Thursday, August 17, 2006
News, Security, and a Modicum of Freedom
It’s been a big news week, hasn’t it? One piece of good news that amazes one to contemplate is that they caught the real killer of Jon Benet Ramsey. Confessed, he did. Too bad Patsy didn’t live to witness the day. Or at least to sue the tabloids for all that crap they published over the years. It’s amazing what being well off and living in a place like Boulder, Colorado will allow to happen: they’ll solve the ten-year-old murder of your daughter. Around the same time a little girl in Englewood, Colorado, of not-so-well off parentage and named Alie Barella, was killed. They found her body through the efforts of one amazing bloodhound named Yogi, who was able to track her scent over a day later along a freeway and up into a remote canyon. Her killer remains at large. The upside for the family is that, not being rich, nobody in the tabloid world thought to accuse them of murdering their own daughter, which I’m sure they didn’t. I was sure the Ramsey’s didn’t murder their daughter as well, but the two cases do illustrate the ups and downs of having money in our society, don’t they?
But in other news of course there’s the ridiculous BS promulgated in our airports by the TSA. You can’t even take aboard a bottle of water you bought inside security now. This, if you will, is utterly stupid. Not that that’s a surprise. You know who wants to get us? Islamic men, usually Arab but always Islamic, between about seventeen and thirty years old want to get us. Nobody else cares enough to go to that extreme. I’ll bet there aren’t ten women in the world who would volunteer for such a mission, and no men not fitting the description I just gave. It would not be unfair racial profiling to search the young Islamic men and let the rest of us go with just the minimal security thought necessary prior to 9/11/01. I’m not badmouthing Islam, nor young men, and for those who are young Islamic men who are not out to get us, and this includes virtually all such who are in the country legally, I apologize for the inconvenience of even bringing it up. But, the truth is that this particular profile is accurate, and inconveniencing the rest of us, including Islamic women, is just plain wrong and stupid. But, stupid is what I’ve come to expect from the current administration. For instance, when they say that . . .
We’re still not completely safe? I’d say not, what with the president using illegal wiretaps to spy on us. What? Yes, illegal wiretaps, as decided by a Federal court today. You need a warrant to conduct a wiretapping operation. The constitution says that so clearly that even a person completely ignorant of legal proceedings can figure it out. But the administration said that they had to do it for reasons they could not reveal without compromising “national security.” If that’s security, Mr. President, I’ll take raw danger. Frankly, if we have to do things like a dictatorship in order to call ourselves free, then we’re just trying to fool ourselves in the first place. If we’re really better than “them,” then we need to act like it, and keep our behavior within the law. Sorry, George, nothing personal, but rein in your cloak and dagger team, okay?
But in other news of course there’s the ridiculous BS promulgated in our airports by the TSA. You can’t even take aboard a bottle of water you bought inside security now. This, if you will, is utterly stupid. Not that that’s a surprise. You know who wants to get us? Islamic men, usually Arab but always Islamic, between about seventeen and thirty years old want to get us. Nobody else cares enough to go to that extreme. I’ll bet there aren’t ten women in the world who would volunteer for such a mission, and no men not fitting the description I just gave. It would not be unfair racial profiling to search the young Islamic men and let the rest of us go with just the minimal security thought necessary prior to 9/11/01. I’m not badmouthing Islam, nor young men, and for those who are young Islamic men who are not out to get us, and this includes virtually all such who are in the country legally, I apologize for the inconvenience of even bringing it up. But, the truth is that this particular profile is accurate, and inconveniencing the rest of us, including Islamic women, is just plain wrong and stupid. But, stupid is what I’ve come to expect from the current administration. For instance, when they say that . . .
We’re still not completely safe? I’d say not, what with the president using illegal wiretaps to spy on us. What? Yes, illegal wiretaps, as decided by a Federal court today. You need a warrant to conduct a wiretapping operation. The constitution says that so clearly that even a person completely ignorant of legal proceedings can figure it out. But the administration said that they had to do it for reasons they could not reveal without compromising “national security.” If that’s security, Mr. President, I’ll take raw danger. Frankly, if we have to do things like a dictatorship in order to call ourselves free, then we’re just trying to fool ourselves in the first place. If we’re really better than “them,” then we need to act like it, and keep our behavior within the law. Sorry, George, nothing personal, but rein in your cloak and dagger team, okay?
Labels: Politics
