Just One Thing After Another

Flash! They're patting people down at airports. "It's ok. It's legal. We've always had discretion to inspect what's going aboard our airlines."

Flash! You have to remove your shoes before boarding airliners. "It's ok. It's legal. "Shoes are a good place to hide things."

Flash! They're groping genital areas and women's breasts at airport checkpoints. "It's ok. It's legal. What if someone hid something there?"

Flash! Random searches of bags at New York subways. "It's ok. It's legal. Anybody can leave the subway and not be searched.

Flash! They're searching every bag at the subways. "It's ok. It's legal. What if a terrorist carries a bomb to another subway station?"

Flash! They're setting up checkpoints at random locations on the streets to search bags and persons. "It's ok. It's legal. What if the terrorist wants to bomb a building?"

Flash! They're incarcerating war protesters at Gitmo. "It's ok. It's legal. We don't want our wonderful political system held up to ridicule by the world's media."

Flash! They're putting American citizens of Arabic descent in camps in the Arizona desert. "It's ok. It's legal. President Roosevelt did it with the Japanese in WWII. Worked like a charm!"

When I heard about the data mining being done by this and prior administrations, some time ago, the first thing I thought about was "mission creep." Government programs tend to gradually get larger and slip into other areas than those originally intended (allegedly).

When GWB began sucking up our long-recognized civil liberties beginning immediately after the destruction of the World Trade Center, I automatically knew that these usurpations would mirror those of the so-called "War on Drugs" and that they would flow together and gradually become more and more all-encompassing.

I'm looking for the "National ID Card" which is being sold to us as a federal-spec state driver's license, to become necessary "papers" for travel on airlines (done deal), trains (done deal), busses and taxis. I'm also expecting, at some not-too-distant point in time, "papers" checkpoints for travellers in private autos on the open highway.

GWB makes this happen by simply declaring that this particular travesty "is legal," because I say it's legal, and "it's not a violation of individual privacy" because I say it's not.

This is the kind of Government by Men (not Government by Law) the US Constitution was adopted to prevent--obviously unsuccessfully!

"People Should Not Be Afraid Of Their Governments. Governments Should Be Afraid Of Their People." --V

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California