A little more clarity on Obama parallel police organization.

Thomas Sowell notes the media’s lack of interest in Mr. Obama’s advocacy of the creation of an entirely new police force that would be as large as the military. That would be a force of 2,300,000 people or 46,000 policemen for each of the 50 states. With 88 counties in Ohio, just to choose one state, that amounts to 523 additional policemen in each county of that state alone. And this would be on top of the existing law enforcement organizations in the country.

Some obvious questions:

• What criminal laws would this huge new force enforce?
  
• To whom would it answer? Local elected officials or 1600 Pennsylvania Ave?
  
• What connection will there be between new Obama Administration “volunteer” initiatives and this new police force idea that so intrigues Obama?
  
• Is the idea for this police force something taken from a page in Saul Alinsky’s textbook for revolution, or did it come from somewhere else? Where?
  

And what about constitutionality and funding? As with all of Obama’s plans to change America we are left in the dark on this score for this massive cop WPA program. Constitutional niceties interest no one these days, certainly not our former teacher of constitutional law, and money will just be there at the opportune time it seems, perhaps some kind of “Obama cash” on the order of “Mugabe cash.”

Does history teach us anything, I wonder, about the wisdom of parallel or superseding police organizations? I’m just axing, is all.

But none of this excites the least curiosity amongst our press guardians of liberty. If a secretary of an Exxon junior geologist takes a cruise to Alaska in the summer, our press will connect the dots between this innocent act and secret preparations to turn ANWR into a lake of spilled oil, flaring gas vents, and caribou drinking from rushing rivers of WD-40. So the press will exhibit infinite suspicion of oil industry motives but give infinite slack when it comes to discussion of a huge, historically unprecedented increase in a federal internal police force. Where is the press on this issue given that this same press screams like a cat with its tail on fire when George Bush asserts an inherent presidential power to listen in on international phone calls to which a known or suspected terrorist is a party?

Eavesdrop on international phone calls? Call in UNICEF!

523 new federal cops in each U.S. county with unknown mission? Boys will be boys!

Sowell also fleshes out the creepiness of this thankfully-so-far-unimplemented proposal in light of the recent surfacing of the Department of Homeland Security report on “right-wing extremists.” This category of miscreants includes "groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration."

No word yet on whether DHS will be issuing a companion report on the danger to the Republic posed by left-wing extremists such as, among others,

• those dedicated to the support of abortion or gun control, or
• the ex-cons and other Muslims congregating mysteriously in Jamaat ul-Fuqra redoubts around the U.S. (as chronicled by the Baron over at Gates of Vienna).
  

"Bigger Menace May Be Gov't, Not Extremists." By Thomas Sowell, Investor's Business Daily, 4/21/09.