This story takes place in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is not a right to work state, which means you can be forced to join a union in order to get and keep a job in the Keystone State. The largest union in the town of Allentown is one of the most radical; the Service Employees International Union. This is the union arm of ACORN and the official union of the Obama Administration.

Now .. here's your story: Over the summer, Allentown had to lay off 39 SEIU members because of the economy. Union bosses don't like this ... especially in a town reeking of the union mentality. Just not supposed to happen ... union members are losing their jobs. People get their tires slashed over stuff like this ... or worse.

Then along comes Kevin Anderson. He's 17 years old. Kevin is finishing his final community service project to get his Eagle Scout badge. For over 200 hours, weeks on end, Kevin worked to clear a walking path in a park. Uh oh. It was a city park; a park owned by the city of Allentown ... you know, the city that fired 39 union members?

Eagle Scout or not ... this just cannot be allowed to happen. The president of the local SEIU, Nick Balzano (name ends in a vowel) says that he is considering filing a grievance against the city. Why? Because these evil city officials allowed this non-union kid to clear the walk and bike path in the local park. Dammit! Don't they know this is a union job? A union member could have earned bucks cleaning that footpath! Balzano says, "We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails." Uh oh .. now they've done it. You scouts out there had better look out! The unions are going to "look into" you! Maybe there's a merit badge out there for repairing broken knee caps.

Last week we had the story about the apartment complex in Oregon that wouldn't allow American flags on its property. Luckily ... and after a lot of pressure ... the apartment complex finally came to its senses. But now we have this story out of Chester, Pennsylvania. James Krapf has been a firefighter for 11 years. Last week he was suspended without pay because he refused to peel a sticker of the American flag from the door of his locker.

The department decided to implement a new rule that all stickers and statements be removed from lockers because they could be deemed "racist" or "offensive." Apparently the new rule was put in place after someone posted an "offensive" cartoon on a locker.

So last week, everyone removed paraphernalia from their lockers. But when it came to the American flag sticker, Krapf refused to remove it. The Fire Commissioner insisted that he follow the new policy, also insisting that it is not about the symbolism of the American flag ... that was not the issue.

This is 21st Century America under Barack Obama. You can't even put the American Flag on your locker at a fire department. Maybe if we replaced the Stars and Stripes with the Obama "O" it would be better.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania is about to become the Big Brother of the United States. The community is installing 165 surveillance cameras, making their system larger than systems in cities like Boston or San Francisco.

So what are the people of Lancaster upset about?

The fact that these cameras will be monitored by ordinary citizens rather than the police. They will be monitored 18 to 24 hours a day by the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition, which is a nonprofit board that works with police.

Now, all of the sudden, the people are concerned about their privacy. They aren't concerned when it is the government monitoring their communities ....

Is there a problem here? Only if these cameras can observe what people are doing in private. If these cameras are monitoring the streets and sidewalks then the people monitoring these cameras can't see a thing they wouldn't see if they were standing there on that very same street. I don't really see the problem here.

Here's a little look at what the teachers unions are up to. This story comes from Northeast Pennsylvania. Democrat state legislatures are introducing a bill that would make religiously affiliated schools subject to state labor relations laws. It all started because the Catholic diocese would not recognize the teachers union as a collective bargaining unit.

So this bill would allow teachers and employee at religious schools the option, by a majority vote, to be represented by a union. If this were the case, the unions of religious schools would be able to bring their grievances to the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board. As of now, the Labor Relations Board does not have jurisdiction over issues in religious schools.

The union argues that by religious schools not recognizing teachers unions, this puts the teachers "at the will of their employer." Oh, the horror! If you don't want to be "at the will of an employer," get out there and create your own job!

The local Catholic diocese says that this bill would mean the end of Catholic schools in the district, which would cost local communities $73,880,400 each year to educate these students. Maybe that's the goal! The more students who are removed from parochial schools and placed into the government school system the more powerful the teacher's unions become.

The Governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, has decided that he is going to be a bailout fairy. He is going to make sure that private businesses in his state get their own piece of the taxpayer pie. In this case, Rendell says that the state has secured a $35 million federal loan to bailout a regional department store. Boscov's is some sort of Northeast chain that has filed for bankruptcy. But rather than going belly up, it went to the government to help. And guess what? The government came through ... thanks to your tax dollars. The $35 million loan will be financed through a program that allows the states to guarantee loans for economic development by using federal community development block grants.

Just some more of your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen. Private businesses, you would be foolish not to line up at the government trough. Individual tax payers, your chance is coming.

... this is a tough one for the McCain campaign to come back from.

We knew we were going to get stories of voter suppression from both sides of the aisle. But here's some video of the Black Panthers acting as "security" for a voting station in Pennsylvania.