Men or mice? America was founded not least on principles. Do they mean anything to us anymore?

However, the Feds have used a comingling principle to invoke Federal rule if even on dime of Federal money is used on a particular project.

Fine. They can take their $5.00 per cap per year and go home. We already get that much in used paperback donations.

(You think I'm kidding?)

But, see, it doesn't matter, according to this law, whether they have a single cent in the pool or not. They can come in and act like the KGB anyway. So OK, their suits and their manners will be better. "Give me all your records on So-and-so, and if you talk, we'll arrest you. Your testimony in your own defense will not be admissable in court because you can't talk about why you're under arrest." Wonderful.

What is the chief gripe the current terrorist crop has against us? It's that we not only allow but love freedom of speech and freedom of religion and freedom of association, and that we have Big Laws against unlawful search & seizure and cruel & unusual punishment, and that we have trial by jury, and stuff like that, whereas sharia law as viewed by them would allow none of these heathen practices. These are the marks of the infidel.

What you suggest in your post is that we hang these things up to fight the terrorists. In other words, we become what they want us to be in order to fight them. Don't you see the irony in this at all? We will be trading liberty for a little temporary safety and, as Ben Franklin observed, we will deserve neither.

If an officer of the law suspects someone of wrongdoing, there are other methods besides running a secret check on everyone who has borrowed a copy of Unconventional Warfare Devices and Techniques (also available for sale at your friendly neighborhood gun show, and thus nearly untraceable in any meaningful way). Stakeouts and tails come to mind. With legwork, there will be substance behind a warrant request, and we will avoid the whole secret police thing. Or are we simply unwilling to recruit, train and pay people to do this, and so resort to the lazy man's dragnet?

The Fourth is also interpreted to mean that evidence gathered without a warrant by an officer while it is in plain sight during the course of an investigation is admissable. So they will have to keep their eyes open, and what's wrong with that? Terrorists, we have seen, make obvious mistakes all the time. If people had been paying closer attention when issuing visas, just as an example, the whole of last year's history could have been different.

I hear this argument about gun laws all the time: enforce the ones we have. I agree. Why does this principle not apply when we're talking about what we read and what we think?

To open up the enforcement process to methods of dubious legality fraught with the possibility of abuse to innocent citizens will undermine our legal system and create a two-front war in this country: terrorists attacking citizens, and police attacking citizens. Instead of the venerable "Innocent until proven guilty", we will have to look over our shoulders and be constantly circumspect in our actions. People's lives have been ruined by sloppy investigation into terrorist incidents (does anyone remember Richard Jewell or Steven Hatfill?). Is this an acceptable standard? Does it have to happen to someone we know before it becomes a serious threat? I could be taking a big risk in posting this right now! But probably not: I am, after all, a middle-aged blue-eyed mommy.

United We Stand, not for long under those conditions.

Regards--
Mary Anne