The Police State's Handmaiden

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 01 Jul 2001 13:11:32 GMT
J.D. Tuccille at CivilLiberty.About.Com - A cop responds - Mr. Tuccille wrote an article several months ago entitled, Cops who say 'no'. I remember linking to it at the time. He got quite a few responses, including one from a one-time police officer who asked to remain anonymous. He explains why America's police are increasingly becoming a military organization whose enemy is the public. [Mrs. K]
For decades, I nullified bad laws (e.g., concealed carry of a weapon by honest citizens, gambling and prostitution) and so did many other officers. We did it because we had the power to and it was the right thing to do. Before you suggest how to correct modern day law enforcement, I suggest you first review the reason modern local law enforcement is becoming the police state's handmaiden.

It is simple: Federal influence. Since the Nixon/Mitchell Administration, federal funds, training, hiring standards and procedures have penetrated into local law enforcement in an insidious manner. Training is of the siege mentality type, fear is inculcated in training, and the belief that no one needs a firearm but the police is encouraged and fostered.

Alwin sent email comments, from his perspective as a critical care nurse, on yesterday's story about making heroin legal:

Dead on (so to speak) as far as the amount needed to OD to the point of causing respiratory arrest or cardiovascular collapse. There's a reason they use barbituates over opiates in the lethal injection protocol.

A bigger problem is decreased awareness along with opiate induced nausea. All opiates cause nausea to one degree or another. Being very, very sleepy and vomiting/inhaling stomach acid is much more common cause of fatality. The problem of nausea is dose dependent; if you want to keep from getting sick you take a smaller dose the next time. Of course, you need to know how much heroin you are taking- highly unlikely with a street dealer.

My biggest problems with OD's on heroin has been what they have cut the drug with. I have seen it cut with fentanyl (another, *much* more powerful narcotic that is dosed in micrograms) or strychnine. The answer, of course, is to have legal, pure heroin from manufacturers looking for repeat, long term customers. Say, the same business model as Phillip Morris or R. J. Reynolds... ;-)

Alwin Hawkins, RN

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - The Bush Tax Cut - Dr. Paul gives a good overview of the details of the tax cut. It was, of course, a factor of 10 too small, but it's at least something.

Last week President Bush signed into law the tax cut bill that ultimately emerged as a compromise between competing political interests in the House and Senate. I voted for and fully support the tax reductions contained in the bill, and I appreciate the President's efforts in making tax relief the first priority in his new administration. However, I am disappointed that Congress was unable to pass far more significant and immediate tax relief. Unfortunately, big spenders from both parties worked hard to characterize the tax cut as a "gift" from government to American taxpayers, as though the money belongs to Congress! These pro-tax politicians believe every penny of the bloated $2 trillion federal budget is essential to their beloved pork programs, hence they always argue that "we" cannot afford a tax cut. Millions of American families, however, certainly can afford a tax cut that leaves more money in their paychecks. So while the final bill passed last week represents a political compromise, I believe there is broad public support outside Washington for much larger tax reductions. Congress should not allow the wasteful spenders to prevent passage of further needed tax cut legislation over the coming months.

Kelley O. Beaucar at Fox News - Armey of One Takes on Carnivore - Remember all the noise a while back about Carnivore, the f.b.i.'s computer privacy intrusion system? Well, it's been renamed to DCS-1000, and Dick Armey is asking AG Ashcroft to investigate. Bravo. Kill the carnivore. [zero]

Declan McCullagh at Wired - Digging Those Digicash Blues - so far, noone has managed to build a successful anonymous digital cash system, though many have tried. I wasn't going to link to this story, but everyone else did, so I'll jump on the bandwagon. [wes xray grabbe]

Stewart Alsop at Fortune - My Old Flame: The Macintosh - Mr. Alsop tries a G4 PowerBook and discovers that, unlike Windoze, the Macintosh works.

The bottom line: Sure, there's pain in adopting the Mac. But if I accept that, I get to use a computer that works, and that pretty much does what I expect and want a computer to do.

Greg Travis at IBM developerWorks - Emacs a top-notch Java IDE? You bet! - information on using Emacs as an integrated development environment for creating Java code. I use Java mode in my Emacs, but nothing else currently.

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