1 Hey, it's got flowers and I'm in a festive mood.

Clearly the Airport Gnomes have gotten to you.

2 My brother gave me some words that have brought me comfort over the years.  I now give them to you, Alice.  Use them in good (mental) health.

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

3 Yeah, I dunno, they keep going back to the National Security Force idea, so I can't help but wonder if that was a reference to it, or if this was a token, We're gonna do unspecified stuff about things and stuff and get it done, type statement.

4 Somebody wise on the intertubes (or some wise guy on the intertubes) once said,
"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by malice and stupidity."

Words to live by.

Especially when discussing the people who work for an alinsyite-Chicago-Machine-Politician.

5 Having been snarky, now I'll be serious.  I'm deeply concerned about this "domestic terrorist" language because I view this as setting the stage for justifying expansive investigations.  Like DPud said, the civilian police force thingy keeps getting brought up.  I'll stop believe there's a portion of the Obama admin wants that when they stop mentioning it.  

6

I was watching NCIS the other day, and Gibs was interrogating a man that was suspected of having provided radioactive material to - get this - a PERUVIAN terrorist group bent on setting off a dirty bomb in Washington DC.  (Can you say political correctness?)  Anyway, that wasn't the point of me writing this.

The point was, that during the interrogation, the guy asked for a lawyer, and Gibs denied him a lawyer because, and I quote:

"You are a terrorism suspect." 

The man was a US citizen. 

A couple years ago I was almost banned from a different conservative site because of my constant railing against the Patriot Act and its built-in erosion of our civil liberties, just as long as what we are arrested for can be spun a "terrorism" in some way or another (they said "Bush would never use it in that way - of course, they boned up when I aksed if they intended for Bush to always be president forever).  Of course, the act has no way to determine how to decide what is terrorism and what isn't, so the LEOs in each case basically get to make the choice themselves. 

Terrorists caught by US military in a war zone are unlawful combatants caught on the battle field, and should be treated as such.

US citizens on US soil?  Not so much, in my opinion.  All they have to do is decide that you made "terroristic threats" and they get to throw the 4th and 5th amendments out the window, and you are royally rat-fucked.  Case in point?  A drug dealer in Okalahoma that the people in the neighborhood that he worked in "feared".  He was a terrorist, and therefore, sneak-and-peek non-probable cause ad hoc, no judicial review "search warrants" were issued by the police officers investigating the case, and the charge stuck.

So, the moral is, under the USAPA, you'd better not let anyone "fear" you in any way, or else you're a terrorist. 

It is fucked.  Royally, irredeemably fucked, that we have allowed fear of thrid world backwater douchbags to erode our civil liberties, and it is only a matter of time before the USAPA is used so broadly that it becomes the defacto law-enforcement tool in America.  Finally, no more of that pesky waiting for warrants and such, LEOS just get to go in (as long as they can prove that someone is afraid of you - and really, how hard is that?)

I believe that the plane crashing into the IRS building is what is driving this.  They get to say "See?  Domestic terrorism is really  big problem, so we need to use the USAAPA more frequently".  Just my two cents. 

7 To add to my last sentence, I think this goes hand-in-hand with them trying to spin the douche that crashed the plane as a "teabagger."  My opinion is that this change or heart is a calculated attempt to garner public support for going after fringers on the right as domestic terrorists.  But I'm crazy like that, and I want to point out that I haven't been wrong about this shit yet...

8 That's more than a bit of an irony, but Gibbs deal was a bluff, just like with the two drug dealers that yielded the AQ plot, Just like the L&O crew probably violate more rights per week than the night crew at Gitmo

9

LEOs can't bluff about not giving a suspect a lawyer.  And don't get hung up on the example, Ian, because the USAPA says exactly that - terrorist suspects don't get lawyers, they get waterboarded. 

So exactly who deicdes who is a terrorist and who isn't?  Janet Neopolitano?  The same woman who wouldn't accept that not-so-white guy Nidal Hassan was a terrorist (just a "lone nut" twisted by PTSD - for a war he'd never been to) but quickly denounced a white guy who crashed his plane into the IRS as a domestic terrorist (teabagger) without batting an eyelash? 

When you get arrested because you lose your temper and threaten a person in your neighborhood, and some overzealous LEO decides you're a terrorist, like that poor (but evil, drug-dealing) bastard in OK, what are you going to do?  They don't have to tell you why they arrested you.  They won't let you confront your accuser.  They can search and seize your property without a warrant. You don't get a lawyer (in fact, you are barred by law from even speaking to one about your arrest).  You can't build a defense because you don't know why you're in jail.  You don't get the right to remain silent, and they can coerce confessions out of you however they please, including waterboarding you.  You effectively disappear - lifelong vacation in Siberia time, pal! 

I know it hasn't really happened yet, but they came close with that drug dealer in OK (or the baby-food smuggler in Vermont, that evil bastard!), and they get closer every time some communist nut job crashes his plane into a federal building and gets turned into a right-wing teabagger by the media.  When something CAN legally be done by the government, but HAS NOT been yet, all it means is that they haven't gotten around to it yet.  I don't trust a man simply because he has a badge on his chest, and I don't trust ANYONE who thinks that he should be in charge of my actions and effects in any way, so I guess that means I trust politicians and LEOs even less than your typical person (unless proven otherwise - my brother is a county sheriff's deputy, and I trust him)...

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