Preserve, defend and protect the Constitution

When I entered the United States Army  40 years ago I took an oath. When I became a police officer I took an oath. When I went to work for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security I took an oath.

I raised my hand and swore to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The First Amendment to the Constitution gives all Americans the right to free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of the press and the right to peaceful dissent.

As an individual I may not always agree with what somebody else says or does. Sometimes another’s protest and or speech may be completely at odds to my own beliefs.   Sometimes I find it so abhorrent, so morally incomprehensible to what I stand for that it makes me angry.

That is my right and it is my right to express my opinion on whatever topic I deem necessary.

As an American citizen, I must respect the Constitution and another person’s right to do the same, even if I totally disagree with their point of view.

That freedom is why white racists can protest on the streets of this country and display symbols of the Nazi party or the KKK, no matter how vile and ignorant their protests are to most Americans. Hitler and his Nazi party murdered millions of human beings, and almost annihilated the Jewish race. The KKK murdered thousands of black Americans and white Americans that supported them.

Black Lives Matter can march down the street and chant that they want dead cops.

You can’t pick apart the Constitution and say the freedoms we hold so dear in this country only apply to those who we agree with. It doesn’t work that way and if it did we wouldn’t be a free society.

President John F. Kennedy said that peaceful dissent is what keeps us free.

The Constitution gives an NFL player or any other American for that matter, the right to kneel during the National Anthem for whatever reason he chooses and he doesn’t have to explain to anybody why he is doing it. That is his right as an American.

It is not something I would do, but I respect his right to do it.

President Donald Trump also has the right to free speech, however calling another person a son-of-a-bitch is something that I did not want to hear from the leader of this country.

But I do not believe a President has the right to tell another person that someone should lose their livelihood because they are exercising their First Amendment rights.

Doug Poppa

Doug authored over 135 articles on the October 1, 2017 Las Vegas Massacre, more than any other single journalist in the country. He investigates stories on corruption, law enforcement and crime. Doug is a US Army Military Police Veteran, former police officer, deputy sheriff and criminal investigator. Doug spent 20 years in the hotel/casino industry as an investigator and then as Director of Security and Surveillance. He also spent a short time with the US Dept. of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration. In 1986 Doug was awarded Criminal Investigator of the Year by the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia for his undercover work in narcotics enforcement. In 1992 and 1993 Doug testified in court that a sheriff’s office official and the county prosecutor withheld exculpatory evidence during the 1988 trial of a man accused of the attempted murder of his wife. Doug’s testimony led to a judge’s decision to order the release of the man from prison in 1992 and awarded him a new trial, in which he was later acquitted. As a result of Doug breaking the police “blue wall of silence,” he was fired by the county sheriff. His story was featured on Inside Edition, Current Affair and CBS News’ “Street Stories with Ed Bradley”. In 1992 after losing his job, at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Doug infiltrated a group of men who were plotting the kidnapping of a Dupont fortune heir and his wife. Doug has been a guest on national television and radio programs speaking on the stories he now writes as an investigative journalist.