The Department of Homeland Control

The six of us finally got our luggage hauled up to the ticket counter only to be told, “You have been selected for an extra security search.” We were yanked from the counter and immediately led over to a very expensive looking line-up of bomb sniffing x-ray machines. As we stood sheepishly under the watchful gaze of the armed, stern- looking TSA employees, all of our bags got a thorough going over.

Now please understand, I certainly do not want any bomb-carrying psychos waltzing onto the flight I am about to board. I really don’t. So I would like to think that somewhere in the great TSA security database there is a profile of a known, potentially dangerous terrorist that would read something like this:

“Be on the lookout for a white, middle aged, heterosexual male, wearing shorts and a stupid looking shirt. Likely to be accompanied by a stunning woman, wearing matching shirt, with four children.”

Because then I would feel better knowing that the intrusive search performed on my family was helping to make the world a safer place. But of course, that is nonsense. The “security” precautions are only a sham, designed to fool us into thinking our government is serious about protecting us.

If securing the homeland were really the objective, then Sec. 102 of the USA Patriot Act would not make the ludicrous argument that “no particular culture, people or religion is responsible for terrorism.” Which is just another way of saying that every single one of us is a suspect. What a total crock!

I don’t know about you, but it is pretty clear to me which cultures, people and religions have a propensity to blow themselves up on their way to martyrdom. And it’s not some guy like me who is just trying to take his family on vacation!

If you and I can figure out which cultures, people and religions pose a danger to us, then our government has figured it out too. So when we are told that a completely random search of all 280 million Americans is an effective way of catching the bad guys, it means they really have no intention of actually catching the bad guys. So just as it is with almost every aspect of our government these days, the Homeland Security Agency is not quite what it appears to be.

The Homeland Security Act, The Patriot Act, and the soon-to-be-unleashed Patriot Act II have very little to do with providing security to the homeland. They have everything to do with providing our government with a myriad of new powers for keeping all of us under control.

Do you feel safer knowing the federal government is snooping around in your private affairs? Do you feel safer knowing the federal government is looking into your spending habits, bank accounts and medical history? Do you feel safer boarding an airplane after you and the elderly couple next to you are strip-searched? Do you feel safer knowing that the emails you write and the web sites you browse are subject to warrantless searches?

It is nearly impossible to make the least bit of sense out of the combined 170,000 words of gibberish contained in The Homeland Security Act, The Patriot Act I or The Patriot Act II. In an attempt to make these Acts all the more incomprehensible, much of the verbiage is actually a cryptic modification of other, equally unintelligible laws. It would take an army of researchers just to get all the amended documents together in one place. Which means you can be sure that not a single member of Congress read these Acts before they voted to approve them. Let alone understood the impact of them. If that is not enough, there is another agency lurking about called the TIA, or the Total(itarianism) Information Agency. This is the one where every piece of information about you is fed into a computer that is so huge they had to make up a whole new unit of measure, called the petabyte, to describe the enormous size of the hard drives that will be required to store the mountains of information the TIA is collecting about you. It gets even better. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has just issued contract bids for a new control mechanism called LifeLog. This is going to be a new computer system that will analyze all of our “behavior, habits and routines” in order to “capture each persons experience in and interactions with the world.” Why does our government need to know every detail of our lives? Just what do these people have in store for our Republic?

And not to be forgotten, the Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS was designed to recruit everyday people to spy on their neighbors and report any suspicious activity to the government. If TIPS had been enacted, there would be roughly one government snoop for every 24 Americans. This would mean that every time the repairman finished fixing your dishwasher, there would be a government report filed about any “suspicious” activities in your house.

The failure of the TIPS program to get enacted last year is irrelevant. They still want it and you can bet that some flavor of TIPS will morph its way back into one of the laws that are part of what has now become an avalanche of new “security” measures How could this be happening in America?

If our government were really serious about homeland security, there would be large men with guns, patrolling our borders in Humvees. There would be some sanity in our immigration and visa issuing policies. We would restore our second amendment rights aboard airplanes, so knife-wielding lunatics will never be able to crash them into buildings again. We would be searching the thousands of shipping containers that enter the country each day. We would ban travel to and from a long list of countries. And we would kick out the bad guys that managed to sneak in - immediately!

Instead, we need a whole new dictionary just to know the names of all the agencies that are snooping around in our private affairs, as if we are all somehow at fault for the events of 9/11. Things have gone completely nuts!

Understanding the full impact of these new laws is not very likely. There is just too much there for the average person to digest. But then that is exactly the intent! There are enough new restrictions, definitions and coded phrases, such that any one of us could be caught up in this new “homeland security” net without ever knowing what we did wrong!

Take all these new powers, along with the ability to hold Americans captive for indefinite periods without any Constitutional protections, and it becomes clear that our own government is doing more to destroy America than any terrorist organization could ever have hoped to.

Like the pieces in a giant game of chess, the mechanisms to eliminate our few remaining freedoms are rapidly being placed into position. We do not know how long it will be before the inevitable “checkmate” is called.

Let’s hope we can wake up enough people before we get that knock on the door, “We’re here from the Homeland Security Department and we’ll need to see your right hand or your forehead…”

Just like the AWB, right? And to think I was even concerned about it! Whew! Thanks for setting our minds at ease.

Don Joe, the GOP is toast if they cross the gunowners and they know it. Bush has already tiptoed almost too close to the line by baiting the Dims on this one. (If 'baiting' is what it really was.)

Even the Dims don't want to try gungrabbing this year. A few feeble pro forma bills will be presented and will die quietly. This will be done to suck some soft money out of the gungrabbing Left contingent and harvest some easy campaign funds for Dims in safe liberal districts.

For all I fault this GOP congress with doing, I don't believe for one second that AWB will be renewed. And I give DeLay and Hostettler (Liberty Caucus) most of the credit.

And the Dims are scared stiff by it. Even Boxer and her ilk aren't going to go there again. Even the Brady Bunch has been forced to adopt more 'reasonable' tactics and are actually trying to present 'responsible' gun ownership views and plead with Dims that gungrabbing legislation will not kill their re-election. Good grief, the Brady Bunch is now actually using gunowning gungrabbers for their propaganda pieces.

AWB just doesn't prove much about Patriot. Except perhaps that determined grassroots activism can win against considerable odds.

Look, if we can't win anything, we may as well just give up and enjoy the triumph of socialism. But that's wrong. We can and still do win some for our causes. And we still have strong allies in Congress who do merit our unreserved support.

The Liberty Caucus

I don't ever expect to fly again. The rediculous procedures are just going to be accepted (already have by the sheep) of being "normal".

You, me -- and thousands, possibly tens, or hundreds of thousands -- of other Americans too.

Driving ain't so bad. Get to enjoy the view, and not be treated like some convict on a Bureau of Prisons bus.

See my post 20 in this thread for some horror stories that'll make your blood run cold.

Remember, those are just a few representative incidents. This crap goes on daily. The arrogance of the "public servants" knows no bounds, no limits, no constraints.

It used to be that they'd try to screen out the a$$#oles when hiring for "enforcement" positions. Now, it seems they're screening them in. I guess all the better to keep the public in line. Cowed, afraid to do anything but smile, silently, and just take it.

The principle seems to be that they've staffed these "frontline customer service" positions with the aforementioned a$$#oles, who go about their "work", rousting, hassling, abusing whoever they want, for any reason they want. Do you look like the guy who "stole" his parking place last week? Tough break. Do you look like the guy who ran off with his wife? Does your voice remind him of the loan officer at the bank who gave him a hard time about being late on his mortgage?

The list of potential "offenses" goes on endlessly. The point is, if you, for whatever "reason", offend one of these... well, the politest term I can come up with is "modern day Roman soldier", then you, my friend, are eff yew see kay ee dee. I hope you didn't make any long term plans for the day -- things like "completing your flight", or "not having to even think about stuff like 'making bail.'"

We're racing headlong into something that's... well, they say history tends to repeat itself.

And remember Orwell's vision for the future. A bootheel, grinding into a man's face, forefer.

Don Joe, the GOP is toast if they cross the gunowners and they know it.

I take it you haven't seen the polling data lately.

Here's a hint: it ain't looing good, and it's looking worse by the day. And another thing -- it's not just the gun owners they're crossing. It's pretty much every traditional conservative.

Even the Dims don't want to try gungrabbing this year.

LOL! They won't have to try it. GWB is all for it, he'll do it for them.

I don't believe for one second that AWB will be renewed. And I give DeLay and Hostettler (Liberty Caucus) most of the credit.

I don't for one second believe it won't be renewed -- probably permanently this time, no bogus "sunset" included. And I give Karl Rove all the credit. He hasn't even weighed in yet on the matter. When he did weigh in on CFR and Medifraud "reform", the Big Brave Congressmen folded like a cheap suit. It's amazing the way these guys'll vote when they're getting their arms twisted clean out of the socket.

Even the Brady Bunch has been forced to adopt more 'reasonable' tactics

Yeah -- like "maintaining the status quo."

AWB just doesn't prove much about Patriot. Except perhaps that determined grassroots activism can win against considerable odds.

LOL! Just like it did when it passed?

I wasted my time and money calling Dole's office. They said the calls were coming in fast and furious, pretty much all against. Viagradole himself said that the calls were something like 2000 to 1 against.

He voted for it.

And we still have strong allies in Congress who do merit our unreserved support.

I can't really challenge that statement, because I don't know what you mean by "we". Me, I can barely make ends meet. NWIH can I afford to send the multi-figure $$$ amounts to "my" representatives to get them to listen to what I'd like. I can just shut up and take it. Maybe you and your circle of "we" have deeper pockets than me.

Don, you're too defeatist.

We have won this one. We just need to keep the pressure on.

Let's just keep watching this one. You flag me to any AWB renewal news. I think you'll find that we can't lose on every conservative issue.

Go look around the gun sites. They don't seem all that worried, not even the militant RKBA and GOA.

I'm on the GOA mail list and there are no alerts on the AWB. Nothing on the horizon yet. We may be disappointed that our bills to protect gun manufacturers from frivolous litigation hasn't moved forward and that immunity for self-defense from zealous anti-gun prosecutors hasn't passed yet.

Those are sins of omission. The AWB would be a direct attack on the grass roots gunowerners, many of whom live in the 37 states with recent CCW legislation. Actually, I think Bush would lose at least several crucial Southern states if it passed. And I think Rove knows it.

No. I'm not worried about the AWB. But there are plenty of other things we need to watch.

You and I are pretty much on the same page. I'm disgusted by the whole mess.

My Perfect Morning:

While driving to work, I attempt to tune in the local NPR station to scan the official propaganda arm of the democrat party. For some reason I get nothing but dead air. I shrug and tune in one of the local classic rock stations. They are having a Pink Floyd/Led Zeppelin marathon.
Some time around 9:30 am, a co-worker comes in and informs me there has been a horrendous earthquake in Californicate, and it has just sunk into the Pacific Ocean.
At about 11 AM, I read the following headline on FreeRepublic while I'm sitting on a really boring conference call: Meteor Hits Washington DC.
The story continues...
A meteor estimated to be approximately 200 yeards across impacted with the Capital building apparently at ground zero. Everything within a 10 mile radious has been completely vaporized. The meteorite apparently contained a high proportion of natural radioactive isotopes, and it would seem the area is uninhabitable for the next 5000 years.
The entire executive, legislative, and judicial branches vanished in the fireball generated by the impact. National day of celebration is declared spontaneously across the nation.

I can dream can't I?

Amen. I refuse to even go into an airport. There is no way I could keep from walking around going "Baaaaaa! Baaaaaa!"

Having been employed by a national airline, the last out-of-town airline security conference I had to go to, I went to via Amtrak. When asked why I had done so, I had to reply that airlines, including our own were unsafe to fly on, the pilots being so incompetent and unskilled that they couldn't even be trusted with weapons the way a 6-dollar-per-hour security guard could.

Our business was off 25% since 09/11, and was continuing to fall when I moved into a more interesting and responsible line of employment. I'd estimate conservatively that it's around 50% now, based on the number of cancelled scheduled flights and more available seating.

One of the things I think is sad about the way the media talks about the public when it comes to flying, is they take one of either two stances... Either everything is just hunky-dory, or people are afraid to fly because of terrorism.

The former is patently absurd, as you can tell by looking at financials for any major airline (mod SouthWest). The latter is just sheer propaganda. I find it hard to believe that even with all the scare-mongering by the administration about terrorism by the press, that people really think another hijacking is likely or even possible. I personally believe hijacking is a thing of the past. That's not to say that cowardly muslim terrorists won't try to put a bomb on a flight, but the very idea that they could successfully pull off a hijack is absurd on its face. There is a monument in Pennsylvania that is a testament to what happens when people know the implications of the uses to which the flying bomb they are travelling in can be put.

Many of us aren't flying because the people who are in charge of security at airports around the country, (government drones of course), are demonstrating a complete lack of common sense in their actions. They are strip-searching 70 year old women! Only a government drone could be so stupid. The only proposal that has been made so far that would actually improve security in any appreciable measure is arming pilots. So what does FedGov do? They make the process as intrusive, abusive, arbitrary, and capricious as humany possible to discourage the very idea that we, the people, acn or should have any power over our own destiny. If one didn't know better, one would think they want air travel to be as unsafe as they can make it so they can have excuses to increase their power and control over us. Most pilots are former military. They should have more than average familiarity with weapons. That is not to mention the fact that they are already in control of the aircraft!

The whole subject of what is being done to us in the name of 'homeland security', a wonderfully teutonic turn of phrase if I've ever heard one, is something that really riles me up. I guess you've figured that out by now though.

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