Koenig:

What we see is the beginnings of a Soviet era police state. None of us want to deal with that.

Back to 9-10-11, at least.

Other than the Japanese internments, we are far worse off, IMHO.

Women and blacks didn't have equal rights because the power base was male/.white. Women and blacks were certainly seen as useful, just not equal.

Big difference between that and now. Now, everyone is guilty until proven conditionally and temporarily 'not proven guilty'. There's no such thing as 'innocent until proven guilty'.

As an American citizen with 'nothing to hide', I was never afraid of my government before. I was confident I had rights. I was confident they couldn't whisk me away to be finger-printed, strip-searched, and logged into who knows how many government 'lists' - and I certainly believed I had the right to know who my accuser was and to defend myself. Not any more.

Well that's a good point. This isn't the first time the US has trampled civil liberties and human rights. But before it was always the civil liberties or human rights of minorities. I wasn't one of those minorities. I never experienced those things personally. It's like that first they came quote. I think I have finally reached the point of 'and then they came for me'. Everyone is losing their liberty now. And I think this new era is only just beginning. It is not so much the post-9/11 laws themselves that are the problem. The problem is that not enough people are standing up to stop it. And there are even a large number of people who support the policies out of hate and fear.

There was a time when the US truly was a free country. I would say between the freeing of the slaves in 1866 (the 13th amendment) after the civil war and the establishment of a permanent income tax in 1913 (the 16th amendment) the US was a very free country for everyone. [At least on paper. Blacks were still treated as subhuman.] And in fact I think the US was still quite free right up until the early 30s and The New Deal. The stock market crash of '29 was the first nail in the coffin of US freedom. The beginning of the end. The start of the prohibition era in 1919 could also be seen as the beginning of the end. The start of the war on drugs that has been responsible for the loss of so many liberties.

Unless you personally lived in Soviet Union, I would remove the "Soviet" reference and leave "police state". Other than that, it is fair enough. My comment was about America of the past that so many seem to glorify.

I lost my DL and it was some time before I had the time to go through the nightmare of replacing it. I travelled for 3 weeks on my valid US passport. Not a peep at checkpoint.

Not sure if you checked the expiration date of the other pax's passport, but could it have been expired?

I thought I'd seen it posted that an ID can be expired for a year and still be accepted now? Does that only apply to DLs?

I guess someone could be carrying a expired passport with a current driver's license, but it sounds unlikely to me.

I didn't live in it, but I was on the front line defending against it (1989-1992, US Army Europe)

So I understand what it was about.

That may be one of the most painfully honest admissions i've seen on the intertubes in a few years. My hat is off to you. We're all responsible for letting things get to this stage.

I assume you aren't female, then, or do you think that a country that denies the vote to half its population is "very free?" In addition, I would hardly call a country where separate but equal and Jim Crow was the law of the land as free for blacks, even on paper.

If you're white, male, wealthy, and Protestant, then 1866-1913 was probably "freer" than today. If at least one of those things doesn't apply to you, then you're certainly freer today.

Voting is not a fundamental human right. It is just an implementation detail for a certain kind of government. While it was certainly unfair that women did not have the right to vote for a long time, lack of the vote is not comparable to loss of the right to travel or any other fundamental human right that the constitution was supposed to protect. Personally I'd rather lose the right to vote and gain back the freedom to move about as I wish. I don't vote anyway. I never have. I see it as a waste of time. A single vote cannot change the course of any major election.

To me it isn't a time thing. It is taking our country back from people who wish to see it diminished.

I'll just leave this sit here.

Nappy is the officer's boss, not Clinton.

How about to the 1990's? Sheesh.

A country where women can't vote seems great to me. ^

If they couldn't drive then, it'd be perfect!.

You left out "barefoot and pregnant"....

Yup, between the fall of communism and the millennium. Alternatively, since I'm white and male, the 60's were a blast too .