In the Name of National Security Emerges the Bizarre Orwellian Police State That Is the U.S.

Occupy Wall Street protesters in Phoenix

Never mind that there are well over 2 million Americans in jail, mostly for non-violent "offenses".

Never mind that the US has the world's highest incarceration rate, surpassing Russia and China, and the world's largest prison population.

Never mind that with less than 5% of the world's population, the US now has one-third of the world's prisoners.

Never mind that there are six times as many Americans behind bars as are imprisoned in the 12 countries making up the entire European Union, even though those countries have 100 million more citizens than the US.

Never mind the countless impossible-to-follow laws and regulations.

If those aren't enough to constitute a police state, in the name of national security, there are no legal limits as to what the state can do: warrantless searches and wiretapping, national ID cards, free speech zones, frisking of children, militarized police departments, the ability of the federal government to declare individuals, whether or not they are citizens, to be official enemies with whom the United States is at war, the legal power to confiscate anything and everything that you own, etc. In other words, the state can do anything it wants with impunity.

So, in the spirit of the United States Police State, the TSA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security - the third largest Cabinet department with over 200,000 employees after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs - that exercises authority over the safety and security of the traveling public in the US is trying to expand its horizons beyond the airport.  The Visible Intermodal Prevention Response (VIPR) team, which is a division of the TSA, comprised of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detection officers and explosives detection canine teams were conducting random searches on Tennessee highways.

Earlier this year, the TSA was temporarily kicked out of Amtrak stations when it screened passengers coming off a train, including patting down a 9-year-old boy.

"I see 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments as a privilege that is a public safety issue," -- TSA head John Pistole, Congressional Quarterly, 2010

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The US Is Fast Becoming a Third World Police State