beloved authorities in advance or flown a 200 lbs capacity gyrocopter.
It's time to put away the plastic sheets and stop wetting the bed on command for the national insecurity state, the greatest pork project in the history of the world. Your couch is more likely to kill you than a terrorist, so stop hiding under the bed and throwing your rights away anytime someone knocks on the door.
so... in order to bomb the white house all one has to do is call ahead, say it's a publicity stunt, then break their promise.