Prepaid Cell Phones
Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 15 Aug 2005 12:00:00 GMT
#
Albany Times Union (TU) -
Searching New York subway riders is pointless - the TU printed
the letter I wrote 11 days ago. They picked their own title, of
course, and made small edits to a few sentences, but nothing
that changed my meaning:
Searching New York subway riders is pointless
First published: Monday, August 15, 2005
I agree with the Aug. 4 Times Union editorial that Assemblyman Dov Hikind is wrong and dangerous to suggest using racial profiling to determine whom to search in New York City's subways. But I disagree with your reason.
We're talking about suicide bombers here. If a suicide bomber is stopped for a search, what do you suppose he'll do? Stand there while the bomb is discovered and he is arrested? I don't think so. He'll set it off right there, killing the cops doing the searches and the people in line. Mission accomplished.
Get used to it. Suicide bombers cannot be stopped. Not even turning America into a police state by shredding the last vestiges of the Fourth Amendment will work. Searches without a warrant aren't allowed in America, I learned in junior high school civics, and there's been no constitutional amendment since then to change that fact.
Fortunately, there aren't any suicide bombers in New York's subways. At least not yet. But even if there were, searching every man, woman, child and seeing-eye dog that goes through the turnstiles wouldn't help. It's a feel-good knee-jerk nonsolution to an imaginary problem.
Unless, of course, the real problem is that the "authorities" want more power.
BILL ST. CLAIR
# Silver at WolfesBlog - I Visited Hiroshima - powerful essay about the unimaginable evil that was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [claire]
Now, some 60 years after America invented a new class of war crime, we learn that the American government actively suppressed documentation of the destruction and its horrific aftermath. The intent was to mute American revulsion to death and destruction on a scale that is quite literally incomprehensible. The cover-up largely succeeded. Today we hold thousands and thousands of these ghastly weapons, each many times more powerful than the ones we used to murder several hundred thousand innocent women, children, civilians, and slaves.
# I've been researching prepaid cell phone plans over the last week. Bought a Verizon phone at a mall kiosk last week and a Virgin Mobile (Sprint's network) at Radio Shack yesterday. Now my wife and I can be reached when we're not at home or at our desks. There's a dizzying array of options. And the market is expanding. I remember when there were only two choices at Wal-Mart. Now there are five or six. I can't say that the phones I got are the best or the cheapest, but they'll get me some experience without spending much dough. Somehow, I've avoided cell phones up to now.
