by Francis A Ney Jr
n4zhg1@gmail.com
FROM: The Libertarian Enterprise
In our nation's not-so-slow march towards fascism, I have a few milestones of note not mentioned elsewhere in our little part of cyberspace.
First, the ACLU has announced that yet another supposed constabulary organization has been caught infiltrating and "investigating" terrorist assemblies. Peace protesters, anti-death penalty activists, and property rights advocates, for example. This time, it's the Maryland State Police.
www.commondreams.org/news2008/0717-06.htm
Cue Gilbert Godfried as Iago the Parrot here. I guess I should be grateful that it was MSP and not the Prince George's County (BANG! BANG! BANG! "Stop, or I'll shoot!") Police. MSP is obviously taking a page from F-Troop: Go after soft targets instead of people that might put your feet in a tub of cement and dump you in Chesapeake Bay.
Fucking cowards, the lot of them.
Speaking of cowards, the leaders of New York's largest street gang deserve no gold-of-valor after they caved in to the strident howls of the New York Post, setting yet another undeserved double-standard for our putative overseers.
www.foxnews.com/wires/2008Jul15/0,4670,PoliceShootingBreathalyzer,00.html
www.nypost.com/seven/07162008/news/regionalnews/new_cop_rule_is_just_call_911_120140.htm
Anyone else who did this without the ability to hide behind a badge would still be on Riker's Island. And the same Post and all the other liberal fish-wrap, as well as the traitors in the Brady Campaign would be screaming their heads off about how this is why the Supreme Court was wrong in Heller.
Sorry, a pilot can't fly for 8 hours (12 for commercial ratings) after taking a drink. A paramedic or EMT in New York can't treat a patient for 8 hours after taking a drink. I don't believe it unreasonable to expect that someone carrying a gun stay sober while he does so. A breathalyzer and DWI limits may not be the best way to determine this, but the expectation is valid and I say this as a gun owner and NRA life member. Guns and alcohol do not mix, not even for cops.
Unless you're NYPD, apparently. And I just love the self-righteous indignation from the union, stating that off-duty cops should just call 911 and not get involved. Small loss, since you can't get them involved ON-duty and in uniform half the time, and the other half it's probably not a wise idea anyway.
Next on the hit parade is everyone's second favorite government agency, Thousands Standing Around -oops- Transportation Security Administration.
According to the ACLU, the "potential terrorist watch list" now has over a million names on it. The six or seven people who suck down our tax money writing the TSA blog dispute this with a number of statistical sight gags. Mark Twain was more right then he ever knew.
www.tsa.gov/blog/2008/07/myth-buster-tsas-watch-list-is-more.html
That's no comfort to people like me, or even Jim Robinson (former Asst AG under Clinton), or the thousands of others who are delayed, harassed and humiliated daily at the hands of small-minded people drunk on power. That includes the unfortunate passenger who was told by an ignorant TSA supervisor in Atlanta that the TSA Standard Operating Procedure was "a national intelligence secret" and if the passenger actually saw it, "you wouldn't be going anywhere tonight."
flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=844976
But don't bother complaining about it. CNN reporter Drew Griffin started broadcasting a series of reports critical of TSA, their policies, procedures, and general incompetence. He is now on the watch list.
rawstory.com/news/2008/CNN_reporter_wants_off_terror_watch_0716.html
Tell me this isn't politically motivated retaliation. TSA spokesman Christopher White may say otherwise, but the timing is too much of a smoking gun. And as long as the list is secret, the methods of inclusion are unknown, and the oversight nonexistent (it took an Act of Congress to get Nelson Mandela off the watch list), TSA has become the fourth famous lie in history, right next to "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."
That steady "tromp tromp tromp" you hear in the distance are the stomping of jackboots prepared to grind your face in the dust. 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 are soon to become reality, unless we can stop it.
Frank is a computer consultant and professional gadfly. He serves as the Travel Gestapo Editor of TLE.
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