A white supremacist buys up land in a little North Dakota town, gets an NYT article written about him.

"People have knocked on [Paul Craig] Cobb’s red door to offer to buy back his land and to preach the Gospel."

The City Council is looking into potential ordinance or health code violations (his home has no septic tank or running water). There is a doomsday plan in place, Mr. Schock explained: If enough of Mr. Cobb’s friends move in to gain a majority that could vote out the current government, the Council would immediately dissolve the town....

“Just want to let you know I’m not going to cause any trouble,” he said to Don Hauge, 61, who rolled up in a red Chevy pickup truck to where Mr. Cobb was sitting on a bench, peering through smudged rectangular glasses that slid down the bridge of his nose. Mr. Cobb is a lanky figure, dressed neatly in a button-down shirt tucked into slender black slacks he says he bought from someone who had stolen them, and rubber sandals.

It's a little hard to figure out what the issue is, in this, a free country.  Here's a key paragraph:

The Southern Poverty Law Center and The Bismarck Tribune revealed that the man, Paul Craig Cobb, 61, has been buying up property in this town of 24 people in an effort to transform it into a colony for white supremacists.

What constitutes a "colony"? Like-minded people converging on the same place? What makes that wrong? Isn't that the story of America?

I'm not a fan of white supremacists, just of the freedom of thought and speech and the right to migrate and to buy property. The fact that Cobb is "wanted in Canada on charges of promoting hatred" only underscores these American values, which are also offended by looking for health code violations because you don't like someone's political opinions.

"A 4-minute video by the Air Force Research Laboratory on 'micro aerial vehicles' shows a futuristic bee-size drone flying in an open window..."

"... and taking out an enemy sniper with a miniature explosive payload. Since it was posted in 2009, it has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times and reposted all over the Web."



That's from the NYT article, "Visions of Drones Swarming U.S. Skies Hit Bipartisan Nerve."

[Rand] Paul’s soliloquy has tapped into a common anxiety on the left and the right about the dangers of unchecked government...
“It’s not merely the black helicopter crowd of the folks on the far right,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups. “What Rand Paul had to say about drones absolutely fired up conspiracy theorists on the left as well as the right.”

Human Rights Watch plans to join other groups next month in starting an effort called the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots....

In Washington, Code Pink, a leftist group of antiwar activists, showed up with flowers and chocolates at Mr. Paul’s Senate offices on Thursday to thank him for standing up against abuses of power. Known around Capitol Hill mainly for disrupting Congressional hearings, the group had found a new champion.