I believe this is the printed on the side of the box that my Taser came in.

This is precisely why I totally abhor the so-called "Partiot Act" !

There is no better saying to describe the state of our current affairs.

Ben Franklin says it best: you will get neither. Even the limiting of freedoms does not ensure perfect security. How many people have died throughout our 225+ year history for us to have the right to liberty? We must NOT let our rights be trampled for a misplaced comfidence in our security.

Benjamin Franklin, as always, offered us timeless advice directed towards future policy makers. Societies have been weakened by war many times not specifically because of losses in the battlefields, but rather because of the loss of civil liberties and freedoms back at home. In the current climate of orange and yellow alerts, we have to remember and demand that our government respect our civil liberties. Where's the outrage when an American citizen of Arab descent from New Jersey is detained for a year without even a hearing? How about after the fact that he was exonerated the government didn't even bother so much as to apologize to this man and his family. This is a direct violation of the 6th Amendment, which guarantees a court hearing to people who have been detained. How about the weakening of the search and seizure clause of the 4th Amendment? It is understood that law enforcement has to crack down on terrorism, but we don't need to regress to a police state in order to do this. Terrorism is a law enforcement problem. More broadly, we as a people need to come to terms with one thing. As much as we all want to prevent another 9/11 from happening again on our home turf, we have to acknowledge the fact that there is no such thing as a perfectly safe society. You can go out tonight and be assaulted out in the street. Same thing with terrorism, 9/11 should have taught us that we are as vulnerable as any other people. England, Spain, Israel, even Japan have had to deal with terrorism and they don't have a police state. More broadly, we can't let fear be the determining factor in giving the government a blank check on such actions. We can never be perfectly safe at all times, don't think that giving the government too much authority will solve the terrorism problem.