DHS ignores hearing on privacy assaults

The Department of Homeland Security refused to send a representative to a Senate hearing on the government's claim to the power to search through unlimited private information at border crossings, and Michael Chertoff refused to answer written questions from Senator Feingold. Feingold declared, "Once again, this administration has demonstrated its perverse belief that it is entitled to keep anything and everything secret from the public it serves and their elected representatives, while Americans are not allowed to keep any secrets from their government. That’s exactly backwards."

If you take a laptop computer across the border, the US government claims the right to snoop through all your files without cause. The courts have upheld this, on the principle that you forfeit all your rights when crossing the border.

The Democrats in Congress have demonstrated that any opposition they claim to have to overreaching presidential power is strictly for political show. Senator Feingold, John McCain's co-conspirator in censoring political speech, is a pathetic spokesman for opposition to unconstitutional power grabs.

Conservatives have been replaced by neo-cons. Liberals have abandoned the last scraps of true liberal principles and become Wilsonian progressives. Our liberty goes down the drain, and the political game goes on at our expense.