[TomB]

WE LIVE IN A POLICE STATE.

You are a fool.

If you think the things you listed, taken for the sake of argument as accurate, are the type of things that define a police state, you REALLY need to talk with people who live or have lived in a real one.

[eno_]

It is VERY telling you have not one substantive reply.

You have NO RESPONSE to the question of whether total lack of financial privacy is a police state.

You have NO RESPONSE as to whether it is OK for police to know who you talk to and when.

You have NO RESPONSE about the criminalization of currency, as in a police state.

You have NO RESPONSE about property siezures, as occur in a police state.

You have NO RESPONSE about whether a press that routinely shields the identity of LEOs that abuse citizens is a free press.

Or, how about these questions:

When you get pulled over at a roadblock and police ask to search your car, without any probable cause, will you bend over and say yes?

When police escort fire officials on an "inspection" to get around probably cause rules, will you let them in?

When police escort child protective services officials who are responding to an anonymous complaint, will you let them in your house?

These are not hypotheticals. They happen every day. Don;t you worry that someone will get a hair across their ass about you, and phone in an anonymous tip?

Or will you start to think you might be living in a police state.