19 December, 2011: I couldn't let the year come to an end without offering my candidate for the
Biggest Lie (and Liar) of the Year: Back in the summer, Janet Napolitano, the head of the misbegotten and misnamed “Department of Homeland Security” said “We don't do these things just to do them.”

The “things” she was referring to were the latest round of increasingly invasive, intrusive, provocative and humiliating warrantless searches visited upon airline passengers by her department.

This is, most definitely, a lie. They do do these things “just to do them.”

The official line, of course, repeated explicitly by Ms. Napolitano, is that some vague exterior “threat” has virtually forced the hapless public servants at DHS to institute things like X-ray strip searches of airline passengers. The truth is just the opposite. The control freaks in government have been trying one ruse after another ever since (at least) the Nixon administration, to get the Fourth and Fifth Amendments effectively repealed. The excuse has continually changed, from bombers trying to collect on life insurance policies, to “drug dealers,” and, finally, to “terrorists” (very conveniently vague, that last...). But the goal has always been the same: Allow unlimited, warrantless searches of individuals despite the Bill of Rights.

Illegal searches are not carried out to combat “terrorism.” The whole bogey man of “terrorism” was concocted, embellished, and dressed up to provide a cover for the searches. Janet Napolitano, you LIE!

Long life and restoration of the Republic.