Welcome to Your Police State

From today's Washington Post comes a chilling report on how determined this administration is to use any means necessary against ordinary citizens to consolidate power. You think you have a right to privacy, established by your Constitution and protected by those sworn to uphold it? Well, thanks to the Chimpie gang's broad reinterpretation and reimplementation of old policies and their railroading of the PATRIOT Act greased by fearmongering of willing hysterics in the mainstream media, if you have been missing life under Stalin, don't be so blue. In Connecticut, a good citizen just doing his job was approached and intimidated by FBI agents wanting him to violate privacy rights of other innocent individuals and remain quiet about it under penalty of law.

The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.

But wait, you protest. The courts require certain standards of suspicion be met, right? Oh, you are so, so very naive. Remember that this is a government run by liars, thieves, murderers, war profiteers, and totalitarians.

ssued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that they are also horribly incompetent--the Chimpettes have no proof that it even works!

You see, these are motherfuckers who want power. That's it. They are not concerned with security or the rule of law or the protection of the citizenry. What other conclusion can one draw from the insistence on a practice that is unproductive, anti-American, and in fact ties up valuable investigative resources that should actually be looking for dangerous people with evil designs on our nation.

Here's a tip: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C. Any cabbie can take you there.