(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)
You’re driving along a remote, dusty road, when suddenly you come upon a border patrol checkpoint. There, agents demand to see your identity papers, and search your car. You are taken by surprise, because you know you haven’t wandered across the Texas-Mexico border. In fact, you’re quite sure of that, because you’re driving through rural Wisconsin countryside west of Green Bay. Even the Canadian border is more than 90 miles away.
This scene is not as far-fetched as you might want to believe. The government is turning vast swaths of our country into a “Constitution-Free Zone” in which U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is allowed to exercise extraordinary authority that would not normally be permitted under the Constitution. The government says that “the border” — where there is a longstanding view that the Constitution does not fully apply — actually stretches 100 miles inland from the nation’s “external boundary.” And increasingly, we are seeing DHS vigorously utilize that authority.
Today we held a press conference at the National Press Club here in D.C. to try to draw attention to this problem — and the fact that, as we showed, nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population live within this "Constitution-Free Zone." That’s 197.4 million people.
We calculated this using the most recent, 2007 numbers from the U.S. Census, and released a map showing the cities and states that are enveloped by this zone. It includes some of the largest metropolitan areas in the country: New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. States that are completely within this Constitution-Free Zone include Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. When you say “border,” they think “all of New England.”
CBP has been setting up checkpoints far inland — on highways in states such as California, Texas and Arizona, and at ferry terminals in Washington State. Typically, the agents ask drivers and passengers about their citizenship. People are also reporting that even after they provide passports or state driver’s licenses, CBP continues to interrogate them and try to pressure them into permitting a search.
At our press conference today in the National Press Club here in DC, two U.S. citizens described their experiences with CBP.
Vince Peppard, a retired social worker, told of being stopped and harassed by the border authorities at least 15 miles from the Mexico border with his wife, Berlant.
Craig Johnson, a music professor at a San Diego college, told how he participated in a peaceful demonstration near the border to protest against the destruction of a state park so that a fence could be constructed along the U.S. border. CBP agents monitored the protest and collected the license plate information of those who participated. Since this protest, Mr. Johnson has twice crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and, each time, he has been pulled aside for additional screening. He was taken to another room, handcuffed and questioned. On his first crossing, he was also partially stripped and subjected to a body cavity search. A CBP agent also told Mr. Johnson that he was on an “armed and dangerous” list. Before the protest, Mr. Johnson crossed the U.S.-Mexico border numerous times without incident. It is difficult to believe that his subsequent harassment at the border is unrelated to his protest activity. If it is related, that would constitute a significant abuse.
Congress needs to hold hearings to investigate these egregious violations of Americans’ civil liberties, and then pass new laws protecting Americans’ rights.
I guarantee you that if these powers are not challenged, if the American people do not push back, sooner or later a factory worker in southern New Hampshire, a farmer in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, or yes, some guy driving across rural Wisconsin, will wake up to find that they have lost their right to go about their business, and travel around inside their own country, without interference from the authorities.
October 22nd, 2008 at 7:49 pm
IT IS TIME FOR THE A.C.L.U TO START PUTTING THE INTERESTS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
RIGHT NOW YOU ARE ENDANGERING AMERICAN CITIZENS WITH THEIR SUPPORT OF PEOPLE THAT ILLEGALLY COME HERE!!!!!!!!!!!
ILLEGALS HAVE NO RIGHT TO DEMAND ANYTHING FROM OUR GOVERNMENT!!!!!!!!!
I’m NOT RACIST I’M 1/2 HISPANIC (more Spanish than Indian) 1/2 ITALIAN!!!!
MY GRANDPARENTS ON BOTH SIDES CAME HERE LEGALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I REQUESTED HELP FROM YOU FOR MY SON WHEN HE WAS ARRESTED IN MAY. I GOT A RESPONSE & SENT THE REQUESTED INFO & HAVE YET TO HEAR ANYTHING. IN THE MEANTIME MY SON HAS TO PAY FOR HIS PUBLIC DEFENDER, COURT COSTS, & DO COMMUNITY SERVICE FOR TRYING TO BREAK UP AN ASSAULT IN PROGRESS!!! PLUS HE WASN’T EVEN TOLD WHY HE WAS BEING ARRESTED OR READ HIS RIGHTS!!!!!!!
HOW ABOUT HELPING CITIZENS?????????????
MAYBE THE AMERICAN CITIZENS SHOULD HOLD YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR CRIMES COMMITED BY ILLEGALS AGAINST THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IF SOMEONE HAS NOTHING TO HIDE, WHAT’S WRONG WITH SHOWING YOUR I.D? IF YOU DON’T HAVE A DRIVERS LICENSE YOU SHOULDN’T BE DRIVING.
START WORKING FOR AMERICAN CITIZENS AGAIN & RESTORE YOUR REPUTATION!!!!!!
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Could you please elaborate on this point from the referenced ACLU article?
“But what is “the border”? According to the government, it is a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the “external boundary” of the United States. “
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
You forgot to mention the semi-permenent checkpoint along I-91 in central Vermont.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Guys, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but we’ve had a political coup in this country. The same monsters who backed Hitler have now installed the office of the president as a dictatorial front in which the person may change, but the agenda stays. You won’t find truth on your television, just a continual panacea of psychological manipulation and subliminal programming. (Ever wonder why they’re called programs?) That’s why this push for digital TV is advertised as urgent and they try to put in the “law” that digital must be used to broadcast. If you think conspiracy theories are some unthinkable thing, what’s a suprise birthday party? They happen all the time, and it’s inconcievable that they DON’T happen at the highest levels of world government and finance.
October 24th, 2008 at 12:51 am
“destruction of a state park so that offense could be constructed …”
should read, …”so that a fence could be constructed” …
(took me a few minutes to figure it out!)
Incidents like these that happen to protesters is why I have given up protesting. Yes, I have given up my First Amendment right. I am too scared. Sad, isn’t it.
October 24th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Your ALL CAPS comment is loony beyond belief. The ACLU is working for American citizens - it the border patrol wants to stop illegal immegration, then fine, but they should DO IT AT THE DAMNED BORDER, not 100 miles inland.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
The ACLU is the scourge of this country and an enemy of the state. Their sole purpose is to infest this country with the scum of the planet and then demand we afford them all the rights of the constitution guaranteed only to US citizens. What a lowlife organization.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Well, there’s the last straw. If the post-election administration doesn’t IMMEDIATLEY rescind this policy, I know this particular Canadian will NEVER enter your nation again. You’ll get no more tourism dollars from me, as I have no desire to visit a police state.
You people need to take back your country and re-instate your Constitution before it’s too late.
October 24th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
The ACLU needs to monitor their own mail. They could do this by using a control group to send them letters. I suspect that many requests for help are being intercepted by the Fascist Bureau of Interlopers or the Department of Fatherland Security.
October 24th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
I tried to post my comment. It was all decent english and no name calling but it was not allowed. Either you didn’t allow it or your blog is being monitored which sort of destroyes your reason for existence. Doesn’t it?
October 25th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Cathy Consoli: here is what Wikipedia ways about folks who can’t turn off their caps lock key:
“On Internet chat systems, forums and Usenet, typing a sentence in all capitals is considered rude, the large letters akin to shouting or yelling within the social context. On a more practical level, text written in all capital letters, a result of engaging the caps lock, may be difficult to read. The ‘Caps Lock Theory’, is often referred to in Internet chat forums and states that there is an inverse relationship between a person’s use of the caps lock and their knowledge of a particular subject.”
Thanks for being the latest in a long line of idiots to support the Caps Lock Theory.
October 25th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
To Jeff:
Let the record show that you did not quote the section of the U.S. Constitution which specifies that the Bill of Rights applies only to U.S. citizens. Let the record further show that you did not do this because such a section is not, and never has been, in the U.S. constitution.
So here’s the question: is Jeff ignorant of the U.S. Constitution, or does he know what it says, and oppose it?
October 26th, 2008 at 2:06 am
jeff - there are so many things wrong with what you say it’s hard to actually know where to begin.
#1 - The ACLU defends the rights of normal everyday people who have their rights violated and cannot otherwise afford to defend themselves or protect their rights.
#2 - Who is this “scum of the earth”? Terrorists who somehow managed to make it 100 miles inland? Or is it illegal aliens? This whole thing reeks of fascism.
#3 - Demeaning any whole group of people by calling the scum shows a very high degree of prejudice.
#4 - Perhaps you don’t live in this 100 mile zone. Everybody I’ve ever known does live along this massive swath of our country. If you think you have different rights just because you live inland, something is wrong with you. This false border is draconian, heavy handed, unnecessary bulls**t. Do you think this would have stopped 9/11? Or is it just another instance of security theater like the TSA?
October 26th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I am so thankful for what the ACLU does. For those of you who say “well, if you have nothing to hide what are you worried about”, you are the anti-Americans. I will NOT submit to government searches and seizures for the sake of “safety”. Law enforcement are only humans with a government agenda, and who is watching them? Please keep up the good work ACLU!
October 27th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I would like the ACLU to update their map. The United States of America owns Lake Michigan. The line of border control should not include, for example, Chicago.
Other than that, I find the prospect of needing an interior passport alarming.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
The ACLU is Israels way of destroying America.
Race based Israel needs an ACLU more than USA.
Israel is a racist country that should be destroyed
October 28th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Chicago and all the Great lakes, even though far inland from Canada, are considered international ports, thus Chicago being included.
October 29th, 2008 at 11:10 am
The ACLU continues to ignore the 2nd admendmant.
Are any of you ever going to realize the only hope of our constitution is the threat and ability of a armed populace to rise up if needed?
October 30th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
The ACLU really does defend the scum of the planet. Remember, they even defended Rush Limbaugh against his just desserts.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,108140,00.html
October 31st, 2008 at 2:21 am
Little by little, we are letting the elite shred the US Constitution. Those border patrol agents would have thought twice if the was 100 years ago and they were pulling over a posse. As the government takes away our second amendment rights, they get more and more powerful. With the Patriot Act, they have complete control. Welcome to Natzi US 2009!
November 1st, 2008 at 12:12 am
USpaladin Is Correct. The NAZIs have taken over. Prepare yourselves, this is only the beginning.
November 1st, 2008 at 12:22 am
Until recently I didn’t understand why the ACLU would stand up for the Rights of a murderer, even though he really had those rights. Then I realized that the NAZIs used public opinion to help destroy the Rights of an entire Populace, and the same can happen here. We really aren’t that different today than Germany was in 1936. By defending one persons rights, they are defending everyones.
November 1st, 2008 at 9:37 am
Wow, some real kookie replies here…
I just spent the better part of an hour checking the press releases of the department of homeland security and have found nothing…nada…zip that even remotely relates to this article (except one piece from 2004 regarding the expidite of illegal aliens)
If the idea is that being stopped by law enforcement authorities is somehow harrassment I think that the “idea” is wrong. If you don’t believe that there are people out there violating laws that are designed to protect you from them and it is the job of law enforcement to “enforce” those laws.
Is the system flawless? Nah.
Is it better than the alternative…I think so.
But if the level of the conversation on this blog doesn’t elevate I’ll have to go make a tin foil hat.
November 1st, 2008 at 10:17 am
is this really happening?
“abuse of power comes as no suprise”
we have to wake up people!
here in philly people only care about sports and beer. they have no clue that our rights are being hijacked!
meanwhile, we arn’t a whit safer since 911.
please tell me it’s just a nightmare…or that the people really care and want to change this…we cannot afford fear!
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:36 pm
I live in CA, and I am well within a massive area surrounded in this 100 mile zone. I am a green card holder and I carry my ID with me at all times (as is required by ICE). I have no problem with this and I would be happy to comply with law enforcement if they stopped me and asked for ID. I just don’t see what the problem is perhaps.
I have nothing to hide. Why are you so upset… do you?
November 4th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
We are in a lot of trouble people. From what I see in Seattle, they turn entire communities against the Educators, Writers and Activists that oppose them. Sadly, they are pitting liberal against liberal in many cases because of smear campaigns. (Google community-based harassment to see what some of us are going through.) They are fascists and they have a religious agenda as well.
November 4th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Even though she uneducatedly typed up her whole entire post in caps, I still read it, and her idiocy inspired me to post here. I hope she gets run over by a truck of illegal immigrants, quite frankly. Anyone who comes to my country better be willing to fight for freedom, NOT for encroaching totalitarianism. Cathy, you are a tool… an uneducated tool… and I would appreciate it if you would get the he11 out of my country with that attitude. In the words of my country’s Founding Fathers, “He who will give up freedom for security deserves neither.”
You sicken me, Cathy. I hope you choke on your caps lock key.
November 5th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Brad in CA, you are not an American so dont presume to tell Americans that they should be fine with giving up the rights that you are not privy to.
As for the rest of this, those of you saying we need to wake up, congratualations and thank you for thinking for yourself. For those of you who think this is all so big conspiracy theory, please bury the rest of yourself in the sand so we dont have to see your rear in the air.
People it is time for us to arm ourselves with the most power weapon that could have been given to us by or founding fathers: the Constitution. Everything we need is there.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Do two reports of violation, one extremely vague and one from an activist, constitute grounds of naming the inland 100 miles from the U.S. border a constitution-free zone? I would expect hundreds or thousands of personal accounts if these violations were widespread. I’d imagine the ACLU would be crawling over each one, since they are lawyers and could potentially profit off each victim by representing them in court. Does that make sense to anyone?
November 10th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Anyone who says they don’t mind being searched because they have nothing to hide should not live here. Please get the heck out of this country. This country was based on the entirely contrary principle of that stupid notion. The thing is that you are all so fat and dumb and sit in front of your plasma screens eating your pizzas and beer, you have absolutely no clue of what is going on around you. Funny thing is, when the time comes that one of you has your rights violated the first place you turn is the ACLU for help. I never permit a search just on the principle of it alone. Don’t you understand that once car searches become commonplace and widely accepted the next step is house searches, then random naked body searches. But after all, you have nothing to hide right? Idiots!
November 14th, 2008 at 2:08 am
Hi,
I guess I’m trying to gather any info about the mass state police harassing people on the I91 rest area in holyoke. I was recently harassed and falsley arrested for absolutly no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, when a roid-raged cop decided to arrest me. When he found no wrong doing, he fabricated it. Has anyone else heard of this happening? If so leave a message here and I’ll leave my contact info.
Thank you very much
Bill
November 16th, 2008 at 5:50 am
This is all bs I have an 8th grade education and I know that if they created legislation that said they would be confiscating property from illegals and they would be put on a chain gang for 10 years if caught illegally in usa the illegal problem would be gone overnight as usual the internationalist controlled usa government has created a crisis and they are bringing their solution which is sovietization and militarization of America and regular Americans are begging for the government solution.We must remember government is a latin word govern means to control ment is from the word mente meaning mind government=control-mind or mind control beware fellow sentient sentinals http://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com
November 16th, 2008 at 5:55 am
Bill go to http://ruleoflawradio.com/ check the shedule and archives then call Randy and Deborah these people will help you may your god or gods go with you.
December 8th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Oh no! I was stopped an interrogated for a few moments! Wah! Poor Me! Freaking morons. They are doing this to protect your dumbasses from terrorist attacks. We live in the age of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. We are going to have to be willing to make a few sacrifices in order for the CIA to locate terrorists. I say, give them as many tools as they need! If you get stopped it should make you feel good, because it means our government is making efforts to keep us safe.
January 5th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
McCarthyism is alive and well.
Let’s scare the dickens out of people into thinking there are terrorists everywhere that need to be rounded up INSIDE our borders.
Wake up people, the government is not here to protect us from terrorists. They (DHS/CBP) are here to scare us into thinking that we do.
When they arrest you without charge and hold you for no reason, are you then going to claim that you did nothing wrong and you don’t mind being detained?
Get a clue, they do not need to patrol inside our borders for terrorists, they are doing that to condition all the idiots who think that the good guys have nothing to fear.
The USSR had checkpoints like that all over the place, did it make the populace safer and more secure, it sure did. Did it destroy any sense of freedom and liberty, it sure did.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Im a student at a state college in wisconsin and ive been trying to show and tell people this stuff for the longest time. ive read all the posts so far and most of them sound like what i hear from my friends: if you you have nothing to hide then what are you afraid of?
what do you think the jews of germany said when they had to be marked with the star? its scary to realize this, but we are the minority when it comes to knowing that this is wrong. and im afraid of the country that im going to graduate in.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Why worry if you have done nothing wrong?
A legal medical marijuana patient in Washington State was cited at a roadblock here last summer- for a legal amount of medical marijuana.
I get that federal law does not allow for medical marijuana- still- the man did nothing wrong and was stopped and cited for marijuana at an internal “immigration” checkpoint.
March 21st, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Mob Rule in the Community
By Seana Sperling
There has been a growing paranoia in this country that has people watching for terrorists, drug dealers, thieves, etc. via Community Policing via Neighborhood Watch groups. These Watch groups are viewed as a necessary and positive thing and many people I have spoken to on this subject agree. However, when I asked people in the Capitol Hill neighborhood how much proof they would need to believe that a certain neighbor was a drug dealer, prostitute, thief, pedophile, nazi, etc. most paused. A few were very honest and said they would probably react rather than seeking proof.
I have been guilty of reacting. In the late 1980’s I was in Idaho working at a record store. One day a coworker of mine whispered to me that a person who had entered the store was a nazi. Without any proof, I instantly hated this person and gave him my best glare. I didn’t question it. Frankly, I didn’t know this coworker very well, but I believed her on this hot button issue because I was in Idaho. Reactions like this lead to Community Mobbing (a ganging up by a group against an individual).
In another case, two of my friends were driving around Lynnwood looking for housing in May 2007. According to my friends they saw a white van with the word Rapist spray-painted across the entire side. My friends were shocked and we all commented later that whether it were true or not, the damage had been done. In this age of propaganda an accusation works as well as a verdict and I can only suppose that there was some reaction from the neighborhood.
The week of June 15, 2007, The Stranger Newspaper ran a short piece in the I, Anonymous column, titled, “He’s No Pedophile and You Know It.” It was about a Teacher who had been falsely accused by a jilted girlfriend. Teachers are especially vulnerable to this type of accusation because of the influence they have over the young. As stated in the piece, this Teacher’s career is over even if he is cleared of all charges. Was the jilted girlfriend ever given a lie detector test? For that matter, what about the mainstream TV Media that showed up on the doorstep for an impromptu interview with the accused? (The TV media has been used constantly in these witch-hunts and there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of evidence or fact checking. Since most people believe whatever they see on the nightly news, I’m sure his community is at least regarding him with suspicion.)
Sadly, this is happening globally. With such advances in technology comes convenience, but also new problems can arise, such as anonymous slander on the Internet (cyber mobbing). A satellite of The New York Times, The Herald Times, ran an article about Community Mobbing in China. A man suspected that his wife was having an affair with a University student they had met at a gaming party just because she had exchanged some emails with the student. Even though the husband had no real evidence and the wife denied it, he wrote a lengthy blog on a widely read message board accusing the student of adultery. In response, hundreds of people were recruited and began to stalk and harass the poor student who ended up dropping out of school and hiding at home with his family. From: Mob Rule on China’s Internet: The Keyboard as Weapon. Howard French, The Herald Times, 06/01/2006.
If rumor and innuendo via message boards can provoke such community harassment, then what do we do when we have “proof,” i.e. a photograph, video, a voice-over tape-recording? In this age of PhotoShop, digital imagery, cell phone cameras, etc. much can be distorted. While a picture is worth a thousand words, a photo-shopped image might be worth one life ruining statement and no one questions the accuser. There is no accountability or lie detector test required especially if it is posted anonymously.
It’s quite possible that one vengeance stalker could recruit an entire community with a digitally enhanced image or video of their victim. The Community would then view the targeted victim as an undesirable, someone that needed to be driven out, punished or at the very least watched. Police condone surveillance of suspected wrongdoers by Neighborhood Watch groups and there is no legislation yet for this kind of vigilantism.
Community Policing can turn into Community Mobbing very swiftly. Innocent people can be slandered, then bullied and harassed with little or no proof of their guilt. According to the article: Mob Rule on China’s Internet, there were responses on that message board demanding that everyone, including every store worker or business person harass the student.
I’ve experienced ongoing harassment in a variety of forms over the past few years. In December of 2007, I found multiple postings accusing me of everything from prostitution to racism on a site called rottenneighbor.com under my full name. I immediately contacted the webmaster through the site and alerted him to the slander. The posts were gone the following day, but the webmaster didn’t acknowledge my request for information on the postings. The most recent smear was a series of libelous blogs on the May 27, 2008 The Stranger Newspaper’s SLOG message board under the title, Modern Warfare. I only discovered this particular smear because Chris Daniels, one of the reporters at King 5 called me to ask about it. I wrote to Dan Savage, asking why The Stranger would want to make any kind of “warfare,” against me. Tim Keck responded on Savage’s behalf, writing that he didn’t t think the postings were that bad and the worst of the blogs had been redacted. (The blogs saying I should be “Put down, “ or accusing me of being a crack whore. I printed the originals out however.) These are only a couple of episodes in a long and consistent history of smears.
There is nothing new about Mobbing and the KKK, the Nazi’s and other groups used this to eliminate people they felt were a threat. During McCarthyism, similar tactics were used to destroy people that had been accused of being Communists. Slander campaigns, harassment at work, blacklists, and surveillance were employed. Throughout history activists, educators and writers have suffered the same abuses and there is still no accountability for a whisper or surveillance campaign.
In 2002, Ashcroft unveiled Bush’s plan for community action groups, originally charged with watching for terrorist activity, community action groups are watching for any real or imagined infraction and will mete out punishment vigilante style to anyone that comes under suspicion. In this era of citizen informants (Do an internet search for Amerisnitch.) anyone could spread slander to these citizen groups who then would feel entitled to gang up on the individual. Two or more enemies could then corroborate the lies. The targeted victim is then thrust into situation after situation where they have to defend themselves, thus creating more and more enemies. In my case some of the anonymous bloggers claimed to know me therefore confirming the smear.
The most serious issue to me is that a seemingly liberal community like Seattle would organize around this type of fascist behavior. Consider a quote by William S. Burrows, “A Police State needs no Police.”
April 6th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
How about the systematic abuse of authority and violation of our rights here in Mass? In particualar the two rest areas on rte91 north and south between Holyoke and Northampton. These rest areas have been deemed “off limits” to the state poilce from the Northampton barracks. Park there for any reason, and every 15 minutes a trooper pulls in, blocks your car in, hits you with his spotlight, and starts an interrogation (it cannot be called a well being check by any stretch of the imagination) which will lead to a legitamit arrest, or a false one, but either way if witnesses are present you are ordered to leave because “this is a bad place to hang around” or in the abscence of witnesses you will be arrested for anything the trooper can invent. False charges mean nothing to them. Driving down 91 regularly I have seen many arrests on both sides of that highway. With better weather on the way I am setting up a person with a video camera and am going to go there and prove this is happening. Is that legal?
Also if anyone else has been falsely arrested, and I know they are out there, please contact me at redmanhed@yahoo.com so we can put together a plan and legal action to stop this blatant disregard of our rights.
I sincerely hope the ACLU would get actively involved in this, as this is exactly the kind of abuse that you are destined and designed to stop.
Thank you
April 14th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
After looking at the map of the “zone” I just have to wonder who the idiots were that drew it and just exactly how stupid they think the rest of the Country really is? Chicago, within 100 miles of an INTERNATIONAL boundary? Which one? Not the US/Canadian for sure. Where is the international boundary that runs down the center of Lake Michigan putting Wisconsin and the West side of Michigan in this “zone”? Just more flaming, unfounded nonsense from the ACLU is what this looks like.
April 16th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Obviously, Scott G. hasn’t spent a great deal of time in the Great Lakes area, or he’s already understand that “land borders” are where “borders” are supposed to be, but are now considered the “starting points of the border” for the intents of DHS.
I used to hit the Detroit Auto Show (a.k.a: North American INternational Auto Show) every year like clockwork…but I’ve quit going a few years back because it’s simply not worth the threats, intimidation and inane questioning at the border.
The US is a closing society, under monetary fascist control. It really is that simple. Occam’s Razor suggests that the most obvious answer is usually the correct one, so let’s just take all the evidence in a pot, stir to a rapid boil, and see what answer the totality of the soup results in?
Few people will be able to continue to ignore the gravely serious problems which are increasing exponentially across the US today…
April 18th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Cathy Consoli needs to get her head out of her butt. The border patrol is nothing more than the front line of the police state
This is KGB land we are in now. If you dont believe it, watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUzd7G875Hc&feature=player_embedded