A significant number of national journalists read Homeland Stupidity. You all should just skip right over this post, because you aren’t going to be impressed at all.

But I’m rather proud of myself, having gotten a story into print for the first time.

Oh, okay, if you insist, you can keep reading.

The more astute among my journalist readers sent off a flurry of Freedom of Information Act requests after reading my story last month about the Federal Protective Service, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. FPS, it turns out, had been responsible for contributing the data on anti-war protests and other peace movements to a military intelligence database. You’ve all probably gotten your denial letters back, too.

Last month, while visiting Concord, N.H., on a seemingly unrelated matter, I learned that FPS was still actively monitoring Web sites of various groups who engaged in peaceful protests. One of those groups is the New Hampshire Underground, a loose association of individuals who use “nonviolent noncooperation” to work toward smaller, more limited government and greater personal liberty.

As it turned out, FPS had beefed up security at the federal courthouse in anticipation of, well, I don’t know what, on the day of Dave Ridley’s court appearance. Ridley was in federal court charged with distributing handbills at an Internal Revenue Service office.

I couldn’t find anyone from FPS willing to speak to me. Indeed, they all seemed to run the other way and I wasn’t even able to get a picture of one.

But out of this incident, and one other which took place in New Hampshire, I was invited to rework my FPS story for the Keene Free Press, the “alternative” newspaper in Keene, a college town of 23,000.

That story, which puts some more emphasis on FPS activities within Keene and New Hampshire, was printed up and hit the streets last week (PDF). The picture of Dave Ridley is mine, too. (And his commentary is on page 8.)

I told you you wouldn’t be particularly impressed. But I didn’t start doing this in order to be a journalist. It’s never been one of my goals, and still isn’t. But I must admit that seeing your words on the front page of anything, even a newspaper with a circulation of 5,000, is very exciting.

(I also seem to be wrong about being in print for the first time. Back in May, theKeene Free Press syndicated my article on joining the Free State Project for a special edition (PDF) it distributed in Massachusetts.)