Big Brother's keeper

Tiger Woods named his Yacht "Privacy." It's obvious why he was seeking it, but we assume incorrectly that we have any right to privacy in these days of The Patriot Act and the mass marketing of fear.

Monitoring our phone calls, reading our e-mails -- that's old hat. Forcing us to produce birth certificates and citizenship papers for any cop who decides your car is weaving even if you're ancestors have lived in Arizona for 15,000 years -- coming soon to a Confederate State near you.

But wait, there's more.

Law Enforcement agencies are now adding vans equipped with side scan x-ray units that can inspect the contents of your car as well as the contents of your jockey shorts if you're walking down the sidewalk. Probable cause, my ass -- and yours.

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go according to Time Magazine. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- the one Fox insists is so Liberaliberaliberal tells us we don't have a right to privacy if our cars are parked in our driveways. Search warrant? Don't make me laugh; they don't have to show you no stinking search warrant, at least not in the nine Western states under its jurisdiction, not to install the device or to use it to see who you visit or even how fast you drive . We have no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking our movements even if we pay cash at the gas station and at toll booths and don't use a cell phone. We're fools if we do.

Sound like a Libertarian, don't I? I'm not and I'm not because I am not blaming this on a straw man government, I'm blaming it on you. I'm blaming it on us. We voted for the people who are doing this, we supported the Patriot act, we wallow in the fear mongering the retailing of idiot rage that "justified" it. We fall for their distractions, their distortions and we bark and growl like Pavlov's dogs. When they push our buttons, we push their buttons on the voting machines.

Sure, the Ninth Circuit is Liberaliberaliberal, when they insist you can't use your religious beliefs to stop people from marrying, but they're not are they? They're not when they argue that your home is their castle as is your car, your mailbox and your telephone, and by pretending we're Conservative we vote for the people who appoint them to take our freedom and make us thank them for their trouble.

The man in the monkey mask

I call it a conservative thing. Some may differ, but certainly one has to see Arizona as a red state and Arizona has become the first to follow in the path of countries like the UK by putting up speed cameras everywhere, under the pretense of making the roads safer. Of course as we've seen since the end of the misguided 55 mph national speed limit, speed enforcement in most cases does nothing to reduce the highway death rate and often may make it worse. It's demonstrable that over 80% of drivers exceed posted speed limits and according to the National Motorist's association, the few people who rigidly stick to the limit or drive slower than the prevailing speed, are involved in the majority of accidents - up to six times more than average. The mantra amongst traffic engineers was that the safest speed was that which 85 percent of drivers would maintain and until politics got involved, that's the way it was done. Today, that 85% will drive at 10 to 15 over in a 70 mph zone and generally will keep up that speed if the limit drops to 65. The few pokes who want to do 70 either cause knots of traffic or are forced to sit in the right lane while 18 wheelers honk at them and entering traffic has to take evasive action. Meanwhile as speeds continue to rise, accident rates continue to fall, particularly on the interstates which account for only a small fraction of fatalities.

Arizona however, is using that old "speed is a factor in all accidents" fallacy and the typical scare tactics about dangerous highways to cover up the privatization of law enforcement. It's about money and police departments, like most everyone else, are strapped for revenue. The Arizona machines have issued half a million tickets in the last year and the state has made a $23 million dollar profit.

Arizona is also a libertarian state and some have gone from amusing pranks to sabotage and perhaps even to murder to defeat what they call a "speed tax." Silly String and post-it notes have been found covering camera lenses. One fellow from Phoenix has accumulated 37 tickets but refuses to pay since he cannot be identified as the driver -- he wears a monkey mask while he drives. An Arizona Department of Public Safety spokes man tells us that he "has repeatedly endangered public safety and that the agency is taking his case very seriously." and yet, despite constant surveillance and stake-outs trying to get a picture of him putting the mask on, they haven't been able to find a reason to pull him over - and of course, grave danger to the public safety that he is, he hasn't had any accidents, which may lend evidence to my assertion.

Most Arizonians are either protesting or ignoring these robo-tickets and there may be a link between the shooting death of a speed-enforcement van operator and public outrage over the surveillance program. Citizens groups intend to put up some ballot initiatives next year to ban these things. I hope they succeed.

L'etat, C'est Georges

The illegal information feeding frenzy has been going on since Commander Guy started chumming the waters almost 7 years ago. I'm still being called deranged for mentioning it. Let me mention one more thing.

It's too easy for us to tell ourselves we have nothing to hide, it's all for our own good, it's all to fight terrorists and that strip searching your grandmother at an airport is a small price to pay for eliminating the far smaller chance that Osama will blow up the Dairy Queen in Keokuk Iowa. If you don't mind being under constant surveillance and constant supervision and constant suspicion every time you pass a toll gate or take some cash from an ATM or buy a plane ticket, or enter a web site, don't bother reading any further. Nothing I can say about the United States of America and what it's supposed to stand for will mean anything to you.

If you used to be proud of this country, if you used to think we stood for something more than security and unrestrained government power, you might be interested in some Pentagon documents that indicate our military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans' Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies. The American Civil Liberties Union, yes the same group that the swashbuckling right uses to stop the discussion the way the inquisition did with the Devil, has gone through some thousand Defense Department documents to reach the conclusion that

"Newly unredacted documents released today reveal that the Department of Defense is using the FBI to circumvent legal limits on its own NSL (national security letter) power."

Considering the amount of passion the US once felt about having a government that could simply examine anything or anyone without showing cause or reference to any law, it's had not to conclude that the Republicans have put us right back where we were before we threw another George out of the country. And why this pressing need to put our two hundred year old constitution on hold? A massive invasion of foreign troops? Civil war and widespread insurrection? A shipload of tea thrown into the harbor? Sorry, it's "evildoers" sitting in a cave in Pakistan and sending us an occasional VHS tape while Bush's other family in Riyadh finances terrorism. It's Iraqis defending their country against foreign invaders. It's about fostering fear and cowardice in the name of unitary government and one party rule.

Unfortunately the ACLU has been made into a mass produced straw man that can be trotted out for any hate session the Junta needs in order to refute the irrefutable, or to make defending our constitution and our rights seem subversive. I'm sure some of you didn't read past the name. None the less, had they not filed suit against the government, the government would have been unopposed by anyone with the ability to do more than bitch and blog. In fact other than for the ACLU and the NRA, the bill of rights might long since have been relegated to the Bush enemies list.

I once laughed at Spiro Agnew and his Liberal argument that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" but only because the defense of liberty has become the excuse for undermining it while any reluctance to submit is being called extremism.

Sleep well tonight
It'll be all right
Trust us, we're the government.

Radar love

"I don't know whether Arizonans want to be policed by cameras, It smacks of Big Brother to me."

said Senate Transportation Chairman Ron Gould of the plan to install photo radar in that state. It smacks of revenue enhancement to me. Most Americans aren't familiar with the apparatus that takes pictures of passing cars' license plates if they're exceeding the speed limit. They're common and a nuisance in England, but that's a country of narrow winding roads with blind corners every hundred yards or so. Arizona is a different story.

In my small town in Florida, some cameras have been installed at intersections to prevent the frequent (or so they say) running of red lights. Rear end collisions have risen and the popular suspicion is that the private company that manages the system has shortened the yellow light time because they get a cut of the fines. There is much credible evidence from studies not sponsored by those with a vested interest in enforcement, that speed limits aren't directly related to accident rates; it's more important that traffic move at a uniform speed. Strict enforcement tends to produce a greater disparity between the 15% or 20% who obey ( and have a higher percentage of accidents) and the vast majority that do not and thus it creates a more dangerous road. The prevalence of radar detectors ensures that that majority will continue to seek their own speed but will have to speed up and slow down constantly.

The assurance that we will be electronically monitored for our own safety is more transparent than most windshields - it's all about making up for revenue shortfalls. It's about extracting more money from the people without having to call it a tax.

The Arizona project was tested in Scottsdale and An Arizona State University professor who studied the results says that it reduced speeding and accident rates. No thought was given to the drivers who simply took an alternate route to avoid it and needless to say, I don't trust his figures. Even if it were true, the thought of being monitored in my actions by a soulless machine is enough to bring out the libertarian in me and I'm sure Arizonans will feel the same way. The real question is do we have any choice but to submit to the rules of those who make a living regulating us?

God, I love freedom

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."

Nowhere in the 6th amendment or anywhere else in our constitution does the disclaimer "*but not if the decider decides otherwise" appear. Nowhere in the text do I see the suggestion that the law can be bypassed by substituting the word "detainee" for accused or that any of the rights therein described as natural or inalienable are only things to be granted or denied by a sovereign Commander Guy. None the less that's what the Decider decides in this nation of Republistan Under God.

Lawyers defending Omar Ahmed Khadr have been told he can't have the right to know who is accusing him of war crimes. Khadr, being held at Guantánamo, may be the first of the "detainees" to come to trial, perhaps as soon as May, 2009. Speedy and public may be rather difficult properties to ascribe to this case which has dragged on for years and will be held mostly in secret, but at least he will have some kind of representation, hobbled as it must be by the peremptory decisions of the Decider.

The scary part is not that the the Constitution is only window dressing for George Bush's house of horrors, but that such things have become so routine they hardly grab the public's attention.
Of course we're talking about a military tribunal, the venue of convenience for our defenders of freedom. The concept of the natural rights of Man and uniforms don't blend together well which is why it's good for a Decider to have a war.

“Providing the witnesses’ true identities will add nothing to their testimony,” the prosecutors wrote in a legal filing revealed in the New York Times today. Nothing other than credibility or validity, that is. It's hard to imagine any kind of serious cross examination, but then America's love affair with fascism isn't something I understand either.

Gonzo in the sky with diamonds

Look! Up in the sky - it's a bird - it's a plane - it's Alberto Gonzales! That's right, it's not enough to tap your phones and faxes and to read your e-mail and make lists of what you take out of the library or record video of you as you walk down the street; the Bush Administration wants to use super sophisticated, classified spy satellite technology to monitor what you're doing on your own property in your own home. Warrant? Probable cause? Don't make me laugh.

And meanwhile, back at the Surge. . . you know the surge Big Brother's media says is working so well because there was a momentary slowdown in suicide bombings? As many as 250 were killed today when 5 trucks blew up in a Kurdish area of Northern Iraq. Out of one side of his mouth, Major General Mixon tells us it's a typical al Qaeda trick to get us to turn against the war (has he noticed that we already have?) and out of the other side he calls it ethnic cleansing against the Kurds. Which is it? Do the Qaeda boys really give a damn about kurds as much as the Shiah or Sunni militias? Do insurgents and non-insurgents having nothing to do with Osama want us the hell out of the middle east? Does the continued slaughter of innocents mean we're winning or losing? Not hard questions to answer, General and none of the answers seem to lead to any of your twisted conclusions.

And now the death toll is at least 500

And CNN is still telling us it's ethnic cleansing but still has the fingerprints of al Qaeda. What it is is a continuing civil war with the fingerprints of George W. Bush. How's your surge progressing today George?

But wait, there's more.

And Bush wants it. He still doesn't think he has enough power to do what he will about looking and listening and snooping and spying on anyone, anywhere, anytime. He wants more. He wants those who broke the law before he emasculated the Constitution protected from prosecution and of course as of July 23rd he's made new laws all by himself allowing him to seize the assets of anyone getting in the way - not that he will let anyone see the details. On May 9th he gave himself dictatorial powers and he wants more.

And the witch hunt begins. Since nothing he did in violation of the 4th amendment can now be considered illegal, it seems the administration now feels able to punish whoever exposed his massive and still mostly secret intelligence gathering, spying and data mining directed against US citizens without court approval. According to the August 13th edition of Newsweek, a secret warrant has been used to seize the computers and files of Thomas M. Tamm, who previously worked in the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)—the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets.

Stalin would applaud and now Bush has nearly Stalinesque powers to punish someone who tried to expose the criminal administration in its criminal activities. Such things are not unprecedented, but they are unprecedented in America - and Bush wants more. The man who said he didn't trust government but trusted the people now wants more secrecy, more power and more ability to punish those untrustworthy advocates of a government constrained by law and responsible to the elected representatives of the American people and to an independent judiciary.

It's hard to believe that a lame-duck president would press for such power and such protection from any checks and balances the law provides if he did not intent to stay in power beyond the November 2008 elections. I'm no longer embarrassed to say that I think he doesn't intend to leave and that I think his ambitions are dictatorial. I would however, be embarrassed to say that I'm a citizen of a country that allowed this to happen; a country that snickered about Liberals, obsessed about celebrities, numbed their brains with pop culture, sucked up lies and propaganda like Flavor-Aid in the hot Guyana jungle and allowed it to happen.

What did you expect?

Look out kid
They keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don’t wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals

Judge John D. Bates helped Kenn Starr go after Bill Clinton. Judge John D. Bates allowed Dick Cheney to keep his secrets about the Energy Task Force and is now a close associate of Chief Justice Roberts. What did you expect?

Wasn't he just the man to dismiss Valerie Plame's suit against the White House gang over their use of executive powers in a private vendetta against her husband?

They keep it all hid. They have all the bases covered. Look out kid.

Can't sue City Hall

So you can't sue the Government for illegally spying on citizens because you can't prove you were one of those who was spied on unless we arrest you for something and make you disappear into some interrogation cell in Nowherestan in which case you can't sue us anyway - hell you can't even have a lawyer or be read the charges against you. At least the 4th of July is a national holiday and we didn't have to hear this from the "Activist" Liberal courts while we were out in the streets wearing funny hats and bragging about our unique freedom. It would have been so embarrassing.

America - we're number one!

I raise my finger beside the golden door

Checkpoint Charlie exists no more, although there is a museum in Berlin dedicated to the memory of that intimidating doorway into and out of Cold War East Berlin. I remember it quite well without having seen the museum. I remember sitting on a wooden bench in a stark little room in a building that somehow reminded me of a country train station from the 1940's. I had dropped my passport into a slot in the wall as per instructions and was trying to control my nervousness by counting out all my pocket money as required. The fellow sitting next to me had his pack of cigarettes delaminated and carefully examined for whatever might be hiding between the layers of packaging - microfilm perhaps. My James Bond inspired bravado had been replaced with a strong desire to find a bathroom. There was none. Back in those days I was proud to be from a country that welcomed visitors as welcomed its own - not like those terrible Commies.

I last traveled to China about a dozen years ago and had been led to expect a similar experience from Chinese customs from people who had been there. "Don't take a good camera - they confiscate video cameras, you know, and they go through everything." I was waved through without inspection.

Coming into the US these days is more of a police state experience than many tourists are willing to submit to. If you're a millionaire from England coming to the art auctions at Sotheby's or a surgeon from Germany or Australia or Japan come to demonstrate a new surgical procedure at Johns Hopkins, you're still seen as a potential terrorist and must be fingerprinted like a criminal. Retinal and biometric facial scans are planned as soon as the equipment is available.

Citizens returning home with adopted babies from Asia are subjected to rudely screamed orders, long waits and humiliation while trying to deal with screaming, hungry ( no formula allowed, you terrorist bastard!) and frightened infants who are of course foreigners and potential terrorists. Often you're photographed before you can leave. Body searches are becoming much more common and no one has any confidence that if some half wit TSA employee finds something that puzzles her, you'll wind up in some secret cell in some secret hell in the CIA Gulag.

I have met people who have given up second homes in the US they have owned for decades simply because of the "Up against the wall you foreign devils" attitude. It's our loss. Of course none of these procedures would have stopped Mohammed Atta and his cronies and they don't do anything for National Security - they're just the typical behavior of paranoid police states like the US and Burma and another indicator of our slide into third world status.

Don't ask me if I'm proud to be an American any more - I might just start crying.

Burn baby, burn

The references to the Reichstag fire began while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoking and it was just the worst thing in the world to doubt George Bush's integrity or the "fact" that it was all about Iraq and not about Saudi Arabia's support for international terrorism Against American interests based in Afghanistan and in the United States itself. I have been making sarcastic comments about Bush's ambition ever since and about the chance that he would take matters into his own hands and precipitate some calamity which would justify the suspension of elections and the granting of special emergency powers.


George was able to get himself re-elected with only a few suspicions regarding election tampering and didn't need anything as dramatic as Adolph Hitler's contrived terrorist attack to arrogate unprecedented power, but that was then. If the constitution he reviles is to be obeyed, he may not run again and yet, he sees himself as a messiah and the constitution as an impediment. Will he be content to go quietly and await the judgment of history? My suggestion of another national calamity may remain a thing of cynical speculation, but what do we make of the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive?


Signed two weeks ago with little public fanfare and apparently without Congressional oversight, this document deals with scenarios wherein the President's power becomes dictatorial, unassailable and perhaps permanent. Yes, I am aware of using hyperbole when talking about his megalomaniacal and uncompromising desire to be the world's "commander guy" But the history of his administration is beginning to make the most cynical of us seem prophetic. The mechanism seems to be in place for the transmogrification of the wimpy little ex-cheerleader, ne'er do well of the Bush litter into King George, der Führer George, president for life George, Big Brother George. All that stands between these horrors and reality is the willingness of the man himself to light a fuse. All that stands between the liberty we have enjoyed for over 200 years and an unaccountable dictatorship is the conscience of George W. Bush.

Can we afford to wait for 2008?

Irrelevant

The Holy office in Washington can't tolerate criticism, but because nearly every negative criticism one might make has a good chance of being valid and because to all appearances, the ineptitude, corruption and blind pursuit of a fable deliberately created to promote tyranny, involves more ineptitude, blindness and corruption than we can imagine, they have no choice but to rely on good old argumentum ad hominem.

It's hard to bring the standard charges of unpatriotic thought against former president Jimmy Carter. The customary swift boat might just be so excessive that the attempt would backfire. His moral credentials are pretty good and his dedication to improving America and promoting honesty and justice in the world aren't easily dismissed, so the only practical fall-back position open to the White House Wizards of sleaze is to lump him and his angry denunciations into the same category they put us all in. It's the category of Irrelevance. It's a club called "we don't care what you think."

If Carter calls the Bush administration the worst in history, it's close enough to the truth for all purposes. An administration that is willing to denounce the opinion of about three quarters of the electorate as irrelevant if not treasonous, makes Carters case for him. In fact all that keeps George W. Bush from irrelevance is the fact that he is armed and we are not. He holds the gun to the heads of our troops - criticize and they will die. He has the power to make us disappear into the gulag, to hire his own army, to spy, to torture, to set aside the law. He alone is the State and we, along with our principles, laws and aspirations are irrelevant.

Jimmy Carter is right and most of us know it. The only relevant questions are about how long we will permit this to continue. Will we have to wait until 2008 and hope that we will be allowed to vote him out of office or will we be able to say sic semper tyrannus sooner by impeaching him now?

The enemy in Washington

No, he hasn't died for your sins and he's not going to, but he will lose his freedom, his job, his reputation and probably his career because of our sins and his choice to put conscience above loyalty to George W. Bush; his choice to honor his oath to uphold and protect the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and in the White House.

Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz, a lawyer for the US Navy, will spend 6 months in prison for having mailed a list of names of 550 men held in secret without the right to council and without the right to know the charges against them to a civil rights lawyer in New York. He claims it was a stupid mistake and it was. He should have been more careful.

"My oath as a commissioned officer is to the Constitution of the United States," Diaz said. "I'm not a criminal."

Not in any moral way and since doing what George W. Bush is doing is not only immoral but illegal and Unconstitutional, I will not call him one. Instead I will call him a patriot and a courageous one at that.

"I made a stupid decision, I know, but I felt it was the right decision, the moral decision, the decision that was required by international law," Said Diaz to The Dallas Morning News. "No matter how the conflict was identified, we were to treat them in accordance with Geneva, and it just wasn't being done. I think a good case could be made for allegations of war crimes, policies that were war crimes," he said. "There was a way to do this properly, and we're not doing it properly."

Diaz disputes the administrations obvious lie that we do not torture and he disputes the statement that the prisoners are "the worst of the worst." It has been said that up to 80% have already been cleared of any charge even after years of torture and yet they remain, illegally denied due process and denied access to council despite the Constitution and despite a Supreme Court decision affirming their right to challenge their imprisonment. Because George W. Bush and his ironically named Department of Justice are refusing to say who is in those cages, no lawyer can represent them or defend them.

No, Diaz will not die for your sins or because of them, but you and I are guilty and will remain so until we terminate the evil that has taken our ideals and our long struggle for justice and trampled them, mocked them and defiled them. Are we men? Are we citizens of a democratic republic? Well then, what are we doing when we tolerate this alien invader and his henchmen dragging us inexorably toward being just another evil dictatorship?

The Liberal Media

Four years ago, in a galaxy far, far too close for comfort. . .

"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week"

• Bill O'Reilly 1/29/03

What about your tongue on toast - medium rare?

"There is a certain amount of pop-psychology in America that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni. . . There's almost no evidence for that at all."

• Bill Kristol 4/1/03

At least none that you can see with your head up Bush's ass, Billy.

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the Chemical weapons this guy was amassing. . . the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."

• Dick Morris 4/9/03

Yeah, let me know when I can start, Dick.

"The war was the hard part. . . and it gets easier, I mean, setting up a Democracy is hard, but not as hard as winning a war."

• Fred Barnes 4/10/03

Yep, any day now, Fred.

"The three week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptic's complaints."

• Tony Snow 4/13/03

Credibility always was your strong suit.

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are the upper West Side Liberals and a few people here in Washington"

• Charles Krauthammer 4/19/03

Is that straight jacket too tight, Chuckie?

"Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger. . . the women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. . we're not like the Brits"

• Chris Matthews 5/1/03

no, it's more like we're from the Planet of the Apes.

"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back"

• Howard Fineman 5/7/03

Just which country are we talking about here Howie?.

"American forces are being love-bombed by Baghdadis on a daily basis. . .Everywhere they go, Americans are being cheered and thanked profusely"

• Mona Charen 5/9/03

Say, is that a bomb in that guy's pocket or is he just happy to see me?

"There is a lot of work left to do but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far. . . The final word on this is hooray"

• Morton Kondrake 4/12/03

How would you like those words served Morty? Deep-fried or maybe just shoved up your ass?

"It's amazing that more than two weeks into the liberation of Iraq. . . the Anti-War crowd is still spinning a doomsday scenario."

• Brendan Miniter 4/8/03

Still spinning And isn't that amazing, as the guy at Ronco used to say? Good thing we've got people like you to tell it like it is.

Do I really have to add anything to this? How long did it take for us to forget that Bush insisted that going to war without a concrete timetable for exit was unforgivable and how soon did he and we start blaming "Liberals" for the same sentiment? Fool me twice and shame on me - fool me forever and I'm a conservative.

Signs and portents

In the first judicial assessment of the Bush administration’s surveillance program Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of United States District Court in Detroit ruled against the Bush administration, citing the Fourth Amendment and a 1978 law requiring warrants for wiretapping in the United States.

“It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly when his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights.”

Judge Taylor emphasized that the three branches of government are designed to provide checks and balances against each other. It's a sign.

Of course the administrations response is predictable: Gonzales says the program is lawful because he believes it's lawful and Tony Snow says it's lawful because it's intentions are good. The decision will probably be overturned and the judge's patriotism attacked by Bush's Men in Black, but it's a sign.

James R. Clapper, the Pentagon’s new intelligence chief, says he wants to get rid of the ominously titled "Talon" program; an "antiterrorism" data base program that has expanded to include reports about antiwar groups, churches and student activists. Data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the list of suspicious activities included a church service for peace and named a March 2005 anti-war rally in Akron, Ohio, a “potential terrorist activity.”

Whether or not Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates will approve scrapping Rumsfeld's Hooverish program is uncertain but in either event, it's a sign.