Former Texas Rep. Ron Paul has weighed in on the Boston Marathon bombing and the police response to it. The libertarian-leaning former presidential candidate is not happy about the latter. <\/p>\n
Paul decries police response <\/p>\n
Paul, writing in the blog run by his political ally Lew Rockwell, decried how Boston and surrounding areas were placed on a virtual lockdown after the shootout between the police and Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left the former dead and the latter on the run. Paul described the lockdown and the house to house search by police as a \"military-style takeover of parts of Boston.\" He suggested that the police violated civil liberties with warrantless searches and that politicians were using the incident to call for more surveillance cameras in public places. Paul suggested that in fact the Tsarnaev brothers were taken down by ordinary citizens, including people who had recorded scenes on their smartphones and the homeowner who eventually found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in his boat. <\/p>\n
Paul concerns shared by the left <\/p>\n
While Paul's concerns over a \"military occupation\" stems from his libertarian principles, they are shared by at least some on the left. Renee Parsons, an environmental lobbyist, suggests in the Huffington Postthat the Boston manhunt presented a \"frightening futuristic vision of a police state.\" She wondered what might have happened if citizens in Boston had actually resisted the forced entry into their homes of armed police. She concludes that the manhunt and the tactics used represents a dangerous constitutional precedent. <\/p>\n
The Washington Times reports that Bill Maher, the left-leaning HBO talker, also took up the theme of America becoming a police state. He also suggested that the Boston Police were \"unprofessional\" in shooting at Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as he hid in the boat, even though it was claimed later he was unarmed. <\/p>\n
Boston manhunt defended <\/p>\n
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, defended the lockdown in Boston and surrounding areas in a press conference, according to the Boston Globe. \"I think we did what we should have done and were supposed to do with the always-imperfect information that you have at the time,\" he said. At the same event State Police Col. Timothy Alben denied allegations that there had been a breakdown in data sharing between federal and state agencies during the crisis. However the fact that photos and videos provided by the public were crucial in the takedown of the Tsarnaev brothers -- one of Paul's points -- was readily acknowledged. <\/p>\n
Texas resident Mark Whittington writes about state issues for the Yahoo! Contributor Network. <\/p>\n
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