According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

Meanwhile, in George Bush's America, bad things continue to happen. More at MetaFilter and ThinkProgress.

The prize for understated gallows humor goes to the very first comment at the article itself:

I find it very difficult to believe that Dick Cheney would be part of anything that was not in our best interest.

Posted by: escoBam on May 20, 2008 12:22 AM

I like what Ezra Klein has to say about the recent wrong-track and Bush-disapproval numbers so much I'll just quote it:

It's something of a crisis for our political system that the president has now spent over three years hated and mistrusted by the majority of the country, and yet has never felt the need to take steps to restore his legitimacy. Something is wrong.

It's worse than that, of course, when you consider the cloud of corruption under which the man was both elected and re-elected. Something, indeed, has gone drastically and dramatically wrong with our democracy; it's almost as if the opinion of the governed doesn't actually matter at all.

That said, I must admit I'm pretty fond of the photo he chose to illustrate this somber reflection.

Feeling proud of my country for the first time in my adult life: students at Prairie View A&M University in Texas march seven miles to vote in protest of an early-voting location placed too far from the school. Via Boing Boing.