Great googly moogly. The land that we once knew to be know as ‘the home of the free’ continues to fall deeper into a police state, where any action you take can become cause to ‘alert the authorities’ and place innocent Americans under suspicion and surveillance. Did you know that paying off your credit card may be cause for scrutiny from Big Brother? Yep:

They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522. [...]

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn’t move until the threat alert is lifted.

At the same time, the federal government is now “mounting an unprecedented effort to crack down on leaks of government secrets, even as it is vastly expanding the range of information deemed too sensitive to share with the public.” 

This wicked combination of secrecy and surveillance is not an illusion, and it most certainly is not making us safer. At best, is little more than a paranoid delusional response to the perceived threat that a lone terrorist may pose grave danger to innocent people. At worst, it is the intentional destruction of the values at the very foundation of this experiment in democracy. And it does affect innocent, everyday people like you and me.