Enemies List

If Republicans allege that the tree-huggers, the baby killers, the bleeding hearts, the latte drinkers are so out of touch with mainstream Murka, then why do they spend so much time on them? And I don't just mean talking about them, I mean surveilling them. This is from an ACLU press release:

Documents Obtained by ACLU Expose FBI and Police Targeting of Political Groups

WASHINGTON -- The American Civil Liberties Union charged today that the FBI and local police are engaging in intimidation based on political association and are improperly investigating law-abiding human rights and advocacy groups, according to documents obtained through a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

"Since when did feeding the homeless become a terrorist activity?" asked ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson. "When the FBI and local law enforcement target groups like Food Not Bombs under the guise of fighting terrorism, many Americans who oppose government policies will be discouraged from speaking out and exercising their rights."

The ACLU charged that the FBI is wrongfully withholding thousands of pages of documents, and today filed a lawsuit in federal court to compel the FBI to comply with the FOIA requests. The complaint seeks files kept by the FBI on the ACLU, as well as Greenpeace, United for Peace and Justice, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

The ACLU said that the few documents received to date through the December FOIA requests shed light on the FBI's misuse of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to engage in political surveillance. In Colorado, one memo indicates an ongoing federal interest in Food Not Bombs, a group that provides free vegetarian food to hungry people and protests war and poverty.

This comes right from the White House and everybody knows it. For those who think that the FBI is an apolitical organization, and are simply protecting the nation from terrorism, why don't you read up on a little program called COINTELPRO. Because it's apparently back.

COINTELPRO's mission was to destabilize progressive movements in America from within, from Black Nationalism to the "New Left." This is a similarly naked attempt to intimidate political enemies of this White House to further a permanent Republican majority. It's gone on largely under the radar, under the comforting sheath of the war on terror. And anybody who isn't down with the Administration's program is fair game. Even people of faith:

Reverend Raymond Payne, a United Methodist Minister from Russell, Kentucky is among the individuals seeking FBI documents. Last October, Canadian border officials interrogated Reverend Payne for more than an hour as he attempted to enter Canada for a vacation with his wife. According to Reverend Payne, the officials informed him that the interrogation was triggered because he is the subject of an FBI file. Reverend Payne has never been arrested, been charged with a crime, or even participated in a protest.

But he's not the right kind of Reverend, I guess, so he deserves to be detained and watched.

I hope that by writing this, the FBI will open up a file on me, so I can join the aforementioned groups like Greenpeace and PETA, along with Martin Luther King, John Lennon, The Congress of Racial Equality, David Dellinger, Jean Seberg, and others who have had this honor bestowed on them.