DHS Announces Halloween Checkpoints In Tennessee To Keep Children Safe

Announcement follows unveiling of highway checkpoints manned by TSA agents

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Friday, October 28, 2011

Following the announcement that TSA agents would be involved in manning highway checkpoints in Tennessee, the State’s Homeland Security Commissioner said yesterday that a raft of new “security checkpoints” would be in place over the Halloween period to “keep roadways safe for trick-or-treaters”.

Well, if it’s ‘for the children’, who are we to kick up a fuss?

“State Troopers will be conducting safety checkpoints, sobriety roadblocks, saturation patrols and other enforcement techniques to look for aggressive or impaired drivers,” over the next few days, in order to “keep roadways safe for trick-or-treaters,” according to Department of Safety and Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons, whose office’s role includes “terrorism prevention”.

Since the Jackson Sun has already announced where the checkpoints will be located, enabling any bad guys to avoid them, is this really about keeping the kids safe or is it about revenue generation?

States raise much-needed cash from impounding vehicles from unlicensed drivers, but legal precedent dictates that the checkpoints would be in violation of the 4th amendment and therefore unconstitutional unless “public safety” can be cited as a pretext. Hence, they’re labeled DUI checkpoints and every traveler has their protection against unreasonable searches and seizures violated.

If it’s “for the children,” then the constitution is null and void.

Apparently, because one person was killed in a car crash in Tennessee last Halloween, that justifies the bill of rights being discarded in favor of Soviet-style checkpoints.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

In reality, this represents another example of how Homeland Security has stepped way beyond its mandate and is becoming a literal occupying force in America.

Earlier this month, it was announced that Transportation Security Administration officials would be manning highway checkpoints in Tennessee targeting truck drivers.

After public outrage, the TSA attempted to neutralize the controversy by claiming that the inspections were carried out by State Troopers (the TSA agents were there to try to recruit truck drivers into becoming snitches for the ‘See Something, Say Something’ campaign), and that the checkpoints were merely temporary.

In reality, the program was the latest phase of the TSA’s rapidly expanding VIPR program, under which TSA agents have been deployed to shake down Americans at everywhere from bus depots, to ferry terminals, to train stations, in one instance conducting pat downs of passengers, including children, who had already completed their journey when arriving in Savannah.

So let’s not concern ourselves with the fact that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano admitted to how her department was authorizing illegal aliens, felons who have knowingly broken the law, to work inside the United States, so long as we’re safe in the knowledge that Americans will be getting searched at checkpoints in order to take care of trick-or-treating children this Halloween – that’s what really matters.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

This article was posted: Friday, October 28, 2011 at 9:20 am

---

---

---

---