After many years of fighting against racial profiling, the Department of Justice is now considering using racial profiling to catch terrorists.

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.

I don't like this at all. As someone who just finished a Civil Rights class in law school, I'm disturbed by the possibility of people being investigated simply because their skin looks a certain way or they fit a "profile".

Frank Rich's column this week takes on John McCain adviser Charlie Black's comments that a terrorist attack would be a "big advantage" for the Republican candidate's campaign.  While much has been said about how Black's comments mirror ones McCain made last year (even though McCain repudiated Black's statement this week), Rich goes further to show how the McCain campaign's dependence on the fear of a terrorist attack is a structural part of the Republican campaign.  In this sense, Rich argues, McCain is relying (like all Republicans this century) upon the ideas and tactics of Karl Rove.

Here we go again.

As custom during every election season since that terrible September day nearly seven years ago, Republicans would have Americans be terrorized by the politics of fear.

By now we know the script, and know it well – we should not be surprised that it be followed again.

If the latest Google AdSense ad from the McCain campaign is any indication, we can expect a campaign that sinks to new depths this year.

Aside from the smack of desperation in "with age comes Wisdom" and obvious (but hilarious) swipe at Obama with "Choose Wisdom over Optimism", the McCain campaign seems more than happy to spread out-and-out lies to stir up irrational fears:

"Iran will have nukes in a year".

Yup - even though all intel to the contrary says that Iran doesn't have the know-how now, and think-tank lackeys guess that Iran may be as much as a decade away from developing such capabilities, having halted their nuclear program in 2003, the McCain campaign is counting on irrational fear of "terrah", courting the "sucker born every minute" vote.

Screen cap below the fold...

I find this whole thing very disturbing. TPMis reporting:

In a conference call this morning, the McCain campaign is bringing out Rudy Giuliani as a surrogate for McCain on terrorism. Any bets on how many times Rudy says 9/11 in his comments on the conference call?

Now, I respect what Giuliani went through with 9/11, he handled it admirably. But how does getting attacked automatically make one a foreign policy expert on terrorism?

I believe that repetition of the phrase "the tyranny of fear" will create a frame that will box in the most dangerous conservative frames, past, present, and future. First I will explain the problem that this phrase solves, followed by some useful associations of the phrase.

More below...

I have low expectations of the behavior of most politicians, admittedly.  But I've got to say, even I have been surprised at how low the Republicans and radio right are willing to try and scare everbody with their scary campfire stories.  

Let's address more fear factor thrown out by yet one more Republicnut.  

Obama must refuse, reject, and denounce any idea of having Hillary Clinton as his running mate.

After all that she has done...the racism, race baiting, the fearmongering, stirring xenophobia, the smears, the lies and distortions....the McCain remarks.... She must be really delusional & crazy to believe that she would make a viable VP choice.

Here we go...

The coincidence is uncanny! U.S. election season heats up, the terrorists "threaten America."

No, it's not The Onion. It's AP!

Fresh off the Yahoo front page, is this beauty of a headline:

Commander Warns of Al-Quaida Threat

Sounds scary, right? Unless you actually, you know, read the article. Unintentional hilarity after the fold...

As a friend told me:  "My wife finances promising start-up companies aroud the world.  I have traveled with her on innumerable business trips to Russia, Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, Greece, South Africa, Australia, and Brazil.  I went with her to many receptions and diplomatic parties, visited many a start-up, even sat in on round-table discussions;  it didn't make me an international businessman".

Perhaps the analogy is incomplete.  Certainly, HRC has met with many groups an organizations around the world over the past 16 years.  She has spoken out in favor of democracy and human rights in many venues.

But she never held a security clearance.  She wasn't Secretary of State, an ambassador, a military liaison, a foreign service officer, or an employee of the UN.  She was first lady.  An active engaged first lady, but the spouse of a president, not a foreign policy specialist.

Since around 3 a.m. this morning (when I was up changing my crying newborn's diaper), I've witnessed an unprecedented media onslaught about the significance of...3 a.m.  I've never considered it a crucial moment in time, but based on the way it's been framed lately, we all must be at our most vulnerable when the clock strikes 0300 hours.

I guess the figurative logic here is that the majority of those who don't work graveyard shift or suffer from chronic insomnia are sound asleep at this time of day, in a secure state of slumber.  Our innate sense of endangerment isn't active, unless our sleep is disrupted by something: a nightmare, a loud noise, a strange impulse....

This really has got to stop.  Seriously, wingnuts, bringing up Barack Obama's middle name like it's a dirty word?  Claiming he attended a radical Islamic school and is secretly a Muslim terrorist?  Trying to connect him to Louis Farrahkhan?  This has gone on way too long already, and the general campaign hasn't even started yet.  Who knows how many blatantly racist, Willie Horton-esque ads will be put out by "independent" advocacy groups trying to link Obama with Osama by virtue of their skin tone and name?

My view is that Barack should confront this kind of bigotry head-on and ... make a big joke out of it.  De-legitimize the hatemongering by doing something incredibly outlandish that nobody in their "right" mind (pun intended) could take seriously.  So, what exactly should Obama do? (See Poll)

p.s. If anybody's got better ideas, add them to the comments!

Fear-mongering at its worst.
The only thing you have to fear is...
Obama following in the tragic footsteps of Kennedy and King.
Now don't you see why we must vote for Anyone Else?
Excuse me while I adjust my snarkometer.

While others give high fives to each other over FISA expiring, the Heritage Foundation FISA Overtime Clock keeps ticking towards our doom.  What follows is the first in a set of posts to keep a record of the horrors to come, as a reminder to future generations to never repeat the awful mistakes that were committed at midnight on Saturday

So I'm watching MSNBC to see if they do anything else on the Oklahoma grassfires.  I was channel-flipping earlier, they had a live shot that they said was in southeast Oklahoma City, and I've got friends down there.

They cut from that to another story, then quickly to a live shot at the White House, of Bush's sabre-rattling about the FISA extension expiring today.  I learned several years ago to tune him out when he starts in like this, but something caught my attention.  It only went on maybe 5-10 minutes, but then I heard the roar of a jet.  Now I live within walking distance of Tulsa International Airport so it almost didn't register, until it occurred to me that the roar was coming from the TV.

If I recall, White House airspace is highly restricted and fighter jets patrol it regularly.  How truly convenient that a jet fly-over would just happen to coincide with some good old-fashioned fear-mongering on the part of this embarrassment of a President.

Apparently that pesky HR 888 isn't enough to save this heathen nation.  We're headed for serious trouble, people.  The rapture index has been at 161 for the whole of 2008.  And that spells doom.

In particular, we have this advice from the rapture watchers:

Rapture Index above 160: Fasten your seat belts

What is the rapture index, you might (not) ask?  From Rapture Ready

You could say the Rapture index is a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer. The higher the number, the faster we're moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.

So, at 161, Satan has his foot on the gas and the petal to the metal!  Follow the bouncing Jesus to some hilarity below.

Here's an interesting tidbit that I just came across: Pipe Bomb Locks Down Ariz. Nuclear Plant¹. It appears that a contract worker driving through a security checkpoint had a crude pipe bomb in the back of his pickup. And he's not a suspect or under arrest in the case -- apparently, officials investigating have reason to believe that he had no knowledge of its presence. A search of his home revealed nothing to indicate that he himself had fashioned the device. That leaves us with a couple of questions, of course, and we're not the only ones scratching our heads:

As authorities tried to understand why a contract worker would bring a pipe bomb to the nation's largest nuclear power plant, one thing was immediately clear: The security worked.

Guards stopped Roger William Hurd, 61, at the entrance to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station when they spotted the bomb. He was detained about a half mile from the containment domes where the nuclear material is stored. Officials pulled his security clearances and placed the facility on lockdown.

[cross-posted at And, yes, I DO take it personally]

(note: i just jumped around to a few "liberal," "progressive," and "democratic" weblogs, and the only one i saw that mentioned dodd's speech was atrios... we finally have a senator - a presidential candidate at that - actually speaking out on our constitutional crisis, and it's hardly making a ripple in the blogosphere... how PATHETIC is THAT...?)

you have no idea how long and how desperately i have been waiting for a speech like this... the hair on the back of my neck is standing up and i have chills up and down my spine... this is the call to action that should have been sounded years ago, but better late than never... all of my hopes and prayers are riding on this man... he cannot be too forceful in his message or too strong in his actions to defend our constitutionally-founded republic... god help him and us...

[speech excerpts on the flip]