This Week's Outrages

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) is still calling on Americans to contact their Senators and urge them to oppose Arlen Specter's Senate Bill 2453, which will essentially overwrite the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and give the Executive Branch free reign in violating our right to privacy. BORDC has established a webpage through which you can send Senators a faxed messaged at no charge to you.

Brian Fogarty finds parallels between modern America and 1920's Germany.

Lest you think I exaggerate, see what happened when the Missouri Public Service Commission tried to investigate the NSA-telephone company data base scandal--they got sued (for the record, the Kentucky PSC refused to even ask any questions).

And in the air, too: U.S. Air Marshalls are apparently under pressure to make sure they find enough suspicious airline passengers to meet their "quotas."

Looking for inspiration: My buddy Mike and I put away several beers yesterday while trying to figure out a way to more effectively fight the tyrants (letter writing obviously isn't going to do anything but assuage our consciences)...no great ideas were revealed, but we did find some inspiration re-reading Thoreau's Civil Disobedience. I'm not too keen on being locked up at the moment, though (Thoreau's primary proposal)...I do welcome friends' ideas for more effective ways to fight the Man.

Full text of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience here.