Cooler heads are prevailing and are starting to question the locking down of an entire city to conduct a search for one armed teenager.
It was about 1 P.M. on Friday when I decided this fine country of ours had lost its moorings and gone a little nuts. That was when I heard that the authorities—which particular ones wasn’t clear—had stopped the trains running between New York and Boston. At Penn Station, a radio reporter said, Amtrak passengers and trains were piling up.It stops looking like "determined resolve" that the cable news bloviators were crowing about and begins to look more like a mix of panic and cowardice. Even when a rouge LAPD cop had declared war on law enforcement and when those two asswipes were sniping people in the metro DC area, neither city shut down. But in Boston, a city that prides itself on being tough, they hid inside.
It wasn’t just the trains, it turned out. Some of the airspace over Boston was closed lest … well, it wasn’t clear lest what, but lest something. Logan Airport remained open, but there wasn’t any mass transit running to and from it. And all this on a Friday at lunchtime, when tens of thousands—who knows, maybe hundreds of thousands—of people are preparing to move north or south along the Boston-New York corridor. Even buses were halted, thus enabling the benighted Tsarnaev brothers to achieve something that proved beyond Emperor Hirohito and Hitler. They stopped the Greyhound.
I keep wondering what would have happened if today's political "leaders" in Massachusetts had been in office in the 18th Century. Odds are we'd still be singing "God Save the Queen".
The other thing is that we may need some sort of Constitutional amendment that bans legislation reacting to an event like that for a reasonable cooling-off period, like 90 days or more. We wouldn't be stuck with the Patriot Act, one of the more execrable pieces of modern legislation, if there had been a mandatory cooling off period.
They were able to hide inside until the police or someone swat ninja gear bunch bang on the door and pull them out and search the home while sending the owners and occupants down the street with hands over their heads after being frisked. All without a warrant. One can only hope when they got to return to their home the place was in one piece and nothing went missing or charges pending.
ReplyDeleteThe regulars are coming, argh, were here...
Eck!
When will the law suits start???
ReplyDelete"Soon", one would hope.
Deletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LrbsUVSVl8, Neighbor filming what appears to be a warrantless search. Timing is after the so called lockdown was released.
ReplyDeleteActually from all I've read the locals of Boston were locked down by Military Governor General Guage and it was those out in the rural outskirts that were able to put up a fuss after being provoked. The problem was that even during said early parts of the revolution about
1/3rd were fence sitters and about 1/3 were loyal to the king.
Its my understanding that the guy with the boat now owns junk, apparently all that shooting holed it up pretty well, once it's released, if ever, back to him it may be his problem to
get rid of it and maybe replace it. There are questions on the interior of the house that
was used as a command/observation post. This is right on the edge of public good and
invasion.
Myself I have very mixed feelings on much of this. I see a lot of sheeple and a lot
of heavy handed militarized police and agencies. It doesn't look or feel right.
Eck!
I was wondering what the charge would have been for going for a walk during lockdown. And what a court case would look like, after that. This was more stringent than Martial Law, in some ways, and with far less justification.
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly a terrible precedent. We never agreed to suspend the Constitution and law, as a concept, in order to make a cop's job easier.
I didn't hear a "harrumph"...
ReplyDeleteOn radio today, someone pointed out this bit of US law:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2332a
By shutting down Boston for a while, (D) got activated as a charge:
(a) Offense Against a National of the United States or Within the United States.— A person who, without lawful authority, uses, threatens, or attempts or conspires to use, a weapon of mass destruction—
...
(2) against any person or property within the United States, and
...
(D) the offense, or the results of the offense, affect interstate or foreign commerce, or, in the case of a threat, attempt, or conspiracy, would have affected interstate or foreign commerce;