Homeland Security Coming to a Screen Near You?

The Department of Homeland Security is now pursuing people who download illegal movies. Why? Because they consider illegal downloads part of the war on terror. Yes, they are being serious. Civil-liberties-be-damned and mission-creep serious. More HERE.

“The reason the Department of Homeland Security is protecting Shrek is because we are all about protecting the homeland. We’re all about protecting American interests,” says John Morton, assistant secretary of DHS...“If you don’t think undermining Hollywood’s ability to produce a “Shrek,” undermining the creativity that goes into creating a “Shrek,” undermines the United States,” Morton says, “you are sadly mistaken.”

Who the heck pays these people? Oh, wait, we do. Sigh.

Religious Profiling

A t-shirt with Arabic script? 10 dollars. TSA costing taxpayers 240,000 dollars because of its ignorance? Well, 240,000 dollars. Government ineptitude in action? Timeless.

I wish the article mentioned the name of the attorneys handling the case [Update: according to the ACLU's website, the attorneys were Aden Fine, Reginald Shuford, Dennis Parker, Director of the ACLU Racial Justice Program, and Palyn Hung of the NYCLU]. Raed Jarrar was the plaintiff.

I was laughing at the TSA's stupidity until this line: "Last week, nine Muslims, including three children, were ordered off a domestic US flight after passengers heard what they believed were suspicious remarks about security...[E]ight of them [were] US citizens, were cleared by the FBI, [but] they were reportedly still barred from the AirTran flight."

"If the pilot is uncomfortable with someone flying on their plane, that's their decision," said Christopher White, a federal Transportation Security Administration spokesman. Is the TSA serious? Under their logic, if you pay for a ticket, and you say something the driver/pilot doesn't like, or you just happen to look at him the wrong way, s/he has the complete discretion to kick you off. Sounds like another lawsuit is in order.

Update: here's a link to more information, including a neat vid:

http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/gen/jarrar.html

Hat tip to Political Colors for the link.

Dept of Homeland Security's Incompetence

Yet another reason Homeland Security is America's most incompetent government agency:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/21/60minutes/main4625729_page3.shtml

The American government is spending our taxpayer dollars trying to deport wives of Americans, including dead soldiers, solely because their interview did not occur before the unexpected death of the husband. In the 60 Minutes segment, called "Immigrant Widows Left In Limbo," one mother-in-law tearfully says, "This is America." It's heartbreaking to learn just how incompetent the Department Homeland Security is. I am writing my Congresspersons in both the House and Senate.

And here I thought the federal government couldn't top its previous pinnacle of incompetence, which was improperly jailing an innocent man for seven years. Mr. Lakhdar Boumediene, a Bosnian of Algerian descent, was recently released by a judge--who was appointed by none other than George W. Bush himself. For the legal eagles, there's more about the Boumediene Supreme Court case here: The Most Significant Recent U.S. Supreme Court Case.

For even more on Mr. Boumediene, see WSJ, November 21, 2008, A6. The government jailed him for seven years on the basis of a "single, 'unnamed source.'" Basically, our United States government used secret evidence to jail a man on American-controlled soil for seven years, all the while insisting the man was not entitled to a trial. I'm with the mother-in-law featured on 60 Minutes, but I phrase her sentiment differently: "Is this the America we want, where the Department of Homeland Security appears to have no substantive checks on its powers and very little transparency?"