http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090725/ap_on_re_us/us_camping_for_freedom

By ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer Adam Geller, Ap National Writer – 1 hr 12 mins ago

LANCASTER, N.H. – He fled the “People’s Republic of Massachusetts” to escape tyranny. Now he strides the campground in a plaid kilt and mirror shades, an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle across his torso, an immense Scottish sword sheathed between his shoulders.

Out here, though, the only signs of danger are the ones warning drivers to watch out for moose. Could it be he senses a threat we’re not seeing?

“Not expecting,” says the swordsman, who calls himself Doobie, grinning broadly. “Just ready.”

There’s no escaping the long arm of big government — even here at the far edge of a state whose license plate decrees that without freedom from oppressive authority you might as well choose death. But for Doobie and 500 others, this tent colony on this particular weekend is about as close to Libertarian Nirvana as they’re likely to get.

They’ve come for the Porcupine Freedom Festival, four days of beer, burgers and bonfires. But more importantly, they are here to carve out an enclave of less government and more liberty to do as they wish.

They are here to show a lost nation the way back to its political roots.

It hasn’t been an easy message to sell these past few years. Their group, the Free State Project, has struggled to attract followers. But now, with Americans thinking anew about the reach and role of government, Free Staters see at least the hint of an opening.

So this weekend, they drink to the future. Between swigs of a custom brew called Overregulated Ale, they ridicule the Federal Reserve, applaud the defeat of a bill that would have required the wearing of seat belts, bemoan higher taxes and restrictions on gun rights.

“We said bad things are going to happen and they happen,” Jason Sorens, a political science professor, preaching to the crowd clustered around picnic tables. “We say, we told you so.”
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http://www.nydailynews.com/…

The NYPD wants to cloak midtown with the same security blanket it rolled out for lower Manhattan: camera license plate readers, and radiation and bio scanners.

Those measures covering Manhattan south of Canal St. will slowly be applied to midtown, from 34th to 59th Sts., river to river, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the City Council Public Safety Committee.

“We want to take that model, protecting the 1.7 square miles south of Canal and replicate it in midtown Manhattan,” Kelly said after the hearing Tuesday.

The NYPD wants $21 million in federal homeland security dollars to put toward the midtown project, estimated to cost $58 million.

Modeled after London’s “Ring of Steel,” the NYPD opened its coordination center last November, with cops monitoring feeds from 300 cameras and 30 mobile license plate readers in lower Manhattan.

The 24-hour center, based in a nondescript Broadway building, keeps tabs on high-profile terror targets such as the World Trade Center site and Wall Street.

Plans are underway to have some 3,000 cameras, public and privately owned, and as many as 96 fixed license-plate readers feeding into the center south of Canal St.

The NYPD is also looking to install permanent license plate scanners at each of the 20 crossings into Manhattan as part of an elaborate new safety scheme.

Police also want to install sensors to detect biological and radiological weapons.

The lower Manhattan plan costs an estimated $92 million. The department has already invested about $84 million to secure Manhattan south of Canal St., river to river.

It’s getting ridiculous in Manhattan. They recently opened the new 1, R, W station downtown at the South Ferry. Since then the NYPD has had a table set up to search people at least 50% of the time I’ve left work. Far more often than the old 1 station. I’ve yet to be stopped but mostly because I come in from behind them and they focus on the new entrance rather than the opened area coming from the R,W entry. I still plan on pressing my luck by informing the officer that since I’ve been denied entrance to the 1 I’ll take the R.

http://news.bostonherald.com/

Peabody cops will pocket extra pay to work Sept. 11 or take a day off, thanks to a new union contract.

Even though the date commemorating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America is neither a state nor federal holiday, officers who work it will receive time-and -a-quarter compensation, while others will have the option of taking the day off, said Manny Costa, president of the Peabody Police Benevolent Association.

One 9/11 victim’s brother, contacted by the Herald, voiced disgust.

“I’m really shocked,” said the brother, who asked that his name be withheld. “They’re just taking advantage of a tragic event for their own gain, and I don’t appreciate it.”

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http://www.newsday.com/

A homeless man’s discovery of documents purported to be blueprints for the Freedom Tower is a serious security breach and has prompted an internal investigation, a spokesman for the Port Authority said Friday.

Workers found to have broken rules governing the disposal of the blueprints will be fired, and contractors whose employees may have mishandled the papers could lose their contract to build the 1,776-foot tower, Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman said.

“We already have protocols in place” to prevent sensitive documents from falling into the wrong hands, Coleman said, adding, “We don’t tolerate stupidity.

Right. Well, discuss amongst yourselves.