Bicycles, Maps, And Helmets

From Democracy Under Surveillance by Michael Scherer

As I noted yesterday, a document obtained by the Colorado ACLU shows that the Denver Police had requested a widespread effort to gather intelligence on such normal activity as people with "bicycles," "maps," and "helmets," since all three devices could be used by violent protesters. (Recently, a Denver activist who had gathered bricks to do masonry work on her home was interviewed by police on suspicion of gathering projectiles for protests.) The end of the same memo also included this alarming notation: First responders who "discovered the above mentioned" were asked to contact Denver Police and the CIAC, a joint fusion center for information sharing between local authorities and the Department of Homeland Security.

Read more here.

As If We Don't Have Enough To Worry About

The Department of Homeland Security states the obvious.

From Agency says 7,000 sites at 'high risk' of terrorist attack:

More than 7,000 facilities, from chemical plants to colleges, have been designated "high-risk" sites for potential terrorist attacks, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Next week, the department will send letters to the facilities notifying them that they that they present the highest potential consequences in the event of a successful terrorist attack, said Robert Stephan, the agency's assistant secretary for infrastructure protection.

The facilities include chemical plants, hospitals, colleges and universities, oil and natural gas production and storage sites, and food and agricultural processing and distribution centers, Stephan said.

To tell you the truth, I’m more afraid that I’ll be shot by some hunter with an AK-47 than I am of some terrorist attack. The odds probably favor the good ol’ boy with the RUSSIAN designed weapon rather than the middle eastern terrorist. If you're going to hunt with an assault rifle, can't you at least buy American?

Bush's ICE

I wish the government would make up its mind. I thought that there was a war on drugs. I thought drugs were evil. When people use or even possess drugs for recreational purposes it’s against the law. What is it when the government forces people to take drugs? Talk about a double standard!

From Some Detainees Are Drugged For Deportation by Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest:

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

Read the rest here.