The Erosion of Freedom - Today's Losses

Two stories that mark today's erosion of liberty. I'm starting to think that one of the purposes of all the different rules we have to obey getting onto airplanes is to accustom us to obeying more and more rules. They just keep adding one indignity after another until we simply accept anything they ask. Perhaps we need to start standing up to the TSA. If people decide not to fly because of the TSA hassles, they should contact the airlines they didn't fly on and their Congressional delegation. We have to start saying no to 4 inch baggies for our toothpaste and all the other nonsense. Ideally in a way that doesn't result in a felony. Send in your suggestions for clever ways to protest how we get treated getting onto planes.

In the first story, the seventeen states said "no" and now Bush is punishing the citizens of those states saying they can't board airplanes without the right kind of driver's license. Maybe this will be the last straw and people will stand up and say "No more."

The second story - the government is drugging people involuntarily? Is this America? And we just sit back and take it? At least the judge said, "No."

These were both short items in the Anchorage Daily News. I could only find the second one online in the ADN, the other was apparently taken from the LA Times. (Why doesn't the ADN credit the LA Times?)

By Nicole Gaouette, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 12, 2008

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration hit the brakes Friday on a controversial law requiring Americans to carry tamper-proof driver's licenses, delaying its final implementation by five years, until 2017.

A number of states have balked at the law, objecting to it largely over cost and privacy concerns. But under the administration's new edict, states that continue to fight compliance with the law face a penalty: Their residents will be forbidden from using driver's licenses to board airplanes or enter federal buildings as of May 11 of this year.

The rest of the story is here.

U.S. immigration agents must not sedate deportees without a judge's permission, according to a policy change issued this week. Immigration officials have acknowledged that 56 deportees were given psychotropic drugs during a seven-month period in 2006 and 2007 even though most had no history of mental problems. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit over the practice in June.

The full story is here.