Writes Tim Grieve of Salon.com: “For all the talk of inaugural security — for all the money spent, the roads closed, the surface-to-air missiles ready to launch — the lockdown around the Capitol isn’t exactly airtight, at least from where we’re sitting, which happens to be the front row. “We walked onto the Capitol grounds this morning carrying a color-coded orange pass that provides access to a seating area about 30 feet from where Dick Cheney and George Bush will take their oaths of office. Along the way, we saw law enforcement and military officers of every stripe, and we … Continue reading State Security

As late as the Hoover administration, a citizen could knock on the door of the White House. When I worked for Ron Paul in the late 1970s, you could walk into a Congressional office building and knock on the door of any Congressional suite without being x-rayed, frisked, or even questioned. You could also walk into, say, HUD, and stroll the huge corridors full of people doing nothing. How glad the government was to shut all that off from the people. The Congress in particular has spent hundreds of millions of dollars fortifying itself, with internal security troops/cops patrolling everywhere. … Continue reading State Security