What the . . .?! This isn't even in Utah! The drinkers here are always whining about the liquor laws, but I've never heard of the cops raiding bars here.


Glenn Reynolds calls the police actions "Orwellian," which I find a bit overblown. After all, in 1984 the story could not have been published, let alone the reactions of the people who were tested. There would have been no right to petition the government and no courts with authority to enjoin the police. There definitely was no right against unreasonable searches and seizures. Things like this happen from time to time, people being what they are, but the point is that in this country citizens have a panoply of legal protections against overreaching by government that are entirely absent in a totalitarian state. Yet liberarians and liberals continually claim that we are being subjected to Orwellian oppression. Not true. Not even close.

If we truly lived in an Orwellian system, there would have been no 9/11. We wouldn't have millions of illegal aliens living in our midst. We wouldn't have a free press where raids like this are reported unsympathetically. We wouldn't have blogs or an open internet.