Running Iron Report

As COVID-19 began hitting urban centers in March and governors began issuing lockdown orders, sheriffs began quelling rumors of checkpoints and mass arrests. “This is not Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia where you are asked for your papers!” wrote Sheriff Scott Nichols of Franklin County, Maine. … Read More

On a beautiful November day John Maloney delivered a sweet, brilliant eulogy for his friend Frenchy, voicing the admiration we all felt. Marines shed uncontrollable tears, duty bound to serve in Iraq and resolved to stay tight and honor this sacrifice. My unit prepared for Iraq and an instructor noted one unit that performed better than mine. It was John’s. … Read More

Please consider a contribution.  I know money is tight and times are rough all over, but we keep trying to make important work in the meantime.  My budget will be short and I will lose money, but I’d like to pay the right people and get this out into the world.  Len’s story is worthy and I promise to make … Read More

We have a legal showdown underway in Oregon that has implications across this battered republic. On Monday, a judge in Baker County, Oregon, acting on a case brought by faith groups, invalidated the restrictions on businesses and social gatherings imposed under Governor Kate Brown’s emergency actions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, dating back to March. Judge Matt Shirtcliff, a … Read More

Remember back in January, before we sent SWAT Teams into restaurants after diners and before we jailed hairdressers or governors outlawed vegetable seeds?  If those things don’t disturb every fiber in your body…well, they just should that’s all. … Read More

Governments don’t live together, people live together. With governments you don’t always get a fair word or a fair fight. Well I’ve come here to give you either one, or get either one from you. — Josey Wales to Chief Ten Bears, The Outlaw Josey Wales * Raising hell with the hippies and the cowboys They don’t care about no … Read More

RIR reader and contributor Rob L. Thornton has a poem published in the current issue of Dark Mountain. A signal accomplishment, and we tip our hat(s) to him. I stumbled across the Dark Mountain Project in February of 2016. I know the date because I wrote a piece about it titled Chasing Buffalo Down A Dark Mountain on Frontier Partisans. … Read More

I’ve been riding every day — weather permitting — this spring which has been great for my mental health and even better for my youngest horse, Remington.  He’s a long four year-old this spring and coming out of our mild winter is showing signs of maturity and “getting it” that are beyond his age and super encouraging for the future. … Read More

One benefit of this Covid Spring is that we all get the chance to reexamine our priorities, which can become wildly skewed in lengthy periods of prosperity.  We’ve been prosperous for a very long time, most of us entirely unscathed by our various wars and rumors of wars, and on the macro level we may have forgotten that our extraordinary … Read More

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” — Joseph Conrad * “The systems of explanation, historical and psychological, that we employ to explain ordinary human behavior, however extreme, cannot explain Hitler, who represents, (theologian Emil) Fackenheim believes, a ‘radical evil,’ an ‘eruption of demonism into history…’” — Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler * “All … Read More