If you thought the "Transportation Security Administration" would limit itself to conducting unconstitutional searches at airports, think again. The agency intends to assert jurisdiction over our nation's highways, waterways and railroads as well. TSA launched a new campaign of random checkpoints on Tennessee highways last week, complete with a sinister military-style acronym – VIP(E)R – as a name for the program.
As with TSA's random searches at airports, these roadside searches are not based on any actual suspicion of criminal activity or any factual evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever by those detained. They are, in effect, completely random. So first we are told by the U.S. Supreme Court that American citizens have no 4th amendment protections at border crossings, even when standing on U.S. soil. Now TSA takes the next logical step and simply detains and searches U.S. citizens at wholly internal checkpoints.
The slippery slope is here. When does it end? How many more infringements on our liberties, our property and our basic human rights to travel freely will it take before people become fed up enough to demand respect from their government? When will we demand that the government heed obvious constitutional limitations and stop treating ordinary Americans as criminal suspects in the absence of probable cause?
The real tragedy occurs when Americans incrementally become accustomed to this treatment on the roads just as they have become accustomed to it in the airports. We already accept arriving at the airport 2 or more hours before a flight to get through security; will we soon have to build in an extra 2 or 3 hours into our road trips to allow for checkpoint traffic?
Worse, some people are lulled into a false sense of security and are actually grateful for this added police presence! Should we really hail the expansion of the police state as an enhancement to safety? I submit that an attitude of acquiescence to TSA authority is thoroughly dangerous, un-American, and insulting to earlier freedom-loving generations who built this country.
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DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
8 comments:
I swear if this is implemented everywhere in the US I will move from this freaking country.
Hooray for George W. Bush's Patriot Act! NOT!!
The TSA and the rest of the goons who think they RULE us get away with this blantantly unconstitutional search MAINLY because we have so many (I hesitate to call them) Americans, who need to be told what to think and how to behave. They are a disgrace. ARMED government agents randomly stopping otherwise innocent and unsuspicious American citizens to CHECK to see IF they are committing a crime? THIS is EXACTLY what I warned about when you people said "good idea!!" to the police setting up roadbloacks and stopping EVERYONE (often HUNDREDS of people) to find ONE or two (sometimes NONE) "impaired drivers". You let them open the door, you sheep. Now, you want to complain about your "rights"? Believe in "protect and SERVE"? You don't have any "rights". You gave them away!! And should be beyond ashamed.
I warned all of you about this after 9-11, but the lot of you think speed cameras are a good idea because it's for the children, just like random checks. Just like you fools are willing to give up liberty for perceived safety at our airports.
We really are on the way to becoming Nazi Germany with a good bit of George Orwell thrown in for good measure. Incrementalism at its finest. And to the bright boy who says he is moving...How absurd, where? Where on EARTH is more free than here? Hint Einstein, no where, were screwed unless people like YOU get up off the couch. SO cmon, get of your lazy tail and get to your county council meetings and stop speed cameras and random searches, go to your congressman town hall and complain about the TSA. Mooo MOOOOOOOO does that grass taste bovine boy? Enjoy the milking the government is giving you while you get led to the slaughterhouse.
4:25 - You are right. Unfortunately, most of the posters on here forget that little fact.
We don't need terrorists to destroy our contry. We will do it ourselves.
4:17 PM
But it's ok in certain areas?
Where are all the "if you don't like it, don't fly" people now?
11:47....they are still wearing their badges and guns. And keeping files of the nude pictures taken of all the hot chicks at the airport, or of the ones of the teenage girls they had to strip search several times....
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