How many terrorists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
From The Guardian in England:
I'm wondering who they are. Let's see.... Could one be Ron, my neighbor? He writes acerbic letters to the editor of our local paper and is often accused in letters from other writers as being -- heaven forbid! -- "liberal" or "left-wing".
Could another be Tom, my co-editor on Vox Verax? Let's see, he spent a lot of time overseas protecting our country as a Foreign Service officer. Perhaps he's also a -- gasp! -- double agent for al Qaeda!
Or maybe one could be Jackie, who's a political science professor at Minnesota State University. She's conversant with Zulu and Siswati, and teaches African politics. Plus, she's notoriously -- here's that word again -- liberal. And she's blind, just like the cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in nearby Rochester, Minnesota, for his involvement in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.
Oh, I know who one must be: Michelle, the middle-aged mother who was tailed and briefly interrogated by the Secret Service when President Bush came to town in August of 2004. You see, her grandfather has been a peace activist and government critic since the 1950s, and her family has been marked ever since. (I'm not kidding.)
Or another could be Tim, the high school teacher and former National Guardsman who is running for Congress in the 1st Congressional District of Minnesota. At the event where the President was slated to speak in Mankato on that hot August day of 2004, Tim had the audacity to stand up for two teenagers who were being denied entrance to the event even though they had tickets. Their "crime"? They were pre-marked as not being supporters of Mr. Bush.
The Secret Service told Tim he could not enter as well, but they finally decided it could create some nasty publicity if they were to prevent a National Guardsman who had just returned from a tour of duty in Europe from seeing his commander-in-chief. (See the Nick Coleman article below.)
At any rate, I suspect any number of us could be on the NCTC surveillance list. While none of us are al Qaeda -- or even close to it -- we have the audacity to be patriotic in a way our current government doesn't always understand. You decide: Should this mark us for surveillance?
From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Civil liberties organisations expressed outrage yesterday after it was reported that the database of terrorist suspects kept by the US authorities now holds 325,000 names, a fourfold increase in two and a half years.200,000 suspected terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. Hmm... That's about 7 in every 10,000 people living in the US.... We have about 50,000 people living in the general area of my little town of Mankato, Minnesota. That means that perhaps 35 of us are on that list.
The list, maintained by the National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC), includes different spellings of the same person's names as well as aliases, but the Washington Post quoted NCTC officials as saying that at least 200,000 individuals are on it. They said that "only a very, very small fraction" of that number were US citizens, but that insistence did little to defuse the reaction.
I'm wondering who they are. Let's see.... Could one be Ron, my neighbor? He writes acerbic letters to the editor of our local paper and is often accused in letters from other writers as being -- heaven forbid! -- "liberal" or "left-wing".
Could another be Tom, my co-editor on Vox Verax? Let's see, he spent a lot of time overseas protecting our country as a Foreign Service officer. Perhaps he's also a -- gasp! -- double agent for al Qaeda!
Or maybe one could be Jackie, who's a political science professor at Minnesota State University. She's conversant with Zulu and Siswati, and teaches African politics. Plus, she's notoriously -- here's that word again -- liberal. And she's blind, just like the cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in nearby Rochester, Minnesota, for his involvement in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.
Oh, I know who one must be: Michelle, the middle-aged mother who was tailed and briefly interrogated by the Secret Service when President Bush came to town in August of 2004. You see, her grandfather has been a peace activist and government critic since the 1950s, and her family has been marked ever since. (I'm not kidding.)
Or another could be Tim, the high school teacher and former National Guardsman who is running for Congress in the 1st Congressional District of Minnesota. At the event where the President was slated to speak in Mankato on that hot August day of 2004, Tim had the audacity to stand up for two teenagers who were being denied entrance to the event even though they had tickets. Their "crime"? They were pre-marked as not being supporters of Mr. Bush.
The Secret Service told Tim he could not enter as well, but they finally decided it could create some nasty publicity if they were to prevent a National Guardsman who had just returned from a tour of duty in Europe from seeing his commander-in-chief. (See the Nick Coleman article below.)
At any rate, I suspect any number of us could be on the NCTC surveillance list. While none of us are al Qaeda -- or even close to it -- we have the audacity to be patriotic in a way our current government doesn't always understand. You decide: Should this mark us for surveillance?
From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Hearing Bush took some doingLEIGH POMEROY
by Nick Coleman
The president was visiting Mankato and Tim Walz wanted to see him. A teacher who has 23 years of service in the National Guard and who recently returned home from overseas, Walz wanted to hear his commander-in-chief.
He did.
But only after being threatened with arrest and subjected to a political interrogation. Welcome home, good and faithful soldier. You may see the president.
But keep your mouth shut....
The Bush visit was a huge event in Mankato, which had not hosted a president since Harry Truman. Walz got a ticket without trouble, but others were refused because they didn't seem rah-rah enough, including two teens rejected because they were baby Democrats.
One of the kids had his mom get tickets for the boys, in their names. The mom asked Walz to chaperone the boys. But the kids would not get to see the president.
Only supporters got into the quarry where Bush spoke to a sanitized crowd of 7,000. Not one person carried a sign in protest. But one -- one -- listened without applauding. It was Walz, and his thoughts were his own, unless someone was scanning his brain....
After riding a Bush bus to the quarry, Walz and the kids got off to go through the metal detectors and have their IDs checked. Bush officials took the kids aside and thoroughly inspected them. When one was discovered to have a Kerry sticker on his wallet, they were ordered back onto the bus.
Walz objected, and he was asked to leave, too. "You're not welcome," a Bush guy said. "Get back on the bus."
Walz said he had a right to see the president.
So you support the president? a Bush guy asked. I didn't say that, said Walz. Then you're an opponent? I didn't say that, either, said Walz, thinking it was nobody's business.
"If you don't get on that bus," the guy said, "you'll be detained by the Secret Service for interfering with a presidential event."
"I don't want to get arrested," Walz said. "My wife will get mad because I'm supposed to pick up our daughter and make dinner. Do you really want to arrest someone who just got back from overseas, because he wants to see the president?"
The Bush guys backed down. They said they'd do him a favor if he behaved himself. He ignored the insult. They said the Secret Service was watching him. They let him in....
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