Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 23, 1995 TAG: 9510230158
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Bill Stump a socialist?
Oops - sorry. A listener had missed the speaker's point.
But one definitely had to pay close attention to follow Stump's circuitous explanation of his strict brand of constitutionality. He talked of the illegality of zoning laws - even federal student loans - in a Virginia Tech classroom last week.
Stump, free while he awaits sentencing in federal court for possessing illegal silencers, was a member of the ill-fated Blue Ridge Hunt Club, busted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. A jury last month acquitted him of conspiring with the other club members to break gun laws, but convicted him of two charges - possession of unregistered silencers and silencers without serial numbers.
Urban affairs professor Joseph Scarpaci invited Stump to speak to his Urban Social Movements class so his students could hear, firsthand, from somebody involved with a "Southwest Virginia microcosm of what's happening nationally," as Scarpaci put it. The class is examining a variety of groups that affect the country's political culture, from the Communist Party to civil rights groups to the citizens' militias that burst onto the national scene with the Oklahoma bombing.
Stump, a former Marine, said he expected to have plenty of time to pursue his lawsuits against the federal entities involved in his arrest and trial if he's sentenced to time in a federal prison. Consulting a beat-up copy of the Constitution, he sought to make his point to his scholarly audience: That the states, not the federal government, have most of this country's authority. He believes state citizens' militias are legal under the constitution.
Will the Elks Home go coed?
Don't look for any panty raids at the Elks National Home any time soon.
Even though the 2,230 lodges that make up the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks voted last month to admit women, it'll be a while before the Elks decide if they'll allow women to live at their retirement home in Bedford.
"It's not going to have any immediate impact on the Elks home," said Elks Grand Exalted Ruler and president Ed Mahon, who was in Bedford last week.
To be admitted into the Elks National Home, one must be a member for five years, he said. That means female Elks won't be eligible to apply until late 2000 or early 2001. By then, the Elks will figure out what to do about offering a retirement home to female members.
Mahon, a 64-year-old attorney from Framingham, Mass., was in town to tour the Elks Home. An Elk for 37 years, he was elected to the group's top position at the Elks' annual convention in Las Vegas last July.
As Elks president, he visits Elks lodges in all 50 states and checks up on their special projects, such as the Elks home here or a children's hospital in Florida. Virginia is the 18th state on his trip so far.
"It's an incredible journey, it really is," he said. "You get to meet such nice people ... and I get to go to parts of states where normal tourists don't usually get to go." Like western Alaska, where he visited seven lodges in remote areas of the state.
"I went to Crystal Bay. ... It's the last outpost on the mainland," he recalled. "If you went any further, you'd have been on the Dutch Aleutians. ... Bald eagles are as plentiful as pigeons. ... They're no longer endangered there. ... I saw bears, caribou, mountain goats, and more moose than elks.
"It's funny, I never did see an elk up there."
by CNB