Consider this quote, if you will:

"We're living in the middle of a witch hunt and fat people are the witches," said Marilyn Wann of San Francisco, a militant member of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. "It's gotten markedly worse in the last few years because of the propaganda that fatness, a natural human characteristic, is somehow a form of disease."

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/diet.fitness/08/02/fat.activism.ap/index.html

OK, so you're saying, "what's the beef?" I'll tell you what.

It's the word 'militant' in the description of the quotee. This word has become watered down. Check out the second definition from Merriam-Webster online:

2 : aggressively active (as in a cause) : COMBATIVE 
militant conservationists 
a militant attitude

I submit that the use of the word 'militant' is a terror word. Go ahead and laugh, America. But back in the Black Panther days, a militant protester was an angry young person with a Molotov cocktail in one hand and Abbey Hoffman's Steal This Book in the other. For me, it is an extreme word, not to be used lightly.

Does CNN really mean to imply that there's a growing movement of overweight people who are amassing guns and planning terror strikes? Or is this merely a form of allowable journalistic hyperbole? Once again, you be the judge. Me, I would have picked a different word.

Time to dust off this blog, it seems. Quickly, before middle-age dementia and lack of typing skills sets in.

Here's what occurred to me last night: the framers of the Constitution had a lot on the ball. They wrote a pretty good document for their day, and it worked to bring to life our system of government, that "holiest of holies" in this world of lurking threats, Democracy. Not that a nation governed by the republic was a radical concept in those days - so to correct those revisionists out there, we did not invent democracy. We just made a good one.

So, looking back over what they had created, the framers immediately set about to amend it. And what is the first thing they amended it to say? Congress shall make no law abrogating the freedom of speech, or of the press. In other words, you are allowed to disagree with the government - and you are allowed to say so. In fact, the most patriotic thing you can do is to dissent. Remember, that's why we broke away and formed a new nation. We weren't free to speak our minds until then.

Now I want you to notice that the right to bear arms comes second. Not first. The idea is to shoot your mouth off before you shoot your neighbor's head off. Got it?