The Corpus Callosum

At last, they are being honest with us: you have no rights.  Attorney General said so.  He admitted it.  So, at least he's honest.  See his picture to the right?  Doesn't he look like an honest gentleman?  He is.  

In a recent interview with reporters, Mukasey  stated that it is "necessary to put in place regulations that will allow the FBI to transform itself as it is transforming itself into an intelligence gathering organization."  

Now, the AP is reporting some details of that transformation.  

Race profiling eyed for terror probes
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
2 July 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups...

...The new policy, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press, would let agents open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious.

Among the factors that could make someone subject of an investigation is travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity, access to weapons or military training, along with the person's race or ethnicity...

The Administration now admits that it plans to use data mining.

When asked about the policy change in the interview, Mukasey gave the usual, perfectly honest response:

Q: Can you talk to us a little bit about what changes might be coming down?

MUKASEY: No.

The information available is sketchy.  What we do know, is that if you have access to weapons, you can be investigated.  Fill out an ATF 4437 (background check for weapons purchases)?  You're on the list (maybe: the records are supposed to be destroyed, in most cases).  Travel to a region with terrorist activity?  That would include the Philippines, I suppose, or Spain, perhaps, or Tuaisceart Éireann.  Race or Ethnicity?  That would include pretty much everyone.  Remember the two most notorious terrorists in the USA?  Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski.

Sure, cops don't want to waste time and resources investigating worthless leads.  The only reason they have infiltrated the Quakers, League of Women Voters, and the ACLU, is for practice.  

And who knows, the Billionaires for Bush might really be a bunch of terrorists.

 And it turns out that Michael Mukasey's father, Albert, immigrated from Belarus (White Russia) in 1921.  Who knows, Michael Albertovich Mukasey could be a Communist, or maybe a poputchik.  Just like Barack Hussein Obama might be a Muslim.  

Now, to be clear, I do not actually suspect Mukasey of being anything other than a patriot.  While his family was from the USSR, they were Jewish, and a lot of Jewish persons departed the area for very good reasons.  Plus, there is no USSR any more, and persons from that area are no longer automatically suspected of anything.

Incidentally, Wesley Clark's family had similar roots.

This merely illustrates how easy it is for suspicion to grow, with no good reason.  The anecdotes about police surveillance of peace groups shows that we cannot count on the authorities to act responsibly.  Loosening their leash would be foolish.