Get Used to It.

Based on the attitude displayed in the President's (or should I say HRH's ?) radio address this morning, we all had just better get used to having the government poking into our lives with no restrictions, loosely justified by 'protecting' us from 'another 9/11.'

Like this:

NEW BEDFORD -- A senior at UMassDartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."

Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.

"I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book," Professor Pontbriand said."Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that's what triggered the visit, as I understand it."

Personally, I'm wondering when they started asking for Social Security numbers on inter-library loan forms (unless UMass is using Social Security numbers for student ID numbers, which raises identity theft issues.)

And, just from an organizational efficiency point-of-view, I'm wondering if this student and the other inter-library loan folks are in a different database from the one that anti-recruiting group at that Quaker meeting house in Florida is in, and also the one the NSA is building? And what happens when they pick up that proto-Maoist library-using Quaker based on something in his cellphone conversation, and 'render' him to a secret offshore prison? Do they have a procedure for flagging the record in all those databases? Seems like somebody ought to be thinking about that, now that this is becoming standard procedure.

No wonder the government hasn't had any time to worry about rebuilding New Orleans!