Thursday, July 14, 2005

Unzipping Uncle Sam's Trousers

Yeah, that's a mental image you don't want.

But, apparently, the GOP leadership in the Senate want to see it. They want to see poor Uncle Sam unzip his striped britches and pull them down, exposing his bony ass for all to see as they invite every Tom, Dick, and Achmed imaginable to come and kick that flabby tuchis.

In the wake of the bombings in London last week, the Democrats tried to reinsert funding increases for port and rail transit security. It didn't get past the eagle eyes and feral weasel squints of the Bombs-and-Jesus wing, who promptly grabbed Uncle Sam by the belt loops and pulled down harshly.

We don't check people getting on and off buses. We hardly check people getting on trains. We miss a lot of stuff getting through our ports of entry (you'll notice that drug smugglers have no problem at all getting their little gift packages into the country). Any hint of a pervasive London-style surveillance setup sends people frothing at the mouth.

So who will tell the Senate GOP leadership "I told you so" when we have some silly little hooter walks onto a bus with ten pounds of ersatz gelignite strapped to his back?

Why does the Senate GOP hate America?

2 Comments:

Blogger Jim Yeager said...

In '93, after the World Trade Center bombing, Bill Clinton called for strong counter-terrorism legislation, and eventually got it. In '95, after the Oklahoma City bombing, he called for expansions of those laws, and a lot of these same Republicans we know and love today thwarted him, mainly on civil liberty grounds. At the time I was a moderate conservative; I sided with the Republicans.

At the time, tho I didn't really think of myself this way, I was also a libertarian. I still am, but a liberal one.

These Republicans were oh so big on civil liberties until 9/11, whereupon they did a 180 -- probably partly out of a sense of guilt, I don't know. But like I opposed the draconian measures Clinton wanted to impose ten years ago, I oppose the same crap in the Patriot Act today. They're more concerned with saving face, not protecting America...

3:17 AM EDT  
Blogger Walt said...

Agreed. Being a moderate and a member of the ACLU, I am disturbed by the anti-civil libertarian bent I'm seeing in the GOP. It's as if they were like the Bourbons - they've forgotten nothing, yet they've learned nothing.

7:07 PM EDT  

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