rant: January 2008 Archives

Live free or die, indeed. Is that the best you can do, New Hampshire? With fourty-four percent of you claiming to be independents, with thousands of free-staters now living there, with your state's heritage as the birthplace of the Revolution, and you hand over your delegates to a statist like John McCain, while delivering only nine percent of the vote to Ron Paul? You're a fraud, New Hampshire. You don't care about freedom. Your actions betray your claims to stand for liberty. You should be ashamed.

The frequency with which these types of stories are appearing is disturbing. If you read Radley Balko's Overkill, you are left with no other alternative than to believe that the use of paramilitary raids by local law enforcement is not only on the rise, but is reaching epidemic proportions.

This story illustrates the chaos and pain that was caused for Kayla Irwin when cops raided her apartment, which turned out to be the wrong address. Over a month later, she still has not been compensated for the damage to her property. Almost everything she owned was ruined by their canisters of CS tear gas that were lobbed through her windows. Covering her apartment with shattered glass and a film of noxious dust.

Can a free society that claims to respect not only the rule of law but the individual's right to be secure from illegimate searches and seizures really continue to tolerate these kinds of tactics?

My meager story archive no doubt represents only a very small percentage of incidents like these that go on every day in this country. I would wager that most never get reported in the news. And of the ones that do, few make it onto my radar. But I will continue to collect the ones that cross my path, to serve as evidence that the cost of maintaining police goes way beyond the tax dollars that are wasted. The cost to individual liberties is much higher, and much more devastating.