It's the same stupid approach.
Posted on 11/27/2010 5:32:54 PM PST by The Magical Mischief Tour
Last fall, flying out of Chicago O'Hare, I ran into that rarest of breeds: a Transportation Security Administration agent with a sense of humor. In her "Da Bears" accent, she moved the line along with a good-natured, "awright: who's my next victim?" At least they're allowed to joke about it. If a rubber-gloved fed cups your -- er, I prefer the term "treasures" -- just turn your head and cough politely. Don't dare try to ease the awkwardness with a wisecrack, lest you get arrested under the TSA's no-joking policy.
Sometimes, when I manage to pull my eyes away from my twinkly smartphone and look around, I think, "Wow, if you squint a little, this could be a sci-fi dystopia!" (It happened again just recently, as I was passing through the gates at my local Metro station, and Janet Napolitano's voice boomed ominously from the loudspeakers, ordering me to say something if I see something.)
Thankfully, the growing anti-TSA backlash shows that for many Americans, there isn't a Soma dose high enough to get them to grin and bear the bureaucratic feel-up.
In fact, even some of our most rabid terror-warriors, like former Sen. Rick Santorum and neocon stalwart Charles Krauthammer, now say they've had enough.
Santorum and Krauthammer blame a politically correct mentality that prevents profiling. But the Christmas bomber was Nigerian; the shoebomber, a Brit with a Jamaican father. Should we just give the "freedom fondle" to anyone vaguely swarthy?
I have a different explanation for how we got here.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
There is a huge difference between an act that has unknowable results and ones that have predictable results. The creation of the department of homeland security is in the later category. Regan picking GHB is in the former, but still Regan erred. The Bushes have used every form of subterfuge to destroy the Regan conservative agenda.
Really? I recall when I was free to move about and not have government fences on my land.
The problem in the south is being enabled from the inside.
They want to give illegals college but not my kids.
We should be busting the Mexican Govs chops, not enabling bad behavior.
I blame it on Teddy Roosevelt!
This is the part about some True Conservatives™ I find most disturbing: if they cannot acknowledge how much of the fence was built, they don't know anything about the fence. And if they know nothing of the fence, then the fence isn't that important to them.
14 posted on Saturday, November 27, 2010 8:12:58 PM by 4rcane
If this is true, isn't Jimmy Carter to blame because he brought us Reagan?
No there issue here, is an attempt to look for scapegoats instead of actually putting the blame on the real culprit. The guy directly in charge
Thats like those who blame US for 9/11, instead of the actual terrorists
bookmark
Yes, there is such things as cause and effect. However, we have to be able to isolate the ‘necessary condition’ and ‘sufficient condition’. The creation of TSA maybe seen as necessary condition, but that alone will not lead to groping. It is the decision by Janetalia that provides the sufficient condition.
Unless your land straddles the national borders, your comment is a red herring. If you do have property that straddles the national border, you have two properties not one.
Lots of people have land on the border and dont want the feds breaking up their land so a guy in Maryland can feel good.
Its every bit as intrusive as the TSA to those directly effected.
The author misquotes the sound bite “The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact” in his article, but it concluded the end of a 40 plus page dissenting opinion by Supreme Court judge Robert Jackson, who was the lead prosecutor of the first 21 major defendants at the Nuremberg trials. He, more than any other American jurist, developed a balanced practical and theoretical legal understanding of civil liberties. Among the mountains of evidence, he saw the ways in which legal protections were used to erase a constitutional government in Germany. Here is the link:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=337&invol=1
The essence of his opinion and the preamble of our Constitution carry the transparent understanding that the people of the United States direct the political branches of government to provide for the common defense. Behind this protection citizens can insure domestic tranquility, promote general welfare, establish justice, and secure the blessings of liberty. The preamble and his opinion find tranquility and liberty to be consecutive, but co-equal. The proper exercise of civil liberties was never intended to furnish enemies the weapons for destruction of our society.
The practical reality of his legal direction for understanding of the Constitution could be applied in brilliant, creative, effective approaches for thwarting terrorists. However, the adjectives bright, creative, and effective do not seem to apply to the bureaucrats and politicians who currently insist on managing our safety. In fact their pervasive involvement obscures the realities the rest of us could think through to discover meaningful solutions.
Our society allows police to subject individuals to even abusive intrusions when such actions are deemed reasonable responses to actions. They stop a speeding car. They search persons and property with reasonable suspicion based on specific and demonstrable facts. They subdue and even kill a citizen in response to escalating levels of violence.
However, TSA bureaucrats are allowed intimate, primal domination of people when they have done nothing to elicit the behavior. The massive, random and warrantless program of body scanners and pat downs creates an environment for institutionalizing the worst demons of the human condition.
This country has before and should never again, suffer the consequences of allowing one group of people dominion over another, when submission was not provoked by the other party’s uncivil behavior. In The Life and Times of Fredrick Douglas, he believed that slavery perpetrated as much emotional and psychological damage on the owner as the slave.
The Homeland Security approach contrasts sharply to the disparaged National Security Agency (NSA) program for warrantless intrusion into private communications, where analysts sought a handful of useful leads from the 60 to 100 billion communications per day worldwide. Their standards first passed a Fourth Amendment test, and then focused on much narrower parameters to find signals of interest.
For the NSA probability and statistics enabled approaches, which are otherwise condemned as profiling. TSA should be allowed enhanced surveillance methods, when their rules focus on human actions and characteristics denoting responses with a higher probability for terrorist actions. Unfortunately, the current environment, as exampled by Gene Healy’s juvenile analysis, discourages those capable of higher order thought processes focusing on people instead of props.
It's the same stupid approach.
This is why building the fence and securing the border is entirely different. It is the refusal to do just that, that has resulted in signs like you posted. No criminals from the south means more liberty. The border fence as far as I am aware violates no provision of the constitution.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
REAL funny.
The problem is the Mexican Government.
Punish them, not us.
The airports could be considered borders too.
And what are they doing?
Punishing us and giving the bad actors a pass.
I would be happy if they built a fence - but unlike the one on our side to keep lawbreakers out, theirs would be to keep them in.
Somehow most of the world manages without barbed wire and check points.
I kinda was hoping the USA could too.
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