At 9:00 AM -0500 1/20/01, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>Reno probably didn't expect the situation to, um, blow up in her face.
>
>It is also undisputed that if they wanted to avoid a show of force,
>they could have nabbed Koresh during his jogs around the property
>line or whatnot in the morning. Reese, you blather too much.
>
I also believe that neither Waco nor Ruby Ridge were expected to go
down as they did. Neither Reno nor Clinton gained anything from these
debacles.
What I fault is the general trend toward "militarizing the police,"
especially the trend toward using federal police instead of local
sheriffs and law enforcement. In both cases, Waco and Ruby Ridge,
local law enforcement was bypassed, even "kept out of the loop." This
should not be acceptable in a constitutional republic consisting of
states.
There are also fundamental problems with the War on Some Weapons, the
War on Some Drugs, and the War on Some Religions. Claims that Randy
Weaver had sawed an inch or so off a shotgun, part of an entrapment
by Feds who wanted his cooperation in other matters, tell us how
close we are coming to being a police state (though we are not yet
there in any plausible sense). Claims that David Koresh was mingling
in unapproved ways with young women, or was selling weapons illegally
(never proved, even after the ashes had been sifted), should have
been handled locally, not by calling in federal ninjas.
As for Ashcroft, we'll see. Bush won, so Bush gets to appoint his
staff. The whole "review by the Senate" thing is a relic of the
McCarthy era, actually, and should be done away with.
--Tim May
--
Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED] Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns