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WE DON'T NEED CITIZEN SPIES:
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
WE DON'T NEED CITIZEN SPIES:
The Problem With The Bush Administration's Proposed "Operations TIPS"
By ANITA RAMASASTRY
----
Monday, Aug. 05, 2002
Did you know that the cable installer, your FedEx deliveryperson, or your electricity meter reader might soon be spying on you? They may be preparing to alert the federal government to any signs of suspicious activity as they install cable, ask you to sign for a package, or check your meter.
This Orwellian future may occur quite soon unless Congress acts to outlaw the government's Operation Terrorist Information and Prevention System (TIPS). According to the White House, TIPS is scheduled to be introduced as a pilot project in August 2002. By fall, up to one million U.S. service workers in ten cities may be recruited as volunteer citizen informants, assisting the government in its hunt for the terrorists among us.
They will include mail carriers, utility workers, truck drivers and others - chosen precisely because they have access to our homes and gardens, and can easily observe us as we engage in daily activities. As the government's own Citizen Corps Website explains, "Operation TIPS will be a national system for reporting suspicious, and potentially terrorist-related activity. The program will involve the millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to see potentially unusual or suspicious activity in public places."
Not everyone is happy with the prospect of citizen spies. Indeed, both civil liberties groups and conservative organizations have expressed outrage. As a result, the government's description of the TIPS plan has become vaguer and more ambiguous. But that should only make the public's concerns more intense.
The House of Representatives' version of the Homeland Security legislation - spearheaded by majority leader Dick Army (R-Tex) - which passed just a few days ago, would prohibit TIPS. But the Senate Homeland Security bill, due to be debated next week, is currently silent on the subject.
It is crucial that the Senate bill be amended to mirror the House bill and outlaw TIPS. We should not accept a society in which we must live in fear - worrying about whether our next catalog delivery is from someone who is a citizen spy.
What is Operation TIPS?
TIPS is one of five component programs of the Bush Administration's Citizen Corps. The Bush Administration has proposed that it be administered by the U.S. Department of Justice and run in partnership with several other federal agencies.
Most of the other Citizen Corps functions relate to assisting with disaster relief and emergency preparedness in the event of an act of terrorism or crime. TIPS, as described above, is very different - and intensely threatening to basic civil liberties. Shockingly, if the Bush administration's estimates are correct, under TIPS the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than were enlisted by the former socialist East Germany through the notorious Stasi secret police.
Here is how recruitment will occur: Industries that are interested in having their workers participate will be given flyers and brochures about the program, explaining how to contact the Operation TIPS reporting center. This information will be distributed to workers or posted in common work areas.
And here is how the citizen spies will operate: A volunteer worker recruited for TIPS will be able to report suspicious activity by calling a toll-free hotline. Information received will be referred to an appropriate government contact for further investigation if appropriate.
Many Unanswered Questions About TIPS Remain
We still do not have answers to crucial basic questions about TIPS, and we must keep asking until we get some. What exactly will these new citizen informants be asked to do? What will happen to the information collected by the government? Will we soon find that we all have dossiers on file with the FBI?
Is there any meaningful limit imposed by the language suggesting that these workers will observe "public places"? White House spokespersons have stated that TIPS is not meant to include spying in people's homes. Yet the occupations that the Department of Justice has singled out for participation in TIPS obviously include workers who do have unique and frequent access to our homes - both from the inside and from the outside.
Even if there is some "public places" limitation, how can any such limit be maintained when it is part of the TIPS volunteers' very jobs to enter people's homes? Moreover, if a tip comes from a volunteer's on-the-job in-home observation, will the government ignore it? It seems unlikely.
If a street is a "public place," is a volunteer who looks in the window of a home from a street vantagepoint staying within proper boundaries? And again, if window-spying leads to an apparently convincing tip, will that tip be ignored under a sort of "exclusionary rule" relating to tips that come from violations of the "public space" limitation? Unlikely.
Will repairpersons who come to my home feel the need to check out my bookshelves, or take a glance at my computer screen to see what I'm working on - and if so, won't they be violating my First Amendment rights? If I am a research scientist, might a cable TV installer mistake my books for terrorist tracts on explosives and bomb-building?
What about racial profiling? If I am a single male immigrant worker - particularly from countries of which the U.S. is suspicious - will the mere fact that I share a room with several other men out of economic necessity be cause for someone to call in a tip that I am living in a terrorist enclave?
If I am Arab-American, will my every experience with a service worker turn into a search/interrogation fraught with danger for me? How will my children feel when every government employee their father or mother comes into contact with seems suspicious and distrustful? Will religious articles in my home be construed as evidence of "suspicious activities"?
An End Run Around the Fourth Amendment?
The ACLU has cautioned that law enforcement may use civilian volunteers as an end run around the warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment.
Police cannot routinely enter people's homes without first obtaining a search warrant. But the occupant's consent to a search allows an exception to that rule. So now, by consenting to have cable television installed or have your water meter read, and being unlucky enough to have let in a TIPS informant, you might be held to have effectively "consented" to a search - without any notice to you that this is what you have done.
If that happens, the government will have unprecedented access to information gained from within the privacy of our homes. And they will have gained such access without even having to conduct searches themselves - let alone having to initially obtain a warrant in order to take a peek.
Search resources that in the past have been limited will suddenly become virtually unlimited - with millions of new searchers enlisted as unpaid volunteers - and prioritizing serious crime may thus give way to a dragnet free-for-all. Sadly, it is that the Arab-American family on the block that is most likely to be under constant suspicion. Why bother to detain people when you can use constant volunteer surveillance instead?
Lack of Accountability For TIPS Could Lead to Abuses
There are no restraints or checks and balances in place to create accountability for Operation TIPS. For instance, the current plan does not provide for any judicial or Congressional oversight of TIPS. Nor does it specify the consequences if "tips" consist of false or wrong accusations - raising the specter of a neighbor's vendetta being allowed to put the FBI on another neighbor's track, with no penalty for anyone if the latter neighbor ends up being a wrongly-targeted Richard Jewell figure.
Nor will Congress be asked to review the types of information being reported through TIPS, or to examine whether abuses have occurred. Finally, there is no way to assess whether the program is effective or a waste of federal resources.
Sometimes too much information can actually hinder government efforts, when every tip - no matter how unreliable - must be run down. If volunteers can become heroes in their workplaces by submitting tips, they may report even the most minor of suspicions or the most questionable "evidence." Checking out bad tips costs time and money.
The Government Remains Vague on Important Aspects of TIPS
As mentioned above, neither the Citizen Corps website's text nor any other government releases make clear what the type of activity the volunteer workers will be encouraged to report, or in what places surveillance will take place. More troublesome still is the vagueness about how long the information will be retained and by which government agencies.
Attorney General John Ashcroft recently testified before the Senate Judiciary committee about TIPS. Under questioning, he noted that there would be no central database for information collected by TIPS volunteers. Rather, Ashcroft stated that the program would merely "be a referral agency that sends information that is phoned in to appropriate federal, state and local law enforcement agencies."
But that leaves an important question: How would the data be used? The answer, again, is a vague one: it all depends.
The Bush Administration has compared Operation TIPS to highway watch programs - where citizens are encouraged to report unlawful activity, such as illegal driving in a carpool lane or littering. The comparison is inappropriate, however.
Programs such as highway watch or coast watch have a more geographically defined scope, and generally involve the observation of truly public activities. (It's too bad for you if someone sees you throw a beer can out of your car window, but what if a TIPS volunteer, seeing too many beer cans in your house, deems you suspicious?)
Moreover, the government did not recruit an elite corp of volunteers for watch programs; they rely on general public participation. Through actively recruiting Americans to serve as informants for TIPS, the Department of Justice runs the risk of creating a group of overzealous vigilantes.
Volunteers who are untrained, and who are not experts in law enforcement, will not necessarily exercise restraint. And the consequences of lack of restraint may be particularly serious if volunteers are inclined to engage in racial profiling, or if they have an axe to grind with respect to a particular person or family in the neighborhood.
Living in Fear: The Perils of Creating a Nation of Spies and Snoops.
For TIPS, the truly apt comparisons are not highway watch or coast watch - or even neighborhood watch - programs. Rather, the proper analogies are much darker and more threatening.
Senator Patrick Leahy, (D-VT.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has compared TIPS to a "ghetto informant" program created in the 1960s by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI hired neighbors of suspected political protesters to spy on them.
Operation TIPS also seems reminiscent of the use of citizen informers in countries of the former Soviet Union - where neighbors, and even husbands and wives, were encouraged to spy on one another.
One lesson we can learn from history is that if citizen spies walk among us, we will live in a constant state of fear and distrust. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, that will be nothing less than a tragedy and a betrayal of our national character.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/ramasastry/20020805.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
The Problem With The Bush Administration's Proposed "Operations TIPS"
By ANITA RAMASASTRY
----
Monday, Aug. 05, 2002
Did you know that the cable installer, your FedEx deliveryperson, or your electricity meter reader might soon be spying on you? They may be preparing to alert the federal government to any signs of suspicious activity as they install cable, ask you to sign for a package, or check your meter.
This Orwellian future may occur quite soon unless Congress acts to outlaw the government's Operation Terrorist Information and Prevention System (TIPS). According to the White House, TIPS is scheduled to be introduced as a pilot project in August 2002. By fall, up to one million U.S. service workers in ten cities may be recruited as volunteer citizen informants, assisting the government in its hunt for the terrorists among us.
They will include mail carriers, utility workers, truck drivers and others - chosen precisely because they have access to our homes and gardens, and can easily observe us as we engage in daily activities. As the government's own Citizen Corps Website explains, "Operation TIPS will be a national system for reporting suspicious, and potentially terrorist-related activity. The program will involve the millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to see potentially unusual or suspicious activity in public places."
Not everyone is happy with the prospect of citizen spies. Indeed, both civil liberties groups and conservative organizations have expressed outrage. As a result, the government's description of the TIPS plan has become vaguer and more ambiguous. But that should only make the public's concerns more intense.
The House of Representatives' version of the Homeland Security legislation - spearheaded by majority leader Dick Army (R-Tex) - which passed just a few days ago, would prohibit TIPS. But the Senate Homeland Security bill, due to be debated next week, is currently silent on the subject.
It is crucial that the Senate bill be amended to mirror the House bill and outlaw TIPS. We should not accept a society in which we must live in fear - worrying about whether our next catalog delivery is from someone who is a citizen spy.
What is Operation TIPS?
TIPS is one of five component programs of the Bush Administration's Citizen Corps. The Bush Administration has proposed that it be administered by the U.S. Department of Justice and run in partnership with several other federal agencies.
Most of the other Citizen Corps functions relate to assisting with disaster relief and emergency preparedness in the event of an act of terrorism or crime. TIPS, as described above, is very different - and intensely threatening to basic civil liberties. Shockingly, if the Bush administration's estimates are correct, under TIPS the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than were enlisted by the former socialist East Germany through the notorious Stasi secret police.
Here is how recruitment will occur: Industries that are interested in having their workers participate will be given flyers and brochures about the program, explaining how to contact the Operation TIPS reporting center. This information will be distributed to workers or posted in common work areas.
And here is how the citizen spies will operate: A volunteer worker recruited for TIPS will be able to report suspicious activity by calling a toll-free hotline. Information received will be referred to an appropriate government contact for further investigation if appropriate.
Many Unanswered Questions About TIPS Remain
We still do not have answers to crucial basic questions about TIPS, and we must keep asking until we get some. What exactly will these new citizen informants be asked to do? What will happen to the information collected by the government? Will we soon find that we all have dossiers on file with the FBI?
Is there any meaningful limit imposed by the language suggesting that these workers will observe "public places"? White House spokespersons have stated that TIPS is not meant to include spying in people's homes. Yet the occupations that the Department of Justice has singled out for participation in TIPS obviously include workers who do have unique and frequent access to our homes - both from the inside and from the outside.
Even if there is some "public places" limitation, how can any such limit be maintained when it is part of the TIPS volunteers' very jobs to enter people's homes? Moreover, if a tip comes from a volunteer's on-the-job in-home observation, will the government ignore it? It seems unlikely.
If a street is a "public place," is a volunteer who looks in the window of a home from a street vantagepoint staying within proper boundaries? And again, if window-spying leads to an apparently convincing tip, will that tip be ignored under a sort of "exclusionary rule" relating to tips that come from violations of the "public space" limitation? Unlikely.
Will repairpersons who come to my home feel the need to check out my bookshelves, or take a glance at my computer screen to see what I'm working on - and if so, won't they be violating my First Amendment rights? If I am a research scientist, might a cable TV installer mistake my books for terrorist tracts on explosives and bomb-building?
What about racial profiling? If I am a single male immigrant worker - particularly from countries of which the U.S. is suspicious - will the mere fact that I share a room with several other men out of economic necessity be cause for someone to call in a tip that I am living in a terrorist enclave?
If I am Arab-American, will my every experience with a service worker turn into a search/interrogation fraught with danger for me? How will my children feel when every government employee their father or mother comes into contact with seems suspicious and distrustful? Will religious articles in my home be construed as evidence of "suspicious activities"?
An End Run Around the Fourth Amendment?
The ACLU has cautioned that law enforcement may use civilian volunteers as an end run around the warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment.
Police cannot routinely enter people's homes without first obtaining a search warrant. But the occupant's consent to a search allows an exception to that rule. So now, by consenting to have cable television installed or have your water meter read, and being unlucky enough to have let in a TIPS informant, you might be held to have effectively "consented" to a search - without any notice to you that this is what you have done.
If that happens, the government will have unprecedented access to information gained from within the privacy of our homes. And they will have gained such access without even having to conduct searches themselves - let alone having to initially obtain a warrant in order to take a peek.
Search resources that in the past have been limited will suddenly become virtually unlimited - with millions of new searchers enlisted as unpaid volunteers - and prioritizing serious crime may thus give way to a dragnet free-for-all. Sadly, it is that the Arab-American family on the block that is most likely to be under constant suspicion. Why bother to detain people when you can use constant volunteer surveillance instead?
Lack of Accountability For TIPS Could Lead to Abuses
There are no restraints or checks and balances in place to create accountability for Operation TIPS. For instance, the current plan does not provide for any judicial or Congressional oversight of TIPS. Nor does it specify the consequences if "tips" consist of false or wrong accusations - raising the specter of a neighbor's vendetta being allowed to put the FBI on another neighbor's track, with no penalty for anyone if the latter neighbor ends up being a wrongly-targeted Richard Jewell figure.
Nor will Congress be asked to review the types of information being reported through TIPS, or to examine whether abuses have occurred. Finally, there is no way to assess whether the program is effective or a waste of federal resources.
Sometimes too much information can actually hinder government efforts, when every tip - no matter how unreliable - must be run down. If volunteers can become heroes in their workplaces by submitting tips, they may report even the most minor of suspicions or the most questionable "evidence." Checking out bad tips costs time and money.
The Government Remains Vague on Important Aspects of TIPS
As mentioned above, neither the Citizen Corps website's text nor any other government releases make clear what the type of activity the volunteer workers will be encouraged to report, or in what places surveillance will take place. More troublesome still is the vagueness about how long the information will be retained and by which government agencies.
Attorney General John Ashcroft recently testified before the Senate Judiciary committee about TIPS. Under questioning, he noted that there would be no central database for information collected by TIPS volunteers. Rather, Ashcroft stated that the program would merely "be a referral agency that sends information that is phoned in to appropriate federal, state and local law enforcement agencies."
But that leaves an important question: How would the data be used? The answer, again, is a vague one: it all depends.
The Bush Administration has compared Operation TIPS to highway watch programs - where citizens are encouraged to report unlawful activity, such as illegal driving in a carpool lane or littering. The comparison is inappropriate, however.
Programs such as highway watch or coast watch have a more geographically defined scope, and generally involve the observation of truly public activities. (It's too bad for you if someone sees you throw a beer can out of your car window, but what if a TIPS volunteer, seeing too many beer cans in your house, deems you suspicious?)
Moreover, the government did not recruit an elite corp of volunteers for watch programs; they rely on general public participation. Through actively recruiting Americans to serve as informants for TIPS, the Department of Justice runs the risk of creating a group of overzealous vigilantes.
Volunteers who are untrained, and who are not experts in law enforcement, will not necessarily exercise restraint. And the consequences of lack of restraint may be particularly serious if volunteers are inclined to engage in racial profiling, or if they have an axe to grind with respect to a particular person or family in the neighborhood.
Living in Fear: The Perils of Creating a Nation of Spies and Snoops.
For TIPS, the truly apt comparisons are not highway watch or coast watch - or even neighborhood watch - programs. Rather, the proper analogies are much darker and more threatening.
Senator Patrick Leahy, (D-VT.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has compared TIPS to a "ghetto informant" program created in the 1960s by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI hired neighbors of suspected political protesters to spy on them.
Operation TIPS also seems reminiscent of the use of citizen informers in countries of the former Soviet Union - where neighbors, and even husbands and wives, were encouraged to spy on one another.
One lesson we can learn from history is that if citizen spies walk among us, we will live in a constant state of fear and distrust. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, that will be nothing less than a tragedy and a betrayal of our national character.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/ramasastry/20020805.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
And we all know what happens to Snitches.
This does not apply to information detrimental to National Security.
Remember...Terrorist are attacking Civilians; Not the Government. Protect Yourself!
NRA Lifetime Benefactor Member.
What I find sad is that the President has to resort to something like this to get Americans involved in their own security. I agree it's a bad idea because people will suddenly have a different attitude toward the people who represent these businesses. If something is wrong, a good American should get involved and see that it's put right. Reporting a drug house, for example, is not snitching. Neither is reporting an amateur explosives factory.
My take on it is this, for the average citizen: A "snitch" is someone who is a traitor to righteous men of principle. If you're giving up the bad guys, and your own hands are clean, you're just a good member of the unorganized militia.
- Life NRA Member
"If cowardly & dishonorable men shoot unarmed men with army guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary...and not by general deprivation of constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
quote:Reporting a drug house, for example, is not snitching. Neither is reporting an amateur explosives factory.
How about someone with an illegal gun? Would you turn them in?
An explosives factory would be a threat to national and community security.
"Reporting a drug house" How would you prove it.
I know a girl that got mugged outside a nightclub. Several of us men chased the man down who ran into a house half a block down. We surronded the house and called the Police. The mugger couldn't get out. The Police came and said that it was a known Crack House and weren't going in there. They did nothing, even though we were right behind him when he went into the house.
Again, I ask you, would you turn some one in that you knew had an illegal gun?
Remember...Terrorist are attacking Civilians; Not the Government. Protect Yourself!
NRA Lifetime Benefactor Member.
Now let's see....How many on this board have 'large' quantities of explosives on hand and exotic machines capable of making AMMUNITION.
Under this program, every reloader would be turned in by the postman, the meter reader, the Fedex/UPS guy who brought that last order of bomb-making equipment from Midway, every one of these would report you. How many reports does it take before you get a 3:00 AM visit from your friendly ATF dynamic entry team???
If nothing else, this program raises serious constitutional issues. Since it is a government sponsored program, every participant is a government agent and every time they 'look' around your house is an unwarranted search!.
This is a BAD IDEA smacking of every totalitarian police state in recent times.
Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem.Semper Fidelis
AlleninAlaska
Free men are not equal and equal men are not free
Yes I have served my country. Yes I did swear to defend and uphold the US Constitution. But the US Constitution can be amended and the govt. can make the possession of certain firearms illegal. And if and when that time does ever happen, I will still defend and uphold the US Constitution as it has been amended.
AlleninAlaska
Free men are not equal and equal men are not free
Gun Control is Hitting Your Target!
"ILLEGAL WEAPONS"...Whatcha' gonna do,sweety,when your double over-under is ILLEGAL...HMMMMMM??????
God,Guts,& GunsHave we lost all 3 ??
NO COMPROMISE ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT..NO SPIES!!!!!!!!!
Gun Control is Hitting Your Target!
So if the only people who can own firearms are the ones that fully support the govenment, or, those the govenment "clears" to own guns, that kinda defeats the purpose of the safeguard, doesn't it?
To err is human, to moo is bovine.
Nobody will meet a more conservative gun toter than I, but I have a tendency to be a law abiding conservative. Glad we would have so many criminals amongst us. Guess that puts you in the same category as drug pusher on the street who could care less what the law says.Oh yeah and I would like to be invited to the shooting when they come and get your firearms, that should be quite a circus. People spout all kinds of pious things about what they would do if the Feds came to get their firearms and not 1 out of 100 really has the gonads to defend what they spew.
AlleninAlaska
Free men are not equal and equal men are not free
Edited by - aglore on 08/09/2002 02:19:11
Report them, don't report them, it makes no difference if law enforcement and the prosecutors lack the cajones to arrest and convict! Even if they did, the first Arab or Black muslim group to scream "RACIAL PROFILING" would completely castrate any investigative ability, because the spineless judges will rule in favor of the minorities, every time!
The only safe targets would be those of "non-color", like Shootist3006 and other law abiding citizens who happen to have "arsonals", "thousands of rounds of ammunition" and "several large containers of high explosives".
We will end up with a bunch more mindless federal bureaucrats, doing nothing but suckling at the public teat, while whining about being "underfunded".
Aglore,
Thank you for your service.
Your position on firearms confiscation intrigues me.
Many good Jews shared your law abiding mentality in late 1930s Europe.
Millions of them didn't live to see the mid 1940s.
I just thank God for a small group of men with a different mindset about 230 years ago.
Good night!
The entire history of civilization can be summarized as man's search for equitable government. An equitable government is one that is so structured that it remains a compact with the people, remains the servant of the people. An equitable government also realizes there are inalienable, God-given rights that the government cannot either take or grant. The right to worship, to speak freely, to assemble, to be free from self-incrimination and principle among these inalienable rights is the right to bear arms, to posses the means to defend self and family and property from crime or from wild beasts or from government itself.
Any government that attempts to take these rights acts without regard to the law, the government is illegal and need not be obeyed. It has forfeited its right to govern.
Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem.Semper Fidelis
If I knew then, what I know now.
God,Guts,& GunsHave we lost all 3 ??
God,Guts,& GunsHave we lost all 3 ??
You can't be serious!
Mudge the incredulous
I can't come to work today. The voices said, STAY HOME AND CLEAN THE GUNS!
I love freedom, cause a chained dog ain't happy. A southern born child living behind enemy lines in occupied territory
Citizen spies? Hell no!
Report criminal activity? Absolutely, but I'm not gonna go lookin for it.
Makes me nauseous to imagine that the guy waving his butt crack around my kitchen while he fixes the sink might discern my loading manuals to be subversive reading materials. And the thought of the UPS guy keeping a running tab of my deliveries from MidwayUSA is maddening.
Nope, this is a BAD idea, W.
The Constitution is THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND and any other law/regulation or other legislative bill MUST NOT contradict the Constitution or it is........duh! UNconstitutional and NOT a law that must/should/will be followed!
Now, Aglore, IF the govt. ever amends the Constitution to make the possession of certain firearms illegal, the govt. will have to first STRIKEOUT the Second Amendment!
IMHO, that won't happen...if it does, welll......I don't know yet whether I would move or continue to try to fight it. I'm fighting to prevent it NOW, before the government even gets to that point.
I'm like Iconoclast and Mudge, that really doesn't sound like the aglore I thought I knew. Let us know when the other shoe drops, it'll be a doozy! I just hope it's not a jackboot...
Pickenup: your tongue must be so far in your cheek, that you're in severe pain! [:)]
Big Al
off. Its another thing to go into someones house and see a shotgun with a 10in barrel. Turn them in you bet they are breaking the law. I
guess that is why I am so careful when I sell or buy a weapon to make sure its ok.
col elect1mike Illinois
volinters RRG
O give me a home where no democrats roam
Yes, tongue was so far in cheek it hurt. LOL
The gene pool needs chlorine.
I spent over a year in the Soviet Union as an exchange student at Moscow University in a linguistics program and I've heard the stories and seen a few first hand what this does to communities of average people. Nobody will even look another face to face or even talk to eachother they just slowly walk on by watching their back without saying a word with their heads down. Even my hosts were turned in once to authorities once because they thought they were harboring a "western spy" and I got tossed in the gulag for 6 days until it got straitened out. The people that called them in? You guessed it, somebody who just didn't like them, the father of the guy that my hosts daughter refused to marry, hrmmphfff.
I've seen the other side of the fence and it totally f'in sucks.
have already BANNED handgun ownership.
Imagine going to a gun shop or show and being told:
"You may look, but not touch these little shooters?"
There was no hue and cry.
No violent uprising.
Some lined up at the police station with their
illicit parcels wrapped in pillow cases and
grocery bags.
Others discreetly stored their contraband across
municipal lines.
Disturbing part is, the politicos were RE-ELECTED!
The President of "Concealed Carry," John Birch, even
posted a picture of his gang "packing heat in Downtown
Chicago."
Seems they conducted an ad hoc photo shoot when no one
was around...and quickly retreated to the safety
of their vehicles.
Thoreau would have been proud of these heroes!
The gun "ban" is here.
Perhaps not as complete as intended,
but it is here nonetheless.
And people seem to be saying,
"At least it's not happening in MY town."
Instead of yellow stars, maybe we will be
forced to wear NRA stickers....
Too many soccer mom libs in Illinois. Lorrie Dann was no help to most of those communities. We do try to get new people in here but were stuck with that "mayor for life" in Chi Town who controls the rest of the state.
I think with our new Gov. Milosevic, we're going to see some big gun bans. I'm going on the wait a see what happens. I've been counseling my friends that if you want that AR, Kimber, etc. buy it now cuz it might be gone soon.
Regards,
************************
Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some aquatic ceremony. You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart throws a sword at you!
booger doesn't even know he's being killed. Seems like this
is what is happening with gun confiscation.
The scenario of my neightbors being allocated to spy on me,
reminds me of our former town secretary. She was a good little
gestapo. On her days off she was seen driving thru town looking
into peoples yards for leash, dog tag violations, got the guy
across from me for putting up a little shed without a permit,
these type of things. Imagine thousands like her....
The government was created to serve the people. Apparantly
we have dummied down most people to the point that they don't
even realize the purpose of government....following the pied
piper. God help us!!!
A federal gun law is an unconstitutional law. If the government feels the need, and has the arrogance to usurp the constitution, than I aint gonna help them in their dirty work. Let them get their hands dirty, and let them get blood on their hands by enforcing laws that they have no business and no authority legislating in the first place.
Federal law prohibits selling cigarettes to minors. If I am in a deli, and some guy sells a pack of smokes to someone underage, I am not going to run to the authorities and rat the poor * out. If the feds want to create an unconstitutional cigarette law, than let them post federal agents in every deli across the united states, and bust these store owners and throw them in a federal jail-if the feds are left to vigourously enforce their unconstitutional laws, then maybe the people will wake up and realize its time to put big brother in his rightful place-within the boundaries of the constitution.
We are supposed to be suspicious of the government-we are not supposed to say "well the government passed this law, so it must be OK, cause the government would not pass the law if it wasnt(OK).And if the government says so, it must be right."
"Sometimes the people have to give up some individual rights for the safety of society."
-Bill Clinton(MTV interview)
***There's a difference between living and living well!***
Let's change the laws and quit bickering about them. One man CAN change the status quo.
quote:One man CAN change the status quo.
Is the UPS driver the best place to start?