A Marine from Noo Yawk City runs for Congress in North Carolina

As a former sailor, I must confess I tried to avoid Marines whenever possible while in service, since they just loved to start fights with us "swabbies." But as a former sailor, I now have the highest regard possible for Marines, airmen and soldiers in the service of our nation. And here's a Marine I hope to see in office soon.

I don't live in the 7th Congressional District of North Carolina, I'm in the 8th, but there's a Marine running for the 7th District seat that I surely would vote for.

To stretch my unlikely admiration even further, he's a Noo Yawk City Yankee but everything I read about him sounds very good.

The Military.com article I read identifies him as "former Marine 1st Lt. Ilario Pantano" but any Marine will tell you "there are no former Marines, once a Marine, always a Marine." (There are only two exceptions to that rule that I'm aware of, Lee Harvey Oswald and the late Congressman Jack Murtha. Both of these two earned the prefix "ex-Marine" for their betrayal of all that Marines stand for, faithful service to God and country.)

But back to Marine 1st Lt. Ilario Pantano.

He believes Republicans are as responsible as Democrats for the country's economic problems. Though he served willingly and proudly in Operation Iraqi Freedom, he doubted the Bush administration's justification for the war and criticizes the competence of its execution.

Nor should anyone expect him, should he be the next congressman from North Carolina's 7th District --- held by Democrat Mike McIntyre since 1997 --- to support expensive defense programs simply because they're defense programs.

"If you think the largest piece of the federal budget is not fraught with fraud, waste and abuse, you're smoking crack," he said. "And I am going in there with a butcher's knife, and we are gong to get to the bottom of some things." This will include going after the practice of senior congressmen directing billion-dollar programs into their districts for jobs when the military goes without critical resources.

"I am not a typical Republican," Pantano told Military.com in a Feb. 3 telephone interview. "In fact, I think the Republicans have done a lot of things that disgusted me, that have disgusted the American people over the last couple of years. And the Republicans absolutely deserved the comeuppance they've gotten.

"And just because there have been some successes in Massachusetts and elsewhere is absolutely not carte blanche to return to … tone deafness to the American people."

Pantano further earns my admiration by first serving a hitch in the Marines as a "grunt," their term for an enlisted man, then going into the financial business on Wall Street, then returning for a second hitch as a Marine officer. Ironically, an incident in Iraq left Pantano fighting accusations of murder, exactly the same BS that ex-Marine Murtha accused other Marines of committing in Iraq. Pantano and the Marines Murtha falsely accused were all found innocent of any charges.

But his interest in business collapsed along with the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, and he returned to the Marine Corps, this time going in as an officer.

April 2004 found him leading a platoon in Mahmudiya, Iraq, where he had in custody two Iraqis he suspected were involved in anti-coalition activities. According to various accounts, Marines had already searched the men's car and found no weapons. But when weapons were found in a nearby house, Pantano wanted the car stripped down for another search.

Then the shooting started. When it was over, both Iraqis were dead. Pantano said he killed them in self defense. Marine prosecutors called it murder and roughly a year later he faced an Article 32 hearing on the charges. But when witness testimony fell apart from inconsistencies and autopsies on the Iraqis' exhumed bodies supported Pantano's version of events, the charges were dismissed.

With the legal storm over, Pantano left the Corps and penned his autobiography, "Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy."

"My experience has colored and defined and shaped who I am," he said, when asked if the murder charges he faced will play a part in the campaign. "And there is no question it's going to be an issue. All my life experience is going to be an issue. … They speak to my character."

And Pantano believes he can turn those blemishes in his record into strengths at the voting booth.

"I went out to do a dirty job for my country and in the process I got jammed up," he said. "I never broke with my Corps. I never broke with my country. I never said I was a victim. I took responsibility. I did what I did. I killed men in combat and if you don't like it, don't send men to war."

With a few good men (and women) like Pantano in Congress, we might return sanity to America.

How dare you question my patriotism! OK, I dare

Growing up as a redneck Southerner, there was one thing you better never do. Dare me. Then I'd have to do it or bust hell wide open. So I'll still take a dare today even though I'm way too old. Not.

The political lexicon of the day is that liberal leftwingnuts can say or do anything that's blatantly unpatriotic, such as not putting your hand over your heart during the playing of the National Anthem for instance, and then if criticized the response is: "How dare you question my patriotism!"

I dare, sir, because if I had been at that political rally back early in the presidential campaign when Hillary, Bill Richardson from New Mexico and the other Democrats all stood respectfully with hands over hearts as The Star-Spangled Banner played while Barack Hussein Obama did not, I woulda climbed on stage and cold-cocked him.

I dare, Nancy Pelosi, because the men and women of the CIA have an unblemished track record of zero terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11 and you, ma'am, are as full of crap as a Christmas turkey when you claim the CIA lied to you about waterboarding terrorists. A grand total of three, count 'em three, rag heads got water in the face to save our country from another attack and what did you do, Nancy, but attack the people who were fighting to defend us?

You, ma'am, and you, BHO, are not only not patriots, I doubt you even know how to be one.

I dare, Harry Reid and John Murtha, to opine that you're neither any kind of patriot when you declare "the war is lost" even as it's being won on the ground in Iraq, or call our Marines murderers when they're accused by a bunch of lying terrorists who routinely kill women and children, blow up churches and schools and commit terror in the name of some other "god."

A patriot is not only someone who loves his country -- and does not go on world apology tours -- but a patriot is also someone who serves his country. Nancy Pelosi's idea of service is commandering military aircraft to ferry her and her buddies to an anti-war party in San Fran.

Harry Reid and John Murtha's idea of service is sucking on the public tit their whole lives and giving back nothing, nada, not a mumblin' minute of genuine, self-sacrificing service.

Genuine service is when a Marine, sailor, soldier or airman, lays down his or her life for our nation on a foreign battlefield so far from home it's not even on the geographic radar of the average American. Iraq? Afghanistan? Most Americans couldn't find either on a map. But our servicemen and women not only know where they are, they've been there, multiple times, and are still there right now, putting their lives on the line for BHO, Nancy, Harry and ex-Marine Murtha. (BTW, Murtha joins Lee Harvey Oswald as the only two ex-Marines in history.)

Genuine patriots not only fight for their country, they also send their sons and daughters off to war and pray for them daily and visit them on the battlefields, as the much-despised-by-the-left Sarah Palin has done and no doubt will do again. Real patriotism and real service is what the men and women in uniform of our armed services or the thin blue line of our police forces here at home do every day: put their lives on the line to fight and defend all that we hold dear.

Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. That's genuine love of country, that's a real patriot. Nancy Pelosi, Jack Murtha, Harry Reid and BHO would have to stand on each other's shoulders to stack up high enough to kiss a real patriot's ass!