I love my country but fear my government.

[elfs]

The Department of Homeland Security, we were told, was to protect us from terrorists. That's its assigned job. To protect us from terrorists, foreign and domestic. It's not to be used for any other purpose.

As some of you may know, there's a hilarious showdown going on in Texas whereby the Democrats are attempting to prevent the Republicans from steamrolling over a century's worth of law, and redistrict Texas in such a way as to give Republicans a clear majority of members in the delegation Texas sends to the U.S. House of Representatives. Texas procedural rules prevent filibuster. But the Dems could prevent the plan from coming to pass by refusing to show up, thus preventing quorum and, by the rules, preventing the redistricting law from passing. So the Texas state Democrats have fled to Oklahoma, where the Texas Rangers have no authority.

Now we learn that the Republican speaker of the Texas Legislature (who apparently is authorized to do this) issued "apprehend for duty" warrants for the Democrats. Okay, all this is legal under state law and, ludicrous as it seems, is just state politicians screwing other state politicians. But, what should scare is us that the Dems holed up in Oklahoma were exposed by the Homeland Security Department's Air and Marine Interdiction and Coordination Center, at the request of Texas officials.

The use of the Homeland Security Deparment for partisan political purposes is beyond frightening. It's illegal. And if it's written off as a "harmless mistake," by Republican-led public officials, and no procedures are put into place to prevent if from happening again, you should be more than frightenend. You should be furious.

I know I am.

Comments

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

It's a little unclear to me from the story whether the AMICC is a new agency created for counter-terrorism purposes by the DHS, or an existing INS agency that is now part of the DHS by legislative fiat.

If it's the latter, the story is a lot less scary: local law enforcement makes an (entirely reasonable) request to the Feds for assistance, and it's not really the fault of anyone directly involved that the Feds in question got recently 'rebranded' with a more imposing-sounding title.

Hell, I'm not entirely sure the story is scary even if the AMICC is a new thing: blocking quorum is (for hopefully obvious reasons) entirely illegal in most legislative bodies, and asking Federal law enforcement for help with cases that go over state borders isn't exactly unprecedented.

(All of which is, of course, entirely unrelated to the quesiton of whether the DHS and the cloud of evil legislation that it emerged from and around are a good idea or perhaps even a good reason to flee the country: my votes remain "no" and "probably" respectively.)

[lconover.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing this article. It's reinforced my worst fears about the current trends in fatherland, errr.. homeland security.

When initially I expressed my concerns that the homeland security provisions seemed overly broad and potentially abusable (in terms of privacy matters) I actually had people say to me, "Well, you only have something to worry about if you have something to hide." Those words and that attitude chilled me to the core, almost more than the events of September 11th did.

So far, the only ones that have risen to those privacy challenge appear to be.. librarians, not Libertarians, and certainly not the Democrats. It seems too many people are nervous about becoming targets of a new and terrifying form of McCarthyism in the name of 'security'.