think about driving and paying cash

You know, a few years ago there was a stink about the Pentagon's plan for a truly intrusive domestic intelligence plan to be headed by Iran-Contra convict John Poindexter. That was cancelled, but the de facto Bush Administration has gone forward with extremely intrusive surveillance of American citizens anyway.

Today the Post reports about how the Orwellian-named Department of Homeland Security is collecting data on American citizens who travel. It's bad enough that they keep your name and where you flew to and from. Or that they keep track of the credit cards you used, or who you traveled with, or who you sat next to on that red-eye from Phoenix to New York. They are also in some instances even keeping track of what you are READING on the airplane.

I kid you not; the file for Jim Gilmore, a civil liberties activist (in the Bush II era, that practically equals "enemy of the state") noted that he carried a book about marijuana on a flight.

Incredible. There are also indications that they keep track of travel by American citizens between foreign cities, on itineraries that have no connection to an airport in the United States.

So remember the Automated Targeting System, around since the '90s but greatly expanded since 2002. And then maybe consider reading "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis. Because it can.

But just to be sure, buy the book for cash. And don't carry it on a plane. Drive. And use coins to pay your tolls, not some pass or credit card. Because they're watching all of us.