Posted on 07/29/2011 4:18:03 PM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
...John Whitehead has written a great article about one particular manifestation of this – the VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams that the TSA is using more and more. These teams, paramilitary in nature, form the nucleus of the “expanded role” that the TSA leadership envisions for its agency. This involves extending the reach of TSA interventions and checkpoints beyond airports to other transportation-related entities, such as buses, trains, and even our highway system itself (as this article demonstrates is already starting to happen), with an eventual “goal” of “fighting terrorism” by establishing security checkpoints at all “soft targets,” including malls, restaurants, and schools (a scope which, to put it mildly, would require the vast expansion of the number of VIPR teams and associated personnel to man them). VIPR teams have already been used for providing additional “security” at some high-profile public events; they’ve been used to conduct raids at Amtrak stations during which every single passenger and their luggage was searched, without a warrant of any kind. TSA wants to extend this to pretty much every place where people might use any mode of transportation or might congregates in public in any numbers.
Let’s explore the ramifications of that for a moment...
(Excerpt) Read more at statesmansentinel.com ...
But don’t you dare call them Nazis.
Libertarian ping?
” But don’t you dare call them Nazis. “
Funny - those of us who had misgivings about the Patriot Act and the DHS super-agency, were called worse things than Nazis.....
They will trample the rights of everyone, including the most peaceful and innocent of citizens until, finally, one day, the people will have had enough. The day of having had enough will arrive without warning as these things usually do and when that “day of having had enough” evidences itself, blood will flow.
Good post, thanks.
Isn't that the truth, particularly on here. This is precisely what some of us warned would happen.
When does a “security force” become an “army”? How many thousands of armed (t)SA goon squads roaming the land trigger posse comitatus considerations?
Papers please...........
Welcome to the New East Germany.
For those concerned about a potential declaration of Martial Law, let me clue you in. It’s already here.
And it is going to get worse, a lot worse. The Dems know that whatever they can get going now will not get killed by Pubbies later. We can’t get rid of a poisonous light bulb.
The irony here is that these dipsticks still can’t find an illegal alien criminal, but they can and will lock us up for farting on an aircraft.
“When does a “security force” become an “army”? How many thousands of armed (t)SA goon squads roaming the land trigger posse comitatus considerations?”
When it numbers greater then one and acts in groups.
Technically speaking an army is a “security force”. The key issue here is again related to federalism.
We don’t want a professional Standing Federal army because it poses a potentially insurmountable threat to the rights and liberties of the people. In most States we don’t really even want a state run army of such size and power for the same reason.
The difference is a matter of simple scale, the larger and more distant the goverment, the more difficult it is for an army citizenry to deal with that Government when it gets out of hand.
To that end the very existences of the TSA, along with the FBI, ATF, DEA, ect.. is an affront to our Federal Constitution, and the balanced roll of the Federal goverment in a federalist system.
The Federal goverment being too large to be secured by the people must be secured by the states, and as such must be largely incapable of dealing with the people em-mass. It’s constitutional roll is in dealing with foreign threats, and as such to be extremely tiny and cheap during peace time, and only temporarily sizable during war.
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