Politics: Total Snowjob Awareness

Time Magazine is reporting that the Pentagon plans on making changes to its now-congressionally restrained office of Total Information Awareness. The new entity will still be headed by retired and disgraced Admiral John Poindexter, and will now be called Terrorist Information Awareness.

This is such a stupid step, I don't know how to assail it properly. It demonstrates completely how disconnected from regular Americans the Bush cabal really is. Americans aren't afraid of the words Total Information Awareness, we're afraid of the government deciding that all of our credit card transactions, web browsing, emails, library rentals, bookstore purchases, and everything else are fair game for DARPA analysis. But the people running the so-called war on terrorism (and Iraq) live in a world where they have never been subject to discrimination, miscarriages of justice, or bigotry. They can't imagine that innocent people are afraid that someone looking at everything they ever did will try to pin something or another on them.

Go ahead and change the name again. Change it to the Office of Strategic Information Management or the ministry of funny walks. It won't matter. If you want to spy on the people, you're going to have to do it some other way, guys. This door is closed.