Feel safe PATRIOT and Homeland Security laws

My husband and I vacationed Christmas week among mostly Mexican tourists in Mexico's Pacific coast resort city of Mazatlan. Usually there are more gringos. Perhaps, the little shrubs (WVON's Cliff Kelley's sobriquet for Bush) world destabilization plan kept the gringos on this side of the border.

I yielded to the lure of sun and warmth. Sensitive to terrorist threats from whomever, we flew Mexicana Airlines (and from the length of the check-in line, so did much of Little Village and Pilsen). I avoid domestic airlines for international flights. I have no confidence that the constitutionally repugnant Bush-Ashcroft USA PATRIOT or Homeland Security Acts protect us from terrorist. September 11, 2001, underscored a significant world view of this nation.

Nine-one-one was a mother of a terrorist act, but not the mother (that title is still held by the Atlantic Slave Trade and its residual effects). The failure of the FBI and CIA to connect the dots allowed 9-1-1 to occur. Neither PATRIOT nor Homeland could have prevented 9-1-1 or will stop the next assault.

PATRIOT expanded federal secret arrests, deportations and wiretapping. Homeland created a Cabinet department of the same name, confederated 22 agencies (excluding the CIA and FBI) to prevent another 9-1-1 and authorized the development of a computer network to collate patterns of terrorist activities from searching records of your credit card and prescription purchases and books you borrow from public libraries. It also federalized airport security.

The world scratches its head and watches as this nation's leaders rush hell-bent to repeat past mistakes. Was it so long ago when then President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps to temper the world view of this nation as ugly Americans? If the earth is still revolving when Bush & Ashcroft leave their bully pulpits, we will need much more than a peace corps.

For this nation's leaders have again reached into the past and embraced the bully's big stick unconcerned that no one likes a bully. Bullies are cowards. Their victims are always the weak, helpless. Yet, bullies generally meet their match in the form of those who have nothing to lose. Then things get interesting. Stuff hits the fan. That is what 9-1-1 was about, an in-your-face confrontation with a bully by those with nothing to lose and paradise to gain.

Those on the sidelines watch and hope to avoid being caught in the snarl. Yet life is not like that. The United States sneezed and Mexico caught a cold-- which is why Mazatlan had more Mexican tourists than gringos. Business was down in restaurants, hotels, on tours and for street vendors. Echoing complaints of American retailers, Mazatlan merchants bemoaned their worst ever Christmas season.

So much for the PATRIOT and Homeland Security Acts. Are you feeling secure yet?