Running a Web site like this, I get a lot of strange e-mail. And I don’t mean the spam, though some of that is pretty strange. I also get a wide assortment of hate mail, though less of it than I’d expect. A couple of things that came in lately, though …

Just a couple of hours ago, I received an e-mail from someone in the military. This isn’t too unusual, but the odd thing today was that he sent the mail from his DoD e-mail address, and it started out like this:

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

And it ended like this:

If this e-mail is marked FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY it may be exempt from mandatory disclosure under FOIA. DoD 5400.7R, “DoD Freedom of Information Act Program”, DoD Directive 5230.9, “Clearance of DoD Information for Public Release”, and DoD Instruction 5230.29, “Security and Policy Review of DoD Information for Public Release” apply.

All I can really tell you about that message is that the sender wanted assistance with a Department of Homeland Security protocol, and that I really am not in a position to help directly. Anyway, I’ve put the message into encrypted storage and there it shall sit, along with other sensitive but unclassified curiosities such as the identity of Jimmy Hoffa’s killer. Just kidding. Actually this is the first time I’ve ever directly received any sensitive but unclassified documents of any kind. But seeing this for myself, I certainly understand now why many people say that the government overclassifies things.

In the hate mail department, someone requested to unsubscribe from my mailing list. This isn’t too unusual either, as people come and go all the time, change e-mail addresses, find out that they’ve accidentally signed up for a pro-liberty site, etc. It was the latter which motivated this person to unsubscribe. He didn’t want to be on a pro-liberty mailing list.

In fact, I’m pretty sure he didn’t even know what liberty is. He accused me of being a Democrat! Them’s fighting words. I’ll have you know I’m a registered Libertarian and I vote straight ticket.

Speaking of the mailing list, due to a software error, everyone on the list has been unsubscribed as of yesterday morning. Due to the way the confirmation logs are formatted, it’s time-consuming for me to reconstruct the list without inadvertently either adding someone who didn’t click the confirmation link, or adding someone who has since unsubscribed from the list. So I’m going to leave the list empty. I’ve upgraded the mailing list software to the latest version, which fixes the problem of everyone being dropped from the list. Please re-subscribe to the mailing list if you want to receive it, or better yet, use the RSS feed to have the latest news from Homeland Stupidity and millions of other sites delivered directly to your desktop. No e-mail address required.