THINGS I THOUGHT I’D NEVER READ IN MY LIFETIME

Three really frightening items from a variety of sources via Blogdex:
From UPI: http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030204-031831-1626r France is no longer an ally of the United States and the NATO alliance “must develop a strategy to contain our erstwhile ally or we will not be talking about a NATO alliance” the head of the Pentagon’s top advisory board said in Washington Tuesday. Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and now chairman of the Pentagon’s Policy Advisory Board, condemned French and German policy on Iraq in the strongest terms at a public seminar organized by a New York-based PR firm and attended by Iraqi exiles and American Middle East and security officials.
From Mother Jones’ interview with EFF founder John Terry Barlow on Bush’s Total Information Awareness program http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2003/06/we_268_01.html
It’s ridiculous, dangerous, grossly unconstitutional, and it’s perfectly in keeping with what this administration’s been doing across the board. This is an administration that has recently reserved to itself the right to kill American citizens anywhere on the planet for the mere suspicion of membership in Al Qaeda. That’s really quite and awe-inspiring breakthrough. And the astonishing thing is that the American people are nodding along in their stupor and saying “Yeah, well, whatever it takes to stop terrorism.” I’m so disappointed in my countrymen.
From the NYT, on the Rosenthal trial: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/05/national/05POT.html
In an unusual show of solidarity with the man they convicted last week, five jurors in the trial of a medicinal marijuana advocate issued a public apology to him today and demanded that the judge grant him a new trial.
I’ve never been a conspiracy theory advocate, but something is terribly, terribly wrong here.