Watch your bumper.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: McCarthyism Watch - Dwight Scarbrough

Dwight Scarbrough used to be in the Navy. He was a machinist on submarines, some of them nuclear, in the Pacific from 1975 to 1980. Now he heads up the Veterans for Peace chapter in Boise, Idaho.

And he's not shy about expressing his opinion. At any given time, he may have as many as ten bumperstickers or peace signs all over his truck.

On February 7, at his day job for a federal natural resource agency, Scarbrough got a call from Homeland Security. An official told him to come out to the parking lot.

When Scarbrough got there, he found two armed officers of Homeland Security, who told him he was violating the Code of Federal Regulations--in particular, the prohibition against the posting of signs on federal property.

(Scarbrough, fearing trouble, brought a tape recorder along and captured the entire confrontation. You can read a transcript at the website of the Boise Weekly, which broke the story on February 15 in an excellent article by Nicholas Collias.)

"I'm informing you that you're in violation," one officer told him, according to the transcript.

Scarbrough tried to point out that those signs were not on federal property but on his own private property--his personal truck.

But they continued to demand that he remove them or be cited for a violation.

"You know this is total BS," Scarbrough told them.

But rather than risk getting a citation, and rather than tear the bumperstickers and signs down, Scarbrough moved his truck out of the parking lot.

The next day, Scarbrough says, he "drove around the parking lot and took pictures of about forty vehicles that had signs of them." According to Scarbrough, some of the signs said, "My Dad Is a Marine" and "Support the Troops."

Scarbrough has since returned to work, and to the parking lot, with signs and stickers on his truck bumper and doors.

And he hasn't been hassled again.

Neither the federal Department of Homeland Security nor the Idaho branch could help clear up what happened.

"It's not anyone I represent," says Lieutenant Colonel Stephanie Dowling, public affairs officer for the Idaho Military Division.

The press office for the federal Department of Homeland Security did not return phone calls for comment.

Back at work, with his adorned truck in the federal parking lot, Scarbrough seems to be doing just fine.

"One of my co-workers' wives made a cake for me with a pickup truck and signs on it," he says. "That tells you the sentiment around here."

Linda Laroca of San Diego has a...