FBI Intimidation Almost as Scary as Chris Matthews

The Justice Department has renewed its late-60s practice of sending the FBI out to visit our own citizens at their homes if they've ever participated in a political protest or march. Why? Adam Eidinger, a political activist, was on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews last night, and he had the naiveté to suggest that the FBI was doing this to intimidate people.

Chris Matthews asked why "hardened Lefties" should be afraid of the FBI.

Is he serious? Did I accidentally click over to the FOX channel? Ohmigod, noooooo!

In an age where our government can put you in jail for the flimsiest reason it cares to come up with, so long as the words "national security" are in there somewhere . . . where you may have no access to counsel and no reasonable guarantee that you'll see your friends or family again for months or years . . . and Matthews asks why someone should be afraid? How much more do we need to know about the United States' "detention" centers to not be at least somewhat concerned if the FBI were to show up on our doorsteps, even if we hadn't done anything wrong? You see, under the Patriot Act, you don't have to have done anything wrong. Most of these protesters are college students, kids just out of high school. They're not politically sophisticated nor "hardened Lefties." (At least, not yet.) Of course they'd be scared. And you better believe that John Ashcroft knows this.

Of course, the Justice Department says that the FBI is just doing its job, trying to protect American citizens from acts of terror and violence. But what kind of top-notch investigation is going on when four FBI agents plus two or three uniformed police officers walk right up to your door, knock, and then ask point blank, "Are you planning any acts of violence at the upcoming Republican convention in New York City?"

What's the person going to say? "Yes, I'll be bringing the plastic containers, and my girlfriend is bringing the fertilizer."

This tactic has no obvious value for gathering intelligence. It's an old trick, used for intimidation purposes only. Period.

But I guess I'm the naive one here. I honestly used to think that the Bush administration would content itself with using the Patriot Act to chase down terrorists. But when I heard that the FBI was visiting ordinary Americans just because they had participated in a protest or attended a rally, I was actually -- well, not surprised, but startled. Silly me.

I also thought that this was something that someone like Chris Matthews would find disturbing. But I was wrong about that, too.

Matthews used to be a fairly astute journalist, but now he's become a parody of himself -- only not as funny as when Saturday Night Live does him. His rapid-fire style of questioning used to be used to keep spin doctors off balance, but now he uses it indiscriminately on everyone. I wonder why he bothers when he doesn't seem to care about the answers he gets? The idea seems to be to ask as many questions as possible in the space of two or three minutes, because this makes it look as though you've got an aggressive interviewing style. I read through the Hardball transcripts for the show (Monday, August 16), but stopped counting after he'd interrupted Eidinger 33 times. And that was within the space of less than three minutes.

(Oh, and Mr Matthews, I don't care if you have "been doing this every night": the entire world did not think that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. You and your brood may have thought so, but only because you didn't have the cojones or the good common sense to question the Bush administration's "evidence" at the time. You just took his word for it. You could stand to cultivate a little more humility (if not responsibility). I remember the day you sat with your cronies discussing how terrific George Bush looked in his flight jacket after he'd landed on the deck of that aircraft carrier.)

The media can't be counted on anymore. At least not anyone on television. You can count the number of serious network/cable news journalists on one hand and still have enough fingers left to tie your shoes.

We need to wake up, folks.