Apparently, virtual strip searches and “love pats” at airports aren’t oppressive enough for the federal government. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood this week discussed government mandating cell phone scramblers in automobiles. “I think the technology is there and I think you’re going to see the technology become adaptable in automobiles to disable these cell phones. We need to do a lot more if we’re going to save lives.” Indeed, it’s never enough for big government advocates.

LaHood, who is a Republican (snort), is missing a few side effects of this Big Brother idea. Blogger Ed Morrissey lists them:

The scrambler would also affect the passengers in a car that want to use their cell phones, which doesn’t do anything to improve public safety.

The presence of multitudinous scramblers in autos driving in a city will likely render cell phones used by pedestrians useless as well, or at least unreliable.

Adding more required equipment to cars will make them more expensive, and increase the value of used cars without the scramblers.

People who want to make calls from their cars or allow their passengers to do so will likely hold onto current vehicles longer.

Anything installed in a car can be disabled by the owner, especially electronics. Will car owners have to submit to random searches, or annual verification of scrambler functionality? Will the federal government make that yet another unfunded mandate on the states?

People also get distracted by eating, reading printed material, and applying make-up. Shall we ban drive-through restaurants, newspapers, and cosmetics, too?

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) admitted in a report this week that they can’t draw a statistical relationship between deaths in vehicles and cell phone use. But no matter, “safety” is the reason for all sorts of intrusion. Morrissey concludes, “Finally, we come to the most basic point, which is that traffic law enforcement is not a federal jurisdiction. It’s a state and local jurisdiction.”

There’s also such a thing as personal responsibility. Bureaucrats hate that one, though – it ruins all their fun.