It's time to make a choice, conservatives. Are you conservatives
or are you fascists?

"After more than a year of complaints by some US anti-war
activists that they were being unfairly targeted by airport
security, Washington has admitted the existence of a list,
possibly hundreds or even thousands of names long, of people it
deems worthy of special scrutiny at airports.

The list had been kept secret until its disclosure last week by
the new US agency in charge of aviation safety, the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA). And it is entirely
separate from the relatively well-publicised "no-fly" list,
which covers about 1,000 people believed to have criminal or
terrorist ties that could endanger the safety of their fellow
passengers.

The strong suspicion of such groups as the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU), which is suing the government to try to
learn more, is that the second list has been used to target
political activists who challenge the government in entirely
legal ways. The TSA acknowledged the existence of the list in
response to a Freedom of Information Act request concerning two
anti-war activists from San Francisco who were stopped and
briefly detained at the airport last autumn and told they were
on an FBI no-fly list.

The activists, Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams, work for a small
pacifist magazine called War Times and say they have never been
arrested, let alone have criminal records. Others who have filed
complaints with the ACLU include a left-wing constitutional
lawyer who has been strip-searched repeatedly when travelling
through US airports, and a 71-year-old nun from Milwaukee who
was prevented from flying to Washington to join an
anti-government protest.

It is impossible to know for sure who might be on the list, or
why. The ACLU says a list kept by security personnel at Oakland
airport ran to 88 pages. More than 300 people have been subject
to special questioning at San Francisco airport, and another 24
at Oakland, according to police records. In no case does it
appear that a wanted criminal was apprehended.

The ACLU's senior lawyer on the case, Jayashri Srikantiah, said
she is troubled by several answers that the TSA gave to her
questions. The agency, she said, had no way of making sure that
people did not end up on the list simply because of things they
had said or organisations they belonged to. Once people were on
the list, there was no procedure for trying to get off it. The
TSA did not even think it was important to keep track of people
singled out in error for a security grilling. According to
documents the agency released, it saw "no pressing need to do
so".

It is not just left-wingers who feel unfairly targeted.
Right-wing civil libertarians have spoken out against the secret
list, and at least one conservative organisation, the Eagle
Forum, says its members have been interrogated by security
staff.

The complaints by the ACLU form part of a pattern of protest
since the 11 September attacks, with the Bush administration
repeatedly under fire for detaining people on the flimsiest of
grounds in the name of the "war on terror". Many Muslims have
had a hard time, especially if they have a surname such as
Hussein."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=4300
73



--
Another [C-SPAN] caller made the point more angrily
'For every American who gets killed, they should take
20 Iraquians (his term) and hang them from lamp posts.'
This, he explained, is how the Klingons from Star Trek
would handle it.
-- William Greider

The General's Store
Gen. JC Christian, Patriot mechandise
Now featuring Armed Fetus Ware
http://www.cafeshops.com/patriotboy

Then again maybe Dubya is DONE -- maybe he's looted what he wants and
he's ready to go home to privately consolidate his rewards. I always had
the sneaking suspicion that his dad really didn't want to be president
again, although I had much more respect for him than I do his son.
-a