Through the Looking Glass

I know... believe me, I know... that I've been horrible about blogging. I wish I had a better handle on why that is, but there are moments when I have to say something or spend years telling myself that I should have said something.

Today I awoke to the news that TSA was putting federal agents - air marshals - on Los Angeles' Metrolink. This is being marketed as "test" but the public is reminded that the 'T' in TSA covers all forms of transportation. This is apparently a "test" being conducted across the country.

This is one of those incremental changes that people say I overreact to... Like when I-5 and I-15 were blocked by Border Patrol checkpoints on the San Diego County line at least 75 miles north of the US-Mexican border. The one response I got was that they were successfully catching "a lot" of drug smuggling activity.

For forty two years I was taught that totalitarian government was the antithesis of liberty. I was employed for twenty years in the defense of that concept. The very idea of a central Department of Homeland Security brought to mind nothing so much as the Soviet KGB. Now I am forced to accept that federal surveillance and intervention is acceptable to protect us... not from (other) totalitarian governments but from common criminals.

I am mindful of the quotation attributed to Benjamin Franklin: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

For the record, I object to federal interference/intervention in the internal affairs of the city and county of Los Angeles and the state of California. If TSA wants to ride Metrolink, make them buy a ticket.

P.S. While I have the soapbox out, Mr. Bush did not take us to war in Iraq on the basis of faulty intelligence. He took us to war in Iraq on the basis of manipulated intelligence, and he damn well knew it.

U.N. Offices Being Bugged!?!

Okay, I can't be jumping in here to post every time I see something like this, but... here's this item where they found a bugging device in the U.N. European headquarters in Geneva.
Hello? We talked about this on Monday! The bugs are most likely American! The whole world (excluding the red states) knows we've been bugging the U.N. phones!
(Who was it who came up with the somewhat ironic twist of having the Republican states identified as "red?")

What Can You Say About the Administration?

The insights into the Bush White House just keep on coming...
I'm pretty much over Bernard Kerik... I mean why would anyone want to do a background investigation of the nominee for the Secretary of Homeland Security? I hate the use of "Duh!" as an expression, but...
Today I'm reading where we've continued to do business with a known Russian arms smuggler, Victor Bout... a "Merchant of Death" no less... and once again a Halliburton subsidiary is involved (insert look of surprise here).
The piece that I took a little bit personally was the one about Jenna Bush getting a teaching position in a D.C. public school. I thought about doing that for awhile five years ago, but with a record of reckless driving and DUI convictions in the early 1970s I was kind of "iffy" on whether I could be relied upon to mold impressionable young minds. So... is it me?... is it California?... is it D.C? Is it politics?
I need to mention this business of prisoner abuse... and here... at Gitmo, in Afghanistan, in Iraq?... but it's always the aberrant behavior of a few troops... nothing systemic... and if you do manage to get something out of them by whatever means... well, it would be a shame to let that information just go to waste... Please! We're doing it! Cop to it! Geez, you people in D.C. are worse than my kids about taking responsibility!

Thoughts on Homeland Security

Today is the anniversary of the capture of Saddam Hussein. Do we feel any safer today than we did on December 12, 2003? Seven... eight?... more Marines died in AlAnbar province yesterday. Except for during our invasions of Iraqi territory the only thing Hussein ever did to offend me personally was the missile attack on USS Stark, but we weren't mad at him for that... we were mad at Iran then. Osama bin Laden, of course, remains at large.
Meanwhile last Thursday Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, a principal designer of our Middle East policies who never wore a uniform, hosted a Holiday Gala for wounded troops at the Pentagon. (Did he mean to say: "I don't think there's a military in the history of the world that has helped make the country they defend freer and safer and more prosperous and secure.")
Speaking of the uniformed services... the military has now outsourced security screening to a civilian agency under the Secretary of Homeland Security which was that close to being headed by Bernard Kerik.
And the Administration is warming up the machinery to go after the U.N. head of the IAEA, ElBaradei, actually going so far as to wiretap his agency's phones.