
But some jerk from Missouri wants to ruin everything.
Yep. Ignorant jackass Frank Ancona of Park Hills, Missouri -- who claims to be "imperial wizard" of the "Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan," littered the community with his racist propaganda late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning.
According to a report in The Bloomfield Democrat Thursday morning:
"The Bloomfield Police Department announced Thursday morning that numerous fliers have been recovered from front yards of several residences, businesses and government buildings in Bloomfield. The fliers were trying to entice people to become a part of the group identified as the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan."
(LINK TO THE BLOOMFIELD DEMOCRAT)
Also reported in the Ottumwa Courier:
Residents in Agency and Eldon in Wapello County and Bloomfield in Davis County found the fliers Thursday morning. Police found “numerous fliers” at residences and businesses in Bloomfield during the early morning hours Thursday. The fliers, distributed in plastic bags weighted with rocks, indicated they were from the “Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” Authorities suspect they may have been thrown from a moving vehicle. The Wapello County distribution appears to be similar. Sheriff Mark Miller said the distribution to the fliers was general, rather than targeted at specific residences. Miller noted that the fliers, while offensive to many, are protected speech. The most serious charge for such an act would likely be littering.
Neither publication has yet pinned the littering on Ancona, nor has any law enforcement official, but it isn't exactly a secret. Ancona took full credit for the same thing happening in Lexington, Missouri earlier this week, LINK HERE.
This also happened a couple months ago over in nearby Van Buren county, and Ancona wasn't shy about taking the credit for that in an AP story:
Frank Ancona of Park Hills, Mo., said he's responsible for the fliers, which are being distributed to attract new members to the Traditionalist American Knights, a modern strain of the Ku Klux Klan. Ancona, 47, said he's been imperial wizard of the group for five years.“I swore that if I got in my position, I was going to change things, and since I've been imperial wizard, I've really pushed recruiting hard,” he said. Ancona said his constitutional rights allow him to share his beliefs. “We've got the right to say it, and we've got the right to win people over to our way of thinking,” he said.
USA Today had a follow-up on that incident:
"Iowa's still one of the states where the members want to stay invisible," Ancona said.
By contrast, Alcona said, Park Hills, a city of about 8,000 in southeastern Missouri near the Illinois-Missouri border, still "feels like America." He said that he was wearing a T-shirt with KKK slogans while interviewed by The Des Moines Register over the phone Tuesday.
"I've had a few dirty looks from blacks, but down here where I live, it's real accepted," he said. "I might as well have on a (St. Louis) Cardinals baseball T-shirt. They don't even look twice."
What does the "real America" feel like to Ancona? What is it like to live in a place where his BS is "real accepted?" I can only take a guess -- but judging from one of his tweets on his Twitter page this week, Alcona's "real America" is a pretty ugly, ignorant and uncivilized place:
"Will the niggers riot if Zimmerman gets aquitted?" Ancona asks.
I really doubt comments like that are "real accepted," even in little old Park Hills.
Ancona claims to have about 5,000 devout followers, although his numbers cannot be trusted. I would guess he does have a couple dozen real followers, two or three of which imposed themselves upon the good people of Bloomfield last night. We don't want them here. We just want to enjoy our fair.
Of course, no one is talking about the ulterior motive to Ancona's hate literature. He has himself an online store, where he sells all kinds of goodies. Racist shirts, hats, flags, banners, posters, books, etc. These "flyer attacks" amount to publicity stunts. They are attempts to draw traffic to his little Internet shop, in the hopes that some ignorant buffoons will buy themselves some worthless T-shirts. There's money to be made from the underutilized ignorant racist demographic.
This publicity hate campaign hides behind the old "free speech" clause in our beloved Constitution. Law enforcement officials claim that the only thing they could possibly charge Ancona with is littering -- and even that's a stretch, because they don't charge newspaper companies or weekly shoppers with littering.
Oh, and it isn't a crime to mess with the country fair. Yet. Keep messing with it, though, and they'll think of something. They love their fair here.
Personally, I don't believe law enforcement officials are being creative enough. According to the Patriot Act's broad definition of terrorism, you need not be a member of a terrorist group to be considered a terrorist. If you openly represent or seek community support for terrorist acts or a known terrorist organization, you could be declared a terrorist. Raising money for or giving money to a terrorist group is considered a direct act of terrorism if the funds are used to plan or conduct an act of terrorism. Providing services or assistance to terrorists can also be declared an act of terrorism unless the accused can prove "he did not know, and should not reasonably have known" the services would be used to assist a terrorist act.
The KKK is indeed a terrorist organization, as demonstrated in these recent terrorist acts:
In March 2006 six members of the Nation’s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan pleaded guilty to a variety of weapons and conspiracy charges in connection with an illegal gun trading scheme in the early 2000s to finance a plan to blow up the Johnston County, North Carolina, courthouse. In August 2005, North Georgia White Knights member Daniel James Schertz pleaded guilty to building pipe bombs designed to blow up buses carrying Mexican and Haitian migrant workers from Tennessee to Florida. In November 2005, he received a 170-month federal prison sentence. In 2003, Pennsylvania Klan leader David Hull was convicted of a variety of illegal weapons charges in connection with an alleged plot to use hand grenades to attack abortion clinics; he also allegedly told an informant that he had turned his car into a “suicide bomb on wheels.” In 1997, in one of the more spectacular cases, three Klansmen and a Klanswoman—Edward Taylor, Jr., Shawn Dee Adams, Catherine Dee Adams, and Carl Waskom, Jr.—were arrested for plotting a series of terrorist acts in north Texas, including an attack on a natural gas processing plant.
Those are clearly acts of terrorism by the KKK. And so, if Ancona's little version of the KKK really has 5000 hooded clowns like he claims, then this qualifies as a terrorist group -- a very dangerous terrorist group. And attempts to promote, recruit, raise funds or otherwise seek community support for a terrorist group is clearly a violation of The Patriot Act, making Ancona a threat and an enemy of the state.
So which is it, Frankie? Are you a pathetic joke, or are you a real important guy? If you're a pathetic joke, then no one has to waste any time on you. If you're a real important guy, well then, you're a terrorist, and should be treated as such.
Pick him up and charge him. Watch him cry like a little baby on camera. Force him to be have to defended by the liberal ACLU, because no one else will take his case.
And then see how well those T-shirts are "real accepted" in prison.