Police state

I've been reading online about the Rave bust in Utah. You know the one, almost one hundred cops (with helicopters, dogs, tasers...etc) to bust 300 hundred kids (who it turns out, contrary to police statements, had the proper permits) because there were DRUGS involved, Drugs I tell you. (as everyone in modern America knows, the word drugs, without even having actual drugs, automatically invalidates all laws except for the one that says people in uniforms with guns have the right to FUCK you.)

Well, even if you don't like Libertarians (I like libertarians who believe in Liberty, which is about 1 in 10 of them), there is a great resource if you want to hear about this kind of stuff over at Reason at the feature Daily Brickbat. Disclaimer, sometimes the stuff is just plain libertarian bitching, but sometimes you find juicy stuff like this...(Utah apparently has gone Soviet)

Collateral Damage (8/17)
Larry Chidester was asleep in his Springville, Utah, home one night when a loud crash woke him up. He went outside to investigate. Bad move. A Utah County Sheriff's Office SWAT team was raiding his next door neighbor's house, but when they saw Chidester, deputies went after him, too. According to a lawsuit the Chidester family filed, an officer yelled "There's one!" and officers tackled him and shoved his face into the ground. They then kicked in a side door, went into the home, entered the bedroom of Chidester's parents and threw his father to the floor. Utah County Sheriff Jim Tracy admits the Chidester home was not the SWAT team's target. He says the Chidesters became involved in the raid "as an ancillary issue." "The warrant was for the house next door but in the service of that warrant they became involved ... they had contact with us," Tracy told a local newspaper.

Tells you a lot about Utah. Serve a warrant on one house, but run over and kick the shit out of the neighbors for good measure. I am sure this was exactly what the founders had in mind when they wrote the 4th amendment, I mean you remember how much they liked the british government doing the same stuff, I belive G Washingtion himself once said...golly gee boys, lets build a police state, I don't much like liberty. Yea, sure.

Oh, and remember, Republicans, and Democrats, from Bush to Kerry, from Hillary to Hastert, they all stand absolutely behind the "rights" of the cops to kick your citizen ass.

Ah, sweet liberty, why O why did you run away...what's that you say...you ran away because Americans didn't want you anymore?

But I do!

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Even though I believe that Libertarians are a bit weak on liberty when it comes down to it, they may be the last defenders of "actual" liberty, now that the democrats have officially become "republican lite".

from a post from Jacob Sullum on the hit & run blog:

The drug policy scholar Harry Levine has done some digging in The New Republic's new online archive and uncovered evidence that liberals used to get upset about marijuana arrests. For those of us who have become accustomed to a New Republic whose editors are at best indifferent to the injustices perpetrated in the name of a Drug-Free Society, even as annual marijuana arrests have reached record levels, these reminders of a time when they cared about such things are poignant.

When exactly did the "liberal" democratic party, stop being liberal?