Beware the "Thought Police"!

Nor have the authorities unearthed much of a terror threat. The Justice Department claims that 401 people have been charged with "terrorism-related offences" since the 2001 attacks, and that 212 have been convicted. In fact only a tiny number of these were true terrorists.

The tendency - duly followed last week by Mr Gonzales - has been to hype. The precedent was famously set by his predecessor, John Ashcroft, who called a press conference during a visit to Moscow in 2002 to announce the arrest of Jose Padilla, the so-called "dirty bomber" said to be preparing an attack on Washington with a radioactive device.

Mr Padilla languished incommunicado in a navy brig without charge for over three years. He has been transferred to a civilian prison, and faces trial in Miami later this year on different, much vaguer, terrorist charges. An alleged sleeper cell was unearthed in Detroit, but those convictions were quashed in 2004 when it emerged that prosecutors had manipulated evidence. In December 2005, the trial of Sami al-Arian, accused of links with Islamic Jihad terrorists, ended in embarrassment for the government when the Florida university professor was acquitted.

well I don't know about all this, I once had thoughts about a waitress, she put down the plate she was taking to another table and slapped me in the face and I hadn't uttered a word.

I can remember several Egyptian men were eating lunch in a diner on their way to some hospital in florida and the waitress overheard them talking and concluded they were intending to blowup something with an airplane and there ensued a multi-state search and the governor of Florida said (in effect) "I don't know what they are guilty of but they are definitely guilty of something."

t's ACTIONS that people are supposed to get arrested for

I think slapping mean, though. I just stare fixedly at the genitalia of an offender until he blushes. Works like a charm.