Friday, November 25, 2005

Talking to the Government

Over the Fourth of July weekend my little family traveled from South Bend to the West Coast.  We had a grand time visiting friends and family.  We saw beautiful vistas, lots of buffalo, ate great food and drank even better wine.  Nothing beats a nice vacation, no?  Well, not exactly.  While there we took a little day trip to Canada.  On our return back to the United States we were asked by a U.S. Customs official to produce identification.  We had brought along a copy of our son’s birth certificate; my wife and I had our driver’s licenses.  We gave these documents to the clerk who then proceeded to type at a furious pace the information from our documents into a computer.  I asked her why she was doing this.  I was told that this was for security reasons.  I then asked her what information of ours she was inputting.  She told me that she could not tell me.  Lastly, I asked her who had access to the information she was inputting about us into the computer.  Again, she said that for security reasons she could not give me any information.

At this point my honey pulled me away from the counter in mortal fear that I would somehow be prohibited from entering the United States.  I complied with her fierce tug on my sleeve and the not so gentle push at my back, but on the ferry ride back to the U.S. I continued to mull over the series of non-responses to my questions.  By the time we arrived back in the good ’ole US of A I was just plain mad at what had happened to us.  And so I wrote a letter to my government, or more accurately to our Senators and Congressman Chocola, seeking an explanation.

In the letter I recapped the events above and noted that I am an American citizen, as are my wife and son.  I said that I was terribly concerned that the simple, legal act of visiting Canada allows the government to accumulate personal information about my family and then not tell me why or what it is doing with this information.  I asked why the government was compiling information about me--and presumably on all other American citizens who travel to Canada--but not telling us why?  I asked my elected representatives to please tell me more about the computer database that our information was inputted into.  Who has access to this information?  Was the fact that I became irate at the clerk’s non-responses noted on my file as well?

Within a month I received a letter and a phone call from an aide to Senator Lugar.  He had read my letter, and he too was perplexed by what had happened to me.  He then asked for further details.  Since this time I have been updated by him on the status of my inquiry and how it leads, not surprisingly into the inner bowels of the Department of Homeland Security.  I remain angered over my treatment, but pleasantly surprised at how hard someone in Senator Lugar’s office is working to get to the bottom of this disgrace.

As of late November I have not received responses from either Congressman Chocola or Senator Bayh.  Gentleman, you are clearly very busy with your lives and perhaps this explains your non-response to a constituent’s letter.  I mean, Congressman Chocola, you must be spending all of your time figuring out how all that money you received from former House Majority Leader Tom “The Hammer” Delay now looks, given his multiple indictments.  Or to put it a bit more crudely: what did he receive from you in return for his filthy lucre?  And Senator Bayh, I caught you on C-Span the other day.  You were trying to woo a crowd of Democrats in New Hampshire.  I guess this means you’re running for President.  Yes, you’ve got the good looks, but let me tell you a little secret, Senator: when Hillary announces her desire to be the first women president the camera lights are going to switch from you to her big time.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, wants to watch her run.  Hillary haters, Friends of Bill, even Ken Starr probably want to see her do it because they all know something that is central to our world: people don’t really care about politics unless it touches their lives in a deep way.  And thus the time zone mess.  But everyone loves entertainment.  And Bill and Hillary are nothing if not entertaining.  So gentleman, I implore you to stop your foolish actions.  Take a cue from Senator Lugar’s office and answer your constituent’s mail.  And then go to Canada and see how it feels to become an enemy of the state.

Broadcast by Jonathan Nashel on November 25, 2005
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