Schools Training Americans to be Subservient

We all know school is as much about training kids to respect authority and function in a hierarchical society as it is about math, science, social studies, and language arts. But lately we've seen a few cases where school teaches us that authority is absolute and can do whatever it wants with regard to students' rights. We've seen unauthorized locker searches be justified, but strip searches of 13 year old girls? With no real cause?

When Wilson ordered the search, the only evidence that Savana had violated school policy was the uncorroborated accusation from Marissa, who was in trouble herself and eager to shift the blame. Even Marissa (who had pills in her pockets, not her underwear) did not claim that Savana currently possessed any pills, let alone that she had hidden them under her clothes.

Savana, who was closely supervised after Wilson approached her, did not have an opportunity to stash contraband. As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, "There was no reason to suspect that a thirteen-year-old honor-roll student with a clean disciplinary record had adopted drug-smuggling practices associated with international narcotrafficking, or to suppose that other middle-school students would willingly consume ibuprofen that was stored in another student's crotch."

Does anyone still wonder why no one is in a major uproar about wiretapping and an authoritarian state? We're being taught that this is how it's supposed to be at the earliest levels. Or am I mixing up cause and effect - are they teaching it because it's become the norm in society? I hope so - at least that might be more quickly correctable.

Obama's passport file and the Surveillance State

Since January, Barack Obama's passport file has been illegally accessed at least three times by employees of the Bureau of Consular Affairs, each time triggering an automatic investigation that can easily be leaked and turned into a media story. In fact, this is exactly what happened in 1992 with Bill Clinton. If this is a political move and not just employees' foolish curiously - given the administration's extreme disrespect for the law, I don't doubt it for a second - this is incredibly disgusting. But it's just the latest trend and not at all out of line with what we've seen from King George's Surveillance State.

...incidents like the snooping into Obama's passport file are not the exception, and are not even merely the rule, but are the pervasive and inevitable outcome of allowing government officials to spy on Americans without real oversight.

Yeah...

UPDATE: What on Earth is going on here? Does anybody actually believe it was harmless curiosity when it happened to both campaigns?

UPDATE 2: Make it a trifecta. Am I being too cynical to think they did it to McCain too to remove suspicion that it was political? I'm sure they would have known that the time this happened in 1992 would be uncovered, and that it'd be spun oppositely now, right? Wow, I sometimes amaze myself at how readily I can accept certain conspiracy theories with regard to this administration. But at this point, they've almost all turned out true, and just when you think it can't get worse, it turns out their imaginations are better than yours.

Wait, the police feel scared?

In this day of huge corporations and secretive government, the people's only recourse is web-based public humiliation/pressure. When the police feel that this threatens them, even with the fair solution of allowing their rebuttals, and they manage to shut down and intimidate anyone wanting to hold them accountable, we live in a police state.

From THREAT LEVEL:

Our prediction: A year from now RateMyCop.com will have won public service awards. Good cops, and clean departments, will have come to think of the site as a friend, and its founders will be sought-after speakers at police gatherings. Hosting companies that reject them on "health and safety" grounds will look like fools and cowards.

Fortunately, enough people seem to realize the dangers that there's hope to counter it through websites like RateMyCop.com. I mean, the warrantless wiretapping and Orwellian legislation names sorta had to clue us in too, right?