Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents. A similar project was aimed at Sunni Arabs in the Washington, D.C., area.

Opposing "judicial activism" is one of the rallying cries of the American right.

[snip]

Not until the Bush administration, however, was this political code word integrated into the National Security Doctrine of the United States. Scott Horton of Harper's, writing on "Bush's War on the Rule of Law" describes how the attack on judicial activism entered national security doctrine through the concept of "lawfare":

[snip]

Unlike Bush, Musharraf at least had the decency to announce to the whole world that he was placing the constitution "in abeyance" and arrogating all power to his sole person. The Bush administration prefers to promulgate shadowy memoranda, signing statements, and Humpty-Dumpty like amendments to the meaning of common words. Since the courts are instruments of terrorists (and can even be used to demoralize the security forces!) counter-terrorism logically requires the abolition of the rule of law.

A U.S. District Court jury has found Brent Wilkes, who was charged with bribing disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, guilty on all 13 counts in his corruption trial. TPM's Paul Kiel notes that today's verdict is from just the first of the two corruption trials Wilkes faces. The second involves former CIA executive director Dusty Foggo.

Do whatever it takes to fan the radical extremists flames while being careful not to extinguish the leadership (where is OBL). Meanwhile do whatever it takes to marganalize the intellectuals.

Pakistan is doing nothing to those it needs for justifying authoritarian rule while jailing those who want to protece the constitution.

While the Pakistani military is bothering innocent human rights activists and attorneys who want to defend the country's constitution, it is ignoring Muslim radicals' advances in the north of the country, according to Zee News:

' Pro-Taliban militants have strengthened their hold on the Swat valley in northwestern Pakistan by seizing several key towns after outnumbered security forces laid down their arms and fled their posts.