A brief observation on terrorism at airports

What terrorist in his right mind would bother trying to sneak a bomb through airport security? If the goal of the terrorist is to simply take out as many people as possible, why not simply detonate a bomb in the middle of a packed airport? The parking ramps, main entrances, ticket counters, and lines leading up to the security checkpoints are all unguarded and unscreened. I have yet to see a single government official or news reporter mention this. Why is that?

The reason is that all of the "security" measures being implemented at our nation's airports have more to do with creating a submissive citizenry than actually keeping people safe. And, of course, the use of porno scanners means loads of cash for Michael Chertoff and his friends.

Libertarians against the regime

by Justin Raimondo - We should all give thanks, this Thanksgiving holiday, for the fact that we are not – yet – living under a dictatorship. Although if you're going through an airport on your way to celebrate the season, you are indeed living in a dictatorship, subject to search and the seizure of your personal effects, as well as being "porno-scanned" and felt up by some TSA Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron.

No, we aren't yet living under a dictatorship, but I can't say I'm all that optimistic that we won't be come next Thanksgiving. The odds of another terrorist attack are quite good, and our ineffective means of preventing it are just a way of reassuring the public that all is "normal." But we are so far from normalcy, these days, that I despair of our ever returning to that lost world of innocence into which I was born. The America of my youth is gone forever, together with youth itself, and while this latter cannot be prevented, the loss of the former is a reversible tragedy – although it seems much less reversible than ever, sad to say.

That golden age – we didn't know it was golden at the time, of course – was an America in which the idea of being searched before getting on a plane was incomprehensible, impossible, the product of someone's dystopian imagination: today it is a reality. It was an America in which the idea that the government could read our communications, spy on our lawful activities, and declare anyone – even an American citizen – an "enemy combatant," and hold them indefinitely or even kill them, was utterly inconceivable, a paranoid's fever dream: today it is all too real.

(Full article)

In jail for being in debt

(Minneapolis Star Tribune) - As a sheriff's deputy dumped the contents of Joy Uhlmeyer's purse into a sealed bag, she begged to know why she had just been arrested while driving home to Richfield after an Easter visit with her elderly mother.

No one had an answer. Uhlmeyer spent a sleepless night in a frigid Anoka County holding cell, her hands tucked under her armpits for warmth. Then, handcuffed in a squad car, she was taken to downtown Minneapolis for booking. Finally, after 16 hours in limbo, jail officials fingerprinted Uhlmeyer and explained her offense -- missing a court hearing over an unpaid debt. "They have no right to do this to me," said the 57-year-old patient care advocate, her voice as soft as a whisper. "Not for a stupid credit card."

(Full story)

We have too many laws, and too many cops willing to enforce them

I'm sure many, if not most, men and women who join the police force do so because they believe they are actually helping to make their neighborhoods safer. Unfortunately, too few police officers are willing to question the tasks they are expected to perform.

Consider what happened last year in Haverford Township, Pennsylvania. Seven neighborhood kids, in the spirit of traditional American entrepreneurship, set up a lemonade stand. But, alas, this is 21st-century America, and some people have a problem with that kind of freedom. A local resident was offended by the display of unbridled capitalism and summoned the cops, who promptly shut down the stand because the kids failed to get a permit. Talk about making lemons out of lemonade.

You see, in order to engage in the exchange of goods and services in the Land of the Free, permission must first be obtained from the state and the requisite extortion paid to the proper authorities. That's the kind of "law" cops are expected to enforce -- and they do so willingly. "I am," the cop will say, "just doing my job."

The punch line to the story is that when the cops actually bothered to research the law they were supposedly enforcing, they discovered that it was perfectly legal for those kids to sell lemonade without a permit. In Haverford Township, a permit is only required for those 16 years of age or older. What the kids experienced that day on their neighborhood street was just a taste of what they will have to deal with on a daily basis in a few short years. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts, kids.

We could examine incidents of police beatings, Tasings, botched drug raids, and countless other examples to see the erosion of freedom, but somehow the shutting down of a lemonade stand run by children drives home the point that government control reaches into every aspect of our lives. The fact is that we live in a country of too many laws, and when those charged with enforcing those law can't even keep them straight, you know we're in trouble.

Careful what you say about Obama; you just might be guilty of sedition

Time columnist Joe Klein thinks speaking out against Obama borders on sedition:



So, words spoken against the current regime in Washington are worse than the actual unconstitutional and seditious acts of the current regime in Washington? Is that really what we're supposed to believe?