Unintentional humor

It's been fairly-widely reported now that the FBI has resumed spying on antiwar protestors.

The agency claims, of course, that it's only interested in "individuals or groups that would be involved in either conspiring, or actively involved in violent or criminal activity in support of a particular cause." But there are two weasel words in there: "individual," which obviously literally applies to anyone, and "criminal," which could be (and has been) applied to any and all acts of civil disobedience, even of the most nonviolent and carefully-planned sort. So any individual who so much as expresses support for some action of nonviolent CD is covered by that definition as a "conspirator" in "criminal activity." (And before you say I'm going over the top, you'd better do a little checking on how federal prosecutors have used the concept of "conspiracy" in the past.)

But even that sort of parsing may be unnecessary. Ted Kennedy is quoted in the linked article as saying "We have the stories going on this morning where they're using the FBI to look into demonstrations in order to find out who is demonstrating and getting into their background. That reminds me to the old Nixon times and the enemies list," adding that the Bush administration had gone to "extraordinary lengths" to attack lawmakers who question the White House policy on Iraq.

However, what prompted the heading on this item was the statement, written, it seems, with a straight face in a time of "free speech zones," massive shows of force, demonstrators attacked with stun guns and concussion grenades, people arrested for having signs opposing Bush in a place he might see them, citizens labeled "enemy combatants" with no legal or even human rights (not that non-citizens deserve such treatment, either), and expanded government powers to search and invade privacy, among other outrages, that the FBI "described activist strategies like videotaping arrests to intimidate police and using the Internet to recruit and raise funds."

My gosh! The violent devils! Right on, Mr. Ashcroft, sorry I doubted you!

Addendum: Another point I should have mentioned is that, as the LA Times noted, "Critics called attention to a section of the bulletin that urges police to report suspicious or unlawful activity to their local Joint Terrorism Task Force, a multiagency group run by the FBI."

As the ACLU ably argues, this in effect equates protest with terrorism. On the other hand, maybe the DOJ doesn't have a problem with that.

Update and correction Nov. 25: According to the Christian Science Monitor, Ted Kennedy did not say the White House had gone to "extraordinary lengths" to attack lawmakers who questioned Bush's Iraq policies.

No, indeed. He said they'd gone to extraordinary lengths to attack anyone who doubted.