Action: November 2007 Archives

According to the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, between 1968 and today there were 554 incidents of terrorism perpetuated against the United States domestically and internationally.

Last week's FBI report tells us, in the year 2006 alone, with only 12,600 of the nation’s more than 17,000 local, county, state and federal police agencies reporting, there were around 7,500 hate crime incidents.

I've never been a big fan of the "hate crime" designation because of worries about the potential for anti-Bushisms to become "hate speech" for example. But one thing seems clear: intolerance is a much greater threat to America than "terrorism."

When it comes to my government’s intelligence agencies, I am, and likely always will remain, “low hanging fruit.”

Until last week I had scarcely heard the expression. Then two lawyers in two different offices separately described me thusly just hours apart on the same day. The phrase has been pinging around my brain’s background circuitry like a pinball ever since.

What does it conjure? A well-endowed gay friend made me laugh when he claimed to share the designation… Sometimes I imagine an easy-to-reach banana with my head on it…