We’ve sat down and inked-out a win-win agreement with the U.S. Marine Corps and can now host officially licensed USMC merchandise (be sure to tag your designs with USMCFP). Also, please be sure to follow the new Marine Corps design guidelines – violating products will be shot down – Ooh-Rah!

Those guidelines read as follows:

• No use of an artist's signature or URL (i.e., website address)
• No advertising of any businesses, products, or services of a third party
• No profanity, vulgar language, graphically violent images, or hate language
• No skull imagery
• No blood imagery
• No sexual innuendo, explicit sexual language, images, or graphics
• No reference to drugs, medication, or alcohol
• No derogatory reference to race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, mental handicap, obesity or physical impairment
• No political party associations (e.g. Republican, Democratic)
• No Undergarments (you cannot create Marine Corps thongs, boxer shorts, boxer briefs, etc)

It is interesting to note the trademarking of a logo of a branch of the United States government. As a test of political speech (where “political” refers to issues of policy and not partisan electioneering), we’ve designed the following bumper sticker that meets all the above conditions:

If you click on the bumper sticker’s image here and find that the sticker is available for sale, you’ll know that the Marine Corps can handle a little critique. But if the sticker is no longer for sale, you’ll know that there’s an additional rule in play: no bumper stickers that air criticism of the Marine Corps. That would be government suppression of political speech.

Stay tuned to see what happens.

Update: As of July 17, the bumper sticker has not been removed from the Cafepress marketplace. Meanwhile, shirts like the one below that violate the design guidelines in multiple ways are also being allowed:

It will be interesting to see how winnowing proceeds.

In this oval bumper sticker, an Orwellian all-seeing eye is incorporated into the classic icon of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The message: we may have a new president who ran on hope and change, but under his new administration, Big Brother is Still Watching. The Patriot Act is still in effect. The Military Commissions Act is still in effect. The FISA Amendments Act is still in effect. Barack Obama has committed to continue using tools of warrantless surveillance in contravention of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The election is over. It doesn’t matter whether Barack Obama was on “your team,” or whether you campaigned as part of “his team.” As of his inauguration, he will be the principal executor of a surveillance state. As long as the president and the agents of the president are watching, it is incumbent upon defenders of liberty to watch back.