Thanks for Commenting
Mario, I'm treasuring this moment of being in agreement with you.
Of course if we're going to allow Jose Padilla, an American citizen arrested on American soil, to be held incommunicado for years without legal recourse, having cops check your identification whenever they want seems relatively benign. I've been on Greyhounds that go into military bases because that's where a lot of folks are going, and the ID check is basically an excuse for the military to eyeball passengers and to question those who look "suspicious."
One way to avoid this is to not have the bus go onto the base. This would require shuttles on the base itself but would remove the bogus justification for the stop-and-frisk.
On the other hand, I took a bus a few years ago out of Albuquerque where they not only demanded ID but also emptied out everyone's baggage on inspection tables and had dogs sniffing at every person and all the stuff. I was informed that this was going to be common practice throughout the country. (Fortunately this turned out to be false.)
I was going through Shreveport, LA, on the bus some time ago when the police not only checked IDs but also rousted everyone out of the bus and took dogs in for a sniff test of everything. I was told that they were doing this to every bus coming through. A crowd of locals were giving the one black cop a hard time. "Yeah, bro, them big drug dealers always ride the 'hound! Go get 'em!"
Fake ID isn't all that hard to get, and we're being naive if we think that terrorists are unlikely to fly false flags. All of this confiscation of knitting needles and demanding identification does nothing to make us safer. It engenders more fear among the citizens, which may be what it's designed to do. It doesn't make me feel more secure. How about you?
Vis a vis false identification used to access military bases, this afternoon's Albuquerque Tribune reports that many workers have been coming in and out of the base for quite some time using phony identification.
http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/
news...4283761,00.html
If they can't spot bad identification at the gate (which they can't), how are they going to know bad identification carried by bus passengers? And, if they can't, why go through the charade of annoying law-abiding citizens while having almost no chance of identifying any actual evil-doers?
Well, at least we'll always have this moment.
Charles McCoy.
You are an IDIOT!!!
I AGREE!
My, what enlightened commentary!
Would either of you brave anonymous posters like to tell me why you think I'm an idiot?
And would either of you like to take an standardized IQ test with me with the winner paying for the test and whatever amount you'd like to wager? I could use the money.
Like the photograph with "papers pleze." Pretty well sums up the road we are headed down in our "free country." Perhaps its time to vote the bastards out and find a 3rd party that understands the fundamentals of the constitution as written. Anybody listening?
Commenting by HaloScan
