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Neither rain, sleet, nor snow – nor even the likelihood that he’d be killed – could stop this letter carrier from making his appointed rounds.
Doug Hughes is one gutsy mailman. In April, this rural letter carrier from Florida embarrassed Washington’s haughty security heirarchy and threw members of Congress into chaotic panic by boldly flying his tiny, homemade, gyrocopter right through the heart of our nation’s most restricted airspace, landing it on the front lawn of the US Capitol.
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Far from a terrorist or a kook, Hughes was just a mailman on a mission. Like most of us, he’s disgusted that Big Money can openly buy lawmakers and laws. But he did more than write a letter to his congress critter – he wrote letters to all 535 of them, loaded the missives in his mailbag, and literally went the extra mile to make a “very special delivery” in his gyrocopter.
This was no flight of fancy. Doug planned his mail delivery for months, and he was fully aware that he might crash, be killed by a scramble of military jets, or be gunned down by guards when he landed. Nor was it a sneak attack – he repeatedly posted his intentions in blogs and the Secret Service had investigated and interviewed him about his plans more than a year earlier.
His landing jolted the Capitol into lockdown. Guards rushed out to arrest Doug, a bomb squad arrived, and lawmakers were scared silly. They ran around screeching that that they were threatened by terrorists. Of course, the real threat to America is not some guy flying a gyrocopter, but the utter corruption of Congress by plutocratic elites whom this mailman targeted with nothing more (nor less) dangerous than a bagful of truth-telling letters.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Actually Hughes was not alone on this heroic mission – the great majority of Americans are totally on board with his bold effort to shake up and shape up Congress.
“Man taken into custody after landing single-person aircraft on Capitol grounds,” CNN.com, April 15, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/15/politics/aircraft-lands-on-capitol-grounds/