The only desperate person here is you--after myself & many others point out that the historical & archelogical record proves that your original post...
"Highways were first thought up by Hitler...Truman developed the US highway system to prepare for war with the USSR"...
is BS; you attempt to salvage your dignity by splitting hairs about what constitutes a highway system, and in the process supply a quote that disproves your original post & thesis eight ways from Sunday!:
"Plans for the autobahn date to the 1920's. Construction of the first segment (Cologne-Bonn) began in 1929 and was dedicated by Mayor Konrad Adenauer of Cologne on August 6, 1932. When Adolph Hitler assumed power as Chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933, he took the program over, claiming it for his own...For Eisenhower, the vision of the autobahn was strong in his mind as he became President..."
"I never said that the Autobahn was Hitler's idea."
Right--just that *highways* were first thought of by Hitler! Speaking of foolsmate--does this sound familiar?:
Remember what Hihgways are (Score:2, Insightful)by lawpoop (604919) on Sunday December 04, @04:42PM (#14180240)
(http://lawpoop.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday May 28, @06:51PM)
"Highways were first thought up by Hitler..."
"Plans for the autobahn date to the 1920's. Construction of the first segment (Cologne-Bonn) began in 1929 and was dedicated by Mayor Konrad Adenauer of Cologne on August 6, 1932. When Adolph Hitler assumed power as Chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933, he took the program over, claiming it for his own. "We are setting up a program," he said later that year, "the execution of which we do not want to leave to posterity."
You put alot of effort into disproving your own thesis. By your own quote, the autobahn was CLEARLY was not Hitler's idea. 'Nuff said--thanks.
So you say. Myself and others have refuted your claims.
We've provided direct quotes, photgraphic evidence, & links to authoritative sources detailing the indisputable facts that;
A) Ancient cultures built advanced highway systems for military & commercial purposes;
B) That other Western nations built highway systems incorporating overpasses, clover leaves and other modern highway structures prior to the Nazi's;
and C) That the notion of organizing highway traffic flows couldn't possibly have originated with Hitler or the Nazis.
Still--you maintain the just opposite--without offering a shred of documentation to backup you claims.
How about you start now? Give us some links to *authoritative sources* that Hitler was an innovative visionary & civil engineering genius? (Links to Aryan Unity Magazine & skinheadnation.org don't count)
Oh, I get it--your central thesis is that *OVERPASSES* are what distinguish modern highway systems from what came before!
In other words, the preponderance of evidence & informed opinion that several ancient cultures (including the Romans, Greeks, Carthaginians, and Chinese) built advanced highway systems for military & commercial purposes is either wrong, or vastly underestimates the incredible importance of the innovation of the road bridge to go over roads, which was never thought of before the idea popped into Adolf Hitler's head!
Well, you are wrong;
here:
"Lord Cathcart-Fellingham thought a large oak tree would be just the centerpiece for the one hundred and forty acre grounds of his estate. Since Cathcart-Fellingham was neither patient nor young, he bought a perfect mature oak tree from a farm some two hundred kilometers away. The oak's rail journey stopped at the old Roman overpass near Nordgrenshire; the huge tree couldn't pass under the ancient arch."
& here:
"Traffic engineering principles are well rooted in ancient history. Records indicate that many of these principles were utilized in Rome, such as one-way streets, roadway guide signs, parking regulations, and prohibiting vehicles on certain roadways."
& here:
"The ancient system of highways linked Rome with its most distant provinces. Their primary purpose was military, but they also were of great commercial importance and brought the distant provinces in touch with the capital. In Italy roads led out of Rome in every direction. The roads often ran in a straight line, regardless of obstacles, and were efficiently constructed, generally in four layers of materials; the uppermost layer was a pavement of flat, hard stones, concrete, or pebbles set in mortar. Roads were built or rebuilt by the Romans throughout the empire in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Many modern roads are laid out on their routes, and some of the old bridges are still in use."
This is not splitting hairs. This is my point, which you keep missing. Hitler and the Nazis did invent highways. I didn't say roads. You are overgeneralizing. A highway is not a road!
Hitler invented the modern highway system, which is a conglomeration of the best technologies available. He did the same project that the Romans did, which is using the best tech available to make a transportation system. But my point is that modern world uses Hitler's system, not the Romans'.
Speaking of overgeneralizing! Hitler & the Nazis certainly *did* use the best civil engineering, planning, & road building technology available during the mid-twentyth century--just as the Romans did when they built straight, wide, flat, paved roads *thousands* of years prior.
To suggest that this means Hitler & the Nazis invented 'modern' highway systems is splitting hairs & makes as much sense as saying that cavemen *invented* fire.
Well, an overpass is really just a bridge by another name. Some bridges go over bodies of water; others span chasms & gorges. An overpass is the name given to a bridge for a road that goes over another road.
I couldn't find a photo of a Roman road bridge that went over another road, but undoubtedly they existed. Here is a link to a photo of two Roman aqueducts, built to last thousands of years. One passes over a road and the other aqueduct.
Would you look carefully and tell me that you think a culture that could engineer these aqueducts didn't also engineer overpasses at will?
I don't think compuser missed your point at all--he was exactly right in saying "any attempt to put meaning to your words yields theses which are wrong factually, conceptually, and historically."
In fact the ancient Romans *did* build highway *systems* for moving goods *and* armies, using the most advanced technologies of the day. Had you intended to make a point about the importance of overpasses & cloverleafs, you would have said so in your first post.
Additionally, it would be stretching a point to imply that modern highway structures are somehow inherently evil even if they *were* thought of by Hitler--which is clearly the point you were trying to make. In any event, such a distinction would be irrelevant to the escense NYT story about economic, social & cultural change; not civil engineering.
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads. Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England)for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Now the twist to the story.
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass; (or more correctly, to enable two horses's asses to work together!)
And you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important!
You may be right--along with their tradition of recognizing the rule of law, they have a very good technical education system. India turns out scads of top-notch engineers, mathematicians, physicists, economists, researchers & business executives. It's fairly likely that long term, India will outpace China.
As soon as I 'recharge' my Paypal account I'm going to throw the guy a few bucks--seriously, I've made worse investments!
I've checked out the website & read through most of the comments. I definitly think Lerner might be onto something--in any event it seems that many of the dismissive comments aren't giving Lerner the benefit of the doubt.
Personally, his idea seems pretty similar to a notion that occured to me about twenty years ago when I was working with some plasma etching equipment that used plasma to clean parts for a manufacturing concern I worked for at the time.
Basically, the notion that occured to me was it might be possible to start a small controlled (energy-positive) fusion reaction by shooting a tightly-focused laser into a hydrogen plasma. The way I envisioned it, you started with a lower-density hydrogen plasma in a cyndrical containment vessel with a length 2 or 3 times longer than the radial dimension; & that you would magnetically induce an vortex-shaped region with a higher density and temperature.
If the laser beam was the correct frequency to interact harmonically with the hydrgen plasma, the resulting 'beat wave' accelration would cause relativistic focusing of the laser within the plasma, potentially inducing a controlled fusion reaction within the beam cross-section.
This is an idea that I've played around with in my head over the years (mostly when I was REAL bored). A year or so ago I even constructed a simple diagram (Excel.xls file).
Would it work? I don't know. I don't have access to a lab; I lack many of the fabrication skills that would be required--just to produce test apperatus'. I'm not a physicist; my math isn't that good--and in any event there would have to be ALOT of research & testing because there are MANY variables whose optimal values that would have to known &/or regulated. It was just a fun idea to play around with.
In regards to TFA & many posters comments about "secret laws", there may be such things but I doubt a prosecutor could or would cite them in court; the Sixth Amendment defines the rights of the accused & specifies that the accused has the right to know what they are being accused of & what evidence is being cited.
That said, there seems to be much confusion here about the difference between Gilmore not being allowed to board & Gilmore being accused of a crime. Under FAA rules & the Patriot act, passengers are required to provide ID to board. If they don't, they're *not* guilty of a crime, but they *can* be prevented from boarding.
So my point is, the government now has the power of arbitrary arrest, and is using the excuse of preventing terrorism to track all of its citizen's travel, excepting by their own private vehicles.
Wrong. First of all, they didn't arrest Gilmore, they simply wouldn't let him board the plane.
Secondly, the government does not have the power of arbitrary arrest. Your opinion of the Patriot Act not withstanding, the Bill of Rights still exists, including the Sixth Amendment which enumerates the right of the accused. More specifically, the government must still say why you are being arrested, and what evidence they are citing. You may feel that they are in error; but that is not the same as arbitrary, which would mean that they can arrest you for any reason or no reason.
There is, however, an exception to what I just wrote about arbitrary arrest. The authorities can arrest & hold you for 4 hours before they have to specify the reason & evidence or let you go, but that has been true for many years and has nothing to do with the Patriot Act.
Umm--speaking of 'celver', actually they DO offer what you've described as an *advanced* search option:
On the Google main page, click the "Advanced Search" link on the right, & on the linked page you will see four fields offering these options:
with all of the words
with the exact phrase
with at least one of the words
without the words
Well...golly...I guess you got me. I think you are right, auto passengers are not required to carry driver's licenses. Did you read about the Nevada case I cited? I just wanna know.
Seriously, though, I don't believe you missed my point so much as you ignored it. The 4th Amendment does define certain rights:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
While the Fourth Amendment has been interpreted as to defining individual privacy rights; as matter of common sense, *individual's rights are not unlimited*, but are limited the *public's rights* ; & in this case more specifically by the expectation of reasonable measures to protect public safety.
The point I was making isn't that drivers are required to know how to drive, be licensed, & carry licenses (although they are), so much as that driving is a privelege that enables lawful activity, but can also abet unlawful activity by helping perpetrators elude capture. Therefore, requiring drivers to carry ID is reasonable because a legitimate public interest is served; and the infringement on individual privacy is minor.
Similarly, in this post 9/11 world, air travel is seen as a privelege (remember; travelers have many options when they choose modes of travel.) The infringement on individual privacy, created by the requirment of air travelers to carry & produce positive ID to board, is minor & transitory compared to the public benefit of IDing terrorists & preventing terrorist acts.
I think that Gilmore is a fine individual who has done some outstanding work to benefit individual rights in the public domain, but here he seems more like a boor trying to gain special privleges due to his 'celebrity' status.
I could be mistaken but they may be basing their policy on interpreting a recent Supreme Court decision involving a traffic stop in Nevada. I couldn't find the NY Times article I was looking for, but here is a CNN article that refers to the same case; Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of the state of Nevada, 03-5554.
According to the article some twenty states have laws that can require a person to provide ID under similar circumstances.
Most states regard operation of a motor vehicle to be a privelege under which there are certain requirements; 1st & foremost, that an operator must be licensed & be able to provide positive ID.
One could argue that travel by commercial airline is also a privelege & that providing ID prior to boarding is not an unreasonable invasion of privacy.
Slashdot Mirror
thanks for the cogent argument--sincerely! as I print your post for future reference. mod parent up!
Really? http://www.answers.com/topic/english-language
Mod parent up!
by Jeremy Rifkin 1994?.....SPARE ME!!...
If the grandparent poster is correct, those photons are not in the portion of the spectrum that is visible to humans
Reminds me of that old joke about replacing rats with lawyers in lab experiments...because there are some things that even rats won't do...
"Highways were first thought up by Hitler...Truman developed the US highway system to prepare for war with the USSR"...
is BS; you attempt to salvage your dignity by splitting hairs about what constitutes a highway system, and in the process supply a quote that disproves your original post & thesis eight ways from Sunday! :
"Plans for the autobahn date to the 1920's. Construction of the first segment (Cologne-Bonn) began in 1929 and was dedicated by Mayor Konrad Adenauer of Cologne on August 6, 1932. When Adolph Hitler assumed power as Chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933, he took the program over, claiming it for his own...For Eisenhower, the vision of the autobahn was strong in his mind as he became President..."
Right--just that *highways* were first thought of by Hitler! :
Speaking of foolsmate--does this sound familiar?
Remember what Hihgways are (Score:2, Insightful)by lawpoop (604919) on Sunday December 04, @04:42PM (#14180240) (http://lawpoop.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday May 28, @06:51PM)
"Highways were first thought up by Hitler..."
"Plans for the autobahn date to the 1920's. Construction of the first segment (Cologne-Bonn) began in 1929 and was dedicated by Mayor Konrad Adenauer of Cologne on August 6, 1932. When Adolph Hitler assumed power as Chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933, he took the program over, claiming it for his own. "We are setting up a program," he said later that year, "the execution of which we do not want to leave to posterity."
You put alot of effort into disproving your own thesis. By your own quote, the autobahn was CLEARLY was not Hitler's idea. 'Nuff said--thanks.
We've provided direct quotes, photgraphic evidence, & links to authoritative sources detailing the indisputable facts that;
A) Ancient cultures built advanced highway systems for military & commercial purposes;
B) That other Western nations built highway systems incorporating overpasses, clover leaves and other modern highway structures prior to the Nazi's;
and C) That the notion of organizing highway traffic flows couldn't possibly have originated with Hitler or the Nazis.
Still--you maintain the just opposite-- without offering a shred of documentation to backup you claims .
How about you start now? Give us some links to *authoritative sources* that Hitler was an innovative visionary & civil engineering genius? (Links to Aryan Unity Magazine & skinheadnation.org don't count)
In other words, the preponderance of evidence & informed opinion that several ancient cultures (including the Romans, Greeks, Carthaginians, and Chinese) built advanced highway systems for military & commercial purposes is either wrong, or vastly underestimates the incredible importance of the innovation of the road bridge to go over roads, which was never thought of before the idea popped into Adolf Hitler's head!
Well, you are wrong;
here:
"Lord Cathcart-Fellingham thought a large oak tree would be just the centerpiece for the one hundred and forty acre grounds of his estate. Since Cathcart-Fellingham was neither patient nor young, he bought a perfect mature oak tree from a farm some two hundred kilometers away. The oak's rail journey stopped at the old Roman overpass near Nordgrenshire; the huge tree couldn't pass under the ancient arch."
& here:
"Traffic engineering principles are well rooted in ancient history. Records indicate that many of these principles were utilized in Rome, such as one-way streets, roadway guide signs, parking regulations, and prohibiting vehicles on certain roadways."
& here:
"The ancient system of highways linked Rome with its most distant provinces. Their primary purpose was military, but they also were of great commercial importance and brought the distant provinces in touch with the capital. In Italy roads led out of Rome in every direction. The roads often ran in a straight line, regardless of obstacles, and were efficiently constructed, generally in four layers of materials; the uppermost layer was a pavement of flat, hard stones, concrete, or pebbles set in mortar. Roads were built or rebuilt by the Romans throughout the empire in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Many modern roads are laid out on their routes, and some of the old bridges are still in use."
Speaking of overgeneralizing! Hitler & the Nazis certainly *did* use the best civil engineering, planning, & road building technology available during the mid-twentyth century--just as the Romans did when they built straight, wide, flat, paved roads *thousands* of years prior.
To suggest that this means Hitler & the Nazis invented 'modern' highway systems is splitting hairs & makes as much sense as saying that cavemen *invented* fire.
I couldn't find a photo of a Roman road bridge that went over another road, but undoubtedly they existed. Here is a link to a photo of two Roman aqueducts, built to last thousands of years. One passes over a road and the other aqueduct.
Would you look carefully and tell me that you think a culture that could engineer these aqueducts didn't also engineer overpasses at will?
Roman aqueducts
Yes. Throughout the Roman Empire. Which included most of Europe AND Great Britan.
C'mon. Everyone built roads for moving goods and armies.
Indeed--and certainly before Hitler & the Nazis 'invented' highways. Are you done splitting hairs?
I don't think compuser missed your point at all--he was exactly right in saying "any attempt to put meaning to your words yields theses which are wrong factually, conceptually, and historically."
In fact the ancient Romans *did* build highway *systems* for moving goods *and* armies, using the most advanced technologies of the day. Had you intended to make a point about the importance of overpasses & cloverleafs, you would have said so in your first post.
Additionally, it would be stretching a point to imply that modern highway structures are somehow inherently evil even if they *were* thought of by Hitler--which is clearly the point you were trying to make. In any event, such a distinction would be irrelevant to the escense NYT story about economic, social & cultural change; not civil engineering.
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads. Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England)for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Now the twist to the story.
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass; (or more correctly, to enable two horses's asses to work together!)
And you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important!
You may be right--along with their tradition of recognizing the rule of law, they have a very good technical education system. India turns out scads of top-notch engineers, mathematicians, physicists, economists, researchers & business executives. It's fairly likely that long term, India will outpace China.
I only mentioned the online version because I typically don't get the Times 'dead tree' version, & didn't know if this story was also printed.
As soon as I 'recharge' my Paypal account I'm going to throw the guy a few bucks--seriously, I've made worse investments!
I've checked out the website & read through most of the comments. I definitly think Lerner might be onto something--in any event it seems that many of the dismissive comments aren't giving Lerner the benefit of the doubt. Personally, his idea seems pretty similar to a notion that occured to me about twenty years ago when I was working with some plasma etching equipment that used plasma to clean parts for a manufacturing concern I worked for at the time.
Basically, the notion that occured to me was it might be possible to start a small controlled (energy-positive) fusion reaction by shooting a tightly-focused laser into a hydrogen plasma. The way I envisioned it, you started with a lower-density hydrogen plasma in a cyndrical containment vessel with a length 2 or 3 times longer than the radial dimension; & that you would magnetically induce an vortex-shaped region with a higher density and temperature.
If the laser beam was the correct frequency to interact harmonically with the hydrgen plasma, the resulting 'beat wave' accelration would cause relativistic focusing of the laser within the plasma, potentially inducing a controlled fusion reaction within the beam cross-section.
This is an idea that I've played around with in my head over the years (mostly when I was REAL bored). A year or so ago I even constructed a simple diagram (Excel
Would it work? I don't know. I don't have access to a lab; I lack many of the fabrication skills that would be required--just to produce test apperatus'. I'm not a physicist; my math isn't that good--and in any event there would have to be ALOT of research & testing because there are MANY variables whose optimal values that would have to known &/or regulated. It was just a fun idea to play around with.
Why is this review on /.?
replying to my own post...heh...
In regards to TFA & many posters comments about "secret laws", there may be such things but I doubt a prosecutor could or would cite them in court; the Sixth Amendment defines the rights of the accused & specifies that the accused has the right to know what they are being accused of & what evidence is being cited.
That said, there seems to be much confusion here about the difference between Gilmore not being allowed to board & Gilmore being accused of a crime. Under FAA rules & the Patriot act, passengers are required to provide ID to board. If they don't, they're *not* guilty of a crime, but they *can* be prevented from boarding.
So my point is, the government now has the power of arbitrary arrest, and is using the excuse of preventing terrorism to track all of its citizen's travel, excepting by their own private vehicles.
Wrong. First of all, they didn't arrest Gilmore, they simply wouldn't let him board the plane.
Secondly, the government does not have the power of arbitrary arrest. Your opinion of the Patriot Act not withstanding, the Bill of Rights still exists, including the Sixth Amendment which enumerates the right of the accused. More specifically, the government must still say why you are being arrested, and what evidence they are citing. You may feel that they are in error; but that is not the same as arbitrary, which would mean that they can arrest you for any reason or no reason.
There is, however, an exception to what I just wrote about arbitrary arrest. The authorities can arrest & hold you for 4 hours before they have to specify the reason & evidence or let you go, but that has been true for many years and has nothing to do with the Patriot Act.
Umm--speaking of 'celver', actually they DO offer what you've described as an *advanced* search option:
;)
On the Google main page, click the "Advanced Search" link on the right, & on the linked page you will see four fields offering these options:
with all of the words
with the exact phrase
with at least one of the words
without the words
all set Bucky?
Seriously, though, I don't believe you missed my point so much as you ignored it. The 4th Amendment does define certain rights: While the Fourth Amendment has been interpreted as to defining individual privacy rights; as matter of common sense, *individual's rights are not unlimited*, but are limited the *public's rights* ; & in this case more specifically by the expectation of reasonable measures to protect public safety.
The point I was making isn't that drivers are required to know how to drive, be licensed, & carry licenses (although they are), so much as that driving is a privelege that enables lawful activity, but can also abet unlawful activity by helping perpetrators elude capture. Therefore, requiring drivers to carry ID is reasonable because a legitimate public interest is served; and the infringement on individual privacy is minor.
Similarly, in this post 9/11 world, air travel is seen as a privelege (remember; travelers have many options when they choose modes of travel.) The infringement on individual privacy, created by the requirment of air travelers to carry & produce positive ID to board, is minor & transitory compared to the public benefit of IDing terrorists & preventing terrorist acts.
I think that Gilmore is a fine individual who has done some outstanding work to benefit individual rights in the public domain, but here he seems more like a boor trying to gain special privleges due to his 'celebrity' status.
I could be mistaken but they may be basing their policy on interpreting a recent Supreme Court decision involving a traffic stop in Nevada. I couldn't find the NY Times article I was looking for, but here is a CNN article that refers to the same case; Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of the state of Nevada, 03-5554.
According to the article some twenty states have laws that can require a person to provide ID under similar circumstances. Most states regard operation of a motor vehicle to be a privelege under which there are certain requirements; 1st & foremost, that an operator must be licensed & be able to provide positive ID. One could argue that travel by commercial airline is also a privelege & that providing ID prior to boarding is not an unreasonable invasion of privacy.