True Words: I Should Not Be Allowed To Say The Following Things About America (The Onion)

"Here's another question I won't ask right now: Could this entire situation have been avoided in the early 1990s had then-U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie not been given sub rosa instructions by the Bush Administration to soft-pedal a cruel dictator? Such a question would be tantamount to sedition while our country engages in bloody conflict. Just think how hurtful that would be to our military morale. I know I couldn't fight a war knowing that was the talk back home.

Is this, then, the appropriate time for me to ask if Operation Iraqi Freedom is an elaborate double-blind, sleight-of-hand misdirection ploy to con us out of inconvenient civil rights through Patriot Acts I and II? Should I wonder whether this war is an elaborate means of distracting the country while its economy bucks and lurches toward the brink of a full-blown depression? No and no."

    

Terrorism Task Force Detains an American Without Charges (NYTimes)

"Civil liberties groups say material witness statutes are being abused by the Bush administration to hold people like Mr. Hawash indefinitely. "The government doesn't have and should not have the power to arrest and detain someone without charging them," said Lucas Guttentag, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants Rights Project. "If this kind of thing is permitted, then any United States citizen can be swept off the street and locked up without being charged.""

    

Data Mining at its Finest: An Early Warning System for Diseases in New York(NYTimes)

"In mid-March, a corner of Queens suffered a sudden, sharp increase in the number of people with fever and trouble breathing, turning up mostly at one hospital's emergency room. Where a statistical analysis said there should have been 7 such cases over three days, there were 23. The next day, there were 47."