Anyone who rode\u00a0the bus in Houston, Texas during the 2-10pm shift last Friday faced random bag checks and sweeps<\/a>\u00a0by both drug-sniffing dogs and bomb-sniffing dogs (the latter being only canines necessary if “preventing terrorism” were the actual intent of these raids), all courtesy of a joint effort between TSA VIPR nests and three different local and county-level police departments. The new Napolitano doctrine, then: “Show us your papers, show us everything you’ve got, justify yourself or you’re not allowed to go about your everyday business.”<\/p>\nCongresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee praised these violations of her constituents’ rights with an explanation asinine even by congressional standards:<\/p>\n
“We’re looking to make sure that the lady I saw walking with a cane \u2026 knows that Metro cares as much about her as we do about building the light rail.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
See, if you don’t support the random harassment of ordinary people riding the bus to work, you’re a callous bastard who doesn’t care about little old ladies.<\/p>\n
No specific threats or reasons were cited for the raids, as the government no longer even pretends to need any. Vipers bite you just because they can. TSA spokesman Jim Fotenos confirmed this a few days before the Houston raids, when VIPR teams and local police did the same thing to travelers\u00a0catching trains out of the Amtrak station in Alton, Illinois<\/a>. Fotenos confirmed that “It was not in response to a specific threat,” and bragged that VIPR teams conduct “thousands” of these operations each year.<\/p>\nStill, apologists can pretend that’s all good, pretend constitutional and human rights somehow don’t apply to mass transit, and twist their minds into the Mobius pretzel shapes necessary to find random searches of everyday travelers compatible with any notion that America is a free country. “Don’t like the new rules for mass transit? Then drive.”<\/p>\n
Except even\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0doesn’t work anymore. Earlier this month, the\u00a0VIPRs came out again in Virginia and infested the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel<\/a>, also known as the stretch of Interstate 64 connecting the cities of Hampton and Norfolk. Spokesmen admitted again that the exercise was a “routine sweep”, not a response to any specific threat. Official news outlets admitted the checkpoint caused a delay (further exacerbated by a couple of accidents), but didn’t say for how long.\u00a0Local commenters at the Travel Underground forums reported delays of 90 minutes<\/a>.<\/p>\nI grew up in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia. When I was a kid, my dad crossed the bridge-tunnel every day while commuting to work. When I was in university, I did the same thing. The old conventional wisdom said “Get to the airport at least two hours early, so TSA has time to violate your constitutional rights before boarding.” What’s the new conventional wisdom \u2013 “Leave for any destination at least 90 minutes early, so TSA can violate your rights en route”?<\/p>\n
Airports, bus terminals, train stations, highways \u2013 what’s left? If you don’t like it, walk. And remember to be respectfully submissive to any TSA agents or police you encounter in your travels, especially now that theUS supreme court has ruled mass strip-searches<\/a>\u00a0are acceptable for anyone arrested for even the most minor offence in America. If you’re rude to any TSA agent or cops, you risk being arrested on some vague catch-all charge like “disorderly conduct”. Even if the charges are later dropped, you’ll still undergo the ritual humiliation of having to strip, squat, spread ’em and show your various orifices to be empty.<\/p>\nCan I call America a police state now, without being accused of hyperbole?<\/p>\n
————<\/p>\n
This entire post is not mine, but is reproduced from the Guardian, as clearly indicated and linked above.<\/p>\n
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\r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The following is a post by Jennifer Abel, retrieved from the Guardian. \u00a0I am keeping a local copy, not for publication.<\/p>\n
The TSA’s mission creep is making the US a police state<\/h1>\n
The out-of-control Transportation Security Administration is past patdowns at airports \u2013 now it’s checkpoints and roadblocks<\/p>\n
\n- Jennifer Abel<\/a> <\/li>\n
- guardian.co.uk<\/a>,\u00a0Wednesday 18 April 2012 15.42 BST<\/li>\n
- Article history<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Ever since 2010, when the Transportation Security Administration startedrequiring that travelers in American airports submit to sexually intrusive gropings<\/a>\u00a0based on the apparent anti-terrorism principle that “If we can’t feel your nipples, they\u00a0must<\/em>\u00a0be a bomb”, the agency’s craven apologists have shouted down all constitutional or\u00a0human rights<\/a>\u00a0objections with the mantra “If you don’t like it, … Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}