I've been concerned for some time with substantial similarities between the Department of Homeland Security, along with its hideously ugly stepchild, the Transportation Security Administration, and the worst that Germany had to offer in the 20th century.
Today we were served with yet another reminder that the Stasi, East Germany's feared Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Mfs, Ministry for State Security, best known as the "Stasi"), did not die in 1990. Rather it lie dormant in the minds of evil men until it resurfaced in 2002 as the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Sadly the similarities have evolved in practice as well as in name.
Today I learned of a fellow citizen, American as I, probably darker in complexion, who was taken off an airplane without warrant or probable cause, strip-searched, her belongs searched, and interrogated for several hours without benefit of counsel and without being allowed to contact her family.
This is America? It is not my America. My father didn't spend 20 years in the U.S. military so that innocent women could be hauled off an airplane and strip-searched on the basis of a rumor. Earlier generations of my family did not serve -- and die -- in the European and Pacific theaters so that the worst institutions of our enemies could be brought home and re-established in America.
It is time for this to end. We must abolish our very own Ministerium für Staatssicherheit and re-establish the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as the supreme law of the land.
For an account of what transpired on the Detroit tarmac yesterday, it is best that you read the victim's own account of the transgression:
Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit
Until the victim's own account surfaced, our American Stasi tried to pass it off as just another case of excessive lavatory use:
Police board Frontier Airlines flight at Metro Airport with guns drawn after suspicious behavior
Police Meet Plane At Detroit Metro Airport: 3 In Custody After Plane Lands, Later Released
No charges against 3 detained at Detroit airport
One of the men removed reportedly had spent an entire ten minutes in the lavatory. The woman who was cuffed and strip-searched apparently never even used the lavatory. She just happened to be of dark complexion and sitting in the window seat of the same row as the two men, whom she did not know.
We must shut down the American Stasi and return to the rule of law -- now. Until then the terrorists have won.
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