ARLINGTON, VA – Last March Jason Talley and myself split the cost of a 2000 Four Winds Hurricane. As many of you know, that RV was soon dubbed MARV and became the fourth and best-looking member of the Motorhome Diaires (especially after his transformation into a rolling billboard for liberty).

Over the next seven months MARV traveled to 43 of the lower-48 states so that his crew (me, Jason, Adam Mueller and, for short stints, Allison Gibbs and Ryan Maddox) could interview and share the stories of activists, policy scholars and others advancing the ideas of liberty and bring us to meetups in 55 cities to network such folks.

But MARV was more than just means to get from point A to B. MARV helped to connect and grow the liberty community, putting people in touch who might otherwise never meet and introducing the ideas of liberty to receptive minds for the first time. And MARV helped disseminate different strategies and tactics, enabling us to learn from each other and have a greater impact. In the end, MARV helped to underscore why we’re so passionate about this movement, causing many of us to redouble our efforts.

So, though the title for this post isn’t 100% accurate (prior to being handed over to his new owner MARV will accompany the Liberty Caravan) it’s with a bit of heavy-heartedness that we announce that MARV will soon be put up for sale on eBay (March 4-14th). While there are many pros and cons to this decision one obvious benefit for us is that we’ll be able to allocate the capital now tied-up in MARV to other projects.

We thought the earlier we announced MARV’s pending sale the more eyes we’ll get on the auction, hopefully increasing MARV’s chance of finding a good home. If you have any specific questions about MARV or his sale, feel free to leave a comment or email us: mail[at]motorhomediaries.com Questions about MHD or future projects will be addressed at a later date.

More Information About MHD & MARV

• http://motorhomediaries.com
• http://youtube.com/motorhomediaires
• http://facebook.com/motorhomediaries

While on the road we were fortunate to cross paths with a great number of the current and budding luminaries in the liberty movement, many of whom shared their signatures, quotes and well-wishes on MARV’s guestbook (his ceiling).

• More pictures of MARV’s guestbook (scroll down)
• More “Pictures of M.A.R.V. as he crosses the country“
• More pictures of some of the great “People we’ve met Along the Way“
• More MARV-related posts/videos

ARLINGTON, VA – When in the Pacific Northwest I received an email from Scott Barton, one of my former colleagues at the Institute for Humane Studies which put on our radar the secession movement in northern California/southern Oregon known as the Free State of Jefferson. I immediately emailed Brian Petersen, listed as the contact person on the site, and we nailed down a date for an interview. Despite having a set-back with MARV while heading his way, Petersen generously rescheduled and we were able to visit him on his beautiful property, with Mt. Shasta in the background.

In this video he shares some of the reasons he and many others in his area advocate for secession (emphasizing the peaceful nature of the movement) and gives an overview of the process as outlined by the U.S. and California Constitutions. As is clear, Petersen is a good guy – someone I wouldn’t mind having as a neighbor – he basically just thinks that it doesn’t makes sense that the folks hundreds of miles away get to call the shots about things in his area. I tend to agree.

On a random related note – a few weeks ago when at the Students For Liberty’s Mid-Atlantic Conference another attendee posed a question to the lecturer about the geographical size of an area able to be effectively governed, specifically mentioning California. I happened to be wearing the State of Jefferson hat given to me by Peterson, and was able to point to it and share a bit about the movement there with those present. Pretty cool.

NMissCommentor.com just broke the news of our lawyers filing a motion to dismiss our charges on appeal:

Since last May, I’ve been writing about arrests in Jones County, Mississippi of several travelers who write on the site MotorHomeDiaries.Com.  They were stopped while passing through.  They were arrested under a typically wrongheaded and vague use of the disorderly conduct statute, charged with failure to follow the lawful order of a law enforcement officer.  They were convicted in justice court and then appealed to County Court, where they will get a de novo appeal (for non-lawyers– an appeal where the appeal court starts from scratch, a complete do-over, rather than just reviews what previously happened).

They’ve filed a series of interesting motions to dismiss raising flaws in the arrest affidavits.  The first notes that an essential element of an arrest for possession of beer in a dry county requires showing when the county held an election on whether the county would be dry.  The other motions are more interesting, because they highlight the common police misunderstanding about disorderly conduct arrests– police officers think they can tell someone to do something, and when they don’t, arrest.  One of the arrests was based on an order to put down a video camera.  Period.  The other affidavit alleges that the offense was committed “by arguing with the officer, refusing to put his hands behind his back, and by taking an aggressive stance toward the officer.”

The offense requires a refusal to follow a lawful order of an officer under circumstances that a breach of the peace was either intended or unlawfully risked by the defendant’s conduct where the officer had authority to then and there arrest any person for a violation of the law.  This is three distinct elements, two of which can’t possibly have been met, according to the motions:

1) Refusal to follow a lawful order– here the “arguing” and the video camera have first amendment implications

2) where it could cause a breach of the peace– the video camera affidavit is risible on this point.  I suppose the “taking an aggressive stance toward the officer” allegation is an attempt to meet this standard.

3) the officer has authority to arrest.  This doesn’t mean the general authority of an officer to make an arrest, it requires that there must be something happening then and there that is about to give the officer authority to arrest someone– a fight or the like about to break out (or already occurring).  An officer and a couple of guys standing on the roadside doesn’t meet this standard.

The motions are really clear in the way they break down the requirements and due process problems of  disorderly conduct charges.  There’s some caselaw in there, too; should be interesting reading for anyone who deals with misdemeanor charges.  Here are the motions.

ATLANTA, GA – Last month when wrapping-up our travels in the Bay Area we had the opportunity to connect with freedom fighter Angela Keaton. Not only did she make time for us in her busy schedule but she later joined us at our last meetup on the beach. As you’ll see in the video, Angela doesn’t mince words. She tells it like it is.

If what Angela stated in this video caused you to think I encourage you to learn more by going to Antiwar.com, listening to Antiwar.com Radio, and checking out MHD’s interview with Daniel Lackmacker: “Why War is Immoral,” recorded when we were in Chicago a few months ago.

ARLINGTON, VA – As I type from my basement apartment over 800 miles separate me from Adam (in WI) and 2,600 miles stand between me and Jason (in CA). Despite our geographical separation and the conclusion of the on-the-road portion of MHD we’re not done yet! We’ve each had more time to become involved in other projects (some on our own and some collaborative) but we’ll continue to post fresh content here each Monday.

In the coming weeks expect to see our own thank-you/wrap-up, new video interviews (with folks such as Angela Keaton of Antiwar.com and Brian Petersen of the State of Jefferson) and updates about the progress our book and documentary. Today, we share with you an interview we did this weekend with Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio. It was truly a pleasure speaking with one of the leading minds in the Voluntaryist movement.

On another note, if you happen to be within driving distance of St. Louis I encourage you to join Jason, Adam, myself and other lovers of liberty at the inaugural Liberty on the Rocks, St. Louis meetup on Friday night and the Missouri Blogosphere Event on Saturday hosted by the Show-Me Institute. They should both be excellent venues to meet good folks and share ideas.

ASHEVILLE, NC - When at our Portland meetup I was pleasantly surprised to put a face with a handle I’d only known online – that of Liberty Pile. I first crossed paths with Liberty Pile when I was working at a now-defunct anti-State organization and was excited to get to know him and learn more about the tactics of he and his crew utilize to grow the freedom movement.

In this video – which as you’ll see, includes only his shadow and voice, a first for MHD – Liberty Pile touches on the site he manages with the same name, tactics he and other Portland-based freedom activists utilize and the importance of self-education to be an effective communicator.

ASHEVILLE, NC – As mentioned a couple of days ago – Jason, Adam and myself are taking part in the State Policy Network’s 17th Annual Meeting. Yesterday, we woke up at 4am and were driven to the San Francisco International Airport by our good friend and fellow voluntaryist Peter Bosse and around 4:30pm, after a layover in Atlanta, we touched-down in picturesque Asheville (we left the keys for MARV with Peter and his wife Laurie in the Bay Area).

Thus far we’ve been able to connect with a lot of the policy-oriented folks that we were able to meet with while on the road, so it’s been good catching up, hearing their input and informing them about our pending book/documentary.

Earlier today I did a session on “How to Plan Your Small Video Project” which I think went pretty well and I’m currently sitting in Jason’s session entitled “Video Recording – how to shoot video, lighting, audio, cameras, how to download video for editing.” Next up is Adam, who’s slated to be talking about “Social Networking 101 – How to set up Facebook, MySpace, Ning, Twitter and link them together.”

Much of this is due to our experiences and feedback gleaned over the past seven months on the road with the Motorhome Diaires we were all much-better prepared to address these topics. So thanks to you for helping to make that happen.

And, on a related note – as some of y’all may recall, we stopped by Asheville earlier this year, where we had a great meetup with a lot of really active, principled people and where Adam was able to connect with Mark and Debbie Kuhn (thanks to Brian Umbarger) which resulted in one of our most-viewed videos.

ASHEVILLE, NC - A couple of weeks ago when we were in Portland we had the chance to visit the offices of the Cascade Policy Institute and talk with Todd Wynn, program director of their Climate Change and Energy Policy area. In this video, Todd shares a bit about his background and drops some serious knowledge about how spontaneous, bottom-up individual actions can better ensure a vibrant clean environment than top-down one-size-fits-all decisions.

I think I can speak on behalf of MHD in saying that I’m glad Todd is allocating his time to this issue. He’s clearly well-versed and personable – both things that may help encourage those clamoring for increased government intervention in our lives and the economy to protect the environment to consider other perspectives. We all want the same thing – a clean environment – the question at hand is what is the best way to get there.

Since this issue was brought into the political arena it has polarized many people – I remember, when outside an Al Gore speaking gig in DC, I was handing out literature with a few others that advocated much the same as that proffered by Todd in this video the reactions we received were mostly in the form of personal attacks. I even had a self-described libertarian tell me that “This issue is too important to not involve the federal government further and completely rework our economy.” Really? I don’t think so and thanks to the work of Todd and others, more and more folks are starting to question the status quo that would not only grant bureaucrats and politicians more authority over your life but harm the environment.

SAN JOSE, CA – As you may have noticed, we didn’t get a Thank You Thursday up a couple of days ago and didn’t get any content up yesterday. We apologize! We’ve been running around quite a bit here in the Bay Area – doing a lot of interviews, packing and figuring out our post-MHD logistics (as our last meetup for ‘Searching for Freedom in America’ was last night) and preparing for our speaking gigs up the State Policy Network conference (to which we’re flying).

In the near future we’ll post a more-exhaustive Thank You Thursday about this past week and for our entire journey and share some details about how this project will evolve (including when we’ll release content we still have and our book/documentary). In the meantime, have an excellent Halloween!

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – After we left Portland we continued south on I-5 toward San Francisco. On the way, we stopped in Roseburg, OR, where met Nick “Nicky the heel” Puglia, who, like a few others thus far on the trip, had agreed to act as an intermediate of sorts, and receive some things shipped to us. The next day when we were just about to pack up after working for a while at the local Starbucks then in walked David Humphries (who goes by the handle “PrometheusforLiberty” online on sites like Fr33Agents.net).

David told us that he’d watched pretty much all the videos on MHD’s YouTube channel and that after receiving a text from a friend that told him that MARV was at Starbucks he started to reply “In Roseburg?” but then just decided to stroll over to catch us.

In this video David details his personal journey to the ideas of liberty. He’s yet another person who got involved in this movement due in part to the Ron Paul campaign that has done a lot of self-education and is now considering moving to New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project. Hell yes.