Prelude to the Fourth of July

So, the Fourth of July is upon us here in the Excited States of America, where, according to this morning’s copy of the Washington Post Express, “Organizers of Washington’s Fourth of July celebrations outlined plans Monday for the festivities on the Mall and sought to reassure visitors that heightened security precautions would be in effect because of recent terrorist activities in Great Britain. (my emphasis)”

What bothers me is that heightened security precautions are now a reassurance to people rather than another reminder of the freedoms that the average American has given up since September 11.

On this Independence Day eve, let us looks at some of the wonderful things being done in the United States that should remove any sort of confidence you ever had about it being the open society or great nation it claims to be.

Second on the list, yesterday, King George the First, magnanimously “wipes away Libby’s prison sentence” because, in his words, “I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend 30 months in prison. (WTOP)” While the argument about whether or not Lewis Libby is guilty of anything, despite being convicted, will continue well after Bush leaves office, commuting his sentence because he would have to start serving it before his appeal is complete is uncalled for.

Third up, if you have not been paying attention, you might think the US was beginning to resemble the Third Reich or perhaps some Communist nation. The call for papers please in an effort to stop illegal immigration is becoming louder. Of course, the people calling for this are the same people that are opposed to any sort of National ID, there-by making it hard to prove you are properly documented. A Catch-22 that even Heller would be proud of.

Fourth on the list is the process of federal security. Take your pick, but the government has managed to implement bad procedures on top of shaky technology, resulting in…well, a train wreck that certainly destroys any faith I have in them. Two examples for your consideration: Early last year I changed my status and became one of them. This was duly transmitted to just about every important agency on the planet including those people that do federal security clearance checks. Since my wife has a clearance, we felt this would be a good thing to do. Seems we could have saved ourselves the energy because her paperwork was never updated to reflect the change in status. Or, how about this. A federal agency that has suffered data loss over the last few years implements a plan to prevent this from happening by installing software. The problem is that this software has not been tested but it is damn the torpedoes time and it is deployed…only to run smack into some software that was deployed earlier to prevent another catastrophic issue and the two pieces of software, in combination with some hardware, and a Redmond OS really do not like each other. To the point of an endless boot loop. Have a nice day, thanks for securing my PC and I will see you next week.

For those who have not become cynical and jaded, have a Happy Fourth of July. Oh, and make sure to actually read The Constitution. Then tell me what medications you are taking, because that is the only way you cannot be jaded, given the current state of affairs.