Thursday, January 13, 2005

"We Have To Abridge Individual Rights"

Eight months before the White House appointed him the Homeland Security Department’s top intelligence official, retired U.S. Army Gen. Patrick M. Hughes told a public forum at Harvard last year that the government would have to “abridge individual rights” and take domestic security measures “not in accordance with our values and traditions” to prevent terrorist attacks in the United States.

“Therefore, we have to abridge individual rights, change the societal conditions, and act in ways that heretofore were not in accordance with our values and traditions, like giving a police officer or security official the right to search you without a judicial finding of probable cause,” said Hughes.

But, it's for the greater good. You know, people laugh at this, people say it's no big deal, that these sweeping changes won't bother them because after all, they're not a terrorist. It won't be until they get stopped at an unconstitutional roadblock and are told to get out of their vehicle so the police can ransack it and they are forced at jack-boot to give a swab of spit or a blood sample. Of course, I guess that's ok if it's for the greater good.

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