Political Jackass

Oh, those Republicans. They?ll sing songs about Gawd blessing America. They?ll pass laws to make it illegal to desecrate the cloth of an American flag. But when it comes to real liberty, what are they up to?

They?re gathering private information on your kids.

Under Bush Administration orders, the military is building gigantic files of private information about kids who aren?t even old enough to buy cigarettes. Using little-known powers granted through the No Child Left Behind Act, Bush Administration officials in the Pentagon are sending out soldiers to high schools across the country in order to gather information like students? Social Security numbers, their email addresses, the classes they?re taking, and even the extracurricular activities that they are involved in.

The Washington Post quotes the official description of the project as stating ?The purpose of the system . . . is to provide a single central facility within the Department of Defense to compile, process and distribute files of individuals who meet age and minimum school requirements for military service.? The parents of American high school students are right to worry that this looks like the preparation for a military draft.

One cruel irony: Republicans have been fighting to eliminate Social Security benefits, but they?re eager to use high school students? Social Security numbers in order to spy on their personal activities.

Another cruel irony: The Pentagon has informed parents that they can opt out of the effort to collect private information about their kids ? by providing the Pentagon with private information about their teenagers, to be kept in another file. I guess that?s what the Republicans mean when they talk about family values.

This is what Republicans seem to think about liberty: It gets in the way of efforts to drag American high schoolers into the war in Iraq. Unfortunately for them, there?s a little old thing called the Bill of Rights. One of the freedoms in the Bill of Rights is protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

Grabbing personal information to feed into gigantic national files on underage students – it?s probable that Jefferson, Madison and Adams would have regarded such an act as unreasonable search and seizure. It?s too bad that the Republicans in government have taken America far away from the traditions of liberty that these founding fathers worked so hard to establish. Source