and i'll bet when it passed, his mama stood up and cheered

two months ago, this 16-year-old kid was dragged, handcuffed, outta his house and thrown into lock-up on suspicion of making a threat from his home computer. since then, he's been held virtually incommunicado at a juvie detention center far from his home, his future murky and uncertain.

his mother claims that her son--conservative, flag-waving, church-going and home-schooled--had never been in trouble, there was no evidence to support the arresting officers' claim recovered from their home, and that someone must've hacked the kid's ip address and made the threats in his name.

is the kid guilty of the charge? who knows--maybe, maybe not.

point is, in this case it doesn't really matter, because the feds aren't interested in any defense he might offer, nor are they required to be; hell, they can hold this kid in a kafkaesque limbo--no charges, no communication with the outside, no lawyers, no hearing, no arraignment, no defense--forever if they want.

"but this is america," i hear you say, "land of habeas corpus and rule of law--how could this be?"

simple: the patriot act makes it so.

see, the "threat" in question was apparently a bomb threat, thus making this a potential act of terror--and thus giving the feds, via said patriot act, virtual unchecked, unquestioned power over this american citizen's life.

kid's mother is mystified, wailing and wondering what happened to due process in america.

this story makes me chuckle darkly to myself for two reasons:

first, because at the same time the obama administration is falling all over itself trying to close guantanamo, free many of its prisoners and downgrade middle-eastern "terrorists" to mere "extremists," it's now using the patriot act (among other things) to target conservative "terrorists" in the heartland of america; and

second, because i'm sure that, as long as the previous administration was in power and the patriot act seemed only to apply to towelheads, liberal librarians and similar other pinko troublemakers, most conservatives (such as the mother in question here) were perfectly fine with it.

see what happens when you pass dangerous, poorly-thought-out, emotionally-charged legislation and then the tables turn?

[and yeah, of course there's a message here; let this be a cautionary tale for all my friends out there who so passionately favor the hate-crimes legislation currently making its way through congress--think for a minute what might happen when the other side once again gains power (because it'll happen--it always does), and starts using that thought-police bullshit against you.]