Sunday, January 4, 2009

Welcome to Baltimore. Paper's, please.







I am offically proposing a new motto for the State of Maryland. The current motto is "Fatti maschii parole femine." It means "Strong deeds, gentle words." But after reading the below, I think "Fatti maschii parole niente" or "strong deeds, no words" is better.


Benen has a post up over at Wasington Monthly dealing with the Washington Post's series about the State of Maryland's attempts to spy on and infiltrate domestic groups. Not only were the state police targeting anti-war groups, but they were also targeting anti-death penalty groups and others, like PETA and Amnesty International. What were the high-crimes some of these groups were thought to be committing? Communicating sensitive date? Plotting to overthrow the government? Ripping the tags off of mattresses? How about this:



One of the possible "crimes" in the file police opened on Amnesty International,
a world-renowned human rights group: "civil rights."
"Civil rights" a crime? In Maryland? The same state that houses "Bodymore, Murderland?" Is this really the best use of law enforcement time and resources? Really?

Who was running the Staties in Maryland? Sheriff Jim Clark? These investigations led to regular Americans exercising their most-American of rights (that of free speech) being entered into Federal Databases as terror suspects. No government employee or official has been reprimanded over this horseshit and the Staties now say they are purging the files and expecting lawsuits. Uh...you think.

Note to people those who want/wanted to call opponents of the Patriot Act unamerican. This is the kind of crap civil liberterians were afraid of.

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