What fourth amendment?

The Transportation Security Administration has surrendered its foolish diktat that peeing within an hour of landing is a security threat, but another of its other responses to the controversy is equally stupid and more disturbing. They've tried to suppress news of the policy:

The subpoenas demand presentation of “all documents, emails, and/or faxsimile transmissions (sic) in your control possession or control concerning your receipt of TSA Security Directive 1544-09-06 dated December 25, 2009.” They are signed by Dan Kuntz, senior counsel for civil enforcement at TSA.

Under the Constitution, a warrant issued by a judge should be required for any seizure of property. Yeah, we were way past that even before the so-called PATRIOT Act. Now, the Fourth Amendment is gone.

Telecom amnesty is about one thing only

Litigation it ain't. Security? Nope.

Amnesty is about hiding the truth from us little people, the truth about how thoroughly the phone company despises privacy and law (see The President's Analyst) but even more important the truth about how thoroughly the Bushist regime keeps us all under surveillance.

Papers, please

When the police can stop you for no specific cause and, under threat of suspension of your driver's license, force you into a Breathalyzer test, the difference between America and a police state is - politeness. Yeah, there's a difference of degree, too, but that's easy to change when everyone in politics periodically goes through a paroxysm of "toughness", which the voters lap up eagerly. (Witness Iraq.)

I've been through two internal domestic checkpoints, one in Maine looking for drunk drivers, the other in New Hampshire looking for illegal aliens. I didn't match either target, but I still felt the hot breath of the law on the back of my neck.