Feeling Secure at home

Dear reader, you needn't be so worried about your security. After all the problems are all over in Iraq. Here, in the U.S., we have a Department of Father...um, sorry, Homeland Security that is guarding us. In fact, it's a highly successful organization. It's so successful that earlier this month they threw themselves a big bash on the taxpayer's tab, celebrating their good work. Never mind that lower level employees - you know, the ones who actually work - got much lower percentage bonuses, if anything at all.

Those lower level employees are sure to be well rewarded for their efforts next year. Surely businesses will kick in something for those employees as they are out in the field in such places as St. Helens, Oregon, protecting the copyrights of toys. Yes, Homeland Security agents confronted a toy store owner and asked her to remove what they mistakenly thought were illegal copies of Rubik's Cubes. Said a spokesperson for the protection agency,

"One of the things that our agency's responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation's financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications."

Nice to know that our security agents are protecting us from terrorists importing toys. Feel safer yet? I thought so. Let me put a nail in this coffin (oh, how I wish it were so, but it's only a cheap Halloween reference) by offering up this article in Conressional Quarterly. The Homeland Security Department's top intelligence official, retired U.S. Army Gen. Patrick M. Hughes, told a public forum 8 months before he was appointed by the White House the following:

“Set aside what the mass of people think. Some things are so bad for them that you cannot allow them to have them. One of them is war in the context of terrorism in the United States,” Hughes said, according to a transcript obtained by CQ Homeland Security.

“Therefore, we have to abridge individual rights, change the societal conditions, and act in ways that heretofore were not in accordance with our values and traditions, like giving a police officer or security official the right to search you without a judicial finding of probable cause,” said Hughes.

Now, then, there's the beginning of your Halloween fright.