By the peole, for the people

So we learned this week that the troop levels in Iraq are now at an all time high, and that the Bush White House wants even more. Am I wrong, or did we not vote in a recent election with the majority of voters saying we want the war to be ended and our troops who are being killed and maimed in this pointless, un-needed war to be brought home. Apparently what the people of this great country want is not relevant.

Today I read a new release from this same august institution, the Bush White House, headed by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff who announced that starting six months from now airlines operating international flights will be required to send the government their passenger list data before the planes take off rather than afterwards, as is now the case. He added the the proposed domestic system would transfer the matching of passengers against the government's terrorist watch lists from the airlines, which do it now, to Transportation Security Administration officers."This should provide more security and more consistency, and thus reduce misidentifications" which have produced passenger frustrations.

Chertoff said the new domestic system, known as Secure Flight, will avoid the kinds of activities envisioned in earlier versions of the proposal that raised privacy concerns.

Secure Flight will not harm personal passenger privacy. It won't collect commercial data (about passengers). It will not assign risk scores and will not attempt to predict behaviors.

The plans for previous versions to do those things alarmed Congress so much that it banned the government from implementing the program until it passes a list of tests designed to ensure privacy and accuracy. The Government Accountability Office was assigned to judge the plan based on those tests and said that the previous version had failed almost all of them.

Right so now we will be harassed even more when flying, by the minions from Homeland Security.

Overall it looks and feels like "By Big Brother, For Big Brother".

We, the people, stopped counting in this equation in November 1999 when the election results were known. Now, we need to find a way to stay sane and tolerate this mess until November 2008. May the people have courage and sense, and vote for the candidate that can rebuild our reputation and pride in the world stage, that can fix the divisions in this country, that can fix health care and get education back onto the track it should be, building the next generations that can lead and carry us forward.

Think, and vote!