  Hey guys, hate to skip back behind the web development talk - thanks for working on the site, by the way, I appreciate it - but I wanted to chime in on this Citizen Corps/Operation TIPS thing...
There's a difference between the Citizen Corps and Operation TIPS. The Citizen Corps is a program intended to increase community infrastructre, especially times of crisis. Ideally, it's supposed to set up a volunteer police force, medical reserve corps, a neighborhood watch program, and a community emergency response teams.
None of those ideas suck. Hell, I signed up for the community emergency response teams, which means I get a few days of emergency medical training whenever they get to calling me. After that, should something awful happen in Rochester, I can go do something instead of stand around like a chode. Love that idea. Huge. Great. Wonderful. Operation TIPS, though, is no good. A system by which regular citizens can report "suspicious activity' of other citizens to the government is a really bad idea, especially in this age of anti-terrorist "detainees.
" It's got a good heart behind it, I think. Or, at least, I'd hope it does. If you read what Tom Ridge has been saying about it, he sure seems surprised that people have reacted to it in this way. In a warm, fuzzy, nice world, it's a system by which truckers and fast food workers and flight school instructors can do something if they see some dude acting like a terrorist. Of course, in a warm, fuzzy, nice world, there aren't any terrorists. So in the cold, slick, mean world that we live in, this is a bang-up way to create a system that can be so abused, and so powerfully abused, as to cause absolute havoc and mayhem nationwide.
So, no good. But the citizen corps is not all bad, I don't think. If it's a way to strengthen communities in America, I'd love to try it. Seriously. Because communities could use some strengthening. You know? 
