mycatharsis.com

In President Bush’s America,  nobody.  Literally.

In an era where we are being subjected to more and more unique ways of privacy invasion, traffic cameras, REAL ID cards, data mining, and more,  the age-old question comes up, “Who watches the watchers?”  Apparently, if you know what’s good for you, no one.  A man in Massachusetts is on trial for nothing more than videotaping an arrest by police with cell phone camera.  This is simply shameful, no other way to put it.  The police should be ashamed for arresting this guy, and the D.A. should be ashamed for prosecuting him.  There is ONLY ONE reason to go to all this trouble.  ONE.  The police and D.A. are worried enough about how their actions look on camera that they don’t want ANYONE recording them.  And for that, they should be ashamed of themselves, quite simply.

About the only positive here is that they are prosecuting based on a Massachusetts state law meant to protect citizen’s privacy.  But for public servants charged with special privileges and powers by  our society to claim they are not subject to citizen oversight, is, well, extraordinarily scary. The potential consequences of accepting the contention that oversight is unnecessary are dire.  Politically motivated prosecutions,  prosecutorial overrreach, police harassment and beatings, etc. Not that they’re inevitable, but enough of this is already happening, and telling our public servants they don’t have to worry about consequences of these actions just cannot be good.  Thank god our President would never make such a claim to be above the law! oh wait …

Radley Balko writes a laundry list of some of the worst outrages perpetrated by our government this year alone.  A list that includes justifying doing nothing as thugs murder American citizens (in the name, of, of course, our war on drugs), prosecuting people for possessing their own PRESCRIBED medicine (not just once, but twice after an appeals court throws out your first conviction AND calls it ‘ridiculous’ and ‘absurd’), teaching children how to tattle on their parents for unclipped lawns, and the inevitable expansion of extraordinary rendition (kidnapping) to include, well, just about anyone.

One outrageous assault on liberty might be an aberration, two might be a curiousity, but three times or more is quite simply a pattern.  All levels are government are represented, from federal agencies to state goverment to local prosecutors and even schools.  These are actions typical only of a government out of control and accountable to no one.  If you want to know why thousands think Ron Paul might well be our only hope to avoid tyranny, this article is a fine place to start.