Pun Salad

A quick recap: The Free State Project (FSP) is an endeavor to get 20,000 "liberty-loving" people to move to New Hampshire. The stated intent is to have them "work within the political system to reduce the size and scope of government."

Last December, NH State Representative (Democrat) Cynthia Chase deemed Free Staters "the single biggest threat the state is facing today" and advocated establishing an "unwelcoming" environment for them. Cynthia's intolerant comments made waves even outside of New Hampshire, getting attention from Matt Welch at Reason, Warner Todd Huston at Big Government, and Fox News's Brett Baier.

Which brings me to the editorial antics of my local paper, Foster's Daily Democrat. Although they've never shown any interest in covering the FSP in their news pages, they've published three FSP-trashing editorials so far this year.

The first, on January 8 warned ominously that the FSP was "co-opting our way of life". While barely criticizing Chase's invective as "inopportune", the editorialist condemned the FSP as being "surreptitious" (without providing a single example), and leaned heavily on us-vs.-the-outsiders demagoguery.

The second came after some FSP wags sent Cynthia Chase a lovely bouquet, thanking her for the free publicity. The humor-impaired editorialist tsk-tsked: the FSP, he said, "had some growing up to do."

And then, finally, yesterday: "Cat is out of the bag ... for sure", the headline read. The editorialist had found a smoking gun! Where? Why, in the words of Carla Gericke, the FSP President! (As reported in the Union Leader, because as previously stated, Foster's has shown no interest in covering the FSP in its own news pages.) The issue is how soon it will take for the FSP to reach its 20,000-person pledge goal.

Uh, so what's so nefarious about that? The Foster's editorialist knows:

Whoa. I hope you were sitting down for the revelation of that bit of news.

Now, how silly is this, really? When the FSP hits the 20K pledge mark, that is supposed to start the five-year window during which the signers are supposed to move to New Hampshire. (How many will actually do that is anyone's guess, but I would bet: fewer than 20K.)

But the Foster's "suspicious" editorialist imagines the dark future of 2015 when 20,000 Free Staters show up all at once and … do what, exactly? Well, worst case: "work within the political system to reduce the size and scope of government." You know, exactly as their Statement of Intent states.

[Just to be clear: I'm not a Free Stater, having moved to NH when Jason Sorens was about 8 years old. But, heck, I wish all 20,000 of them were here today.]

The Foster's editorialist also makes a big deal about the FSP's stated desire to organize itself under the IRS's 501(c)(3) rules. He is, in fact, aghast:

I have no opinion on whether the FSP should organize as a 501(c)(3), but in fact a lot of advocacy groups do so, perfectly legally: examples include Planned Parenthood, the National Rifle Association, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, People for the American Way Foundation, etc.

It's a mixed blessing that Foster's news reporting on the FSP is nearly non-existent. If it were as transparently lame and grudge-driven as its editorials, it would certainly be an easy target for a blogger to make fun of.

This may seem frivolous, but does the Chicken Dance really span so many cultures? The Wikipedia page seems to suggest it does. Perhaps we'll look back on it one day as the unexpected uniter of humanity in peace, harmony, and oom-pah.

But it's just a small, sweet part of End of Watch. Which follows around two LAPD beat cop partners, Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña) as they prowl the very mean streets of a crime-ridden Los Angeles neighborhood.

The idea is that this is "found video", pieced together from recordings taken by the participants themselves. (Taylor is taking a filmmaking class, and he says his video for a class project.) That means there's a lot of bouncy/shaky camerawork, meant to add an air of reality to the enterprise. (Does this technique drive traditional cinematographers crazy?) Everybody records everything, though, so we not only get video of Taylor and Zavala on the job, we also get to see their personal lives. And the bad guys have video too.

Taylor and Zavala have great chemistry together—their videotaped banter is often hilarious—and they're also brave, smart, and effective cops. Unfortunately, disrupting too many criminal enterprises brings them to the deadly attention of the Sinaloa cartel.

The best actress ever to come out of Portland, Maine, Anna Kendrick, plays Taylor's love interest and eventual wife. And yes, if you want to see Anna Kendrick do the Chicken Dance, this is your movie.

The people who count such things count 326 occurrences of the F-word, which is good enough to put End of Watch in sixth place on the all-time list.