Friday, October 26, 2007

Bloodsuckers In Blue

To "Protect" and Siphon: A "Phleboto-Cop" prepares to drain the blood of a "volunteer."

(Thanks to Freedom's Phoenix)

During the mid-1980s, a state radio broadcast in East Germany proudly announced a record-breaking national blood drive. In the audio equivalent of fine print could be found the critical, defining detail: “Most of the donors were volunteers.”


As with so many other East German episodes of that sort, the Stasi State's practice of compelled blood donation prefigured current developments here in the erstwhile Land of the Free.


An appeals court in New Jersey has ruled that police enjoy “qualified immunity” when accused of excessive force in retraining a man from whom they're extracting an involuntary blood sample.


That decision is veritable layer cake of due process atrocities.


The foundation is the well-established, and constitutionally spurious, concept of “qualified immunity,” the incantation regularly pronounced to protect law enforcement officers from civil liability when they needlessly or improperly injure or kill innocent people.


Offenses against the Bill of Rights – particularly the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination – compose the middle layer.


Topping off the court's unpalatable confection is the claim that it is proper for a police officer to force a subject to submit to those violations of his constitutionally protected rights through abuse tantamount to torture. In this case, a police officer placed his entire bodyweight on one of Russell Johnson's wrists while attempting to handcuff him.


According to Dr. Michael S. Grenis, an orthopedic physician who examined Mr. Johnson, the predictable result of the policeman's action was not only to inflict excruciating pain, but also leave him with permanent nerve damage that may result in “permanent impairment of a significant body function.”


That last line, incidentally, wasn't extracted from the New Jersey court decision, or the physician's report. It was taken from the notorious 2002 “Bybee Memorandum” in which the Bush Regime defined torture as narrowly as it could, for the purpose of enabling that practice as much as it could. This adds another dreadful weapon to the arsenal of the armed parasites called “DUI officers.”


Quite in spite of themselves, DUI officers occasionally identify and remove from the highways people whose state of intoxication make them dangerous to innocent people. In like manner, the police in East Germany did occasionally identify and arrest people who had committed real crimes against persons and property. By this was incidental to the primary purpose of East Germany's police, which was to compel the submission of that nation's captive population.


In much the same fashion, arresting real drunks is peripheral to the prime directive of DUI police, which is to harvest revenue for the jurisdictions they serve. And it's hardly necessary for a driver to be intoxicated – or even to drink at all – to be caught in the clutches of the DUI enforcement system. As California DUI attorney Lawrence Taylor observes, there is a widely observed “DUI exception to the Constitution,” and that “exception” is doing a great deal to make East German-style police behavior the norm.


The October 1 installment of the investigative TV program Inside Edition examined the recent DUI arrests of two men – one of them a Polk County Commissioner named Randy Wilkinson, the other an 19-year-old named Robbie Stout – neither of whom had consumed so much as a picogram of alcohol on the day of the arrest. Both Wilkinson and Stout were handcuffed, fingerprinted, forced to pose for mug-shots, and briefly jailed.



What was particularly galling in the case of Randy Wilkinson was that he requested a blood alcohol test, which confirmed that there was no alcohol in his bloodstream – yet the charges weren't dropped until much later. Likewise, Stout underwent a blood alcohol test (apparently not at his request) that produced a negative result – which was also ignored.


On exiting the jail, Wilkinson, who was running for re-election, was greeted by reporters. He was able to get the charges dismissed with relatively little difficulty, but some substantial expense. Stout, a young man of limited means, had to pay several thousand dollars in legal fees in order to clear his name of the bogus charge.


With relatively little difficulty, Inside Edition was able to unearth documentation that DUI officers in Lakeland, Florida -- where those spurious arrests occurred -- are under a strict quota (clothed in the euphemism “Performance Standard”) to make 10 arrests a month. The program's investigative team was able to verify that similar quotas have been assigned to police departments across the nation.


Thanks to a pernicious proviso in nearly every driver's license application called “Implied Consent,” the police can detain any driver at their discretion, conduct a warrantless search of the driver's vehicle, and compel the driver to undergo a “chemical test” for alcohol, via either the admittedly unreliable instrument called a Breathalyzer, or the more invasive method of a bodily fluid test – blood or urine.


Refusal to submit to this procedure will generally lead to summary arrest for “per se intoxication”; furthermore, as one legal advice website points out, “Under implied consent laws, in most states a driver's license is automatically suspended for up to one year, even if the motorist is not found guilty of DUI.”



So, in the East German sense of the expression, those of us who have driver's licenses have "volunteered" to be stopped, interrogated, searched, and surrender bodily samples at the whim of a DUI enforcement officer. And as the cases of Randy Wilkinson and Robbie Stout illustrate, a perfectly clean blood alcohol test will not result in immediate exoneration.


This is because, once again, the purpose of this exercise is not to identify drivers who are dangerously intoxicated, but rather to generate revenue. Former Atlanta DUI Officer Tony Corrado admitted to Inside Edition that filling DUI arrest quotas is necessary in order to keep federal subsidies flowing into “local” police departments.


Matters get worse – they always get worse – at DUI “safety checkpoints.”


One return on Washington's investment in subsidizing DUI arrests is a healthy stream of vital information collected by police at “safety checkpoints.” A May 2, 2005 Washington Post story describes how the hundreds of Washington-area motorists pulled over at “safety checkpoints” were aware that they were being subjected to an involuntary intelligence-gathering dragnet.


One of the innocent people profiled by the Post story, Lisa Davis, was sober and carefully obeying all traffic laws when she was detained at a checkpoint. “Even so,” noted the Post, “an officer jotted down some basic information before letting her go, including her name, address and the time and location of the stop for a police database....”(Emphasis added.)


Which is to say that she – like all the other drivers who passed through the checkpoint – was temporarily arrested (that's the correct term to use when a police officer detains you, however briefly and for whatever purpose) and compelled to surrender personal information at gunpoint.


And just as all drains eventually flow into the ocean, all information collected by “local” police eventually ends up in Leviathan's master databases, to be used as Leviathan's masters see fit – a reality somewhat understood by Miss Davis, if by relatively few others.


I've got some serious constitutional issues with that,” commented Miss Davis about the police search. “I feel like it's a violation of my rights. It's a slippery slope to Big Brother.”


I disagree with Miss Davis only to this extent: She fears the impending advent of a Big Brother State, rather than recognizing that it has already descended on us. How else can we adequately describe a system in which police can compel innocent people to suffer the invasion of their persons for blood tests – and when a negative result does not provide immediate exoneration?














To "Protect" -- and Infect: James Green, victim of a police-administered DUI blood draw, displays the infection he received as a result.


A few years ago, Arizona became the first state to train police officers to collect their own blood samples. This procedure is now used in Utah, Texas, and perhaps elsewhere. Although they are trained to render emergency aid, Police are not health care professionals – as Arizona resident James Green learned, to his dismay, when he was arrested on suspicion of DUI by a Pinal County Sheriff's Deputy.


Despite the fact that the arrest took place within walking distance of a hospital, the deputy insisted on performing the blood draw. Two inept and unhygenic needle-sticks later, the deputy has his blood sample – and Green had a nasty infection that lasted for months and forced him to miss work as a test pilot.


Da Boyz in Blue Had Their Fun: Brian Sewell displays injuries sustained in a Taser attack inflicted on him when he refused to let Sheriff's Deputies draw his blood.


Green was more fortunate than Brian Sewell, another Arizona resident who was arrested for DUI in 2004 and forced to undergo a blood draw. Like many others, Sewell is deathly afraid of needles, and didn't consent to be stuck. He received three Taser shocks while resisting efforts by deputies to draw his blood. Eventually the charges against Sewell were dropped.


Given that blood test evidence isn't considered conclusive (at least for purposes of exculpating the accused), what is the purpose of such behavior by the police?


We should never rule out simple sadism.


Blood draws allow the police to take out a little bit of `street justice' on suspects who refuse to cooperate by sticking a needle in them,” opined a defense attorney in commenting about an essay by the above-mentioned Lawrence Taylor. “If an officer is angry with the suspect, he may present an unreasonable risk of harm to the suspect. Also, the officer is less likely to establish phlebotomy safety protocols. I have a client who was stabbed with a needle 5 times by a police officer before they took him to the hospital to get a blood draw. The client told the police that he had collapsed veins and they would not be able to get his blood. The police did not listen because there had been a scuffle and they were angry with my client. My client took pictures of the puncture wounds the next day. We have a hearing on the matter in December.”


We shouldn't be surprised when we learn that the officers in that incident "behaved professionally" and "acted within department guidelines." The outcome of official inquiries into police misconduct is usually as predictable as an East German election.

___________

A friend in the health care field corrected my improper use, in the original version of this essay, of the term "dysgenic" to refer to a non-sterile needle stick. Thanks, Bud!

Dum spiro, pugno!


23 comments:

  1. Ridiculous. I work in a residential facility for kids. In Ohio, I can't administer medication encased in individual doses to the children in my care, yet a police officer can inject a needle to draw blood from people who are in an adversarial relationship with him/her?

    Another example of the assumption that the police are experts at everything and are above the law.

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  2. Doesn't the officer have to have a "reasonable suspicion" in order to search a vehicle? Of course, they should have to have a warrant, but I though that was a federal law.

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  3. Let me relate an incident that happened to me regarding DUI. If you do not like my language you are free to edit it out, however, I refuse to call a sonofabitch a gentleman of questionable heritage.

    I used to drive tractor trailer over the road. I was so self-employed when the Federal DOT passed their new regulation regarding enforcement and investigation of such, despite the fact that in all the accident investigations involving big trucks, whether at fault or not, the commercial driver was subjected to tox and alcohol screens to determine his condition of sobriety and/or impairment at the time of the accident had returned result of far less than 1% of impaired commercial drivers.

    I entered Utah at the border between it and Wyoming on I-80. Just across the line is a weigh and inspection station for Utah, almost directly across the highway from the same thing on the Wyoming side.

    After being weighed and passed for legal weight I was flagged for inspection and pulled over to the side off the scale. I gathered my log book, my bills of lading, my permit and license books, my Commercial Drivers License and my medical certificate and entered the station house.

    Upon getting inside, I said to the trooper on duty, "I don't know what you need, but I brought it all, what do you want to look at first?"

    He replied, "I don't need any of that I pulled you in for a random alcohol screen."

    I said, "What?"

    He said, "You were number 17, I have four numbers I must pull in to screen for alcohol."

    I asked him, "Did I do something on my approach to make you think I had been drinking?" He answered,"No."

    "Well did I stagger or walk in any manner during the 100 yards walking back here to make you think I had been drinking?" He answered, "No."

    "Well then, do you smell any alcohol on me now, or do you have any reason to believe I am drinking?" He answered, "No, I don't understand why you are so upset if you have nothing to hide."

    I then asked him, " You really don't understand why I am upset that I must prove to you I haven't committed a crime you have no right or reason to suspect me of?"

    He again stated, "I just don't understand why you are so upset if you have nothing to hide."

    I said, "Are you really so stupid that you don't understand the reason I am angry that I must prove my innocence, though you have no reason to suspect me?"

    He said, "Look, this is my job and I have to do it and if you didn't have anything to hide you shouldn't be upset."

    I asked, "Do you really believe that?"

    He said that he did.

    That was three times I asked, three times the dumb sonofabitch indicated he had no concept of liberty or law. Three is all I will give anybody, and sometimes not that.

    I said, "Ok, if you really mean that, take off your pants and your underwear."

    He looked incredulous, then asked, "Are you crazy?"

    I replied, "No sir, I am not. Take off your pants and underwear, we are going to examine your penis for blood and fecal matter to determine if you have been molesting small boys."

    That sonofabitch went through the roof, ranting and screaming and telling me I had no right to accuse him of such a thing. I think he would have shot me if he had had the guts and thought he could get rid of the body before anybody happened along.

    I calmly replied, "It's random, I have no reason to suspect you, but now you must prove you have not been sodomizing young boys. After all, if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be upset. What do you have to hide? Isn't that what you told me three times that you believed?"

    He was sputtering and yelling at me and soooo red in the face, I thought I might get lucky and the no good sonofabitch would die from a stroke. He screamed at me, "That's entirely different!"

    I told him, "The only thing different is now we are talking about you proving something I have no right to suspect you of. Evidently you didn't believe all that shit you told me, about nothing to hide shouldn't bother you. We have proven you are a liar and a coward who will not stand up for your country or its rules."

    If ever I saw a man who wanted to kill me (and I have seen several) he certainly could be counted among them.

    I am sure I didn't convert him to a decent American, but I damn made him look at himself and realize that somebody else knew him for what he was.

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  4. straightarrow, you are my hero. Damn.
    They take an inch, tomorrow random sobriety tests. The next day, random strip searches. Under most of Americans' logic, why not?

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  5. I recommend you pick up a copy of "Boston T. Party"'s book, You and the Police.


    dum spiro agnew

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  6. Good man, straightarrow. I'm heartened by your stalwart and calm retort in the face of a blathering copper and grand ability to illustrate the blatant absurdity by being absurd, the irrational by being rational!

    Most folk wither and bow before an "authoritah" figure, especially an armed one, rather than, as you managed, to calmly and coolly make him/her look like the feckless tax-consumer android, devoid of reasoning skills, that many of them truly are.

    However, on rare occasions it's wise for one to play the idiot card.

    What do I mean by that? Well, when I came back from Luxembourg with a bag full of imported stuff, I claimed nothing on the customs form. I also acted like I was a submissive and meek dorky white boy coming through the customs screening area. I happened by a black she-agent in her state costume and she looked me over with those piercing eyes. She apparently saw me as a sorry sap and, "with authoritah" she snatched my passport, stamped it, and whisked me right on by.

    I must admit, though, that as I was coming up to this lady customs agent there that, yes, I did have vague thoughts of being Billy Hayes in Midnight Express for a brief moment, but quickly composed myself.

    No, my fear wasn't for the same reason or anywhere near the extreme level of Hayes, mind ya, but nevertheless, not claiming ANYTHING will often gain the attention of customs agents. It did not, but I'm more than certain if I'd pranced through there squeakin' about LAW or decided to have a hearty exchange about rights, I'd of been toast.

    So I would say it simply just depends on the situation in question as to whether one should play the idiot card and play the game in ignorance or refuse to play until you've read them the rulebook first ;).

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  7. Do not mistake my response for a default position. I will be as courteous and cooperative as they will let me be. I will treat them with the same deference they show me.

    I do not look for trouble. But I don't shrink from it if someone visits it upon me.

    I have had several encounters where I was absolutely in the wrong. (traffic infractions only)even willfully in the wrong. No complaint from me, no animosity to the man just doing his job, and in fact, actually some pleasant, though expensive, experiences.

    I have also disarmed a Plano,Tx cop who thought he could bully me. Didn't know he was a cop at the time, but soon found out. However, as I was the only one with a gun in his hand (the disarmed cop's) and the other cop couldn't get to his (seated in his patrol car) it pretty much went my way. Not because I am a bad man or even tough, but because when the uniform heard what had happened and realized I didn't really want to hurt him and that his brother cop was not only waaaaay over the line, but was a danger to him because of the situation he caused, we reached an accomodation with the only real unpleasantness visited upon the ego of the asshole.

    Since they were looking for a dangerous felon, not me, it could have gone very badly for them if I had been the guy.

    This was some 35 years ago when not all of them were into this macho ninja bullshit. Today I would probably shoot them both, knowing my life was ruined because of the bully bastard,and because they can no longer be trusted to behave as grown responsible men. At least not often enough to rely on it.

    And that's a damn shame. And it's all their fault.

    But back then the uniform even offered me a ride to my car. I declined.

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  8. Any state in this Republic authorizing by statute the forcible drawing of blood evidence without a search warrant should not rest until such legislation is repealed.

    I think those out West are worse off when it comes to DUI issues. I recall my brother-in-law in Vegas telling me how he thought he wasn't going to be able to make it to his wedding after he was stopped by Da Man on a Friday night.........after the rehearsal dinner/party.........half in the bag...........almost home....... due to be married Sunday morn. Apparently the DUIs actually go into a jail until they appear before a judge to set bail. And the judges don't work weekends. I thought this sounded strange so I confirmed it with a friend and a cop in Vegas.

    In my neck of the woods (back East) a DUI who is arrested on probable cause is brought to a DUI processing station. The arrestee's sober ride home is contacted and is probably en route to rescue the driver. The driver is subjected to a process which lasts maybe 30-45-60 minutes. If he refuses a sample, IMPLIED CONSENT consequences follow. There is no forcible blood draw. The DUI personnel prefer this because it's less work for them, i.e. what do they care whether or not a guy consents to a blood test?

    The cop's probable cause and blood results are filed with the elected Magistrate. IF the Magistrate agrees with the evidence a summons is mailed to the driver. He shows up in court and pleads his case. If prima facie is found, the case goes to yet another elected judge. Here he can fight the charges during trial or fall for the extortion angle and buy his way out.

    Short and simple process. But a very expensive one.

    Quotas are illegal in many states-for obvious reasons. My experience has been that quotas usually thrive in states that limit union or collective bargainning activities/"rights" of cop unions(not that I'm a big fan of either).

    When we examine all of the ubsurd or questionable laws the cops are enforcing we should keep in mind the origin of these "laws". Legislators (elected) are handing down orders to the cops (appointed) to enforce. The Legislators are alleged to be better educated in matters of law than blue collar cops. THEY are the ones who need to be called on the carpet more often than they are.

    This isn't an excuse for police behavior. Just an attempt add to the perspective.

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  9. Straightarrow, that was the most awesome story I've heard in a long time. Most of us wouldn't have the guts to challenge a law enforcement cretin like that.

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  10. Al, if they have you outnumbered 13 to 1 it isn't a good idea, but for all their whining about being outnumbered and outgunned with very rare exception have I seen one or more engage in activity where they didn't hold the odds of overwhelming force on their side.

    That is why so many people are killed by gunshot from police who claim "I thought he had a gun, or he made a move to his waist, or his cellphone looked like a gun, or he was facing away from me and I couldn't he tell he wasn't reaching for a gun, or I couldn't see both his hands, etc.,etc. ad nauseum."

    I watched a shooting on television on a small screen tv where the cop car video was taken from 15 moving to 30 feet away and I could tell the man was holding a cell phone to his ear. The cops were standing right next to him and shot him multiple times. They claimed they thought he had a gun. When in actuality they were pissed because he wouldn't end his call when they told him to.

    It helps if they are afraid of you. You had better be close and they had better not have you badly outnumbered or you will be dead.

    I don't recommend anybody doing what I have done. I probably wouldn't do it if I could help myself. I just can't kiss another man's ass or let him walk on me, no matter the consequences. I have often wished I were different. I wouldn't have so many scars.

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  11. Straightarrow,

    The disarming of the Plano copper sounds like a neat story. Do tell.

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  12. Fred, it had more to do with his stupidity than anything else. And I have already used up a lot of space here and it would take a long time to tell in its entirety.

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  13. I'm so sick of cops. My elderly 63 year old mother, who is hard of hearing, was grabbed from behind and tossed down onto the sidewalk by an over zealous cop for jaywalking! Her friend told me that she merely stepped onto the crosswalk right before the light changed, and was cursed and grabbed by a "friendly
    local" constable who threw her down to the ground. She's lying there on the pavement moaning in pain while some over-fed thug-in-blue continued cussing and lecturing her. Her friend Jan, who was with her at the time, also told me that there was no traffic and hence no danger. Jan, a fiesty Navajo, gave him a cursing in return for his thuggish and violent behavior. My mother now has a bruised hip and is undergoing medical tests to see if there's any other damage.

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  14. He needed his ass whipped for that. Were there no men around? Or was it just males?

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  15. The ubiquitous quest for Federal grant money is making a bad situation worse. The upward trend of searches without probable cause and numerous other nefarious measures is undoubtedly helping local police departments reach their (grant required) quotas.

    The unmentioned cost, however, is twofold. Taxpayers must first send money to Washington which is then partially dispersed (bureaucracy always grabs its fair share) to local law enforcement agencies which have met dubious Federal agendas. Secondly, the citizenry is increasingly subjected to Stasi-like tactics in order to insure the uninterrupted flow of addictive monetary fixes.

    Needless to say, Federal grants usually come with strings attached. It's surprising just how much control Washington can exert at the state and local level by dispensing relatively small amounts of money. Unfortunately, the more local law enforcement goes for the carrot the more we seem to get flogged by the stick.

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  16. Even if the law was to be amended to state that only trained and certified medical personnel are allowed to draw blood from DUI/DWI suspects, it would not change anything at all. Cops would merely have one of their own masquerade as a medical technician (all one needs is a pair of scrubs, available at any uniform store) and continue with business as usual.

    Amnesty International's archives are full of stories of torture survivors who describe their assailants as dressed in medical garb while inflicting torture routines. What makes anyone think that today's rogue "law enforcement" agents do business any differently?

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  17. Am anonymous simply because I can't be bothered to create an account. Can be written at wirelessmurf AT YAHOO dot COM if anyone wants to shoot the breeze.

    Give up on the USA. It is too far gone. I moved abroad to the UK, which sucks in many ways, but at least there are no pretenses that you have "Constitutional Rights." It is the hypocrisy that gets me.

    As a military vet I have pretty broad experience. When I was getting out of a SF Unit going to the Nasty Guard I was activated to work counter drug ops. Up until that point, I was pro drug war. This was in 1992. My god did it open my eyes to police state abuses. It is worlds worse now. I quit what could have been a lucrative career posting. It got me examining my philosophical beliefs and I quit the military despite bright career prospects ahead of me and 8 years in.

    Move abroad. Look at places like Costa Rica, or Uruguay. Even in some ways, despite serious deficiencies, the UK is freer than the USA (except horrible gun control). In law it isn't, but there are so few police in the UK (and Europe) and they have so few powers comparatively that you get more rights "on the ground" in practice. There is none of this staking out bars at closing time and nailing people. If you do get popped for DUI in the UK, you really have to work at it.

    In practice, in the UK in general, and Europe in general (in my experience) the police are SO polite and normal compared to the USA. Then again, cops in the USA USED to be so polite and normal. I say this coming from a family of cops (some fairly famous in the scheme of things). Their advice? Don't become a cop. It isn't the same.

    Amerika isn't the same. Everything is federalized, militarized, and there is a serious tyrant mentality in every governmental and private interaction these days. The whole mind set is poisonous in the USA. Even private enterprises claim mythical "laws" you are supposed to obey when they want you to do something.

    In living in places like Texas, I was surprised how jack booted they were. I had a doctor and his staff telling me I had to give them a copy of my driver license to be seen because it was "the LAW" and was according to HIPPA regs. That is BS. I designed medical networks and HAD to know HIPPA and there is no such law, and when called liars and threatened with suit they said they "could not treat me LEGALLY."

    Anytime private enterprise in the USA wants to bend you over they appeal to some law they claim you must obey. It often turns out to be a total lie. Most people just meekly submit when that magic spell ("it is the law") is uttered.

    Americans today are nothing like the Americans of the Revolution, or even a few generations ago. When I realized people in the USA would not resist (notice the gun confiscations in New Orleans after Katrina) no matter how egregious the violations, I figured there was no reason to die in some pointless shoot out when freedom is so unvalued. My family and I moved essentially into exile and are now permanent expats.

    We collect passports. Having multiple passports means greater freedom. Living in countries with a lack of certain valued freedoms becomes a lot more tolerable when you always consider yourself a visitor and know it is no place you would fight and die for. Unfortunately, that is what the USA is to me now. Despite 8 years of honourable military service, I get called a commie (the irony of the fact that Amerikans live under essential communism in the USA today in so many ways with some market trappings)by people I know who never would have gone in the military, or let their kids in, who have NO historical or real appreciation for freedom.

    I can tell you, the tentacles of the feds are everywhere, and the Constitution is just a scrap of paper these days. Amerikans have a false image of themselves as rugged individualists, but they are living with the reputation and the image earned by better people than themselves. The notion of actually resisting the government is alien to most Amerikans. Too many Amerikans work for government, or are dependent on it. Too many governments are "educated" (brainwashed) in government schools, which operate on the Prussian model (with similar results).

    It was I nice run while it lasted, but time to start over or move out in search of greener pastures. Sadly, most Americans don't realize that far more freedom exists outside of American shores than in it these days (especially when one defines freedom in practice as the absence of government and its agents).

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  18. You must be joking... I just got back to the USA after 7 years of AF duty in the U.K. Free at last, free at last... (still in the AF). Of course, I am now located in Arizona, so the difference is pretty remarkable.

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  19. A relative of mine spent Christmas Eve/Christmas in solitary confinement because the "regular" jail, which was 300-miles-from-nowhere-Minnesota, was "out of space". The only problem, as he found out two months later, was that he was under the legal limit. The Minnesota Highway Patrol gave him a breathalyser, but refused to show him the results. Later that night he had a blood test, which he did not get to see the results from until a couple of months later.

    After a couple of months when his attorney finally got ahold of the tests and found that he was under the legal limit, the DA still refused to drop the charges, and proceeded with the case. After it was all said and done, and after several thousands of dollars that the 25 year old did not have, the DA agreed to no charges, he had to take a "class"-$250 more for the state.

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  20. Good grief! Now they're drawing blood, literally, and I wonder what kind of DNA wunder-database is being compiled as we speak. Will was correct in that there is no "slippery slope"... thats ancient history because Big Brother arrived long ago and even now is kowtowed to daily.

    These stories sound more like fictionalized fantasies but sadly are true. I wonder if anyone in Hollywood would have the cajones to run a new "reality" series based on the abuses inflicted on people by these gladiators in blue instead of the propaganda that's spewed regularly?

    And I'm down with Anon about getting out of the country but that's going to take some fancy footwork. Until then it's all about finding a quiet spot to lay low. Traveling outside of this country will open your eyes to the lie about "freedom". That pablum force-fed to us daily simply doesn't jibe with reality.

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  21. What nobody seems to appreciate is that when the state brings frivolous or malicious charges against you, how does the state pay their costs? From the taxes on money YOU WORKED for, which they have lifted right out of your own pocket with or without your consent. (Everybody else calls that stealing.) How do YOU pay your own costs? From the miserable pittance they leave you with after "taxes." So enjoy this concept, folks - WE are paying the costs for these a$$holes to prosecute us, and WE are paying to defend ourselves - sometimes to the tune of tens of thousands, even when the charges are frivolous. Not only that - THEY are at work and being paid while they are persecuting you - YOU have to take vacation time or unpaid leave off work to defend yourself. Ain't that nice? Trust me, if the freakin cop and the a$$hole prosecutor had to pay the court costs to prosecute you out of their paychecks, and do it on their own time, they would be a lot more circumspect.

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  22. I'm not leaving. This MY country. If I have to fight alone, I will. I certainly won't win under that scenario, but I promise to exact a higher price than they would be willing to pay.

    I sincerely hope it never comes to that, but I am a free man. I live my life according to my lights.

    I once had a cop tell me "You can't obey the laws you agree with, and ignore the ones you don't."

    I replied, "The Hell I can't. I've been doing it a long time now."

    A word of clarity here, I don't disagree with a law just because I don't like it. If there is a constitutional basis for it and/or if it serves the ends of justice I obey it religiously. Even if it bites me.

    I am pretty much a social animal who believes in a peaceful approach, but I know how to engage in the other kind if predators will not have peace.

    I am sincerely hoping that my fellow Americans suffer great discomfort and wake up to how much they have lost and how much they are losing, and correct it through the ballot.

    Of course, that is why our public schools teach revisionist history and revisionist civics. To keep the comfortable American from knowing what he has surrendered.

    Time will tell.

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  23. So are random searches at the airport any different than what straightarrow describes?

    I might use his idea the next time I am searched.

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