Department of Fearing the Worst

It's stories like this that make a person right to be concerned -- if not obsessed, depending on how much free time one has -- with the state of civil liberties in Dubya's USA.

Police and government officials in Florida have been using an informational system called MATRIX, the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange.

"Created to enable state and local authorities to track would-be terrorists as well as criminal fugitives, the database is housed in the offices of a private Florida-based company, Seisint."

The founder of Seisint, Hank Asher, previously owned a company called Database Technologies, which "administered the contract that stripped thousands of African-Americans from the Florida voter rolls before the 2000 election, erroneously contending that they were felons."

Go ahead. Read it. I challenge you not to fear the worst, too.