Taxation without representation was not the only cause leading to the American Revolution. Another was the writ of assistance (a general search warrant with no expiration date) issued by courts in British America in the 1760s, which authorized British customs officials to search anywhere at anytime for anything without first obtaining a specific warrant. The abuse of these written orders inspired the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids general search warrants in the United States.

So, you ask, what does this have to do with the Naked Pumpkin Run in Boulder, Colorado, and who is the Halloween Gestapo? First you need to know a few things:

• The Naked Pumpkin Run has been an annual event in Boulder every year since 1999 when two lone men with carved out pumpkins on their heads, sneakers on their feet, and nothing in between set off for a run in the chilly Colorado air.


• Each year afterward more and more participants joined in, with 150 in 2008, and has thus become a Halloween tradition.


• The Boulder Police ticketed a dozen participants in 2008. The Pumpkin 12, as they became known, all had the charges against them dropped or reduced to disorderly conduct in exchange for a few hours of community service.

  It should be noted that on the same day that cops were getting ready to ticket and arrest pumpkin streakers, a short distance away a woman was gang-raped by four men.

  The irony here? If the streakers were convicted of indecent exposure they would be on the same sex-offender registry as the four rapists. I don't know about you, but it seems wrong to me.



• The Run takes place after 11 pm every Halloween, so young children are unlikely to be exposed to the runners, although seeing naked people does not harm children, actually the reverse.


• the Police Chief in Boulder, Mark Beckner, an idiot and waster of public moneys, last Halloween (2009) threatened nude pumpkin runners with arrest and registration as a sex offender, even stationing up to a hundred officers around Boulder for the express purpose of intimidating would-be runners.


• As a result, no one ran naked in the 11th annual Pumpkin Run (2009) in Boulder.

It should be noted that it is not against the law to be naked in Boulder Colorado. So this moron, Mark Beckner, had to go through textual contortions to turn a harmless bit of fun into a sexual offense. Chief Moron Beckner twisted Colorado's indecent exposure statute, which makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor for anyone to knowingly expose his or her genitals in circumstances "likely to cause affront or alarm," and applied it to nude pumpkin runners saying, "a throng of naked people with jack-o-lanterns on their heads is, by definition, an alarming sight."

Oh really? In what Nazi dictionary will we find that definition? Actually a throng of children dressed as goblins and witches and vampires is an alarming sight, should the good Chief arrest the children on Halloween as well?

By threatening participants with charges of indecent exposure and registration as a sex offender if convicted, it seems the annual pumpkin run is over for now.

The truth is, anyone arrested under this asshole's threat last year would most likely have beaten the life-long sex offender charge. However, who wants to take the chance with their future livelihood?

This idiot police chief does not seem to realize that people sacrificed their lives to protect Americans against such unreasonable arrests.

I will tell you what is an alarming sight, what is truly indecent: the abuse of police power, here threatening citizens with life-long sex offender status, for harmless, late-night, frivolity. In 1776, this Halloween Gestapo agent, for his abuse of power would have been put up against a wall and shot.

Beckner was told that the state's indecent exposure law, which requires convicted violators to register as sex offenders, is not appropriate for nudity-related pranks, but said his officers will continue enforcing the state's indecent exposure law anyway. Meanwhile Beckner is waiting for Boulder to draft a public nudity law so that he can arrest them and have the charges stick.

I wonder if there are any unsolved violent felonies on the books in Boulder, Colorado? If there are, I have a suggestion for a better use of 100 officers than arresting nude pranksters who are not engaging in sexual, violent, dangerous, or threatening acts.

A video of the Naked Pumpkin Run of 2007 is available here.

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Disclaimer: I am not asking the good citizens of this country to put this imbecile against a wall and have him shot. As you all know I am opposed to the death penalty - I was merely making an observation. I do wish, however, that for this particular jackass that I was not an atheist so that I could get some small measure of satisfaction knowing he will be spending a good amount of time naked with a pumpkin on his head roasting over an open fire in Hell. If only.

Photo montage at top courtesy of Photovisi. Click here for individual photo views (WARNING - Not Safe For Work).