TOTALLY INSANE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

Arsonists permitted to drive gasoline tankers! You couldn't make this stuff up

The federal government wants to change its current rules to permit convicted arsonists to get special licenses so they can drive gasoline tankers and trucks loaded with explosives and hazardous materials. But murderers and convicted racketeers will no longer be permitted to drive hazardous materials on the nation's interstates. "Arson is not always an act of terrorism," the Transportation Security Administration declared in proposing the new regulations that would permit the agency to review on a case-by-case basis whether convicted arsonists should get the special licenses allowing them to drive gasoline trucks, or other vehicles carrying hazardous materials.

Under the Patriot Act, the TSA - a branch of the new Department of Homeland Security - was directed to issue special federal certifications to the commercial licenses held by truck drivers who haul hazardous chemicals, gasoline tankers and explosives. The government plans to begin issuing the new licenses Jan. 31. it estimates it will receive more than 2 million applications for the certifications.

Last May, the agency issued regulations that would have prohibited anyone convicted of arson from driving hazardous material trucks. But on Nov. 24 the TSA announced in the Federal Register that officials had changed their minds and no longer regarded arson as being among the most serious crimes warranting lifetime disqualification. Amy von Walter, a TSA spokeswoman, said the agency considered arson to cover a broad category of crimes. "We wanted to ensure that we allowed for flexibility as we reviewed an individual's case," she said. The licenses will given only to drivers who have been out of prison for seven years.

While removing arson from the list of disqualifying offenses for hazardous material licenses, the agency said it was adding murder and racketeering convictions to the list of crimes. "Murder is one of the most violent crimes on the list of disqualifiers and indicates a disregard for human life," the agency said.

The Owner-Operators Independent Truckers Association, the nation's largest association of independent truckers, is irate at one of the changes in the new rule that would relax rules preventing non-citizens from receiving permits. The TSA wants to allow citizens of Mexico and Canada, along with people who have entered the United States under asylum visas or as refugees, to obtain the special driving permits. Paul Cullen, a Washington attorney representing the independent truckers, said there is no way TSA can check the backgrounds of these immigrants to determine if they are a threat or not. "It is grossly unfair to U.S. citizen drivers to allow persons whose backgrounds cannot be effectively checked to have the same rights and privileges as U.S. citizen drivers," he said.

Source. (Via Michelle Malkin).



EVEN A PROMINENT LEFTIST IS GETTING SICK OF AUTHORITARIAN BRITAIN

A former editor of "New Society" speaks:

"Mantraps, ready to cripple liberty, lie all around us, as if we were villagers trying to poach the lord's game. First I place the steady abolition of the secret ballot, fought for from the Chartists on. This government persists with a scheme that will end in all-postal voting, wide open to fraud and coercion. It gives all power to the man who wants to be master in his house, making his family vote as he does. I know the arguments about increased participation, but true dilemmas are choices not between good and evil, but between rival virtues. Here, quality should outweigh quantity. It's up to politicians to ensure their message entices voters to polling booths.

Then we have the forcing through of identity cards. No longer shall we be able to read ironically about Stendhal's romantic hero Fabrice, as he struggles with constant demands for his "papers" in the petty 19th century tyrannies portrayed in La Chartreuse de Parme. We, too, will have to show our papers, everywhere. No evidence has been produced that the system would hinder real villains or terrorists. It's been driven through as a sheer Nietzschean exercise in will by the prime minister and his tame home secretaries.

Again, there's the grotesque illiberalism of the foxhunting vote. I don't hunt, nor have I any wish to. But in reading Sassoon, Surtees or Trollope, I recognise that it's a long, not dishonourable thread through the fabric of English culture. Admittedly, this law was driven through not by Blair, but by Labour backbenchers - so keen to show their own transient freedom, for once, that they forgot about other people's. But it was Blair who let this "promise" (which he hoped never to keep) stand in his manifestos. If we were really hunting down animal cruelty, far more animals die drawn-out deaths from kosher and halal slaughter. None of these minority pursuits should be actually banned (as opposed to campaigned about).

Finally, we have the project to forbid vigorous criticism of religions. It's a censor's dream. Wordsworth's plea got it right: "Milton! [and Blake and Russell and Chesterton] thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee; she is a fen of stagnant waters." This anti-libertarian law is proposed as a gross sectarian palliative, for mere political gain: the prospect of more Labour votes from Muslims.

Voltaire and Swift proved that what dogmatists fear most is mockery. This truth was rubbed home in December by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, the Sikh playwright so disgracefully unprotected by the police - and government. As her satirical play closed and death threats drove her into hiding, Fiona MacTaggart, the minister for race equality, took it all on the chin. The violent dispute was, she said, "a sign of a lively, flourishing cultural life".

Meanwhile, all the government's diktats, its tsarist ukases, rain down from the centre. This regime is wedded to social intervention, for which a better phrase would be social manipulation. Fortunately, the pronouncements are often ignored atlocal level. Peter the Great issued an ukase ordering that all previous ukases be obeyed. The government must often feel similar frustration. It says "Don't smoke", and people continue to smoke. It says "Drink two units", and they continue to drink five. It says "Waste your money by putting it in a Pru pension scheme", and they persist in taking out loans to buy houses. People cling to their eternal (I hope) right to go to hell in their own way.

Last month's findings from the annual British social attitudes survey cast authoritative light on the upshot: disenchantment with a form of politics that seems to have little to do with most people's own anxieties. The most prominent anxiety is a wish to cut immigration. Newcomers are often seen as freeriders on a welfare state other people's taxes paid for....

The man, or woman, in Whitehall doesn't know best. Even in the government's current troubles, the present chances of change seem bleak. But every libertarian must hope it's the dark before the dawn. Otherwise, forget America and Russia: it's farewell freedom in Britain".

More here. (Via Blithering Bunny)