Pentagon To Be Allowed To Spy on Us

Michael Isikoff is reporting in Newsweek that a secret provision got quietly slipped into a bill before Congress that could vastly expand the Pentagon's ability to gather intelligence inside the United States, including recruiting citizens as informants:

"Ever since the 1970s, when Army intel agents were caught snooping on antiwar protesters, military intel agencies have operated under tight restrictions inside the United States. But the new provision, approved in closed session last month by the Senate Intelligence Committee, would eliminate one big restriction: that they comply with the Privacy Act, a Watergate-era law that requires government officials seeking information from a resident to disclose who they are and what they want the information for. The CIA always has been exempt -- although by law it isn't supposed to operate inside the United States. The new provision would now extend the same exemption to Pentagon agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency -- so they can help track terrorists."

Next stop: a legal brief from the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice saying that torture of college students with "divergent" ideas isn't necessarily a bad thing? That will be in preparation of bringing back the draft, which is likely to get a few students angry and upset and "terroristic" in their thinking.

But don't worry. Haven't you heard that God is blessing this administration's every move?