Gyrocopter Guy: Patriot or Kook?

[American Patriot]

Alright, this happened at 11ish yesterday my time. I was hesitant to bother putting anything up since it appeared to be either a nutcase or some kind of emergency landing or something.

I heard immediately the Capitol authorities were "going to shoot him down if he got too close" - and yet I saw a video showing there was NO WAY anyone could have, in time, have grabbed "long guns" to bring him down. He was traveling pretty fast coming in.

Immediately he was arrested.

Now it appears he is going to be charged with... you guessed it... terrorism.

In reading up on this last night I found out the guy is a patriot and conservative. He was a former postman. He was bringing letters to Congress. Etc etc.

Then I HEARD the man speak about this. He is fed up with the country's path down the slippery slope and at the ripe old age of 75 (I think they said 75) he wanted to do something to bring attention to the country's plight.

below is an ABC news report.

Gyrocopter at Capitol came in 'under the radar,' says Homeland Security Secretary

By The Associated Press
April 16, 2015 - 10:25 am

A Gyrocopter sits on the West Lawn of the Capitol. (AP photo)

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Thursday that a gyrocopter that landed on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol "apparently literally flew in under the radar."
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More on this story

• Gyrocopter lands on Capitol's West Lawn in apparent protest; pilot arrested

Johnson said it's too soon to say whether Wednesday's incident should prompt changes in security procedures. "I want to know all the facts before I reach an assessment of what can and should be done about gyrocopters in the future," he said.
Johnson confirmed that the pilot, Florida postal worker Doug Hughes, was interviewed by the Secret Service almost two years ago. He said the Secret Service passed along the information from that interview to "all of the appropriate law enforcement agencies."
Johnson said his first reaction on hearing of the incident was to ask, "What's a gyrocopter?"
The tiny, open-air aircraft landed without injuries to anyone, but the incident raises questions about how someone could be allowed to fly all the way from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, right up to the Capitol. Hughes has said he was making the flight to publicize his concerns about the corrupting influence of money in politics, and deliver letters to all 535 members of Congress on the topic.
"We are a democracy. We don't have fences around our airspace, so we've got to find the right balance between living in a free and open society and security and the protection of federal buildings," Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill. "And so we want to stay one step ahead of every incident like this, but then again, you don't want to overreact, either."
Johnson defended existing protocols for dealing with the restricted airspace over Washington, D.C., federal buildings and monuments.

This man has been talking to the Tampa Bay news papers about this for MONTHS. The government had to know he was planning it. And he did it. Security? Pffflll. There's no security there.

But guess what Obama's administration said yesterday when some public officials' addresses and pay rates were released by hackers? "Dangerous Right Wing operatives are at fault."

CBS said the leaked list was titled “DHS-CIA-FBI TRAITORS HOME ADDRESSES.” It added that investigators believed a “right-wing extremist group” was behind the posting, based on its content.

Back to Gyrocopter Man. He's a RIGHT WING fellow. He did NOT crash into the capitol building. He didn't threaten anyone. He didn't perform "work place violence in the post office". He didn't say he was going to kill anyone. He SAID he was going to deliver a message to Congress (and he did).

His message? "Campaign Finance" and the problems with it.

Is he a nut case? Probably not. Is he right to voice his opinion? Yes, even if I don't necessarily agree with him, he has that right. Does he have a right to make it a public statement? Yep. At the Capitol? Yep.

What he did.... he forgot about a No Fly zone. And while no one shot him down... he shouldn't probably have done it quite the way he did it....

Terrorists? Not a bit. An American making a statement.

Dangerous? Yes, it was dangerous and the man is taking full responsibility for what he did. And it is an AMERICAN TRADITION for CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE!

Good God, don't charge him with an act of terrorism, charge him with violating FAA regs, or putting a plane on the grassy knoll or something... but Terrorism???????????????????????

I call Bullshit on the government.

[American Patriot]

Friend alerted Secret Service after fearing gryocopter would be shot down

By Associated Press

April 16, 2015 | 9:14am
Modal Trigger
A member of a bomb squad works with a bomb disposal robot beside a gyrocopter after it landed on the West Lawn of the US Capitol. Photo: EPA



ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A Florida postal worker who piloted a gyrocopter onto the US Capitol lawn to call attention to his belief that campaign finance laws are too weak is “a patriot” who first came up with the idea about a year ago, a friend said.


Doug Hughes, 61, called his friend Mike Shanahan on Wednesday and said he was in the DC area and ready to take off, Shanahan was quoted by The Tampa Bay Times as saying. Shanahan said he feared law enforcement would shoot down the small aircraft emblazoned with the Postal Service logo, so he alerted the US Secret Service. The gyrocopter landed about half a city block from the Capitol building.


Modal TriggerDoug Hughes wanted to shine a spotlight on campaign finance reform, so he wrote a letter of protest to every member of Congress, with the intent of delivering them by flying through the no-fly zone in front of the Capitol building in Washington, DC.Photo: Zumapress.com

“I was scared to death they were going to kill him,” Shanahan said.


Hughes steered his tiny aircraft onto the Capitol’s West Lawn after flying through restricted airspace around the National Mall, police said. A Senate aide told the Associated Press the Capitol Police knew of the plan shortly before Hughes took off. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the aide was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation.


Hughes is a married father of four who wanted to “spotlight corruption in DC and more importantly, to present the solution(s) to the institutional graft,” reads a statement on his website, The Democracy Club. He lives in the Tampa Bay area community of Ruskin.
In an interview with the Times before his flight, Hughes told the paper he sees himself as a showman patriot — a mix of Paul Revere and legendary circus owner P.T. Barnum.


The stunt, which led to breathless reports on national cable TV networks, involved delivering letters to all 535 members of Congress to draw attention to campaign finance corruption.


His website talks of “bi-partisan corruption” and urges readers not to focus on him.


“Let’s keep the discussion focused on reform — not me — I’m just delivering the mail,” he wrote.


According to his website, Hughes was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California, where his first job was at a McDonald’s. Upon graduating from high school, he joined the Navy, he wrote, and then worked in restaurant management on the West Coast. He lived in North Carolina and then moved to Florida following a divorce.


He’s worked for the Postal Service for 11 years.


“As I have informed the authorities, I have no violent inclinations or intent,” Hughes wrote. “An ultralight aircraft poses no major physical threat — it may present a political threat to graft. I hope so. There’s no need to worry — I’m just delivering the mail.”


He said he told the Times about his stunt because he feared being hurt or arrested. He also said he kept his Russian-born wife and 12-year-old daughter in the dark about his plan.


Hughes has three other children, including one son who took his own life by driving his car head-on into another vehicle, killing both himself and the other driver nearly three years ago. Hughes said his son’s suicide was a catalyst for him.


Modal TriggerPhoto: Getty Images

“He paid far too high a price for an unimportant issue,” Hughes told the paper. “But if you’re willing to take a risk, the ultimate risk, to draw attention to something that does have significance, it’s worth doing.”

About two hours after Hughes landed, police announced that a bomb squad had cleared his gyrocopter and nothing hazardous had been found. The authorities then moved it off the Capitol lawn to a secure location.


House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said Hughes landed on his own, but authorities were prepared to shoot him down if he had made it much closer to the Capitol. “Had it gotten any closer to the speaker’s balcony, they have long guns to take it down, but it didn’t. It landed right in front,” McCaul said.


The Federal Aviation Administration said the pilot had not been in contact with air traffic controllers and the FAA didn’t authorize him to enter restricted airspace.


Airspace security rules that cover the Capitol and the District of Columbia prohibit private aircraft flights without prior coordination and permission. Violators can face civil and criminal penalties.


The White House said President Barack Obama had been briefed on the situation.


Witnesses said the craft approached the Capitol from the west, flying low over the National Mall and the Capitol reflecting pool across the street from the building. It barely cleared a row of trees and a statue of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.


John Jewell, 72, a tourist from Statesville, North Carolina, said the craft landed hard and bounced. An officer was already there with a gun drawn. “He didn’t get out until police officers told him to get out. He had his hands up” and was quickly led away by the police, Jewell said. “They snatched him pretty fast.”

[American Patriot]

See?

Violators can face civil and criminal penalties.

Not terrorism charges....

[American Patriot]

Gyrocopter pilot’s stunt is just latest bid for capital’s attention

Fla. man lands gyrocopter on Capitol lawn, pilot in custody(1:34)





Police arrested Florida mailman Doug Hughes after he landed his gyrocopter on the West Lawn of the Capitol on Wednesday. Hughes said he performed the stunt in an effort to change campaign finance laws. (AP)



By Petula Dvorak Columnist April 16 at 10:56 AM Follow @petulad

Helloooo? Congress? Do you hear us? Nah, didn’t think so.


Our letters, our e-mails, our goofy Web sites, posterboards and public declarations fall on deaf, security-blanketed ears.
Petula is a columnist for The Washington Post's local team who writes about homeless shelters, gun control, high heels, high school choirs, the politics of parenting, jails, abortion clinics, mayors, modern families, strip clubs and gas prices, among other things. View



So we take to the sky, gyrocoptering in the missives hoping that this time, they won’t be opened only by overdressed interns who’ll put them in a stack. We’ll chain ourselves to poles, drive our tractors onto the Mall, set ourselves on fire or shoot ourselves in the head. Message delivered, submitted for evidence to the authorities.


The U.S. Capitol gets a lot of these troubled souls. This spring looks like it might give us a bumper crop of homegrown, daffy activists who pull both intrepid and tragic stunts.


The latest came from Doug Hughes, 61, gyrocopter man who skimmed the nation’s most protested ground just 40 feet in the air in his kit-craft chopper emblazoned with renegade U.S. Postal Service logos.


The contraption that landed on the Capitol’s West Lawn View Graphic

How crazy was it? The gyrocopter “looked totally official,” onlooker Jose Labarca, 55, told a Washington Post reporter after Hughes somehow landed it in one piece. “I thought, ‘The Postal Service has helicopter service to the Capitol now?’ ”


But no one was giggling Saturday when Leo Thornton, a 22-year-old from Illinois, arrived at the Capitol with a backpack, a suitcase and a sign that said, “Tax the one percent.” He shot himself in the head on the West Front of an iconic symbol of democracy on a gorgeous day, at the very peak of the Cherry Blossom Festival.


Just as awful: John Constantino, 64, a Vietnam War veteran from New Jersey, doused himself with petrol, saluted the Capitol and set himself on fire on the Mall in the fall of 2013. Neighbors remember his frustration with political Washington.


There’s a history of this here. In 2003, Dwight Watson, a North Carolina tobacco farmer angry about the government’s influence on his industry, brought Washington to its knees in a two-day standoff after he drove his tractor onto the Mall and said he was going to blow it up. No explosives were found, and he did 16 months in prison.


You may want to call these folks mentally unstable. And, indeed, Hughes told the Tampa Bay Times that he was first inspired to do something dramatic to call attention to his cause after his 24-year-old son committed suicide in 2012 in a horrific, public way — by slamming his car into an oncoming vehicle, killing both himself and the other driver.


When people take extreme actions, we drill down into the personal history of the mailman, the veteran, the farmer. And sure, it’s a no-brainer that many of the Don Quixotes have been diagnosed with some medical, mental thing. And we brush away their crusades as wacko and return to the latest news about who J-Law is dating and which football player was jailed this time.


But check out what Nassir Ghaemi, who runs the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, has to say about mental illness and the reins of power and the engines of revolution.


Gyrocopter lands on West Lawn of Capitol

View Photos


A pilot said to be a mailman from Florida was arrested after landing the one-person copter.








“Four key elements of some mental illnesses — mania and depression — appear to promote crisis leadership: realism, resilience, empathy and creativity,” he wrote.


Ghaemi studied the lives and medical records of great leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for his book, “A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness.”


“One might call it the Inverse Law of Sanity: when times are good, when peace reigns, and the ship of state only needs to sail straight, mentally healthy people function well as our leaders,” Ghaemi wrote. “When our world is in tumult, mentally ill leaders function best.”
Lincoln’s depression or Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mild mania may be the key to the empathy and unfathomable optimism that made those leaders great.


“In these times, it is hard to say who are sane and who are insane,” Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman said after being removed from Union command in 1861 because of his paranoid delusions.


Aristotle said insanity and genius are inextricably linked.


So who says that piloting a flying chair through the sky, past our insanely well-funded security systems and landing on the Capitol lawn to deliver a political message — Hughes’s spot-on frustration with an utterly broken and dismantled campaign finance system — isn’t a form of genius?


Because the truth of Washington today is that the people who get heard on Capitol Hill are the ones who park their Gulfstream G650s at Reagan National and arrive in a town car, checks in hand.


Remember, even the outright slaughter of 20 first-graders holding their chubby hands up to shield the gunfire ripping them apart at Sandy Hook Elementary School wasn’t enough to make Congress act on even the tiniest, most tentative measures on gun control.


So how — in this climate — are mail carriers, Marines, farmers or moms going to make a real difference? What are these extreme activists fighting for? The right for redress of their grievances.


Sure, sure, our systems are good at letting people rally on the Mall, protest through the streets.


I’ll never forget how sorry I felt for the woman who mortgaged her home and rallied a couple dozen people to drive all the way from the South to draw attention to the disparate sentencing of African Americans by our justice system. She didn’t even make The Post that weekend. Did anyone hear her?


To many in power, these passionate, First Amendment-sanctioned airings of grievances are nothing more than background noise.


The problem with these stunts, of course, is that Gyrocopter Man isn’t likely to start a national conversation on how completely jacked up our campaign finance laws are, and Leo Thornton’s 22 years on Earth will not spark a real conversation on fair taxation and income inequality.


Nope. Besides the dudes Googling “gyrocopter kit,” the conversation is going to be all about Inspector Gadget’s subversion of our multimillion-dollar restricted airspace defense system, who screwed up and how Homeland Security can get cracking on that force field dome to put over the Capitol. Hire some more defense contractors! We need protection!


That’s the part that’s insane.


Twitter: @petulad

[American Patriot]

Official: Aircraft came ‘under the radar,’ lands at Capitol

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Published: April 16, 2015, 10:07 am Updated: April 16, 2015, 11:01 am

A Capitol Police officer flashes a thumbs up after inspecting the small helicopter a man landed on the West Lawn of the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, April 15, 2015. Police arrested a man who steered his tiny, one-person helicopter onto the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, astonishing spring tourists and prompting a temporary lockdown of the Capitol Visitor Center. Capitol Police didn't immediately identify the pilot or comment on his motive, but a Florida postal carrier named Doug Hughes took responsibility for the stunt on a website where he said he was delivering letters to all 535 members of Congress in order to draw attention to campaign finance corruption. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Thursday that a gyrocopter that landed on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol “apparently literally flew in under the radar.”


Johnson said it’s too soon to say whether Wednesday’s incident should prompt changes in security procedures. “I want to know all the facts before I reach an assessment of what can and should be done about gyrocopters in the future,” he said.


Johnson confirmed that the pilot, Florida postal worker Doug Hughes, was interviewed by the Secret Service almost two years ago. He said the Secret Service passed along the information from that interview to “all of the appropriate law enforcement agencies.”


Johnson said his first reaction on hearing of the incident was to ask, “What’s a gyrocopter?”


The tiny, open-air aircraft landed without injuries to anyone, but the incident raises questions about how someone could be allowed to fly all the way from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, right up to the Capitol. Hughes has said he was making the flight to publicize his concerns about the corrupting influence of money in politics, and deliver letters to all 535 members of Congress on the topic.


“We are a democracy. We don’t have fences around our airspace, so we’ve got to find the right balance between living in a free and open society and security and the protection of federal buildings,” Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill. “And so we want to stay one step ahead of every incident like this, but then again, you don’t want to overreact, either.”


Johnson defended existing protocols for dealing with the restricted airspace over Washington, D.C., federal buildings and monuments.


“We’ve got a well-coordinated federal response to dealing with issues of those who penetrate the restricted airspace without permission,” he said.


A friend of Hughes said the pilot alerted the Secret Service beforehand because he was afraid he would get shot down.


Hughes, 61., called Shanahan on Wednesday and said he was in the Washington, D.C. area and ready to take off, Shanahan was quoted by The Tampa Bay Times as saying. Shanahan said he feared law enforcement would shoot down the small aircraft emblazoned with the Postal Service logo, so he alerted the U.S. Secret Service. The gyrocopter landed about half a city block from the Capitol building.


“I was scared to death they were going to kill him,” Shanahan said.


A Senate aide told The Associated Press the Capitol Police knew of the plan shortly before Hughes took off. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the aide was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation.


Hughes is a married father of four who wanted to “spotlight corruption in DC and more importantly, to present the solution(s) to the institutional graft,” reads a statement on his website, The Democracy Club.


Hughes has worked for the Postal Service for 11 years. He said he kept his Russian-born wife and 12-year-old daughter in the dark about his plan.


Hughes has three other children, including one son who took his own life by driving his car head-on into another vehicle, killing both himself and the other driver nearly three years ago. Hughes said his son’s suicide was a catalyst for him.

[American Patriot]

As FAA Investigates, Most Laugh Off Gyrocopter Stunt

By Stephen Pope / Published: Apr 16, 2015
Related Tags: News



With his harebrained landing of a gyrocopter on the Capitol lawn to hand deliver hundreds of protest letters to Congress, mailman Doug Hughes has put a new twist on the expression "going postal."

The FAA says it's launching a full-scale investigation of the unauthorized flight. AOPA quickly labeled the stunt "unacceptable." Most everybody else, meanwhile, seems to be laughing off Hughes' impromptu arrival on the Washington, D.C. Mall in his self-described "flying bicycle."

The 61-year-old postal worker from the Tampa, Florida, area gave plenty of advanced warning of his protest flight, which he's been planning for over two years. With the landing, he says he is merely trying to turn America's attention toward campaign finance reform.

Pundits on TV have been wringing their hands over how Hughes was able to penetrate Washington's protected airspace undetected. The incident recalls past security breaches such as a German teenager's landing of a Cessna Skyhawk in Moscow's Red Square in 1987 and the intentional crashing of a Cessna 150 onto the south lawn of the White House in 1994.

This episode was different, however. While those previous headline-grabbing flights focused negative attention on general aviation, in this case the public doesn't seem to know or really care what a gyrocopter is.

"It looked like something out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," one bemused spectator said of the stunt.






Read more at http://www.flyingmag.com/news/faa-in...pdTF7cu0sM4.99

[American Patriot]

Who is Gyrocopter Pilot Doug Hughes?

Tweet ?


04/16/2015 10:26 AM
04/16/2015 12:20 PM

(CBS News)- Perhaps nobody was more surprised by Doug Hughes' gyrocopter stunt at the Capitol on Wednesday than his neighbors in Ruskin, Florida.

"It's weird thinking somebody like that, you know, two doors down," the U.S. mailman's neighbor Ian Hopkins said.

"We were so surprised about it because you know he's a good man... he's a good neighbor," another person said.

Hughes is a married father of four who's been flying gyrocopters for more than a year. According to his website, the 61-year-old grew up in California, served in the Navy and became a mailman more than a decade ago. But Wednesday, he chose to veer off his regular route to draw attention to campaign finance reform, reports CBS News correspondent Vicente Arenas.

Hughes' so-called "freedom flight" had been in the works for some time.

In fact, Hughes alerted the Tampa Bay Times last year -- after the Secret Service interviewed him about his plans.

"Terrorists don't announce their flights before they take off. Terrorists don't broadcast their flight path," Hughes told the Times.

Hughes recently admitted to the paper that even he thought his idea sounded crazy.

"No sane person would do what I'm doing," he said.

According to the Times, Hughes' act of civil disobedience began taking shape more than two years ago after his son committed suicide.

His grief prompted him to take a bigger stand on political issues he felt were important.

"We were trying to think of ways to get attention, and it looks like he did that," Hughes' co-worker Michael Shanahan said.

Shanahan shared Hughes' passion for politics, but wasn't on board with his bold plan.

"I told him that it was a very bad idea, extremely dangerous... but like I said, he gets like a pit bull sometimes," Shanahan said. "He gets very tenacious with his ideas and he holds onto them."

Still, Shanahan insists his friend is more patriot than terrorist.

Ahead of his landing at the Capitol, Hughes took to his website writing: "I have no violent inclinations or intent... Let's keep the discussion focused on reform -- not me -- I'm just delivering the mail."

Hughes knew what was at stake in carrying out his mission. The Tampa Bay Times said he expected to lose his job and his freedom.

Hughes said he didn't tell his wife or four children about the plan because he didn't want them to be implicated.

[American Patriot]

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

[American Patriot]

Only a Leftist Gyrocopter Protest Could Get Positive Reaction

By Dan Gilmore · Apr. 16, 2015


You have to give the Florida mailman credit: Doug Hughes had the creativity and guts to pull off one of the most memorable protests. On April 15, he flew his gyrocopter through restricted airspace, down the Washington Mall, and landed on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol — catching the Secret Service unawares.

He had 535 letters for the lawmakers in Congress demanding campaign finance reform.

“I’m demanding reform and declaring a voter’s rebellion in a manner consistent with Jefferson’s description of rights in the Declaration of Independence,” he wrote.

“As a member of Congress, you have three options. 1. You may pretend corruption does not exist. 2. You may pretend to oppose corruption while you sabotage reform. 3. You may actively participate in real reform.”

Capitol police arrested Hughes and charged him with violating the U.S. code governing transportation — a slap on the wrist considering. If a conservative tried the same stunt, at least one talking head would have drawn the conclusion the person was commemorating the anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. But everybody sure loves a quirky leftist and his gyrocopter. More…

[American Patriot]

So, my thinking here... the guy IS protesting.

I don't AGREE with him.

He has a RIGHT to protest.

He should not be charged as a terrorist (leftist or rightist, whatever).

[American Patriot]

http://video.tampabay.com/?ndn.track...s&vid=28899727

FAA investigating Florida mailman's landing of gyrocopter on U.S. Capitol lawn

• Ben Montgomery, Times Staff Writer

Wednesday, April 15, 2015 12:11pm

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Doug Hughes, a 61-year-old mailman from Ruskin, told his friends he was going to do it. He was going to fly a gyrocopter through protected airspace and put it down on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol, then try to deliver 535 letters of protest to 535 members of Congress.
The stunt seemed so outlandish that not even his closest friend thought he would pull it off.
"My biggest fear was he was going to get killed," said Mike Shanahan, 65, of Apollo Beach, who works with Hughes for the Postal Service.
After 2½ years of planning, Hughes came hovering low over the buildings of northeast D.C. about 1:20 p.m., like a distant bird. He rounded the Washington Monument a few minutes later, flew straight up the expanse of the National Mall and brought his small craft down right in front of the Capitol, where he was quickly surrounded by police and surrendered without incident.
The flight stunned police, Secret Service and witnesses. Authorities briefly shut down the Capitol as a security measure. The incident brought out dozens of reporters and cameras from national media outlets — exactly what Hughes had hoped for. Hughes, who sees himself as a sort of showman patriot, a mix of Paul Revere and P.T. Barnum, wanted to do something so big and brazen that it would hijack the news cycle and turn America's attention toward his pet issue: campaign finance reform.
"No sane person would do what I'm doing," Hughes told the Tampa Bay Times in the weeks before he took flight. He was doing it, he said, because the United States is "heading full-throttle toward a breakdown."
"There's no question that we need government, but we don't have to accept that it's a corrupt government that sells out to the highest bidder," Hughes said.
It's hard to say whether the message got through.
"I don't think anyone noticed it," said Sophia Brown, visiting Washington from England. "We noticed it, but nobody made a big deal about it."
Richard Burns, 27, a worker at a marijuana lobby group in Washington, stood by the Capitol in wonder and solidarity.
"I don't know whatever it was he was doing, but I support him," Burns said.
Gil Wheeler, 53, a pilot from Las Vegas, said the biggest problem was how the letter carrier reached restricted airspace in the first place.
"This is just another question for Homeland Security," Wheeler said. "We still have a lot of questions to ask."
Late Wednesday, U.S. Capitol Police said Hughes had been arrested, charged under Title 49 of U.S. Code and processed at their headquarters. He was then transferred to the central cellblock in Washington. The FAA was investigating.
News reports said Secret Service agents were investigating at Gettysburg Airport, a small airport in Pennsylvania, where they believe Hughes took off.
Hughes didn't know whether he would even make it. He imagined being shot down, blown down. Almost every scenario he could imagine involved some type of resistance. Barring that, he said: "They will put the cuffs on me. And they will try to establish who is behind this. . . . The authorities are going to be out to get me."
His wife could not be reached for comment.
Hughes contacted a Tampa Bay Times reporter last year, saying he wanted to tell someone about his plan and motivation. He said he had no intention of hurting anybody and that he didn't want to be hurt. By that time, he had already been visited twice by the Secret Service, he said.
The first visit, Hughes told the Times, came one night last spring at about 1 a.m. The agent was accompanied by a Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy. In a statement issued to media outlets Wednesday, the Secret Service said it interviewed Hughes on Oct. 5, 2013, and that a "complete and thorough investigation was conducted."
The Secret Service agent asked him questions about his plan, Hughes said, and he said he was honest in his replies, if not totally forthcoming with details. Yes, he did own a gyrocopter. Yes, he kept it in a hangar at the small airport in Wauchula. Yes, he had talked of doing something big to bring attention to the issue of campaign finance reform. No, he was not planning to crash into any buildings or monuments in Washington, D.C.
I'm not a violent person, Hughes remembers saying. All I want to do is draw attention.
Someone inside his circle of secrecy had reported him, telling the Secret Service that Hughes was talking about committing a daring act of civil disobedience that also happened to be a federal crime.
Two days later, Hughes said, the same agent showed up at the post office where Hughes works and asked more questions. One of Hughes' colleagues told the Tampa Bay Times that he, too, answered questions from the Secret Service.
And then, for months, nothing. That was it, Hughes said. No other questions. No other contact. Hughes put his plan into action.
He bought a burner cell phone and a videocamera and tested a livestream video feed from his gyrocopter. He built a website offline that explained why he was doing this. He bought $250 worth of stamps and stuffed envelopes with his letter:
"I'm demanding reform and declaring a voter's rebellion in a manner consistent with Jefferson's description of rights in the Declaration of Independence," he wrote in his letters. "As a member of Congress, you have three options. 1. You may pretend corruption does not exist. 2. You may pretend to oppose corruption while you sabotage reform. 3. You may actively participate in real reform."
Late last week, he loaded the gyrocopter onto a trailer and headed for an undisclosed location outside the nation's capital.
His livestream showed that he took off about 12:10 p.m. Wednesday. He intended to fly about 300 feet high, at 45 mph and wound up landing on the west lawn of the Capitol shortly before 1:30 p.m.
Hughes knew there was a risk he could be shot out of the sky, though he hoped it wouldn't come to that.
"I don't believe that the authorities are going to shoot down a 61-year-old mailman in a flying bicycle," he said. "I don't have any defense, okay, but I don't believe that anybody wants to personally take responsibility for the fallout."
In the end, his flight occurred without incident or escorts. The Times published a story about Hughes' plans on its website, tampabay.com, shortly after noon when it was clear he had actually taken off and was attempting his flight. His livestream cut in and out but showed his progress. A Times reporter called the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., shortly before 1 p.m. to see if officials were aware of a man in a gyrocopter flying toward the capital. Public information officers there who did not give their names said they had not heard of the protest. They referred a reporter to Capitol Police. A public information officer did not immediately answer.
Sgt. Trina Hamilton in the watch commander's office said: "He hasn't notified anybody. We have no information."
Hughes' friend, Mike Shanahan, after receiving a call from Hughes early Wednesday, said he contacted a Secret Service agent and left a message but never heard back. Hughes had told his friend he was in Washington, Shanahan recalled. But when Shanahan tried to access the live-streaming website, he could not find it and was unsure if Hughes was really going to take flight.
Before his flight, Hughes said he knew what was at stake. He figured he'll lose his job of 11 years. And he could lose his tidy little house across from a pond with a fountain. He knew he would lose his freedom. That means losing, at least temporarily, his Russian-born wife and his polite 12-year-old daughter who plays the piano and wins awards at the science fair. He kept them in the dark, he said, for fear they'd be implicated.
Hughes is a slender, soft-spoken, pedantic man, with thinning gray hair and hearing aids. He has no criminal record and it's rare to hear him curse. But he said he needed the show, the very dramatic public act of civil disobedience, to focus the nation's attention on campaign finance reform, a topic that in most quarters makes eyes glaze over. Money, he says, has corrupted the democracy.
At the root of Hughes' disdain is the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, in which the court decided campaign contributions were a form of "political speech" and struck down limits on how much corporations and unions could give to political contenders. The decision changed the game. Campaign spending went through the roof. In Hughes' mind, there was a parallel spike in favor-dealing and the government is now practically owned by the rich. Hughes likes to point out that nearly half the retiring members of Congress from 1998 to 2004 got jobs as lobbyists earning some 14 times their congressional salaries.
But nobody seems to care.
Hughes thinks the answers are out there, and they're nonpartisan. He points to reform thinkers like political activist Cenk Uygar and Harvard legal theorist Lawrence Lessig, who launched a political action committee to end political action committees. The motto: "Embrace the irony."
"I'm not promoting myself," Hughes said a few weeks ago. "I'm trying to direct millions of people to information, to a menu of organizations that are working together to fix Congress."
His idea began to blossom 2½ years ago, after his son, John Joseph Hughes, 24, committed suicide by driving his car head-on into another man, killing them both. "Police: Suicidal driver caused deadly crash," read the headline in the Leesburg newspaper. He was crushed by grief, and disappointed that his son had killed himself — and someone else — to make a stupid, worthless point.
"Something changed in me," Hughes said. With mourning came a realization. The years Hughes spent thinking about and writing about mundane political issues were for naught if he didn't have a way to make a point. His political frustrations and grief merged. He doesn't condone what his son did, but it offered a lesson.
"He paid far too high a price for an unimportant issue," Hughes said. "But if you're willing to take a risk, the ultimate risk, to draw attention to something that does have significance, it's worth doing."
He has always wanted to fly. Growing up in Santa Cruz, Calif., he used to ride his bike to Sky Park and watch the planes come and go, and read books about the Wright brothers and Kitty Hawk.
At first he thought about using an ultralight fixed-wing plane, but that felt too threatening. He finally found the gyrocopter, which has unpowered helicopter blades on top for lift but gets its thrust from a propeller on the back. The cockpit, if you can call it that, is wide open. "This is as transparent a vehicle that I could come up with," Hughes said. "You can literally see through it." He can land the craft in a space the size of half a basketball court.
Hughes told the Times he planned to set up a delayed email blast to alert as many TV and newspaper breaking news desks as he could find, as well as the Secret Service.
The Secret Service statement said it did not receive notification of the flight. Several reporters told the Times they received the email. The Times reported about Hughes' flight on Twitter and Facebook as it was happening, but most media attention came after his landing at the Capitol. His website went up as scheduled, which broadcast a choppy livestream of his trip.
His biggest fear all along, he said, was losing his nerve.
"I have thought about walking away from this whole thing because it's crazy," he said. "But I have also thought about being 80 years old and watching the collapse of this country and thinking that I had an idea once that might have arrested the fall and I didn't do it.
"And I will tell you completely honestly: I'd rather die in the flight than live to be 80 years old and see this country fall."
Times staff writers Zachary T. Sampson and Lauren Carroll and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Contact Ben Montgomery at bmontgomery@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8650. Follow @gangrey on Twitter.

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This is the text of the letter that Doug Hughes wants to deliver to members of Congress:
Dear ___________,
Consider the following statement by John Kerry in his farewell speech to the Senate —
"The unending chase for money I believe threatens to steal our democracy itself. They know it. They know we know it. And yet, Nothing Happens!" — John Kerry, 2-13
In a July 2012 Gallup poll, 87% tagged corruption in the federal government as extremely important or very important, placing this issue just barely behind job creation. According to Gallup, public faith in Congress is at a 41-year record low, 7%. (June 2014) Kerry is correct. The popular perception outside the DC beltway is that the federal government is corrupt and the US Congress is the major problem. As a voter, I'm a member of the only political body with authority over Congress. I'm demanding reform and declaring a voter's rebellion in a manner consistent with Jefferson's description of rights in the Declaration of Independence. As a member of Congress, you have three options.
1. You may pretend corruption does not exist.
2. You may pretend to oppose corruption while you sabotage reform.
3. You may actively participate in real reform.
If you're considering option 1, you may wonder if voters really know what the 'chase for money' is. Your dismal and declining popularity documented by Gallup suggests we know, but allow a few examples, by no means a complete list. That these practices are legal does not make them right! Obviously, it is Congress who writes the laws that make corruption legal.
1. Dozens of major and very profitable corporations pay nothing in taxes. Voters know how this is done. Corporations pay millions to lobbyists for special legislation. Many companies on the list of freeloaders are household names — GE, Boeing, Exxon Mobil, Verizon, Citigroup, Dow …
2. Almost half of the retiring members of Congress from 1998 to 2004 got jobs as lobbyists earning on average fourteen times their Congressional salary. (50% of the Senate, 42% of the House)
3. The new democratic freshmen to the US House in 2012 were 'advised' by the party to schedule 4 hours per day on the phones fund raising at party headquarters (because fund raising is illegal from gov't offices.) It is the donors with deep pockets who get the calls, but seldom do the priorities of the rich donor help the average citizen.
4. The relevant (rich) donors who command the attention of Congress are only .05% of the public (5 people in a thousand) but these aristocrats of both parties are who Congress really works for. As a member of the US Congress, you should work only for The People.
1. Not yourself.
2. Not your political party.
3. Not the richest donors to your campaign.
4. Not the lobbyist company who will hire you after your leave Congress.
There are several credible groups working to reform Congress. Their evaluations of the problem are remarkably in agreement though the leadership (and membership) may lean conservative or liberal. They see the corrupting effect of money — how the current rules empower special interests through lobbyists and PACs — robbing the average American of any representation on any issue where the connected have a stake. This is not democracy even if the ritual of elections is maintained.
The various mechanisms which funnel money to candidates and congress-persons are complex. It happens before they are elected, while they are in office and after they leave Congress. Fortunately, a solution to corruption is not complicated. All the proposals are built around either reform legislation or a Constitutional Amendment. Actually, we need both — a constitutional amendment and legislation.
There will be discussion about the structure and details of reform. As I see it, campaign finance reform is the cornerstone of building an honest Congress. Erect a wall of separation between our elected officials and big money. This you must do — or your replacement will do. A corporation is not 'people' and no individual should be allowed to spend hundreds of millions to 'influence' an election. That much money is a megaphone which drowns out the voices of 'We the People.' Next, a retired member of Congress has a lifelong obligation to avoid the appearance of impropriety. That almost half the retired members of Congress work as lobbyists and make millions of dollars per year smells like bribery, however legal. It must end. Pass real campaign finance reform and prohibit even the appearance of payola after retirement and you will be part of a Congress I can respect.
The states have the power to pass a Constitutional Amendment without Congress — and we will. You in Congress will likely embrace the change just to survive, because liberals and conservatives won't settle for less than democracy. The leadership and organization to coordinate a voters revolution exist now! New groups will add their voices because the vast majority of Americans believe in the real democracy we once had, which Congress over time has eroded to the corrupt, dysfunctional plutocracy we have.
The question is where YOU individually stand. You have three options and you must choose.
Sincerely,
Douglas M. Hughes
www.TheDemocracyClub.org

[American Patriot]

Is it me, or has every single stupid event in the last 15 years (or longer) come almost exclusively from the left?

Mass murders, bombers, nutcases landing planes on the White House, the Capitol, protests about bullshit (literally, too much cow shit and cow farts causing global warming) and so forth?????

Can anyone name ONE true Right Winger who has come unhinged and did a mass murder or something else?

I'm drawing a blank right now.

(McVey isn't what I consider a right winger, I consider him a Libertarian-Anarchist)

[American Patriot]

Pilot who landed gyrocopter at U.S. Capitol blogged about why

By Josh Levs, CNN
Updated 12:26 PM ET, Thu April 16, 2015

Pilot wanted to address campaign finance reform 02:29

Story highlights

• Doug Hughes, 61, said the point was to present solutions to corruption
• Hughes mentioned the idea a couple of years ago, his friend says
• Hughes had a son who committed suicide, report says

(CNN)Before landing a gyrocopter on the Capitol lawn Wednesday, Doug Hughes wrote about his intentions and the reasons behind them on a website called the thedemocracyclub.org.



"The point of the flight is to spotlight corruption in DC and more importantly, to present the solution(s) to the institutional graft," the 61-year-old Florida postal carrier wrote in an online post titled "Your Pilot."


Doug Hughes landed his gyrocopter on the Capitol law on Wednesday.



"My flight is not a secret," the post says. "Before I took off, I sent an Email to info@barackobama.com. The letter is intended to persuade the guardians of the Capitol that I am not a threat and that shooting me down will be a bigger headache than letting me deliver these letters to Congress."


Hughes' friend Michael Shanahan told CNN that Hughes called him Wednesday morning and told him to check out the website.


Although the post is not signed, he lists an email address of "dhughes@thedemocracyclub.org," and the information in his self-description matches information about Hughes in public records.


He refers to having multiple children -- the youngest an 11-year-old daughter -- and grandchildren as well.


It's unclear exactly when the post published. Shanahan told CNN that when he searched for the site Wednesday morning, he was unable to find it.


"The purpose of it was to call attention to the United States concerning our campaign finance laws, or the lack thereof," Shanahan told CNN's Brooke Baldwin.









Pilot wanted to address campaign finance reform 02:29




Hughes had his first appearance in court scheduled for Thursday.
On Wednesday, he took off in his gyrocopterfrom Maryland and traveled through restricted airspace over Washington, landing on the Capitol's West Lawn. Inside the small personal aircraft he had letters for every member of Congress urging campaign finance reform.


"There's no need to worry -- I'm just delivering the mail," Hughes wrote in his post.


The incident shut down the Capitol for part of the day.


Hughes' main purpose "was not so much to alert Congress to something they already know, but to make a statement, so that America would take notice," Shanahan said.
The two men together run a website and nonprofit corporation called The Civilist Papers, which focuses on such issues, Shanahan said.
In his post, Hughes wrote of his time spent in the Navy and described his family.
Although he did not mention it in the post, one of Hughes' sons committed suicide 2 ½ years ago at the age of 24, the Tampa Bay Times reported. "Something changed in me," Hughes told the paper. Public records show Hughes had a son named John Joseph Hughes who died.
"He told us that he felt like his son did something stupid, but he had made a point," said Ben Montgomery, the Tampa Bay Times reporter who broke the story of the gyrocopter flight. "He learned a lesson out of that. And it was: If you want to make a point, you've got to do something big, as sad as that seems," Montgomery told CNN's Jake Tapper.









Reporter: We wondered if pilot had a death wish 04:22




"He's been thinking about this for 2½ years. He's pictured every scenario you could possibly imagine," Montgomery said.


Shanahan said Hughes mentioned the idea when the two were brainstorming a couple of years ago. Having grown up in Washington, Shanahan opposed the idea. "I told him that, no, that was an insane plan because the chances are he was going to get killed."


"Doug is like a pit bull when he gets an idea," Shanahan said. "He's very stubborn. And he finds ways around it. ... The word got out because he was telling people of his idea. And the Secret Service heard of it. So, they interviewed the two of us. And after that, he said he was going to sell his copter and figure out something else to do. But then I noticed he did not sell this copter."


When Hughes called Shanahan on Wednesday morning, Shanahan said he did not try to talk Hughes out of the plan, but "he was talking real quick, and I didn't know exactly what he meant by a lot of things."

[American Patriot]

http://thedemocracyclub.org/

There's his site.

[American Patriot]

Freedom Flight

Hello - I'm Doug Hughes, a mailman, pilot and the author of this web site. In my time, I've delivered a lot of letters, and I'm delivering 535 letters by 'air mail' today - a special delivery to every member of the US Congress.

Congress knows the corruption I am writing about - the voters know about the corruption. The message in the letter is that there is a SOLUTION and every member of Congress will be a part of it, or they will be seeking other employment.

We are going to restore true democracy. I am broadcasting the flight - video and audio. Click on the gyroplane above to watch.

[American Patriot]

His thoughts on Obama:

Obama

What About The President???



There’s plenty of people who think all evil in Washington comes from the Executive Branch of government. Not surprisingly, most of those people today are republicans. Of course, if you go back 12 years, democrats believed that the Executive branch had become an extension of Hades. You can make an argument for improper use of power whether you hate Bush or you hate Obama. I’m not going to mediate the debate.


I am going to say that the founders who crafted the US Constitution to replace the Articles of the Confederation knew that by creating an Executive Branch (which the Articles of the Confederation did not have) they were taking a risk that the president would exceed his authority. Stay with me – there’s a point to this civics lesson.


The founding fathers intended that Congress would be able to rein in the president if he exceeded his constitutional authority with the threat of impeachment. What constitutes an impeachable offense is vaguely defined – an impeachable offense is what two-thirds of the Senate agrees is impeachable. In almost any period in US history, a two-thirds majority in the Senate requires defections from the president’s party. In our current state of hyper-partisanship, it’s impossible to get those defections. The other aspect of congressional hyper-partiship is gridlock, which forces presidents to press the limits of executive authority because Congress can’t pass legislation to fix problems which the the president MUST address.


Here’s my theory – when the legislative branch is dysfunctional and paralyzed and locked in a perpetual partisan duel, two political aspects re-enforce each other to produce ideal conditions for problems from the executive branch. First, Congress isn’t able to pass laws that address problems which the president is required to fix. Second, in an era of hyper-partisanship, there is virtually no chance the Senate can muster a two-thirds majority to impeach, anyway.


Here’s the flip side of that theory. When you have a Congress who has the best interests of the country at heart and understands the importance of the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, Congress will produce imperfect legislation that will work (imperfectly) and give the president the tools he needs to run the federal government and address (imperfectly) the problems which the country faces. That goes a long way to relieve the political pressure which tempts the executive to push the limits.


Extending that concept, if a significant number of Senators of both parties are operating from a highly ethical understanding of the principles that make democracy work, a president who exceeds his power runs a serious risk of censure or even impeachment if he crosses the line.


If we had a Congress – when we have a Congress, limited by a wall of separation between them and big money, they will work for the people. When the people are the source, the ONLY source of campaign funds, when a retired member of Congress can’t take a payoff in the form of a cushy job, when every member of Congress can not sellout, before during or AFTER their term in Congress, we will see a class of people with different values. They won’t necessarily be more liberal or more conservative but they will have no confusion about who they are working for.


I understand frustration that some voters have with the Executive Branch. There’s a constitutional mechanism for dealing with excesses by the Executive Branch, but you need a healthy Congress for the process to work. That’s how the government was designed. A functional Congress promotes a balanced Presidency.


An afterthought on the subject. Campaign Finance Reform will change how candidates for the office of President run their campaigns and how they set their priorities in the platform they run on. Right now, candidates for president are making unofficial promises and concessions to powerful sources of campaign funds. For government to work for the people, campaign money has to come ONLY from the people in small amounts that preclude buying favors.

[American Patriot]

• A Small Favor, if you will..
  
  My flight is not a secret. Before I took off, I sent an Email to info@barackobama.com. The letter is intended to persuade the guardians of the Capitol that I am not a threat and that shooting me down will be a bigger headache than letting me deliver these letters to Congress.
  *
  You can help by calling the White House at 202-456-1414. Tell them they have mail from - dhughes@thedemocracyclub.org. Let them know you demand an honest government that works for the people - and you oppose shooting me down.
  *
  (If you favor shooting me down, call that number, but wait until tomorrow.)
  

[American Patriot]

Interestingly enough, web sites and facebook pages are almost instantly shut down these days by authorities as soon as they can identify the perps, and they do this prior to the release of names.

That has not happened here.

His helper on the web site hasn't been arrested.

His family is being left alone.

His house, to the best of my ability to determine, has not been raided.

His name is released.

His agenda published.

His videos out there.

The news has been culpable in his mission and hasn't notified authorities.

He even NOTIFIED authorities himself, and was not shot down, but HAS been arrested.

If this were 1963, they would have let him deliver the letters, and 20 congressmen and women would have met him on the lawn applauding his actions.

Really?

Now, he gets charged with "Terrorism"?

Let's get the popcorn and see.....

[Toad]

I consider what he did an act of civil disobedience. He did what he did as protest, he knew he'd be arrested. He did not however have any weapons, any intention of violence, he peacefully surrendered. I don't see anything "terrorist" about this.

[American Patriot]

Same here.

I don't agree with him politically - except for the civil disobedience part.

I've kind of been waiting on Malsua to chime in, as he usually sees something all of us miss. lol