Misapplied Power – in Idiot's Hands

The rights we all enjoy as Americans are under assault as kooks and nuts have been let out of the the playpen. Recently created, the Homeland Security Department seems to be increasingly populated by zealots and misanthropes who are utilizing newly found powers to impose their personal views on America.

What's needed are professional personnel with finely trained police and investigative capabilities – not the dimwitted prison guard types that are causing problems now. Ranging from minor abuses of power by self appointed morality police belonging to the religio-fascist brigades to the more egregious violations of the Constitution by their unthinking storm troopers, the department is in serious need of restructuring, re-training, and mission policy analysis. Their efforts to 'protect' America are being misdirected. For example, a newly instituted program has enlisted school bus drivers to watch for potential terrorists. Now, it's a mystery, how a bus driver, regardless of the training provided, is going to be anything more than a neighborhood snoop that will cause innocent people harm.

Such a training program demands strong oversight, said John Rollins, a former senior Homeland Security intelligence official now with the Congressional Research Service. Otherwise, he said, some bus drivers could think of themselves as undercover agents.

"Today it's bus drivers, tomorrow it could be postal officials, and the next day, it could be, 'Why don't we have this program in place for the people who deliver the newspaper to the door?' " Mr. Rollins said. "We could quickly get into a society where we're all spying on each other. It may be well intentioned, but there is a concern of going a bit too far."

It is going too far. We are losing America – bit by bit. The most dangerous aspect of this loss of liberty is the glacial pace it marches at - so slowly that people do not become alarmed, but relentless in it's damage. People need to wake up now – or their children will think the police state is the way America always was.
Posted on The Human Stain