Winter Blues

By 4 p.m. today, it was dark outside, what with the heavy clouds overhead, and we are yet almost three weeks till the winter solstice, at which point the daylight begins to lengthen. Each year, by December, I have forgotten how dark it becomes, how early it becomes dark. Lots of fog and mist about, too. Yesterday, the ferry offered a lovely view of the mist coming down (or, I guess, rising up). Fortunately, the highway provided a steady mist-free zone all the way to Point Roberts.

Not only mist-free zones. The winter is also bringing us more constitution-free zones. I knew this phrase previously as what applies at the actual border and which phrase is used to seize your computer or phone in order to investigate its contents without any probable cause or warrant. The ACLU reports that the border people are now extending their need for a greater reach into the population by setting up more and more ‘check-points’ far away from the border; at least as the public thinks of ‘the border,’ but not as the D. of Homeland Security likes to think of ‘the border.’ Their view is that anywhere within 100 miles of the actual border, they are free to set up check points and stop and question everyone going through, in the interests of ‘national security.’ And 'the border' is the edges of the country all the way round.

Now they’ve had, for decades, a checkpoint down on I-5, near San Clemente (as I recall), and I once went through one well west of El Paso, but both those locations are a pretty straight run-up from the border. The ACLU reports that they are now setting up checkpoints over in western Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula, and that organization strongly suggests that the agents are neither looking for nor finding terrorists. Immigration stuff, instead. So, ACLU (and all of us who care about the Constitution) may be headed for the courts on this.

I am not a lawyer, but I know something about constitutional law. I was astonished to find that the Courts permitted INS/DHS to set up checkpoints all over the place in order to insist that I and any other random traveler answer a lot of questions when there is no probable cause to have stopped me in the first place. Freedom to travel within the U.S.: one of those other little things, like habeas corpus, that I just take as a given. Okay, I accepted that checkpoint near the San Diego border, but that doesn’t generalize to one in, say, Santa Monica. But the DHS’s view is they are entitled to do this anyplace within 100 miles of the U.S. edges. The ACLU points out that 2/3 of the entire U.S. population currently lives within 100 miles of the U.S. 'border.' So 2/3 of you Americans reading this can contemplate what you might think if they set one up near your house, on your travel route.

And to add to the craziness of this stuff, the Washington Post reports today that we are now going to have 20,000 military personnel in the U.S. assigned to military duty, in case of something happening. (Remember posse comitatus? Oh, well, never mind; that’s so 20th Century). None of this sits well with me. But what with the Mumbai attackers allegedly entering that city via speedboats, well…. I suppose the sky, the sea, the freeway system, beaches, caves, back yards, whatever: there’ll be no limits on looking for the boogeyman. And while they are at it, they can also check on who we are and where we are going. Some big daddy-ism going on there. Check it out, O.

And also: the government in Canada is teetering absolutely. But we wait until next Monday for the final event.