http://antiwar.com/radio/2012/03/05/stephan-salisbury-5/

We are ground zero for military-fetishishts (the Pentagon is in Virginia). These wanna-be authritarian freaks outnumber the regular folks around here, and they vote with religious ferver. Of course, they do EVERYTHING with religious ferver, including religion.

Virginia has an extremely high percentage of federal employees. See above note about people with a military fetish. Authoritarians love other authoritarians.

There seems to be 4 cops to every non-cop. In one NOVA town, there are town police, county police, federal uniformed police and, of course, undercover government agents with badges and guns that are policing who-knows-what for who-knows-whom. Four individual police agencies, all patroling the same streets. On Sept. 11, 2001 several of the agencies armed their guys with M-16 rifles and posted them on street corners (yeah, that helped a lot).

Virginia is a “gun” state – lots and lots of guns here but not our neighbors in DC or Maryland. This attracts “gun people”, most of whom appear to be the kind of folks who admire the police, rather than distrust them.

Virginia is already a police state.

Protect & Serve (Themselves!)

Need I remind you what happened in Quincy, IL back in 2010?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/29/quincy-tea-party-protest_n_556367.html

The comments are really juicy — full of Blue-State Fascist goodness.

All pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others, right?

They simply do so in order to remain anonymous from individual civil suits for police brutality.

Any LEO who hides his nametape should be fired.

Anyone know the outside temperature at the Virginia state capitol on that day? Seeing as how the protestor in one picture had on a thin dress, and several officers have their sleeves rolled up, I don’t think the weather was a valid reason for the masks.

I agree, actually. I should have put more effort into that to clarify, and I apologize. Northern Pike and Grayling are not noted for demanding accountability of their predators, and apparently, neither are we.

This wasn’t an attempt to protect themselves from whatever imagined dangers they perceived from peaceful protesters. It was a pretty blatant and systematic attempt at concealing their identity and removing accountability if any of the police decided to use excessive force. It was premeditated thuggery.

May wanna rethink this generalization.

Pablo, you wanna go fishing this weekend? It’s gonna be about twenty below….

This misconception is what permits a nation to morph into a police state. What conceivable motive do cops have to protect the rights of citizens? To them, rights are a hindrance.

The only place where the rights of the citizens receives protection is in the voting booth. Government (including police) is the primary threat to the rights of citizens.