Author Archives: John Flannery

Louie’s Lock and Load Eatery

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John Flannery with his six shooter

I’m Louie, originally from up around Pleasant Avenue in Manhattan, the “Big Apple,” where we have the Sullivan laws and guns are verboten.  We got a crazy Governor who is imposing even more stringent gun laws.  Who needs that?  It’s nature’s way to thin the herd – violence I mean. Guns don’t kill people. It’s the men with guns who kill people.  They’d do the same thing with a jack knife.

So I came to the hand gun capitol of the world, Virginia, where a man can wrap his hand around a gun and carry it almost anywhere. I could feel the air fill my lungs with liberty when I crossed the Potomac.  This is a place that understands the Second Amendment. Continue reading →

Equal Justice Under the Law – Unless You’re Gay

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Our Governor is not the worst homophobe in America but he is a contender.

Our Commonwealth is not the worst in its intolerance of gays but it’s got nothing to be proud of either.

In Loudoun County, we have a Board of Supervisors indifferent to the fact that one of its members, Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, is a gay bashing demagogue.

I wrote each member of the Board of Supervisors to ask them to disavow this bigotry.  Our Board has no shame in its silence. As that old 60s tune went, “Hello Darkness my old friend.”  Janet Clarke wrote she felt no obligation to respond at all.  And she didn’t.  By their silence, may we know them. Continue reading →

Just a kid!

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I’m just a kid, 16 ½ years old.  The half year matters.  I’m getting older.  I play b-ball and f-ball at Park View High School and can palm a ball.  I like rap, rhyme and rhythm.  I’m kind of square.  I hang with great kids, no h8ers, and I’m blessed that they seem to like me.  My Mom and Dad are fine.  My Dad’s white and my Mom’s black.  So I’m like President Barack although I’m Caleb and my parents are race-reversed.  Like a verse I’d rehearse.  I’m a person of color but don’t feel that I’m treated differently.

We live in a nice home.  The other homes on Pullman Court are like ours – all nice – very much the same.

My friends joke I’m “black Irish” — so we’re going out tonight – to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.   It’s quiet in my house so I’m going to sneak out now, and go out with my friends.  I kind of know better.  But my parents must have done the same when they were my age.  Huck Finn did this kind of thing.  Right? Continue reading →

Who Cares for the Ill in America?

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I was Republican Senator Orrin Hatch’s special counsel when he was chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources; I was especially proud to hear Hatch’s statement last June commending the states to participate in the expansion of Medicaid, to cover adults earning 138 percent of the poverty level, thus providing needed health care for those who were ill who couldn’t afford to care for themselves.

An income level of 138 percent works out to about $14,856 for an individual and $30,656 for a family of four. Compare those levels to your income and expenses, and those you may know who could be helped by this legislation.

In Virginia, this provision would cover 400,000 more Virginians, create 30,000 more jobs, bring $21 billion in federal funding over several years into our state.

Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly, in neighboring Fairfax County, put it this way, if we opt in, our state shall receive “$17 in federal funds for every state dollar it spends on its Medicaid expansion program.” Continue reading →

Young “Strangers” in a hostile land?

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My Aunt married an immigrant from Peru who became a US Citizen by volunteering as a young man to fight for this nation in World War II.

Uncle Jack was a hard-working, tall, athletic, and distinguished looking man but his Latino accented English and facial features invited discrimination from Nativist Americans.

Jefferson wrote that “that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

About ten years later, the promise of this declaration shrunk in the context of our nation’s constitution, hollowed out by excluding coverage of “these rights” to slaves, to women and, basically, to persons without property. Continue reading →

Theists and Atheists – an overheard Dialogue

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Pastor Don Prange, St. James UCC, Lovettsville

Pastor Don Prange, St. James UCC, Lovettsville

Recently, Pastor Don Prange hosted atheists at St. James Church in Lovettsville for a dialogue with his congregation on “evolution weekend.”

You may fairly ask how one can reconcile an atheist who does not believe in God attending a church where the congregation does believe in God.

Pastor Don explained where he thought there was common ground.

He preached, “Jesus and his followers were among the first A-Theists, challenging the Theistic claims of Caesar and religious collaborators … affirming a way of life built around the principles of compassion, justice mercy and peace.”

“Collusions,” Pastor Don said, “between religious and political forces have too often created oppressive realities that abound in the world of today … sometimes contributing to a contemporary spirit of Atheism we acknowledge today.” Continue reading →

“Tebow Bill” passed by House Reps; Intercepted by Senate Dems

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Home school advocates are suffering buyer’s remorse and lately demand the right by legislation to select ala carte services from the public schools that they, by homeschooling, have pronounced unworthy to educate them.

Home school parents want the right by law for their home school students to play on the athletic teams of the schools that they have chosen to avoid.

Republican Delegate Rob Bell, from the 56th District, Albemarle County, authored what he called the “Tebow bill” to force every public school in the Commonwealth to allow homeschoolers to compete on public school teams even though they don’t attend the school.

The first fair concern is that Bell has widely characterized his proposal as the “Tebow bill” after the home-schooled Denver Bronco’s quarterback, Tim Tebow, who struck kneeling, fisted praying poses on the playing field when he scored.

Bell plays to that large fraction of the home schooling movement therefore that schools at home to avoid being taught, among other things, modern science that contradicts their fundamentalist beliefs that the Bible is to be understood literally and not as metaphor or allegory. Bell says he is a “committed supporter of home schooling.” Continue reading →

Live fire on the range

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On the firing range at Mount Weather

The FEMA facility, Mount Weather in Northern Virginia off Route 601, is where Vice President Cheney sat out 9-11 underground. Above ground, there is a shooting range and I went there to shoot an AK-47 Assault Rifle – now some time ago.

This name, AK47, comes from the second version of an assault weapon designed by Soviet Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1947. When fired in full-automatic mode, this AR fires continuously for every trigger pull. There have of course been design improvements and model changes since its origin.  The magazine’s capacity is 30 rounds. It can shoot 100 rounds a minute over an effective range of 400 meters.

You no doubt have seen movie stars shoving fully loaded magazines in cinematic fight scenes. But loading the magazine beforehand is something that has to be done carefully. You place a round between the feed lips until it locks inside the magazine, and you repeat this until the magazine is full. Like I said, 30 rounds. At the range, several of us loaded magazines for each other before we shot. Continue reading →

Ed

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Mayor Ed Koch (l) with John Flannery aboard the Circle Line

If there was ever a force of nature in politics and life, a model for talking, arguing and doing, it was Ed “How’m I doing” Koch, the former Councilman, Congressman and three term Mayor of New York City.

We could use more politicians like Ed who cared so deeply and worked so hard until finally his heart failed him at 88 years of age last Friday morning. Continue reading →