Mother Davis takes in a breath of air filled with particulate matter as she reflects,
It’s been almost five years now that the United States of America has had that new apparatus of government power known as Homeland Security. Five years seems like a good time to reflect upon what Homeland Security has done for America, and done to America.
Homeland Security has made America a nation full of people who are happy to take off their belts and shoes and submit to a pat down at a moment’s notice. Homeland Security has brought us giant computer databases run by the government to track our personal activities. It’s brought radio chips embedded invisibly in the fabric of our lives, to give signals about our movements. It’s brought government agents observing peace protesters as “potential terrorists”. It’s brought multiple, massive programs in the Executive Branch of government to spy on Americans who have broken no law. It’s brought a President who claims to be above the law, and a Secretary of Homeland Security who claims certain territories within American borders to be law-free zones where he can do whatever he wants.
Quit ‘yer complaining, say the proponents of Homeland Security. It’s all for our own good, and besides, we can trust our Homeland Security agents only to crush freedom in the pursuit of the bad guys. These Homeland Security people are our best and brightest, they say.
News this week ought to cause us to stop and reflect that America’s Homeland Security best and brightest are really just flawed human beings like everybody else.
Two air marshalls, those guys who are supposed to be defending America from the evildoers trying to infiltrate our passenger airplanes, plead guilty this week to using their positions as agents of Homeland Security to help drug dealers bring cocaine into the USA. They were caught with 33 pounds of cocaine that they got past airport security using their air marshall badges. How much did they sell out America for? $75,000.
Then, this morning, I’m reading about Brian Doyle, the Deputy Press Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security who has been arrested on charges of using his Homeland Security office to try to seduce someone he thought was a 14 year-old girl. In order to seduce an undercover officer posing as a teenage girl, Doyle blabbed about his position in the Homeland Security structure, and even gave out his Homeland Security office telephone number so that she could call him at work.
Am I trying to say that the people in the Department of Homeland Security are especially bad people, worse than the rest of us Americans? No. I am saying, however, that people working for Homeland Security are just as flawed as the rest of us.
That ought to give us pause about all the special powers we’ve given to the people who work for the Department of Homeland Security. We’ve given them the power to conduct unreasonable search and seizure, to conduct arbitrary arrests and imprisonment without habeas corpus or a fair trial. We’ve even given Homeland Security agents the power to overrule the law at some times and places.
Back in 2001, people were saying that we had to give Homeland Security these powers, because the terrorists were going to try to blow us all up at any moment. Since then, we have seen quite clearly that America’s reaction to terrorism is more of a danger than the terrorism itself.
The entire concept of Homeland Security is starting to seem like an overreaction. The mere name of Homeland Security is now becoming something of an embarrassment, an awkward, nationalist phrase thought up be people in our government who sought to encourage fear and knee jerk reactions among Americans.
The time has come for Americans to re-examine the premise of the Homeland Security Revolution of 2001, and start talking about taking America back to the days when liberty, not insecurity, was our guiding national principle.
Gazing through the cracked lens of a security camera,
Mother Davis
How can this nightmare be dealt with, as we must consider how
to sue the people doing the airport frisking when Courts
including the Supreme Court will support the present
congressionally-approved system (use of a new government
agency)? The Airline companies have the money to fight back,
but their labor unions block action. I have written to many
Senators and Congressmen,but they refer me to the
Administration. The whole paranoid reaction as has become
financially established through creation of the “pat-down”
agency,is a political distraction from real issues of the
increased gasoline price and wasteful expenditures in the use
of military equipment. The Constitution has been misinterpreted
by the Courts in recent years and together with the rest of the
government, they are playing right into the hands of subversive
anti-americanism. We are facing a virus that has to be stopped
and we can’t even count on a change of political party to cure
it in the next Presidential election. What would the Founders
of America think if they could have witnessed the tragedy of
these friskings in public places?
The security checkers are running a front for the salaried
bureaucrats and politicians who gave them a job at the price
of requiring mentally-disturbed duties, as many acknowledge
at the time of quitting to find real work.
Again, the Airline companies are just as responsible as the
government and courts for the insult to America being inflicted
upon paying passengers at the airports.
Recently, the virus has spread to football games, where there
have been a number of suits against NFL “pat-downs”. The
security insanity bug has to be viewed as partially motivated
by financial interests who provide jobs and sell security
equipment.
Groups such as the American Bar Association, Airline Pilot’s
Association, ACLU, etc. have to come out much more strongly
against the “Big Brother” maneuvers which amount to illegal
arrests and searches before they become too established to
phase out.