One other conspicuous characterizing thing about police states - to me anyway - has been the cultural integration of citizens informing on each other. As you say, LWM, hard to define.

I guess you've never heard of the "drug tips hotline"?

Even grammar school kids are encouraged to turn in their parents for heresy against what Silenced has brilliantly termed the "state religion" of the USA.

The government is pushing for a "drug free America", given that drugs are available even in maximum security prisons, a "drug free America" will not be a free America.

Exactly the opposite.. Informing is a very obvious characteristic of police states.

On another thread Silenced pointed out that the drug war has become the state religion of the USA. I find this a brilliant piece of analysis since, like religion, the drug war is based on faith in the absence of evidence.

Likewise, just as every politician finds it necessary to proclaim their religious faith, they must also proclaim their support for the drug war.

Anderson was one of my favorite SF authors.. His characters were always well drawn and his plots sufficiently complicated to keep one guessing until the end..

Look up "A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows", without a doubt the best Flandry novel that has a nasty surprise twist for the main character at the end.

After nearly a million miles on crotch rockets and never being touched by a car I do feel like a bit of a telepath. I can usually tell when someone is going to do something stupid before they know it themselves.

I teach motorcycle safety courses and I tell my students to ride in such a manner that even if they were totally invisible they wouldn't get hit anyway.

It's harder than it sounds.

I kind of feel like an alien, too.

A stranger in a strange land, if you will.

Yes, fascists are so worried about the incredibly high incarceration rate in their country.

What is your "better metric", eh?

I predict that you will not provide an answer.

Nah, I'm a multitasking obsessive jerk.

http://www.drugfree.org/

http://www.dfaf.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_a_Drug-Free_America

The organization first entered the wider public consciousness in 1987, with its This is Your Brain on Drugs broadcast and print public service advertisements (PSAs), which used the analogy that if a person's brain is an egg, then using drugs would be like frying it. This, in addition to a PSA where a television, a trip to Paris and a new car all disappear right under the nose of a cocaine user and another about how a drug-induced high is like diving into an empty swimming pool, were all praised in a speech given to those involved executively with PDFA by then-President George H W Bush in late 1989.

And:

PDFA also participates in the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, co-ordinated by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). At the core of which is a paid advertising program featuring messages produced by PDFA, who donates all PSAs to the campaign.

Preemptive pardons have happened before .. Just recall GHW Bush's preemptive pardon of Cap Weinberger.

And yet we constantly hear of Clinton's pardon of Mark Rich.

Weinberger, not so much.

It's kind of like every single neo-Nazi and KKK member in the country supporting Ron Paul for president and now hating Bush and his policies. Ain't polictics cool?

I'd prefer Kucinich or Gravel though.

Go back and read my previous letters, you'll find that I'm very consistent in what I advocate and what I believe.

By the way, what is you "better metric"?

Why do you criticize my metric and yet fail to provide a better one of your own?

There isn't any such thing as accurate information, only varying degrees of inaccuracy.

Sitting on a jury and listening to different witnesses relate their version of the same event will teach you this in a remarkably short time.

I grew up being taught that America was a shining 'city on the hill', above the depravities of human nature.

Every society on the planet indoctrinates its children to believe that their's is the best and most perfect of cultures.

Why should America be any different?

How about this, and I'll do my best Jeff Foxworthy impression just for you.

You might be living in a police state if you try and leave the country and find out that it isn't allowed.

A felony conviction for a, wait for it...... drug charge and you can't get a passport. Without a passport you cannot leave.

You might not be living in a police state if more people are trying to get into the country than are trying to get out of it.

I know several illegals, without exception they are here for economic reasons and when they have accumulated sufficient money they intend to return to their native land.

Last time I checked, you are free to leave. Please, do so.

Even if I were to leave I could still post here.. That line of thinking will get you nowhere.

Just wondering, why do you feel the need to tell others what to do? That's why I mentioned your authoritarian streak in the first place.

Last time I checked, some asshole or another is trying to put up a wall at the border. Not to keep people in, but to keep them out.

As I already stated, the vast majority of illegals are here for economic, not political, reasons.