Law enforcement, or any of the hundreds of Agencies that purport to be interested in those 

Total Information Access (TIA), under the direction of former Admiral, former felon - John Poindexter, who seeks to collect all the data that exists on every American citizen: This includes, medical and dental records, banking, personal phone calls, and all computer records, in addition to anything else that TIA might be able to learn by any other means. That's the civilian thought police at its most bizarre. From there we move on to TIPS - which is the new government program to enlist delivery and repair services personnel (said to be roughly a million people) to spy on their customers, "in case they might notice anything 'suspicious' about anyone they might encounter in their daily rounds." These two additions to the public safety police - are only two of the latest innovations to control the thoughts and actions of all citizens of what is still billed as the most free and open society on earth.

WHEN THE GOVERNMENT FEARS THE PEOPLE, THERE IS LIBERTY. WHEN THE PEOPLE FEAR THE GOVERNMENT, THERE IS TYRANNY! Thomas Jefferson

When the above is seen against the immense backdrop of overarching federal agencies: The FBI, the CIA, and the NSA: augmented by the Defense Intelligence Agency and all the pro-active branches of each of the above - things began to border on the ridiculous.

Admittedly the nation's welfare is one of the government's jobs. But it is not the only job of government, nor is this a productive use of the public's money - as the goal is impossible to satisfy. No government, no agency, nor any individual can be held responsible for the absolute safety of every individual in any nation. There are NO guarantees in Life - for anyone! Moreover, whenever government tries to do this, the quality of both liberty and life itself is degraded to that of laboratory animals.

The most obvious question that all this new security raises is who will watch the watchdogs? In the old days there was Congressional oversight of these largely redundant idiocies - but now there won't even be that haphazard impediment - to this government's continued abuse of legislative power and political thought control.

Under HOMELAND SECURITY and its enforcements arm, The USA PATRIOT ACT, there are several larger questions that are in need of very clear answers. Since there are several very different areas of threat to any population: International, Criminal, Civil, Political and or Medical, the protections and precautions afforded to the public cannot be the same in every instance. Bank robbers are not the same as Terrorists, just as illegal drug users are not the same as corrupt corporate officials. The threat from the hallucinations of a mental disease cannot be treated in the same way one deals with the excesses of a Wall-street broker, nor are the failings of political leaders necessarily on a par with a grade school teacher who is also a pedophile. The differences in the laws are there to accommodate the differences in the threats to society that each action represents. Yet here under the all-encompassing blanket of SECURITY as the only national concern - everything is now a threat to the national security of the United States, and that is nonsense.

have taken over the government - in the order to "save" the nation. Bush and his cohorts are crudely poised to "Make the World Safe FROM Democracy" which they are doing by destroying the last vestiges of personal freedom and legitimate government authority at every turn.

If the United States had been created as a place devoted only to PROTECTION: then we are on course to achieve that false sense of personal security. But if this nation is about Life and about what each of us chooses to do with our lives, then we have the wrong political leadership to obtain those ends. When Life matters, so do truth, and ethics, and the settled laws of the land. When people matter; so do economics, jobs, education, medicine, the environment, and the viability of opportunities. But if SECURITY is the only consideration for a nation to exist - then nothing else can matter. Laws, civil rights, personal freedoms, private as well as public integrity in binding contracts - none of this now matters to the Congress or the Bush administration. And as the poet said, it now appears that: "We have sold our reputations for a song." - in this case for a promise of a 'security' that can never be fulfilled.